Opening Note: First off, I would like to thank everybody who reviewed, followed and favourited this story! I honestly didn't expect to receive such a positive response for the first chapter, but I'm glad that people are interested in this idea and that they're liking Daisy. Big shoutout to norfintroll, YoullJustHavetoDeal, MaddieLB and Isabella Poulous; my first reviewers! Your positive feedback and wonderful comments really made me feel better about this being my first story and encouraged me to write more, so thank you for that!
This chapter ended up being very different from what I initially planned, but I can't say I'm all that displeased with the final result as it did end up being quite smooth and I didn't want to prolong Dean and Daisy's "official" first meeting until the third chapter. I would really appreciate it if I could get some feedback on whether or not I'm making Dean sound like canon-Dean because that's what I'm mostly worried about. I'm not a member of the Supernatural writers' team, but I do want the characters to stay in character and relatively within the realm of realism with this.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, its characters or anything associated with it. I only own the protagonist of this story and have merely taken liberties with the universe Eric Kripke created.
Trigger Warning: Much like the show, this story does heavily reference and explore religion within some chapters and while the female protagonist of this story is agnostic, the character does contemplate the idea of religion and the beliefs of different religions during Dean Winchester's time in hell and following the introduction of the canon character, Castiel, within this story. Religion vs. science is also a recurrent theme – if exploring the reality of such things makes you uncomfortable, then this story may have a similar effect. This story is not, however, about exploring either religion or science. The themes are present due to the nature of the show and the protagonist's own background.
Specific triggers for this chapter are descriptions of injuries, torture and cursing.
Chapter 2: Natural Selection
August 2nd, 2008
Toronto, Ontario
I awoke with a gasp, my mind alert as images of Alastair flashed before my eyes. My heart continued to race like it had in the nightmare - if it could even be called that anymore - and suddenly the sheets around me became far too suffocating. I hear the blood pounding in my ears like a drum as I struggle against my soaked clothing and blankets, fighting to break out of the soft restraints as panic continued to set into my mind. The fingers. Why had I been able to count the fingers? The amount of clarity I had in that moment, when I was looking down at my hands with anxiety making its way through every cell in my body, still terrified me. Every research paper, book or article that I had ever read about dream psychology and nightmares mentioned the hands reality check. The instructions were simple and I had followed them to a tee, that much I was certain of.
Step 1:
Look at your hand or both hands and focus on them.
Step 2:
Count the fingers in your head or out loud. They may have the wrong number of fingers or the number may change as you attempt to count them. The fingers may also appear to be deformed and keep on changing when you look at them. Your hands could also be the wrong colour, or have other abnormalities.
Not only were my hands their usual brown colour, shape and size, but they also had the same amount of fingers as they usually did and they had stayed that way when I had attempted to count them. It had occurred to me quite early on, after the first couple of nights, that my nightmares were more vivid than any average dream I had ever had. In fact, according to ever reliable doctor – whose research I had read – claimed that my nightmares were unusually clear. I had passed this off as being a 1 in 100 thing that probably happened to like five percent of the population, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to convince myself now.
The burning pain in my left forearm was what tore my thoughts from this alarmingly not-so-little epiphany, although it did next-to-nothing to stop the tears from running down my already soaked face. Maybe it was the pain or maybe it was the demon-induced fear that still ran rampant through me, but I refused to look down and inspect the source of the fire making its way through my veins, opting to squeeze my eyes shut instead. It didn't escape me that the pain I was currently feeling was in the exact same area as it was in my dream. One of the very first things that I had been taught in my highschool Sports Medicine class was to never ignore pain. That was a rule that I lived by since tenth grade and what I told every fellow student who came to me with a sprain, fracture, or meningitis.
Never ignore pain.
Yet there I was, ignoring the pain as I attempted to push the burning sensation out of my mind. Instead, I blindly reach over in the dark – using my good arm – to turn on the lamp that rested on the small table beside my bed, frantically turning its knob. Relief flooded through me as the light simultaneously flooded the room. I barely registered what had occurred within those sixty seconds of my body leaving the mattress and my feet touching the cold floor. Usually, it was my lack of blood circulation that could be held accountable for my exaggerated response to the icy air that would stab every surface of my skin – penetrating each nerve until the very strands of DNA were frozen – upon exiting my bed.
This time, it was the memory of Alastair that froze me to the very core. It was one thing seeing a demon inflicting pain upon somebody I was very fond of and it was a whole other thing to finally be an active participant in his little game, but to be the one on the receiving end of his blade? Well that was just fifty shades of terrifying and the very memory had me frantically rubbing my shoulders in an attempt to stop the chills that made me shake as I paced my bedroom, the hair sticking to my sweaty forehead making it nearly impossible to see the foot of my bed in time.
