Fic: Onuava, 4/4
[ Part 3]
They wandered for a long time, treading leaves and dirt for hours just because they could, because even the insipid, polluted air of Purgatory's forests was something new and glorious to their ashen lungs, the miles of thick foliage gleaming like freedom in front of their eyes.
It was still a cage-just a wider arena, but the muscles in Dean's legs were joyful, burning happily with the old-faithful stretch.
He lead them down ribbons of meandering, weathered tracks, pausing every so often to check on Castiel and to touch the soil.
When the dry earth grew wet, muddied at the edges, Dean veered them off into the trees and the quiet babbling of water trickled at his ears, the most amazing sound.
Castiel declared the water safe and they bathed themselves and their clothes quickly and efficiently, unwilling to be caught vulnerable again.
The river ran clear and silver around their hips, tears of the red earth, weeping, bleeding into bellows; loud, roily carols.
It spilled over Castiel's body, illuminating him in soft whites and pale blues, a canvas painted into a mirage of fragility, beautiful in the false-moonlight.
They stepped from the water when they were clean and wrinkly, baptised, and when Castiel suggested they make camp near the bank it didn't take much coaxing for Dean to agree.
Castiel needed to rest. His grace was weakened, depleted by the sudden discharge of stifled energy and never in the best state to begin with.
Neither of them wanted to push it-they had no idea how long his fragile reserves would last and the extra bulk Castiel carried with him wasn't helping any.
Dean wanted him settled and warm, recuperating.
He set a fire.
Castiel had frowned, disapproval knotting his brow, but he didn't say anything.
Smoke and light were beacons in this place, a shrill flare bursting into the onyx sky and screaming look, I'm here, come and eat me!
They'd adapted quickly when they'd first gotten here, establishing rules and sticking to them like marines-one of the most important of them being “no fires”.
They'd gotten caught anyway.
This time Dean was vigilant, hyper-aware of every snap of a branch, every crick of a stumbling stone, every light piercing the thick fog, his hand coiled tight around the firm metal of an angel's blade.
All the fanged nasties with a meal ticket could try their luck at him for all the good it would do.
Nothing was getting to his mate.
Dean sighed, blinking dust from his eyes.
He shuffled his weight to the centre, casting a look back at where Castiel was curled up near the fire, wrapped up in the animal hides and watching the dark patches of moisture fade from his trench coat.
He had to stop thinking of Castiel like that.
Mate.
It was a word planted and birthed by an invasion of artificial chemicals and hormones, a word designed to make him something less than human, something hungry and vicious and animal.
A word he couldn't shake.
Castiel had assured him the Lilu's spell had been purged from their bodies, the corruption of the heat and the rut obliterated in a single touch of grace.
Their bodies, their minds were their own again and they didn't have to worry about a fever made of lust striking them down and making animals of them every few hours.
He shouldn't still have been having these thoughts, these rumbling basal urges that growled commands that he protect, provide, keep his mate safe at all costs.
Dean didn't know how to voice his worries but they weren't the only elephant in Purgatory anyway.
Dean had itched and ached to know about their bodies and the changes that had been stitched into their biology, to know if they were healing, if they'd go back to normal.
Castiel had cautiously admitted he wasn't sure what the effects of reversing the changes would be, if it could damage the baby or make it impossible to deliver safely without the necessary adjustments.
If his body would fight and struggle to expel the invader, a foreign parasite leeching off his being.
Dean's had stomach recoiled, twisting into foul clenches but it made sense; Castiel's vessel was never equipped to carry a kid and taking away what was enabling it to could be a disaster, but…
What did that have to do with Dean?
It felt selfish and ugly and Dean's cheeks had heated in shame at the thought.
He should have wanted to stick this out with Cas, to suffer right alongside him, but a quiet, ragged part of him wanted his body back, wanted these deformed, misshapen defects gone from his skin.
How could he be his own man again when a demon's brand was woven like a manacle into his flesh?
