fic: supernatural//these crimes of illusion (chapter 1.2)
Today is an awesome day. I just would like you all to know. ;)
My flow is back, which means my other projects, paused because I felt I couldn't write as elegantly as usual, are back on. I just need to make myself a schedule or something and stick to it or else nothing will get done. Isn't that why there's Google Calendar? *g*
Many, MANY thanks to koyote19 for her amazing beta work on this chapter. *hug*
Title: These Crimes of Illusion
Rating: R (for language)
Genre: Pre-Series, Gen
Summary: "Out in the real world, he can't see a thing." An encounter with fae leaves its marks on Dean, leading him and his father on a dangerous journey to recover things stolen -- and uncover truths that challenge their perceptions of good and evil.
Chapter 1.1
Chapter 1.2
Things progress downhill from there, like a stone in snow, rolling faster and faster, gathering what it can before thudding to the bottom where it lay, covered and forgotten, blending with the fresh whiteness blanketing the ground.
That’s how Dean feels. Estrella leaves him in a bright white room, and even with his eyes closed, light penetrates his eyelids and keeps him from getting any good rest. He tries a few times here and there, but only manages a good hour, waking out of nightmares involving the sun. After what he defines as three days, for he’s lost all concept of day and night, his stomach stops growling; fae such as these eat food only for show, and none come to offer him any.
Water drips in the corner, and while he can not see it, the constant plunk of droplets hitting water reverberates between his ears. With Glamour still in place, Dean finds himself searching among lavish armchairs, hands spread in front of him. Will he be able to find what he can’t see? Mind over matter works against him in this place, and turning off years of basic instinct is proving difficult.
Groping the air feels ridiculous; he’s glad his father can’t see him, but wishes he could if that meant being able to leave. Three days, and he knows his father is searching for him, putting off the real hunt to rescue his idiotic, wayward son.
Dean growls and swears, disturbed by how foreign his voice sounds. The drip of the water is louder now, teasing his parched throat. His mouth is full of cotton and he pauses, straining to hear the soft flow of water.
Left. Dean stumbles on the foot of one of the chairs and catches himself on the wall. The white wallpaper is damp under the cracked skin of his fingers; he slides his hand along the wall until the feeling of water cascading over his hand signals his success.
Crouching down, Dean drinks greedily. The liquid is putrid, foul-smelling with the taste of rot, and he winces with every hungry drink. His father’s lessons on basic survival echo in his head; use what you can to stay alive.
He drinks until he can’t take the taste any longer, and shifts to lean against the wall. His stomach flips; Dean breathes through his nose in an attempt to calm it, but finds the odor of the flowing water aggravates it more. His body heaves, and he slams a fist against his mouth to keep himself from throwing up the first stuff to touch his stomach in days.
The smell follows him as he pitches forward and stumbles through the armchairs, tipping like a baby on new legs, stumbles, and falls forward, hands extended in front of him. Grace is something associated with girls practicing ballet, moves practiced until presentation was perfect; grown men rarely exhibited anything close to such a level, yet even with his stomach heaving and muscles trembling from malnutrition, Dean Winchester tumbles forward and lands on his feet.
And comes face to face with his captor for the first time in two days.
--
Memory is a funny, fickle thing. As we grow older, thoughts and sensations from earlier years, once so clear, become muddled before fading away completely. The loss isn’t felt -- you can’t miss what you can’t remember. At first, the feeling of losing something can be disconcerting; the lack of control can only be fought by detailed journals and obsessive recall, but as time goes on, such things become tiresome.
It was only after the third journal that Dean gave up recording everything that happened to him in the tradition of his father. He tossed the volumes in the trunk under a stockpile of rock salt loads and boxes of ammunition bought states and years ago and didn’t give them a second thought.
Of all the futures he would never write down, this was certainly one he won’t lament over. Keeping pages white brought solace; never scribbling down the details of his imprisonment is a blessing in disguise. If given the choice, he’d erase the memories from his mind, sever the ties from consciousness to wherever the past is stored, and wander through life with nothing in his head but a blank slate.
