This is a snippet that's most likely going to be part of the James and Harrison story that I'm currently in the process of rewriting a bit.
contains: references to past torture, hospital setting, brief mention of thoughts about death, fear of being drugged.
When James first came too he couldn't quite tell what he was looking at; tired and dazed as he was, the change in scenery confused him. The room was surprisingly bright and he couldn't feel the cuffs or leather straps that usually wrapped around his wrists. Blinking slowly James looked down. Indeed there were no cuffs or straps, but instead bandages around his wrists and a cast on his right hand for his fingers. And he could see more bandages on his arms and a tube stuck to his arm with some plastic adhesive.
That made his heart skip a beat. unknown substances going into his body was not a good thing. “No, no no.” James mumbled as his heart began racing in fear. This wasn't good, who knew what Harrison was pumping into him with that. He moved his hand to try and peel the plastic adhesive for the tube away but his fingers wouldn't quite cooperate. Still, he couldn't give up, he had to-
“No, don't do that.” Someone said and put a hand over his. The touch caused James to let out a scream and looked up. The hand was removed, and a woman, dressed in scrubs stood next to him, looking apologetic. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
Wait, scrubs? why was she wearing scrubs? that was a new one. Still breathing rapidly James' eyes darted around the room and for the first time he actually took in his surroundings. The room was bright and he appeared to be laying in a hospital bed. Yeah the equipment beside the bed suggested it definitely was a hospital room. And come to think of it, for the first time in a long time James wasn't in an overwhelming amount of pain. He still didn't feel good, but a lot more numb than he was used to. That, and extremely tired.
“What, how…?” James looked back at the woman, a nurse.
“James, you're at City Central hospital, you’re safe.” The woman spoke calmly, carefully, so as to not startle him.
Safe… Flashes of memory suddenly appeared. Being brought out of Harrison’s house on a gurney, the ambulance ride, doctors. It really was over, he was free.
“I understand that this must be a lot to take in, but you're safe now.” The nurse said gently. “If you feel up for it, your family is here.”
“They- they're here?” James asked with more tears rolling down his face. He’d missed them so much. For a long time now he’d been afraid that he would never see them again. He’d been so sure he was going to die in that basement.
“Yes,” the nurse smiled warmly. “Shall I tell them to come in?”
"This can end at any time kid," the blade master drawled, swaggering arrogantly in slowly shrinking circles around his helpless prey. The shock arrow rolled lazily through his fingers, tiny sparks leaping forbodingly from its pronged tips. "All you have to do is tell us about the portals that let you heroes move through time. How do they work? Which one of you is making them?"
"Fuck off," Wind croaked, inwardly wincing at how weak and thin his voice sounded. Dehydration made his vision swim as he tried to lift his head and back the statement up with a fierce scowl, which his captors seemed to completely content to ignore. Acid burned the back of his sinuses as nausea rose, a hot river scorching straight through his chest to pool with the pain from his skipping heart.
"Kids these days," the blade master drawled, companions sniggering amongst themselves as the behemoth knelt down, his greater bulk towering over the smaller hero, "no manners. Maybe, if you're good, I'll teach you some. But for now, tell me about the portals."
"Never," Wind hissed, trying to brace himself for the storm. Wicked prongs pierced his skin, and sands of Gerudo desert were obliterated by lightning.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“How did you think this was gonna end?”
The moment Sam left Lucifer behind.
The thin, jagged crack of light hovers undulating in the air in a beckoning dance, promising sanctuary on the other side. All of the people Sam and Dean have brought to the fissure between worlds—Mom, Jack, the remnants of human freedom fighters barely hanging on against the tyranny of angels who reduced this Earth to ash—they’ve made it through. They’re free, they’re safe, Sam has done what he had set out to do. But there’s one last thing remaining. Sam watches Dean disappear through the breach and turns to face Lucifer as he approaches, then blocks his path, pushing a hand against the archangel’s chest.
“Sam, what are you doing, man? I’m hurt. Please.”
