WARNING: This chapter includes violence, gore, and disturbing imagery.
Most of the time, when Dean dreams, it's of fire and brimstone. It's of the myriad tortures of hell; shit that would make Dante jealous or, perhaps, traumatized, and, yes, Dean's read Dante—you don't wage war against all the evil of the universe without doing a little background research. It's not like Dean needs the literary assist to know exactly what's waiting downstairs. Hell, Dean has not only lived the nightmare; he has become the nightmare. The sort of creature that haunts dreams and shadows and corners—the type of thing that makes your skin crawl (if you're still lucky enough to have skin; have not yet been lovingly flayed, piece by piece and consumed by the gaping maw that is the seventh circle), and your eyes weep, and your stomach reject its contents violently. He was something that would make a sinner cry, make a heretic fall to his knees and pray for forgiveness, for mercy; make you flinch and recoil and hide from his gruesome countenance. Sometimes, Dean forgets that that time is past. He forgets his own humanity. He dreams, and, in those dreams, he is, still, the twisted creature that he became over the course of forty years. Alistair had, indeed, carved him into a new animal; a special pet, held upon a pedestal constructed of shattered bone, broken soul, and fear; the most prized monkey in the menagerie.
He's back in hell and there's someone on the rack, waiting for him, pleading for forgiveness, pity, a second chance. It's wrong, Dean knows that it's wrong, that he shouldn't be there. Bone deep and certain, he knows that he belongs at home, with Cas and Sammy. The house with the library, and the garden that Cas is cultivating on the side; with his workshop and the half-finished table he's laying in with carving round the legs. But he's not there, and the blade, suddenly in his hands—like magic—is not meant for oak or ash or maple. It's made for something else entirely. It fits his hand perfectly—it burns against his palm, searing into the flesh, but the burn is good—merited, the pain won't matter, not as soon as he lays the sharpened edge against the pitiful soul. There's mounting panic—he knows this isn't right—but there's something else too, anticipation perhaps—almost joy—this is what he's made for; this is the only thing that he's good for—daddy's blunt little instrument and by god, the damage he can do…it's exquisite, art in its own right. He misses this, he wants this, and he twirls the scorching implement between his fingers, he watches his own skin sear and smoke, he smiles, licks his lips, ready.
The first cut is the deepest, he sings and cackles madly, jubilant. He traces new patterns, carves sigils for protection and health and beauty; for forgiveness and summoning, and love; and he laughs as he narrates their meanings, giving hope and tearing it away until the poor sad soul is a dangling mess. When the weeping no longer serves to entertain, he cuts out the tongue and tosses it casually aside; the garbled choking noises are sibilant in their own way, acoustically pleasing, a satisfying backdrop to his humming.
His subconscious has got forty years of memory to work with, and he'd be lying if he said that it didn't make the most out of every second. Waste not, want not. It weaves the reality into infinite configurations—myriad arrangements of disturbing surrealism.
He's not sure what's worse sometimes—waking up with the taste of blood in his mouth and a smile on his face because he enjoyed it and he misses it and what kind of a sick, fucked up bastard is he that he misses torturing the damned? Or the nights he wakes sweating, crying silently because he's so fucking sorry. They suck. Either way.
Sometimes, there's a mirror—in the dreams—he turns away from the rack, startled by something, maybe just compelled by dream logic, and he sees himself—he doesn't realize what he's seeing at first. He immediately, by some ingrained habit, recoils from the creature before him, ready to fight and it takes him a moment to realize that, yes, that thing is parroting his every moment, and, yes, its face is, in so far as possible, shaping into something like the shocked horror that he himself is experiencing and reflecting. He realizes in that moment that he is no longer a man, but a monster. And he moves forward peering at himself. His body is contorted beyond any recognition—flesh burned, scorched, and shaped into a new landscape, rotted and black in places, spattered with the blood of today's special in others. His fingers are longer, curved and clawed, his hair, what's left of it, grizzled in chunks and grey. His face is taught skin stretched and gaunt, like a corpse, with a rigor mortis smile on one side and a gaping broken jaw on the other. His skull had been broken and bashed, and jutting pieces of bone in the front jar forth like horns. His eyes are pits, and they are widened and black, dead and devoid and demonic. He falls to his knees and covers his face and sobs, the reflection smiles back like a demented jack-o-lantern. When Dean wakes he's covered in sweat and breathing heavily and covers his face with his hands, partially to hide the afterimages, partially to reassure himself that he's human. He avoids mirrors the rest of the day.
