Thanks to my beta Cartersdaughter.
Also sorry about the numerous line breaks, I would just use spaces but ff won't accept the space breaks so it's over killed with line breaks instead.
Chapter Twenty-Three, It's A Bittersweet Symphony
That night, the three of them were sitting around the Impala. Kat was curled up on the trunk an untouched beer in hand as she gazed up at the starry sky. Sam was leaning against the hood, as far from Dean as he could get. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he was well on his way through his third beer of the night. Dean was half sitting on the hood, still nursing his first beer as they sat around just outside of Lawrence, Kansas, remembering Alyssa.
Kat wondered uselessly if her spell had even done anything -if there would be any nasty mojo coming around to balance out what she had tried to do. It seemed Dean and Sam hadn't noticed, or they had forgotten and that was great. Because Kat was all too aware of how bad it was to mess around with questionable magic. She had spent most of her life fixing up those sorts of mistakes. They'd said bye to Bobby some hours ago, leaving him to get back to work while they grieved. He had given Kat a stern look that told her he hadn't forgotten what she had done and just how foolish he thought her actions were.
Kat wasn't sure if they were going to pick up hunting again. She glanced toward the brothers. She wouldn't blame either of them if they called her on her idiocy -there was no telling what could have gone wrong with the spell. Sam looked wrecked. It wasn't his fault. And a small part of her was glad that Sam was here, for Dean. She shoved her guilt away roughly. Alyssa hadn't deserved her fate. Of anyone here, Alyssa was the least deserving. Some innocent victim dragged into this mess years ago. Sam was probably dying of guilt inside, and those beers weren't going to do him any favors. But Kat wouldn't fault him for it either. At least they knew what had happened to Alyssa… there had been some closure. It was questionable just how willing she had been to go through that hole, to chain herself to Lucifer for eternity… but there was nothing they could do.
As Dean asked his brother a question, voice low and teasing, trying to pull Sam from his shell, Kat wondered what the hell they were going to do now.
"She did it," Kat murmured to herself. "We did it. We stopped the Apocalypse."
There was only one question left after that: What came next?
"Proud of yourself?" Lucifer hissed, stalking away from her.
Alyssa quivered, helpless against his ire. Adam was sitting beside her, rocking back and forth. Michael was testing the reaches of Lucifer's cage -he didn't care what happened to either of their fragile human souls. He only cared about the fact that his escape and long-awaited battle with his brother, had been stopped by one human.
Hell was entirely different from how she had imagined it, at least this far in. It was ice cold. The cage was located in the deepest recesses of Hell, but demons could come and go as they saw fit. Beyond them, she could see where Lucifer's favorites played their games and curried for favor from the new top dog. With Azazel and Lilith gone, Lucifer's influence seemed to have dimmed considerably. She could see Crowley on the horizon, where the white tundra turned to smoking brimstone, a throne made of human skulls seated just at the edge of her field of vision.
It was obvious that Lucifer didn't much care about what was going on anymore, in how he prowled the perimeter of the cage. It had been… Alyssa wasn't sure anymore, but it felt like weeks. And in that time, Lucifer and Michael had attacked each other four times, violently blasting each other with everything they had, careless of Adam and Alyssa's presence. And being forgotten was a far more pleasant alternative than when they occupied the angels' attention.
Adam whimpered quietly. "Why'd it have to be me?"
Alyssa set her hand on his translucent shoulder, seeing the shimmer of his soul just beyond his astral presence. "Because life sucks," she offered sadly. "And we got the short straw."
He snorted. "You asked for this," he reminded her.
She hadn't really. It was just a better ending to the Winchesters' sorrowful tale. She looked up as Lucifer strode back to them, grabbing her by her neck and dragging her along with him. His cage was a massive box, and from it he could see any part of Hell he wanted to, other than the entrance where newly reaped souls arrived. But his influence was contained; the only places he was visible to his demons in both sight and presence was that frost covered plain.
Alyssa quickly learned that his favorite place was the torture racks. Alistair had learned all of his lessons from a trainer, and before that trainer, there had been Lucifer. From what she gathered, from the whispered pieces of conversation that drifted to her while she was nearly asleep, Lucifer made Alistair look like a baby. The fallen angel never spent more than an hour on any tricky bastard he wanted on his side, but he did tend to prefer to leave most things to his demons. Unless he had a vendetta against the victim. "John Winchester had gotten lucky," the demons would mutter under their breath when Lucifer left to face Michael. "John Winchester had been lucky that Lucifer was never personally interested." A timeless angel didn't have to worry about deadlines.