Sam wants to laugh at the hypocritical plea from the monster who never before showed Sam an ounce of the sympathy he’s expecting now. Nearly two centuries of confinement together gave Lucifer unhindered access to Sam’s innermost thoughts, and he knows how to take advantage of Sam’s propensity to forgive those who seek redemption, knows how to exploit Sam’s instinctive compassion, twisting it to his own ends. But nearly two centuries of confinement together also gave Sam more insight into Lucifer than the archangel is willing to admit. The Devil puts on a good act, Sam will grant him that, and if anyone else were watching they might fall for it, think less of Sam for what he’s about to do, judge him harshly for his treatment of the pathetic creature before him. But Lucifer’s façade of good will wouldn’t fool anyone who has seen Lucifer’s true face, the one he keeps hidden away behind his vessel. The one he lets out to fuel the nightmares of his victims, to torment them in his absence. The one he displays as a reminder that they will never be free of him.
The performance doesn’t fool Sam. “How did you think this was gonna end?”
Sam shoves.
Despite his professed injury and weakness, Lucifer is still an archangel, still possesses raw archangel strength, and is nowhere near as fragile as he would have Sam believe. So Sam puts every memory of the Cage, every moment of anguish, every second of despair into that shove. Every searing burn, every jagged slice, every crushed bone, every torn sinew, every ruptured organ. Every peal of laughter from Lucifer’s delight at his agony. Every falsely proffered mercy taken away, every drop of hope obliterated. Everything Lucifer did to him and the joy he took in doing it, it all goes into that shove.
Lucifer goes down, stunned.
All traces of the archangel’s arrogance drain from his expression. The memory of his true face, a presence that has stalked Sam through every waking moment and in every heart pounding nightmare, diminishes from a visage of overwhelming terror into a pitiful, buffoonish caricature. In that moment, Sam knows that Lucifer has already done the worst he will ever be able do to him, yet Sam is the one left standing. He is the one who stands between Lucifer and what he so desperately wants, and there’s not a damned thing the archangel can do about it.
Sam gazes steadily into Lucifer’s eyes and sees in them an awakening realization, a reluctant bud opening to the dawn light. One hundred and eighty years of burrowing through Sam’s mind, defiling every thought, corrupting every memory, had the archangel assured of his hold over Sam, convinced that he had plumbed the depths of every corner and knew everything that could be known. It’s only now that Lucifer sees the truth, that what he thought he knew was only a persona he’d created for Sam, crafted for him in the Cage, torturing and twisting and reshaping Sam until he was pliant enough to be forced into a mold of conditioned responses. As Sam looms over him now, Lucifer’s eyes betray the epiphany. In his hubris, he thought he'd broken Sam, made him into puppet bound to his will. But it wasn’t Sam that broke; it was the suffocating coffin that Lucifer had constructed to hold Sam a prisoner of his fear that shattered. Had Lucifer known Sam at all, he would have known that a cage of despair couldn’t keep Sam contained forever. He would have known that Sam would turn it into a cocoon.
Sam turns his back on Lucifer, shrugs off the shredded remnants of subjugation that had encased him. Leaves the shadow that has haunted him for years on the ground behind him, powerless. Impotent. He steps through the fissure just as the light begins to flicker and takes a deep breath on the other side as the rift seals behind him.
A/N: This chapter gets a bit darker and features more Kessler.
***
Where It Hurts Most, Part 2
Deeks had been in the empty room for an undetermined time. He’d woken up when his captors were dragging him in with a bag pulled over his head, and tied him to a chair. Only them had someone removed the cover. He was clearly in a garage or work room of some sort, but it was too generic to give him any real clues about his location.
They’d attacked him on a deserted part of the beach, fast and relentlessly. Deeks managed to hold his own for a while and even broke one guy’s nose and knocked out another before they took him down.
His bottom lip was split, dried blood stiffening the hair of his beard. He was also pretty sure he had bruised ribs and one of his index fingers was either broken or dislocated.
For the last several minutes he’d been quietly working at his wrists to try and find some leeway in the straps binding him to the chair. Although he wasn’t liable to have a panic attack these days, he still wasn’t a fan of being tied down, especially in this position.
“Struggling is pointless, Detective.” Deeks froze as David Kessler appeared in the room. He jerked towards him without thinking, regretting it when the action brought a grin to Kessler’s face.
“Actually, it’d Investigator now,” Deeks said pleasantly even as he wished for the ability to bludgeon the smirk right off his face.
“Oh, that’s right. You were promoted after you were fired,” Kessler commented, shaking his head. He wandered around the room, almost pacing, hands tucked into his pockets like he was trying to give the illusion of nonchalance. “Congratulations. Kensi must be proud.”