Sometimes Dean has a good dream. He's thankful that he's able to manage that occasionally at least. He dreams of simple things—a hammock on a beach, a dock on a lake, his mom and a piece of pie. He dreams sometimes of driving, anywhere, nowhere, and, when he turns to look at the passenger seat, sometimes he finds Sam with his hair blowing in the wind, talking about nothing, but, sometimes, he sees Cas, smiling at the passing scenery, or, even better, at him.
Dean dreams of sex, like any red-blooded American boy, but, he's not spilling, you fucking perverts—it's not relevant to the story here…Especially not the part where Cas keeps finding his way into them…As an angel, Cas used to make an appearance, not like literally, when he zapped in, cause that was a fucking gross invasion of privacy, and he and Dean had had a really fucking long, really fucking uncomfortable conversation, wherein Dean had had to explain that he really didn't want fucking Cas jumping into Dean's HD porno-vision, and Cas had used the word 'fornication' several times and it had just been awkward. Really fucking awkward. Angel Cas made an appearance in Dean's dreams, after that, every so often, as a figment of Dean's imagination, which was probably the number one reason that Dean did not want actual angel Cas popping upstairs while Dean couldn't keep that shit on lockdown. It was bad enough that time that Anna interrupted the angel on demon action. Sometimes, in dream land, Cas would throw Dean up against the wall in that dank alley, and they would pause and instead of beating the shit out of him, zapping him unconscious and dragging him home for house arrest, he would kiss Dean. Hot and rough and in total fucking control, and Dean was so fucking turned on he thought he was gonna come in his fucking jeans just from the coarseness of Cas' mouth like a fucking teenager.
Nowadays, it's human Cas that shows up. The Cas who smiles, and makes weird jokes, and likes to chop vegetables for dinner. The Cas who walks around barefoot and steals Dean's t-shirts and rolls his eyes hard whenever Dean says something stupid. It's the Cas who has been tanned by the summer sun, and actually grows a five o'clock shadow, and leaves notes on post-its scattered around the house reminding him to do things, or just randomly depositing knowledge to be picked up later; making PB&J, playing blues records, lying in the grass. That Cas sometimes shows up in Dean's head, actually, he often shows up in Dean's head. That Cas smiles at him and kisses him, hungrily, forcefully—with human desperation and human tenderness, but somehow still with angelic fierceness and devotion, and Dean fucking doesn't want to wake up from that. Fucking ever.
Of course he does…usually with a hard-on, which he either ignores or takes care of, depending. Then he either wakes up or goes back to sleep, again, depending.
Course, you have those fucking awesome nights where the dream is going fucking peachy and then everything goes fucking terrible, atrociously, horribly wrong, like his life.