It only took thirty years to utterly break Dean Winchester. But for Alyssa, it never mattered how often she screamed and begged for him to stop; Lucifer would never let her take a turn at chopping demons or Adam or do whatever else she thought he wanted of her. He liked her where she was: bleeding and screaming under his knife. But this activity wouldn't last him an eternity, she knew. It might last a few years as he dragged retribution from her flesh. But he would get other ideas in his head.
Adam was a little safer. He had not intentionally dragged Michael down to Hell, and Michael had no feelings to spare towards his vessel. He had only hit Adam the once, when the young man tried to interfere between the angels. Adam was a peacemaker, of all things. In between the torture sessions and often during the repetitive clashes of Michael and Lucifer's graces, Alyssa would limp over to Adam and sit down beside him.
"This is so pointless," he had whispered.
"I know," she would tell him.
Kat found a decent place they could rent where they could live without tripping over one another. She and Dean took upstairs and left Sam with the basement to do whatever he wanted. Dean parked the Impala and gave Sam a second set of keys no questions or demands in place. Sometimes, one of them, would go down to tell him breakfast was ready but instead, they would find he had disappeared. He came home every night, though, even if it wasn't always in time for dinner. Kat took turns with Dean to make sure at least once a week they went out with Sam; often it was a hunt, only a few states away.
They tried to give him as much space as they could, but they kept an eye on him. The worst was during the demon-involved hunts he went on, and she knew Dean felt the same. They both worried that in his state of grief, he might become addicted again in an effort to get Alyssa back. An effort that would never amount to anything, as all of them knew, but no one talked about.
As the months kept on passing, the couple could see Sam was making more of an effort to get back to the healthy person he had been before his grief. He started to go out hunting more often, and as Kat had gotten a boring part-time job with fictitious credentials, she stayed back more often than not while Dean went out with Sam. When Dean was at home, he picked up odd jobs around town, doing labor work for construction sites and he started to help out semi-regularly at a mechanic's shop.
It wasn't a perfect routine, by far, such as the night when Sam staggered into the living room with a gaping hole in his leg they had to invent a cause for as Dean ushered him to the hospital. They skipped town after that, showing up three states away in Minnesota and taking up temporary residence at another house that was a fair bit more crowded.
Lucifer was creative.
Alyssa couldn't tell how long it had been anymore… and there were distinct holes in her memory, where the only things she could see and feel and remember were the flames. Lucifer burned her alive. He let her freeze to death. He tore through her mind, shredding any semblance of sanity and reason as though her mind was a piece of paper meeting his scissor hands.
She couldn't see the pieces; she couldn't put them back…
Adam wasn't doing so well either. Michael had left Lucifer's vicinity, frequently, trying to get his hands on Beelzebub and the other fallen angels. Michael even tried to get Crowley on his side. He was desperate to get out. She could see his brilliance was slowly dimming the longer he was trapped here. Adam was in worse shape than she was; he wasn't meant for this torture. A state of non-torture, of being ignored by the angels and then coddled to by Alyssa. Adam grew quieter: morose and melancholy turning to despair, blame and hatred.
Adam stopped talking.
Adam stopped moving.
Adam was like a decoration to the cage, a desolate and inconsolable piece of art, wrapping in and around himself like he was hiding from another blow. An imaginary strike. He was a prisoner to his own mind: likely a raving lunatic inside and nothing could ever repair or free him from that state.
Alyssa couldn't remember the last… thing. She frowned.
Lucifer's voice cackled around her like the whip drawing blood from her skinless body, stripping the flesh from her bones. She rocked forward on her feet, dry heaving. The chill bit deep, settling over her like a comforting blanket to soothe her wounds. It was better than the fire -anything but the fire and the burns and the stings.
Crowley came over to her sometimes when Lucifer wasn't around. He was a merry British man, whistling and bristling with his success like the pompous literary agent he was.
"The Winchesters are doing well," the demon commented. "Katherine too, but she's practically one of them, so I hear. Nothing formal, I'm afraid, but the neighbors do talk about what those three get up to at night."
Alyssa stared at him blankly.
