Fic: Hides the face, lies the snake (Supernatural, Dean/Castiel), PG-13/R
Title: Hides the face, lies the snake
Characters/Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: Torture, Spoilers for all of S4
Summary: When the gates to Hell are opened, Dean is reunited with a part of himself that had been left behind.
Word Count: 2,601
A/N: Written for Team Heaven for the spn_teamfic Oscar Wilde quote prompt: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." The quote served as inspiration, through the resulting interpretation is loose at best.
Hides the face, lies the snake
You've left part of yourself back in the Pit.
A thin, diffuse puff of black smoke, all but invisible in the night, drifted against the wind, circling a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere. It came to rest outside a single window, where, barred by a line of salt, it tested here and there with stubborn determination until it found a space too small for even an insect. Particle by particle it pushed its way inside.
It flew straight toward the room's only bed to where a body lay, chest rising and falling with the deep, even breaths of sleep in between dreams. This is what it had been seeking since the doors to Hell had been thrown open. It would be whole again.
Dark smoke drifted across flesh, bare in the warm night, circling a permanent mark of protection meant to keep its kind out.
Fortunately, there was no magical rune or sigil which could protect a man from himself.
*
The world was breaking down, piece by piece. The demons weren't even bothering to hide themselves any more. They walked through the scorching streets with eyes blacked out or burning red, walking as though they had every right to be there, as though they owned the place.
You'd think it would've been easier to trap this one, Dean thought as he handcuffed a demon to the exposed, rusting pipes of a boiler room in an empty factory, using cuffs that had come from the belt of the overweight, balding cop the demon was riding. The devil's trap Dean had drawn on the cracked cement floor made him uneasy. He knew it would hold, but every time he stepped over its threshold, he could feel something oppressive, wearing down on nerves that had already stretched too thin. It seemed to amplify the voice inside that kept telling him to stop, that he didn't want to do this, didn't want to become this again, not ever.
"Guess there is no escaping the Pit, no matter who your friends are," the demon said, false sympathy and compassion in every word. It made a show of looking around the room and sniffing the air before commenting as though surprised, "But I don't see any of them now. Can't smell them, either. Not one single angel anywhere to be found. Did they leave you all alone?"
Far from shaking him, the taunt snapped Dean's attention back to the present, back to the task at hand. This would make him feel better, he knew. It wouldn't save Sammy any more than it would bring back Castiel or Pamela or any of the thousands who had died in the past week. But for a little while, this would make everything better.
"Guess it's just you and me," Dean said, not bothering to hide his smile. "And it looks like we've got all the time in the world."
The demon's eyes flashed black at that. "Come now, there's no need for this. What is it you want? I will help you. I have connections, some of the greats-"
"I want you to bleed." He looked over the demon, now fully bound, mapping out his first targets. But all of the markers he sought, vein and bone and tendon, were hidden under layers of official uniform. He should have removed its clothing before cuffing it. With a loud sigh, Dean took out his knife and began cutting. Bit by bit the uniform was shredded, and white scraps of cloth followed dark blue to scatter carelessly over the floor. When he ran out of clothing, he kept cutting, thinking to peel the skin from the meatsuit as easily as he had the cloth. The blade of his scissors sliced a shallow, straight line from shoulder to wrist.
Dean caught himself then, remembering where he was, and stopped. Up here, skin would not re-grow itself with a thought. It had been too long since he'd done this, and he was making mistakes; but then again, it probably didn't matter how out of practice he was. This particular demon had never had the privilege of knowing Alistair's attentions. Frankly, it wouldn't have been able to appreciate the workmanship if it'd had the chance.
Switching tactics, Dean started simply, with a few pokes and a few prods, trying to get a sense of how much the demon would be able to take and how quickly it could heal. He dipped his fingertips into holy water to sprinkle a series of acid burns across the demon's chest. When the flesh stopped sizzling and he finished admiring his work, he looked down to find his own fingers burned lightly pink from contact with the water. A tear slipped unnoticed down his face as something inside folded, gave himself up as lost.
He set down his scissors and picked up his knife. With the blade, Dean scraped a section of the soft skin on the stomach raw, not quite breaking it aside from a few beads of blood here and there, and then grabbed a handful of salt. It stung his palm. He walked slowly back to his captive and stood silently for a minute, waiting.
