[FIC] SPN: Yellow Butterfly (NC-17, Het)
Art Prompt Title: Cornerstone (Brady/Jess)
Art link: Art Masterlist
Artist: melanth0
Fic Title: Yellow Butterfly
Author: extraonions
Fandom/Genre: SPN, Horror, Angst
Pairing(s): Sam/Jess, Brady/Jess (Non-Con)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~5,400
Warnings: Ongoing RAPE and abuse alongside elements of dubious consent (in the vein of Stockholm Syndrome). Gore and violent imagery, disturbing and potentially triggery content, to include sex between a demon and a ghost. Blasphemy and language. Spoilers through Season 5. Please pass this by if any of these themes are disturbing for you. If you have any questions about the content before reading, please PM me and I'll try to get more specific.
Summary: Brady wasn't satisfied with just killing Jessica.
Yellow Butterfly
In the temple of the gods, the day had come to come together,
In the early morning sun, they saw that girl that came to heaven.
They asked her 'bout life on earth, if it was getting any better.
She told 'em someone took her life if they could send her back...
Just one more time, she knew that someone feels so blue.
Hold on... Wouldn't it be nice... hold on...
To spread the wings and fly... Don't kill the butterfly.
To see him one more time.... Hold on.... To be a yellow butterfly....
- The Scorpions, Yellow Butterfly
A hand tangles roughly in her hair, pulling at her scalp, and Jess feels hot breath against her ear.
"Shhh, shh, shhh," Brady croons, drawing the flat of the blade down her cheek gently. "No one can hear you." The knife sinks lower; down the slope of her neck. Jess can't move, but she can feel the frantic syncopation of her heart and trickles of sweat pooling in the small of her back. The knife sinks, tracing the swell of one breast and circling lower to her navel. He rests it there. She tries whimpering, tries screaming, but nothing happens. It's not just fear. It can't be just fear that's paralyzing her. Brady is doing this to her, robbing her of even the slightest control of her body.
God, where's Sam? Why this night of all nights to take off with his brother? Jess can't even close her eyes to the madness, the sight of Brady holding her as tight as a lover with an unholy smirk on his face reflected in the dresser mirror he has positioned her in front of. Saaaaam! Jess cries out in the silence of her mind. She prays for a miracle-Sam slamming through the front door; the telephone ringing, the fire alarm going off-anything. Brady's gone crazy.
Could he have slipped her something? Brady never seemed the type for drugs, but. Could this all be some kind of bad trip?
Please be a bad trip.
"Don't worry, pretty Jess." The hand in her hair loosens minutely, and if she could Jess would grab the asshole by his balls and squeeze hard. He must read the fury in her eyes because he laughs delightedly. "Ah, Jess. The things I'm going to do to you. You're almost wasted on Sammy-boy." He wrenches her around and drags her close, forces his mouth against hers. Jess feels tears rolling down her face, feels the press of Brady's tongue against her clenched teeth and the hot press of his body through her thin nightgown.
She puts every bit of willpower she possesses into trying to move enough to bite his tongue off. Nothing happens.
Then the knife slides across her belly; cuts deep, and the world comes spilling out in jagged spurts. Jess gasps and feels her limbs turn to jelly. There's a warm-hot-wet spill against her skin she knows is blood.
"Mmm, perfect," Brady murmurs, pressing some kind of chalice against her to catch the blood. "Just wait till you see the things I do with your blood." She's dying, or hallucinating, or both-Brady's eyes have turned an inky black. She moans and strikes at Brady ineffectually with her fist, but quickly finds herself immobilized once more. Even the bleeding has stopped and Jess doesn't know whether to be relieved or terrified.
Brady sets the chalice aside on the dresser and licks away some of the blood on his hand. "You should feel honored, you know," he says conversationally. "You're a very important little pawn in a much larger game." A flick of his hand sends Jess crashing up against the wall; spread eagle. He hasn't touched her, yet…. He hadn't-and then her body begins to slide up the side of the wall, inch by excruciating inch. Jess tries to tell herself it's only a nightmare-that she'll wake up and none of this is real. She'll wake up next to Sam snoring lightly beside her. She never made cookies. Never let Brady into the apartment. Never let Sam go tearing off with his brother the night before his interview. Never… never…. Her head bumps gently against the crown molding and Jess shrieks internally. Wake up! Wake up, damnit!
To her horror, she continues to slide across the rough popcorn of the ceiling, helplessly watching Brady's hand motioning her into position. She comes to rest above the bed. Jess can't comprehend what is happening-the way time has apparently frozen in her body because not a single drop of blood has escaped her wound since Brady sent her up against the wall. What kind of freak is he?
Brady cranes his head up to look at her critically. A few impatient twitches of his fingers jerk her limbs further apart, painfully apart. Jess tries to scream and fails yet again. Whatever kind of monster Brady is, he has complete control over her. She's crucified on the damn ceiling and where the hell is Sam?
"You get comfortable now," Brady says, finally satisfied with her positioning. "Don't worry, Sam will be here soon. I'm just going to go clean up." She sees Brady pick up the chalice and take it into the bathroom. After a moment she hears the shower turn on. Oh, God. He's going to wash away her blood down the drain and Sam is coming and Brady is going to kill them both. How can this be happening? Try as she might, Jess wouldn't be able to move or make the slightest sound to warn Sam.
Time moves strangely then. It might have been minutes or hours that she stayed there, pinned helplessly above their bed. Jess lets her mind wander, noticing the thick layer of dust she had never noticed on top of the tall shelves that lined one wall. Sam won't mind; she thinks to herself. He'll laugh and dust everything off himself. Jess finds herself drifting in a happy sort of fog, letting herself imagine that Sam was just out of sight, maybe in the next room. She'll turn back the covers and light a candle or three, and they'll make love in the warm light of the flames. Yes. He'll smile when he sees her waiting, spread out against the sheets. She imagines it, Sam coming out of the bathroom, hair still damp and a fine mist of water across his naked chest. The bathroom... the shower... she can hear it running....
Brady.
Oh, God.
She can hear Sam now. Oh so familiar, comfortable sounds as Sam comes in and locks the door. The clink of his keys hitting the ceramic pumpkin plate she put out by the door for Halloween and hasn't put away yet. There's a stillness in the air of the bedroom, humid from the steady rush of steam from the hot shower; an unnatural stillness from the bathroom where Brady waits. Jess tries desperately to free herself from the paralysis that pins her to the ceiling, the enforced muteness which prevents her from warning Sam, from crying out for help. She can see Sam in her mind's eye as he calls out her name from the kitchen, sees him find the cookies she left out, reading her carefree note and smiling as he takes a bite.
And then Sam is here, his tall lanky frame filling the doorway at an angle Jess has never seen before. He doesn't see her. Dear God, let him look up, she cries. Sam!
