WHO: Mary Winchester, Claire Bennet (future), Alastair, NPCs WHERE: a store; "Hell" WHEN: Saturday, February 4, 2006; just before noon - around midnight WHAT: Alastair extends an 'invitation' for Mary and Claire to be his 'guests' and eventually take back a message to Dean. RATING: R for descriptions of violence and torture STATUS: log; COMPLETE
As Mary led Claire into the fifth furniture store, she was thankful that it was Saturday. Normally during the week, when Dean was at work, she would watch Ben and keep her grandson entertained, and she knew that looking at five different stores for what she was beginning to call The Couch would not be the boy's idea of a good time. Still, she had promised to help Claire find a couch similar to the much loved couch in the Winchester house, and home making was her specialty, so to her the five different stores was more of a challenge than a set back.
"Look at that one," She said, pointing to a comfy looking sofa in a corner of the store. She was excited, because she could see that they were close to finding the perfect sofa, and this felt almost like a scavenger hunt. "If the upholstery was just a little different, I think that would be the right one."
Shopping for things for a house hadn't really been something Claire had done in any serious fashion before getting her own house in Los Angeles. Moving so much meant never buying a lot and not getting to keep most of it if she had to leave fast. So this was definitely a new experience, but a fun one. She felt lucky to have Mary here to help her, because Mary had that mom touch to things and had been able to make the Winchester's house feel like a real home, though Claire knew that had as much to do with the people as it did the things that decorated the house.
When Mary pointed out the sofa, Claire moved closer. Flopping down on it, her expression was one of concentration for a moment, then she grinned and closed her eyes.
"I think this is it," she said, leaning back. "I don't mind the upholstery, I think this blue would look okay in the living room?" It was more question than statement, as she wasn't honestly sure. "Maybe I'll have to paint?"
"The blue would look nice in your living room, though I think a more cheerful wall color might accent it nicely. When we get through here, we can go to Home Depot and look at paint chips, and next weekend I'll kidnap the boys and get them to paint a few rooms in the house. You can consider it a belated housewarming gift."
Mary had already gotten Claire a few nice odds and ends to decorate the house, but she spoiled the boys, and their girlfriends and friends a good deal. She considered the spoiling to be the most important part of her job, and she knew that normal things like painting rooms and fixing up a friend's house would be a good experience for all of her boys.
"That lamp goes nicely with the couch too."
"Mary, you don't have to get them to do that," Claire said, but even as she offered the protest, she smiled because she knew that wall painting was on the level of grass cutting, most likely, and Dean rarely let her mow her own lawn because he liked doing the handy man things at his house and hers.
One couch, a lamp and two bookcases later, they left the shop after the delivery was scheduled. Most of the things picked out had been too big to carry, so deliveries had worked well to leave them without many bags to carry.
"So where next?" she asked as they left the shop.
Just as they moved to cross the alley to the continuation of the sidewalk beyond, two men approached, both relatively young - between Mary and Claire's physical ages.
"Excuse me, do you think you could help us?" one asked, holding out a street map.
Mary knew what John or the boys would say about being cautious, and she had given the same lecture to all of them a million times. This was Los Angeles, a city full of people and things that would love to hurt them, but Mary also knew that if something really wanted to get to you, there was little you could do just by running the other way. Besides they had taken every precaution, and she was born and raised in a small town in Kansas where everyone knew everyone and she had always mocked her father's level of paranoia. She just wasn't like that.
"Sure," She said, flashing the men a smile, and leaning in to look at the map. "I think we're right here..." She paused, pointing at the map so that they both could see. "and if you take this road here and t--" Mary didn't get to finish her directions, because she unexpectedly felt the sharp pain of something hard hitting her head.
John...
Before Mary could think anymore about John or their boys or how they would react to hearing about this, her vision went fuzzy and she felt herself falling.
The daylight hours would never be entirely safe in the city, but it was usually the nights that held the most dangers - not that it stopped Claire from being out at night, or fighting the things in the night. But for the daytime, there were still protections, like the hex bags that Ruby had made for all of them, that kept them from being located by demonic or angelic means.
Of course, that didn't preclude anything demonic or angelic using its eyes to follow any of them once they had been seen, or stop humans from attacking them.
The two men who approached them weren't the only two there, as movement in Claire's peripheral vision from the alley made her turn sharply away from Mary and the men, alarm spiking, but not soon enough to pull out a defensive weapon, let alone duck or block the blunt object from impacting with her head.
There was only time for one thing.
PE-! The mental scream never formed the second syllable as Claire was hit and then crumpled a second later.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Regenerative abilities or not, that didn't stop Claire from feeling the residual effects of hard damage to her body, such as a mild headache where another would have a pounding one after blunt force trauma. That was why, when she came to, it was with a slight wince.
The dark made it hard to focus, but as she did, pieces of what had happened came back. Being hit. Waking up in something that was moving, only to be knocked out again. It was dark here, but it wasn't cold - on the contrary, Claire could feel the sweat making her clothes stick to her, the hard ground beneath her hands not even a cool relief. Moving made swishing sounds, not clanking ones, but she still couldn't move her hands far. There was a weight against her, on her right side.