Trade the good for the disappearance of the bad.
Estrella leaves him alone most of the time; he attributes it to a fear of the unknown, and curses his new status as a “freak of nature.” Their Laws are strict and binding, he knows that much from those books he should have paid more attention to, and even though they have little to no control over the human population, they like to pretend they do. Magic, they believe, such as Glamour, belongs in their realm, not the human one, and Dean thinks Estrella doesn’t exactly know what to do with him. Because those same Laws protect others from their realm from the torments usually inflicted on unsuspecting humans.
Does she treat him as close to an equal as she can, or a human captured for entertainment?
Then again, the Unseelie Court is controlled by politics like any other governing body, and while Dean doesn’t know much about their inner workings, he knows back where he belongs, a deviation from the norm would be held indefinitely for tests and study. He doubts the underbelly of the world of darkness would be so kind; his thoughts soon center on what Estrella has in store for him even if part of his mind, the logical, rational part often shoved aside by instinct, tells him he’s playing right into her hands.
She does give him food -- an apple and some nuts -- a day later. Keeping time becomes a moot point as more information about fae float to the surface. Time has no meaning in the faerie realms, and while to him it may feel like days, the only timekeeper in this place is his mind.
Dean spends his free time running his hands over the walls, searching for a crack in the stone he knows keeps him in, not this white, textured wallpaper that makes the room feel like a turn of the century parlor. There’s some here and there, and soon the armchairs are scattered about, marking different deviations in the stone. He grumbles, swears, and begins having conversations with the brother who abandoned him just to hear his own voice.
When he begins to believe all those gruesome tales of torture at the hands of fae are nothing more than exaggerated accounts, Dean awakens from a short nap in chains, thick silver rubbing against the soft skin of his wrists and ankles. He flails, pulling against his new restraints, but only manages to scratch himself up more and dislocate his shoulder.
She’s chained him across the room from the water he’s grown accustomed to drinking. He sees it as a mixed blessing; shivers wrack his body, accompanied by a cold sweat that soaks his clothes. Fever’s made his mind foggy, and maybe he was awake when she chained him up. Dreams and reality are starting to blend together in this room of undying light, his eyes burning each time he blinks.
“The Queen has ruled on your fate,” Estrella’s voice reaches through the fog, her figure slowly coming into focus. She’s standing above him, pale like a vampire out of a black and white movie he’d watch at four am.
“How lucky for me. Never been judged by a queen before,” Dean quips. His voice is strong from conversations bounced off the walls. He shifts, bending one knee in front of himself, back straight against the wall. Casual. Conversational.
Estrella howls with laughter and throws a kick in his direction. Dean dodges it easily, but his eyes aren’t what they once were, and she draws in Glamour to distract him long enough to land a single blow to his side.
Dean coughs. “You kick like a girl.”
She leans down and grasps a handful of his hair in her hand, pulling his head up to hers, and runs a finger down his exposed neck. “Wouldn’t you like to know what she decided?”
“Depends. Is it bad news?”
Estrella’s finger comes to rest against the spot near the nape of his neck where blood pumps furiously under elastic skin. Whereas before, Dean found her icy skin uncomfortable, he welcomes it now, realizing, as she rests a hand on him, just how high his fever is.
“She’s given you to me,” Estrella replies, pressing against his neck. He feels his own heartbeat against her fingers and shifts his weight, reducing the pressure.
“I didn’t know I was up for sale.”
“Not anymore. You’re a perversion of humanity, a freak of nature. Your kind was never meant to possess any of our abilities, and when I’m finished with you, none will.”
“Sweetheart, that sounds like a death threat.”
Estrella grins wickedly. “Oh, my boy, it is.”
