blood-spattered angel

[The ironic part about the appearance of the door is that really, nothing changes. Oh, the intensity level goes up but it has been for months, and everyone is acting the same as they always have, matched to their surroundings. Wardens are lying and making threats and using inmates to vent their difficulties, their boredom, their frustration; inmates are retaliating however they can, and paying the price amongst themselves more than anything.

In short, Bea's announcement is not really surprising, and neither are the screams echoing down the hallway as Dean moves from one maintenance assignment to another. He hesitates, because he always does, letting the cries sink into the wounds they reopen around his heart, remembering a time when this wasn't commonplace, when the sound of it would bring him running and already clicking the safety off his Colt.

Now, he listens for who it is, and if he's likely to be able to do anything at all. If it will be worth being late to his next site. And then he recognizes the voice.

Dean closes his eyes, because he knows at once what has happened, in general if not the specifics: the bloody, feral side of him this place has brought out sings with satisfaction, and tells him to just keep walking. He has an alibi. She can't punish him for doing his job to the letter she herself has set for him. She deserves it.

It's that thought, though, and the twisting, nauseous swell that tightens his chest and gut that makes him adjust his course, moving stiffly but unerring to the door. This is why he'll never know peace: she deserves it, she knew the consequences of this place when she chose to stay, but he loves her still and it is not his place to judge. He can't start deciding who deserves what. It doesn't even occur to him to call one of her guard dogs: he tries the handle on the door and, when it's locked, steps back to what he knows from experience is the perfect distance.]

Kiddo! [He kicks the door, shouts as it jars his back, but doesn't pause in steadying himself, lining up another shot. Beatrix is only a step away from a warden herself. She proves it every day.] Stop! Stop!

[The second kick splinters the frame, and he nearly topples inward along with the suddenly open door. But because this is the Barge, he closes it behind him - his razor already in his hand as he looks over the scene.]

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[When the blood begins to flow Beatrix slows down. They have no reason to hurry, after all, and there is a sense of peaceful correctness that comes as she slowly works on disassembling Anya's body. The screams, whimpers, and pleading that pours forth from her mouth are not of interest to her; mercy has never had any place on this Barge, and never will. She breaks a finger, twists it so the bones will have to each be set back in place; it doesn't even look like a digit anymore by the time she's finished.]

Is that all you have to say?

[Then there's the pounding on the door, the sound of Winchester yelling at her to leave Anya alone, and Beatrix freezes out of pure disbelief. Anya, broken and bloodied and suffering not nearly as much as the inmates she lords her power over, is about as much cause for alarm as Cecil tripping over a shoelace, and she does not understand his concern.]

Have you gone insane, Winchester? [She digs her nails into Anya's eyeball, again, slow. Her fingertips are rough as she squeezes, waiting for the vitreous humor to ooze out of it while it remains in the socket.] Go be a hero for the people who need to be saved!

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[It's all thin whines and strained whimpers now, her breath too short and hitching to sustain further screams, the noise in her throat high and wriggling. She pants, so shallow, trembles, wants more than anything for him to save her.

Almost anything.

She doesn't beg, any more. She doesn't struggle. She's a mess, physically and mentally - just like Abigail only yesterday, wrecked but unprotesting, not even bothering to beg in the argument over her own torment. Unlike Abigail, Anya can't quite meet his eyes.]

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[Not for the first time, not for the last, he wishes he had his gun. This would be simple if it was the ivory handle of his Colt warm in his hand now and not such a thin, delicate blade, sharper than anything else he's ever owned but so precise. He steps closer, glancing at Anya, but only enough to confirm she's alive and together enough to move if he can get to her before Beatrix kills her.

The damage itself doesn't much matter. The song remains the same, the details fading from one to the other, and the only part of him that's still queasy after all his time here is deeply hidden. His teeth flash, his lip curls - he talks loud enough to drown out the whimpering, both to be heard and for his own benefit.]

I'm not here to talk about heroes. I'm not here to talk about who's insane.

Get your hands off her, and go find some other bones to break. This one's mine.

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[There is no fear in Beatrix's eyes as she looks at Dean; they're too cold and unfeeling for something so human as that emotion. She's been pushed beyond the brink of fearing pain or death anymore, and nothing about him worries her beyond his sympathy for Anya.

So she sighs, pulls her fingers from Anya's eye-socket, and wipes the blood on the girl's already-stained face and hair. She takes one step to the side, Anya's knife in her left hand, and gestures toward her with her right.]

I'll give her to you under one condition. Let me see you finish her.