He'd opened his mouth to ask, but Castiel's down-turned eyes and flushed cheeks told Dean all he needed to know.
Castiel just didn't have the juice left in him to do it.
Dean had blinked at him for a moment, then he'd swallowed, flexed his jaw and moved on.
There was no sense in putting this on Cas and his willingness to accept the blame for anything that went wrong in the world, in making him think this was his fault as well.
He'd done what he could and Dean would deal with the rest.
He had no other choice.
Castiel looked up at him, his lips tugging up slightly, eyes clear for once. Dean smiled back.
“You okay over there?”
Dean watched Castiel's gaze flicker to the starless sky, sweeping over the muggy hues and cording spirals of mist almost peacefully, like he could easily be counting clouds on a hot day.
“Yes.”
Dean felt something in him soften, unwind.
Following suit, he tipped his head back slightly and filled his lungs with free air, blinking up at the night, but it wasn't the dense, pulsating black he remembered from before.
It was lighter, somehow, more of an early morning grey than anything else, a slate ceiling mottled with flecks of bruised purples and needling into a deep, deep blue.
Dean frowned.
He didn't know whether to be unsettled or not.
His eyes found Castiel's face again, watching a pink slip of tongue curling over his lips, wetting the cracks and the peace from a moment ago had been replaced by confusion etched in little lines between his eyebrows.
Dean wondered if he was noticing the sky as well.
He didn't have time to wonder too long though. There was a crunch of leaves, as loud as a gunshot and Dean was whirling around, his body steeled to fight.
A man stood under the shroud of trees opposite their camp, willowy and sharp, crouching himself into angles, a desperate animal.
His skin was rotten, hanging in decaying sags off his bones and as he neared, Dean could see long, bony needles protruding from its wrist. Wraith.
It growled, brown teeth bared and Dean tightened his grip on the blade, but before he could attack, it stilled. Silenced.
Its yellowed, anaemic eyes were round, huge, stricken things and they were looking right past Dean.
Honed in on Castiel.
“Matka,” it whispered.
Dean saw its head roll to the floor before he even heard the crunch of bone.
Its body spasmed then collapsed, the gleam of some kind of axe embedded in a tree behind it the only clue of what just happened.
Dean's spun around, alarms ringing livid and coppery in his skull.
Another man, this time bulkier, stepped forward slowly, hands splayed out at his sides; placating.
His posture was tentative, guarded, as though he hadn't just decapitated a monster from fifteen feet away. Deceptive, then.
Dean straightened up.
“Who the hell are you?” His voice was low, dangerous, a sharp demand rumbling from his chest.
He held the angel blade out at an angle, hearing Castiel rustle to his feet behind him, a solid line of defence.
The guy held his hands up.
“Someone whose best interests happen to align with yours.”
The stranger’s eyes fell on Castiel, sloping into something indecipherable before he shook his head and whatever it was disappeared again, like it had never been there to begin with.
“That right?” Dean said, raising the sword a fraction, “Your interests happen to involve sitting on this?”
The man snorted, his head tilting forward in concession to something. Hopefully not assplay.
“Name's Benny,” he said, his tone mollifying.
His gaze skipped to the left, going glassy for a beat as he tilted an ear to the air. He cleared his throat and tugged at the front of his jacket, standing straighter.
“And I'd love to stand around and chit chat, but it's not safe here. We have to leave.”
Dean glanced at Castiel, feeling him step closer, a warmth at his back. He arched his brow, eyes dark with caution as they snapped back to Benny.
“Yeah, not gonna happen. How about you get on your way before you end up like your friend here.” Dean said, clicking his tongue. “I hear karma's a bitch.”
Benny huffed a laugh, shaking his head.
“I wouldn't trust me either, chief,” he said. He stepped over the corpse to get to the tree and yanked his axe out of the bark in one swift pull.
Dean stiffened, tension creeping up his spine, waiting for this to go south.