--
Everything makes sense, now. Estrella exiting the bar when he happened to be walking by. The mismatched images forced upon him when he awoke. Days alone with nothing to drink but rotting water, what he could now surmise was the cause of his fever. The lack of attention and food. Estrella effectively took all those skills ingrained in him for survival -- drinking and eating what he could, searching relentlessly for the door he knew was there, short periods of sleep -- and used them to weaken his body and mind.
At first, she teases him; he comes out looking like a man unable to shave properly, with nicks and cuts dotting his skin, though his aren't limited to his face. Some are deep enough to bruise the skin around narrow lines of red, innocent-looking lines like someone took a red marker to him, then grabbed a blue or purple and colored with the artistic ability of a three year old.
She’s kept him chained up, but even if he could move, Dean wouldn’t use the water he’s been drinking to clean the cuts and scrapes. They’ll have to heal on their own; the water would only help infection along.
Not that he’d be able to tell. The white room pulls him from feverish dreams, creates a mirage the size and shape of his father, a disappointed, angry father chastising him for being so weak. Break out of those chains, boy, and find the door! Hands rapidly losing color shake as they reach out for him, falling to his side as fast as they rose. Whatever it was -- because he’s sure the whisper of shape isn’t his father -- it has a point.
When Estrella returns, an audience of two fae scooting into the white room behind her, Dean’s ready. Sleep may not come easy, but rest does, especially when he can’t move more than two feet in any direction, so he feigns sleep. If she can tell he’s faking it, she doesn’t let on, and reaches down to awaken him with bony fingers.
When she’s close enough for him to reach her shoulder, Dean springs into action. Wraps a hand around her right shoulder, the other gripping a chain, and pulls her forward, so close he can feel the cool comfort of her chilly skin, and it might have distracted a lesser man.
But not him.
He yanks her forward and wraps the chain around her neck, then loops it at her wrists. With his voice cold and low, Dean growls in her ear. “When I get out of these, I’m going to kill you.”
Estrella laughs. Deep, enveloping laughter. Her ribcage vibrates against Dean’s chest, up and down, until she can’t laugh any longer. Light tremors shudder through her like aftershocks until she pulls up on the chains. She hasn’t been neglected for days on end, and despite her lithe form, possesses a good amount of strength. The chain falls from her wrists; she unloops it from her neck in a spin reminiscent of their ballroom dance and uses the inertia from her movement to send it spiraling into Dean’s face.
Thick loops crash into fragile skin, thwacking against jawbone. Dean’s head snaps to the right, neck cracking and popping with the movement, his head knocking into the wall. Bells ring inside his skull. Dean clenches his eyes shut, not feeling that prickling of sand caught under his eyelids, and bites his bottom lip to keep from crying out. Take it like a man. If you don’t react, they’ll leave you alone.
They don’t.
“Threaten me again,” Estrella shouts. This time, she aims for his arm, sending waves of pain up through his elbow to his already floundering brain.
It isn’t enough to keep him from throwing words in her face. “I’m going to kill you, you fae bitch.” He pauses, pulling together the blood in his mouth to spit it onto the floor. His tongue roams his mouth, searching for missing or broken teeth, and finds all intact. “And your little friends, too.”
Behind Estrella, the fae wince.
Dean figures the point is to keep him alive for as long as possible, Estrella and her parade of acquaintances extracting enjoyment from each slice and discoloration decorating his skin. Red and white and blue all over, swelling with patriotic pride. Their only enjoyment comes from watching the colors on his skin blend together over a steady wash of pale peach, and soon, even that begins to wane.
Starts with a bang, ends with a whimper.
Except he has yet to whimper.
--
In retrospect, Dean Winchester figures he was a prisoner of Estrella and the Unseelie for a few days. In their clutches, it felt like an eternity. Days and days of nothing but short naps and shivers that turn to convulsions strong enough to rattle his lungs and steal his breath; the fever grows and soon he feels as if his brain is on fire, boiling like an unwatched pot left on the stove too long.
He pushes that aside. There’s nothing he can do for it, and thus, no point in worrying. Dwelling on that you can’t control only splits your focus, and he’s been finding it harder and harder to even keep himself conscious.