It's not until Sam stretches out contentedly beneath her on their bed, face tired but happy, that life and motion begins to return to her body. She can move her lips, but it's like swimming through molasses, and silent. Still silent. The blood which had stilled inside her begins, ever so slowly, to drip.
Time speeds up then. Jess sees Sam's flinch, and his horror as he takes it all in. And worst of all, in his eyes-knowledge. It's the final cut, almost deeper than that which Brady has dealt her. Sam has seen this sort of death before. Sam and his secrets and his sweet smiles, damn them! She doesn't know how, but somehow… somehow Sam has lived this moment before. Jess wants to weep. A sweeping fury takes her then, burning her up from the inside out. It's not until she sees Sam's face drain of all color and the reflection of flames in his devastated eyes that she realizes the fire is real, and it's burning her alive.
She mouths Brady's name, hoping Sam will understand.
The flames rise, dancing across her skin. Jess screams and screams, the smell and taste of her own flesh burning putrid in her nose and across her tongue. Sam can't hear her. Maybe no one can but herself. She's burning alive and Jess dimly realizes that whatever shreds of sanity she might have kept through this night are burning to ash.
Things become a bit jumbled then. Jess never remembers later if she started laughing instead of screaming or if it was Brady. She does remember Dean bursting in like some kind of action hero, dragging Sam out before he burns to death with her. In more lucid moments, she realizes that Dean's face, like Sam's, carries the stark knowledge of her fate. The memory of it, and the scars.
She's still burning when Brady steps out from the bathroom. A gesture sends her down into his arms. He doesn't even flinch at the fire, the heat of her, just dumps her on the bed and grins down at her nastily. His eyes are still ink black. Like India ink, Jess' mind hazily supplies. She's too spent to scream. She should already be dead. How can she still be alive? Dear God, let her die quickly.
Brady touches her then, face intent as he brushes aside the scorched remains of her nightgown. Reaches down deep, face alight as he strokes her from the inside out. She's shuddering and still burning, covered in eldritch flames which have spread from her body to the bed and beyond. She's too numb to scream. Too numb to anything but the horror of it as Brady drags his dripping fingers across her throat and traces symbols into the mess of charred flesh and exposed bone that remains. "I hope you don't mind me going off script," he says, fingers curling around the sizzled lump of her breast and squeezing. "You were perfect, by the way. Just like Mommy Winchester. Azazel will be pleased."
He straddles her, seemingly immune to the flames which have engulfed the bed. Brady leans down and licks from the edges of Jess' ruined mouth to the corner of her exposed eye socket. Jess smells sulfur mixing with the scent of cooked human flesh and charred bone. Is she dead yet? Why isn't she dead yet? "But I think we'll keep you around a little longer." Jess sees the glint of the knife in Brady's fist and the hank of scorched hair he's sliced away from her scalp. Then Brady slips off her and the fire rises up to hides him from her sight.
******
There are dim flashes of awareness after that, mixed in with long bursts of terror and burning pain. She constantly hears sibilant whispers, guttural sounds that can’t possibly be torn from human throats. She doesn't seem to have form. She's a whisper of pain on the breeze.
She is lucid for part of her funeral. Reality spins by her like black light flashes in a mosh pit-the mournful faces of her friends and family, the scent of flowers and freshly overturned dirt briefly overpowering the stench of her death.
Brady is there, his human face angelic in its put on sorrow. But Jess sees now with the eyes of the dead, and she can see a miasma of evil surrounding her once-lover, her murderer. The sooty, oily creature slip-slides around and inside Brady's empty flesh. It grins viciously at her burning ghost-corpse from across her grave. In the crowd, she sees several other people with the same type of sooty evil hovering around them.
Sam is still and silent and broken, but she sees a brittle flame of anger burning brightly from him. She also sees a dark smudge, just the barest hint, in his blood and on his soul. It terrifies her.
She sees Sam's brother pulling him into a comforting headlock, sees him talking low and urgently to Sam, but cannot hear the words of comfort Dean must be offering. Then Brady steps forward to clap Sam on the shoulder. Sam smiles shakily at the bastard and Jess combusts with rage.
******
Jess sees Sam again one more time. She's realized by now that she's tied somehow to the monster inside Brady. He's sipping coffee outside at a little café, ostensibly reading the newspaper. In reality, Brady's a demon sent to watch Sam for some kind of unholy agenda. Jess flops around Brady like a fish on a hook, her spirit wailing and raging as she cycles through endless re-enactments of her death. Try as she might, no one but Brady and others like him can see her.
He's in a car. Dean is at the wheel while Sam slumps in the passenger side.
Sam… Sam! She pulls all the love in her soul, all the longing she has for Sam into her very being. The charnel flames and blood fade away. In that moment her ghost-flesh coalesces into something whole and untouched. Something beautiful. Miraculously, he looks up as the car passes. Jess sees his eyes widen and his whole body jerk upright. Yes! If Sam can see her, surely he'll stop.
He'll save her.
Jess knows enough by now to know Sam and his brother are aware of the world beyond, the unnatural things in the dark like she has become. Ghosts and monsters. Brady talks to her sometimes, speaks of things she would have called impossible before she was sliced open and burned to death and yet somehow still walks the earth.
But Sam doesn't reach for her. He doesn't make his brother stop and come back for her. The classic muscle car just keeps rolling past. Jess sinks to her knees there on the sidewalk and stares hopelessly after it. She feels Brady's clawed hands sink into her shoulder even as her ribs burst into flames and her flesh splits open into a bloody mass of empty despair.
The plates read KAZ 2Y5.
It's the last thing she sees for a long time.
******
She sleeps.
Jess dreams she is a butterfly with pale yellow wings stretched out against a stain of dried reddish-brown blood. There's a pin impaling her thorax and the metal burns. She is trapped behind glass and framed up on a wall. Monstrous faces peer in at her, mocking her fragile wings. Their eyes are deepest black and their teeth run with her blood. She screams forever but no one hears her.
Then she wakes up.
She's not a butterfly; she's not anything but the angry echoes of her soul. The unquiet dead. Her hair is on fire and flames lick at the edges of her torn, bloodied nightgown. Her ghost-flesh catches fire and burns and sizzles and eventually falls to ash. Jess dissolves and is reborn in an endless cycle of furious agony.
She's in an apartment suite she doesn't recognize. Sparsely decorated, but expensive looking. After a time, she realizes she's not walking around it, but rather spurting in and out of the ether in jagged motions. Moving through rips in reality.
There's a desk in front of a window that she moved towards, cluttered slightly with lit candles and a one of those metal desk sculptures. A Newton's Cradle. Jess tries to move one of the balls and set the toy in motion, but the exposed bones of her hand pass through it uselessly. More of her ghost-flesh sizzles and the sinews and tendons of her hand fall away as she passes it through a familiar looking chalice.
She is gripped by a disquieting sense of déjà-vu.