"You know…"
She blinked, frowning in confusion as she caught the rest of what he was saying.
"…and he's ready to help with this. We might be able to fix this problem of yours."
Alyssa frowned, gaping at him in confusion.
Something akin to pity flashed in his eyes before he walked away.
Alyssa furrowed her brows, shuddering involuntarily as she flinched, sensing movement nearby. And when she glanced up, no one was there. She cried out, clapped a hand over her mouth, and sobbed. There was no one here with her. She was alone... so alone, and this prison was inescapable. But she wasn't the only one crying, screaming out, because she could hear the all-too-human screams ringing out behind her and around her.
Crowley's reign was inevitable: brutal and harsh, and there were more souls reaped than ever before as he tailored the deals to match his interests.
But she was still curled up on the floor of her cage, Lucifer towering over her.
There was fire, flames nipping at her flesh, and screams were torn from her lips as he dropped her into the pit of heat, and the flesh melted off her bones.
She lay dead, unmoving and immoveable on the tundra, soaking in the cool frost.
Crowley was nearby, peering down at her, a smirk on his face. How her death was amusing, she would never know.
How she wished she could die.
Kat jerked out of bed reflexively, running to the room next to hers, hot on the heels of Dean as the agonized scream ripped through the air. Dean slammed the door open, running in and throwing his weight at his little brother as Sam flailed violently. Kat heaved a sigh of relief, confliction warring with her as she watched Dean bring his brother out from the nightmare.
It had been a year. They had moved three times and found some semblance of peace, balancing an apple pie life and hunting. Sam was working as the library assistant, and he seemed to find some peace in his work, at long last. Sometimes Kat wondered if he wished he was dead instead, locked downstairs in Lucifer's cage, but he always seemed to remember the promise he had dragged from Dean. And Dean had dragged the same promise from his little brother, merciless and relentless in not allowing his brother to spend one minute looking for an answer, or finding some mystical way of bringing Alyssa back.
Because there wasn't one. And there never would be.
Sometimes, when she went to bed after a long shift, she would find Dean kneeling by their bed and praying to Castiel. Castiel was someone they could believe in, tangible and there. But they hadn't heard from him since Alyssa had fallen to hell. Every night, when Kat came across Dean, so vulnerable and desperate to relieve Sam's suffering, and therefore his own, she would sneak back out of the room and fix them all drinks.
Their money situation was a little tight after they got a call from Bobby about a possession a town over. Since they were trying to keep their money honest, coming back home made things a little trickier. They were still suffering from it -Dean with his bruised back, who would be crawling under cars come morning; Sam with his sprained wrist, who was expected to cart books around all day and Kat with three broken fingers and a job that required being bale to type over a hundred words a minute.
She looked through their cupboards, most of which weren't too empty, other than the liquor cabinet of course. There was a bottle of Kahlua and two empty whisky containers. Liquor was always a good way to deal with pain, and Kahlua was better than nothing. She rooted around in the cupboard above the stove, pulling out their hot chocolate mix and preparing three mugs.
Sam and Dean were in the living room, bickering over what show to watch when she brought the drinks out. Kat curled up on the couch, next to Dean as she took a sip from her drink. She watched him from the corner of her eye as her boyfriend reached over, grabbing his favorite black mug and taking a long drain from it.
"This is... what did you put in this?" Dean asked, scrutinizing her.
Sam chuckled, grabbing his cup. "Can't you tell?" he teased. "It's Kahlua. Your favorite."
Dean scrunched his face up, glaring at the drink distastefully.
"Oh come on, you liked it until you realized," Kat protested with a laugh. "It's not that bad!"
"You gave me a girly drink!"
"So? You don't see Sam complaining."
"That's because he likes this crap," Dean muttered.
"I like it," Kat said cheerily. "And we're out of the good liquor. So quit bitching." She elbowed him playfully.
"Sammy, go out and get some good hard booze."
"Do it yourself!" he laughed. He made a show of lifting his hot chocolate up, taking a long drink from it and savoring it.
"Too bad you're too proud to know what you're missing out on," Kat teased.
"Ugh, you're such a girl," Dean said, rolling his eyes.
"Jerk," he replied, and for a moment, there was some of his old spirit in the word.
"Bitch," Dean responded without missing a beat.
Sam didn't seem to mind and for the first time in months, it felt like they had the old Sam back.