This was his favorite part: the look in their eyes when they realized what was coming, that there'd be nothing they could do to stop it. Alcohol had never made him feel half so good.
The demon was pleading and cajoling, but Dean barely heard it. He drew out the moment as long as he could, waiting for the anticipation to build, and then almost gently, he patted the salt onto the raw skin, crusting it in sparkling white. A perfect, soft whimper of pain reached his ears. Then he pushed his hand down, rubbing, scouring the salt into skin until the melting crystals were pink with blood. Whimpers built to shrieks and then full screams of pure pain, and Dean shivered at the sweetness of it. The sting of the salt on his hand traveled up his arm, and he delighted in knowing how much worse it was for the thing strung up before him.
"Please," the demon begged, but that word was cheap in Hell. A victim had to be a whole lot more creative than that to impress. "Just tell me what you want."
"Okay, I'll play. Tell me, how do you think it feels to be chained to a comet?" Dean asked, knowing the thing squirming before him had no answer; demons were nothing like angels. Still, it wasn't expecting too much, he decided, for one of them to think for one goddamned minute. To try to understand the way Sammy was feeling right now, wherever Lucifer had taken him.
He picked up his knife and sank it through the demon's forearm, scraping the bones on either side, filling the space between them with pain.
"I don't know, I swear I don't know..." it babbled pointlessly, the words dissolving into an open, honest scream when Dean twisted the knife, spreading the bones far apart, popping them loose from the wrist.
Dean grinned.
*
He'd lost track of the time when a rush of rustling feathers dampened the echo of the demon's screams. It was a sound his mortal ears had never heard, but it was one he half-recognized from his last few moments in Hell. Dean gripped the knife tightly, lest it slip from blood-slick hands, and turned almost joyfully to the sound. If he was really lucky, it'd be Zachariah. Then, he'd find out how smug the bastard would be with Dean's knife buried in his face.
Instead, Castiel stood in the corner of the room, still wearing Jimmy's meatsuit, complete with trench coat. His hair was messier than Dean remembered, his tie more askew, but otherwise he seemed intact. Whole. Dean nearly dropped the knife; he'd been convinced the archangels had torn him apart.
Without a word, Castiel walked up to the demon and rested his palm on its head. Black smoke poured from every opening on the body: from the nose and mouth and even from the deep gashes Dean had so carefully carved. The body shuddered, gasped, and when the last of the smoke disappeared, the human left behind struggled to draw breath.
"Help me," the man said to Castiel, choking on the words. He coughed, and anything else he might have said was drowned when blood filled his throat to trickle out from his lips.
"It's over. Rest now." Castiel waited as the man struggled through his last breath and then closed the corpse's staring eyes before turning to Dean.
Bile rose in Dean's throat and he shifted. He turned the knife over and over in his hands, trying to stare at the messy blade to avoid Castiel's gaze. He didn't want Castiel to see him like this, but he was unable to resist checking again and again to reassure himself that Castiel was there, alive, in spite of Dean.
"Dean." Castiel said, and Dean's hand shook, the blade of the knife trembling as the Dean relived the physical memory of sinking the knife into Castiel's chest, the initial resistance followed by the giving way of flesh. "This is unexpected."
"Don't tell me you're surprised, man. This is me. This is who I am."
"Yes," Castiel said. They may as well have been talking about Dean's affinity for bacon cheeseburgers and pie.
"Okay. Well, now that we understand each other, why don't you just go find yourself another poor schmuck to chase around?" Castiel had already lost too much. Stupid angel needed to let him go.
The suggestion got a reaction. Castiel looked down for a moment, and when he looked back up he was frowning. "Dean, you misunderstand me." His voice was softer, careful. "When we fought our way into Hell, and I found you, your soul was soaked in blood."
Dean looked down at his hands, at the blood that was beginning to dry in places, at the filth under his nails. "So, why-"
Castiel didn't let him finish. "I purged Hell's taint from your soul."
He looked so certain, Dean wished he could believe. An itch crawled up his spine, a desire to put out Castiel's eyes so that he could never look at him like that again, as though he would fix the world for Dean, if he only knew how.
