Episode 7: Into the Mystic
Title: Into the Mystic
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: murron
Characters/Pairing: pre-Dean/Castiel, Sam, Bobby, OC and canon characters
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~17,000
Warnings: language, violence
Betas: nyoka & zatnikatel
Art: Chapter banner by animotus; cover art by slinkymilinky, which you can also find here, and comic by made-of-tin, which you can also find here (both pieces of fanart contain spoilers for the episode).
Summary: You realize that no one who tried this has ever succeeded, not even in the old days?
"Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as enduring as the grave.
Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame."
-Song of Solomon 8:6
Prologue
The sword froze an inch above Dean's head, so close Dean felt the cold radiate off the metal. For a second, his vision filled with the blur of gold and swirling white robes, then the angel stilled.
"You didn't flinch," he said.
"What?" Dean croaked. He couldn't breathe, the muscles in his body pulled tight enough he thought they'd snap at any second. Forget about flinching. He was surprised he hadn't wet his pants.
Wings settling elegantly against his back, the angel lowered his sword. "You didn't flinch," he repeated, pronouncing the words patiently.
Dean swallowed. "Is that good?"
"It's a start." With that, the angel withdrew his arm and sheathed his sword in a scabbard he'd slung over his back. His blazing aura dimmed to a less spectacular patina, so Dean could see his face. Dean let out a furtive breath, resisting the urge to run a hand over his eyes.
With his hawk nose and sweeping brows, the gatekeeper could have passed for an ordinary guy had it not been for his copper-and-gold eyes. Eyes which, for the moment, watched Dean as if he waited for a cue. Problem was, Dean had no idea what a situation like this required in terms of protocol.
At length, the angel sighed. He folded his hands and when he opened them again, a wooden cup nestled in his palms.
"Here."
When Dean hesitated, the angel held the cup up to his face. "It's customary to offer the traveler a drink of water between the desert and the fire."
"The fire?" Dean asked. His stomach twisted nervously but he took the cup and lifted it to his mouth. Better to play along.
Dean swallowed the lukewarm water and thought of his mother's kitchen, the cold film on the glass she'd set out for him. The ghost of her hand seemed to brush his cheek, and Dean's heart contracted with a longing he'd never truly lose.
"The purifying fire souls must pass through if they don't have a clean conscience," the gatekeeper explained. He cocked his head. "How's your conscience today?"
"Uhm." Dean cleared his throat and stalled for time by taking another drink. "Average?"
The gatekeeper's mouth twitched. "You're alive aren't you?" he asked. When Dean didn't answer, he added, "Lover, brother, or father?"
He said it casually but Dean nearly dropped the cup. "What?" he choked.
The angel shrugged. "It's usually the only reason why the living come here. To see a beloved deceased one more time or to tell them something they failed to say when the person was still around."
Dean tightened his fist around the cup, not sure how to respond.
Waiting for his reply, the angel raised his brows. "So?"
Dean bit his lip. Telling the gatekeeper to mind his own beeswax probably wasn't a good strategy. "I'm looking for a friend," he said, settling for the bottom line and hoping he would not have to explain further.
The angel made a 'hmm' sound as if he turned Dean's answer over in his head. Something flickered over his face, a mask of light and color, giving him for a second the appearance of a beast of prey, a lion, maybe. Finally, he nodded. "Very well. Follow me."
Dean took one last look at the desert behind his back, the flat earth glowing carmine red under the setting sun. He saw no trace of the house where his mother had waited for him in the mountain valley. Tucking the image of Mary safely away in his memory, Dean joined the angel by the gate.
"If you're alive, you're not due for the fires yet," the gatekeeper said. "I assume you'll want to return to your body after you talked to your friend?"
Dean weighed his next words carefully, but something told him it wouldn't be a good idea to lie to this guy. "I'm not here to talk to him," he said. "I'm going to bring him back with me."
To this, the gatekeeper said nothing. His eyes narrowed though, the gold irises flaring so sharply Dean almost did flinch. Before he could help it, his gaze slipped to the pommel of the sword that showed above the gatekeeper's shoulder.
"That is rare," the gatekeeper commented. His voice was so neutral Dean couldn't tell at all if he disapproved or if he was only surprised. In the end, though, he pulled two keys from his robes, one gold and one silver, and Dean's stomach flipped with anticipation.