Memory returns slowly.
The chalice pressing up against her.
Sam. Dying. Brady.
And speak of the damn devil, he's leaning in to her now, except instead of Brady's handsome, hated face she can see the monster beneath; black eyes and razor teeth and smudged edges writhing around Brady's walking corpse. She can smell the rot of him.
Clawed hands reach hungrily towards her and Jess screams for God to save her.
Turns out God isn’t listening.
******
She is trapped in Brady's apartment. Jess has no idea how long she drifts-it could be months or years for all she knows-she stutters in and out of awareness without warning. But when she is present she burns and she hates and she feels herself changing more and more into something dangerous.
Something damned.
If ever Jess thought about being a ghost while she was alive, she'd have pegged the ghostly afterlife as being a whole lot more Joan Blondell in Topper Returns and a whole lot less clanking chains and fucking Jacob Marley. The reality of being a ghost sucks. Not that she can see her chains, but they are there none the less, placed around her tattered, singed soul by that bastard demon Brady.
And he is a demon.
Jess can't leave. Brady has placed some kind of barrier around the confines of the apartment that her ghost-flesh can't penetrate, no matter how violently she flings herself against it. She doesn't know if it's the hank of her hair that Brady keeps which ties her here or something else entirely.
Jess knows there will be no well-meaning stranger to help her, like Topper did Joan's character in the movie. No Sam to come to her rescue. All hope of that had burned out of her in the first few months of her torment.
******
Brady fucks her often. Jess calls it that, instead of rape. It sounds better. Sort of like in A Handmaid's Tale, and she likes that book.
He lets her fight, most times. Gets off on it, probably, but Jess continues to struggle and bite and kick at him for all that he can use his demonic powers on Jess to immobilize her whenever he wants.
Demons don't have cocks, not exactly, but Jess still feels Brady's human flesh jutting up against her torn insides at the same time as the demon's real essence roils through her, smearing corruption across her soul. He talks sometimes, telling her about nebulous plans and horrific futures. She knows he's going to use his position with Niveus Pharmaceuticals to distribute some kind of super disease.
Not that she has anyone to warn.
He toys with her insides, brings ghostly blood to her lips and makes her lick it from his fingers. He drags her face up to his cock and forces it past a mouth that has burned away. Brady is insatiable and endlessly creative in his enjoyments of her ghost-flesh.
It shouldn't be possible for a ghost to orgasm, willingly or not, but the demon drags them out of her as well, just because he can.
"Time to celebrate, sweet Jess," he gloats. He's holding her on his cock, dragging her up and down roughly. "Croatoan was a complete success… wiped out an entire town." He's using his power to lock her arms together at the wrist, as if she were handcuffed. Brady bites her breast, scrapes down with sharp teeth and licks at her oozing blood with his wicked tongue. "Couldn’t have done it without you, you know. All that sweet blood of yours made the perfect host for my virus." Acid burns inside as he ruts against her. "How does it feel to be mother of a new breed of demons?" he purrs.
She says nothing. What can she say? Jess feels as if she is slowly loosing herself; the very memory of herself. It's hard sometimes to recall what things were like when she was still alive, still human and not this echo of flesh.
It's hard to remember, sometimes, what it was like to be with Sam instead of Brady. What it meant to be free and happy.
One day, Jess drifts back to awareness, flesh reforming on muscle and sinew and bone before beginning to smolder again, only to realize she has forgotten her mother's face.
That night when Brady pulls her down to the floor and fucks into her, fire spreading out from their bodies across the carpet, she doesn't fight him at all.
When she comes, the air smells of scorched chocolate chip cookies.
******
There's a painting hanging over the brown leather sofa, the only artwork in the room unless you count the vase Brady keeps on his desk. The cleaning lady puts fresh flowers in it every few days, and blushes prettily when Brady thanks her.
Mariah can't see Jess. Or hear her, apparently, because Jess has done nothing but scream and wail and shout piteously whenever the woman comes to dust and straighten and vacuum. She doesn't notice the blood that oozes from the walls when Jess flies into a rage, or flinch when she walks through curtains of fire trailing from Jess' ghost-flesh.
Once or twice, Mariah looks around warily and mumbles in Portuguese when she feels a cold spot, but otherwise she is oblivious to Jess' torment. When Brady is present, he smiles innocently at Mariah and promises to speak to the landlord about the draft. His true, demonic form laughs and pulls Jess up close to his body. Jess shudders and burns as clawed fingers stroke over her.
Brady is the only thing that can touch her now, and she both abhors and craves his touch.
The painting is a still life. Dutch, she thinks. Balthasar van der Ast, an original. A similar piece hangs in the Hague… Fruit Still Life with Shells and a Tulip, Jess' mind supplies. This one must have been a study for it. She stares at it while Brady reaches a hand beneath her gown, the other hand gripping her arm tightly. Jess strangles the horror festering in her gut and holds herself still.
When Brady is burning against her, her own death-flames are extinguished. She tells herself it's worth it, to trade one torment for a lesser one, however fleetingly.
Gourds and grapes and shells. Flowers. The demon's claws slip inside her, working her open with insistent strokes. Rotting fruit crawling over with insects.
When she spasms in Brady's arms, opens wetly for him without protest, she watches as the gourds begin to bleed and burst forth with a horde of locusts.
******
She changes the painting often after that-melts the colors and spreads them around the canvas at a whim. It’s the only thing left for her to control.
She paints butterflies tasting the marrow of cracked open ribs and hordes of twisted demons surrounding a frantically beating heart suspended from meat hooks. She paints oceans on fire and endless graveyards and empty playgrounds.
She paints a forest where all the trees have fallen, rippling outwards from a single thrown stone, a meteor returning to earth.
Once she paints Sam. His eyes are black and there's a trickle of blood running from his lips. A dark haired woman with a smug expression is offering Sam her wrist.
The canvas burns from the center out, cracking and peeling as Jess weeps.
******
One night, Brady doesn't return. He doesn't come the next night, or the next, or the next, and eventually Jess realizes that he isn’t coming back. She shrieks and throws herself against the barrier which holds her in, works herself into a frenzy of panicked escape attempts. The barrier holds.
It always holds.
She levies enough rage, enough power to shatter the vase and send wilted flowers-daffodils, this time-sweeping out across Brady's desk in a puddle of too-old, smelly water. Mariah hasn't been by in a while.
Jess bleeds and burns and rots and crumbles to ash over and over, only start up again. She stares balefully at the flowers as they too, rot.
Trapped.
She paints a stormy beach across the canvas, with crimson waves made of salt and blood and bone. A white feather floats across the sky, just touched by the rays of the sun. Jess curls up tightly into herself and stares at that feather for a long time, a wistful sort of yearning filling her up and spilling over.
Jess fades, barely aware of the passage of time but still cognizant when something changes.