Deeks just watched, not engaging him. He was angry for sure, but he wasn’t going to give Kessler the satisfaction of seeing him react. Eventually Kessler turned back towards him.
“I expected a better fight from you.”
Deeks snorted, shaking his head.
“Right, because five armed men against one is a fair fight. I noticed you didn’t join in. Is that because you’re afraid you might lose?”
He saw Kessler’s eyes darken and his jaw clench and was pleased that the barb had hit home. It was probably a terrible idea to poke him given Deeks’ current position, but he was eager to see what his end goal was.
“I can see why Kensi likes you. You’re her type,” Kessler observed, nodding. “You’re confident, pretty, like most California boys, and you’re in shape.
“Oh my god, you are so transparent,” Deeks said, laughing softly. “Your jealous. You know there’s no scenario, even if you weren’t a complete psychopath, where Kensi would choose you and that’s killing you.”
“It doesn’t matter because in the end I will have her.”
“Please. I’m tied down and you still think I’m a threat to you. You didn’t even dare coming near me until your thugs had me subdued. You’re not nearly as strong or smart as you try to pretend.”
Kessler smirked again, though this time it was tinged with anger. Clearly the image of control he was trying to project was faltering which was a point in Deeks’ favor. As long as he could keep Kessler off kilter long enough, the team might be able to find him. No doubt they’d noticed his absence by now.
“While I do want your wife, and I will have her, that’s not my purpose today,” Kessler explained and Deeks tensed at the mention of Kensi. At the idea of Kessler ever being close to her to act on his sadistic fantasies. “No, I want to see her fear losing the thing she loves most. And that’s you. I want Kensi to feel the pain of knowing I hurt you and she couldn’t stop me.”
“If you think I’m going to cave for your circus tricks, then you don’t know anything about me,” Deeks said seriously, even as a horrible thought as to Kessler’s plan began to form in his mind.
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong Marty.” Moving slowly, he walked behind Deeks, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “Doesn’t this place bring back memories? You in a chair just like this, a couple Russians with a drill? That’s the kind of thing you never forget. It leaves a trace behind.
Deeks couldn’t stop himself from flinching away when Kessler lightly touched his cheek.
“Mm, well, I did get these pretty awesome implants.”
“I am going to enjoy breaking you so much,” Kessler murmured, caressing his cheek again.
***
A/N: I might have made Kessler a little smarter than he really is, but I do think he likes to talk more than act.
Chapter 128 Summary: While William is still asleep, Rowan and Peter can spend some time together. (Taggalicious: @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi, @much-ado-about-whumping, @abitefullofeverything, @whump-me-all-night-long, @sky-or-something-idfk and @tears-and-lilies)
Trigger Warnings: PTSD whumpee, self-depreciation, mention of torture, mention of previous abuse
Rowan clutched the tea in his palms through a blanket, the heat seeping through the cloth welcome on his chilled fingers. Peter had brought in almost everything he used during the day: the books he was slowly reading and the notebooks he would scrawl in, his knitting needles and the length of scarf that was now longer than Rowan was tall, and even the chisels he was working away at the spoon with, he hadn’t done much since his hands were unbandaged from last time, he was very careful not to hurt himself again. Peter would preach how awful hand injuries were, and while Rowan didn’t want to worry him, he mainly didn’t want to have to listen to the lecture anymore.
“Thank you,” He smiled as his eyes followed the graceful movements.
“Don’t worry about it,” Peter replied, resting beside Rowan once everything was lined up on the windowsill. “You shouldn’t be alone in here for long, it would be torture.”
“It definitely wouldn’t be torture,” Rowan almost scoffed, imagining his weeks in the dungeon where his joints were dislocated and his skin was torn and his body ravaged.
“There’s more to torture than just hurting someone,” Peter answered. “If…if he tortured you physically then that was because your mind was already broken. For those who won’t submit, they generally try to break your mind, solitude will fracture it in no time at all.” He paused for a moment before his frown deepened. “And it will only be easier with a head as haunted as yours,”
“How do you know?” Rowan asked. “How would you know what torture is?” As he asked he could hear the accusatory way it left his lips, but Peter only gave him a small, melancholy smile.