"There are rules you have to follow," the gatekeeper said as he fit the first key into the lock. Dean watched the angel's hands on the key, struggling to concentrate over the boom of his own heart. What if the keys didn't turn and the gate remained locked, what then? The angel's first question echoed in his head.
Are you deserving?
He'd call himself a great many things. 'Deserving' wasn't one of them.
"You must exit by the door you've entered through," the angel told him. "This is crucial. You must draw the key sigil in your blood." At this, the angel drew a glowing symbol in the air which disappeared so fast Dean struggled to memorize it.
"You must speak the words that request passage," the angel continued and recited a short summons in Enochian. This, too, he said fast and only once. Dean repeated the spell two times in his head and hoped it would stick.
Standing by the angel's shoulder, Dean could see through the bars of the iron gate and the view on the other side made him shiver. The gateway stood on a precipice, and the world clean ended beyond the threshold; the ground broke off and there was nothing but sky from here on out.
It was like standing at the open door of a flying plane. Not like Dean had ever done that.
"Remember," the angel said and inserted the keys into two identical locks in the gate. "Use the same door for going in and going out. The Balance depends on it."
Dean wanted to ask what he meant by that but got distracted by the angel's long fingers closing around the first key. The key turned and an audible click sounded from the lock. "Have you understood these rules?" the angel asked.
Pulse hammering against the side of his throat, Dean stared at the sheer drop behind the gate's threshold. What was he supposed to do? Grow wings? But not only did he nod and say 'yes', he also drew closer.
The gatekeeper turned the silver key, and the lock clacked a second time before the gate swung open. Wind blew through the gateway and swept over Dean's face, carrying the scent of mountains, of snow and a wide sky.
There was something so familiar in that scent it made Dean's heart beat a little slower. He recalled, briefly, what Marco had said to him in the desert.
We all know that you can reach him.
With a faint rustle of wings and robes, the angel stepped aside and held the gate open for him. Again, his expression flickered, his face shifting from human to animal and back again. "You may enter."
Breathing deeply, Dean stepped up and set the tip of his boot on the threshold.
"You realize that no one who tried this has ever succeeded, not even in the old days?" the gatekeeper asked.
"There's a first time for everything," Dean muttered and handed back the now empty cup. "Thanks for the water."
Dean shut his eyes when he passed through the gate, part of him still expecting to arrive in a fiery pit. For a second, he had the weird impression of stepping out into thin air, then his foot set down on soft grass and the evening song of birds swelled around him.
I
The Garden
On the summit of Mt. Purgatory, the sky stretched like a powder-blue sheet over a wide lawn that hadn't been mowed in a while. There were no flowerbeds, no hedges, no landmarks except for an alley of sycamore trees and a pale path disappearing into their shadow.
So. God had modeled Purgatory after a country issue of Fine Gardening. Good to know.
Dean stood ankle-deep in grass and dark red poppies, a soft breeze tugging at his clothes. The air smelled fresh, and the only sounds came from the rustling of trees and the drumming of a woodpecker. Dean looked around, half-expecting to spot a dainty damsel or two plucking flowers, but no dice. He sucked his lower lip in between his teeth and turned around, gaze passing over the empty meadow.
Dean took in his surroundings for a long moment before he stretched, easing the tension from his shoulders. He noticed that he no longer carried the aches and pains he'd gained in his time in the desert, and he'd also lost the knife Marco had given him. It seemed like passing through the gate meant an automatic reset. But, now what?
With a pang, Dean realized he had no idea where he should look for Cas. He'd been so focused on gaining access to Purgatory, he hadn't even thought to research how the whole soul-to-grace communication was supposed to work on this plane. He'd assumed the way to Cas would be obvious, that it would stretch out ahead of him like the yellow brick road.
Looking back, Dean couldn't believe his massive stupidity. What had he expected? A neon arrow pointing in the right direction?
The connection between you burns so bright, Missouri had said. Her observation still made Dean - not uncomfortable, exactly, but it did weird him out a little. He couldn't get used to the idea that he and Cas were joined somehow, and god, even that word made him humph and fidget.
I've never seen the likes of it before.
He just didn't think he was made to be part of something like that.
Right now he had to get a grip though. After all, he didn't need to define the connection he just had to use it. Somehow.
Maybe he needed to initiate contact.
"Profound bond, go," Dean muttered and felt the heat rise in his cheeks. He touched the handprint on his shoulder, a gesture that still felt awkward, and tried to send out his thoughts like he had on the train in Kansas.