He doesn't remember Cas pulling him out of hell. Sure, he remembers hell—good times and all that—and he remembers waking up in a pine box in the middle of fucking Illinois. But he doesn't remember the in-between. He's not sure whether he's happy about that or not. On the one hand, he's never seen that version of Cas—of who Cas used to be or what Cas was for eternity, and he knows now that he never will …sometimes he wishes that, in that moment, he had seen Cas, understood him, beheld his glory or whatever (he actually did think, at one point, in those terms—wishing he had beheld Cas' glory, before he got really embarrassed and shied away from that use of phrasing even within his own head, because Dean is a fucking pansy ass when it comes to emotional vulnerability and/or flowery language in reference to maybe the great fucking love of his fucking life. When he chides himself about his inability to emote, the voice is always Sam, except, of course, for when it's Bobby). On the other hand, of course, there's the fact that he remembers hell, remembers every fucking brutal second of it, and he fucking knows what he was there, what he became, the fucking hideous demonic son of a bitch that he had been, and he's thankful as fuck that he can't remember Cas fucking looking at him like that, fucking seeing him like that. He doesn't know what went down, and he doesn't fucking remember, but even imagining it, makes him feel sick with shame and straight up terror. That's probably why he's never asked Cas about it; why he always avoids the subject. He doesn't want to know what he did or said, he doesn't want to make Cas remember their first meeting because he doesn't want Cas to think about that every time he looks at Dean. Dean can barely look at himself in the mirror most days, if he lost that penetrating blue stare…he wouldn't, he couldn't…he just doesn't want to know—okay?
That's probably why his brain offers up multiple scenarios for his viewing pleasure. Nothing like having the worst moments of your life reimagined, revisited, and illustrated in all their gory detail. He's a fucking mess.
There's one scenario where Cas takes one look at him and leaves. There's this perfect moment in which Dean is bathed in holy light, where these warm tendrils of mist touch him and he feels, for a moment, for the first time in what feels like centuries, human, achingly human, but this thing, that is Cas, and he knows, painfully, awfully, that it's Cas, recoils from him, even as Dean tries to latch on. Cas shies away from the filth, from the dirt, from the disease that is the corrupted remains of Dean Winchester and turns his back on him. Dean screams for him to come back, to please, please, come back, to take him, to save him, to forgive him. It's too late. It's dark again, Cas recedes and the moment of comfort, the only one he'd felt or would ever feel again is gone, leaving him there, weeping in the dark, his cries mingling with those of the damned, the sea of agony that was destined to be his tomb, and Dean picks up the blade once more. He is nothing.
The soul on his rack is lovely really. Quiet, stoic, a challenge. Dean enjoys a challenge. He was quiet once a long, long time ago. Silly little thing. Thinking that he was special, brave. Foolish. Just like this idiot. Dean grins with what passes for his lips and he licks them in anticipation, twirls his blade between his fingers; he'll learn…Dean will teach him. He turns the fucker into a work of art—slow and steady as he goes, slicing and dicing, flaying his skin, pulling the nails from their beds, severing fingers and toes, slowly, one at a time—this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy was a fucking whore and this little piggy is going to rot here all the way to forever. Won't that be fun? He laughs as he throws the digits away. Everything is dust in the wind.
He watches as muscles twitch, bared to the dismal fiery light, red tendon standing taught and bloody, strings of fat and bundles of nerves.
"Strong silent type," Dean croons, a pantomime flirtation from something only half remembered—a movie or a memory, teeth, white, a smile, then blood. He blinks and cants his head to the side, considering the specimen. Heavy breathing, shaking muscles, lovely.
Dean traces the blade down his chest, taunting. The man shivers, barely held in place by the restraints. Dean continues onward, a light touch, though he knows it must burn. He feels the anticipation in himself. He wants this bastard to break. This is the most fun he has had in ages, his spine fairly tingles with it.
"Tall, dark, and handsome," he whispers, "Don't worry…I know how you like it."
