[Fic] "Infernal Machinations" (Supernatural; R)
Title: Infernal Machinations
Author: black_regalia
Series: Supernatural
Pairings/Characters: John, Dean/Sam, Mary/Mike, the Demon
Rating: R (explicit sexuality)
Word Count: 1,843
Spoilers: 2x01 [In my Time of Dying]
Summary: After being taken by the demon, John learns that the worst part of hell is that you can never tell what is real and what isn't. An attempt at a John Finds Out fic. Sort of.

Concept by calicokat and wonderful betaing done by baileytc



The first thing the Demon shows John Winchester in Hell is the truth.

The setting is the backseat of the ’67 Chevy John picked up from a man in Louisiana, shortly after he returned from the war. No where to go, no where to be, seemed fitting that he at least travel in the style of his comfort. He fixed it up, working on it in the garage he owned with Mike, then later in his driveway, the wife and son he’d somehow managed to find along the way waiting in the house he somehow owned. Later, after he lost that wife, that house and most everything else, he gave the car to his eldest son. He’d known that certain unspeakable acts had been performed on the leather of those seats, but nothing like this.

His sons have no bruises or marks on their faces, and there is no shadow of death to their eyes. It must be sometime before his death – probably before he found them in Colorado with Daniel Elkins’s letter. Beyond that it is impossible to say when in their lives he is looking.

Invading.

Because that is what he is doing. His sons faces are pressed together, mouths open and teeth flashing occasionally before Sam’s back meets the upholstery, and for all his ridiculous length he manages to curl one leg up, Dean’s stomach resting between his thighs.

The Demon is smiling.

There isn’t any justification for what John is seeing. He can smell the old leather of the Impala and the dry dust of whatever mid-America road they’re pulled over on, but he can’t smell any alcohol, any scent that might lead him to believe that some foreign substance is influencing their behavior. For a moment he buys into some deeply needed delusion that it is something they’re hunting, a shapeshifter, maybe, or some kind of nature spirit that inspires lust. But then their foreheads crack together in a moment of eagerness and Sam is laughing while Dean is grousing and rubbing his head, while he smacks the side of his little brother’s. It’s too them to be anything else. The motion, the scene, so brotherly and warm and then not at all when Dean’s lips attach themselves to Sam’s neck, and his little brother is bucking his hips up against him with a lazy grin.

John has no recourse. He can’t do anything, can’t yell or deny, can’t even look somewhere else. The fear for his children runs through him, unchecked.

The Demon is laughing.

There’s nothing but feeling here. Endless. Limitless. Spreading itself out over all things, over whatever landscape there is to this place that John cannot see. When he hurts, he knows it runs like a river through the valleys, lapped up by eager beasts, throats parched and needy. When he lurches with nausea, he knows it cracks the earth, fissures snapping through the land, making even mountains shudder, as if in ecstasy. When he despairs, he can hear every monster he’s killed screaming in triumph.

There is nothing here but their pleasure and his pain, and it is his punishment for more sins than he can imagine, not the least of which is selling his soul to the devil. Or a devil. Time and experience have taught him that there is no “the” when it comes to the spiritual world, only a multitude, all beyond humans, all worshipped or reviled. God is just a spirit like any other, like any god that came before, like any devil, and there is no salvation, no respite.

And in that reality, in the face of that truth, there is no sin. No right or wrong. No evil or good. There are just the hunters and the hunted. The people killed by old ghosts and the people who hunt those ghosts. Nothing is objective. Nothing is clear, cold, cut down the center. Everything is hot and passionate, and John is more than aware of the Demon’s ache, his pain for his own children, and that John has to be subjected to that is torture enough. The possibility of pity is there, pity for the monster that killed his wife, the monster whose children are gone. The possibility of forgiveness is so strong in that moment, and John never wants to go there. The blinkers are gone, though, and the tunnel of his vision is blown wide to encompass all things.

John learns quickly that the truth is only a filter through which to pass the lies. There are things he sees that he doubts, and at first he is strong enough to tell the difference.

When he sees his eldest at the age of fifteen and his youngest eleven, the former wanting and the latter unwilling, he knows it isn’t true. When the Demon shows him rape and violence, John doesn’t believe it. He knows, all through him, that it is a deception. His son, his sons, are not like that. The Demon just laughs, because it doesn’t matter what he believes anymore.

Time will take care of that.