"Apparently, you're as good at that as you are at making devil's traps." Dean wasn't the only failure in the room, and it only seemed right to point that out.
Castiel ignored him and took a step closer, his head tilted and gaze stripping Dean down without a single touch. "Something has changed."
Dean laughed at that. "You're damn right, something has changed. My brother started the apocalypse, and how does the devil thank him? By doing the same thing to him that you've done to poor Jimmy in there. How is he, by the way?"
"You're not yourself."
He couldn't help it; Dean laughed again, and this time he could not stop, not even when tears came to his eyes. "Yeah, I've had a rough week. Not stopping the Apocalypse, watching my brother get bitch-ridden by Lucifer, thinking the whole time that you were dead. Good times."
"I should have been here sooner. It shouldn't have come to this. I am sorry." Castiel hadn't looked away, not for a second, and Dean broke apart a little inside.
"What kept you? Did they make you say ten Hail Mary's and promise not to do it again?"
"I had to help Anna. She was being punished." Castiel paused and seemed to shrink inside his coat. "It was my fault."
"Is she-" Dean wasn't sure how to finish that question. Was she alive? Was she still herself, or had she been reprogrammed into someone Dean wouldn't recognize? He wasn't going to ask what Castiel had done. Not here, not in front of the mangled body he'd created.
"She will be fine. But you... You are not. There is something in you that was not before."
Like his own heartbeat, the urge to hurt something was still there, relentless, but it was getting easier to pretend that it wasn't, that everything was fine. Normal. "Well, I had a really bad sandwich at this dive down the road."
"I can help you. If you'll let me." Castiel stepped forward, moving closer, and it was all Dean could do to keep from striking out with the knife he still held in his hand.
But the hope was there, the hope that Castiel wasn't just seeing what he wanted to see, Heaven's version of Neo or Anakin Skywalker or whoever. Hope that this, that what he'd done really wasn't him - even though he knew, deep down, that it was. That hope was enough to keep him standing there, to let him meet Castiel's gaze with one he hoped the angel would read as permission.
After what seemed like an hour of standing and being scrutinized inside and out by the creature standing in front of him - impossible to pretend Castiel was anything like human, even for a moment - Castiel moved even closer, until he was near enough to steal Dean's breath.
Eyes still open, piercing, Castiel brought his lips to Dean's.
The kiss burned like holy fire and Dean was certain that when it ended, there would be nothing left of him but ashes. He found himself gripping Castiel's shoulders, the knife dropped on the floor, forgotten, leaning into the pain that was ripping him apart. A flare of pure light forced Dean's eyes closed. The inside of his eyelids glowed red, and all he could hear was that strange rustling, the sound of feathers moving through dead air that still reeked of blood and fear.
Then it was over, the light and the pain, and all he could feel was the soft press of Castiel's borrowed lips against his own. Their burn had faded to warmth and the comfort of simple contact. Dean moved slightly into the kiss, into the first good thing, the first real thing, he'd felt in much too long.
For a moment, Castiel moved with and against him, nothing robot-like about him at all. Only for a moment, and then Castiel gently pulled away.
Dean watched as the bloodstained handprints he'd left on Castiel's trench coat faded and disappeared.
"Are you alright?" Castiel asked, his forehead wrinkling and the corner of his mouth turned down.
"Yeah," Dean lied. He felt ill, wondering how many more times he'd slip and hurt someone for his own pleasure. If Castiel hadn't helped him- He forced a smile. "Man, don't you ever tell anyone I said this, but you are one hell of a kisser."
The frown disappeared from Castiel's face, and if Dean hadn't known better, he'd have thought the angel was preening. Which he totally was. "I won't tell anyone."
"Cas-" Dean's eyes closed as the memories of the past hours replayed themselves in full, vivid, nightmarish color in his mind. "What happened to me?"
"When I raised you from perdition, one small part of your soul was lost, left behind in Hell. It must have escaped and found you."
"This thing is gonna be part of me forever? Is that what you're saying? Christ, Cas - I can't live like this."
"No, Dean." Castiel reached out, touching the back of one of Dean's filthy hands. There was no sting in that touch, only affection. "I mean that now you are complete, the good and the bad. Just yourself. Your experiences have shaped you, but they can no longer define you. You are free."