Turning her head, Claire blinked, then refocused on the blonde hair directly in front of her. Mary.
"Mary? Mary, wake up, come on, please wake up," she whispered, jostling the woman slumped against her shoulder, wanting to be gentle given the fact her own head hurt, but needing Mary awake now.
"Mary, wake up..."
Mary frowned, because the hard ground beneath her was nothing like the comfortable bed at home. Something was NOT right, but the way her head was pounding with every pulse beat made it hard to figure out what was going on. Someone was shaking her, odd too because she was something of a morning person and up before most of the people in the house.
"...Please wake up." More sensations started to return even before Mary opened her eyes. She could feel the heat, the stifling kind of warmth that made her damp hair lay limply across her forehead. She could feel the pain in her head, could smell a stench so noxious that it was almost overwhelming.
Grimacing, Mary opened her eyes, looking around in confusion before her eyes landed on Claire. "What's going on?" She whispered, memories of the two men and the map and then the bump on her head slowly coming back.
When Mary stirred, Claire sucked in a breath of relief, but soon regretted it because of the smell. It was tangy, iron-like - it was a smell she was all too familiar with because of how much of her own blood she had witnessed over the years, but the rest of the smells weren't something she could name as anything other than rotting.
"I don't know, we were attacked, I'm not sure where we are," she said, looking up at the ceiling, but not able to make out how high it was or what kind of building they were in. As for getting out...
PETER! There was no answer, something that Claire tried to tell herself wasn't definite, even as her stomach plummeted. People had been taken and blocked from telepathic communication before. It was a favorite trick of Wolfram & Hart's.
The door swung open before she could puzzle it out further, Claire squinting against the light - bright, but not yellow. Instead, it had a red-orange hue to it, like fire.
In the doorway, Alastair smiled, the expression almost genial as two figures behind him moved restlessly in the shadow afforded by the red light. "Rise and shine, dear ladies, rise and shine. Gentleman, why don't you untie our guests now? Otherwise they'll think we don't have any manners."
The shadowed figures stepped forward, the reddish glow lighting the pale faces enough to make the vampiric features visible.
Behind them, Alastair chuckled and then wagged his finger at their backs. "And no snacking."
Mary bit hard on her bottom lip to keep from gasping when Alastair came in. He looked the sort of genial man that she would bump in to at the store, not someone who had control over vampires. Of course, she used to be a hunter, she knew that appearances could often be deceiving, but there was something very wrong about that friendly looking man with the welcoming tone warning the vampires against snacking as though they were children.
"Let us go." She said, voice firm. "Let us go, before people realize we're gone and start looking for us, because I assure you, we know people who end things like you without a second thought."
Mary had once done the same, and Claire still did, but Mary didn't want to reveal to the bastard anything more than he might already know about them. There was still a trace of the girl she used to be, the hunter, who wasn't above trying to talk her way out of this, even when she knew it was likely impossible.
She had to try.
Untie them? Either this guy thought they were defenseless or he had some other trick up his sleeve, but Claire didn't intend to do this placidly. This close to a vampire after all these months here spent training and patrolling, her first reaction was to lash out, but there was no weapon here to do it with.
Or wasn't there? She might not have her purse, but these were vampires, she still had one card to play. When her hands were free, Claire reached for her necklace and slammed the cross against the vampire's neck.
The creature recoiled with a hiss, then lunged for Claire, fangs bared. However, it never reached her, as Alastair waved a hand and the vampire slammed back into the wall. The vampire pinned there, Alastair circled around behind Claire and tutted, freeing the clasp on her necklace with a small chuckle as she flinched, then tucked it away in his pocket.
"We'll just put that with all the rest of your personal effects," he said, then moved to stand next to Mary, giving the woman a slow once over.
"Mary Winchester. Formerly Campbell. Contrary Mary, trying to escape the hunter life and now right back in the thick of it." Alastair tsked, then reached out, turning her face toward his. "I know all about you." </font>
If this thing knew about her, knew about her family, then things were worse than she thought. He had to know just what he was getting into, messing with a family like the Winchesters. Perhaps he didn't know who Claire was, and what she and her family were able to do, and much the better. This was likely something very, very bad, and if he knew Claire could heal herself, it could turn into some sort of sick game.
"Well if you know all about me, you should know that keeping us here isn't smart." Her tone turned patiently leading, like the sort of tone you would adopt with a child that you wanted to influence to go a certain way. "Now, you're going to let us go, and you're going to leave us alone, and we'll forget about the way you sent your henchmen to attack us while we were out. It's a win win situation."
"Oh, I intend to let you go," Alastair said, flexing his free hand slightly, the vampire sliding along the wall in a show of continued control (as well as, on Alastair's part, continued assertion of his alpha maleness, as it were) "- later, after we've all gotten better acquainted. See, I know Dean - and, as it happens, old Johnny boy too - very well, so I figure having a day with mommy dearest and his 'special friend'-"
He turned to Claire then, reaching out so her chin was caught between his fingers, the touch deceptively light given that he could crush her jaw with less effort than a human would squash a bug.
"And you are special, aren't you, Claire?" he asked, turning her head to examine the spot the first blow had rendered her unconscious. Not a mark on her. This was better than he'd expected after cluing in to just what kind of tricks she might be able to do.