Benny glanced back at him, tossing the weapon into his other hand smoothly and sheathing it in a MacGyvered holster.
“You can't trust nobody 'round here. And I ain't your kind,” he said, his shoulders squaring as he surveyed the forest, an edge trickling into his voice.
“But we have to move. They already sense you.”
“The fuck are you talking abo-”
“The vampire is right,” Castiel said gruffly, stepping forward.
Dean felt something icy spike through him for a startled second at the declaration, his eyes hardening as they skirted back to Benny.
Once upon a time, he'd been a vampire too and he knew how they thought, what drove them to act and it sure as Hell wasn't lurking around in the woods to help passing strangers out of the kindest of their cold, undead hearts.
Benny
let out a puff of air that sounded all too exasperated and looked off to the side, his arms folding.
Dean's eyes narrowed but Castiel was twitching next to him, staring out at the India-ink of the forest with the same alertness in his eyes that Benny had, a hand splayed protectively over his belly in a spray of fingers.
“Something's coming,” Castiel said, his eyes flicking to Dean's in confirmation. “A lot of somethings.”
Dean swallowed against his heartbeat, blood rushing to his limbs in a dizzying torrent, ready to grab Cas and bolt.
Benny nodded once, cordially, and held out his arm towards the trees.
“I got a safe place,” he said, pivoting on his foot impatiently, able to hear something Dean couldn't, “But we need to be quick about getting there. I'm not looking to get followed.”
Dean straightened his back, his chin lifting slightly.
“How're we supposed to buy this isn't a trap?”
Benny groaned, giving Dean a look like he was the source of everything annoying in the world before he let out a long sigh.
“I suppose y'can't. But we all know a vampire can't put up much of a fight against what the little one here is.” Benny said, pulling an invisible cap towards Castiel almost like a sign of respect, or a display of condescension.
Dean bristled; Castiel wasn't even little.
“More to the point, I'm not wasting my air debating it. It's not safe here.” Benny said again, but this time he turned and started off towards the mossy trees, calling over his shoulder.
“Follow me if you want.”
Dean locked eyes with Castiel, lifting a brow in silent question.
He wasn't about to trust some random vamp just because he'd woken up and decided he wanted to play Good Samaritan today but they couldn't stay here, that much was obvious.
Castiel glanced at Benny's retreating form and he nodded once before scurrying off to gather their clothes and the few trinkets they'd swiped from the cave.
Dean sighed, rubbing a hand through his hair before calling after Benny.
“You'll still be blinking when your head hits the ground if you're lying to me.”
A loud, hearty laugh rumbled through the whirring quiet, an odd warmth to it.
“I don't doubt it.”
Dean huffed and stalked over to help Castiel, yanking on half-damp clothes and kicking dirt over the fire.
He felt uneasy, tense, too-tightly stitched together.
He didn't like this one bit.
Castiel's hand caught his wrist and swept down to lace their fingers together, squeezing reassuringly.
Dean looked down at their locked hands, a small smile on his lips, wondering when Castiel got to be so good at comforting, so human, especially when they'd spent the past few, withered months as creatures not even close.
He tightened his fingers around Castiel's briefly before pressing a quick kiss to his forehead and taking the weight of the fur bundle Castiel had balled up all their things into.
“So,” Dean said, tucking Cas close, “feel like an interview with a vampire?”
Castiel scowled at him in a way that meant he was entirely unimpressed with Dean making references he didn't understand, his lips down-turned.
Dean snickered, a smile coming easier to his mouth than it had in a long time, their banter warming his chest.
He squeezed Castiel's fingers once more and they stepped forward together, begrudgingly following Benny off up a hill and into the belly of the beast.
◊
They walked hard, the terrain harsher in some parts than others.
Dean fretted his fair share of fretting over the strain on Castiel and dodged Benny's snarky comments, but the path didn't go on for too long.
Purgatory was a godless land and Dean was walking with living proof of the Heavenly Father's abandonment, so instead he thanked the ground, sang its praises for not taking them hours into the distance.
