Just as a warning, this chapter is pretty brutal, there's demon hallucinations being super creepy and mentions of past abuse.
MaddieLB- That is potentially the best compliment I have ever received! Thank you! :D
wandertogondor- Haha, yea, I set myself kind of a ridiculous pace for this story. Never again will I be posting chapters for a fan fiction every other day! I'm glad you think I've kept true to the characters, it's so hard not to stray off.
BrySt1- You'll like this next one! All sorts of angst and pain. :)
Guest- Thank you so much! Hope you enjoy this chapter, too.
"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!" a horribly cheerful voice called out.
Drums pounded in Amelia's head, and she groaned as she sat up. The hallucinations had started.
Meg leaned against the wall, arms crossed and smiling.
Amelia did her best to ignore the hallucination as Meg strolled around the room, admiring the quality of the demon traps.
"Thanks for the opportunity to drop in," Meg told her. "I wouldn't be able to come normally."
Amelia starting humming Metallica, one of the habits she had picked up from Dean.
"Of course," Meg considered, "now that I'm in your sad little head, I'm everywhere you go."
"Sanitarium," Amelia sang, rather badly, but really who cared. "leave me be! Sanitarium, just leave me alone."
"I'm in your blood, too," Meg sat down next to her, leaning against Amelia's arm. "In your head, your body. You'll never be clean again, you'll always be tainted. Still bound for hell, Aim darling."
"Whisper things into my brain," Amelia clutched her head in her hands, trying to ignore the use of Paul's nickname for her, "assuring me that I'm insane."
"Appropriate choice of song," Meg laughed, patting her shoulder. "Hankering for a hit of blood yet? Granted it's only been a day, but it feels like forever, doesn't it?"
"Sanitarium, leave me be. Sanitarium, just leave me alone," Amelia whispered as the demon-hallucination stroked her back, planting kisses along her shoulder.
Her skin crawled.
"You're not real," she told herself. Again and again, once for every unwanted touch of the demon. It never made it feel less real.
After a few more minutes of tormenting her, without evoking much of a response, Meg disappeared. Amelia stood, and started to do nervous laps around the panic room, longing for a good run. Some time later, the blood still making it hard to judge time, she started to get lightheaded and sat back down on the bed, leg jiggling nervously.
A fever started not too long after that, alternating with horrible chills that left her teeth rattling. She lay unmoving on the bed, pain gnawing at every part of her body, racked with fire and ice. Sweat poured from her body, and after a while her stomach started to roll.
Slowly, weakly, she slid down to the floor next to the bucket, hunched over as pain crashed into her. After a few minutes, she started throwing up, barely making it over the bucket in time. Waves of nausea ripped into her, and she heaved again and again, with not enough time to catch a decent breath between her retching. Everything in her stomach came up, and she tasted blood in her mouth, which made her throw up again. Her head screamed in pain.
Her whole body quivered at intervals, and she couldn't stop her hands from shaking.
Wearily, she picked up one of the water bottles from underneath the bed and rinsed her mouth out, spitting into the bucket. Vomit drooled down her chin, and she wiped it away half-heartedly. After an hour of sitting on the cold floor, quivering, she finally mustered the strength to pull herself back up to the bed, where she sat, gasping from the exertion. She pulled a blanket around her dead-tired body, trying to warm up, trying to stop shaking.
She heard a grunt from across the room.
Dean stood a few yards away, arms crossed, glaring at her.
"I trusted you, you know," he snarled. "I thought, hey, she's a good kid, decent hunter, Bobby trusts her. Hell, I even thought you might be good for Sammy."
Amelia rested her aching head on her hands. "Not real," she told herself.
"Don't matter," the hallucination version of Dean spat out. "I'd say it anyways, if those bleeding hearts out there weren't so quick to gag me. You're a monster," he growled, stepping towards her, in a menacing way that somehow screamed 'Dean Winchester'. "You're close to going dark side, I saw your face when you blew Meg's head off. You liked it. You smiled. Even if you keep it together, you're still going to wake up some time and realized you fried someone while you were sleepin'. And chances are it's gonna be Sammy. I won't let you hurt my brother, I don't care what I have to do. You remember that."