Cas.
Shutting up the inner voice that called him a moron for even attempting this, Dean breathed out, closed his eyes, and tried again.
Cas. Can you hear me?
No answer.
With a sinking heart, Dean lowered his hand - but who was he kidding, the lack of response didn't surprise him. Perhaps Missouri had been wrong, and the link he and Cas had shared lasted only long enough for Dean to throw his best friend into Purgatory.
It would figure.
Dean scrubbed a hand over his face and slammed a lid on the disappointment that crept up into its accustomed places. No despairing now; he had to believe he could still fix this. He couldn't worry about the leagues of uncharted Purgatory ahead of him, couldn't acknowledge the possibility that Cas might not answer because he was gone, the scraps that had been left of his grace torn apart in the downrush of exorcised souls.
Dean thought of Cas's empty body stretched out on a scorched field and then banished that memory, too. He set out for the sycamore trees because, hell, he had to start somewhere.
Despite Dean's good intentions, though, the impossibility of his task settled like lead in his stomach, and the closer he came to the trees the worse he felt. A sense of unease niggled at the back of his brain, reminding Dean of mornings when he'd left Lisa's house and couldn't remember if he turned off the stove. When the clench of his gut wound tight enough to hurt, he stopped and rubbed a hand over the hard muscles, confused. He'd come within spitting distance of the first tree but instead of moving on to the path, Dean frowned and looked back over his shoulder.
As soon as he turned around, the knot in his stomach eased and the breeze purled around him like a current.
"That way, huh?" Dean said. He took an experimental step and a surge of rightness welled in his chest. Another step and a spark of warmth settled deep in his shoulder, right under Cas's seal.
Dean's hand flew up to that spot, fingertips blindly tracing the scar under his sleeve.
"Okay," Dean huffed, and he almost laughed, because, damn, who needed a neon sign. This was way better and for a second there, Dean didn't even freak out. He just felt relieved.
On top of Mt. Purgatory awaits the Garden, beautiful Eden, a place before sin and doubt.
And maybe it is that, a miracle land with fried chicken flying round your head and grapes growing into your mouth but the gateway to the Garden?
Not as grand as it was cracked up to be.
Picture a parking lot in front of a post-apocalyptic Seaworld, a wide swath of sheer rock and a gray wall hiding the no doubt Elysian landscape behind. Add to that the actual entrance, a row of turnstiles hemmed in by empty ticket booths.
Not grand at all but jeeze, that place hauled in the masses.
The crowds at the edge of the Garden never dispersed. Day in and day out, hundreds of people pressed up against the wall, cluttered the square in front of the entrance, in the hope that today they'd be among the lucky few to slip through the gates, to walk onto the fabled grass which had to be oh-so-much-greener on the other side.
Never mind that the entrance had been closed for a decade or two.
People said there'd been angels once, fierce and glorious Regulators manning the booths, but they'd packed up and left long ago. Better things to do - and who could blame them?
Still. Once people - pardon - souls, reached the top of the mountain, they stayed, watching this last hurdle before Paradise with glassy eyes and vacant faces. Like their brains, or what passed for brains in here, couldn't grasp that after everything they went through, all that holy purifyin', clambering up the mountain terraces with stones of penitence on their backs, they'd wash up in a dead-end. No redemption, no lawn-chairs for the wicked.
Pathetic? Definitely. But compared to the critters that slithered around at the foot of the mountain, these waiting masses were almost easy on the eye. Like cows, maybe.
They were so transfixed on the glimpses of the Garden beyond the turnstiles, they didn't even react when something finally moved on the far side of the entrance.
No, not something. Someone. A single person, striding up to the checkpoint.
That person hesitated in the face of the crowd but they didn't stir, not even when he climbed over one of the turnstiles. Not an angel, so maybe that's why they didn't bother.
Just a soul, wearing a scuffed t-shirt and washed-out jeans, his John Wayne don't-fuck-with-me frown recognizable even from the distance…but it couldn't be.
Could it?
People didn't stop him, not even to tell him he was going in the wrong direction, but they didn't make room for him either. Dean Winchester pushed his way through the throngs of stumped pilgrims, squeezing past rigid shoulders and uncaring bodies. He headed for the back of the gathering, the place where a road plunged down the mountainside.
The gaps Dean opened closed again behind him, souls moving up and waiting elbow against elbow, not sparing Dean an extra glance.