"Shit!" I cursed out as the piercing pain made itself known in the big toe of my right foot. That was just what I needed on an already crappy night – to stub my toe.
An exasperated sigh left my lips as I pushed my hair back to assess the damage, finally not feeling like I was that blind without my glasses. My eyes travelled up from my now red toe, lips pursed in annoyance, only to be met with a sight that made me want to faint on the very spot. Crimson stained my sheets, bright and fresh. My first thought was to look down at my pajama pants before I remembered that my period had ended the day before. It was only when the burning pain in my forearm made an appearance again that I pried my eyes from my sheet and acknowledged my left arm for the first time in that night.
Where there had been smooth skin less than an hour ago was now home to a gruesome incision with blood trickling out of it and staining the skin around the wound.
I mumbled a thank you to my friend as he handed me my cup of coffee, directing my attention back to the triglyceride structure of fats as I tapped my pen nervously against the textbook. It had been three nights since the bloody sheets and I was running out of ways to keep my mind off of the white bandage that covered nearly my entire forearm. I had tried everything: coffee, loud television and music and anything else that would normally keep me up, but the coffee had run out of my apartment and my friends were beginning to demand why I had been avoiding them for almost two months. How was I supposed to respond to that? 'Sorry. I've been a little busy having nightmares about our favourite character and being tortured by demons.' Yeah, that would work out incredibly well. So here I was, swallowing what little pride I had left and socializing like a contributing member of society.
"Daisy?"
"Hm?"
"Are you okay? You've been distant since June…and quiet?"
Damn it. I guess I wasn't as discreet as I had originally thought after all. Sighing, I smile up at him as genuinely as I'm able to right now.
"Yeah, Seb. I'm fine. Just trying to study for the MCAT," I replied, tapping the textbook again. It wasn't completely a lie. I would be writing the test in September and anybody who knows me also knows that I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my grades. It really isn't unusual to find the source of the bags under my eyes to be late nights spent studying. Still, he is unconvinced and I know it, but he doesn't push me and just nods.
The truth was that I was the farthest thing from okay. I was scared; frightened. No, frightened was an understatement. I was terrified, horrified, petrified and every other synonym for it in the Oxford English Dictionary. Seriously, what the hell? Random cuts don't just appear on your skin. They especially don't appear on areas where scary demons cut you in your nightmares. Did that mean my nightmares weren't just some really weird lucid dreaming trip? 'But that would be impossible.' I don't refute the idea of Hell, never have, but if I accepted there to be even a slight possibility of my nightmares not just being some weird hallucinations created by my brain, then that would imply the acceptance of demons. Furthermore it would imply the acceptance of Dean being real, but that was one thing I could not get behind. Dean Winchester was as fictional as they got. Jensen Ackles was real and he most definitely was not in Hell.
My nightmares were just nightmares and the cut on my arm was some anomaly. Therapy might actually be a good idea at this point. Or maybe I could speak to one of the Health Sciences majors who were going into psychiatry, in September. Either way, I couldn't accept there to be a reality behind what I would experience as soon as my thoughts stopped being voluntary.
I managed to stay up for four days before I finally collapsed with my head buried in A Feast for Crows. I may have gone to sleep with dragons and direwolves in my mind, but they sure as hell weren't what I woke up to. No, what I woke up to was a sight I could have gone my entire life without seeing. A woman was strung up – her head hung low, tears in her eyes and cries leaving her mouth – as a figure that I knew all too well gleefully carved into her abdomen with a knife. I caught the scream before it could leave my mouth, clamping my hand over it as my own eyes widened in terror.
'I should have known. Holy crap, I should have known!'
Last time, before I had distracted him with my scream, Dean had reached for the razor Alastair had offered him. I should have known that one interference from me wouldn't stop him from accepting it again. Or maybe these were my conscious thoughts creeping into my nightmares. From the moment Alastair had begun to make his offer a part of me had worried that Dean would actually accept it. Perhaps what I was seeing now was that fear coming to life because I knew there was a possibility that it could. Still, I should have known.
"Please stop," the woman sobbed. "I'll tell him you did everything you had to, just please stop!"
"Sorry lady, can't do that," Dean grinned in response. That was all I could take. My hand left my mouth and I threw up the contents of my stomach on the ground beside me. The sound of retching probably filled the room, if the two heads that snapped towards me– a sense of déjà vu was overtaking me at this point– and the four pairs of eyes that were burning holes into my crouched over form were any indication. Once I was sure that I had seen the last of my dinner from last night, through the water in my eyes I managed to look up just in time to see Dean ripping the hooks out of the woman's body as he proceeded to shove her towards a door.