John sees Sammy standing on a bleak hill in some godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere in the northwest, the landscape distantly familiar. He doesn’t remember when this was, what job it was or what had been happening, but he doesn’t need to. He can see his son’s eyes and the way he stands, not yet tall but strong against the cold winds pushing through the fields, and Sam’s looking out to a world he doesn’t yet know how to touch, a world he’s been deprived of. John can see him, in every way solitary, unable to become part of anything meaningful because of his upbringing. Because of the life that John forced upon him. He can see the muscles forming in Sam’s arms and shoulders, growing even as the boy stands there, his hair extending out around his cheeks, messy and wind-whipped. He can see the loneliness and the violent determination that John gave to his son, through genes and his own stubborn ways; he can see it growing like creeper vines, and this is more true than anything. John wants to close his eyes, but he has no eyes to close, and there is no way to turn away, because Sam is everywhere.

John’s aware of the Demon, and he knows that if the Demon didn’t want him to be aware, he wouldn’t be. There’s something in this. Something the Demon’s enjoying, knowing that John knows he’s here. Perhaps it is the ability to gloat. To say “You see? I have won.”

John would very much like to curse the thing, but in all his dreams, all his euphoric fantasies, he’s seen himself standing over that thing, shooting it over and over and letting it live, as long as he can, cutting his anger, his guilt into it with any weapon he has.

He has never before had to be “fair.”

He sees Mary at the sink and she’s crying. He can see every tear track down her face, catching only occasionally before dropping off. He doesn’t know why she’s crying, but that hardly matters. She’s rubbing her hands, wringing water off them, and he doesn’t remember what her hands feel like.

A piece in the plethora of things he’s forgotten, things he swore he would always remember when everyone else forgot.

He sees Mike standing in the doorway, and Mary turns around, looking shocked and then, strangely, relieved, and John doesn’t understand what’s happening, why Mike would be there when John is obviously not. There is a lapse from the time Mike stands in the doorway to the point when he has Mary on the counter and her skirt hiked up. John sees the way Mike’s hands slide up her thighs and John doesn’t remember her thighs either, save for those soft patches of skin on the insides of them, where years of chafing from wearing skirts wore it puffy. Mike is grasping at the front of his pants, and none of this makes sense. There would have been no time that John was at the garage and Mike wasn’t. It wasn’t only unimaginable; it was literally, physically impossible.

But he is watching it nonetheless.

He watches it from angles that would be disgusting to him even if it wasn’t his wife getting fucked by another man on their kitchen counter. It is visceral and unappetizingly physical close up, watching ugly skin rub and shift together.

John wonders what he looks like now. If he’s a spirit like all those he killed, humanoid but insubstantial – flickering, pale with death. He wonders if he’s anything at all. He can’t feel any limbs, can’t close his eyes or turn his head. He doesn’t know if this is because he has no control or because he has no body. It’s like being in a dream. He is nothing but consciousness, eternal, unending consciousness.

He sees his eldest, Dean, at the age of seven.

Dean’s alone with Sammy for the first time, and the food burns, so they eat bread with cheese slices on it. John sees Sammy push the plate away, telling his brother he doesn’t want a cheese sandwich. They argue for awhile, and finally Dean eats Sammy’s food, and Sammy starts to cry about it. There is no balance here, no mediating presence to temper the selfish nature of children. Sammy has no knowledge of feelings outside his own, no ability to empathize, even if he tries his hardest. Dean has a sense of what he is supposed to do, enough to feel guilty, but not enough experience to know how to execute it. When Sammy starts screaming and throwing things, Dean locks his brother in a closet out of desperation. Dean curls up with his back against the closet door and hides his nose in his knees to cry.

Terrified of the dark, Sammy doesn’t quiet, and his screams only grow in volume.

The truth and the lies all bleed together. There is a possibility – as it all keeps coming, more and more, over and over again, sex and blood and tears, a family dragged over rough and muddy ground, a family half dead and half destroyed – that it is all true. There is a possibility – as John is forced to watch everything from the mundane to the incredible, everything from an innocent child to two adults fucking each other into depravity – that it is all lies.

But there is also the possibility that it is both.

And John can no longer tell. It bleeds together, water through oil, floating on the surface bright and colorful, until John only knows he’s watching the world end. His world. After a while, there’s no more judgment, no more anger, no more righteous fury. After a while, there’s no more honor, no more dignity, no more devotion. After a while, there is nothing but the crush of eternally leaning over this precipice and the thrum of this infernal machine running through him.

And the Demon is laughing.