In Hell

Chapter 2

He was barely aware of the passage of time. Night and day were non existent concepts in the dank darkness and searing brightness of Hell. A lifetime of being on the job had given him a good internal clock, but even that couldn't keep up with the way time moved in Hell. He couldn't keep track. He couldn't mark the passage of days. He could only mark the passage of sessions. Deep gouges scarred the wall of his cell, covering nearly an entire wall now, each one made once his hands had recovered enough to make them. Each one a memory of pain and blood and his own throat torn raw. And each one just meaningless as the last. If each one marked a day, then it had been fourteen years. Fourteen years towards eternity. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn't torturing himself more effectively than they could ever hope to.

The demons that came to retrieve him, marking the start of another "day," did so with caution. Even now, after all these years...even now he was deadly, and they knew it. He couldn't kill them in here, not exactly. On the rack he was a defiant victim, but in his cell? He was a caged beast. He'd torn the throat out of a demon once. Torn it with his own teeth. Another time, he'd bashed his jailors head against the walls of his cell until was nothing more than broken bits of bone and brain matter smeared across the brick and caked beneath his fingernails. The demon had smoked out before the body died, but by then it was far too late for the poor bastard. Pitiful, dying human body lost in the depths of Hell. What would happen to his soul? Dean tried to care, but day after day, he was finding it so much harder.

One of the demons cleared his throat. "It's time," he said simply, unlocking the door to Dean's cell. He threw it wide and stepped back quickly, giving Dean plenty of room to exit the cell on his own power. He glared at them each in turn, head lowered, breathing deep through his nose. A wolf among sheep. They raised weapons, instinctively. A machete...an axe...bare hands...what did it matter? Chop him to bits and he'd still be there. An eternity of damnation was not so easily waylaid. They cowered away from him, the instinct of lesser beings before a predator, and he turned, walking the familiar path. He could go to the table willingly or unwillingly, but he would wind up there either way. He chose dignity. Honor. It was all he had in this place, and it was precious little.

The table, as it happened, was occupied.

"I thought we'd try something a little different today." He'd been so focused on the table and it's occupant that Dean hadn't noticed Alastair standing to one side. The man...no demon, he reminded himself, moved to the table and, with one hand, lightly stroked the dark hair of the girl pinned there. She jerked her head towards him rather than away, as though she might like to bite the hand that stroked her, were she not so firmly strapped. Her body was nearly naked in front of him, covered only with the leather straps that held her prisoner. "Do you recognize her?"

"No," Dean said simply. He wouldn't play Alastair's game. The man..damn it the demon should have known better than that by now.

"No, I don't suppose you would. Sadly, you haven't learned how to see us for what we are. For who we are." He patted the girl's head fondly. "This demon? She very nearly killed your brother. And your father as well. His friends. Your friends. This one...oh she's been following you for decades. You could say it was her duty, as a faithful daughter."

Dean stood, impassive, for a long moment, trying to piece together what he'd said. Trying to remember his life before Hell got more difficult with each passing year, but it was still there, like a dream. Or a nightmare. There were days when he wasn't sure what was worse, facing the life he now had to live, or remembering the one he'd had before. Everything hurt. Everything cut. There was no winning, and never would be. Slowly, the words came together, and his lips pulled up in a sneer.

"Meg."

"That's not even her real name, you know," Alastair continued, as though there had been no hesitation. No momentary lapse in attention. "Merely the name of some poor innocent that had to die, at your hands no less, because of her." He stood, his movements slow and methodical, just as they always were. He pulled a long, jagged knife from his collection of instruments and held it out towards him, handle first. There was no hesitation in him. He took the knife on instinct, eyes on the trapped demon on the table in front of him.

"I'll leave you two to get reacquainted." Alastair smiled indulgently, a father offering candy to his favorite child, and strolled past Dean. There was a slight click as the door shut and locked behind him.

Dean stood, looking down at her, for a very long time. He breathed in shallow breaths through his nose. The room stank, as all the rooms stank, but this one in particular had a special bouquet that seemed to drive right into the base of his skull and start to ache. The ever present, almost sweet smell of decay was cloying. Choking. Beneath that was the shark reek of sulphur. She'd been bled before he'd ever arrived, for who knew how long. Time in Hell, after all, could be very fluid. He could smell his own body, stinking of unwashed clothes, sweat, and no small amount of fear. And there was her too. Yes, he could smell the fear on her, the way any predator could. It was a scent he'd never appreciated in life. Never been sensitive enough to notice. Now it was his bread and butter, his constant companion. The lack of it would have been more noticeable than its presence. And now he could smell it on her.

He didn't know the face, but he knew the demon. Her name, when he spoke it, sounded like a curse, but it so rarely left his lips that he'd nearly forgotten it. So many years ago now, but he remembered her. She was a killer. A manipulator. She deserved this.

But this was his table. He'd been strapped to it the same as she. The stains on the floor, some of them much fresher than they should have been, were made with his blood. And now hers. She was a killer, but so was he. She was a liar, and so was he. She was under the knife, just as he had been. Only now? Now the knife was in his hand. His mind seemed to go blank at the implications, the similarities. He couldn't start to sympathize simply because he'd been on the slab only the day before. He couldn't, not for a demon.

Dean sighed as he set the knife down on the small metal tray by the table. He sat in Alastair's empty chair and reached for the leather straps that bound her wrists. She watched him, not so much surprised as wary. She reminded him, in that moment of an alley cat. Some lost, wild creature, distrustful and ready to scratch. How apt was the analogy? Most stray cats, after all, had once been loved by someone. Once been loved and tossed aside. He supposed he could relate. Wasn't that what his dad had done to him the moment their house had gone up in flames? Wasn't that what Sam had done, on a dark road in the middle of nowhere, when he'd left him to go to Stanford? Worst day of his life, even counting the Hellhounds. Always had been, always would be.

"Don't look at me like that," he muttered, raising himself off the chair just enough to reach across to her other wrist. He pulled the straps free and sat back. Meg gathered her arms close to her chest, instinctively, but she needn't have bothered. He wasn't looking, and the strap that held her down preserved most of her modesty anyway. Modesty in Hell. Laughable concept. He doubted her attempts to cover herself were a result of shyness. Hell, he was pretty sure she'd have stood naked in front of him with no qualms, long as it had him on his heels. This was about vulnerability, and that was something he could understand. He understood too much. "You wanna know the best part?" he asked ruefully. "We were topside right now?" His mouth pulled down in a frown of distaste, but he shrugged one shoulder dismissively. "Finding you trussed up like that would be like sitting down to Christmas dinner."

Dean sat for a long moment, his elbows resting on his things, hands clasped between his knees. "Gonna thank me?" he asked with a slight twitch of his lips, a ghost of a smile that came nowhere near his eyes.

"No."

Her voice was huskier than what he remembered. Supposed that came with the new meatsuit.

"Yeah, I probably wouldn't thank me either," he said, leaning back, his eyes drifting away from her. He stood, casually and comfortably, on his way from sofa to fridge, not torture chamber to cell. "You're not welcome, anyway." He didn't look back as he stepped through the door, but he didn't close it behind him. Her hands were free. She could free herself now or rot for all he cared. Wasn't any of his damn business.