The white room catches his attention. He lets his eyes wander over every detail, from the crown molding to the plain baseboards. Textured wallpaper covers the space in between, embossed with swirls from the turn of the century accompanied by splays of leaves found on old china. He never noticed the details before, but soaks them in now. Five armchairs, gold leafed legs and molding, plush red cushions. A fireplace along one wall.
Analyzing the room makes him feel like a grown up visiting someplace he knew as a child -- the house in Lawrence, once so large and spacious, lacked the dimensions his memory served up. Here, the room shrinks in on him until the wall across from him can be brushed with his fingertips if he moves far enough. The chairs are clustered together, and he realizes -- shit! -- she’s changing the size and moving the chairs marking possible exits.
“God damnit,” he says aloud, voice vibrating back at him.
“God has no place here, my pet,” Estrella says. He can’t see her, but knows she’s there, watching. She’s always watching, waiting for some sign of weakness she can exploit, some action so pitiful, it’ll give her the ultimate thrill. “Just me.”
“And that bitch of a queen,” Dean calls back. “So help me, when I get my hands on her...”
He feels a chill cross his brow, but doesn’t see anything. Days of observing Glamour and beauty has made him forget about the other realm, the human realm, devoid of magic and trickery. She’s in front of him, but not wearing her Glamour, and he hates that he can’t see her.
The idea that he’ll be blind in the real world -- his world -- hits him square in the chest -- or maybe that’s Estrella? Holy shit, he thinks, I’m fucking blind. That thought cuts through him, though not physically, right between his now useless eyes. You can’t reverse something like this with spells or teas; only Estrella could, and he doubts she would even if moments from death.
Something tickles his nose. Dean reaches up to brush it away, angry at how heavy his arm feels. As soon as he lets the near-limp limb, he feels the tickling again, this time coming in a steady drip.
Cold and moist. Falling in clumps of solid snowflakes, Dean feels more and more, the sensation creeping up his legs as sound finally reaches his ears; it’s the sound of something falling, and sounds suspiciously like dirt or sand.
“No one insults the Queen of Air and Darkness,” Estrella chides, a parent speaking to a child.
The feeling’s climbing his legs and reaches his stomach. Whatever it is -- and Dean’s sure something’s there, just as Estrella had been moments before -- sinks into the cuts and nicks on his skin, inflamed skin burning. He doesn’t feel more than mild discomfort, though. The fever’s elevated his body temperature, and whatever’s falling, while he knows it’ll cause some sort of infection, holds a candle to his sweaty, fevered body.
Higher. Climbs up his stomach and presses on his chest. Dean reaches out into the white room, but finds his arms are pinned to his sides. He can’t see anything. His other senses shift into overdrive, each grain of sand against his skin picked up by touch, smell recognizing the musty odor of wet dirt.
It’s everything and nothing at the same time. Infinity and a black hole. They meet at his chest and squeeze his lungs between it and the wall. Dean struggles against the invisible force pouring into the white room, but finds he’s only able to manage short, spastic gasps.
Estrella laughs from her perch. “If it were up to her, you’d be dead already. And yet you laugh in the face of my mercy.”
“Mercy,” Dean wheezes. “You need a dictionary?”
Up, around his throat, and those wheezes turn into gasps. Dean takes as deep a breath as his lungs will allow and closes his mouth. Sand and dirt -- both feelings at once, yet it’s not a mixture -- play over dry lips, topple over the top one, and flares up his nose.
He can’t breathe. He tries to capture a few gasps of air through his nose, and finds the amount of particles he sucks up is increasing. Puff, puff, wheeze. His father always told him panic is the enemy of rational thought, but as he feels his mind slipping and the invisible force crashing down on him, he starts to let the panic eat away at his steel resolve.
When the grains cascade down the back of his throat, Dean clenches his eyes shut. Lungs burn, mind revolts, and Estrella’s cackling lulls him to sleep like some kind of demented lullaby.
