From the Journal of Bobby Winchester

These were odd times. Hell was at its strongest and no external enemy pressed upon our gates. I will write no more about Zeus. I have given him enough ink and he has come back to life for enough pages. Let it only be said that his threat was diminished. My armies were consolidated and organized. I reigned each day in the throne room, but mostly, I reigned alone.

Crowley's throne had not been moved but my callers and captains had shifted around me, the set of their shoulders faced me alone and their eyes slid passed him for the fleeting hours that he sat at my side. His part in my disappearance was not going to be easily forgotten. Nor had forgiven him entirely either.

Months into this arrangement there were no callers and I sat alone in the throne room, I allowed myself to slouch into the throne, chain resting on my hand, tapping my lengthening nails against my cheek patternlessly. I didn't care so much that he had had that failed frolic with Aphrodite. It had been a necessary plan, the spear and knife were of the highest priority. And, if I'm being honest, I can't hold it against anyone who gave in if Aphrodite wanted to put her claws into them, for gods' sake, she's Aphrodite.

My head gave me a warning throb of pain. A headache had plagued me since my return to Hell, ebbing occasionally, but when I was alone and my thoughts stirred, it returned to torment me.

It felt like so long ago that I had run around with Crowley in the Hellions' consumed world. The memories had a blurred quality to them. I had been so goddamned young. Chronologically wrong, it felt longer still since I had kissed him in the tree copse. My body had been flooded with loneliness and desperation to get back to a home that was gone and with crushing loss. Any port in a storm.

I didn't want to run off into the arms of some other man, Xed's cloying attempts had repulsed me more than anything, I just wanted to be left alone. To go untouched. The smallest brush of a hand unnerved me, felt like my bones would collapse. It felt like the structures in my brain were all shaking loose, like everything was dusty and I couldn't ever quite think straight. Now that I noticed it, it felt like it had been that way for awhile held together with paperclips and tape, now finally falling apart. I wanted time to put it back together.

I rose from the throne and cracked my stiff back, there was no one I planned on meeting today and I could always be found if the need arose. I put my fingers to my forehead briefly, reveling in their coldness then fixed a smirk to my lip and sauntered out of the room. I stopped to look at my guard, "You throw me a line if someone comes calling."

The guard nodded and I smiled at him, "Thanks, Gillium." Which made him grin. I made a point to learn their names.

I retreated to my room. It wasn't the room I had shared with Crowley that had never reflected any particular taste of mine but seemed vaguely coupley. My abilities to alter Hell were beginning to refine and I had made it my latest project to carve out my own space.

A tower now jutted from the corner of the palace and within it a jumbled mess. I didn't let anyone in, not even to clean. That seemed important. I wanted it to be my space, to show me what I was supposed to be, but even was hard.

I closed the door behind me and shucked my elegant clothing, pulling on loose pants and a cowled sweater as fast as I was able. I had no mirrors here, the sight of my body, the feeling of being naked had started to tear at me like a dull knife.

Comfortably dressed, scaled the vines that wrapped thickly around the walls to the second level, a loft that stuck out halfway across the expanse of the tower. I leapt onto it and dropped into the thin bed pushed up against the wall. It was always so cool in here. I pressed my forehead against the stone to repel the headache and pulled a pillow over my head to snuff out the light.

Without Crowley's heartbeat to give me something to concentrate on and away from the omnipotent threat of hunting, I could not stop thinking. I had once, I thought I remembered, been in control of my own mind. But it had turned against me and now fought me every moment. And I was not strong enough to resist for long. When I thought, the taste of Ethan's blood filled my mouth and I could feel Zeus's fingers against my skin and the claws of the Hellions. I could still feel the dizziness their wounds inflicted and the soul deep confusion. Unable to stop the onslaught it was like sinking.

I pushed my face against the mattress and bit myself to keep from screaming out and I thrashed in the bed. My muscles flailed and contracted and my head pounded in my skull.

Sometimes the thoughts felt like a toxin that would build inside of me and I would eventually have to let it engulf me. Then I felt clearer, clearer than any other time and I thought perhaps after each attack a little bit of my brain was put back in order. But it had not been getting better. It had been months. It felt so much longer.

I lay in the cool silence for a long while before the knock came, like a clock, upon my door. My captain, Gilgash, as he always did, poked his head in the door, "My lady, Persephone, will you be leading the high guard in their drills today?"

And today, like every day for the last two months, I righted my facer, pulled myself from my covers and shimmied down the vines, landing deftly before my captain. And, like every day he gave me a strengthening smile. "Good, it's good for them you know." And he stepped out for a few moments while I changed into proper under armor then helped my strap into my armor.

"Thanks, Gil," I said to him, as I always did. I relished this regularity as much as his reassuring smiles.

Drilling the high guard was a favorite time for me. The physical exertion cleared my head, I had no time to think. Although sometimes, my mind would slip and I would be assaulted with an idea that if I had just dodged this particular way or leapt instead of rolled at this attack I may have entirely evaded Zeus' capture. And then he was on me again and his fingers passed through my armor and I was exposed and naked and used and helpless.

Then my soldiers would pretend not to notice and claim fatigue and allow me to flee.

Today, it was one of the worst. A soldier, while we were sparring, grappled me from behind and, effortlessly, in a turn I had never yet accomplished, I twisted out of his grasp, although he had me beat in weight by maybe a hundred pounds. If you had done that Ares never would have caught you, my enemy mind lanced me. I shuddered. I knew it was on its way.

Not noticing my slip, the soldier took moved and struck, hitting the back of my head. He was, no doubt, sure I would dodge in time. I fell for a very long time. The pain in my head was so ferocious my vision darkened and all I could feel was Zeus' weight pressing me down so hard I could barely breathe, his hands forcing me apart, and then and then and then.