His amiability was naturally short lived.
They neared a building, a black silhouette in the fog and Benny its gatekeeper, looking over his shoulder for lurking nasties as they stepped toward the threshold.
Dean felt his insides churn.
A cabin, a twin of the shacks and houses Dean had avoided that first month, learning quickly about the salivating, hungry jaws that waited inside.
Spider webs eager for the fly, and Benny had brought them here.
“The hell are you doing?” Dean hissed, stretching an arm across Benny's broad chest, holding him back, wildfire in his glare.
“We are not going in there.”
Benny sighed, long suffering, and shoved Dean's hand out of his way, shifting forward.
“It's safe,” he said, rolling his eyes at the first stuttered sound of Dean's protests, cutting them off.
“Look, I'll go in first. Check for monsters. Maybe later I can check under your bed?”
Dean really wanted to decide whether he liked this guy or not.
For now he settled on fervently distrusting him, just so he could say 'I told you so' when this inevitably went belly up.
Benny dug something-a stone?-out of his jacket and pressed it carefully against the dried, flaking pattern of some kind of sigil painted on the wooden door.
It spat out a glare of light, brief and woeful, and then Benny was pushing it open.
The door groaned, a high-wire sound that had Dean's fingers itching for a shotgun and some salt rounds but when Benny stepped inside… nothing.
No gnashing walls or fanged, gaping maws yawning in the floorboards and waiting to swallow them down. Not even any blood.
Just a normal little hut with normal, if sparse, interior. Just a fireplace, some crooked chairs and a few wooden bowls.
Dean almost would have preferred a death trap. Normalcy in Purgatory was a hell of a lot creepier.
Looking over his shoulder, and no doubt seeing the screwed up look of incredulity on Dean's face, Benny snorted.
“See? No monsters,” he said, leaving the door open as he shuffled further inside, “Things are different now.”
Dean edged into the cabin, the tendons in his neck stiff and pulsing, Castiel falling into place behind him.
He glanced around, alert and cautious, expecting something to jump out at him or snap at his ankles, waiting for the floor to give way into a bottomless pit under his feet, something.
Benny watched Dean with mirth in his eyes as he swept the room, but he could smell no putrid sulphur and no rotting flesh, could find nothing that told him danger was skulking around.
Castiel found Dean's eyes and nodded at him, and Dean felt himself relax somewhat, his shoulders sloping into a softer arc as he put down the makeshift fur sack.
“Different how?” he asked eventually, hearing Castiel shut the door behind them.
Benny ambled around the room with a cultivated familiarity, pouring liquid from some kind of container into the pot above the fireplace and bending down to start a flame.
He glanced back at Dean, lifting an eyebrow.
“You not seen the sky out there?” he said, striking sticks in the hearth, pausing to shake his head.
“I've been here a long time, brother and I can tell you, never once have I seen a lick of light in them woods.”
Dean frowned, a weight fraying on its strings in his chest. Change in Purgatory was nothing good, he'd learned that lesson hard and long, burned it into his skin.
Benny sawed away at his drill, letting out a deep rumble of satisfaction when it started to smoke.
He sighed, squinting up at the simple square window, watching grey fog tap at the frame and when he spoke again, his voice was slimmer, solemn.
“Something's changing out there. Purgatory's waking up, stirring to see the mother.”
Dean felt confusion spiral in his skull, the hairs on the back of his neck peeking up as dread fiddled in his veins.
He turned
his head towards Castiel, finding him staring at Benny with a blank expression, a pale white swallowing the colour from his cheeks.
Benny blew and bated his coal until it spat out embers and when flame reached up for his tinder, he stood, triumphant, and span around to face Dean.
“Hope you boys like tea,” he said, picking out dried leaves from his pockets and arranging them into the bowls, the most fucked up display of domesticity Dean had ever seen.
He was still half expecting him to vamp out and go for the jugular any second.