*
6/19/09
Characters/Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: Torture, Spoilers for all of S4
Summary: When the gates to Hell are opened, Dean is reunited with a part of himself that had been left behind.
Word Count: 2,601
A/N: Written for Team Heaven for the spn_teamfic Oscar Wilde quote prompt: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." The quote served as inspiration, through the resulting interpretation is loose at best.
Hides the face, lies the snake
You've left part of yourself back in the Pit.
A thin, diffuse puff of black smoke, all but invisible in the night, drifted against the wind, circling a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere. It came to rest outside a single window, where, barred by a line of salt, it tested here and there with stubborn determination until it found a space too small for even an insect. Particle by particle it pushed its way inside.
It flew straight toward the room's only bed to where a body lay, chest rising and falling with the deep, even breaths of sleep in between dreams. This is what it had been seeking since the doors to Hell had been thrown open. It would be whole again.
Dark smoke drifted across flesh, bare in the warm night, circling a permanent mark of protection meant to keep its kind out.
Fortunately, there was no magical rune or sigil which could protect a man from himself.
*
The world was breaking down, piece by piece. The demons weren't even bothering to hide themselves any more. They walked through the scorching streets with eyes blacked out or burning red, walking as though they had every right to be there, as though they owned the place.
You'd think it would've been easier to trap this one, Dean thought as he handcuffed a demon to the exposed, rusting pipes of a boiler room in an empty factory, using cuffs that had come from the belt of the overweight, balding cop the demon was riding. The devil's trap Dean had drawn on the cracked cement floor made him uneasy. He knew it would hold, but every time he stepped over its threshold, he could feel something oppressive, wearing down on nerves that had already stretched too thin. It seemed to amplify the voice inside that kept telling him to stop, that he didn't want to do this, didn't want to become this again, not ever.
"Guess there is no escaping the Pit, no matter who your friends are," the demon said, false sympathy and compassion in every word. It made a show of looking around the room and sniffing the air before commenting as though surprised, "But I don't see any of them now. Can't smell them, either. Not one single angel anywhere to be found. Did they leave you all alone?"
Far from shaking him, the taunt snapped Dean's attention back to the present, back to the task at hand. This would make him feel better, he knew. It wouldn't save Sammy any more than it would bring back Castiel or Pamela or any of the thousands who had died in the past week. But for a little while, this would make everything better.
"Guess it's just you and me," Dean said, not bothering to hide his smile. "And it looks like we've got all the time in the world."
The demon's eyes flashed black at that. "Come now, there's no need for this. What is it you want? I will help you. I have connections, some of the greats-"
"I want you to bleed." He looked over the demon, now fully bound, mapping out his first targets. But all of the markers he sought, vein and bone and tendon, were hidden under layers of official uniform. He should have removed its clothing before cuffing it. With a loud sigh, Dean took out his knife and began cutting. Bit by bit the uniform was shredded, and white scraps of cloth followed dark blue to scatter carelessly over the floor. When he ran out of clothing, he kept cutting, thinking to peel the skin from the meatsuit as easily as he had the cloth. The blade of his scissors sliced a shallow, straight line from shoulder to wrist.
Dean caught himself then, remembering where he was, and stopped. Up here, skin would not re-grow itself with a thought. It had been too long since he'd done this, and he was making mistakes; but then again, it probably didn't matter how out of practice he was. This particular demon had never had the privilege of knowing Alistair's attentions. Frankly, it wouldn't have been able to appreciate the workmanship if it'd had the chance.
Switching tactics, Dean started simply, with a few pokes and a few prods, trying to get a sense of how much the demon would be able to take and how quickly it could heal. He dipped his fingertips into holy water to sprinkle a series of acid burns across the demon's chest. When the flesh stopped sizzling and he finished admiring his work, he looked down to find his own fingers burned lightly pink from contact with the water. A tear slipped unnoticed down his face as something inside folded, gave himself up as lost.
He set down his scissors and picked up his knife. With the blade, Dean scraped a section of the soft skin on the stomach raw, not quite breaking it aside from a few beads of blood here and there, and then grabbed a handful of salt. It stung his palm. He walked slowly back to his captive and stood silently for a minute, waiting.