He makes the cut deep, penetrative, just below the navel and he rips open the bastards belly with a smile on his face. The soul whimpers, convulses, silent, sorrowful tears. Dean plays then. He's an artist, and he deserves some fun. He turns the fucker inside out, makes ornaments out of internal organs, ornate filigrees on his heart and tiny wings from his lungs. The entrails, the intestines he weaves into a crown and he places it on his own head as he continues to work. He leaves the ribs and spine intact, he doesn't want the meat suit to totally collapse in on itself. A deflated balloon is not nearly so much fun as a full one still able to be batted about and played with. Faces are always last. Alistair didn't even have to teach him that, he just knew. You always leave the face for last because you want them to feel it, what you're doing to them. You want them to smell their piss and shit and blood and filth. You want them to have the scent of their own burning flesh heavy in their nostrils till their sick with it and then you want to shove their vomit down their throats so they can taste their own worthlessness. You leave their eyes because you want them to see their destruction, the intense, disbelieving, surreal sensation of knowing that you are broken beyond repair, that the laws of physics have no meaning, that you can be torn and shredded but you won't die and there is no escape. You want them to watch their own ruination and you want them to beg you for death. There is no god except for you now because you hold the knife, you determine their fate, and their fate is to be torn and shredded because they are evil and they deserve this. You want them to hear you and hear themselves and know shame at their own weakness, their pitiful screams. The sound of their bones breaking, their skin stretching, their fucking rotting gore falling and splattering. What big eyes you have? All the better to watch your damnation with, my dear. He laughs at his own joke.
It's always the face last. And Dean has made quite a project of this one, he wants to show off his handiwork. What better audience than the supplier of the crafts?
He reaches out a clawed hand, coated in carnage and filth, and he grabs the jaw of the bastard without even looking, it's a fierce unyielding grip and he surveys his masterpiece, the wreckage of a damned soul made anew through his hands, made into something beautiful, corrupted, filthy, perfect in its punishment, and he smiles beatifically at what he's done.
"What d'you think, pretty boy?" he purrs, "I think you—"
They're blue. The eyes looking back at him, exhausted, agonized, half-dead with pain and delirium, but they're blue and piercing.
"No."
The man on the wrack works his throat, spits blood, wheezes, struggles to form a word, "Dean."
"No," he's numb, his whole body, every inch of it, from the tips of his toes to the spiked protuberances of his crown, tingle with numbness, something deep, deep inside of him, where he can feel anything is wailing, shrieking, breaking into thousands of pieces and curling in upon itself in agony.
"No," his hand drops to his side and his breath comes fast, panicked, his knees are weak, "No, no, no, no, nonononono—" and unbroken litany.
Cas is before him, is strewn all around him. He's wearing parts of him and he scrambles to divest himself of his intestine crown and thinks he might be sick. He has to put Cas back together.
He scrambles, madly to put things inside and close Cas up and Cas watches winces, and finally, now, Dean feels wetness on his hands that isn't blood, but tears, water falling from the corners of Cas eyes, the only piece of him still intact. Dean can't cry—he's lost the ability, the right, he's a demon, and there's nothing left in him that is human enough to cry, except the tiny section of his self that is weeping for what he's done.
"Cas," he chokes, "Cas, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry—what'd I do? God, what'd I do?"
He tries holding Cas and then flinches away, he can't bear to touch what he's broken, he can't bear to let go.
"Why are you here? Cas, why are you here?" as if that will change what he's done; he broke Cas, he tore him apart; Cas hangs limp, and the stumps that were his fingers twitch as if he would reach for Dean. Dean falls to his knees, covers his face in his hand, and keens like a wounded animal. "You're not supposed to be here," he screams, "You're not supposed to be here," his claws dig into the rotted flesh of his forehead, his voice breaks, "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry, boy," a sinuous voice comes out of the darkness, oily and clinging, "you've done beautifully."
Dean turns, dread running down his spine. Alistair looms over him, a smile gleaming ominously on his cadaverous visage.
He chuckles, "Michelangelo would be jealous…it's been centuries since I've seen someone turn a fallen angel into such a, ah, um, work of art," he licks his lips lasciviously with a forked tongue as he surveys Cas' trembling form.
Dean growls bitterly, "You made me do this."
Alistair cants his head, considering the cavernous, viscous opening of Castiel's chest, before he looks back at Dean, "Tut, tut, now Dean, don't be so generous," he smiles again and Dean wants to vomit, to spit in his face, to get Cas the fuck out of here as fast as he can—but he can't, they're trapped, "Credit where it's due."