All except one.
One watcher, who'd only come here for a bit of distraction really, separated from the crowd. He followed Dean to the road, making sure to leave enough distance so he wouldn't be spotted.
II
The Sea
The road down the mountain was packed, human souls milling up the slope in droves. When he first exited the Garden, Dean had been daunted by the wall of gray faces, expecting some kind of trouble or resistance. Instead, they ignored him.
Dean knew he should be grateful, never look a gift horse in the mouth, but their passivity made his heart turn over in his chest. With their dragging steps and silent procession, these people reminded him of refugees, hollow-eyed and emaciated. They all had ashes in their hair and on their skin, dry white flakes crusting their cheeks and clinging to their lashes. The ash was in the wind too, tumbling over the crowd like snow.
He'd come a good way down the mountain when the train of pilgrims finally thinned out, leaving only a few stragglers lurching after the bulk. Dean felt bad for it, but once he left the crowds behind he could breathe easier.
The road wound down the mountain in looping serpentines, a ragged rock-face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Dean kept a weather eye on the road's edge but he couldn't help admiring the view. It was like easing his baby along the Pacific Coast highway. The top half of the mountain looked out at a craggy mainland, hills of stone and pale earth rolling away from the sea.
Mt. Purgatory seemed to be the furthest peak of a peninsula, its slopes plunging into the ocean. Following bend after bend in the road, Dean looked down at the coastline, the vast blue sea and flocks of sea-gulls, winking in and out of sight like mirages.
The lower Dean descended, the better he could smell the sea, breathing in the salt-and-brine tang that mixed with a trace of smoke in the air. The latter Dean tried to ignore, but the acrid stench of burnt hair and skin was all too familiar.
Dean had read Dante, brushing up on the classics when Crowley had revealed his game plan. Bobby owned two illustrated editions of The Divine Comedy, and Dean remembered engravings of the different terraces on Mt. Purgatory, seven levels for the seven deadly sins, each equipped with its own theme park of punishment. The envious had their eyes sewn shut; the lustful were trapped in a wall of flame, etcetera etcetera. Dante sold these trials as purification, but Dean called them torture, and he'd received and dished out enough of the latter to know it didn't cleanse people. It broke them.
If Dante's circles of holy suffering existed, however, they had to be located on the far side of the mountain. Or perhaps they hid on the inside, tucked away in caves and riddling the mountain like tree-rot.
Good thing Dean's newly developed gut-feeling led him away from the smell of burning flesh instead of closer. By the time the air cleared, Dean even dared to believe that Cas hadn't fallen into the purifying fires, that he'd ended up somewhere less hostile.
As Dean headed to the foot of the mountain, the handprint on his shoulder radiated a low, steady warmth. Despite the emptiness that surrounded him and the eerie silence that cloaked the mountain, Dean had to clench his teeth to keep from smiling. For the first time in his life he'd received a palpable sign that he was on the right track, and the confirmation made his heart beat a little faster, hope flickering in his chest like a storm lantern.
Before long, the road narrowed into a footpath and thorny bushes dotted the slope. Dean cast one last look up the mountain but the shadows of the heights hid the garden from view.
By the time Dean left the mountain, a fine white mist crept in from the sea. The light dimmed, maybe because of the fog, maybe because the days faded in Purgatory too, Dean didn't know. Temperatures dropped, and Dean covered Cas's seal with his palm, protecting the guide-warmth by instinct.
When the footpath trailed off into rough terrain, Dean used the ebb and flow of heat in his shoulder as a compass, navigating the ridge that connected the mountain to the mainland and climbing down over slabs of rock. Looking down, he spotted a crescent bay, the waterline already obscured by a blanket of mist.
Seemed like he'd be finding himself at sea level soon.
Lowering his body down a fringe of rock, Dean was feeling for a foothold with his toes when he heard the sound of shifting gravel above his head and a handful of smaller stones trickled down the slope.
Dean whipped around, gaze flying up, but no one showed on the ridge. He was still the only traveler. He waited another second, then continued his descent.
One Christmas Eve when Dean was eight, he'd watched The Last Unicorn, that weird cartoon movie with its somber colors and scary creatures. He remembered sitting on the couch, Sammy tucked close to his side and clutching at Dean's sweater. The red bull had scared them something fierce, although Dean had done his best to hide it. To this day he recalled the scene with the demon bull, lumbering over a gray beach like a thing risen from the dead and herding the unicorns into the waves.