This was his favorite part: the look in their eyes when they realized what was coming, that there'd be nothing they could do to stop it. Alcohol had never made him feel half so good.
The demon was pleading and cajoling, but Dean barely heard it. He drew out the moment as long as he could, waiting for the anticipation to build, and then almost gently, he patted the salt onto the raw skin, crusting it in sparkling white. A perfect, soft whimper of pain reached his ears. Then he pushed his hand down, rubbing, scouring the salt into skin until the melting crystals were pink with blood. Whimpers built to shrieks and then full screams of pure pain, and Dean shivered at the sweetness of it. The sting of the salt on his hand traveled up his arm, and he delighted in knowing how much worse it was for the thing strung up before him.
"Please," the demon begged, but that word was cheap in Hell. A victim had to be a whole lot more creative than that to impress. "Just tell me what you want."
"Okay, I'll play. Tell me, how do you think it feels to be chained to a comet?" Dean asked, knowing the thing squirming before him had no answer; demons were nothing like angels. Still, it wasn't expecting too much, he decided, for one of them to think for one goddamned minute. To try to understand the way Sammy was feeling right now, wherever Lucifer had taken him.
He picked up his knife and sank it through the demon's forearm, scraping the bones on either side, filling the space between them with pain.
"I don't know, I swear I don't know..." it babbled pointlessly, the words dissolving into an open, honest scream when Dean twisted the knife, spreading the bones far apart, popping them loose from the wrist.
Dean grinned.
*
He'd lost track of the time when a rush of rustling feathers dampened the echo of the demon's screams. It was a sound his mortal ears had never heard, but it was one he half-recognized from his last few moments in Hell. Dean gripped the knife tightly, lest it slip from blood-slick hands, and turned almost joyfully to the sound. If he was really lucky, it'd be Zachariah. Then, he'd find out how smug the bastard would be with Dean's knife buried in his face.
Instead, Castiel stood in the corner of the room, still wearing Jimmy's meatsuit, complete with trench coat. His hair was messier than Dean remembered, his tie more askew, but otherwise he seemed intact. Whole. Dean nearly dropped the knife; he'd been convinced the archangels had torn him apart.
Without a word, Castiel walked up to the demon and rested his palm on its head. Black smoke poured from every opening on the body: from the nose and mouth and even from the deep gashes Dean had so carefully carved. The body shuddered, gasped, and when the last of the smoke disappeared, the human left behind struggled to draw breath.
"Help me," the man said to Castiel, choking on the words. He coughed, and anything else he might have said was drowned when blood filled his throat to trickle out from his lips.
"It's over. Rest now." Castiel waited as the man struggled through his last breath and then closed the corpse's staring eyes before turning to Dean.
Bile rose in Dean's throat and he shifted. He turned the knife over and over in his hands, trying to stare at the messy blade to avoid Castiel's gaze. He didn't want Castiel to see him like this, but he was unable to resist checking again and again to reassure himself that Castiel was there, alive, in spite of Dean.
"Dean." Castiel said, and Dean's hand shook, the blade of the knife trembling as the Dean relived the physical memory of sinking the knife into Castiel's chest, the initial resistance followed by the giving way of flesh. "This is unexpected."
"Don't tell me you're surprised, man. This is me. This is who I am."
"Yes," Castiel said. They may as well have been talking about Dean's affinity for bacon cheeseburgers and pie.
"Okay. Well, now that we understand each other, why don't you just go find yourself another poor schmuck to chase around?" Castiel had already lost too much. Stupid angel needed to let him go.
The suggestion got a reaction. Castiel looked down for a moment, and when he looked back up he was frowning. "Dean, you misunderstand me." His voice was softer, careful. "When we fought our way into Hell, and I found you, your soul was soaked in blood."
Dean looked down at his hands, at the blood that was beginning to dry in places, at the filth under his nails. "So, why-"
Castiel didn't let him finish. "I purged Hell's taint from your soul."
He looked so certain, Dean wished he could believe. An itch crawled up his spine, a desire to put out Castiel's eyes so that he could never look at him like that again, as though he would fix the world for Dean, if he only knew how.
"Apparently, you're as good at that as you are at making devil's traps." Dean wasn't the only failure in the room, and it only seemed right to point that out.
