Amphisbaena: a snake with a head on each end; in Greek mythology, spawned from the blood of Medusa's severed head

—-—

Every one of them had been alive, once upon a time.

(Unfortunately, every one of them had also been freely, gloriously human.)

.

.

She had always loved music.

It was simply an integral part of life, for her, and everyone around her knew it. She started piano lessons when she was scarcely old enough to reach the keys; she joined the choir in junior high; when she was old enough to save up the money, she bought a guitar and taught herself to play.

Maybe, she rationalizes with herself later, it was her own damn fault. After all, she frequented the less-savory parts of town—where her few friends hung out to practice with their fledgling band…where bad things tended to happen to innocent, cheerful teenage girls.

(She never got a chance to regret walking home alone.)

It was broad daylight; she figured she was safe enough. She had her keys in her hand and held her head high, her hair untied and blowing behind her in the breeze. It had been a good day—she was in a fantastic mood—nothing could possibly go wrong.

But all of that vanished in an instant, and the pretty blonde McLain girl was never heard from again.

.

It takes her far too long to figure out what exactly is going on, when she eventually wakes up.

She is in her body, but she isn't, and she pushes against the foreignness of her own mind until someone laughs, too close too cruel too wrong. It's her voice, but it isn't, and fear so deep and so complete paralyzes her that every rational thought is all but impossible.

Pretty little girl—and that cannot possibly be her voice but it is, but it's distorted and guttural and wrong within the confines of her own head. Pretty little girl all alone with no one left to miss her—let's see how useful you'll be to me, hmm?

And she wants to scream, to rage, to be sick because she has never felt so alone in her entire life, has never been so terrified, but she can't even do that—can't even control her body enough to perform these simple, base functions necessary for survival and for sanity—and so all she can do is think and panic and hold nothing but fear and useless hatred for whatever this force is that has taken over her body.

(It's hers. It's hers. No matter what the monster insider her head tells her now, no matter what it whispers when it makes her eyes blaze black as death, no matter how it laughs to her, gloating, after it kills another innocent human being simply for the sake of murder—)

(It's her body, but everything is out of her control, and slowly, she's come to accept that she will never be saved. By anyone. After all, her parents aren't the best in the world; her friends, while they would worry when she stops showing up at school, would not go out of their way to save her life—even if they knew where she had gone in the first place, which she is certain they do not.)

Her only hope—and it is a desperate, useless hope, as the monster so gleefully informs her, for it can read her every thought—are the Winchesters, the men who the monster and its cohorts speak of with something akin to fear. Hunters, though she does not know of what, who are able to kill these monsters, who are able to stand up to them when she (and so many others—a tall, burly man with raggedy hair and a scruffy beard, a plump middle-aged lady who might have once worn a kindly smile, a little boy whose youthful features are twisted too often into something malicious and more terrifying than the rest put together) could not.

She holds onto the fleeting hope that somehow, these men will be able to save her, will rip this monster from her body and let her go home where she belongs. She hears talk of apocalypses and demons and Hell and she hates every moment of it, feels unspeakable terror as she never has in her entire life, but she holds on because there is that hope—no matter how slim—that she will be saved.

Time passes in this (her) body, though she's long lost track of the weeks and months. She feels wrong, like the skin she can still feel doesn't quite fit over her bones, like the world she can still see beyond this prison wavers and dips of its own accord before these (her) eyes.

Detachment, defense mechanism, slipping away—

(The monster laughs at her from behind her eyes, from within the brain she has no control over, not anymore, because she's only weak and only human and only a useless little girl whose only purpose is as a meatsuit and a death sentence and—)

She can no longer remember her parents' faces, can't remember her friends' smiles and the sound of a piano or a voice or a guitar crafting the music she once loved. She can't even remember her own name, sometimes, when she's pushed into the darkest corners of her own mind. She had liked it, she knows—the sound of it, the way it rolled off the tongue when spoken, the fluid lines of written English that designated themselves as her own.

(She cannot remember even this, and she thinks it might be driving her mad.)

(Or, at least, madder than she already is.)

The four of them—her and the huge man and the plump woman and the little boy—they are a unit, they are together even though they have never spoken and likely never will. They are trapped together, separate, chained by these monsters in their heads. She knows their faces better than she knows her own, by now, for the creature controlling her limbs and her voice and her eyes spends much of its time with their captors.

Sometimes, when she is especially desperate, she pretends she knew them, before. She pretends she knows what the little boy's favorite color is, pretends they played pirates together when she babysat him (neighbor? little brother?)—for he wears a T-shirt with a skull and crossbones emblazoned boldly on the front, though it is long torn and faded, and growing small for him, now, because his body still grows though it's not quite him anymore. She pretends the woman is her mother—grandmother—aunt—who baked her cookies every weekend, smiled kindly at her and allowed her to practice her guitar whenever and wherever she wanted, so long as she kept up on her schoolwork and didn't stay out too late and—

(What is schoolwork, again? What is science and mathematics and history and—? She cannot remember. All she can remember anymore is the death and hatred and rage boiling just beneath the surface—both that of the monster and of herself.)

