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So, this is just the beginning and end of a one-shot Supernatural fic I started writing, but can't come up with a middle for. However, I still think the writing is pretty good, so I'll post it. Spoilers through the end of season 3 (like you don't know what happened by now).
Oh, and happy August mrgreen
*~*
The chains and blood and guts and gore had all just been a put-on. Satanic bravado. Lucifer didn’t want to let any of the lost souls that floated his way to be disappointed when they at last reached the underworld. And none were.
But after the initial chains and blood and guts and gore, with a little molten magma and burning corpses thrown in for good measure, the damned souls were sent to meet with an older, more experienced demon—Hell’s answer to high school guidance counselors. And it was there that Hell, the one you’d spend all of eternity in, truly began.
Some people were sent to float in an endless sea packed with great whites until the end of time. Some were tormented by the demons of their pasts, all the wrong-doings, all the regrets. Some were set to be burned, or tortured, or boiled, or strung-up; whatever the demon decided was right for them. And still others were simply locked into a tiny room to face their worst fears and phobias for all eternity.
Dean didn’t know what he had coming as he stepped into the office. It was the type of room that one expected to see in a Wall Street building, the corner office of some huge corporation’s CEO, but Dean guessed it was probably small beans compared to Satan’s pad. Seated behind a huge mahogany desk was a man, early fifties, graying hair, and before him was a heavy volume. The man looked up and grinned at Dean, beckoning him closer. “Have a seat, Mr. Winchester, please.”
Dean sat in the chair in front of the desk, clicking his tongue and glancing around the office. “Nice place you got here.”
The demon barely glanced up from his paperwork. “Thank you. Now, Mr. Winchester…” He flipped through the book the way a reader will an old favorite—he’d read it already, and he just needed to skim to find the best parts, the stuff he wanted to remember. Then, with a resounding thud, he slammed the book shut and clasped his hands on top of it, peering at Dean over the tops of his glasses. “You’re here to be placed in your own personal Hell, where you will be punished for your past misdeeds and petty crimes against humanity, et cetera, et cetera…I think you know the drill.” The demon grinned, as if Dean were an old friend. “I think you’ve exemplified every one of the seven deadly sins at one point or another, not to mention murder—even if they were so-called ‘evil beings’—trespassing, breaking and entering, and theft, of varying degrees. Seems to me you’ll be haunted by your family, especially your brother, as long as you are with us, so we don’t need to work on that at all. Perhaps we should just place you in a nice, quiet room, locked away alone with your thoughts forever and ever…
“But, alas, that is not to be your punishment, though many here would laugh at your wild cries for freedom and peace. No, we have much better plans for you, Dean Winchester…” The demon clapped his hands, and two hell hounds appeared in their full forms. The dogs were more like wolves, with their wild cousin’s size, fangs, and claws, though their fur was completely black and their eyes glowed red, and they padded obediently, eerily silent, towards Dean. “You know where to take him,” the demon said, addressing the hounds, and waved a hand of dismissal.
The hounds lunged, grabbing Dean firmly by the neck and arm, and dragged him out the door. He struggled against them for awhile, before deciding it was pointless to fight the inevitable and allowing himself to be dragged along the rocky corridors to God (Satan?)-knew-where.
Finally, the hounds’ grips slackened, and they dropped him roughly on the ground outside a door. A guard was posted outside, another demon, and she grinned wickedly down at him. “Prepared for your fate, Dean?”
“I’m ready as I’ll ever be, babe,” Dean replied, stumbling to a standing position, watching the demon run her fingers over the brass doorknob. He dropped into a fighting position, fists up in preparation to meet whatever was behind the door, and the demon smirked.
“Enjoy eternity,” she said, throwing the door open and shoving him roughly inside. The door was slammed behind him, not before he heard her mad giggling follow him into the room, and then he tripped over his own feet and hit the ground hard. The room was completely white, about the size of your average prison cell, and brightly lit by unseen spotlights. There were two chairs set facing each other, and Dean wondered if he should be expecting a cell mate. Did things work like that in Hell?
He pushed himself up and walked over to the pair of chairs, choosing one and dropping heavily into it. He twiddled his thumbs. He whistled. He tapped his feet. Nothing happened. Maybe the demon in the office had lied—maybe he would be left her to ponder his sins for all eternity.
Suddenly, a trap door in the ceiling opened above the other chair, and he heard distant screams speeding steadily closer. A body, a woman, flew from the trap door and crumpled over the chair as both the entrance through the ceiling and the door in the wall sealed and promptly vanished. Dean cocked his head at his roommate, who appeared to be unconscious, and he pushed away from her slowly in his seat. “Is this it?” he asked of no one in particular. “Is Hell a couple of years spent in a room with a corpse?”