"Very, very special. Anyhow, I figured that it's only right to get to know each other, especially after I heard them talk so much about Mary then and how you all carry on now."
Special. Claire could have ignored the word if the man wasn't examining her head just where it had been hit, then turning her face to examine the other side, just like he knew where the blows had been, and were now healed.
It was on the tip of her tongue, some scathing remark, but a modicum of common sense held it at bay. If she were alone, she could do as she wanted, as this thing could hurt her, but it couldn't kill her, but she wasn't alone. Mary was here and Claire wouldn't let something she said put Mary in more danger.
PETER! Peter, come on, please answer me. You've got to get us out of here. There was a desperation to the mental tone now, not for herself, but for Mary. Without her bag, Claire couldn't even help Mary if they hurt her.
Between the woman, Alastair chuckled. "Not very likely, little girl. Mary, why don't you tell Claire how calling for the 'Champion' won't do her much good? In here, there's not a thing going in or out, even if she keeps right on screaming in her head. She'll listen to you."
Mary wasn't exactly sure how this man knew what Claire was shouting in her head, or how he had prevented the thoughts from reaching Peter, but she knew that if Peter could have heard Claire, he would have already responded.
"It's no use." She whispered. Were her purse there, she could have called John or one of the boys, but it was nowhere in sight. This was bad, very, VERY bad, and judging by the look on the his face. He knew...he knew what Claire could do.
"You don't know anything about them." Mary said, trying to distract him before he tried to test Claire's abilities. "What are you, some demon they've sent back to hell? You're guessing."
Mary swallowed, because for all of the 'spunk' she had had as a teenager, she had never liked dangerous situations, and she had never liked the supernatural things she was forced to hunt. She was scared, scared of the power he had shown over the vampire, scared her theory was wrong and that Dean and John knew this man FROM hell instead of before.
"Sent me there? No, no, my dear. They met me there." With a blink, Alastair's normal eyes were replaced with white. "They were very special cases in the Pit, those Winchester boys, and with so much potential once they got off the rack and joined us. Wasted potential now," he said, shaking his head with every appearance of regret, "but no doubt still there. It was enough to make a wife and mother proud."
Turning to look at Claire, he smiled, all teeth, nothing genial about the expression even without the eeriness of the white eyes. "But you don't know exactly what I mean, do you? What your good friend Dean did down there. How about a little show and tell?"
The vampire against the wall slid down it and hit the floor, getting quickly to its feet as Alastair nodded to Mary.
"Boys, take the lady Winchester here out to get," he chuckled, "changed, and she can be exhibit one of all the tricks the Winchesters learned - and all the ones they came up with on their own."
There. Hell. Eternal damnation, torment, the kind of torture that made it impossible for Dean to sleep some nights, so he was left nodding off at random point during the day to get any rest. And this demon sounded like he meant Dean and John had joined in.
He was lying, he had to be. He was a demon, that's what they did, wasn't it?
But she didn't have more time to sort out that revelation, because the vampires were taking Mary. It wasn't even a thought of who might be 'better' for what they had planned, it was just gut instinct that made Claire cry out, to protect Mary.
"No!"
Though he had smiled several times, this time, the one most worthy of mirth, Alastair's expression was simply neutral as he turned to Claire. "No?" he questioned, holding one hand up, the vampires stopped in their tracks. This was, without a doubt, too easy to get the girl's compliance. The self-sacrificing tendency must be contagious.
Claire swallowed, lifting her head. "No. Whatever you're trying to take her for, take me instead."
She might have acted on instinct first, but she still wouldn't back down. If they wanted to hurt her, she could take it. She'd died before, she'd hurt herself over and over and walked away from it. If they left Mary alone, Claire'd let them do what they wanted to her instead.
Mary was horrified, because this thing speaking to them could very well be one of the awful bastards who still haunted Dean and John's dreams. There were some mornings when Mary was all but certain that John had something strong mixed in with his coffee because he'd smell of mints and gum for some time afterward, as though trying to cover up the smell of the alcohol, and Dean--Dean was younger and even less skilled at hiding such things from his mother. They had good days, when she could almost forget for a little bit about what they had been through, but then that pained look would flash across her husband's eyes, or Dean would look lost in thought before flashing her that fake smile, and she knew.
When the demon issued his order for the vampires to take her away, Mary turned her chin proudly up. He had already made it clear that the plan was to release them, so he wasn't going to kill her, and anything else...well she would live with it. Scared or not, she wasn't going to scream or cry and plead, both because she knew it would do no good and because she wanted to show this thing that her family was strong and could not be broken by him or hell or anything. "You don't know anything about them." She whispered fiercely.
She had taken a few steps from the room under the guidance of the vampires when she heard Claire speak, and when she winced this time it had nothing to do with actual physical pain.
"Claire..." She gave Claire a soft look, begging her not to do this. After all, Claire could feel pain, although not in the same way she could. Claire was offering to do God knew what, and it was going to hurt, and Mary didn't want that. She was Dean's best friend, she didn't want this to hurt Claire, or Dean. "Please."
"Well, now," Alastair said, tapping his chin with one finger, looking back and forth between the two women. "It sounds like Mary would rather be the one to go."
