#but she does kind of disassociate and it's grim. this wasn't easy to write

[arthurwilde]

a bad combination in the dark

(Part 7 of a series, wherein Alex tortures Alistair in “On the Head of a Pin” instead of Dean. I watched that fucking episode twice in like 3 days)

(This one gets dark. Death and torture and shit.)

@saferincages thanks for listening to me and I won’t blame you if you don’t read this one

“I’ll do it.”

It’s those three words that set off a jolt in everyone in the room.

Dean’s incredulous “are you insane” and Castiel’s resolute refusal and Uriel’s amusement and Alex’s face, resolute, unflinching.

“You can’t.” Castiel’s got his Big Time Angel voice on, obviously meant to shut her down, but she isn’t flinching away.

“Let me do it.” She strides up into his space. “I can do this.”

Dean’s still sputtering, “have you lost your mind - “

Uriel’s chuckling, shaking his head. “Little girl,” he says, “your bravery is admirable, but your arrogance - “

Alex doesn’t move her eyes from Castiel’s face. “You really don’t want Dean doing this? Then let me do it.”

“It would be useless. There’s no way you can possibly get what we need from him - “

“You really want to catch him off balance? Throw him off, show him some rage from a source he doesn’t expect? Use me.”

“Alex,” Dean says, fear buried under anger, “you can’t do this. I can’t let you do this.”

“No, Dean, I can’t let you do this.” Her gaze hasn’t wavered from Castiel’s face. She takes another step closer. “You think I don’t have it in me? You have no idea what you haven’t tapped into yet.”

“Cas,” Dean says, pleading now, worrying at Castiel’s silence. “Come on. I’ll do it, I’ll go in there, I’ll do whatever you want me to, just - “

“Use him as a last resort, if you have to,” Alex says. “But until then, if you want him to be good for whatever the hell kinds of plans you have in store for him, you keep him in here and you throw me in there with him. You don’t want him going down this road? You don’t want him turning into a monster? So be it, but I can go down it just fine.” She grins at him, humorless, baring her teeth. “Come on. You know you don’t give a shit about me, Cas.”

“You can’t be serious,” Uriel scoffs, and he doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Castiel, you can’t possibly think that this ridiculous little human could successfully torture a demon where angels have failed - “

“We use her first,” Castiel says, and the room goes shudderingly still.

“You can’t let her in a room with that monster!” Dean shouts. “Cas!”

“Our trap cannot be broken, Dean. No harm will come to her.”

“He doesn’t have to touch her to hurt her!” Dean howls. “She’s not a part of this, Cas, come on - “

“You have an hour,” Castiel says in an undertone, for Alex alone. “Then we’re sending him in.”

He opens the door and throws her in.

It doesn’t give her much time to prepare, but she’s as ready as she’s ever going to be. Alistair is there, pinned to the wall, and she squashes down the fear, the doubt, and focuses on the monster that hurt Dean.

Revenge is as good a motivator as any.

“So, this is the angels’ backup plan.” She hasn’t forgotten the terrible hiss of Alistair’s voice, but she’s never been this close to it before, and she has to hold back the urge to shiver. “To say this smacks of desperation would be putting it mildly.”

Alex doesn’t say anything. She looks at the tools that have been laid out before her, and takes a deep, slow breath.

“The little girl who tags along with the Winchesters,” he continues, conversational, sounding for all the world like he isn’t strung up and bleeding. “I suppose they couldn’t find any orphaned schoolchildren and had to settle for the next best thing.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” he purrs. “You want revenge on me for what I did to your boyfriend? Nothing you do to me can possibly compare to what I watched him do to those souls in Hell.”

Alex is still quiet. Runs her hands over the blades. Measures them, sizes them up. Wonders which one would make him scream the loudest.

“I suppose they wanted to send him, and you took his place instead? Noble of you.” She doesn’t look at him, but she can hear the way his grin curves around his words. “Poor little thing. If you’d seen the look on his face when he tortured girls just like you, the way he got off on it, oh, you’d run the other way.”

Alex’s steps are steady and quiet when she walks toward him at last, holding the blade she’s carefully chosen, doused in holy water. She knows how to move quietly, even in heavy boots, how to be inconspicuous and keep to the shadows. Keep herself small. The delicate roll of her foot that she learned through years of ballet, incorporated later when she snuck through the hospital corridors on socked feet. Later still, when she learned to sneak up on monsters. Even Sam and Dean’s keen instincts didn’t always warn them when she was close.

She’s gotten so good at being overlooked.

She has to raise herself on the tips of her toes to press the blade against his cheek, slow, almost gentle. Watches the way it presses into his skin, the slight, prickling burn it leaves behind.