Standing on the shore of Purgatory, Dean felt the same awe and sneaking terror he'd experienced while watching that movie. With the dark salt meadows to his left and the desolate coast stretching into infinity ahead of him, he couldn't shake the impression that he'd come to the fringe of existence.
By the time he reached the sea, the fog had thickened and wavered in dense slabs above the water. The sky had gone from pale blue to white, and it seemed to hang lower, blending with the mist. Dean heard the waves roll out on the ocean but saw no further than the tide line and the sea foam lapping on the hard-packed sand.
Checking back over his shoulder, Dean discovered that the fog had swallowed the mountain, erasing the way back as though it had never existed. Not a good thought.
Shivering, Dean set out along the shore and tried not to feel small as the landscape dissolved in white shade around him. Childhood fears skittered over his skin, and he imagined creatures watching from the murk, waiting to steer him into the surf.
Searching the fog for landmarks, Dean focused so hard on the way ahead that it took him a while to realize the warmth in his shoulder was growing weaker. By the time he noticed, the spark he'd carried had all but faded. Heart jumping to his throat, Dean stopped and clutched at his sleeve.
"Hey, hey," he blurted, as if the seal could hear him. "No, don't you dare."
To his dismay, though, the warmth dimmed further and for a second it was like Cas slipping through his hands all over again. Throat squeezing tight with panic, Dean grabbed his own shoulder, pressing the ghost of the exorcism he'd written on his palm against Cas's handprint.
"Cas, come on," Dean pleaded, willing the link to keep on working. One more second of holding his breath, then the heat rekindled and bled through Dean's sleeve into his fingertips.
Dean let out a sigh. "That's it," he muttered, and maybe Cas did hear him, who knew. "That's it, man. You hold on tight there."
Slowly, Dean moved his hand to the hollow of his neck and rolled his shoulder, loosening the muscles that had clamped tight with fear.
Maybe the connection only worked if he held up his end. Vowing to concentrate better, Dean kneaded his fingers into his neck, lowered his head, and noticed that the tide had climbed far enough up the shore to wash over his boots. Startled, he took a step back.
Was it his imagination or did the sea rush after him, trying to reclaim his feet?
He fell back another inch and frowned at the curling water. He heard the surge retreat from the beach and the shell-shards rustle in its wake. The ocean heaved behind the veil of fog but there was also something else, wasn't there? A slapping, slurping sound, as though something heavy rose from the water and flopped down again. Maybe Dean's eyes were playing tricks on him but a section of the fog seemed to grow darker, like a bruise.
A bruise that moved.
Hand frozen on his neck, Dean squinted into the fog and searched for the source of the noise even though a big part of him had no desire to see what was out there, thank you very much.
He was still tensing for a threat from the sea when a blow to the back of his head knocked him out cold.
III
The Salt Meadows
Dean woke to the sound of the sea, the distant swell of waves, and the much closer, rhythmic noise of metal grinding over stone. He opened his eyes, pried his salt-crusted lashes apart, and blinked at the grass in front of his nose.
He lay on his side, cheek pressed against a damp cushion of grass and heather. For a second he couldn't make sense of his surroundings, then he remembered the explosion of pain in his head. He stiffened, tried to get up, and noticed that his hands were tied at the wrists.
Caught, Dean thought, and a chill ran down his spine. But by who…?
"Good morning, sunshine," someone said behind his back, and Dean's stomach didn't only turn to water, it collapsed. That voice. No, it couldn't be. No one had that much bad luck.
No one except him, obviously.
Clenching his bound hands, Dean turned around.
Gordon Walker sat on a low wall, his arms crossed on his knees and a knife in his hand. He still wore the denim shirt Dean had last seen him in, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In fact, Gordon looked exactly like Dean remembered, with the minor difference of his head being reattached to his neck.
"You've got to be kidding me," Dean muttered and dropped on his back.
Gordon laughed, a deep, delighted sound that rolled up from his belly. He noticed Dean frowning and grinned wider, revealing the rows of sharp teeth in his mouth.
"I'll be damned," he drawled. "Dean Winchester in the - well. Not 'in the flesh', but you catch my drift, huh?" Still smiling, Gordon leaned back on the wall. "Whatever could have brought you here?"