"Get out," he growled and she didn't need to be told twice, as she ran back into what I presumed to be some kind of cage or something. That seemed like the kind of thing you would find in Hell.
My eyes widened as Dean abruptly spun on his heel and began stalking towards me. The expression on his face could only be described as murderous and the uneasy feeling made its way back into my stomach and as I began to back up. Big mistake, I realized as he now had me pinned against the wall. A fangirl's dream, really, but the Hell factor squashed any butterflies I might have felt at any other opportunity in which me, him and this position might have been involved.
"Who are you?" he demanded as he held the blade up to my throat. He didn't have the same broken or defiant expression on his face that I had been seeing for the past three months nor was he wearing the immaturely flirtatious grin that had adorned his face almost permanently before he entered the pit. As Dean Winchester stared down at me, there were zero traces of either his pleasant or depressant demeanor. His face had contorted to an expression that held an explosive and consuming anger; nostrils flared, eyes closed into slits and a growl erupting from his lips as he spoke. His furious eyes held a challenge in them, daring me to speak and promising to drive the blade he held in his hand through my throat if I gave the wrong answer.
The blade that had just sliced clean through another woman's abdomen only seconds before.
I swallowed any excess saliva that had accumulated in fear as the realization hit me like a truck. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester – the man who was a good and righteous man, who had risked his life for strangers and traded his soul for his brother's. The same Dean Winchester who decreased his life expectancy with every slice of pie and sip of alcohol, who had wandering eyes and flirted with any woman who caught his eye, who was harmless to humans but a feared whisper among monsters. I now understood their fear, for Dean Winchester – this Dean Winchester – would not hesitate to follow through with the unspoken promise he was making with the razor in his hand. If I answered wrong, he would kill me.
Panic began to arise within me as it usually did during these nightly visits, but this time it wasn't induced out of fear for Dean. This time, the anxiety making its roots in my chest and blooming throughout my body was caused by Dean; it was born out of the fear I felt because of him and that thought was more difficult to wrap my head around than the idea that my nightmares might not just be dreams. I could feel my pulse beating in my ears, blocking out any sound other than our combined breathing. He stared at me in fury – nothing else – waiting for the answer I would give him as I stared right back at him. I couldn't tear my gaze from his, not because his fanfiction-green eyes were still the most beautiful pairs of human eyeballs that I had ever seen, but because I knew that the second this petrifying connection broke, I could die. I had never felt more certain of anything else in my life and so I kept staring, despite the fear in my heart and terror in every nerve, willing whatever this was to hold.
"What the hell are you?!" He roars and I physically flinch at the tone, my eyes snapping shut as I try to control my heavy breathing. Lord knows I did not do well under pressure. Of all the times I fantasized about being pinned against a wall by Dean Winchester, this scenario had not come to mind. Ever.
"D-Daisy…" I trail off nervously.
"Okay, what kind of a demon are you then, Daisy and why the hell are you following me?" He sneers, eyes still glaring at me in anger and suspicion.
"O-oh I'm – I'm not –"
Another growl erupts from his throat and I can't even enjoy him doing the jaw thing thanks to the fact that I might die in the next ten seconds. Death by Dean Winchester; what a way to go.
"I'm – I'm –" He presses the blade harder into my skin and I feel the first drop of blood making its way down to my chest as his scowl grows. For once, I am at a loss for words. Nervously, I take as deep of a breath as the razor against my throat will allow, wincing as the scent of sulphur enters my nose and lungs, mixed with what little oxygen this place has to offer. This time, I start slowly though my voice still shakes with fear. "I'm a biomedical sciences student…" His brow furrows at my confession. "And I'm a human. A living human. Like still alive, you know? Not dead." I laugh nervously, trying to break the ice as much as the erm…circumstances will allow. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. What a shocker.
"The hell do you mean you're still 'alive'? Everyone here is dead, sweetheart. Kind of comes along with the whole Hell thing," he sneers again, shaking his head at how ridiculous I must sound to him before his expression changes to a more forlorn one as he looks at me with more pity than anger. Nostrils no longer flaring, the scowl slowly disappears as he looks down at the ground. "Did uh – did Alastair send you?" His tone is quiet and I understand what he's asking as soon as the words are out. 'Are you my next victim? Do I have to torture you next?'