(Sometimes, she thinks they might be bleeding together. Sometimes, she's unable to tell the difference.)

And, most often, she looks at the man—early to mid twenties, perhaps, burly and strong with once-cropped hair that has since grown long—and sees someone she might have loved (should she ever remember again what love is). She pretends she knows how his eyes look when they crinkle into a kind smile, how his arms feel wrapped around her, holding her close, safe, protected. She pretends she knows how his lips feel against hers, though she remembers no longer why such a gesture is one of goodness and happiness and life—

She cannot remember what it is like to have a brother, or a mother, or a lover, and isn't sure whether she had any in the first place, in that time before, in the time when she was only human. She cannot remember how it feels to rule her own head, cannot remember what it is like to be one of the humans that the monster that rules her body kills so easily. She cannot remember—

.

It's a day like any other, months later, when the demon (she) curses vilely inside their head, when they come upon two men while walking with the others, while planning the monsters' (their) next move to help stop (help) the apocalypse from overwhelming the world.

There are two men, and the monster knows who they are instantly, though she has never seen them before. But she knows too, now, because the demon knows and they are fluid—they are the same, or very nearly so, and now it is not just that it knows her thoughts, but she knows its every twisted musing as well. She is human no longer, and it is less a monster than she first thought (though whether she has been distorted or if she was mistaken, she has no way of knowing)—and so she knows instantly who these two men are, when they come upon each other in the dead of night.

Winchester. And once, the name might have struck a beam of hope through the darkness of her mind, but now her twisted, blackened heart only rears up in defiance, snarls as one with the monster who is a monster no longer, laughs cruelly at these men as they approach, listens to the words the monster flings at them and finds herself agreeing.

She (they) see the men's eyes flicker around, first to her and then to the boy and the woman and the man and there they linger, something like recognition flashing across their faces—something like pain, something like regret, something like those other emotions she has long since lost the ability to feel herself. But they go on, and one pulls out a wicked-looking knife and the other holds a silver blade in his hand, and she feels her body tensing in anticipation for battle, the thrill of adrenaline coursing through her (their) body.

It's over before it even begins.

The woman gets a knife to the chest and goes down shrieking, and the monster within her never gets a chance to escape. She (they) are undeterred, though—but it is not much of a battle, for her and the boy at least, because she is weak and skinny and he is barely four feet tall—they are trapped in a corner, feral and mad with rage, for they are only doing what they know to be right and now these humans—these weak, pathetic men—are hell-bent on stopping them.

They duck the knife of the smaller man and twist around him quickly, a foot shorter and grateful for the agility it lends them. The boy is not so lucky, and the knife embeds itself quickly—briefly—in his heart before Winchester turns to her, not a trace of remorse on his face even as blood taints his hands.

(He would make a good demon, she thinks, and glances to where the larger brother is grappling with her remaining comrade, his face contorted in rage and grief as Winchester eventually overpowers him, getting a grip on the blade in his hand before ramming it between his eyes.)

She is distracted by it—momentarily, only a fleeting second, but it is enough—and even as they dodge the other man's knife again easily, he pulls a bottle from his jacket, leers at them in victory, and throws it to the ground at their feet.

The world explodes in agony and fire around her—holy fire, her partner curses, shrieking his pain in ways that echo her own—and before she can form another coherent thought, before they can contract their tortured muscles and force this ruined body to retaliate, the Winchester monster is there again, and his grin is feral and murderous as he plunges the knife into her heart.

It is indescribable and endless and—

.

—and over, really, before she even realizes that this means that they have died.

She wakes (and why does she wake, because she felt the cursed blade as it slid between their ribs, as it pierced the feebly pumping heart of that damnable body) and is disoriented for a moment, because she feels weightless and wrong and empty, because she realizes quickly that the presence that has been with her for so long is either dormant or unconscious or gone, maybe it is dead because they certainly should be, after they were murdered indiscriminately by those fucking hunters, how dare they—how dare they—

She finds herself able to move her limbs of her own accord and isn't quite sure how to, not anymore, not after so long of being a passenger, a sideshow in what was once her own body. They were together—the were the same—and she cannot remember what it is to be so wholly alone, cannot remember how to function without that other presence there beside her.

She finds that she does not need to breathe, which is fortunate indeed because she isn't quite sure that she will remember to, when she is not focusing on it so closely that all other functions fall to the back of her mind.

