Fic: Give the Devil his due

[caranfindel]

Title: Give the Devil his due
Prompt: The Devil Went Down to Georgia
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Alastair
Rating: R for language, torture
Length: About 1200 words
Warnings: Torture, language
Summary: He was looking for a soul to steal. Written for the 2015 EvilSam Roulette Challenge at evilsam_spn.

It's not the first time Sam has visited you in Hell. Alastair sends a Sam to your rack almost daily, to tear you to shreds, to describe how monsters are ripping him apart topside, or to beg you to say "yes" and get out from under the knife. But Alastair's versions of Sam are always the Sam your heart remembers: the round-faced little boy, the gangly teenager, the coltish college student. This Sam, the one striding into Alastair's chamber, this is the Sam you never really admitted to yourself - tall, strong, unafraid, a full-grown man. This Sam has to be real.

He approaches the rack and bends down over you, and his breath is redolent of sulphur. "I heard you screaming, big brother," he whispers in your ear. "I heard it in my dreams. Calling my name, all night long. Then I started to hear it during the day. You, screaming my name. All. The. Fucking. Time." He waves his hands around his head. "Couldn't get away from it. Turns out there's some kind of demon radio, and they can broadcast it where ever the fuck they want. Even inside my own goddamn head."

You're so sorry. You didn't know.

"So I did what I had to do, to make it stop. Killed what I had to kill. Bled what I had to bleed." He grins, and it's a crazed, feral thing. "And now here I am."

But Alastair steps in.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't little Sammy Winchester. Here to rescue big brother? Or are you just here to listen to us make beautiful music together?"

Alastair plunges a hand into your torso, ripping away flesh and skin and bone to expose your ribs. You scream as you always have, as you did when you didn't know Sam could hear you. You want to hold it in for his sake, but he already knows how weak you are and you can't stop it, you throw your head back and you fucking scream. You scream and sob and plead when he peels back the flesh of your leg to expose the bone, when he rips it off at the hip, when he pulls out a rusty, gore-covered hacksaw and trims the ends of your ribs to suit his purpose, when he snaps your femur in half and plays your ribs like a marimba. Alastair likes Mozart, and he bangs out the melody on your ribs over the cacophony of your howls and sobs. You scream until your throat is a bloody pulp and the only sound you can make is a blood-drenched, gibbering moan. And you know you'll scream again after he reassembles you.

When he's finished playing his symphony on your bloody corpse, he places a gnarled hand on the top of your head and gently moves it down over your body, knitting you back together. He grins at your brother.

"What do you think, Sammy? Dean's a beautiful instrument in the right hands, isn't he?"

You look up at Sam, an apology on your lips for what he had to witness, but he's neither disappointed nor horrified. He is, in fact, wearing a little smirk. "That's the best you can do?" he asks.

"I'd like to see you do better," Alastair sneers.

Sam's smirk widens into a humorless smile, a display of too many teeth. He turns to you and puts a finger up to his lips. "Not a sound, Dean," he says. "I don't want an opening act." You struggle to keep silent as he plucks a slender blade from Alastair's worktable and carefully slices you open from collarbone to pelvis; you struggle, but you will do it for him, you will do anything for him. He peels back skin and muscle, reaches inside, and delicately cuts through one end of your large intestine, and your fingernails carve bloody crescents into the palms of your hands. He pulls the intestine out and uses the knife to shred it into long strands, and you writhe in agony. He draws lengths of nerves from somewhere in your mangled torso and wraps them around the strands of intestine, and you bite through your lower lip. He runs his fingers through the entwined intestine and nerves, slowly, like running his fingers through a lover's hair, and you whimper "please, please," though you don't know what you're begging for. Sam puts two fingers against your bloodstained lips and says "Shhh. Almost done." He wraps the ends of your entrails around his left hand, and you feel a scream building that you can't stop, but he reaches into your chest cavity and pushes his free hand down on your lungs, squeezing out all of the air and leaving you silent, and you mouth "thank you," grateful that he loves you enough to do this for you. Finally, he snaps off your breastplate and ribcage, exposing your beating heart, and its stuttering rhythm fills the chamber.

"You ready to do this?" he asks.

You are. You will do anything for him.

Sam pulls your intestines taut and gently strums the strings of your body a few times, then slams into a wailing riff. Your heart pounds out the beat and your shrieks of pain are a counterpoint, the rhythm guitar to his lead, as his long, nimble fingers fly up and down the instrument he carved from you. He segues seamlessly between Metallica, Van Halen, Hendrix, Zeppelin, and pieces of his own creation, musical runs that sound like howls of agony and moans of ecstasy combined, soft lilting bridges that sound like the wind through the open windows of the Impala or the whoosh of a blade cutting through the air, and as he plays, you can see he is filled with a brilliant golden light; it leaks from his eyes and his fingertips and the ends of his hair, and he's so beautiful it hurts your eyes to look at him. The blood bubbles up in your throat as you scream; you're drowning, you're burning, you're shattering into a million pieces that float around Sam and reflect blood red and amber. The denizens of Hell gather round to listen, swaying, enchanted, and they cry and sing and shout their love for the Boy King, but no one loves him as much as you do, and he is here for you.

When he finishes, he pushes his hair back from his face with a bloody hand, wipes his brow, and smiles proudly at you. As you watch, his golden light fades until only his eyes are glowing amber, lit from within. The throng of demons cheers as Sam stares at Alastair, eyebrow raised expectantly. Alastair knows he's been beaten, and he bows his head slightly as he presents Sam with the key to the rack.

Sam releases your bindings, but instead of rebuilding you, he offers a hand. You stare at him in confusion. "We're not done," he says, pulling you to your feet. "There's one more thing down here that belongs to me." He tightens his grip on the bloody mass of guts spilling from your body and beckons you with a motion of his head.

He starts walking toward the coldest, darkest part of Hell, the part even demons shy away from. Your exposed heart quickens in fear, echoing through the chamber, and he laughs. "It's okay. I know what's down there. And he may be in a cage, but he still has something that's meant to be mine." Sam tugs and you follow; you have no choice but you would follow anyway, you would - no, you will - follow him into the deepest, darkest parts of Hell. "Oh Lucifer," he croons softly, as he pulls you into the icy darkness. "I'll bet your crown of gold against Dean's soul, cause I think I'm better than you."