Chapter 1.3
My flow is back, which means my other projects, paused because I felt I couldn't write as elegantly as usual, are back on. I just need to make myself a schedule or something and stick to it or else nothing will get done. Isn't that why there's Google Calendar? *g*
Many, MANY thanks to koyote19 for her amazing beta work on this chapter. *hug*
Title: These Crimes of Illusion
Rating: R (for language)
Genre: Pre-Series, Gen
Summary: "Out in the real world, he can't see a thing." An encounter with fae leaves its marks on Dean, leading him and his father on a dangerous journey to recover things stolen -- and uncover truths that challenge their perceptions of good and evil.
Chapter 1.1
Chapter 1.2
Things progress downhill from there, like a stone in snow, rolling faster and faster, gathering what it can before thudding to the bottom where it lay, covered and forgotten, blending with the fresh whiteness blanketing the ground.
That’s how Dean feels. Estrella leaves him in a bright white room, and even with his eyes closed, light penetrates his eyelids and keeps him from getting any good rest. He tries a few times here and there, but only manages a good hour, waking out of nightmares involving the sun. After what he defines as three days, for he’s lost all concept of day and night, his stomach stops growling; fae such as these eat food only for show, and none come to offer him any.
Water drips in the corner, and while he can not see it, the constant plunk of droplets hitting water reverberates between his ears. With Glamour still in place, Dean finds himself searching among lavish armchairs, hands spread in front of him. Will he be able to find what he can’t see? Mind over matter works against him in this place, and turning off years of basic instinct is proving difficult.
Groping the air feels ridiculous; he’s glad his father can’t see him, but wishes he could if that meant being able to leave. Three days, and he knows his father is searching for him, putting off the real hunt to rescue his idiotic, wayward son.
Dean growls and swears, disturbed by how foreign his voice sounds. The drip of the water is louder now, teasing his parched throat. His mouth is full of cotton and he pauses, straining to hear the soft flow of water.
Left. Dean stumbles on the foot of one of the chairs and catches himself on the wall. The white wallpaper is damp under the cracked skin of his fingers; he slides his hand along the wall until the feeling of water cascading over his hand signals his success.
Crouching down, Dean drinks greedily. The liquid is putrid, foul-smelling with the taste of rot, and he winces with every hungry drink. His father’s lessons on basic survival echo in his head; use what you can to stay alive.
He drinks until he can’t take the taste any longer, and shifts to lean against the wall. His stomach flips; Dean breathes through his nose in an attempt to calm it, but finds the odor of the flowing water aggravates it more. His body heaves, and he slams a fist against his mouth to keep himself from throwing up the first stuff to touch his stomach in days.
The smell follows him as he pitches forward and stumbles through the armchairs, tipping like a baby on new legs, stumbles, and falls forward, hands extended in front of him. Grace is something associated with girls practicing ballet, moves practiced until presentation was perfect; grown men rarely exhibited anything close to such a level, yet even with his stomach heaving and muscles trembling from malnutrition, Dean Winchester tumbles forward and lands on his feet.
And comes face to face with his captor for the first time in two days.
--
Memory is a funny, fickle thing. As we grow older, thoughts and sensations from earlier years, once so clear, become muddled before fading away completely. The loss isn’t felt -- you can’t miss what you can’t remember. At first, the feeling of losing something can be disconcerting; the lack of control can only be fought by detailed journals and obsessive recall, but as time goes on, such things become tiresome.
It was only after the third journal that Dean gave up recording everything that happened to him in the tradition of his father. He tossed the volumes in the trunk under a stockpile of rock salt loads and boxes of ammunition bought states and years ago and didn’t give them a second thought.
Of all the futures he would never write down, this was certainly one he won’t lament over. Keeping pages white brought solace; never scribbling down the details of his imprisonment is a blessing in disguise. If given the choice, he’d erase the memories from his mind, sever the ties from consciousness to wherever the past is stored, and wander through life with nothing in his head but a blank slate.