“I didn’t just, appear one day in the forest, Rowan, I had a life before you stumbled into my trap,”
“I-I didn’t mean-oh Gods, no, Peter I didn’t mean to –“
“It’s all right, Rowan,” Peter smiled, cupping his cheek gently. “I know that you don’t mean it that way. You remember that battle along the border? You would have barely been fifteen when it was over, William’s father was still alive then and since most of his army had been depleted from his most recent dispute with rebels, he called for an emergency conscription.” He explained, lowering his hands and resting them in his lap. “I was a part of the army for three years.” Rowan remembered the war, it was brief, but it was longer than three years, he had just left his father when he heard. Peter was being generous with his assumption, Rowan was thirteen when it began, he heard it from a beneficiary he had at the time.
“Did they…torture you?” He asked nervously, he didn’t want to hear that someone had subjected Peter to the same agony he had survived.
“Not as bad as some,” Peter admitted. “The closest I got was when I was separated from my legion and a few patrolling enemy soldiers found me. They weren’t interested in prisoners so they...had a bit of fun, as they called it. Roughed me up a bit and left me for dead,” Rowan heard how nonchalant Peter’s voice was and felt a tremor of dread and shock run down his spine.
“They hurt you enough to almost kill you?” He exclaimed, looking at him in shock.
“It’s old pain,” Peter soothed. “And not the point of the story, I learnt of common techniques used by higher ranking officers during interrogations, and saw some of the results of them. But they never treated me that way.”
“Gods,” Rowan gasped in realisation. “I know nothing about you and you know every little thing about me!” He covered his mouth and turned his head down in shame. “Oh, I’m so selfish!”
“That’s ridiculous!” Peter replied. “I don’t like to talk about myself, and you need to talk more than I do, so I’d rather let you speak. I know far more about you than you do about me because I chose to only ask about you. You are far too used to not being allowed to exist in your own right.” Rowan grumbled in dissent and shook his head softly.
“I still feel bad,”
“Rowan, you’re always going to feel bad!” Peter chuckled. “If it starts raining while I’m checking my traps you’d blame yourself!” He lifted Rowan’s head with his thumb and grinned at him. “If you stop apologising for things that aren’t your fault, I’ll tell you more about my life,” He bargained and Rowan nodded eagerly.
“All right! I’ll-I’ll try!” He promised and Peter smiled kindly.
“I know, I know you will.” He said, lowering his hand from Rowan’s chin.
“How are you able to care so much about someone when you’ve also been hurt?” Rowan asked seriously. “How could you risk letting me into your house without being sure I wouldn’t hurt you?”
“Why are you asking me this?” Peter wondered as Rowan dipped his head again.
“Well, I always thought that you were kind to me because you didn’t know. That you hadn’t, felt what it was like to be hurt by your own kind. I would have, if I found someone in my trap, I probably would have just, released them and told them to leave. I don’t know how you can bear spending so much energy to care for someone, who hasn’t done that much for you,” He admitted, his cheeks flushing with shame. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have assumed, but…”
“I understand,” Peter smiled. “It’s all right. I know what you mean.” He sighed heavily and looked away as he considered how to explain it. “After the war I found it hard to cope,” He admitted. “Everyone was always so worried about me and my wellbeing, granted I looked rather spectacular when I returned, and I didn’t feel that I deserved any of it. I isolated myself, out here, to escape the constant sympathy, when Cordelia came along she,” He paused for a moment and shook his head. “I won’t tell you any details until she gives her permission, but she wasn’t in any state to hurt me, and I liked helping her, it made me feel better about all the misplaced pity that people gave me.” He explained.
“I’m so –“ Rowan stopped himself from finishing his sentence and flushed as Peter began laughing again.
“Good job,” He grinned. “Keep it up and maybe I’ll tell you about when I learnt the hard way about how to build a roof,” Rowan began laughing and covered his mouth in a vain attempt to suppress his giggles.
“What?”
“It is an entertaining tale,” Peter promised and patted Rowan’s leg gently. “I’ll come back in a bit, I should check on William.”
⌘ + ✘... but u better do them AFTER your BREAK ASH
LOOK I am doing them DURING MY BREAK but also I’m taking another break again after I do them so... it still counts
This didn’t go in an explicitly sick direction but... features @untilthepainstarts‘s Lev because Dotty has yet to tell me to stop and I will never ever stop
“It would always start out as a relief, um, to just... to just be alone, you know?” Danny tosses the hackeysack - he’d found it in a box in his closet, and didn’t that bring back memories of being a snotty piece of shit in college - idly up in the air and catches it again, listening to the soft sshhhhk sound of it landing in his open palm.