There's someone in the apartment. A man with dark hair and the beginnings of a scruffy beard who is wearing a rumpled suit and trench coat. He's looking at the painting intently.
No, not a man. Something other. She can see the whorls and eddies of power rippling through and around him, barely contained by his body. She drifts closer, interested and drawn almost helplessly to the power the creature exudes.
To her surprise, he swivels his head to meet her gaze. "Hello." Jess recoils. Nothing else has seen her, nothing except other demons. But this is not a demon, not like Brady.
To her surprise, Jess finds her voice. Her actual voice, not the screams and shrieks she has devolved into more and more often of late.
"What the hell are you?" Jess demands.
His eyes are looking right through her; judging her. Jess imagines he sees down to her very soul, whatever is left of it… sees the anger burning at the core of her, the guilt and the shame and the sick, twisted pleasure every time she ever leaned into one of Brady's touches instead of away.
"My name is Castiel. I'm…" he hesitates, then continues, "I'm an Angel of the Lord. I'm here to save you."
"Yeah, well, I'm not Princess Leia," Jess says, crossing her arms over her chest. "And no offense, but you're a little short to be a goddamn angel." She winces when she realizes what she just said. God, when did her afterlife become a Star Wars parody?
"Of course not. You're Jessica Moore," Castiel says, cocking his head to the side. "And my vessel's height is of no consequence."
Jess blinks.
"I'm also Sam Winchester's friend," he adds, gently.
Sam. Jess loses what little control she has then, feeling her ghost-flesh catch fire again. The scent of charred meat is everywhere, but the angel seems unaffected.
"Sam…?" Jess whispers. She wavers on her feet, and Castiel reaches for her arm to steady her. Jess manages not to flinch at the touch. "Can you take me to Sam?" she asks. Is it possible? If only to say goodbye. If only to see him one more time.
"I've come to take you to Heaven," Castiel replies, looking away from her. "You have been too long on the Earth to find your way there unguided."
"Why didn't you come sooner?" Her voice sounds broken, even to her.
"Until recently, I was nearly mortal. It was not until my return to the Host that I felt your soul crying out."
Castiel cups her cheek tenderly in his hand. The flames licking at her are extinguished and she finds herself whole-or as close as she has come in a long, long time. "Come with me. In Heaven you shall know no suffering. There will be only peace and joy." His eyes seem sad.
Heaven… but. She frowns at the angel. He never answered her about Sam. "Is that where Sam is? Is Sam dead?" The idea isn't as distressing to her as Jess expects. To be with Sam again, forever… no pain… it really would be Heaven.
He looks at her, clearly not wanting to answer. "It's complicated. But no, Sam's not in Heaven."
"So he's alive?" Jess says. "Thank God! It's simple then, just take me to him, just for a little while. Then I'll wait for him in Heaven-"
Castiel winces at that, and Jess trails off, confused. "Perhaps it would be simpler to show you," he says, and reaches out to touch her forehead.
A barrage of dizzying images, years worth, crashes into Jess' awareness with the impact of an eighteen wheeler. If not for the angel holding her up, she would sink down to the floor. Tears stream from her eyes as she begins to understand the events set in motion by her death.
******
Sam. Dean. Croatoan. Michael. Brady.
Sam… and Lucifer.
How can it be possible? Even as she argues and pleads with Castiel, her very soul is shuddering at the implications.
"You’re an angel! You already pulled his brother out of hell! You have to go save Sam!"
Castiel looks away.
"I'm sorry. I can't. I have been given other tasks," he says. Jess realizes he truly does look sorry, but she explodes anyway.
"Fuck that and fuck you. And you call yourself Sam's friend! I should have guessed that angels are all assholes," she hisses. Castiel gets a bemused expression on his face and shakes his head.
"You remind me of Dean." Castiel looks away from her, up towards the ceiling. "He's taught me a lot about humanity. About free will…."
"Yeah?" Jess feels cool resolve settle upon her like a cloak. "Try this for free will then. I want Sam. I want to be with Sam. I won't go to whatever stupid idea of paradise you have, because without Sam it won’t be Heaven, you understand? I'll take the elevator down, thank you very much."
Castiel looks more resigned than surprised. "Truly a Winchester at heart."
Jess smiles at him. The expression feels strange on her lips. "Don't you forget it." Winchester… survivor… unholy spirit. What she is doesn't matter. What matters is that she is taking charge of her own destiny.
He nods and says, "If you chose pain and Sam instead of peace and Heaven, I won't stop you. But understand that I will be sending you to Hell and its endless torments with virtually no chance of escape."
She scoffs at that. "Don't you think I've been in Hell, all this time?"
Castiel looks at her with pity. "You have suffered, yes, and I'm sorry for it. But truly no one who has not endured Hell can know it, and fewer still survive it." From the haunted expression that fleetingly crosses his face, Jess has a feeling that Castiel speaks from experience.
"Hell changes a man. And even before Sam's sacrifice, his road has been a long and difficult one. He may not be at all the Sam you remember," Castiel warns. He leaves unspoken, the Sam she loved. Loves.
"I don't care," Jess says. She ripples forward and lays her hands on Castiel's chest, fists curling tightly around the lapels of his trench coat as she tugs him close. "I want this. I choose this." Her hair has caught back on fire and blood runs from her midsection down her thighs. This time it feels like war paint.
"Very well," he agrees. "I… I hope you find Sam." Castiel raises his hand and places his palm against her forehead. Light bursts forth brighter and brighter until Jess can see nothing but the essence of him, holy fire cleansing her and freeing her from the prison Brady created.
Then the gateway to Hell opens above her, symbols traced in fire on the ceiling. How appropriate. Jess smiles grimly and begins to ascend the pathway that Castiel has wrenched open for her. She can hear the screams and cries of the damned and feel the blistering heat of Hell across the marrow of her soul. She tastes the putrid air-spoiled meat and rotting fruit and the carrion stench of hopelessness and terror. It doesn't matter. She is used to flames, and heat, and despair. She is used to damnation.
Somewhere ahead of her waits Sam.
Both damned souls, the two of them. She'll find him; the light and goodness of him shining in her memory like a beacon.
The gateway to Hell closes behind her with a sickeningly wet plop, the sound of sliced flesh being forced roughly back together and stitched shut.
Jess doesn't look back.
Author's Notes: Dudes, I am way nervous about this one because of some of the content, and hence have agonized about it up to the last possible second. Yet it was a pleasure to work with melanth0's deliciously creepy prompt and I can only hope I have done it justice. I have a lot of thinky-thoughts about this story which I'd like to share someday, but it all boils down to helplessness and empowerment and choosing one's fate, at least in my head. But the Jess presented here is very much me, and I think I might even be proud of this story.
My thanks to c00kie and imisspadfoot21 for encouraging me! Also, I totes blame c00kie, tracy_loo_who, and vichan for not stopping me from using terrible Star Wars analogies in time! :D
Comments are very welcome.