Trade the good for the disappearance of the bad.
Estrella leaves him alone most of the time; he attributes it to a fear of the unknown, and curses his new status as a “freak of nature.” Their Laws are strict and binding, he knows that much from those books he should have paid more attention to, and even though they have little to no control over the human population, they like to pretend they do. Magic, they believe, such as Glamour, belongs in their realm, not the human one, and Dean thinks Estrella doesn’t exactly know what to do with him. Because those same Laws protect others from their realm from the torments usually inflicted on unsuspecting humans.
Does she treat him as close to an equal as she can, or a human captured for entertainment?
Then again, the Unseelie Court is controlled by politics like any other governing body, and while Dean doesn’t know much about their inner workings, he knows back where he belongs, a deviation from the norm would be held indefinitely for tests and study. He doubts the underbelly of the world of darkness would be so kind; his thoughts soon center on what Estrella has in store for him even if part of his mind, the logical, rational part often shoved aside by instinct, tells him he’s playing right into her hands.
She does give him food -- an apple and some nuts -- a day later. Keeping time becomes a moot point as more information about fae float to the surface. Time has no meaning in the faerie realms, and while to him it may feel like days, the only timekeeper in this place is his mind.
Dean spends his free time running his hands over the walls, searching for a crack in the stone he knows keeps him in, not this white, textured wallpaper that makes the room feel like a turn of the century parlor. There’s some here and there, and soon the armchairs are scattered about, marking different deviations in the stone. He grumbles, swears, and begins having conversations with the brother who abandoned him just to hear his own voice.
When he begins to believe all those gruesome tales of torture at the hands of fae are nothing more than exaggerated accounts, Dean awakens from a short nap in chains, thick silver rubbing against the soft skin of his wrists and ankles. He flails, pulling against his new restraints, but only manages to scratch himself up more and dislocate his shoulder.
She’s chained him across the room from the water he’s grown accustomed to drinking. He sees it as a mixed blessing; shivers wrack his body, accompanied by a cold sweat that soaks his clothes. Fever’s made his mind foggy, and maybe he was awake when she chained him up. Dreams and reality are starting to blend together in this room of undying light, his eyes burning each time he blinks.
“The Queen has ruled on your fate,” Estrella’s voice reaches through the fog, her figure slowly coming into focus. She’s standing above him, pale like a vampire out of a black and white movie he’d watch at four am.
“How lucky for me. Never been judged by a queen before,” Dean quips. His voice is strong from conversations bounced off the walls. He shifts, bending one knee in front of himself, back straight against the wall. Casual. Conversational.
Estrella howls with laughter and throws a kick in his direction. Dean dodges it easily, but his eyes aren’t what they once were, and she draws in Glamour to distract him long enough to land a single blow to his side.
Dean coughs. “You kick like a girl.”
She leans down and grasps a handful of his hair in her hand, pulling his head up to hers, and runs a finger down his exposed neck. “Wouldn’t you like to know what she decided?”
“Depends. Is it bad news?”
Estrella’s finger comes to rest against the spot near the nape of his neck where blood pumps furiously under elastic skin. Whereas before, Dean found her icy skin uncomfortable, he welcomes it now, realizing, as she rests a hand on him, just how high his fever is.
“She’s given you to me,” Estrella replies, pressing against his neck. He feels his own heartbeat against her fingers and shifts his weight, reducing the pressure.
“I didn’t know I was up for sale.”
“Not anymore. You’re a perversion of humanity, a freak of nature. Your kind was never meant to possess any of our abilities, and when I’m finished with you, none will.”
“Sweetheart, that sounds like a death threat.”
Estrella grins wickedly. “Oh, my boy, it is.”
--
Everything makes sense, now. Estrella exiting the bar when he happened to be walking by. The mismatched images forced upon him when he awoke. Days alone with nothing to drink but rotting water, what he could now surmise was the cause of his fever. The lack of attention and food. Estrella effectively took all those skills ingrained in him for survival -- drinking and eating what he could, searching relentlessly for the door he knew was there, short periods of sleep -- and used them to weaken his body and mind.