He leveled the white-eyed gaze on Mary, blinking to return it to normal, then stepped closer. "Either very brave, or very stupid, as you know how special your son's little friend is, don't you, Mary?"
Did she want to be hurt? Not really. No sane person wanted to be hurt, but Claire knew she could handle more. Those tests of her ability she had done all those years ago with Zach, they weren't the only things she had done to herself. They'd just been the beginning. He wanted to stab her or chop off a finger or start sawing at her limbs, she'd survive it. It would reveal to this demon all she could come back from, but she would survive it.
Mary wouldn't.
"It doesn't matter what she knows," Claire said, the beginnings of a plea in her voice. "Take. Me. Instead."
After a pause, Alastair nodded to the vampires. They flanked Claire and took her out the door before there could be any more of a protest, Alastair following after them. At the door, he turned back to face Mary.
"Now you rest up, Mary. We'll be back for you after Claire and I have a little chat."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Mary sat in the room for a long time after Claire and the others were gone, trying to come up with some plan to get them out. She had been a hunter, she should be able to figure out a small thing like an escape. For what felt like days but in all actuality was likely more like hours, she waited, mind desperately trying to come up with something.
And then she heard it. At first it sounded like a muffled whimper but grew to a stomach churning scream that sounded as though it had been ripped forcibly out of Claire's lungs.
"No!" She whimpered, going to the door and pounding on it. "No, don't you hurt her!" Mary knew that Claire was strong. Her strength was both a mental one as well as the physical way her body responded to pain, so if she was screaming...well what the bastard was doing to her was probably pretty damned bad. "Let me in! Don't!"
The screams faded, and Mary could hear a muffled rumble of normal speaking voices, but he couldn't identify them. Slumping down next to the door, Mary prayed. She prayed as hard as she could for an angel or God herself to come save the girl who had so selflessly volunteered for this. She could only hope that whatever wound the demon had caused had healed instead of the alternative--that he had somehow managed to find a way to kill her. A moment later the screams started again. Jumping to her feet again, Mary repeated the cycle of pounding on the door and crying at the top of her voice to try to stop the torture, and praying with all of her might to end it as well. It went on for what felt like forever, until finally the door opened and a vampire ushered her into the next room.
The smell hit her before she was even fully in. Blood, she smelled so much blood, and when she was in she could see why. There was blood every where, wet and dry, on the floor, the table Claire was strapped to and Claire...
God help her, how can she be alive with that much blood loss?.
"Claire!" Claire was strapped to the table like some sort of absurd medical guinea pig. "You son of a bitch." Mary hissed, moving to stand in between the table and the demon who had made Claire cry out in pain. "Get her off of this table. Now."
Mary calling her name was a shock to Claire's senses and she roused from the half-conscious stupor from the last round of new tricks, turning her head toward the direction she had heard it. It was a reprieve, but it was one Claire didn't want, as Mary was now in the room. What would they try to do to Mary now?
At first, it had been bearable for Claire, one slice at a time, one tear at a time, one carved piece at a time. It hurt, it healed and she didn't scream. She wasn't quiet, driven several times to choice invectives, but she didn't scream. Not at first.
She had realized that he found her lack of screams equal parts curious and frustrating, like a scientist with a lab rat, but then he had discovered how to make her truly hurt. One injury at a time, her ability got her through it. Multiple injuries at once, her pain receptors would overwhelm and the pain would get to be too much, to the point she did scream.
Over and over and over. In those hours, that demon learned just how much her body could withstand and heal. Even now, there was a bucket nearby with fingers and toes that had been taken off, but her body had regrown the parts, making the cut off pieces now superfluous.
But that hadn't been the only torture. In the quiet, when she'd screamed too much to do it anymore, or he'd gone back to one injury at a time so she was quiet and could hear him, he had talked about Dean in Hell, illustrating his points about Dean's 'promising techniques' by doing those things to her and telling her how much Dean had enjoyed it.
The talk about her, how interesting she was, how much he would love to have more of her because humans were so hard to repair again when this wasn't really Hell - that she barely listened to. The talk about Dean, she soaked it all in, lies or not.
And demons lied. That much she knew. Even if, after the hours passed, Claire accepted that a person could only survive so much before giving in - and Dean had lived through this for thirty years, John for a time the demon hadn't revealed yet and Peter, while not ever in Hell as they had been, had lived through torture like his at the hands of DHS before and Wolfram & Hart recently - it didn't mean those people who had given in, who had done what they had to in order to survive, were monsters. If there was truth, there was also lies in the tale.
But she was still alive after all of it, something Mary wouldn't be, which was why Claire struggled against the restraints, the leather and her bare skin now slick with blood. Modesty over the table straps being the only thing that covered her had been abandoned when the pain had started. Now she didn't even think about it.
Alastair watched from a few feet away as Mary came into the room, readjusting shirtsleeves now decorated in blood. Since coming to Los Angeles, this had been the day most like the Hell he had been pulled from, because the girl on the table was the closet thing yet to the gift of Hell, that each soul always started the new day whole again. With the determination of a researcher, he had set out to find out just exactly what she could heal from, as well as begin to fine-tune his own techniques to make the pain a symphony. Each person was unique, so the tune was never the same.