He glared at her for another minute, then he was gone, too.
She had a blessed few seconds before, "Hey Aim," Paul bounced down beside her on the bed. "How ya doin'?"
Amelia didn't raise her eyes from the floor.
"Aw, come on, not even gonna say hello?"
She looked up at him, pain and exhaustion etched across her face.
"Why the long face? I'm here for the sleepover." His face twisted into his signature grin. "Weird place for a party, though. You live here then?"
He glanced around the room. "Funny way of showing their care, locking you up here. Not so different from the closets we used to get locked up in as kids, huh."
"Don't say that," she growled.
"Ah!" Paul punched her lightly in the shoulder. "She speaks!"
"The demon made me drink her blood, Paul," she whispered. "Locked me up in a prison for days."
"And this," he gestured to the panic room, "is different how exactly?"
"I could hurt someone," she reminded herself. It was so hard to remember with the thrumming inside her mind and the fever muddling up her brain. Not to mention freaking hallucinations playing with her thoughts.
"You have power over your life, maybe more than you ever had before. How is that a bad thing?"
"I don't have any power," she muttered. "The demons just want to use me, it's part of their plan."
"And Dean told you that, yes? The same Dean who wants to kill you. You saw his face, you know he'll do it if he gets the chance."
She tried to ignore Paul as he sat there, filling her head with doubts.
"You're not safe. I just want you to be safe. Happy. You're my sister, Aim. You've always trusted me before, trust me now."
"Just leave me alone," she finally snapped, and jumped off the bed in a sudden burst of energy. She started walking laps around the panic room again, legs quivering, every step a pained jolt through her entire body. Her whole body felt so weak.
"Aw, come on Aim," Paul wheedled, and started to follow her.
"Leave me alone!" Amelia growled, and for a few seconds she was alone in wonderful silence.
Then her father appeared, and she wished Paul would come back, even if he was just a hallucination that played with her mind.
"Demons?" her father mocked her, disdain in his voice. "Vampires? What kind of fantasy world are you living in."
Amelia swallowed, and looked away from him. The cement wall was in front of her, and clenching her teeth, she punched it, welcoming the new pain to distract her from the hallucination behind her.
"They're not doing this because they care about you. You're a monster. They're scared of what you turned into in that prison. You always were weak, just needed a little push to send you over the edge."
"Leave, me, alone," Amelia said through clenched teeth, resting her pounding head against the cool cement of the wall.
"You enjoyed killing the demons, didn't you. Blowing up their bodies. You liked the feel of their blood splattering on you. Oh if only Dean knew how close you came to blowing up Sam..."
His cruel laughter echoed off the wall. "Monster."
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screamed, and turning she let loose a firestorm that briefly covered the entire floor of the panic room in blazing flame.
When the fire burned out a few seconds later, her father was gone. Then he flickered up on the other side of the room, still laughing, still mocking her.
Screaming now, Amelia sent fireballs after him, punching the air in front of her to send them roaring after him. He flicked around the room, now here, now there, and at each step she tried to catch him with a fireball but he moved too quick.
Then he appeared right in front of her, and making one of her firebombs, she shoved it into his face.
For the moment, she had forgotten that he wasn't real, and the charge exploded in open air. The explosion blew her off her feet and she crashed into the wall behind her, arms briefly coated in flame. Her head collided with the wall yet again, and the pain in her head doubled, tripled. Each thought was agony. She screamed as the fire burned her arms and her head felt like it would split open.
Her father still stood in front of her, smiling at her pain, but his outline flickered now. The pain seemed to dull the hallucination. The fire licking at her arms died out, but the pain in her head only grew worse.
Amelia watched the bed burn in the middle of the room for a minute before she dug up enough resolve to raise her arm wearily, focusing on the flame. As the pain in her mind grew from extinguishing the flame, the image of her father grew weaker, and soon flickered away entirely. Slowly, painfully, she forced the fire out of existence, leaving the blankets smoldering and blackened. All she wanted was sleep. Her father's laughter echoed off the walls, faintly.
Using the wall for leverage, she managed to get to her feet, and she stumbled across the panic room, collapsing onto the bed in exhaustion. She pulled one of the half burned blankets around her, careful of her scorched arms.