At first, she teases him; he comes out looking like a man unable to shave properly, with nicks and cuts dotting his skin, though his aren't limited to his face. Some are deep enough to bruise the skin around narrow lines of red, innocent-looking lines like someone took a red marker to him, then grabbed a blue or purple and colored with the artistic ability of a three year old.
She’s kept him chained up, but even if he could move, Dean wouldn’t use the water he’s been drinking to clean the cuts and scrapes. They’ll have to heal on their own; the water would only help infection along.
Not that he’d be able to tell. The white room pulls him from feverish dreams, creates a mirage the size and shape of his father, a disappointed, angry father chastising him for being so weak. Break out of those chains, boy, and find the door! Hands rapidly losing color shake as they reach out for him, falling to his side as fast as they rose. Whatever it was -- because he’s sure the whisper of shape isn’t his father -- it has a point.
When Estrella returns, an audience of two fae scooting into the white room behind her, Dean’s ready. Sleep may not come easy, but rest does, especially when he can’t move more than two feet in any direction, so he feigns sleep. If she can tell he’s faking it, she doesn’t let on, and reaches down to awaken him with bony fingers.
When she’s close enough for him to reach her shoulder, Dean springs into action. Wraps a hand around her right shoulder, the other gripping a chain, and pulls her forward, so close he can feel the cool comfort of her chilly skin, and it might have distracted a lesser man.
But not him.
He yanks her forward and wraps the chain around her neck, then loops it at her wrists. With his voice cold and low, Dean growls in her ear. “When I get out of these, I’m going to kill you.”
Estrella laughs. Deep, enveloping laughter. Her ribcage vibrates against Dean’s chest, up and down, until she can’t laugh any longer. Light tremors shudder through her like aftershocks until she pulls up on the chains. She hasn’t been neglected for days on end, and despite her lithe form, possesses a good amount of strength. The chain falls from her wrists; she unloops it from her neck in a spin reminiscent of their ballroom dance and uses the inertia from her movement to send it spiraling into Dean’s face.
Thick loops crash into fragile skin, thwacking against jawbone. Dean’s head snaps to the right, neck cracking and popping with the movement, his head knocking into the wall. Bells ring inside his skull. Dean clenches his eyes shut, not feeling that prickling of sand caught under his eyelids, and bites his bottom lip to keep from crying out. Take it like a man. If you don’t react, they’ll leave you alone.
They don’t.
“Threaten me again,” Estrella shouts. This time, she aims for his arm, sending waves of pain up through his elbow to his already floundering brain.
It isn’t enough to keep him from throwing words in her face. “I’m going to kill you, you fae bitch.” He pauses, pulling together the blood in his mouth to spit it onto the floor. His tongue roams his mouth, searching for missing or broken teeth, and finds all intact. “And your little friends, too.”
Behind Estrella, the fae wince.
Dean figures the point is to keep him alive for as long as possible, Estrella and her parade of acquaintances extracting enjoyment from each slice and discoloration decorating his skin. Red and white and blue all over, swelling with patriotic pride. Their only enjoyment comes from watching the colors on his skin blend together over a steady wash of pale peach, and soon, even that begins to wane.
Starts with a bang, ends with a whimper.
Except he has yet to whimper.
--
In retrospect, Dean Winchester figures he was a prisoner of Estrella and the Unseelie for a few days. In their clutches, it felt like an eternity. Days and days of nothing but short naps and shivers that turn to convulsions strong enough to rattle his lungs and steal his breath; the fever grows and soon he feels as if his brain is on fire, boiling like an unwatched pot left on the stove too long.
He pushes that aside. There’s nothing he can do for it, and thus, no point in worrying. Dwelling on that you can’t control only splits your focus, and he’s been finding it harder and harder to even keep himself conscious.