When Mary moved between him and the table, Alastair just chuckled and held up a hand, holding her there, grip tight at her throat, but not a stranglehold. Mary so held, he moved back to the head of the table and bent down to Claire.
"Do you want to get off the table now?" he asked, leaning close to her ear, the tone soft and persuasive. "This will all be over, you can come off and the pain will stop. Mary will take your place, but your pain will stop."
Claire's response was simple, straightforward and backed by as much force as she could muster, because she didn't care what he did to her, she wasn't willingly getting up and letting Mary be hurt. "Screw you."
Mary struggled against the hold at her throat. She told herself that because she could not actually see the forces holding her that they were possible to overcome, but she knew she was lying to herself.
"She's little more than a child." It wasn't entirely true, as technically Claire was of age, but to Mary anyone who was born after her sons would always be a child. "And you're a coward for doing this. You've made your point, now let her go."
Mary knew how the outcome would be in the end. There was only so much torture that a soul could go through, whether it was still tied to a living body or tied to a body with powers like Claire's or free. The fact that Claire could not die like most humans was in this case a blessing and a curse. Yes, she could heal, and yes, there would be no lasting physical scars, but most humans would reach the point where they could take no more and find release in death. Mary knew what that point felt like, because she had lived through being pinned to the ceiling, having her stomach ripped open and even lived through the flames for one brief, painful minute before death came. Sometimes, death came as a blessing, because it was a release from the pain.
Her own son had broken under the pain of hell, and John Winchester, the strongest, most courageous, moral man she knew had done it as well, so there was not a doubt in Mary's mind that eventually Claire would be willing to trade places. By that point, so much of the part that made her Claire would have been blocked that it was even possible Claire would willingly be the one to slice and dice. Mary knew she could NOT let that happen, because she knew full well from seeing Dean and John try to cope that the decision to let another hurt in your place was a haunting one. Claire, the girl who could never die, had enough to think about without adding that lifetime of guilt to her plate.
"Get her off the table, you white eyed devil. You've made your point. I'll do whatever you want, but let her off."
"But we haven't even had the first of our several chats," Alastair said with a shake of his head, standing back up straight as he adjusted Claire's restraints with an efficient air, edge with that indefinable pleasure he took in the artisticness of his work as he wiped the blood free of the symbols burned into the leather.
"I've been telling Claire here how things work in the Pit, a little history of Hell mixed with some very personal anecdotes about those boys you both know. Those souls that get off the rack, they like to work hard, to be all that they can be," he said, shaking his fist a bit with a grin to emphasize the words. "And the Winchester's, well, their work ethic is down right famous. So, as I was telling her, some of those souls even come up with little quirks of their own, like your son, and your husband, did. Would you like to see one of Dean's?"
He held up a hand, effectively silencing Mary, who was still turned away, briefly. "No, wait, I know," he said, reaching for a long blade with a curve to it as he dropped the silence on her. "You'd like to see one of John's tricks. It was inspired by what happened to you, after all."
With a flick of his wrist, Mary swiveled to face the table, Alastair's invisible grip still holding her as he turned to face the table too. After testing the edge of the blade, he reached down and carved into Claire's stomach.
"Every time he used it, for, oh - a hundred years," he said conversationally as he cut, "minus his initial breaking down and that sticky little rebellion of his, that is - every time, it was with the same passion. Both of them, Mary, they really loved their work."
Sickeningly, Claire knew what was coming before he did it, because he had been all too happy the last few hours to show her some of what he called both men's tricks, but that didn't make a knife slicing into her stomach any easier. It wasn't just skin, but internal organs as well, things that would all heal fast, but wouldn't mend as quickly as a small cut by any means. And healing, especially something that large, didn't come without its own pain.
What made it almost impossible to bear, however, what made her shut her eyes as she gritted her teeth against the scream building in her throat, was that she knew Mary was watching this now. Mary was seeing her own injury done to Claire, seeing how much of a freak she really was because she would survive it.
And Mary hadn't.
Though the demon silenced her to prevent her from answering his not question, shock and horror kept her from speaking for longer. A strangled gasp of 'No!" was torn out of her throat when Alastair sank the knife into Claire. Mary watched silently, tears welling up in her eyes because she couldn't look away. Even all these years later, Mary could remember what that pain felt like. She had been so optimistic then, certain that if John could just get her down, he'd get her to the doctors and they'd work a miracle. Logically, she knew there was no way that a person could survive being gutted, but for that brief moment when she was pinned to the ceiling and bleeding, she wanted to believe in more.
Mary let out a small, pained gasp when she watched Claire's body slowly start to knit itself back together again. There was not so much as a scar where it healed. One minute Mary was looking at Claire splayed open like some sort of obscene high school dissection project and the next Claire's stomach was flat and unflawed again. It was amazing to see the healing in action, amazing and terrible at once, because Claire was WHOLE again but Mary had not missed the way she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out. She could, and very likely would, endure more instead of escaping to the nothingness of death.