The woman moaned, but didn’t stir otherwise. Dean watched her for a few more seconds, long enough to deem her pitiful and incapable of harm, before he went back to whistling Metallica. He tipped the chair back on two legs, staring up at the ceiling, listening to his roommate moan again and then take deep, stuttering breaths. From the sound of it, she was hauling herself to her feet, and then he glanced at her again as she clapped her hands over her ears, back turned to him.
“Good Lord, will you stop that bloody racket?”
Dean’s eyes widened. “Oh, God.”
The woman froze, hands still pressed firmly over her ears, and her tone indicated that her eyes were also squeezed shut. “Please tell me that when I turn around, I won’t see Dean Winchester behind me.”
“Well, at least you won’t have to look at a stuck-up British b***h until the end of time.”
She let her hands drop from her ears, and slowly turned to face him. He grinned cheekily. “Hi, Bela.”
...
The demon from the office strode into the room, and both Dean and Bela looked up at him expectantly. “You both seem to think your Hell is simply being locked in a room together,” he began, and neither noticed that they were both nodding in time, affirming his words. The demon smiled. “You’re wrong. Very wrong.”
“What could be worse than this?” Dean asked rhetorically, because, of course, he could think of plenty worse. But, for the moment, spending eternity with Bela was pretty high on his “Things That Suck Majorly” list.
“What’s worse, Mr. Winchester, is that you’re falling in love with her. Oh, don’t give him that smug look, Ms. Talbot—you love him right back and you know it.”
The unlikely pair glanced at each other, then quickly diverted their eyes, as if the fleeting look had proven the demon’s words. “Demons lie,” Dean said gruffly, trying to convince himself it wasn’t true.
“Yes, we have a tendency to do that. But not when it comes to the goings-on in our home. I can assure you, I’m telling the truth about this. Why lie?” He smirked, and readjusted his glasses. “Falling in love with Ms. Talbot, Mr. Winchester, is bad enough—it’s forcing you to think of all the things you could have, should have, done together, while you still had time on Earth. Following that line of thought, your beginning to remember every little decision you made throughout the course of your life, and you’re coming to doubt your reasoning. You’re regretting more and more of those choices with every passing millisecond. You’re worrying about Sam. You’re worrying about Bobby. You’re thinking over every conquest, and wishing you’d spent less time sweet-talking buxom blondes and more time searching for your true love. You wish you’d had kids of your own, to love and to teach. You loathe your father for pushing you into hunting. You long for a normal life. You know you could have had better, or done better with what you had. You could have applied yourself to schoolwork, gotten a nice job, perhaps run into Ms. Talbot at a nice corner café. Are you imagining it, Mr. Winchester? Your eyes meet across the crowded dining room, and everything seems to freeze. Nothing else matters but you and her, this woman you know you should marry and love and honor for the rest of your life. Hunting is your father’s gig; she will mark the beginning of a new era in your life. You two belong together, whether the woman you’re picturing across that crowded café in your mind is Bela Talbot or Jo Havelle or Lisa Braeden, and the life you’re picturing yourselves sharing could have been yours.
“Yes, perhaps you two drive each other crazy, but you’re in love, and probably have been since the first time you held guns to each other’s heads. And now that I’ve laid it all out for you, and I’ve got your minds twirling and spinning with agonizing questions, and you may be on the brink of admitting that the gnawing thought at the back of your mind has always been about each other, and you’re expecting us to just let you jump up and start dry-humping, well, you’re in for a terrible shock. For, now that we’ve forced you to realize you’re in love, we’re going to make your Hell even worse: we’re going to separate you. And I’d suggest giving up all hope now; you’re never going to see each other again. I’ll make sure of that.”
“You son of a b***h,” Dean spat, rising from his chair. He wanted to land a nice fist right to the smug demon man’s kisser, but he doubted that would solve anything. And, surprisingly enough, there was a physical urge much stronger than that one, a need to do something totally crazy and unexpected. Now that it was so clear, and he let his mind consider it at length, dammit, he was in love with Bela, and the only thing in the world that mattered right now was being able to kiss her, just once, before she was taken away from him for all eternity.
He didn’t have much time; he felt it. And this kiss would probably only make things hurt more (probably why the demon was letting it happen), but it would be something to cling to when he was shipped off to whatever other Hell they had lined up for him next. So, without another thought, without weighing the consequences or the pros and cons or the potential harm his next actions could do, he grabbed Bela’s hand and dragged her out of her chair.
“Dean…” she gasped, suddenly crushed against his chest, the lack of air cutting off the words she so desperately wanted to say out loud.
“I know. Me, too.” And with that not-quite-spoken declaration of undying love and devotion, he lowered his lips to hers and she reached up to meet him halfway. Their lips met in the best kiss of either of their lives, electrifying and terrifying and hopeful and wonderful and soothing and scary all at the same time. If it were a movie, the music would have swelled and he would have swept her up off the floor, like he was doing now, only there would have been a candlelit bedroom to go to, and a door to shut and lock and throw away the key to, and there wouldn’t have been a nerdy-looking demon standing in the doorway of their tiny white cell, smirking and clearing his throat to kill the moment.
