Hell's Greatest Weapon

Chapter 34: The Face of Guilt

Your head was pounding and it was almost too much for you.  Cain was yelling, you heard Id and Sup yelling something, even Dean was getting in on it—maybe you were even yelling, you didn't know—but it was such a sensory overdrive that you pushed Cain back, removing the Blade from his stomach and each of you fell back; the only difference being that Cain was dead while you only wished you were.

Pain surged through your arm, your stomach, you felt a sudden decrease in evil as Cain fell still and collapsed into a pile of ashes.  Interesting.

Get up, Dean needs you.

Sup, erase the line so she can kill him.

Don't kill Dean!

Thub-dub.  Thub-dub. You felt your heart beating in your chest but it was most obvious in your arm, in your stomach, and it took a few seconds of organizing your thoughts before you realized that you were groaning on the ground.  Your arms were wrapped around your stomach when you rolled over until your gut was to the ground, at which point you curled into a ball with your forehead pressed against the cold cement.

Thub-dub.  Thub-dub.

Crowley called you to Hell.  He told you the Blade was missing.  You left your backpack.

Rowena slipped the blade into the backpack.

Cain got you nervous about him.  You forgot about Dean.

Dean heard the blade in your backpack.  He was angry from the argument.

The calling got louder.

Your stomach surged with pain, it felt like it was on fire.  Your arm. You wanted to cut it off, wanted to be rid of the damned thing and go the rest of your life with only one arm. Anything.  Anything to make it stop.

Dean's Mark knew the Blade was close.  He was dark.

The Blade called to him from the backpack.

The Winchesters and Claire are the only ones who can reach into the backpack without getting their arm chopped off from its magic.

Gragnis, you need to get up.

Sup's voice sounded like Id's.  Weird.

Go and kill him.

The Mark took Dean over when he was too close to the Blade and it finally transferred to you fully, your 'death' causing you to go to the pit.  Lucifer tried to strip you of your humanity, but the Mark needed some humanity to cling on to, to destroy, or it wouldn't be able to work its magic.

Gragnis!

You felt your muscles relax and you turned your head to look at Cain, to take in the pile of ashes that now stood in his place. His blood was all over the floor, all over you, but there were no signs of any movement coming from him.

Your wing.

Another surge of pain went through your back when you thought about the nearly-detached power source and the grim reality sunk in: you weren't going to be able to fly for a long time.  Centuries, maybe.  Wings weren't like the rest of the body, they couldn't heal quickly and they were far more sensitive, which is why you never exposed them to anyone prior to this moment.

"Erase the line," you said to no one in particular before sitting up, your arms still wrapped tightly around your stomach. Your muscles were weak, far more so than you had ever experienced, and you knew that your face must look ridiculous; it was cut up, likely red if not bruising already, and you felt each of your eyes beginning to swell.  The right was far worse than the left—you doubted the left would get so bad that you couldn't see but the right was still up for debate—but they were each swollen, nonetheless.  You had a couple gashes here and there that were bleeding slowly, but you only wiped your bare right arm up and tried to clear up some of the blood.  "Someone let me out of here."