The white room catches his attention. He lets his eyes wander over every detail, from the crown molding to the plain baseboards. Textured wallpaper covers the space in between, embossed with swirls from the turn of the century accompanied by splays of leaves found on old china. He never noticed the details before, but soaks them in now. Five armchairs, gold leafed legs and molding, plush red cushions. A fireplace along one wall.
Analyzing the room makes him feel like a grown up visiting someplace he knew as a child -- the house in Lawrence, once so large and spacious, lacked the dimensions his memory served up. Here, the room shrinks in on him until the wall across from him can be brushed with his fingertips if he moves far enough. The chairs are clustered together, and he realizes -- shit! -- she’s changing the size and moving the chairs marking possible exits.
“God damnit,” he says aloud, voice vibrating back at him.
“God has no place here, my pet,” Estrella says. He can’t see her, but knows she’s there, watching. She’s always watching, waiting for some sign of weakness she can exploit, some action so pitiful, it’ll give her the ultimate thrill. “Just me.”
“And that bitch of a queen,” Dean calls back. “So help me, when I get my hands on her...”
He feels a chill cross his brow, but doesn’t see anything. Days of observing Glamour and beauty has made him forget about the other realm, the human realm, devoid of magic and trickery. She’s in front of him, but not wearing her Glamour, and he hates that he can’t see her.
The idea that he’ll be blind in the real world -- his world -- hits him square in the chest -- or maybe that’s Estrella? Holy shit, he thinks, I’m fucking blind. That thought cuts through him, though not physically, right between his now useless eyes. You can’t reverse something like this with spells or teas; only Estrella could, and he doubts she would even if moments from death.
Something tickles his nose. Dean reaches up to brush it away, angry at how heavy his arm feels. As soon as he lets the near-limp limb, he feels the tickling again, this time coming in a steady drip.
Cold and moist. Falling in clumps of solid snowflakes, Dean feels more and more, the sensation creeping up his legs as sound finally reaches his ears; it’s the sound of something falling, and sounds suspiciously like dirt or sand.
“No one insults the Queen of Air and Darkness,” Estrella chides, a parent speaking to a child.
The feeling’s climbing his legs and reaches his stomach. Whatever it is -- and Dean’s sure something’s there, just as Estrella had been moments before -- sinks into the cuts and nicks on his skin, inflamed skin burning. He doesn’t feel more than mild discomfort, though. The fever’s elevated his body temperature, and whatever’s falling, while he knows it’ll cause some sort of infection, holds a candle to his sweaty, fevered body.
Higher. Climbs up his stomach and presses on his chest. Dean reaches out into the white room, but finds his arms are pinned to his sides. He can’t see anything. His other senses shift into overdrive, each grain of sand against his skin picked up by touch, smell recognizing the musty odor of wet dirt.
It’s everything and nothing at the same time. Infinity and a black hole. They meet at his chest and squeeze his lungs between it and the wall. Dean struggles against the invisible force pouring into the white room, but finds he’s only able to manage short, spastic gasps.
Estrella laughs from her perch. “If it were up to her, you’d be dead already. And yet you laugh in the face of my mercy.”
“Mercy,” Dean wheezes. “You need a dictionary?”
Up, around his throat, and those wheezes turn into gasps. Dean takes as deep a breath as his lungs will allow and closes his mouth. Sand and dirt -- both feelings at once, yet it’s not a mixture -- play over dry lips, topple over the top one, and flares up his nose.
He can’t breathe. He tries to capture a few gasps of air through his nose, and finds the amount of particles he sucks up is increasing. Puff, puff, wheeze. His father always told him panic is the enemy of rational thought, but as he feels his mind slipping and the invisible force crashing down on him, he starts to let the panic eat away at his steel resolve.
When the grains cascade down the back of his throat, Dean clenches his eyes shut. Lungs burn, mind revolts, and Estrella’s cackling lulls him to sleep like some kind of demented lullaby.
Chapter 1.3