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[Something in Dean relaxes as Beatrix moves away from her. Something else tenses.

Dean himself doesn't move, except to take another step forward, better placing himself to step between the two women if he deems it necessary. Like Beatrix, he doesn't fear her, he doesn't fear anything she can do to him; they avoid each other, for the most part, and this is exactly why. She's excitable. Volatile. Too far, he thinks, gone for him to reach. They were never close anyway.

She's going to make one messy warden, he thinks, staring back at her. Then he glances down at Anya, as though considering.

There it is again. The thin, dark tear in him that started before he even got here, notably widened only to him, demands he do exactly that. Or maybe not. Maybe let her linger, let her marinate a bit in the things other people can do to her just because she can't stop them. Like Abigail. He wants it. He wants it badly.

His grip tightens on the razor, and he breathes in.]

...Nah. [He shoves everything - everything - back like this place has taught him, and swings his weighted fist as hard as he can for Beatrix instead.]

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[It's a split-second reaction; she had stayed still as Dean stepped between Anya and her, although her suspicions of his ill intentions grew the closer he got. Perhaps that's why she's prepared when he swings the punch, ducking away from his fist with a birdlike agility.

And this is where she hesitates, trying to weave behind him. Dean is foolhardy, and confused, and yes, perhaps weak enough to crack, but she's never had any ill will toward him. He's still an inmate, still technically on her side.

She grips the knife tighter, blood oozing from between her fingers as she clenches her fist around the hilt.]

You're not the one I want to hurt.

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[Dean catches himself from his over-correction, but he doesn't follow her; instead he digs in his heels, so to speak, where he comes to stand more solidly between Beatrix and Anya. He pants out a breath, his back on fire, and the glare he levels on her is the only expression he has left to him that won't end with him being eaten alive in this place. Beatrix makes it easy to make the decision he's made, much easier than if he'd walked into this room and found Jones or de Carabas standing over his warden.

His warden.

He shakes his head and doesn't advance.]

We're on the same page. Just skedaddle, Kiddo. And try not to graduate while you're at it.

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[That almost gets her, that accusation, that barb, and for just a second her knife hand twitches. She fights to keep it still, inhales slowly to keep her heart rate down.]

You know it's what she deserves. You know she'd love to do worse to you. You know she should die.

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[He sees the twitch. He's waiting for it, quite frankly, unflinching. He doesn't look away from her face.]

Maybe. But I know that it's not in me to do it, and as long as it's not, I'm not like them.

What about you?

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I kill wardens. If I ever become one, I'm killing myself.

[Suicide on board may not stick, but even the Admiral will have some difficulty bringing her back if she throws herself off the deck.]

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Very well thought out.

[He was a career smartass, once. It shows through, faint and faded, in the way the corner of his mouth curls.]

Go on. Shoo.

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Better thought out than what you're doing.

[It warrants an eyeroll, although not a very irritated one. That was almost a good joke, and God knows she could use one. As ridiculous as this "rescue" was, it wasn't funny.]

I said I didn't want you hurt. Why should I let you hurt yourself?

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Because darlin', I'm not the one with eyejuice on my hands. [A pause. The tilt of his head to make an allowance.] This time.

[This is taking too long. Dean backs a step without looking away from Beatrix, addressing Anya.]

You ready to blow this joint, princess? Or you wanna stick around for the second act?

[It's a rhetorical question. He steps back until he's beside her, and goes into a somewhat unbalanced crouch, his open hand searching for her unbroken wrist.]

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[This is, she thinks, one of the worst things she will ever do. It's certainly one of the hardest. She wants to be his princess so badly she can taste it through the swelter of blood and the pall of pain throbbing from her eye socket. She tries to breathe, spits blood. Despite her hoarseness, she does her best to convey low, raspy contempt.]

You're...fucking soft, Dean.

Edited Date: 2013-10-28 03:29 pm (UTC)

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[That is what Dean wanted to save? She all but leaps on Anya, forcing the knife into the corner of her jaw to pop it out of joint. She doesn't care what he does now, he has to see the futility in what he's doing, and all that matters is teaching the piece of human shit on the table exactly what she is.

Besides, he's not going to kill her. It wouldn't be self-defense, it wouldn't even be defense of anyone who deserved to be saved. It would be outright murder because he wanted her to die, and nothing separates him from her if he chooses that action.]

