The Samulet Confessions- no.1

This story will be a four-shot. The chapter title is stolen from that movie by the same name, and yes, Alistair stole his line from Oswin Oswald. The Samulet breaks my heart, so I'm sharing the pain.

Part two has already been written in rough draft form, but I was sans laptop at the time, so it went straight from my phone to my tumblr, so I just have to clean it up. This story should move quickly, probably two or three days between postings.

Disclaimer: Chucks, not mine.

"The Things We Lost in the Fire"

Dean Winchester lived a black and white life. Good or Bad. Up or Down. Human or Monster.

Save or Kill.

His whole life was a series of fractured snapshots, of Before and Afters.

Before Azazel, and after his Mother's death.

Before Sam left for Stanford, and after he came back.

Dean didn't deal well with shades of gray, with maybes and uncertainties, with monstrous human beings and all too humane monsters.

So when Dean once told Sam he measured his time in hell by before and after he got off the rack, Sam believed him.

But really, Dean measured time by the Amulet.

SupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernatural

Dean said no. That's what you have to remember. For thirty years, Dean said no.

They cut him. They burned him. They wore the faces of everyone he had ever loved. His mother, his father, Lisa, Cassie.

Sam.

But he said no. He said it over and over. Some days he said it so much that by the time they cut him down, bleeding and broken, it was the only thing left he could say.

He would curl up in a ball in the corner of his cell, rocking back and forth, mindlessly still chanting- "no-no-no-no-no' with his hand fisted over his amulet.

And wasn't that a curious thing. Dean had been tortured in every way imaginable. He'd lost limbs, and eyes. He'd been skinned.

And he could name dozens of times that some stolen-faced demon or another had ripped the thing from his neck.

But every morning he would awaken, just as whole and shining as the amulet back around his neck.

He wondered about that often. Was it real? Was it a memory?

Once, when Alistair seemed to be in a particularly chatty mood,he'd asked him about it. Dean was strung up on the rack, wearing nothing but his torn pants and his amulet.

"That thing?" Alistair had asked wryly, one eyebrow lifted in sardonic amusement.

"Humor me?" Dean gasped as blood trickled down his throat.

Indulgently, Alistair stroked Dean's blood and sweat soaked hair. "It's a part of you." He said simply.

"I don't understand." Dean managed, trying to focus, to block out the pain.

"Hell strips away your humanity. That's the point. Once you've been here a while, only the strongest parts of you are left. The parts of you that are so intrinsically true to your nature that they stick around once you've forgotten you name, your mothers face, and all the other things you thought were important while you were alive. And then you subtract love, add hate, and BOOM!" Alistair grinned as snapped his fingers. "You have a demon where once you had a human soul."

"This-" He toyed with the amulet almost lovingly, sliding it back and forth around Dean's bloody neck, "Stubborn little piece of brass represents you, and all the things you're still holding onto. Saving people. Being a Hunter. Being a good soldier, a good son. Little Sammy. All the things you went to hell in the first place for. I do love irony."

And then he made Dean scream some more.

But he still said no.

SupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernatural

Years past like life times and Dean felt old. He felt insane. He felt broke down and worn thin. And he couldn't remember the color of his mother's hair, or the timbre of his father's voice. He couldn't remember if he'd ever fallen in love, or why he was even in hell in the first place.

But at night, he'd grasp the amulet around his throat, the strangely shaped charm that had hung there for as long as he could remember and sometimes he'd get flashes of memories, of voices-

"Are monsters real?"

"Thanks Sam, I love it!"

"We're just starting to be brothers again."

"If you hurt my brother, I will KILL you-"

"We're all that's left."

And he'd hunch down in the corner of his cell, whispering to himself.

"Sam. I have a brother. His name is Sam."

SupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernaturalSupernatural

And then one day he said yes.

The word slipped out almost unconsciously, with a life and volition of it's own, and he didn't know who was more surprised, himself or his captors.

And then things were moving, moving quickly. In what seemed like just bare seconds he was standing on his own to feet and it felt fucking great, and suddenly, the knife was in his hands and that felt fucking great too.

And the rack was before him, not under him, and some other poor soul was strapped to it, and the fear in their eyes was directed at him-

And he wanted it.

God he wanted it.

"Go on." His torturers urged, all giggles and gleefully baited breaths.

But when he extended his arm, his hand shook, and his chest was burning, he was burning, and-

It was his damn necklace. Burning hot and cold and heavier than it had ever been, and it seemed to scream his long lost brother's name at him and he couldn't take it anymore.

The amulet was the last piece of the man he was.

But he wasn't that man anymore. And it was heavy.

So he took it off. With an echoing finality he dropped it, cord seeming to trickle through his fingers in obscene slow motion.

He spent the next ten years saying yes. Yes to Alistair. Yes to power and pain and vengeance. Yes to blood and screams and survival.

And he didn't awaken to the burning weight of the amulet anymore.