Dean began to pull away, undoubtedly to say something nasty to the demon, but Bela pulled him back, and they were soon up against the wall, and the kissing and embracing and caressing were better than anything else, perhaps even better than being let out of Hell, welcome-back parade and all. Satan be damned; they were going to stay here, like this, as long as they damn well pleased.
The demon grew weary of their make-out session, and snapped his fingers. A pack of half a dozen hell hounds appeared, growling gutturally and pawing the tiled floor in barely-restrained excitement, and then the demon gave a little nod and the hounds were upon them, tearing them apart, pulling them away from each other. Two dogs snapped and bayed at Dean, keeping him up against the wall, while the remaining four clawed at Bela and got hold of her skin, dragging her out of the cell she’d shared with Dean for an indeterminate length of time. She fought back, actually wounding one of the over-grown mutts, but another appeared to take its place, and the hounds were soon herding her back towards the doorway, past the office demon, away from Dean and closer to her impending doom.
“Dean!” she cried, and he glanced up from clubbing hell hounds with a chair. She managed a smile. “You’re a pain in my a**, Winchester…but I do love you.”
Dean gave a lopsided grin, ignoring the hound using his ankle for a chew toy. “Love you, too,” he replied, and he meant it, for the first time in his life, or afterlife, or un-life, or whatever this was considered, and he held her gaze until she was out the door and out of sight, never to be seen again, if the demon carried through with his threat.
The demon snapped again, and the hounds vanished as abruptly as they’d come, and the sounds of Hell floated into the room through the open door: screams and snarls and crackling flames, mingling into a chorus befitting the Underworld. The demon strolled over and grabbed the chair Bela had occupied in all their time together, and smiled. “Guess you won’t need this anymore,” he said brightly, and it burst into flames, leaving a smoldering pile of ashes on the spotless floor. The demon glanced at Dean, and suggested, “Sit down. You’ve got a lot of brooding to do, I’d expect.” He turned to go, then paused in the doorway and turned back. “Oh, and FYI: you’ve got another go-around on the hooks coming up.”
“Go to hell,” Dean muttered in reply, barely favoring the demon with a glance.
The demon beamed. “Gladly.” He strolled out the door and waved a hand, the passageway sealing painfully slowly, and, at last, Dean was alone again in the silence, just like the day he’d been assigned this personal Hell. He glanced around at the walls, at the ceiling, at the pile of ash that should have been his other chair, and he thought of Bela on that first day, and the way they’d bickered their time together away. It had been annoying, sure, and she had been unbearable. But he’d take her over no one any day.
The door opened again, and Dean jerked his head up to watch the office demon enter again, still with the same little smile on his face. “Here. I forgot to give you this.” He held out his hand, and Dean reached out a tentative hand to take what he offered. It was a picture, he realized, before he even turned it over to reveal a headshot of Bela. Perhaps it was idealized, a little too perfect, just to make his heart ache a little worse than it would have, but it was her, and it was all he had left of her now.
The demon watched him stare at the picture for a long moment, waiting for a reaction. But Dean’s face remained blank, and he said without emotion, “What? You want me to cry?”
“Preferably,” the office demon agreed. “Or scream. Hit me, maybe. Whatever feels right.”
“You seem to know me pretty well,” Dean replied. “So, you should know by now that I don’t show people how I feel.”
The demon held his position, and the room remained silent, and at last, he sighed. “Very well,” he muttered, defeated, and he backed out of the room, shutting the door once more. “But I’ll be back.” The entrance vanished and Dean was left alone again with only his thoughts, a pile of ashes, and a picture of the girl he loved, and the room seemed to shrink. The ceiling was barely an inch or two over his head and the walls were pressed in tight, just to his knees and sides, and the little jail cell became suddenly claustrophobic. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He could do nothing, was given nothing to do, but think.
He propped the picture up against the suddenly-close wall before him, and somehow, he smiled. The demon had told him to give up hope. But he wouldn’t. And he liked to think Bela wouldn’t either. They’d find a way out of this, a way to see each other again. And if they ever got up top again, he was driving her into the sunset and they were locking themselves into a dirty motel room, and they were never looking back.
Between then and now, all he had to do was think, coming up with new regrets, new plans, new ideas, new stories, new scenarios…and, yes, reliving the past in painfully-real detail. Being locked in a room with Bela hadn’t been Hell, he came to realize, as the pain grew sharper, stronger, with time, and everything he thought or did put him in agony, worse agony than the meat hooks did to his flesh. His thoughts were ripping apart his mind and soul, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
This, he admitted, between agonizing over his little brother and missing his former cellmate, was Hell.
*~*
It's a little corny, I know, but I like it. I just wish I could finish it and post it : (
Ah, well. I'll work on it.
 OuEstLaCraie · Sat Aug 02, 2008 @ 03:11am · 0 Comments |
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