"STOP IT!" The anguished cry that came out of Mary shook her to her core. She didn't want to see the demon do this anymore, didn't want to hear that this trick had been a favorite of John's or Dean's, or see any more of their favorites demonstrated. She wanted to be home with her two very scarred men, to hug them more and tell them she could see now more than ever after just a matter of hours how someone could break...and they had lasted years.
"Just stop it, and let her go. Take me, it's me that you want." She knew it wasn't true. Claire's abilities would make her the perfect experiment for a sick bastard like this...but she wanted it to be true, because Claire didn't deserve to suffer through another experience like that.
Mary went ignored at first as Alastair bent over Claire's stomach, finger following the line of where his cut had been. A perfect mend, perhaps even more perfect than Hell's own gift in some ways. But less desirable, for now, as in Hell, souls never perished and this strange human might, and there was no way to keep the pain to a constant hum, to have a steady beat. It was still a problem to him, a curiosity to be solved.
"Every time," he said, tapping her stomach with the tip of the knife, only chuckling as she still flinched away. Spirit. It would take much longer to break her, but he didn't intend to do that now. Not yet. Perhaps not ever, if she proved interesting enough to be useful later. There were different plans for her today. "Even the delicate organs this time. Can you be killed, Claire, or do you just revive from fatal blows? We should explore that next."
Mary's cries, Alastair's observations - they thudded against Claire dully as she felt her insides sort themselves out, the pain coming from nerve endings mending. But there were things to focus on still, as the pain ebbed, and the most important was Mary trying to get Alastair to do this to her instead. Claire couldn't, because she wouldn't be able to look anyone in the eye again if she let it happen.
"No, don't listen to her," she said. She'd died before, it was no big deal. It was no big deal. Even if it meant this demon would know most of her secrets, as long as she was strapped to this table, he wouldn't find out the thing that could take her down temporarily.
She wouldn't cry. Not now, not in front of Mary.
"You won't be able to do to her what you can do to me," she said, turning to look at Alastair as the disgust increased in her tone, "you evil bastard."
Alastair studied Claire for a minute, then looked up at Mary and picked up a cloth to clean the knife. "I don't think you're quite ready to talk about old Johnny boy, are you, Mary? Claire and I, we can keep having our chat, and you can come back later."
Beckoning the vampire close with a finger, Alastair turned his attention back to Claire.
This...this was the reason she had left hunting behind. To see someone she cared about suffering hurt Mary a great deal, and, what's more, to know they were suffering willingly in her place was heartbreaking.
"No." She said softly, moving to give Alastair a small shove. It was a last ditch effort, and a desperate one, but she couldn't just give up. Giving up meant that the torturous bastard was going to keep poking and stabbing and hurting Claire until somehow he managed to make even her super blood useless. He was going to kill her, and Mary would do anything to stop it.
"Let her go. If you manage to kill her whatever point you're trying to make is going to be lost because we'll find you again, and we'll kill you." For once Mary said 'we' when she was talking about the hunters, because the mind games that this thing was playing with her and Claire had made it very personal.
The shove had little physical effect on Alastair, but it did draw a reaction - a wide grin. "So, there is some spunk in you. Wouldn't have guessed it after all these years." Holding up a hand, he stopped the vampire headed for Mary in its tracks.
"As for killing me, Mary, you'll find that isn't going to happen. And I think little Claire here, she won't be killed either." He laid down the large knife and picked up a handful of smaller ones. "Or, at least, not stay that way. See, I have this theory," he continued, then drove a small knife into Claire's forearm, "that when things are still in the wound, she can't heal." And another knife went into her upper arm. "But I can slice and flay and dismember," he gestured to the basket, "and it all goes right back or grows anew. It's really very interesting to study."
He looked up at Mary as he drove the third knife into Claire's shoulder. "But you don't want to see that yet, do you, Mary? So go, you can come back later."
To study. Like she was some freak, some human guinea pig for a medical experiment. Just like back in her own world, but with a whole new literal Hellish twist. Claire kept her eyes opened, focused on the ceiling of the room they were in, because she knew what was coming. He'd done this before, with first cuts, then stabbing wounds, then carving pieces right out of her. He would do it over and over until she started to moan or cry, then he'd do something to make her scream. Each stab wound alone was tolerable, but one on top of the other...
"Mary, please, go," she whispered, turning to look at the woman. She didn't have to see this, she shouldn't see this. It had already been hours that Claire had lost count of, so someone would find them soon and it would be over.
Mary did not want to see Claire bleeding. She did not want to see this bastard carve her up and discard pieces in that awful basket...but she wasn't going to leave Claire in here alone. Claire might not be her daughter, but Mary was a mother first and foremost, and if this was one of her children suffering, she wouldn't want them hurting alone. Besides, Claire had been there for both of her boys, going back even before Mary had been there, and was Dean's best friend, something her son had never had before. She owed it to her.
She reached out, brushing a bit of bloody hair away from Claire's face. "I'm not leaving you alone with this thing, Claire." She said softly, in the voice she normally reserved for family, then turned her fiercest glare on Alastair. "You're done here. This? This is over." Searching her mind for a phrase she had not used in many, many years. Still, the way her father had once all but drilled it into her head made it stick in a way she was certain would last her for the remainder of her natural life.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas..."