After a few minutes her bleary, swimming head decided consciousness wasn't in her best interest.
Sam woke her up a few hours later.
"Hey, how are you doing?" he asked, softly.
She squinted at him. "Thought I told you to stay out. Therefore, I'm just going to treat you like you're not real." Amelia closed her aching eyes again.
"You've been in here for thirty six hours already. You've slept the last ten."
"Whaa?"
"Come on, let's get you out." He took her hand to help her to her feet, but instantly released it when Amelia let out a tortured scream.
"What's the matter?" he dropped to his knees in front of her as she cradled her arms against her chest, shaking in pain.
"Burned... burned my arms." Biting her lip to keep from screaming again, she untangled her arms from the blanket and held them in front of her.
Blisters and angry red burns covered almost all the skin.
"We have to get that taken care of," Sam snapped. "Can you walk?"
Amelia didn't have the will to argue with him about whether he existed outside her mind, and led the way up the stairs, Sam hovering behind her. He sat her down at the kitchen table, and sent Dean for a first aid kit while Bobby and he inspected the mess of her arms.
"Honestly," Bobby looked at her, "she should go to the hospital. Those burns are bad, and she's hit her head how many times? Probably has a helluva concussion. Dehydration too, maybe."
"Not goin'ta hozpitul," Amelia gritted through the pain in her arms.
Bobby sighed, and gave her a round of extra-strength painkillers with a long drink of water before they started the process of wrapping her arms up.
She started screaming halfway through, and by the end had almost fainted.
When they were done, Sam laid her down on the couch, where she laid in a stupor of pain and drugs.
"When are you going to ask her what the hell is going on?" Dean growled from the kitchen.
"When she ain't screamin' in pain, boy," Bobby snapped at him. "Grillin' her now'd be no better than torture."
"I don't think I could believe anything she says anyways," Dean slammed his fist down on the table. "How long has this been going on? She could have been playing us the whole time."
"Dean-" she heard Sam's pleading voice.
"No, Sam," Dean cut him off again. "I know she saved you, but that don't give her a clean slate."
"Lily flower," Amelia grunted, leaning against the doorframe into the kitchen, panting a little in exhaustion. They all stared at her. She fought to keep her voice steady. "Holy water, drop of baby's blood, salt."
"The hell?" Bobby scrunched up his face in confusion. "Could use it for an exorcism, maybe, but-"
"Truth serum," Amelia said, like it was painfully obvious. "Theoretically. Would you believe that, Dean? If Bobby proves that it works."
He swallowed, looking slightly uncomfortable as everyone zeroed in on him, and shrugged.
Bobby whipped up a batch (she didn't want to think about where he got the baby's blood from), and tried it out on Dean with Sam as interrogator. Within a few minutes, Dean started spilling his worry about the impending demon apocalypse getting back on track, in spite of the dark look in his eyes. Bobby declared that it worked perfectly.
"Just like friggin' Andy," Dean muttered as he washed the taste out of his mouth with a half-gallon of water and a swallow of whiskey. "Speakin' of Andy, maybe it don't work on demon blood kids. Sam, you try. Though you always did like sharin' and carin'."
Sam was soon spilling the details of his first kiss, to Dean's obvious delight and Sam's discomfiture.
"Alright, good 'nuff for me." Dean pushed the bowl towards Amelia. "Bottoms up."
She studied the disgusting mixture, and sighed, putting the bowl to her lips. She would have to learn how to keep her mouth closed.
The stuff tasted like perfume. Very salty, bloody perfume, but Amelia managed to choke it down without thinking about that too much. Bobby poured himself a tall glass of whiskey, and started to drink as they waited for the serum to take effect.
After a few minutes, Dean started.
"When did you find out about the demon blood?"
"That demon hunt last summer," Amelia supplied. The serum didn't have to force her to say that. Now that they knew her best bet was complete honesty and openness. "When they grabbed me, the demon, Meg I guess, tried to possess me, but I had drank a bunch of holy water so she smoked out. Then she went off on a long spiel about demons and made me drink her blood. Knocked me out after, that's when you found me."