Art link: Art Masterlist
Artist: melanth0
Fic Title: Yellow Butterfly
Author: extraonions
Fandom/Genre: SPN, Horror, Angst
Pairing(s): Sam/Jess, Brady/Jess (Non-Con)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~5,400
Warnings: Ongoing RAPE and abuse alongside elements of dubious consent (in the vein of Stockholm Syndrome). Gore and violent imagery, disturbing and potentially triggery content, to include sex between a demon and a ghost. Blasphemy and language. Spoilers through Season 5. Please pass this by if any of these themes are disturbing for you. If you have any questions about the content before reading, please PM me and I'll try to get more specific.
Summary: Brady wasn't satisfied with just killing Jessica.
Yellow Butterfly
In the temple of the gods, the day had come to come together,
In the early morning sun, they saw that girl that came to heaven.
They asked her 'bout life on earth, if it was getting any better.
She told 'em someone took her life if they could send her back...
Just one more time, she knew that someone feels so blue.
Hold on... Wouldn't it be nice... hold on...
To spread the wings and fly... Don't kill the butterfly.
To see him one more time.... Hold on.... To be a yellow butterfly....
- The Scorpions, Yellow Butterfly
A hand tangles roughly in her hair, pulling at her scalp, and Jess feels hot breath against her ear.
"Shhh, shh, shhh," Brady croons, drawing the flat of the blade down her cheek gently. "No one can hear you." The knife sinks lower; down the slope of her neck. Jess can't move, but she can feel the frantic syncopation of her heart and trickles of sweat pooling in the small of her back. The knife sinks, tracing the swell of one breast and circling lower to her navel. He rests it there. She tries whimpering, tries screaming, but nothing happens. It's not just fear. It can't be just fear that's paralyzing her. Brady is doing this to her, robbing her of even the slightest control of her body.
God, where's Sam? Why this night of all nights to take off with his brother? Jess can't even close her eyes to the madness, the sight of Brady holding her as tight as a lover with an unholy smirk on his face reflected in the dresser mirror he has positioned her in front of. Saaaaam! Jess cries out in the silence of her mind. She prays for a miracle-Sam slamming through the front door; the telephone ringing, the fire alarm going off-anything. Brady's gone crazy.
Could he have slipped her something? Brady never seemed the type for drugs, but. Could this all be some kind of bad trip?
Please be a bad trip.
"Don't worry, pretty Jess." The hand in her hair loosens minutely, and if she could Jess would grab the asshole by his balls and squeeze hard. He must read the fury in her eyes because he laughs delightedly. "Ah, Jess. The things I'm going to do to you. You're almost wasted on Sammy-boy." He wrenches her around and drags her close, forces his mouth against hers. Jess feels tears rolling down her face, feels the press of Brady's tongue against her clenched teeth and the hot press of his body through her thin nightgown.
She puts every bit of willpower she possesses into trying to move enough to bite his tongue off. Nothing happens.
Then the knife slides across her belly; cuts deep, and the world comes spilling out in jagged spurts. Jess gasps and feels her limbs turn to jelly. There's a warm-hot-wet spill against her skin she knows is blood.
"Mmm, perfect," Brady murmurs, pressing some kind of chalice against her to catch the blood. "Just wait till you see the things I do with your blood." She's dying, or hallucinating, or both-Brady's eyes have turned an inky black. She moans and strikes at Brady ineffectually with her fist, but quickly finds herself immobilized once more. Even the bleeding has stopped and Jess doesn't know whether to be relieved or terrified.
Brady sets the chalice aside on the dresser and licks away some of the blood on his hand. "You should feel honored, you know," he says conversationally. "You're a very important little pawn in a much larger game." A flick of his hand sends Jess crashing up against the wall; spread eagle. He hasn't touched her, yet…. He hadn't-and then her body begins to slide up the side of the wall, inch by excruciating inch. Jess tries to tell herself it's only a nightmare-that she'll wake up and none of this is real. She'll wake up next to Sam snoring lightly beside her. She never made cookies. Never let Brady into the apartment. Never let Sam go tearing off with his brother the night before his interview. Never… never…. Her head bumps gently against the crown molding and Jess shrieks internally. Wake up! Wake up, damnit!
To her horror, she continues to slide across the rough popcorn of the ceiling, helplessly watching Brady's hand motioning her into position. She comes to rest above the bed. Jess can't comprehend what is happening-the way time has apparently frozen in her body because not a single drop of blood has escaped her wound since Brady sent her up against the wall. What kind of freak is he?
Brady cranes his head up to look at her critically. A few impatient twitches of his fingers jerk her limbs further apart, painfully apart. Jess tries to scream and fails yet again. Whatever kind of monster Brady is, he has complete control over her. She's crucified on the damn ceiling and where the hell is Sam?
"You get comfortable now," Brady says, finally satisfied with her positioning. "Don't worry, Sam will be here soon. I'm just going to go clean up." She sees Brady pick up the chalice and take it into the bathroom. After a moment she hears the shower turn on. Oh, God. He's going to wash away her blood down the drain and Sam is coming and Brady is going to kill them both. How can this be happening? Try as she might, Jess wouldn't be able to move or make the slightest sound to warn Sam.
Time moves strangely then. It might have been minutes or hours that she stayed there, pinned helplessly above their bed. Jess lets her mind wander, noticing the thick layer of dust she had never noticed on top of the tall shelves that lined one wall. Sam won't mind; she thinks to herself. He'll laugh and dust everything off himself. Jess finds herself drifting in a happy sort of fog, letting herself imagine that Sam was just out of sight, maybe in the next room. She'll turn back the covers and light a candle or three, and they'll make love in the warm light of the flames. Yes. He'll smile when he sees her waiting, spread out against the sheets. She imagines it, Sam coming out of the bathroom, hair still damp and a fine mist of water across his naked chest. The bathroom... the shower... she can hear it running....
Brady.
Oh, God.
She can hear Sam now. Oh so familiar, comfortable sounds as Sam comes in and locks the door. The clink of his keys hitting the ceramic pumpkin plate she put out by the door for Halloween and hasn't put away yet. There's a stillness in the air of the bedroom, humid from the steady rush of steam from the hot shower; an unnatural stillness from the bathroom where Brady waits. Jess tries desperately to free herself from the paralysis that pins her to the ceiling, the enforced muteness which prevents her from warning Sam, from crying out for help. She can see Sam in her mind's eye as he calls out her name from the kitchen, sees him find the cookies she left out, reading her carefree note and smiling as he takes a bite.
And then Sam is here, his tall lanky frame filling the doorway at an angle Jess has never seen before. He doesn't see her. Dear God, let him look up, she cries. Sam!
