Nothing Left To Fear

25

Farfarello is feeling loquacious, even tempered and garrulous. A good pot of tea lying in his belly with buttered bread and a new pair of hand knit socks from one of the Hunters who is laid up with a broken foot. It doesn't take much to make him happy, but when he is he talks. Sometimes he recites whole sagas in the languages in which they were written. Sometimes he reads aloud the novels Dean gets him from the local library. The demon will happily read anything.

He's sent for Dean, which he doesn't often do.

He's sat on his bare mattress, there are plenty of books piled around the room, dime store novels, airport trash, green bound modern classics, hardback library books, battered paperbacks picked up by Hunters.

"How many demons have you killed?" The demon asks, he has a voice that is generally disturbing, soft and whispery with a hint of an accent but Dean has never been able to place it. "I have a story to tell, from my electrical well, it's a simple story so I'm leaving off the whistles and bells." Dean rolls his eyes, leaning against the wall to take the weight off his thigh. Castiel appears behind him with a stool so he can sit, stretching out his leg but he refuses it. "So the world must listen to me, as I filibuster vigilantly, my name is blue canary, one note spelt L I T E, my story's infinite, like the longines symphony I never rest."

"If this is all you want?" Dean says ignoring the stool and the relief it offers, he doesn't want to show even a gram of weakness in front of Farfarello, especially because the demon is in a good mood.

"No," Farfarello draws the word out, "I do have a story to tell. There was once a great general of heaven who made love towards a concubine of the Jade Emperor himself and was punished with mortal life and mortal reincarnation for his sin." Dean knows the demon is telling him this for a reason, "his punishment was that he would love one woman and one woman only, no matter how he was wanted, but he would forever be denied her."

Dean nods, he can't see where this myth is going but he knows better than to ignore it. Farfarello can be obtuse but he is often true.

"In his first life he was born as an orphan, one of twins, and they were raised together, two halves of one human soul. They were adopted by a childless merchant whose wife taught her all the skills of a woman and trained him that he might inherit his trade. And all was well, if men said he loved his sister too well they said so only because he would not let them marry her."

Dean is listening.

"But in those days demons were more common, lesser demons, long since extinct that could be killed in the same manner as humans, but still could produce Cambion," Dean nods, he knows that word, "they were long lived and dangerous and lived in Clans, acting as bandits across the roads of the emperor, fearsome, and deadly.

"One such group of demons was called Hyakugen and they heard tell of the merchant and his sister who was so lovely that she could stop the sun and their Lord wanted her, so he gathered up his army, a thousand demons all in all, and sacked the town whilst the merchant was away and took all the girls of the town.

"The merchant returned to find the town burned down and the survivors, few as they were, told of how the demons had come and taken the women of the town, young, old, and married. The merchant was enraged and that part of him which had been a General of Heaven awoke within him although he could not have known that. He went to the stronghold and with all of his wares as offering begged entrance. It was granted.

"He stood before the demon lord and asked what it would take to release that one woman for whom he cared, his beloved sister. The demon told him that if he plucked out his right eye that he would free her. The merchant did so without hesitation, but the demon merely laughed and crushed the eye under foot."

Dean knows why this story is important now; he knows why the demon tells this old fairy tale.

"The merchant was enraged and fought like the General of Heaven he had been until he had killed all of the demons before him, until only the demon lord remained. The demon lord bargained for his life, but the merchant grew closer, the demon lord offered the merchant his sister, raped into insanity and half dead, poisoned with a cambion growing inside her, he merchant grew closer, the demon tried to flee but the merchant caught him and tore out his heart.

"As he stood there amongst the gore the king of Hell laughed and laughed, for he could not have arranged such a fall, for if a mortal man kills one thousand demons he is doomed to become a demon, subject no longer to the Jade Emperor but to the King of Hell instead. Neither god nor demon, cursed with the knowledge of heaven and the power of Hell, he was doomed to wander the Earth, his beloved sister unable to be born again until he had died, trapped in the body into which he had been born, but a scourge upon both realms of Heaven and Hell.

"I like that story," Farfarello has his cheshire grin, all teeth and eyes in the dark, "it is such a good start."

"Is it true?" Dean asks, "if you kill a thousand demons do you become a demon yourself?"

Farfarello has a shark's grin, sharp teeth and cruel empty eyes. "Ask yourself that, or better yet -ask Cho."