"When did you figure out about the, uh, fire thing?"
"Pretty soon after. That day, I think."
"What all can you do?" Sam sounded genuinely curious.
"Make fire, extinguish it. A few months back I found out I can change the temperature of things."
"Hot pockets!" Dean exclaimed.
"What?" Bobby gave him a look.
"Hot pockets," Dean nodded, figuring it out in his head. "She ate cold hot pockets and didn't complain. I knew something was off. No one likes cold hot pockets. You heated them up, didn't you?"
"Yep," Amelia smiled at that one.
"Did Meg ever tell you what their plan was?"
"She said she wanted my soul," Amelia said, reluctantly. "Wanted me as a demon. Said I wasn't going to heaven with demon blood in me."
Sam gave her a very sympathetic look, but held himself back from trying to comfort her with his touch. He knew it wouldn't do her any good at the moment. "That's not true. It doesn't mean you're a monster." And with the truth serum still in his system, Amelia had to believe him.
"How many times have you drank demon blood?" Dean again.
"Just the twice. Though when they nabbed me just now Meg made me drink it pretty often. Not sure the exact number."
"You had no idea about any of this before last summer?"
She shook her head. "No. The fire didn't start until I drank the blood."
"That's what ya dream 'bout," Bobby muttered.
Amelia nodded, and even though it wasn't a question, the truth serum still prodded at her, forcing her to talk. "Meg, and the vampires, and my father some times," she couldn't close her mouth, couldn't stop the words that the serum dragged from her mouth. "He raped me once, you know," and if there had been a gun she would have blown her brains out rather than watch their expressions. "Drunk as hell, I think he thought I was my mother. Never told Paul, Paul would have killed him-"
"Amelia," Bobby barked, finally pulling out of his shocked silence, "stop. You don't have to tell us."
The serum released her, and she took a breath, closing her eyes so she didn't have to look at them. She started shaking again.
Someone punched a wall, Dean probably.
"You used fire to blow up the vampires when you saved Jo," Sam changed the topic, probably trying to avoid the imminent panic attack.
"Yea."
"That's why you had the panic attack when Ellen asked you about it. You didn't want anyone to find out."
"Yea."
"Damn, I really wanted those hex bags to work," Bobby muttered into his beard.
"Anything else important about the demons you haven't told us?" Dean asked.
Amelia thought for a few seconds. "She said the demons were in turmoil a year ago, but I think you know that. And that a lot of stuff slipped through the cracks. She said she waited a long time for this. I can't remember anything else, sorry."
No one asked her any questions for a minute, and Bobby turned to Dean.
"Satisfied?" he asked the younger hunter.
Dean didn't look happy, but he nodded. "Yeah. I believe her."
And because the serum was still in his system as well, they all relaxed.
"Why didn't you tell us, Amelia?" Bobby asked, his voice low and gruff.
"I," she stared down at her bandaged hands. "The demon warned me that Dean and Sam might kill me if they found out. I know demons lie, but I just didn't want to risk it I guess. I mean, you are hunters. I couldn't find out anything about it. You could have killed me for all I knew about it."
"Did you really think we would kill you?" Bobby sounded hurt, but it was still Bobby so it came across all growled.
"Dean maybe. You and Sam..." Amelia lowered her eyes. "No," she said, softly.
They were quiet for a minute.
"Hell of a lot to carry around," Bobby muttered, and noticed Amelia drooping. "We're done, do you want to lay down again?"
She nodded, and walked by herself to the couch, refusing any helping hand.
"Just," she tossed around a little bit, trying to get comfortable for all the bruises covering her body, "just don't startle me awake alright? I don't want to burn anyone's eyebrows off. Remember, I kind of have flamethrowers in my hands."
"We won't," Sam promised. "Get some sleep."
"Thanks," she mumbled, and laying her arms down awkwardly, drifted off.
Kind of an emotional ride there, hope you guys enjoyed it! Just as a warning, the next chapter will be the last official one. I've written up a couple of shorter epilogue chapters to tie everything together and do some things I never got around to doing in the fanfic itself, but I need to work on them a little so I'll take some time with posting those. Thanks for coming along on the ride, see you at the last chapter! :)