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Sam's breath came in ragged bursts, the acrid stench of the Pit, of the burning flesh and ruptured bowels making the air a toxin that kills you a little more every time you had to breathe. He looked at the mangled body before him, fingers clenched around the handle of the cat of nine tails. One of the poppers, with its cruel obsidian shard, was still embedded in the flesh of the man before him.
It had taken hours, he'd fought them off as best he could, tried to protect him, the man on the rack, but there was no protection in Hell. No chance for escape, for a change of fate. It was the young man's fate to be tortured, over and over again, just as it was Sam's fate to torture him, to break him and bruise him and cut him open into a million pieces that shattered like glass.
He had tried though, so hard, not to have to do this, not to have to raise the cruel whip and look in those eyes that pardoned him.
That FORGAVE him.
And that was why it hurt, why he'd tried so hard to not harm him, because there was no animosity in that gaze, no condemnation or resentment. There was only a friend in front of him, who understood what they were being put through, what they were being forced to suffer. "Sam..." The body, what he was sure had been a corpse moments before, croaked out through a caved in zygomatic process, jaw hanging loosely on one side. "It's... it's ok Sam... you... not your... fault."
Sam wanted to scream at him to stop, to stop talking, hurting himself, hurting Sam. Those words were too pure for Hell. They shone with the force of a supernova, and he felt like he was the one on the rack, skin charring in the face of such love, such forgiveness. He walked closer, listening to the fall hitches of the whip whisper over the broken ground, shards of bone cutting into his feet as he stepped close enough to watch skin and sinew knit itself back together again.
His only consolation was that he hadn't done this, not all of it. He'd been forced to make the final blows, to kill him, once again, every day, but he hadn't done the rest. But that wasn't a comfort as it should have been, because they had been cruel, took their time, made him suffer. They'd use a flail and a skinning knife, a cork screw and an Iron Maiden mask. His body, laid before Sam in this grotesque tableau showed evidence of each and every blow and slice, recorded on unendingly healing flesh.
Reaching forward, he trailed his fingers over the man's face, wiping away the blood, helping him open his eyes. This was Andy, poor, gentle Andy. Condemned to Hell because of the blood that ran through his veins, an Abomination in the eyes of Heaven, the same as Sam. This was Andy, who after three hundred years in Hell had never once failed to willingly climb onto the rack to save Sam, even now, as the demons had finally forced Sam to be the one to torture him. This was Andy, who had died because Sam hadn't noticed, hadn't seen the wolf in their midst.
His hand dropped to Andy's, and he fought back the revulsion as his touch caused the burnt and charred skin to come away with his grasp, flaking off of Andy and onto Sam. In fact all the ash in the air, in his lung, coating his skin, it was all Andy, all his quiet, gentle pardon. And the blood on Sam's face and hands, chest and neck, all Andy's. Andy was nothing more than a tattered, mangled sacrificial goat, and Sam realized that Andy would be his damnation, because he could never live up the forgiveness in those eyes or the understanding coming from that broken mouth.
"Please, Andy... just once... don't..." But it was pointless. It was Andy's nature to forgive, just as it was his to destroy. "Tomorrow... I won't let them touch you. I'll... I'll torture you myself if I have to, but I'll make it quick." He would, he wouldn't let them drag it out as they loved to do.
The wheeze that passed Andy's lips as his lungs collapsed and caved in, regrowing far too slowly to be of use to his reanimated body, sounded grateful.
Sam cried tears, blood here in Hell, and it dropped, washing over Andy's face as Sam pressed their foreheads together. Three hundred years. Hell had broken him in three hundred years, not by its own strength or horror, but by the quiet pardon of a lost and tortured soul.