It's not until Sam stretches out contentedly beneath her on their bed, face tired but happy, that life and motion begins to return to her body. She can move her lips, but it's like swimming through molasses, and silent. Still silent. The blood which had stilled inside her begins, ever so slowly, to drip.
Time speeds up then. Jess sees Sam's flinch, and his horror as he takes it all in. And worst of all, in his eyes-knowledge. It's the final cut, almost deeper than that which Brady has dealt her. Sam has seen this sort of death before. Sam and his secrets and his sweet smiles, damn them! She doesn't know how, but somehow… somehow Sam has lived this moment before. Jess wants to weep. A sweeping fury takes her then, burning her up from the inside out. It's not until she sees Sam's face drain of all color and the reflection of flames in his devastated eyes that she realizes the fire is real, and it's burning her alive.
She mouths Brady's name, hoping Sam will understand.
The flames rise, dancing across her skin. Jess screams and screams, the smell and taste of her own flesh burning putrid in her nose and across her tongue. Sam can't hear her. Maybe no one can but herself. She's burning alive and Jess dimly realizes that whatever shreds of sanity she might have kept through this night are burning to ash.
Things become a bit jumbled then. Jess never remembers later if she started laughing instead of screaming or if it was Brady. She does remember Dean bursting in like some kind of action hero, dragging Sam out before he burns to death with her. In more lucid moments, she realizes that Dean's face, like Sam's, carries the stark knowledge of her fate. The memory of it, and the scars.
She's still burning when Brady steps out from the bathroom. A gesture sends her down into his arms. He doesn't even flinch at the fire, the heat of her, just dumps her on the bed and grins down at her nastily. His eyes are still ink black. Like India ink, Jess' mind hazily supplies. She's too spent to scream. She should already be dead. How can she still be alive? Dear God, let her die quickly.
Brady touches her then, face intent as he brushes aside the scorched remains of her nightgown. Reaches down deep, face alight as he strokes her from the inside out. She's shuddering and still burning, covered in eldritch flames which have spread from her body to the bed and beyond. She's too numb to scream. Too numb to anything but the horror of it as Brady drags his dripping fingers across her throat and traces symbols into the mess of charred flesh and exposed bone that remains. "I hope you don't mind me going off script," he says, fingers curling around the sizzled lump of her breast and squeezing. "You were perfect, by the way. Just like Mommy Winchester. Azazel will be pleased."
He straddles her, seemingly immune to the flames which have engulfed the bed. Brady leans down and licks from the edges of Jess' ruined mouth to the corner of her exposed eye socket. Jess smells sulfur mixing with the scent of cooked human flesh and charred bone. Is she dead yet? Why isn't she dead yet? "But I think we'll keep you around a little longer." Jess sees the glint of the knife in Brady's fist and the hank of scorched hair he's sliced away from her scalp. Then Brady slips off her and the fire rises up to hides him from her sight.
******
There are dim flashes of awareness after that, mixed in with long bursts of terror and burning pain. She constantly hears sibilant whispers, guttural sounds that can’t possibly be torn from human throats. She doesn't seem to have form. She's a whisper of pain on the breeze.
She is lucid for part of her funeral. Reality spins by her like black light flashes in a mosh pit-the mournful faces of her friends and family, the scent of flowers and freshly overturned dirt briefly overpowering the stench of her death.
Brady is there, his human face angelic in its put on sorrow. But Jess sees now with the eyes of the dead, and she can see a miasma of evil surrounding her once-lover, her murderer. The sooty, oily creature slip-slides around and inside Brady's empty flesh. It grins viciously at her burning ghost-corpse from across her grave. In the crowd, she sees several other people with the same type of sooty evil hovering around them.
Sam is still and silent and broken, but she sees a brittle flame of anger burning brightly from him. She also sees a dark smudge, just the barest hint, in his blood and on his soul. It terrifies her.
She sees Sam's brother pulling him into a comforting headlock, sees him talking low and urgently to Sam, but cannot hear the words of comfort Dean must be offering. Then Brady steps forward to clap Sam on the shoulder. Sam smiles shakily at the bastard and Jess combusts with rage.
******
Jess sees Sam again one more time. She's realized by now that she's tied somehow to the monster inside Brady. He's sipping coffee outside at a little café, ostensibly reading the newspaper. In reality, Brady's a demon sent to watch Sam for some kind of unholy agenda. Jess flops around Brady like a fish on a hook, her spirit wailing and raging as she cycles through endless re-enactments of her death. Try as she might, no one but Brady and others like him can see her.
He's in a car. Dean is at the wheel while Sam slumps in the passenger side.
Sam… Sam! She pulls all the love in her soul, all the longing she has for Sam into her very being. The charnel flames and blood fade away. In that moment her ghost-flesh coalesces into something whole and untouched. Something beautiful. Miraculously, he looks up as the car passes. Jess sees his eyes widen and his whole body jerk upright. Yes! If Sam can see her, surely he'll stop.
He'll save her.
Jess knows enough by now to know Sam and his brother are aware of the world beyond, the unnatural things in the dark like she has become. Ghosts and monsters. Brady talks to her sometimes, speaks of things she would have called impossible before she was sliced open and burned to death and yet somehow still walks the earth.
But Sam doesn't reach for her. He doesn't make his brother stop and come back for her. The classic muscle car just keeps rolling past. Jess sinks to her knees there on the sidewalk and stares hopelessly after it. She feels Brady's clawed hands sink into her shoulder even as her ribs burst into flames and her flesh splits open into a bloody mass of empty despair.
The plates read KAZ 2Y5.
It's the last thing she sees for a long time.
******
She sleeps.
Jess dreams she is a butterfly with pale yellow wings stretched out against a stain of dried reddish-brown blood. There's a pin impaling her thorax and the metal burns. She is trapped behind glass and framed up on a wall. Monstrous faces peer in at her, mocking her fragile wings. Their eyes are deepest black and their teeth run with her blood. She screams forever but no one hears her.
Then she wakes up.
She's not a butterfly; she's not anything but the angry echoes of her soul. The unquiet dead. Her hair is on fire and flames lick at the edges of her torn, bloodied nightgown. Her ghost-flesh catches fire and burns and sizzles and eventually falls to ash. Jess dissolves and is reborn in an endless cycle of furious agony.
She's in an apartment suite she doesn't recognize. Sparsely decorated, but expensive looking. After a time, she realizes she's not walking around it, but rather spurting in and out of the ether in jagged motions. Moving through rips in reality.
There's a desk in front of a window that she moved towards, cluttered slightly with lit candles and a one of those metal desk sculptures. A Newton's Cradle. Jess tries to move one of the balls and set the toy in motion, but the exposed bones of her hand pass through it uselessly. More of her ghost-flesh sizzles and the sinews and tendons of her hand fall away as she passes it through a familiar looking chalice.
She is gripped by a disquieting sense of déjà-vu.
Memory returns slowly.
The chalice pressing up against her.