He’s lying on his back on the couch, and it’s probably 4 am but he’s been up since 3 and he has the laptop open, Lev on the other side of the video call sitting slightly off-center, looking down at something.
One thing they’ve gotten good at is moments like this - they keep the video up so they can look at each other, but they don’t always have to. Especially in moments like this.
“Yeah, I get that,” Lev says without looking up. He’s maybe doing a crossword or something, Danny doesn’t know. But he has something he’s marking up with a pen, in any case.
Danny feels a twitch of a smile. Risky, doing the crossword in pen, if that’s what it is.
What’s risk when you’ve lived like we have, though, where it was a risk just to take a bite that you weren’t given permission to eat? Where it was a risk to fall asleep with the hand of a man who might slaughter you heavy on the back of your neck? When you have been hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and it didn’t matter if you took the risk or not, he hurt you anyway?
“Then, you’re down there long enough and you just... time crawls. It would be hours and I thought it’d been days. Or weeks and I thought months. I could never remember how long, when he pulled me back, um, back up out of the cellar.”
He shivers, even now a lick of fear runs straight down his spine at the memory of the dark.
“Yeah, it’s easy to lose time, isn’t it?” Lev speaks with real sympathy, real kindness and affection. They speak more openly and casually about the agonies they’ve survived with each other than they do with their partners, sometimes.
The difference, Danny thinks, is that Lev’s abductor thought it was love - like Bram thought he loved Nate. In that... in that, Danny sometimes finds himself jealous of Lev’s torture, because at least for him there was some delusion of love.
He understands the madness in that thought. He tries not to have it. It creeps in anyway, around the edges.
“It is, it’s, um, it’s so easy to lose time. It really is. Eventually, though, he’d come back down, and tell me, um, tell me... ‘are you ready to be good now?’“
Lev shivers, visible through the slightly pixelated call screen. He writes something down with his pen.
“Then he’d pick me up, usually - I was usually too weak to walk on my own by then - and he’d carry me upstairs and put me in the bathtub to get clean and kiss my forehead and, um, and tell me all the ways I could be good this time... and...”
“And what?”
“It got to where I was so grateful to see him coming down the stairs that, um, I stopped seeing him as the one who put me there and instead, um I just-... I just saw him as the one who rescued me.”
Taglist: @yuckwhump, @slaintetowhump, @whimperwoods @galaxywhump LMK if you wanna be added to the taglist! :D
TW: Spiders.
Tears dripped from Derrick’s face, landing on the glass below. Even with the tear stains, the glass was all too clear for Derrick to witness the horror unfolding beneath him. Rose lay chained on the ground, gasping for breath. Her face was bruised and blood dripped from her swollen lip. Her arms and legs were covered in welts from the cane Wayne had used to beat her. Blood seeped from the cuts that marked her back. The whipping. Derrick shuddered when he remembered Rose’s screams. He had cried, but knew she couldn’t hear him. Wayne had made sure of that. She didn’t even know he was here.
At least now Rose is alone, Derrick thought, though without much comfort. Whenever Wayne left for a long time, that meant he was plotting something diabolical. What more could he do to her? At that moment, the door creaked open, and Derrick wished he hadn’t even asked that question. Two assistants were with Wayne, dragging an over-sized glass coffin. Derrick caught his breath and stared in horror at the contents of the coffin: inside the coffin were spiders. Spiders of all sizes. Hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands. No. Not that. Anything but that! Rose is deathly afraid of spiders. He glanced at her on the floor. Wayne was already unchaining her from the floor and dragging her towards the coffin. Derrick fought against his restraints furiously, even though he knew it was hopeless. If he could scream, he would have screamed TAKE ME INSTEAD! DO WHATEVER YOU WANT BUT NOT THIS!
Rose had realized what was in the coffin. She shrieked and despite her many injuries, wriggled so hard that Wayne almost dropped her. But he held her firmly and pushed her into the glass coffin, shutting the lid and locking it. Rose went rigid, petrified with fear as the spiders crawled all over her. Scuttling, scurrying, jumping everywhere. On her arms, her legs, her face.. Some even went under her shirt or pants. Derrick screamed into his gag. Wayne stood calmly by and spoke in a calm tone.
