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A soul should have all the power of a nuclear bomb, capable of flattening cities to ash and destroying forces divine in nature, alight with enough raw force to outshine a star gone supernova, blazing in white fire. Souls had power, strength, glory, as potent as angelic grace, and luckily for all, humans had no way to tap into the power within themselves, otherwise their bloody wars would have long ago split the Earth in half, and all the galaxies and all the alternate universes and all the planes of existence--Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Empty, and everything in between--would tremble as the planet, or at least a version of it, exploded.
And yet, this soul had none of that power radiating off of it. It had long since shattered apart, decimating its glow, yet it still pulsed, flickering, like a lightbulb when all the glass is broken away, but enough of the inner mechanisms are intact enough for it to continue to pump out a weak, stuttering light, a fluttering heartbeat that should, at any second, wink out.
If Death had ever in his life felt pity, he’d forgotten it so long ago that he forgot he forgot. And yet, some strange feeling stirred in him when he lifted this broken soul from the ground. Pity? Perhaps. But he did not need to feel, he only needed to act.
Taking the soul had been easy enough. The Cage at the very core of Hell had been made to hold an archangel, all its wards and bindings specific to that particular breed of power. Death had been bound to the Cage, once, with a ring he willingly surrendered while his colleagues fought to the bloody end to cling to their own shackles, solely because they could not see the bigger picture, did not understand the universe beyond the minuscule parts they played in it.
So Death turned his back on the role destined for him, gave his ring away, and allowed the events to play out. He’d done his part, and would only wait.
The Winchester brothers succeeded, as he suspected they would, and Sam Winchester overcame possession long enough to fall right into the Cage, sealing himself away for all eternity with two archangels, and his half-brother. A noble sacrifice, and if Death felt pity, he would pity the boy for all of the suffering he would endure.
But his suffering, of course, had been necessary, or all life would end in a destructive apocalypse.
All remained as it should be for a time until the fallen angel Castiel interfered to rescue yet another Winchester from Perdition, diving into the depths of Hell on charred wings as a falcon plummets from the skies and down to the Earth to seize its prey.
Castiel slipped between the bars of the Cage and grabbed Sam Winchester’s body, but failed to return with his soul. Death didn’t know or need to know why. Perhaps he’d decided the body was more important, or perhaps he’d got caught in a scuffle and had to drop the soul to escape. The ‘why’ didn’t matter, until Dean Winchester came calling, barely masking his pleading as he tried in desperation to save the brother he knew would lose his body soon enough without intervention, because a soulless man is an evil man, and evil men tend to end up butchered without remorse.
Death supposed that he could repay the Winchester brothers for making his job easier; if the majority of the world were wiped out, his job would become incredibly difficult, trying to manage so many souls, even with an army of reapers.
Some would come willingly, but many wouldn’t, and despairing, confused ghosts would clog the veil.
So Death agreed to help and slipped into Hell, familiar with all its passages and inner workings, unaffected by the aching screams of souls he’d sent to this place, in some part responsible for their damnation. He ignored the squelching of blood slick on the floor, the rotting stench of sulfur and innards, and the sticky puddles of various bodily fluids dripping in an intermittent rhythm onto the ground.
Some souls and demons lifted their heads to look at him, but none spoke to him or tried to hold him back. Demons backed away, with fear or distaste or reverence in their eyes, parting like the Red Sea to allow him the quickest, easiest passage to the Cage.
It took Death no effort to reach through the bars and grasp one of two souls in the Cage. The other, Adam Milligan, had not earned angelic wrath, having done exactly what was asked of him despite the clear dangers, and as a reward for obedience, Death knew the archangel Michael would protect him, but Sam’s soul… Death had to peel it off the sticky ground, scraping up its remnants with his fingernails before pulling the ragged mess of a soul away, dull and flickering, a candle at the end of its wick.
He ignored shouts and swears of fury. He ignored blows aimed at him that felt like mere smacks from an infant throwing a tantrum. He ignored the way the soul screamed and wailed as he touched it, ablaze with agony flaring up each time Death so much as gestured at it; his hands hovered above the soul, and it screeched till its throat bled crimson at just the idea of touch, then screamed twice as hard when that touch arrived.
Death simply walked away from the roaring angels, carrying the soul in both hands, cradling it as if it were as fragile as glass, and it probably was.
As he left the Cage, Death took a closer look at the soul beyond its light. To human eyes, that’s all a soul looked like, just a ball of white light (though this one had been tinted red) but to the eyes of a being capable of seeing souls, like an angel or reaper, every soul took on a unique shape, similar enough to its own body, a vague humanoid shape, with its own details and features, like fingerprints and folds and freckles, and no two souls looked alike, in the same way that no snowflakes or zebra stripes or jaguar spots resembled one another exactly.