"So touching, all this family spirit," Alastair murmured, smile growing with Mary's agreement. Certainly, he could have forced her to stay, but watching someone agree to their particular torture was so much more fun.
Had she left, he would have had to keep them longer, but her agreement to stay was putting him right on schedule. By the time they reached their departure hour, these two would be ripe for his further plans, not just coaxing Dean Winchester to be the one to hand over the radio line to the heavenly host, but the tearing apart of the Winchester clan. Without people to support them - after all, how could these two woman stand to be close to the Winchester men once they learned that demons didn't always lie? Humans were perpetually judgmental and squeamish and so easy to break at times - the group comprised of their family and their close friends would all self-destruct, leaving Alastair with more potential for this new Hell he was building.
And then she began to chant in Latin and Alastair did show surprise - but no discomfort. "Ah, ah, ah, my dear," he said, wagging a finger at her. "You're dealing with the big leagues now. Even your little Sammy didn't have the juice to take me down." He tsked. "A shame about what he's done here. Still, a definitely A plus for effort on remembering that, but you won't be able to listen if you're so busy chanting." With a wave, Mary's mouth was bound again and he smiled at her and then Claire.
"Now. Let's all get even better acquainted, shall we?"
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The hours blurred together, until Claire wasn't sure if only a few had passed, or if it was more like days. Everything the demon had done to her before, he did again, and then even more new things for Mary's benefit. Talking constantly, about Hell, about Dean, about John, about his own passion for his work, about things he hadn't known about until today.
Talking, always talking.
Like before, she hadn't started out screaming, the screams had come later, when the pain would overlap, only this time he was even more creative. She screamed and she cried, she begged for help from a God she still believed placed less worth on her than her 'normal' human creations, she sobbed out to her dad, to Peter, to Nathan, to Dean, desperately pleading for them to find her, to rescue her and come make this stop, even though they couldn't hear her. She'd even cried for Mary, a cry without purpose, because watching Mary watch all of this was equal parts painful and humiliating.
And the demon kept offering to let it stop, but it was never just to let it end. No, it meant Mary would take her place and Claire didn't care if this stretched on for days, she wasn't going to let that happen. She wouldn't.
Where there had been just pieces of fingers and toes in the basket before, hands, feet and a leg to the knee eventually joined them. Her body just kept growing them back, over and over. It was disturbing even to Claire, who had purposely cut off pieces of herself before to see if she would grow them back.
She'd died too. She wasn't sure now how many times it had been, as sometimes blacking out felt the same as dying, but she had. Cut open, like that morgue table, but awake this time when Alastair had started slicing into vital organs to kill her.
He had known about that time she had woken up on that table, about everything that had happened to her, because the longer he tortured her, the easier it became for him to rummage around in her head. Telepathy. Her only experience with it had been with Peter, and he had never taken anything from her mind she wouldn't have willingly given. The demon, though, he took whatever he wanted, from her mind and from Mary's.
But right now, there was a break, the demon called out of the room for the last ten minutes on some business. There wasn't, however, a reprieve. After those hours and hours and hours of his 'work', he had succeeded in making the pain constant, an all over thrum like having a body-wide headache. Not enough pain to scream and cry, but not something Claire was used to feeling constantly, and it meant he could build the pain from there at any time.
She hadn't ever imagined there were so many ways to hurt a person who could heal, so many things that would make a person who couldn't die want to do so to get a reprieve, so many uses for all the torture devices he had.
Now she knew.
Days. Mary was certain they had been there for days, weeks, maybe even months. She stood near Claire's head, trying to focus on her pained eyes instead of looking at the bloody mess itself, and for a while that worked. If she focused hard enough on Claire she could block out the lying demons's words.
And then Claire started whimpering, and Mary lost control. She grabbed one of the knives, trying to lash out at the demon, but he caught her his powerful invisible grip and took the knife, returning her to her original position. Somehow she managed to stay there for some time, offering silent and then not so silent comfort to Claire. She promised that help would come for them soon, because she couldn't imagine that her husband and sons would allow them to be missing for days without looking. If there was one thing that Mary Winchester knew, it was that John Winchester would not rest until he found them. She had faith in him, in her boys, and that faith would have to be enough, because she had little else to offer.
"They're coming." She whispered to Claire, blinking back tears as she looked down into the girl's face. There were blood spatters there, and Mary reached down, trying in vain to wipe them away. "Dean and John and Sam and Peter. Your Dad and Father and everyone. They're coming to get us, Claire."
She wasn't even sure if Claire could hear her, because her eyes looked far away and dull, and then..then she was gone.
"NOOOO!!!!" She screamed, launching herself again at the demon, intending to physically beat him with her hands as hard as she could. If the couldn't do the exorcism, she'd use whatever weapons she had. He stopped her again, before she even touched him, and moved her right back where she had started from.
Just as the white eyed devil had predicted, Claire eventually even recovered from death, gasping and in pain but she was alive, and the cycle repeated of promising Claire things she could only hope would happen and watching her die. Mary tried everything, from trying to grab the torture instruments to throw at him to other exorcisms to shouting to cover the demon's words, but nothing worked. He'd silence her briefly, or use his powers to stop her, or send the vampires in to hold her back. Nothing worked because the awful excuse for a man kept changing his tactics like a scientist playing with variables on an experiment.