Sam. Dying. Brady.
And speak of the damn devil, he's leaning in to her now, except instead of Brady's handsome, hated face she can see the monster beneath; black eyes and razor teeth and smudged edges writhing around Brady's walking corpse. She can smell the rot of him.
Clawed hands reach hungrily towards her and Jess screams for God to save her.
Turns out God isn’t listening.
******
She is trapped in Brady's apartment. Jess has no idea how long she drifts-it could be months or years for all she knows-she stutters in and out of awareness without warning. But when she is present she burns and she hates and she feels herself changing more and more into something dangerous.
Something damned.
If ever Jess thought about being a ghost while she was alive, she'd have pegged the ghostly afterlife as being a whole lot more Joan Blondell in Topper Returns and a whole lot less clanking chains and fucking Jacob Marley. The reality of being a ghost sucks. Not that she can see her chains, but they are there none the less, placed around her tattered, singed soul by that bastard demon Brady.
And he is a demon.
Jess can't leave. Brady has placed some kind of barrier around the confines of the apartment that her ghost-flesh can't penetrate, no matter how violently she flings herself against it. She doesn't know if it's the hank of her hair that Brady keeps which ties her here or something else entirely.
Jess knows there will be no well-meaning stranger to help her, like Topper did Joan's character in the movie. No Sam to come to her rescue. All hope of that had burned out of her in the first few months of her torment.
******
Brady fucks her often. Jess calls it that, instead of rape. It sounds better. Sort of like in A Handmaid's Tale, and she likes that book.
He lets her fight, most times. Gets off on it, probably, but Jess continues to struggle and bite and kick at him for all that he can use his demonic powers on Jess to immobilize her whenever he wants.
Demons don't have cocks, not exactly, but Jess still feels Brady's human flesh jutting up against her torn insides at the same time as the demon's real essence roils through her, smearing corruption across her soul. He talks sometimes, telling her about nebulous plans and horrific futures. She knows he's going to use his position with Niveus Pharmaceuticals to distribute some kind of super disease.
Not that she has anyone to warn.
He toys with her insides, brings ghostly blood to her lips and makes her lick it from his fingers. He drags her face up to his cock and forces it past a mouth that has burned away. Brady is insatiable and endlessly creative in his enjoyments of her ghost-flesh.
It shouldn't be possible for a ghost to orgasm, willingly or not, but the demon drags them out of her as well, just because he can.
"Time to celebrate, sweet Jess," he gloats. He's holding her on his cock, dragging her up and down roughly. "Croatoan was a complete success… wiped out an entire town." He's using his power to lock her arms together at the wrist, as if she were handcuffed. Brady bites her breast, scrapes down with sharp teeth and licks at her oozing blood with his wicked tongue. "Couldn’t have done it without you, you know. All that sweet blood of yours made the perfect host for my virus." Acid burns inside as he ruts against her. "How does it feel to be mother of a new breed of demons?" he purrs.
She says nothing. What can she say? Jess feels as if she is slowly loosing herself; the very memory of herself. It's hard sometimes to recall what things were like when she was still alive, still human and not this echo of flesh.
It's hard to remember, sometimes, what it was like to be with Sam instead of Brady. What it meant to be free and happy.
One day, Jess drifts back to awareness, flesh reforming on muscle and sinew and bone before beginning to smolder again, only to realize she has forgotten her mother's face.
That night when Brady pulls her down to the floor and fucks into her, fire spreading out from their bodies across the carpet, she doesn't fight him at all.
When she comes, the air smells of scorched chocolate chip cookies.
******
There's a painting hanging over the brown leather sofa, the only artwork in the room unless you count the vase Brady keeps on his desk. The cleaning lady puts fresh flowers in it every few days, and blushes prettily when Brady thanks her.
Mariah can't see Jess. Or hear her, apparently, because Jess has done nothing but scream and wail and shout piteously whenever the woman comes to dust and straighten and vacuum. She doesn't notice the blood that oozes from the walls when Jess flies into a rage, or flinch when she walks through curtains of fire trailing from Jess' ghost-flesh.
Once or twice, Mariah looks around warily and mumbles in Portuguese when she feels a cold spot, but otherwise she is oblivious to Jess' torment. When Brady is present, he smiles innocently at Mariah and promises to speak to the landlord about the draft. His true, demonic form laughs and pulls Jess up close to his body. Jess shudders and burns as clawed fingers stroke over her.
Brady is the only thing that can touch her now, and she both abhors and craves his touch.
The painting is a still life. Dutch, she thinks. Balthasar van der Ast, an original. A similar piece hangs in the Hague… Fruit Still Life with Shells and a Tulip, Jess' mind supplies. This one must have been a study for it. She stares at it while Brady reaches a hand beneath her gown, the other hand gripping her arm tightly. Jess strangles the horror festering in her gut and holds herself still.
When Brady is burning against her, her own death-flames are extinguished. She tells herself it's worth it, to trade one torment for a lesser one, however fleetingly.
Gourds and grapes and shells. Flowers. The demon's claws slip inside her, working her open with insistent strokes. Rotting fruit crawling over with insects.
When she spasms in Brady's arms, opens wetly for him without protest, she watches as the gourds begin to bleed and burst forth with a horde of locusts.
******
She changes the painting often after that-melts the colors and spreads them around the canvas at a whim. It’s the only thing left for her to control.
She paints butterflies tasting the marrow of cracked open ribs and hordes of twisted demons surrounding a frantically beating heart suspended from meat hooks. She paints oceans on fire and endless graveyards and empty playgrounds.
She paints a forest where all the trees have fallen, rippling outwards from a single thrown stone, a meteor returning to earth.
Once she paints Sam. His eyes are black and there's a trickle of blood running from his lips. A dark haired woman with a smug expression is offering Sam her wrist.
The canvas burns from the center out, cracking and peeling as Jess weeps.
******
One night, Brady doesn't return. He doesn't come the next night, or the next, or the next, and eventually Jess realizes that he isn’t coming back. She shrieks and throws herself against the barrier which holds her in, works herself into a frenzy of panicked escape attempts. The barrier holds.
It always holds.
She levies enough rage, enough power to shatter the vase and send wilted flowers-daffodils, this time-sweeping out across Brady's desk in a puddle of too-old, smelly water. Mariah hasn't been by in a while.
Jess bleeds and burns and rots and crumbles to ash over and over, only start up again. She stares balefully at the flowers as they too, rot.
Trapped.
She paints a stormy beach across the canvas, with crimson waves made of salt and blood and bone. A white feather floats across the sky, just touched by the rays of the sun. Jess curls up tightly into herself and stares at that feather for a long time, a wistful sort of yearning filling her up and spilling over.
Jess fades, barely aware of the passage of time but still cognizant when something changes.
There's someone in the apartment. A man with dark hair and the beginnings of a scruffy beard who is wearing a rumpled suit and trench coat. He's looking at the painting intently.