Not for the teapot.
“Had a feeling I'd have guests and tea's alls I can find these days.” He snorted a laugh, amused by some private joke.
“Which is a hell of a lot more than I could find in the old days, let me tell you.”
“Matka,” Castiel said softly from somewhere next to Dean.
He snapped his head around towards his voice, the roundness in Castiel's tone too cottony, too haunting.
Dean's heart stumbled over a lead weight, thrummed under his shirt.
“Mother. That's what the wraith said.”
Dean swallowed convulsively, his fingers twitching at his sides.
“What mother?” he asked slowly, cautious. Scared almost.
Benny raised his eyes up from his leaves, his pupils bouncing from Dean to Cas, Cas to Dean, startled.
“You don't know?” He sounded confused, which was good; it was nice to have company.
Dean felt frustration scratch at his ribcage, his hands spreading wide and slashing through the air, palms turned upwards to show he had nothing here. No fucking clue.
Benny exhaled stale air in a long, reluctant sigh. His eyes skittered to the left.
“It started with the two of you.”
Any lingering calmness fled, chased away by icy-hot fear.
Benny's words were whip-crack loud and Dean felt them like a lash down his back, welting him to the bone.
“Word spreads fast round these parts,” Benny said, looking decidedly uncomfortable, “Especially when it's related to the prophecy.”
“What are you talking about, what prophecy?!”
Dean knew he was yelling, a desperation in his voice that had Castiel stiffening at his side but he couldn't keep his cool, couldn't stop the frantic tattoo of his heart.
They didn't need this now, they couldn't take any more of this destiny bullshit, of these pre-ordained fates, these long-foretold futures, these fucking prophecies.
Benny sighed again, a roughened sound, and he bent down to put his bowls back on the hearth.
When he stood again, he found Dean's eye, searching for a slender second before clearing his throat and opening his mouth to recite.
“And judgement will pass when the mother returns, bearing the fruit of a mortal, and all who witness her glory shall have passage to the next world.”
Castiel was frozen next to him, silence collaring the room.
Dean's heart pounded against his sternum, an arrhythmia fluttering too hard in his throat. His mouth dried out.
“Now you listen to me, True Blood,” Dean bit out, his voice silted by gravel, “You better quit fucking around or I swear to G-”
“This angel a'yours,” Benny said sharply, his chin raising in bristly defiance.
Dean's hand snapped out, curling around Cas' arm instinctively, a warning growl pushing past his teeth.
Fear flared in his gut, prickled like static over his vision, the flood of his pulse a staccato in his ears.
“If the prophecy's to be believed,” Benny said, continuing unfazed, “which every monster I've come across lately seems to think it is… The angel's destined to save the souls he consumed.”
Dean's face screwed up, his fingers pressing tight to Castiel's pattering pulse, a shudder breaking free of his spine.
Confusion barreled past him, yanking him right into anger, into fear, cramped in his chest and thick in the ether.
He turned to look at Castiel, wanting to find answers, to seek comfort but Castiel's eyes were turned down, dusky shades of shame tingeing his cheeks, as helpless and lost as he was.
Dean opened his lips, a threat on his tongue ready to spill with ransoms for truths, demands for answers but Benny stepped forward again, a look of apology scrawled over his face.
“They think he's the new mother.”
He paused, eyes flitting between them again and Dean's heart stilled.
A pin drop, a bomb blast and the ringing silence afterwards.
Whiteness consuming sight, a hot knife twisting deep into his stomach.
Benny swallowed, his eyes settling on Dean's. He clarified; two words.
“Of all.”
The world shattered.
~fin~
A/N: Okay, so over a year later the sequel is finally done! I hope you guys liked it, I know it kicked my ass to get it written. If you notice any mistakes/errors, please let me know and I would love to hear your feedback as well. The third and last part to this series is currently in the works but I'm not 100% sure about whether people want another part though so if you'd like to read what happens next, let me know! c: Thanks guys!