I straightened and looked at my soldiers. They had all stilled, watching me. Gilgash called out at once, "That is the end of training for the day, be off!"

He waited until they were dispersed then stepped to me, a frown cutting through his brow, "My Lady, if I may be so bold, perhaps you should rest."

I nodded softly, trying not to jostle my head and fled inside, back to my cool and lonely tower.

I did not even make it up the vines, but fell to the floor and pressed my forehead against the cool stone. I was choking and I couldn't breathe. Something pressed on my lungs and I could not even move. I shook and shook and shook and my mind would not be stilled.

Ethan's spector rose, his tiny face smeared with angry tears, his too big glasses askew. He shrieked at me in his little voice and knives pressed through my flesh, "What mother sacrifices their child for the sake of themselves?! You dare to still think of me as your own? How did my blood taste, mother?! Is that the blood you used to make your shining palace?"

My internment in the bunker had made me too good at raising the dead and Ethan was not alone for long. Mary came first, and looked at me with howling disdain, her whisper was a counterpoint to Ethan's shrieking, "You are not a worthy child of my eldest son, Dean deserved so much better than you, demon whore, queen of damnation, murderess. Don't you know what your legacy is? Weren't you listening when my Dean told you about me? What I did for him and for your Uncle Sam? You had a boy and you let him die. Do you still think you are a Winchester after that?"

Mary was befittingly joined by her husband who growled and shouted and snarled, "Don't you know what it is to be a hunter, girl? So you got picked up by a halfass god and thrown around by a winged bitch? So your kid died, you know how many hunters had kids die? And you're on the ground whining? And you call yourself a Winchester?"

Dad was the worst, he stalked in like a nightmare and his eyes fixed on me for so long they bit. Finally he turned and left, and over his shoulder, dismissively, "You aren't my kid."

And then he came like a hurricane, and my ghosts tore me apart while Zeus bore me down.

My body clenched and thrashed and my voice could not be quelled from rasping and shouting.

Only by the influx of light did I know the door had opened. I looked up through my arms that cradled my head and Crowley, closing the door behind him, looked down at me.

I pushed myself to sit at least, pain pressing upon even inch of flesh the shouting ringing in my ears.

"What do you want!" I yelled, desperate. I wanted to fling things at him, to hurt him and break him and make he plead.

He crouched to my level, "Bobby, you are not alright."

Angry sobs jerked my torso backward and forward, my reply was not my usual well crafted riposte, "Fuck you!"

He stood and turned, "I should have left you alone."

Before I could stop myself I threw out and arm and shouted, "Don't leave."

He turned back, "Don't tell me you've forgiven me for Aphrodite?"

I snarled, anger rising as my first defense, "It wasn't about Aphrodite!"

I stood, finally and launched at him, knocking him back against the door, my superior strength keeping him pinned as I spat in his face, "You should have told me!" I shrieked, "You should have told me your plan because I thought I had to leave and I thought I was going to be alone and I can't do it alone and they won't stop yelling!"

The end had dissolved from shouting into tears.

He peered at me and didn't try to fight for release, "Who won't, Bobby?" His voice was so soft and it had been so long since I had heard it. I wanted to lay my head against his chest and hear his heart thudding and drive out the noise. I wanted his arms around me where Zeus could not touch me.

Weakened from my fighting, from hundreds of sleepless nights that had again begun to drain me, I forwent pride and allowed myself to slump onto his chest.

His arms came up tentatively and held me in place and for the first time in so many weeks a touch didn't make me feel like collapsing. He lifted me and, not able to get to the bed a storey up with no stairs, he sat heavily on the floor, back leaning against the wall, and huddled me onto him. I did not complain. His heartbeat had already begun to drown out the shrieks, the acrid smell of sulfur burnt away the taste of blood.

His fingers laced through my hair, "I should have told you, Bobby, you're right. But what would you have said, if I had told you I was going to sleep with the goddess of love for weaponry?"

I murmured into his shirt, "If she wasn't coercing you, if you didn't feel duty bound and coerced, I would have had your back."

In a more level voice than he usually had, free of conniving he replied, "You really would have. I should I told you, Bobs. You nearly died saving me from the Hellions, twice. You plotted a way of giving me part of Hell, when you could have taken it. You kept your legions from ripping me apart." He paused here and his hair stroking stopped, "It's possible that in light of my jealousy over your popularity in Hell and all of time we spent together, I forgot that you are the first friend I have ever had."

"You make them stop."

"What?"

And I told him about my howling ghosts and the faces in the dark and the blood in my mouth. And I told him about Zeus who pressed me down and never let me free.

I peered at him, "Does that make me weak?"

"I don't care. We'll patch you up."

I pressed my ear against his chest and listened the the thumping, Crowley's nearness and the homey smell of sulfur, the heartbeat that drove out the dark, was tearing at my defenses and I had tried so hard but I crumbled and cried into in shirt, "I want it to stop!"

He said the next sentence like an oath, "It will. It will."

It wouldn't. It would be long after this that I discovered it. That my wounds did not close. When the claws of a Hellion rip into you, you stop fixing up right. I could learn to push them down and I could see them coming from the corners of my eyes, but my howling ghosts and the press of Zeus did not diminish.

I am immortal and have seen many centuries of tragedy, and none of them leave me, not one, not for a moment, except, inexplicably, with the thumping of Crowley's, my companion in the ages, heartbeat, and the scent of sulfur. But, of course, that died when he did.

AN: Sorry for the hold up guys! A bout of ridiculous sickness and normal being a dumbdumb adult got in the way! Hope you enjoyed it.

Drop me a review and tell me what you think!