Thankfully the demon was called away for a short while. For the first few minutes while he was gone, Mary tried in vain to get Claire off of the table, but the straps wouldn't budge. She wanted them to flee this place, to stop hearing things she didn't want to hear about Dean and John, to stop seeing a girl who she cared about a great deal being carved to pieces. She wanted it all to stop.
"Shouldn't be long now," she said apologetically to Claire. She leaned in, whispering in her ear, because she didn't want the thing (who she was certain was the Devil himself the Bible talked about) to hear, to shatter their last hope. "It's been so long already, I'd bet that everyone's split up into teams, and they're closing in on this place. I'm sure they have the Colt with them, and they'll stop him. We're going to fix this, Claire, and it's all going to be just fine."
Hope was all Mary had left to offer to Claire, because part of this sick demon's plan was to break the girl every way possible, and nothing Mary had done had been enough to make it stop.
Turning her head toward Mary, Claire blinked until she had focused on the other woman. "You." She stopped, coughing roughly, and then continued. "You need to go, go find a way out."
Even if Mary couldn't get her off this table, she could still try to escape, get out of this place and bring help back. Claire wanted to believe everyone would be here soon, but Mary was the only one free. There weren't even vampires in the room right now.
"No," Mary said, soft stubbornness there both because she didn't want to leave Claire alone here with the sadistic demon, and because she knew that the thing would blame Claire for the escape. She wasn't going to do anything that would make things worse for the girl.
Come on, John. I'm here, I'm right here...
"We leave this thing together, Claire, I'm not going to abandon you here."
"You're not, you're not abandoning me," Claire said, faint tears starting again, not from pain, but distress, and barely there because she'd shed so many at this point. That Mary didn't want to abandon her meant more than Claire could ever express even on a good day, but she couldn't just let Mary think that, or not do it, when it might be the choice between getting free or being here forever. And it could, literally, be forever in the wrong circumstances.
"Please, just try," she begged, wetting her lips as the tears touched her mouth. "What if they can't find the building? What if it's like with Lilith? If you get away, you can bring them back."
Mary knew deep down that Claire had a point, because this demon, for all of his sadistic tenancies, had to be at least as powerful as Lilith, and so there was a chance, a small one, that they were somewhere where John and the boys couldn't find them. Mary bit back the urge to curse, because this wasn't about her throwing a temper tantrum, it was about getting Claire help.
Taking a shaky breath, Mary leaned down, brushing her fingertips over Claire's forehead. "We all love you, Claire. Your family, mine....and I'm going to bring them all back with me. It won't take me long, I swear it."
She quickly closed her mouth and turned away before either of them could say something close to 'Goodbye,' because she knew if either of them said it she'd fall to pieces entirely. Instead, Mary physically forced herself to take one step and then another, drawing on strength reserves she didn't know she had, and began to look for a way out.
Bottom lip trembling, Claire closed her eyes at Mary's promise, letting the woman walk away without stopping her. She didn't want to be alone, and that fear, of being here with this twisted demon that seemed to get happier the more he cut into her, nearly overrode trying to be brave and strong. And it was trying, because she didn't feel very brave anymore and this was redefining everything she knew about strength.
But maybe Mary would find a way out, and then she could lead all of them back. Then that demon and everyone who had helped him would pay, not just at the hands of those who knew her, but Claire too, because he'd made her a victim like this, helpless, powerless, unable to protect herself, and she wanted her chance to pay that back.
The door opened shortly thereafter, as soundlessly as it had opened when he exited, and Alastair just stood in it to watch Mary inspect the room for a handful of seconds. After being suitably amused by the fact everything was shaping up oh so very well, he cleared his throat loudly.
"Going so soon, Mary?"
Mary's heart stopped for a fraction of an instant when the demon spoke, because she had not anticipated him returning so soon. She knew he would not be so careless again, to give them another chance at escape, and it made her want to rage out of control again. It wasn't fair, not at all. It wasn't fair that Claire was now going to be forced to endure more, it wasn't fair that Mary couldn't help but think that this time wasn't even a fraction of the time Dean and John had been forced to endure. It wasn't fair that Mary might never get to see them again to tell them how very proud she was of them for resisting for as long as they had...none of it was fair at all.
She forced her features into a neutral look and turned to face him. "You've made your point, I think it's time we both went home."
Scrunching his face, as if heavily considering it, Alastair nodded, stepping side to let two new vampires into the room. "You're half right. I've made my point, but it's not time for you to leave just yet. First, we're going to chat about the message you're taking back to my good pal Dean."
By the time he finished with Claire in a few hours, the message would be clear. When he had both her and Mary Winchester delivered back to the frantic, and now utterly tainted, embraces of their loved ones with nothing but a slight bump on Mary's head, the real torture would begin, not just for these women, but for the men who would have to use their imaginations to figure out just what he had done to the girl. Nothing like prodding to wake more buried memories.
Pressing a finger into Claire's ribs when he stopped next to the table, Alastair smiled when she winced. "Good, very good. So, Claire, let's discuss what I'll do to you, Mary and every single Winchester family member and friend if Dean doesn't do what I say."