“It has occurred to me that perhaps fear would be a better motivator then pain alone. Knowing your fear of spiders, I decided to make use of this knowledge. You are to stay in here for one hour each day.”
Inside the coffin, Rose let out a squeak. She was too terrified to make any other noise. Too scared to open her mouth. Wayne cocked his head, then made a gesture as if remembering something and smiled broadly.
“Rest assured, my dear Rose, none of those spiders are deadly, but some may bite. I’m sure you already know to keep your mouth closed. I’ll see you in one hour.”
With that, he and his assistants left, leaving Rose frozen in horror, and Derrick dying on the inside at the horror he was watching.
Tags: reference to torture, aftermath of torture, canon compliant, rescue, first meeting, trueform!Cas, brief mentions of being buried alive and coming back from death.
A story of an Angel of the Lord plucking the righteous man out of the black. (Set briefly before Season 4 episode 1)
Reprieve in hell was a fickle thing, it came at the expense of another’s pain. It came perched on the tip of a blade or inside the flickers of flame directed at another. You held out until you didn't, and everybody cracked in the end; a small splinter that grew until you caved in on yourself and became hollow.
An endless feedback loop, a snake eating itself, a spiralling path that turned ever inwards; down and down into depths darker at every turn.
Dean had been black for years, if one could count time in hell in the rotations of the earth and passage across the stars. It seemed an eternity, and the reason for his own reprieve was long lost to the recesses of memory. He turned the screw tighter, and cut deeper, and burned hotter and faster and crueller so as not to look back. His own pain like a phantom in the night that never gave up the chase, his own fear a choking fog that drove him ever onward to pulling apart those around him; so that he might be saved the punishment himself.
Not a willing pupil, but an attentive one, an eager learner; how to carve, how to make them sing. They all sang eventually, they all fell to his knife and his whims.
Reprieve in hell was never a sure thing, and always the terror of being inadequate made him righteous in his anger. How dare anyone, or anything, put him back on the whipping post when he’d worked so long, and so hard, and endured so much to be free of it?
But resolve in hell was a thin thread stretched taut, and he never did his surety waver more than in those last moments. The crash came loud and long, a booming cacophony that echoed from above as though all the walls were falling inward. It grew louder, and nearer, and he gripped his blood stained weapon with all the strength he had. He was certain, for moments that spanned an eternity, that his luck had run out. Alistair must be displeased to come for him with such ferocity, such wrath. Screaming and clashing of blades that seared through his skull and rendered him motionless in fear.
Surely he was done for, the pain about to swallow him whole, the darkness come to consume him.
Light erupted ahead of the noise, the very sight of it overwhelming to his much-dimmed vision. He turned, and struck, and met his match. A flaming, winged thing so very far from Alistair’s blackness. Resplendent and terrifying, it battered his attack away with a blow that set his bones to rattling.
He snarled, and threw himself forward with fists and nails and teeth, and was caught up, wrapped in tendrils of power and strength that smothered and burned. He thrashed and kicked, and threw back his head with a wail. This was worse, whatever punishment he’d earned now, than anything he’d felt before. It seared him from the inside out and he looked down to see blackened, charred flesh fall from his body. Flakes and ash peeling away everywhere the light touched him.
Fighting raged above and behind him, roars of anger and shouts of victory reached his ears. Something looked down at him, peered close and tilted him this way and that. He cowered under its gaze, a gaze that seemed like a mirror reflecting all his brokenness back at him. He saw the ruined, scarred mess of his soul in many giant lidless eyes and clenched his jaw to keep back tears. He knew what he must look like, and he didn’t want to see it.
“Dean Winchester has been saved.”
No!
Fire red and coal dark walls sped past him as he was thrust upward with a lurch, the thing that gripped him held tight and kept him close.
Stop, no!
“Yes, you have been saved.”
You can’t.
“It has already been done.”
Saved for what?
“For earth, for your purpose.”
I have no purpose, I’m just a tool, I wield and am wielded.
“You are many things, a soldier yes, a brother, a man, perhaps a saviour… it remains to be seen.”
Brother? No? It couldn’t be. That way lay danger.
“Would you like to see the sun again? To be free again?”
There is no sun here, it has all been taken. There is no freedom, not from what we’ve done.
“I can return all you have lost. Give all of it back to you.”