Alistair claps, slowly, mockingly. Dean averts his gaze, shamed, fearful, disgusted, but Alastair, languid, rancid, grabs his head, clawed fingers puncturing the tissues of his skill, forcing him to face his handiwork—Cas shaking, bleeding, rotting. Cas' blood is on Dean's hands.
Alistair murmurs in Dean's ear, closely, like a lover, "I gave you the tools," he simpers, but this, this is your artwork—your masterpiece."
"No," Dean groans, piteously, "No."
"Oh, yes," Alistair insists, "my little pupil, you have indeed surpassed your teacher," he pets Dean's hair, dotingly, it sends chills racing across Dean's shoulders, "I mean, I knew you had potential, but this," he smiles greedily, hungrily at Cas' mangled body, "this not even I could have dreamed up."
"Cas," Dean calls, "Cas I'm sorry."
Alistair pulls back from Dean then and his leer is chilling, dangerous; "Now, don't go anywhere."
Just like that, Dean is frozen in place, forced to watch as Alistair saunters closer to Castiel.
"No," he shouts, "don't you fucking touch him!"
"Dean," Cas says, his voice somehow clearer and stronger than it had been.
Alistair tilts Cas' face this way and that, and Cas moans.
"Get your filthy fucking hands off of him," Dean growls.
Alistair just smiles, "Hardly anything left to put my hands on is there, my little angel," he winks, "not since Dean here got through with you."
Dean struggles viciously against the statement as well as the bonds—his fault, this is all his fault.
"Dean!"
He has to help Cas, he needs to save him, get him out of here.
Alistair smiles, and Dean knows instinctively what's about to happen—he's been in hell long enough to know what that smile means, the only thing that can make you smile in this fucking place—Alistair is about to go for the one thing that Cas has left, the one thing that Dean hadn't touched, because he'd been waiting, saving the best for last—his wings. He can't watch; he closes his eyes tight before Alistair makes the first cut, but he can't block out the screams, the agonized screams that go on and on, piercing and broken, until Cas can't scream any longer, until his screams are soundless and the reverberations echo in Dean's bones.
"No!" Dean screams, struggling against his bonds, "No!" he hadn't known what hell was until now, not really.
"Dean."
"Cas! Please, no!" Dean never begs, but he's begging now.
"Dean," Cas' voice is firm and close, "Dean, wake up."
And Dean is aware that demonic restraints that he's struggling against, feel suddenly like hands on his arms and shoulder; that the blood red flames of hell are dissolving, fading into shadows, and that Cas' voice is close and strong.
"Dean," he says, commands, "Dean, open your eyes."
And Dean does. He's not in hell. He's in his room. Cas isn't on the rack; he's not ripped to shreds; he's whole and healthy and awake.
Dean is aware that he is holding the knife that he keeps under his pillow, even now, ready, just in case, because some habits are hard to break. He's brandishing that knife inches away from Cas' face, and Cas, for his part, is staring impassively back at Dean as if the knife is of no consequence. Cas has one hand firmly on Dean's left shoulder and the other around Dean's right wrist, blocking the attack. Dean's fingers loosen, shocked, scared, and the knife clatters to the floor. Dean wants it as far away from himself as possible. Once he releases his grip, his whole body droops, boneless, he's curling in on himself, crumpling forward, but Cas hands stay firmly on his arms—human strength, where once it had been angelic, but human comfort too, human sympathy, human warmth.
He doesn't deserve it.
"Are you okay?" he barks; and Cas looks bewildered, "did I hurt you?"
Cas shakes his head, sharply, "No, you didn't."
"Fuck, Cas," he breathes, voice breaking, relief sweeping over him, cold sweat cooling on his overheated skin, "I'm sorry."
He covers his face with his hands, ashamed, afraid, half expecting to find Cas' blood on his hands, "Christ, Cas, I'm so sorry."
