How heroes fought and nations fell - SN fic - R
Title: How heroes fought and nations fell
Fandom: “Supernatural”
Disclaimer: if you recognize them, they be not mine; title from Lord Byron
Warnings: future!fic; disturbing; torture
Pairings: none
Rating: Rish, I guess?
Wordcount: 1000
Point of view: third
Notes: written for
blankversesficin the Anti-Christmas fic-exchange to the prompt I like the dragon thing. I would love to have them calling each other St. George and running around trying to figure out how to kill a dragon. This… isn’t quite that. At all.
More notes: takes place in the same ‘verse as “ the color of a rose when it bleeds,” but knowledge of that story isn’t entirely necessary.
Still more notes: thanks to
creenofor looking this over!
The world ends in fire and there’s an iron collar around his neck. It’s your fault, his keeper hisses. All your fault. He did this for you.
The words have no meaning and he groans, the only reply capable of him.
Shut up, she snarls, slapping his face. Shut your filthy mouth. Her nails dig into the side of his head, raising his chin to look in his eyes. You’re an abomination. I should destroy you, like he’s destroyed everything else.
Tears pour down her face and she tightens her hold. He can only stare at her, uncomprehending of whatever led to this moment. He has no memory before her hate.
I should destroy you, she repeats. But that would be too quick. Nowhere near the punishment you deserve.
What is his crime? He doesn’t know, can’t remember. He did something. He must have, to receive such hate. He wants to ask, but the words dance out of his reach and he’s left grasping, mouth open but silent.
No, she murmurs, her skin warm against his. I won’t destroy you. You deserve so much more, and I will give it to you.
Her fingers tighten further around his skull and he whimpers, silently pleading for the pain to end. He must have earned it, somehow, but he just can’t remember what he did.
He can’t keep track of time; he doesn’t even really remember what time is.
You killed the world, she says. Said. Yesterday, tomorrow-sometime. Alltime. You killed the world, you bastard. Because of you, everything is dead. Her fingers are tight on his face. Were tight. Nails digging in, gouging skin, welling blood. Everything is dead. Gone. Forever, except for him. And us. And the dragons.
Her breath iswas warm. Fingers cold. He doesn’t know what she means, when she speaks. The words are just noise, but her eyes scream at him. Alltime, her eyes scream at him.
Hate. Rage. Despair. Pain.
When she scratches his face, when she howls, when she uses bats and knives and cat o’nine tails, he sees something else, though.
She curses him. She punishes him.
She fears him. Alltime, she fears him.
He wonders what he did to earn that.
He is sitting in the corner watching his fingers move when the dragon comes. It settles before him, the largest thing he can remember seeing, towering over him at over four times his height. It stares at him with amber eyes, gleaming a dark green.
She ushers it away, saying, Pay him no mind. He’s nothing.
For the first time in memory(however long that is-alltime) the words have meaning.
Watching his fingers move, he smiles.
World-killer, she hisses, carving something on his back. Abomination. You should never have been born. Or him, that fucking brother of yours. Both of you should’ve died in the cradle. If your father had balls, he would have killed both of you. Or that bitch-mother. Her womb must’ve been a portal into Hell.
He understands the words. And for the first time in memory, he feels something besides vague regret.
He still doesn’t know what happened, or who he is, or who she is-but he feels… hatred.
His body is weak, so weak. Too weak. He can do nothing but submit and learn more. Wait. Alltime will circle back around, and he will wait.
The dragon returns, stares at him more. Studies him.
What is your name?
The first sound he hears besides her is masculine. Powerful. Ancient.
He stares back at the dragon, canting his head. She calls me many things, he says.
You are familiar to me, the dragon muses. Have we met before?
I’ve never left here.
She rushes in, from wherever she goes when she isn’t punishing him, and the dragon follows. He peers back over his shoulder, wings folded tight to fit in the hallway.
After the dragon goes, she uses the cat o’nine tails again. Until he collapses, gasping, begging for mercy in his mind. He still refuses to speak to her, no matter what she says, what she does.
She doesn’t think he has a voice. Thinks it still lost in whatever abyss he’d been cast into, before.
No memory of that time. Only alltime. No memory before her, before here, before alltime.
Monster, she snarls. He barely hears her. You killed everything. For you, he burned the world and destroyed the sun.
When the dragon comes a third time, he brings another. Even larger, pure black with silver eyes. The black lowers its head level with his, turning sideways to gaze directly eye-to-eye.
It stares at him for a hundred heartbeats, sniffs him. Reaches out with one talon to trace his cheek. Slices his skin so neatly and slightly it hardly hurts. Gently laps at the blood. Then stares at him for another hundred heartbeats.
They leave before she returns.
The world ends in fire and there’s an iron collar around his neck. She calls him many things, but none of them feel right. None of them call up recognition.
She glares and stalks around him, slapping and cutting and whipping. He takes it all, but something inside is stirring. Waking.
He watches her. Assesses her. She is all he remembers, all he knows.
He hates her. With everything he has, he hates her.
The large black dragon returns with a rider, the first human besides his torturer he can remember seeing. The man is tall and broad with floppy brown hair and flashing green eyes tinted yellow. The man kneels beside him, a gentle hand on his shoulder, firm fingers on his face.
Dean, the man gasps. Oh, god, Dean.
He just stares at the man. Nothing about him is familiar.
It’s me, the man says. Sammy.
Sammy’s eyes drop to the collar and his face tightens. He bares his teeth. That bitch. That traitorous fucking bitch-whore.
He touches the collar and it burns, falls away.
Deep inside, something keens and rights itself.
I’m Dean.