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[A few years ago, when they were both younger, what Anya says may have shocked him enough to get a visible reaction; he would have been hurt, and because everything back then transmitted instantly into anger, he would have been angry. He's calmer overall, now, and it's not exactly a surprise, not for this place and its wardens, he's certainly been called soft before. He's been called that by Anya, too, though not with this kind of venom, not with her blood pooling under her and him trying to help her.

He's just shocked enough - and the anger, that hasn't gone anywhere, but rather tempered and settled - that Beatrix gets the jump on him even with his position between them. It's terrible timing, overriding his attempt to answer, joke, stay calm and diffuse the hurt - also, apparently, still present - and instead dumping adrenaline on top of his temper.

He knows. He knows he's soft. He's trying, goddammit. Bea lunges and there's the flash of the knife and Dean doesn't even think about it, he just lashes out for her hand, knocking it from Anya's face and down into her shoulder instead. He snarls, wordless and guttural, and throws himself at Beatrix, his own razor flashing in his hand for any part of her he can reach.

Maybe he won't kill her, but he will certainly make someone feel something.]

I said back the fuck off!

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[It's what she wanted: to force Dean into a corner, to force him to choose between killing a fellow inmate, an attacker whose anger is - in Anya's view - wholly justified, and walking away from the torture of a helpless (not innocent, but now, in this moment, helpless) victim. But he's still just stalling, still trying to find a way through, moment by moment, still hurting almost as much as he helps. But moment to moment, if you never look over the edge at the awful spiral of extrapolated time, doing the best he can.

It's heroic and stupid and pointless; she is afraid and frustrated and she hurts, adrenaline and frantic, futile endorphins sanding the keen edges off her thoughts. The sharp plunge in her shoulder is almost a relief, a distraction from the more sensitive nerves of her mangled hand.]

I hate you.

[Gasped, but she'd scream it if she could, no calculated contempt now, just a raw, half-hysterical tantrum. Her remaining eye isn't looking at Bea.]

I hate you I hate you I hate you!

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[The razor slices through the back of her wrist, blood welling up from the gash, and the deceptive delicacy of the weapon means she doesn't even notice the pain for a few seconds, figures the blood on her hands is from Anya. When the sting from the cut kicks in she's already ripped the knife back out and fisted her hand around it, slamming her fist into Anya's mouth, aiming for a target half a foot behind her teeth.

Then there's singeing pain across her back from another slash and she growls, throwing her weight forward onto the girl in order to kick back hard against him.]

And I said, only if you finish her off.

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[The ragged pain in her voice rakes across Dean's resolve, tearing and ripping where no knife can reach, far more effectively. Stone cold sober, he'd roll his eyes and swallow it back down; now, though, it rouses him to a fever pitch of anger, white hot and powerful, too powerful to ignore.]

Stop! [Bea's foot connects and takes the breath from him before he can follow up, but he's taken his fair share of beatings, too; it doesn't faze him, and he abandons the razor to try for a hold on her neck, using his greater height and weight to keep himself in close.

The demons around him now wield all manner of sophisticated weaponry, but Dean has ever and always been first and foremost a bruiser, a brawler. He'll pry her off Anya forcefully if he can, even still dragging in painful breaths, his temper gone so high that his face has frozen itself out.]

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[Beatrix's focus isn't on him. She's aiming for Anya's mouth, punching repeatedly with hands as patient and heavy as sledgehammers. She's waiting for the sound of bone breaking, the low gurgle of blood bubbling down her throat and into her lungs. But more than that -

Before she can shatter her jaw Dean wrenches an arm around her neck and pulls her back, and though she stabs the knife back into Anya's shoulder and holds tight to it as he drags her away, she doesn't resist.]

Fine! Fine. The cunt's all yours.

Just remember, the next time she tortures you, that it didn't have to be you in pain.

[If he wants her so badly, let him have her. At least she's stopped Anya's mouth for awhile, and given the rotten sadist a taste of what she deserved.

She's got three of the girl's front teeth held in her fist.]

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[I hate you I hate you I hate you

Dean has run out of patience, and when Bea comes away with him, he doesn't just drag her off. He digs his fingers into her shoulder, forearm across her throat, and throws her away despite the shout of pain it brings out of him.

He doesn't really care how she lands. He's not a nice person. He's not that soft.]

Shut your crazy-ass mouth! You're fucking insane. [He snaps the order, voice cold enough to burn, and then rounds on Anya.

This time he doesn't ask her anything, and he doesn't reach for her good hand. He closes his grip on the nearest part of her and hauls her unceremoniously - efficiently, not carefully - so that most of her weight is on his shoulders.]

Come on.

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