She meets his eyes for the first time. Sees the eyes of the thing that ripped her parents nearly in two, the wide-open, frozen eyes of her brother. Sees every nightmare she’s ever woken Dean from, every haunted look in Sam’s eyes and every innocent they couldn’t save.

“He was scared of becoming a monster,” she says. “I don’t really have that problem.”

Alistair smiles, and the spark of surprise in his eyes is almost gratifying. “The little Winchester whore,” he says, admiring. “Maybe I underestimated you after all.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” She turns the blade of the knife in against his cheekbone, a quick, sudden grind that scrapes nearly into bone, and for the second time she gets to see his surprise, just for a moment.

“I’m good at compartmentalizing,” she says, mimicking his conversational tone. “Better than most. I know how to hide it all away and call on it when I need it.” She twirls the blade between her fingers, then drags it along his temple. “There are layers of it, going deep. I shuffle it like a deck of cards, so I can control what’s on the surface.”

“Control,” Alistair says, turning it over in his mouth. He licks his lips, and she pushes back the quiver of revulsion. “You’re going to have to let go of some of that if you want to play in the big leagues, honey.”

“Maybe,” she agrees, and drives the knife deep into his eye, and twists.

It’s disgusting, the blood and fluid and the way he howls, and she shivers. She’s done the same and worse to monsters before, but to see it on a human face -

Not a human, she thinks, and buries it. Shuffles it under layers of cold, calm rage.

“Good girl,” he says when he’s got his breath back, and she retreats, looking for another weapon, ready to shift gears. She can’t keep this slow-then-quick pattern going, he’s going to start to expect it if he hasn’t already. He already knows she’s making it up as she goes. “Shame I didn’t get my hands on you sooner, if this is how good you make it the very first time.”

“What would he think, if he saw you here like this?” he presses. “You think he’d realize just how little he satisfies you, that he can’t give you what you crave?” He chuckles, low and deep, and she feels nausea crawling in her gut. “Because you do crave it, don’t you? Dirty little monster girl, just dying to cut and be cut open? Things that weak little monster in training of mine could never give to you? Oh, the things I could give you, if you’d just let yourself, give up that precious control - “

With hands that are desperately trying not to shake, she pours the holy water down his throat, holds his nose, watching him choke. She’d like to drown him in it.

“Answer their questions,” she says. Her voice doesn’t shiver. That rage is simmering, buried down deep.

“Unlike Dean,” he says, and the way he says his name is unquestionably the most loathsome thing so far, with pride and a twisted sort of tenderness, “I don’t give it up that easily.”

“No,” she says. “Neither do I.”

She doesn’t know how long it goes on, how many times she hears Alistair scream or how many times she pushes back the nausea in her gut. She keeps going on until her hands shake and her arms are weak, until she’s covered in Alistair’s blood and she can distantly hear Dean shouting her name on the other side of the door.

She pushes that back, too, and wonders distantly why they don’t let him in. She’s nearly forgotten why she’s here.

Definitely more than an hour.

“He broke the first seal, don’t you know,” he says later, when he is swaying, half-conscious and glazed with pain. His voice still trills with self-satisfaction. “The righteous man, shedding first blood in Hell. The man you would make yourself a monster to protect is going to end the world.”

She does shudder that time, because she believes him, and that’s the most enraging thing of all.

When he does, finally, get loose, and she knows that she’s failed, he barely gives her a second to scream before she’s being beaten half to death, the worst, most terrifying pain she’s ever felt in her life. He’s so strong, so fast; she can’t hide anymore. He’s still covered in blood, and now I’m covered in his, she thinks and wonders if this is how Dean had felt, if they’ll be tied together forever now.

Somewhere Dean is shouting her name again.

And even as she thinks I’m going to die here, I’m really going to fucking die, she doesn’t feel an ounce of regret.

She wakes to find Dean holding her hand, woozy with pain, and she smiles at him.

“Baby,” he says, voice is scared and relieved all at once. “Hey. Jesus. Alex.” His hand squeezes hers. There are tears still in his eyes, but he doesn’t look like he’s been hurt.

“I saw him,” she murmurs. “I looked right at him. I didn’t look away.”

“Alex,” he says again, frowning in confusion, “I don’t - “

“I got him back,” she says, dreamy. “Kicked his ass.” She tries to squeeze his hand back, but it’s weak. “Sorry I got hurt, baby.”

“It’s okay,” he says. There are tears coming to his eyes again. “It’s okay, baby, I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m not sorry,” she says. Everything’s fading again, but that’s still so clear. “Not sorry.”

She’s going under, and she smiles.