"What?! No!" I am trembling now as the idea of a slow, painful death quickly passes through my mind and I don't even need to think it to know it; there is no way I could ever endure anything even minimal in comparison to what Dean or the woman Dean had been torturing mere seconds ago had. A quick death was much more preferable. Besides, I wasn't like him and every other soul down here. The wounds I acquired here were real, as Alastair had proven with the last and only souvenir he had ever given me. "I told you, I'm not from here! I – I don't belong here, okay?"
He chuckles almost sadly.
"Yeah, that's what they all say." His force on my throat weakens and his eyes cautiously dart between me and the blade before he completely drops it and steps back from me. This time, when his eyes meet mine once more, the green irises hold more question than suspicion. "How come they're letting you wander around like this? All the souls are supposed to be caged up."
I sigh in exasperation.
"I told you, I'm not dead. I'm still alive, okay? Soul and body are both intact."
"I think you're in denial, sweetheart."
"Don't call me that…" I shift my weight as I begin to twiddle my thumbs, feeling my cheeks heat up, which are no doubt a dark red by now. He raises an eyebrow, a small smirk on his amused face. I feel flustered and he knows it. I fail to realize that this is the first him he's smiled since he's ended up down here. "No, I'm not in denial…I…" How could I prove it to him? How was I supposed to convince him that I wasn't like the others here? It was pretty clear that he suspected me, considering my spectatorial role in his last two torture sessions. What reason did he have to trust me? I knew he was a cynic from the show and that he would call bullshit on any story I tried to feed him. Still, I had to try. Just because he had backed away didn't mean that blade wouldn't end up piercing my skin for a second time that night.
I'm not like the others here…
I'm not like the others here…
I'm not like the others here…
…
Jesus Christ, am I stupid or what?
Relief floods through me as I make my way towards him this time. He raises his eyebrows in question yet again as I come to a stop directly in front of him. Ignoring the look on his face, I pull up sleeve on my left arm, until it reaches the top edge of the white bandage, covering the wound Alastair gave me. Next, I reach over to the edge of his t-shirt and pull it up to his chest before his hand clamps around my wrists.
"Not really in the mood, darlin'," he states dryly. My head snaps up at his words and I stare at him in confusion for a moment before I realize what he means as heat floods my face again.
"What?! You think I? That I? N-no, god no! S-shut up!" I stammer nervously as my eyes become increasingly interested in the floor. "Just hold this up," I mumble, passing on the task of holding up his shirt to him and proceeding to unravel my bandage, too embarrassed to look him in the eye just yet. The bandage falls off my arm to reveal a cut, still bright red with the clotting process only having begun. "See this? Alastair, he cut me here last time…" I trail off, finally looking up with him. I don't want to bring up painful memories and torture him mentally after what has happened to him.
His face remains stoic and he nods.
"I heard you scream."
I snort.
"Pretty sure everybody did," I mumble to myself, though I'm sure he manages to hear. "Point is," I begin again, voice rising once more. "People here heal." I gesture to his uncovered abdomen to prove my point further. "I didn't. I woke up in my bed with a bloody arm exactly where he cut me. Believe me now?"
His face pales a little and the stoic expression begins to fall as he realizes that I am right – the wound is still there. I can see it in his face that he wants to deny it, but the evidence is in front of him. Souls heal no matter what is inflicted upon them here, humans don't.
"I…" I trail off, wondering if I really wanted to tell him the whole truth. He was still a cynic and a cut on the arm might be unnerving, but telling the guy that he was a fictional character I had dreams about? Even if it was all in my head, I have watched enough of Supernatural to know that he wouldn't believe me. So I settle for the partial truth. "I go to sleep and this is where I end up," I gesture to the space around us. "I don't know why, how, or even what, but it's been happening every single night for the past three months and I don't know how to make it stop. I don't know why you can see me all of the sudden. All I know is that I'm only here when I'm asleep and that I'm very much alive."
I dare to look at him after my little ramble, but he remains silent. Eyebrows furrowed and eyeing the ground. It is a long time before he speaks again.
"So what, you keep having 'Nightmare on Elm Street' trips?"
"Yeah," I nod. "Something like that."
"You…" he stays quiet for a moment before speaking up again. "You just vanished. After he cut you, I mean."
I nod.
"I know. I mean, I always eventually leave but I don't know what triggers it. One second I'm here and the next I'm waking up back there."