"You didn't do anything, Dean," Cas reassures him, and Dean wants to tell him to shut the fuck up, that he doesn't know fucking the half of what Dean's done, but he remains silent, jaw clenched hard enough to break.
Dean's face is dripping sweat and tears leak from the corners of his eyes, burning and hot; his usually steady hands are shaking and his chest is convulsing. Shit, fuck, pull yourself together, fuck.
There is a moment where Ca's hands releases him and Dean is torn between bereavement and relief—an abandonment both painful and rightfully deserved—he is a monster (how could he have forgotten that? How could he ever have forgotten that?) and Cas shouldn't be near him, let alone taint himself through contact. Dean is damaged goods, diseased, contaminated, probably fucking contagious—he's filthy, and he feels that uniquely, his uncleanliness—the stains on his soul that will never wash clean. He knows what he is, what he was…how can Cas ever forget that? The monster he dragged out of hell—how can Cas even fucking look at him? How—suddenly there is an arm around wrapped firmly around his shoulders and another laid gently against his forearm. Dean just fucking loses it, just fucking falls apart because Cas knows, he fucking knows, and suddenly Dean, sturdy, tough, macho Dean can't pull it together to save his life because Cas, fucking angel of the lord, fucking pristine, fucking too good for him Castiel, doesn't give a fuck that Dean was demon spawn and he holds him anyway and it hurts.
Cas' arm is stiff for a moment, but only a moment, as if he's unsure of himself or, perhaps, unsure of Dean's response, but then he relaxes into himself, and he pulls Dean into his chest, like that is where Dean belongs—right there in the circle of Cas' arms, with Cas' real, honest to god, living heartbeat is steady against him—and Dean's face, snotty and sweating, damp and all manner of gross pressed firmly against Cas' neck, tucked into his chin.
"No," he tries to protest, because he really doesn't deserve this; the memory of his nightmare too real and too sharp to let him accept this comfort, "No," because Dean already dragged Cas down here with the mud monkeys and the filth of humanity, he doesn't have to sully him further; he doesn't deserve comfort after everything he's done, he doesn't deserve happiness or sanctuary or whatever the fuck else. He struggles, half-heartedly to pull away, his muscles uncoordinated, disobedient and seeming unwilling to resist Cas' touch—fucking traitors, the whole fucking lot of the of them. He doesn't deserve this he doesn't—but Cas is relentless, firm, strong, unmovable as mountains—warm and safe like home, and he rubs soothing circles into Dean's shoulder blades with one and cradles his head with the other, as if Dean is precious and not the demonic, undeserving, piece of fucking shit that he actually is.
He speaks into Dean's hair, as Dean takes deep shuddering gasps of air, trying to contain himself. Cas' breath is warm and his voice is as deep and gruff as ever, rising and falling in a soothing cadence, rhythms that Dean's ears don't recognize, but his body does, or maybe it's his soul, either way, bit by bit, he relaxes against the steady thrum of Cas' heart and the rise and fall of his chest—whole, solid, steady—it grounds him, shelters him. He's here—Dean's fists his hand in Cas' shirt, pulls him closer—here—his other hand clutches at Cas' side, feels the slide of rib and muscle as he croons—whole, alive, here.
Enochian poetry is traced into his skin, angelic lullabies spoken in into his hair, gentle fingers smoothing through his hair.
"Hush," Cas says, "hush, dear one, I am here."
Dean whimpers at the tone, the sheer devotion in it; it goes straight to his hearts and resonates outward, filling his chest, vibrating deep in his bones. They stay like that for a long time; Dean sheltered against Cas' shoulder, safe in the circle of his arms.
AN: I apologize for this being late and not especially long-the next chapter will pick up immediately where this one leaves off-it will also be followed by some lighter topics, themes, and domesticity. THANK YOU so much for reading this, commenting on it, and taking the time and energy to stick with my irregular posting. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it! Feedback is always appreciated. xo