Dean clamped his mouth shut, trying to measure the depth of trouble he was in. Gordon had been a crazy son of a bitch in life and something told Dean death hadn't mellowed his spirit. Not for the first time Dean wished he'd followed Ellen's advice and walked the other way when they first met Gordon.
Or maybe Dean just should have shot him.
Dean tried to rotate his wrists but Gordon had tied him up good, two sets of leather-straps digging into his skin. Squinting down his front, Dean saw his clothes were caked with sand, and he felt the pull of dried salt on his face. He must've dropped into the shallows when Gordon knocked him out. Awesome.
Rubbing at his gritty face, Dean was aware of Gordon watching him but refused to meet his eye.
"Didn't expect to see me here?" Gordon asked.
"Didn't expect to see you anywhere," Dean shot back, and Gordon chuckled again.
"What can I say? Your little brother chopped off my gourd, and I woke up here. Welcome to Freak Nirvana."
"No less than you deserved," Dean muttered and sat up. Nausea welled in his stomach, and the back of his head gave a dull throb.
"Yeah, I agree with you there," Gordon allowed. "Seems like there is a higher justice. Who would've thought."
Dean gave a derisive snort and took his first good look around.
Gordon had lugged him into the ruin of a house, a square of crumbled walls overlooking the beach. Seagrass choked the remaining stones and smothered a window-frame that had dropped to the ground. Only the house's door had weathered the decay: wood cracked and peeling, the door still hung to its frame by one hinge.
From Dean's angle, it looked like an entry to the sky.
Down on the beach, the fog rocked gently with the surf, and the motion made Dean seasick. It was either that, or Gordon's blow had left Dean's astral body with a concussion.
Could've been worse, Dean thought, and fought the nervous flutter in his stomach. Gordon could've ripped his throat out and then where would he be? He hawked up salty spit when the grinding sound started up again.
Turning his head, Dean saw Gordon had gone back to sharpening his knife. He ran the blade slowly across a whetting stone, giving Dean a generous view of the knife's sickle-curve. A good weapon for flaying skin, that. Dean tensed, pulled his legs closer and prepared to rush up to his feet.
"Relax," Gordon said, his eyes never leaving the blade. "If I wanted to eat you, you'd be bled dry already."
He tested the knife's edge with his thumb, pricked his skin, and licked up a drop of his own blood.
"You can do that down here, did you know that?" Gordon went on. "Drink people until they drop; they only get up again. One of the crooks of dealing with dead folk, you know? You can't kill them, you can only make them suffer. Speaking of which," he paused, smiling. "How's the head?"
"Super," Dean muttered and changed his position so he could face Gordon. As he shifted around, he checked the ground for shards from the broken window frame. Spotting a few pieces of glass, Dean waited for Gordon to look away before he scooped up a shard and hid it in his fist. He leaned against the rubble of an ex-wall and felt the glass dig into his skin, hoping the edge was still sharp enough to cut his ties. He also considered ramming the shard into Gordon's throat, giving him a taste of the pain Gordon seemed so eager to pass around.
Just come a bit closer, Dean thought. "So," he said and held up his bound hands. "Does this get your kink on? I didn't know you were that sweet on me, man."
He'd hoped his taunt would tempt Gordon to use his knife after all but Gordon didn't take the bait. He just pocketed his whetstone and tilted his head, raking his gaze over Dean's face until Dean felt more uncomfortable than he'd thought possible.
"What?" Dean demanded, and he shifted the shard in his palm.
"I'm just curious about why you're here," Gordon mused. "Seeing as you're not dead."
"Who says I'm not?" Dean challenged, but he didn't like the glint in Gordon's eyes. How much did he know? And who told him?
"I do." Gordon shrugged. "The deceased, their souls have a smell. It's hard to give a name to, but I guess it's like-"
"Rot?" Dean suggested.
"More like resignation," Gordon said, and he pointed at Dean with his sickle-knife. "You, on the other hand, reek of mission." He lowered the blade and sucked at his teeth, a pensive and entirely creepy gesture. "Something tells me you came here for something. Or someone?"
Dean opened his mouth for a smart-ass reply, because the last thing he wanted was Gordon finding out about Cas. The retort died on his tongue though, because the second he thought about Cas he was struck by the absence of warmth in his shoulder.
Gordon kept on talking but his voice faded to a warble in Dean's ears. How had he not noticed right away? He'd been awake for minutes, and he hadn't even thought to check...No, stop. Focus.
Forcing out a shaky breath, he brought his bound hands as close to his shoulder as possible.