No, not a man. Something other. She can see the whorls and eddies of power rippling through and around him, barely contained by his body. She drifts closer, interested and drawn almost helplessly to the power the creature exudes.
To her surprise, he swivels his head to meet her gaze. "Hello." Jess recoils. Nothing else has seen her, nothing except other demons. But this is not a demon, not like Brady.
To her surprise, Jess finds her voice. Her actual voice, not the screams and shrieks she has devolved into more and more often of late.
"What the hell are you?" Jess demands.
His eyes are looking right through her; judging her. Jess imagines he sees down to her very soul, whatever is left of it… sees the anger burning at the core of her, the guilt and the shame and the sick, twisted pleasure every time she ever leaned into one of Brady's touches instead of away.
"My name is Castiel. I'm…" he hesitates, then continues, "I'm an Angel of the Lord. I'm here to save you."
"Yeah, well, I'm not Princess Leia," Jess says, crossing her arms over her chest. "And no offense, but you're a little short to be a goddamn angel." She winces when she realizes what she just said. God, when did her afterlife become a Star Wars parody?
"Of course not. You're Jessica Moore," Castiel says, cocking his head to the side. "And my vessel's height is of no consequence."
Jess blinks.
"I'm also Sam Winchester's friend," he adds, gently.
Sam. Jess loses what little control she has then, feeling her ghost-flesh catch fire again. The scent of charred meat is everywhere, but the angel seems unaffected.
"Sam…?" Jess whispers. She wavers on her feet, and Castiel reaches for her arm to steady her. Jess manages not to flinch at the touch. "Can you take me to Sam?" she asks. Is it possible? If only to say goodbye. If only to see him one more time.
"I've come to take you to Heaven," Castiel replies, looking away from her. "You have been too long on the Earth to find your way there unguided."
"Why didn't you come sooner?" Her voice sounds broken, even to her.
"Until recently, I was nearly mortal. It was not until my return to the Host that I felt your soul crying out."
Castiel cups her cheek tenderly in his hand. The flames licking at her are extinguished and she finds herself whole-or as close as she has come in a long, long time. "Come with me. In Heaven you shall know no suffering. There will be only peace and joy." His eyes seem sad.
Heaven… but. She frowns at the angel. He never answered her about Sam. "Is that where Sam is? Is Sam dead?" The idea isn't as distressing to her as Jess expects. To be with Sam again, forever… no pain… it really would be Heaven.
He looks at her, clearly not wanting to answer. "It's complicated. But no, Sam's not in Heaven."
"So he's alive?" Jess says. "Thank God! It's simple then, just take me to him, just for a little while. Then I'll wait for him in Heaven-"
Castiel winces at that, and Jess trails off, confused. "Perhaps it would be simpler to show you," he says, and reaches out to touch her forehead.
A barrage of dizzying images, years worth, crashes into Jess' awareness with the impact of an eighteen wheeler. If not for the angel holding her up, she would sink down to the floor. Tears stream from her eyes as she begins to understand the events set in motion by her death.
******
Sam. Dean. Croatoan. Michael. Brady.
Sam… and Lucifer.
How can it be possible? Even as she argues and pleads with Castiel, her very soul is shuddering at the implications.
"You’re an angel! You already pulled his brother out of hell! You have to go save Sam!"
Castiel looks away.
"I'm sorry. I can't. I have been given other tasks," he says. Jess realizes he truly does look sorry, but she explodes anyway.
"Fuck that and fuck you. And you call yourself Sam's friend! I should have guessed that angels are all assholes," she hisses. Castiel gets a bemused expression on his face and shakes his head.
"You remind me of Dean." Castiel looks away from her, up towards the ceiling. "He's taught me a lot about humanity. About free will…."
"Yeah?" Jess feels cool resolve settle upon her like a cloak. "Try this for free will then. I want Sam. I want to be with Sam. I won't go to whatever stupid idea of paradise you have, because without Sam it won’t be Heaven, you understand? I'll take the elevator down, thank you very much."
Castiel looks more resigned than surprised. "Truly a Winchester at heart."
Jess smiles at him. The expression feels strange on her lips. "Don't you forget it." Winchester… survivor… unholy spirit. What she is doesn't matter. What matters is that she is taking charge of her own destiny.
He nods and says, "If you chose pain and Sam instead of peace and Heaven, I won't stop you. But understand that I will be sending you to Hell and its endless torments with virtually no chance of escape."
She scoffs at that. "Don't you think I've been in Hell, all this time?"
Castiel looks at her with pity. "You have suffered, yes, and I'm sorry for it. But truly no one who has not endured Hell can know it, and fewer still survive it." From the haunted expression that fleetingly crosses his face, Jess has a feeling that Castiel speaks from experience.
"Hell changes a man. And even before Sam's sacrifice, his road has been a long and difficult one. He may not be at all the Sam you remember," Castiel warns. He leaves unspoken, the Sam she loved. Loves.
"I don't care," Jess says. She ripples forward and lays her hands on Castiel's chest, fists curling tightly around the lapels of his trench coat as she tugs him close. "I want this. I choose this." Her hair has caught back on fire and blood runs from her midsection down her thighs. This time it feels like war paint.
"Very well," he agrees. "I… I hope you find Sam." Castiel raises his hand and places his palm against her forehead. Light bursts forth brighter and brighter until Jess can see nothing but the essence of him, holy fire cleansing her and freeing her from the prison Brady created.
Then the gateway to Hell opens above her, symbols traced in fire on the ceiling. How appropriate. Jess smiles grimly and begins to ascend the pathway that Castiel has wrenched open for her. She can hear the screams and cries of the damned and feel the blistering heat of Hell across the marrow of her soul. She tastes the putrid air-spoiled meat and rotting fruit and the carrion stench of hopelessness and terror. It doesn't matter. She is used to flames, and heat, and despair. She is used to damnation.
Somewhere ahead of her waits Sam.
Both damned souls, the two of them. She'll find him; the light and goodness of him shining in her memory like a beacon.
The gateway to Hell closes behind her with a sickeningly wet plop, the sound of sliced flesh being forced roughly back together and stitched shut.
Jess doesn't look back.
Author's Notes: Dudes, I am way nervous about this one because of some of the content, and hence have agonized about it up to the last possible second. Yet it was a pleasure to work with melanth0's deliciously creepy prompt and I can only hope I have done it justice. I have a lot of thinky-thoughts about this story which I'd like to share someday, but it all boils down to helplessness and empowerment and choosing one's fate, at least in my head. But the Jess presented here is very much me, and I think I might even be proud of this story.
My thanks to c00kie and imisspadfoot21 for encouraging me! Also, I totes blame c00kie, tracy_loo_who, and vichan for not stopping me from using terrible Star Wars analogies in time! :D
Comments are very welcome.