He nods in response but he doesn't speak again. I look up at him, examining his features. He seems…better than usual somehow and I can't help but think how utterly wrong that is as I stare at the blood that covers most of his clothing. For once, it isn't his but rather the woman's. Briefly, I wonder how many other victims he had before her but I don't manage to finish the thought before internally flinching at it. No…the idea of Dean hurting people – even if they were not innocent, though I had an inkling that Alastair was picking out good souls for the sake of mentally torturing Dean further – was unimaginable for me. The only thing I was familiar with seeing him do up until this point was help people. He saved them and protected them – he was too good to hurt them.
"You said you've been having these dreams for three months?" It's his voice that breaks me out of the dangerous train my thoughts were on.
I nod in response.
"So you…you saw everything." It's no longer a question, but rather a statement. I refuse to answer, though my silence surely says yes, knowing that the idea of me having any knowledge of what happened to him and what he did here shakes him to the core. This is something I can't imagine him telling Sam. In what world would he be comfortable with me, a stranger of all people, knowing any of this?
Another silence follows and I find myself desperately wishing this conversation was taking place in the impala. Not because she was quite possibly more valuable to me than my own car and I would do anything to even see it up close like any other fan, but because his loud music would at least drown out the awkwardness of this silence. The tension in the air is almost as thick as the sulphur and ironically enough, for the first time I feel as if I'm suffocated by it. The unspoken agreement is there; he doesn't want to talk about it, I won't bring it up. I have no intention of hurting him.
This time it is not Dean's voice, but footsteps that bring both of us back to reality.
"Alastair," Dean mutters. He grabs my right arm and despite the circumstances my brain still short circuits as I realize that he is voluntarily touching me. "You need to go. Now."
I stare at him for a second like he has two heads.
"Did you miss the part where I basically said that I can't control when or how I leave?" I hiss back at him.
The pressure around my arm increases as his grip tightens and he scowls.
"Look, if he finds you here then that means trouble for both of us. Now I don't know what he's going to do to you, but the fact that you only have a part-time membership for the Hell club tells me nothing good."
"That doesn't change the fact that I still can't control when I leave! I don't even know how too!"
"Damn it, woman then hide somewhere!"
"Seriously? Where am I supposed to hide in Hell? I haven't exactly gotten a lot of opportunities to explore, but I imagine security is pretty tight! Besides, what does it matter if he finds me? None of this is real anyway." The words feel bitter on my tongue because it does matter. It matters a lot. Alastair terrifies me to the core and I don't even want to imagine another confrontation with him, but it was Alastair who managed to send me back last time and maybe he could do it again. My brain definitely seemed to currently have zero plans of exiting out of sleep mode.
Dean's grip on my arm slightly loosens and his eyebrows are furrowed again.
"What do you mean none of this is real? How the hell can you say that after what you've seen? How can you say that after that?" he points to the wound on my arm, disbelief colouring his voice and face.
"I mean none of this is real, okay?! Not this place, not him and not you! None of it is! They're all nightmares that are a result of me not being able to tell fiction from reality!"
He sighs before his hand completely lets go of my arm. Before I know it his hands are cupping my face and I'm fairly certain I've lost all ability to move, think or speak at this point. I'm completely incapable of doing anything other than staring into those impossibly green eyes of his.
"Daisy," he's lowered his voice to a whisper now. "You need to listen to me. This is all very, very real and that man out there, the one who hurt you last time? He's dangerous and he will hurt you again, especially if you're really still alive. Now please, think. There has to be a way out of here, one you haven't thought of yet."
Despite the fireworks pounding in my skull and the oceans rushing in my ears, I manage to respond somehow. To think, all of this because he's touching me. My death really would be at the hands of Dean Winchester if my brain or the demon outside didn't beat him to it.
"Last time," it comes out breathy and I must sound like my lungs have given up on me, "when he cut me, I woke up immediately after."
Realization sparks in his eyes and he holds out the blade towards me.
"Oh no, no, no! You want me to…really?!" I take a step back from him.
"Daisy," he sounds exasperated now and I feel a stab of guilt hit me. He's trying to protect me, a stranger who has been seeing some of the most intimate details of his life for months, and I'm being difficult by throwing a fit. He is asking me to hurt myself, though. Most people would throw a fit at something like this. "It might be the only way."
My heart is pounding once again, for entirely different reasons now, however, and I slowly take the blade from him.
"Like that time with the Djinn?" I ask softly, despite my brain telling me that I already know the answer to this one, and his eyes widen.
"How did you – "
He is cut off by me abruptly making a very small cut on my left forearm, above the other one. If I was seriously going to do this then it had to be now.
Dean's shock-filled eyes are the last thing I see before I wake up once more with a burning sensation in my left forearm.
Closing Note: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter; feedback is always appreciated!