Look at me, I’m not worth saving. Where could I go, that would have me?
“Sam, I think, will be glad to see you.”
You can’t! I’m not… I would hurt him!
“Why?”
It’s what I do, that’s my purpose, don’t you see?
“I see a man, broken, but not ruined.”
I don’t think I count as a man, anymore.
Time slowed, the fire grew colder and the speed of their ascent got slower. Heaviness weighed down on his head, pressure that spiked pain through his being, an ache behind his teeth that ate its way upward.
“It’s all falling away now, all of it left behind. Look back, you can see it.”
He screwed his eyes closed and refused until gentle light suffused him and he gasped.
“Look Dean, it is all alright.”
One enormous eye, on the face of a great lion, held his attention. “You are not withered anymore.”
He glanced back, and down, and saw his own form glowing. Star bright and effervescent, and a trail of dying flesh that floated away from him, burned off by the intensity of the flames around his body.
What did you do?
“Returned you to the way you should be, unmarred.”
It’s all…. gone?
“Memories remain, the taint of them is lifted.”
Why? I don’t deserve it.
“That is not for you to decide. What I see beneath, of who you really are, that is what matters.”
The pressure increased until he convulsed with it, walls closed in and pressed upon him. The being that held him didn’t seem fazed, or falter.
Please don’t take me back to Sam, it won’t be the same. He’ll see what I really am.
“Forgiveness is a glorious thing Dean Winchester, and I believe your brother is better at it than most.”
And you, do you forgive me?
He needed to know, to feel it. The stink of the pit was still in his nose, still lingered on his breath and he wanted nothing more than to be free of it.
Blue irises, emanating light, shone brighter as they looked at him. “I saved you, I think that speaks for itself."
What am I supposed to do?
“Live, survive, be the light in the world you were always meant to be.”
Saving people, hunting things, the family business… he hadn’t recalled these things in a lifetime. They felt so alien now. Whatever escape he had found came at the expense of his humanity— he had thrown it away like an unwanted gift. He couldn’t save anyone now, not when he was the shadow himself, when he was the monster under the bed that all fathers warned their sons about. He had drowned himself in evil to spare himself a little pain, he was well on the way to having eyes as black as his soul. How could he go back to cutting away the evil in others, as though he didn’t know where it came from?
Who will tell me what to do?
“No-one, you will be free.”
Freedom is just a length of rope, an illusion. Freedom isn’t for me. I’m not made for it.
“You will be, again, in time.”
He felt the press and roughness of earth and stone crowd around him. A physical weight on his being. The Angel— he knew now that was what it was— that carried him thrust harder, forcing them forward. Through. To the surface.
To life. Life that was so far beyond his scope of understanding, life that he had left behind, turned away from. His hope for it had been abandoned to survive the cut of the knife.
You can’t do this, I’m not ready!
Roots struck out and barred their path and his saviour slowed, carefully pushed them aside like a tender gardener.
“There is no time to waste, Dean Winchester. Life is waiting for you, the world needs you.”
I’m not strong enough, I don’t want it, I don’t want to be needed.
“No-one ever does, fate has her plans.”
The pressure was suffocating, and he remembered suddenly that life came with breath and breath needed space for air, and there was no air here in this underground place.
It’ll hurt, won’t it. The worst things always did.
“I know little of pain, but I fear it will not come easily. Your body awaits you, go with grace, Dean Winchester. I have faith in you.”
What’s your name?
The Angel paused. “Castiel. You will not remember me, I think, not like this anyway. It has been good to know you, and I will know you again.”
With one final thrust, one parry through the jaws of the earth that split apart atoms with a single push of energy, he felt crushed through dirt, and wood, and bone. Light flashed behind his eyes, energy fractured him apart and knit him back together. He became whole. Spirit and flesh reunited.
He gasped.
And opened his eyes in the dark.
Life in the ground is such a fragile thing. Survival against better judgement is an instinct one cannot fight.
So he clawed, and scraped, and dug, and thrashed until the coffin was empty. Until he was free. Until the hollowness in his chest was filled deeply, until sunlight burned his eyes and he knew reprieve had found him; and it had come at the hands of light, the mercy of blue eyes, and the revival of his soul.
He rubbed the place in his chest where the dark had taken root and resolved to fill it with something else.
Coming home, Sammy. Coming back to life. Whatever that means.