Castiel ignored him and took a step closer, his head tilted and gaze stripping Dean down without a single touch. "Something has changed."
Dean laughed at that. "You're damn right, something has changed. My brother started the apocalypse, and how does the devil thank him? By doing the same thing to him that you've done to poor Jimmy in there. How is he, by the way?"
"You're not yourself."
He couldn't help it; Dean laughed again, and this time he could not stop, not even when tears came to his eyes. "Yeah, I've had a rough week. Not stopping the Apocalypse, watching my brother get bitch-ridden by Lucifer, thinking the whole time that you were dead. Good times."
"I should have been here sooner. It shouldn't have come to this. I am sorry." Castiel hadn't looked away, not for a second, and Dean broke apart a little inside.
"What kept you? Did they make you say ten Hail Mary's and promise not to do it again?"
"I had to help Anna. She was being punished." Castiel paused and seemed to shrink inside his coat. "It was my fault."
"Is she-" Dean wasn't sure how to finish that question. Was she alive? Was she still herself, or had she been reprogrammed into someone Dean wouldn't recognize? He wasn't going to ask what Castiel had done. Not here, not in front of the mangled body he'd created.
"She will be fine. But you... You are not. There is something in you that was not before."
Like his own heartbeat, the urge to hurt something was still there, relentless, but it was getting easier to pretend that it wasn't, that everything was fine. Normal. "Well, I had a really bad sandwich at this dive down the road."
"I can help you. If you'll let me." Castiel stepped forward, moving closer, and it was all Dean could do to keep from striking out with the knife he still held in his hand.
But the hope was there, the hope that Castiel wasn't just seeing what he wanted to see, Heaven's version of Neo or Anakin Skywalker or whoever. Hope that this, that what he'd done really wasn't him - even though he knew, deep down, that it was. That hope was enough to keep him standing there, to let him meet Castiel's gaze with one he hoped the angel would read as permission.
After what seemed like an hour of standing and being scrutinized inside and out by the creature standing in front of him - impossible to pretend Castiel was anything like human, even for a moment - Castiel moved even closer, until he was near enough to steal Dean's breath.
Eyes still open, piercing, Castiel brought his lips to Dean's.
The kiss burned like holy fire and Dean was certain that when it ended, there would be nothing left of him but ashes. He found himself gripping Castiel's shoulders, the knife dropped on the floor, forgotten, leaning into the pain that was ripping him apart. A flare of pure light forced Dean's eyes closed. The inside of his eyelids glowed red, and all he could hear was that strange rustling, the sound of feathers moving through dead air that still reeked of blood and fear.
Then it was over, the light and the pain, and all he could feel was the soft press of Castiel's borrowed lips against his own. Their burn had faded to warmth and the comfort of simple contact. Dean moved slightly into the kiss, into the first good thing, the first real thing, he'd felt in much too long.
For a moment, Castiel moved with and against him, nothing robot-like about him at all. Only for a moment, and then Castiel gently pulled away.
Dean watched as the bloodstained handprints he'd left on Castiel's trench coat faded and disappeared.
"Are you alright?" Castiel asked, his forehead wrinkling and the corner of his mouth turned down.
"Yeah," Dean lied. He felt ill, wondering how many more times he'd slip and hurt someone for his own pleasure. If Castiel hadn't helped him- He forced a smile. "Man, don't you ever tell anyone I said this, but you are one hell of a kisser."
The frown disappeared from Castiel's face, and if Dean hadn't known better, he'd have thought the angel was preening. Which he totally was. "I won't tell anyone."
"Cas-" Dean's eyes closed as the memories of the past hours replayed themselves in full, vivid, nightmarish color in his mind. "What happened to me?"
"When I raised you from perdition, one small part of your soul was lost, left behind in Hell. It must have escaped and found you."
"This thing is gonna be part of me forever? Is that what you're saying? Christ, Cas - I can't live like this."
"No, Dean." Castiel reached out, touching the back of one of Dean's filthy hands. There was no sting in that touch, only affection. "I mean that now you are complete, the good and the bad. Just yourself. Your experiences have shaped you, but they can no longer define you. You are free."
*
6/19/09