Cas?
Chest rising and falling, Dean waited for the warmth to rekindle, acutely aware now of his wet sleeve and the chilled skin underneath. He waited even when it became clear nothing would happen and the cold from his shoulder spread through the rest of his body.
He'd lost the link. He'd allowed Gordon to get the drop on him, to lay him out flat, and now the one thread that had connected him to Cas had snapped.
Dean swallowed, and his heart kicked in his chest. He needed to find Cas's trace again, go back to the beach where he'd last felt it. Goddamn, he might still recover the trail. It couldn't be too late, he just needed to hurry.
Overcome by the urge to get moving, he wanted to jump to his feet, but suddenly Gordon was right in front of him, his face close up against Dean's. Startled, Dean jerked away, but Gordon hooked his sickle-knife around his neck and enfolded Dean's hands in one fist.
"Tsk, tsk," Gordon tutted and squeezed Dean's palms together. Dean gasped as the hidden shard cut into his flesh.
"It's Sam isn't it?" Gordon murmured. "He turned into a monster just like I said." He removed the sickle from around Dean's neck only to put the curved blade under Dean's chin. "Did you at least have the guts to kill him then?"
"Screw you," Dean gritted out, and the knife scraped against his skin.
"I didn't think so," Gordon said. "Someone did the right thing though. Otherwise you wouldn't be here." Leaning in, he tightened his grip on Dean's hands, and Dean clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. Blood dripped from his trapped hands and dropped onto his jeans.
Damn, he couldn't think through the white-hot pain cracking his skin. Sam? Gordon thought he was looking for Sam?
"You're here for him," Gordon stated. "You're here to get your freak of a brother. How many people did he kill when he turned Dark Side? And now you want to spring him on the world again?" A frown pulling at his face, Gordon narrowed his red eyes at Dean. "What kind of sicko are you anyway?"
"Look who's talking," Dean managed and Gordon switched on his Hannibal Lecter smile.
"Good point," he admitted and punched out Dean's lights again.
When Dean came to the second time, his left eye and jaw ached along with his head. He licked his lips, the tip of his tongue running over a split in his mouth.
How did all of this turn into a mess so quickly?
Gordon was still there, fixing a rope around Dean's wrists on top of the leather cuffs. Dean shrunk back by instinct but Gordon yanked his hands close and pulled the knot of the rope tight. Dean winced when his shredded palms rubbed against each other. He must've dropped the shard at some point.
"What I don't get," Gordon said, continuing their conversation as if they'd never stopped, "is why you came into Purgatory through the Garden."
"I like daisies," Dean deadpanned by default, forcing up the words through the haze of pain that clogged his brain.
Gordon ignored him. "People don't enter through the Garden," he went on. "They leave through it. Definitely the wrong place to look for a new arrival." Checking his knots again, Gordon stood and held the long end of the rope like a leash.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked. He managed to breathe through the ache of his cut hands and swollen face, but the emptiness that had replaced his awareness of Cas turned his stomach, made him feel even more queasy than before. When he moved to get to his feet, his head spun, and he sunk back against the broken wall.
Escape Gordon, find Cas without a lead...he had no idea how he would manage any of it.
Cas, I'm sorry, Dean thought. You should have someone better to come after you.
How could he ever have thought he'd be enough?
Why he even tried to get up, Dean didn't know, but he set his teeth against the vertigo and raised himself on his elbow. Curling his hands on the rubble, he recalled something Cas had said to him a lifetime ago.
I need your help because you're the only one who will help me.
Dean made a sound halfway between a grunt and a sob and pushed up on his knees.
To his surprise, Gordon grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. "If you want to find someone in Purgatory, you go to the hole in the ground," he said and clasped Dean's shoulder.
Dean froze, perplexed. "What?"
"The hole in the ground," Gordon repeated. "Everybody enters there, monsters, human sinners, scientologists. Heck, they even have a registry office assigning each newcomer a place to go when-"
Dean didn't wait for him to finish. He knocked off Gordon's hand and jammed his elbow into the man's collarbone, hard enough to crack bone. Gordon reacted lightning fast though, evaded Dean's second punch and yanked him close by the rope. Before Dean could counter, Gordon had his hand around Dean's throat and his thumb digging into the soft hollow beneath Dean's jaw.
"Let me go you son of a b-" Dean began, but Gordon cut him off.