She does not have to breathe, and does not even have to know how to walk, for with only a thought, she is upright, and moving forward though there is no ambulation involved. She is moving and as she looks down at her legs she realizes that she does not have legs at all, and in their place is a wispy, translucent tail that floats before and beside and below and behind and—

She screams—she screams like she has not since last she was indeed she and not they, but it is justified (or so she tells herself) because indeed, again, she is no longer they and the difference is unsteadying and terrifying and she is scared, God help her she is more scared than she ever remembers being—

(Some distant corner of her mind roars at her for mentioning God, for ever mentioning such a bastard as Him who would abandon His own creation to ruin—)

But she is so far beyond panic, so far beyond reason that all she can do is scream and scream and scream, and she thinks she cannot be blamed for this when, after all, there is nobody there to hear her—and there is nobody there to hear her, which only sends her further into madness, because she is so so alone and where is she and why is she here because she was so sure—

When she looks up again she is not alone, and panic overwhelms her so wholly that she lashes out without thought, and the nothing surrounding them (her) is illuminated in blue and red fire, and she sees a huge, hulking creature with green flaming hair and thick armor standing before her, its distorted features twisted in surprise.

"I know you," he says, and his voice is deep and familiar, and she looks up properly, scowling, furious for having been seen in such a state—but she recognizes him through the strangeness of the blue skin and green hair, recognizes the strong jaw and the scruff on his chin and the scraggly mane and—

She knows him but does not know what to call him, and so only gapes silently as she takes in his changed form. He is different but he is the same, and he holds his hand out, boldly, as if to help her to her feet.

Her scowl deepens and she pushes herself upright of her own power, something blue and flickering dancing at the edges of her vision though she does her best to ignore it for the moment. "I know you," he repeats, sounding almost mystified, staring at her as if she's the most interesting creature in the world. "I—"

"Where are we?" she snaps, looking around at their surroundings for the first time, and finds only a swirling mass of lime green and jet black stretching endlessly in every direction. "What—?"

"Can't remember," he mutters, and an irrational surge of hatred pours through her at the word. "I remember hunting, and Winchesters, and then—"

A hunter. That would explain, then, why the Winchesters seemed so upset by the man's presence, in those moments before the world was jerked out from beneath her. One of their own, possessed by their enemy—and she can't help but let out a cackle at the revelation, because she hates those men, with every fiber of her being, for ripping her from her comfortable existence as a tenant within her own head—

"Something funny?" he snaps, pulling her from their (her) thoughts.

"Nah," she demurs easily, smirking at the much taller creature. "Just thinking of how much that must've killed those Winchesters to destroy your meatsuit."

He laughs, then, booming and echoing deafeningly around the vast emptiness. "You should have seen his face," he agrees, his lips curling up into a terrible grin. "When he realized we'd never let them take us alive. They wanted to, I'm sure—wanted to save whoever they thought they knew…" He shakes his head, laughing outright.

She finds herself relaxing slightly, because while the body is different the entity within is still the same, or close enough—this is familiar, taking potshots at the humans they have come to despise over these long months, and she finds comfort in the normalcy of it all as she looks around again. "So what is this place, then? S'not Hell, they showed us that—nasty place—"

"Nope," he says, shrugging and glancing around himself. "Not heaven, either, because we'd never end up there. There are others, though—say they're the same as us, joined with the demons and then killed."

"There are others?" she says, suddenly lightheaded at the possibility. She finds herself moving again, moving without walking, but this time, the difference does not scare her—not with him at her side.

"Sure," he agrees, moving to keep up. "Plenty of others. Hunters don't usually give much care to the people who used to live in those meatsuits—so long as the demons are killed, it doesn't matter."

She's only half-listening, looking around with wide eyes as others slowly come into view. They are grotesque and terrifying—a tall, thin man with flaming white hair and a cruel grin—a creature made of nothing but blackness, hovering ominously to one side—what looks like a mass of roots wrapped around an entire island in this endless, distorted sky—

They are disgustingly alien, nothing like the bodies she is used to, but then, none of them are quite human anymore, are they? Not after their unions with those creatures—demons, he called them, and she supposes that he would be the one to know—stripped them of any paltry humanity they may have once had.

(Not that it was any help to them, of course. Humanity is for the weak, for the base and unfortunate and lowly, those who have not seen the glory of something more.)

"What do you remember?" he asks suddenly, towering over her and looking down curiously with a thoughtful face. "They say we become better, here, with parts of our old lives. So—"

She considers this question, despite the way that word sends rage coursing through her body yet again. Honestly, there isn't much, except the coexistence and the wonderful feeling of such power flowing through her veins. But then there is the thought of a piece of metal that once brought her such joy (just like blood and murder did, not long after); there is the thought of sounds brought together to bring pleasing melodies to her ears—there is memory of this, and somehow, it does not fill her with fury like it did moments before.

There is the music, and the hatred, and the fire, and she does not answer him—only grins a grin that is more teeth than cheer, glancing around these new surroundings again.

The other presence—the demon—is gone, but she will carry on with its mission—and as she feels the hair on her head flare up in a blue inferno of anticipation and insane rage, she finds she can't wait.

There is only the music and the hatred and the fire, and she will make sure that the humans pay for their weakness and their transgressions in blood.