Sam’s soul didn’t look like a person. All of its identifying markings, all of its form, all of its uniqueness had been stripped away, peeled aside to reveal a raw bundle of nerves, oozing crimson, twisted into the outline of a body but not much more, and coiled so tight in on itself that it shook.
Trembling, Death realized, it’s trembling.
He held the soul a little closer. Maybe that would provide it the illusion of comfort as Death carried it out of Hell. If he looked at the soul from a humanoid perspective, it resembled a child, too weak to lift its head.
Even so, he felt its grasp as it tried to cling to him, though it had no fingers to hold on with, so desperate to be held, even though every touch burned it with electrifying pain.
Death had seen shattered souls before, but never one so thoroughly ripped apart.
This soul had been flayed to near nothing, only a whisper of what it had once been, no more than nerves, to make sure it could still feel because without nerves, it couldn’t feel pain. The soul’s nerves being so exposed left it in a cruel position of vulnerability, the kind of vulnerability worse than naked or wounded or dead, because even a corpse, with its rigor mortis, had some stability and structure till its bones crumbled to dust.
But Sam Winchester’s soul had none of that. No skin, no meat, no skeleton, no way to hide or protect itself, so Death protected it instead.
When Death stepped out of Hell, he felt the soul flinch in his grasp. He felt its shaking increase. Sobbing, he realized. In relief or fear, Death could not say. He held the soul even tighter, keeping a firm grip on its bloody coils, as weak as water, in danger of slipping through his fingers, wet and fluid and too thin to grip.
Death transferred the soul to a carrying case, where he could transport it with no fear of dropping it. Though to be dropped would be the least of this soul’s suffering. He could see the scars on it, the peeling marks of black burns, dark blotches bruising its light, leaking lacerations that would never heal, all the evidence of whipping and chaining and beating and peeling and drowning. He peered deeper into the soul, accessing its memories, and glimpsed into some of the past few years of its life, and Death did not think he would ever forget those screams, more agonized and desperate than any other soul he’d heard.
He watched through one particular memory, where Sam Winchester had been allowed to have his human form back so his tormentors could watch him crawl on bare knees scraped to the bone on rough ground and clasp his hands above his head as he lowered his face to the floor to plead for mercy that never came when a hand plunged into his back to rip out his own spine, and then that spine became a whip, bones splitting his flesh apart.
If any soul needed a wall to block its memories, this one did. If Sam Winchester were to ever remember his centuries in the Cage, whatever remained of him would crumble to ash.
Sam would end up caught in a perpetual flashback, only knowing his fear and pain, oblivious to the real world around him, or maybe he’d notice the real world, but he’d be stuck too deep in his own memories to sleep or eat or think.
To return Sam Winchester’s soul was not without risk.
The poor man could survive his traumatic torture, only to unravel in the aftermath, and then there would truly be nothing left of him. Though maybe that would be merciful.
Death set his thoughts aside as he arrived in a town called Sioux Falls and entered the home of Bobby Singer, where he delivered the soul to Dean Winchester, who’d been forced to chain up his own brother’s body on a cot in the middle of a warded panic room. Death barely glanced into those empty eyes, void of any light or life, the most twisted form of undeath, where the body required none of life’s necessities, no sleep or warmth or food or companionship, merely a shell.
But before he could fill up the husk, Death had to ensure the possibility of safety for Sam Winchester, because he had never and would never know true safety.
He built up a wall within Sam’s soul, constructing it piece by piece, brick by brick, each particle a necessity, every atom used to conceal a memory. The wall enclosed the soul’s mind in an armor to protect it from itself. Dean Winchester received specific instructions not to chip away at that wall or let Sam scratch the inevitable itch in his mind, because if just one shred of the wall cracked, it could all crumble like a castle of cards and every memory would erupt into the forefront of his thoughts at once with all the intensity of when they first happened.
Ignoring the enraged cries of Sam’s body, Death lifted Sam’s soul from its carrying case. Dean had the good fortune of being unable to see souls beyond a ball of white light, incapable of even comprehending the colors and patterns inside of it.
That meant he didn’t have to see the physical marks of his brother’s suffering.
Death placed the soul back inside its body, threading Sam Winchester back together, ragged surgical stitches to stretch the remnants of his soul out to fill up his body. The soul trembled and cried at every touch, and Dean Winchester had no idea, but Death knew. Death saw every micro-flinch, heard every weeping whimper, and an odd feeling twinged deep within him.
Perhaps Death could feel pity after all.