"What did I say about insulting my momma?" he said, pulling back his upper lip as his teeth grew another inch. Once again, Dean tensed for the killer strike, but Gordon didn't bite and what the hell did he want anyway?
Dean strained against Gordon's grip and almost jumped out of his skin when Gordon framed his face in both hands.
"I'm going to do you a favor," Gordon said, close enough Dean saw the red veins webbing his retinas. "I'm going to help you find your brother. And when we do, we'll see how Sammy likes wearing a wire collar."
Using the rope for a harness, Gordon dragged Dean across the salt meadows, up into the hills, past shallow lakes and piled rocks. Driven by his blind vendetta, Gordon kept droning on about justice, about Sam reaping what he'd sowed. Dean thought about Sam jumping into Hell to save the world and itched to bash Gordon's head in with a stone. Instead, he clung to the knowledge that Sam was alive and safe with grim satisfaction.
It soon became clear Gordon had no idea what had happened after he'd died. He didn't even know about Sam's demon blood; he just assumed Sam had turned into a monster and some good Samaritan had seen fit to dispatch him. Just the way Gordon had predicted, by the way, and yeah, he wasn't above the old 'I told you so'.
Dean didn't burst Gordon's bubble. He let him look forward to a payoff with Sam. It gave Dean room to keep an eye out for the person he really wanted to find.
They even have a registry office assigning each newcomer a place.
If that was true, then there was a place where Dean could ask for directions, and Gordon was leading him to it.
The anticipation he'd carried down the mountain had flickered out when the warmth had died from his shoulder. Dean didn't fool himself - his situation was about as hopeless as it could get, and if it had been only his life at stake he might have provoked Gordon until he ripped Dean's manifested soul apart, speeding up the ending Gordon no doubt had in mind. This was about the life of a friend, though, and yes: if he didn't help Cas, no one else would.
No kamikaze stunts. He had to be smart about this.
The fear that not just the connection but Cas himself had stopped existing was never far from his mind, but Dean slammed an iron gate on his doubts and kept moving. His head had cleared throughout the walk, and the pain of his injuries had dulled to a manageable throb. All the while he rubbed his wrists in circles, using his own blood as lubrication to soften the leather straps.
He wouldn't give up. He'd cut off Gordon's head a second time, he'd hamstring every critter between him and the Purgatorian Yellow Pages, but he would find Cas.
If he had to scour every inch of Purgatory, he would find Cas.
IV
Hole in the Ground
Whoever named the entry to Purgatory 'hole in the ground' had a special sense of humor.
Standing at the edge of a birch grove, Dean looked down at a crater that could've housed the state of New York. The circular walls identified the valley as an extinct volcano but if this place had ever seen action, it had been a long time ago. Forests grew down the slopes and meadows covered the clearings.
Way down on the valley floor, Dean spotted a cluster of square buildings made from the same stone as the volcano. A single column of white smoke rose up from the settlement.
"What is this?" Dean asked, confounded by the pastoral scenery. When Gordon had told him about an entrance to Purgatory, Dean had expected - he didn't know. Mordor, maybe.
"Homestead of the furies, shades, and larvae," Gordon answered and, seeing Dean's expression, added: "Monster Town."
"You're joking."
Gordon shrugged. "The view isn't much but the real estate is dream cheap."
Dean pulled a face and winced when a new stab of pain flashed up from his jaw. "Hate to tell you, Gordo. You're not funnier because you're dead."
Gordon chuckled. "Yeah, I guess not. Keep walking."
They picked their way down the nearest slope, Dean stumbling every so often because he couldn't use his arms for balance. "So how come you're sticking it out in the boonies?" Dean asked, partly because he was curious, mainly because he wanted to get as much information out of Gordon as possible. "Why don't you pilgrim up to the Garden and apply for redemption?"
"Redemption is for human souls," Gordon said without turning. "I'm not human."
"But you were once."
"Doesn't matter. My soul soured the second I turned." At this he stopped and turned, waiting for Dean to scramble over a hump of frozen lava. "Once you got monster in your blood there's no turning back. You knew that the first time we met."
Yeah, Dean thought. That was before my brother became Lucifer's vessel and my best friend turned himself into a god.
Dean himself had been un-fanged by Samuel's magic potion. He wondered what Gordon would have to say about that.
Dean slipped off the hardened lava rock, missed a step and tumbled forward. Gordon caught him by the shoulder, stopped his fall, and fixed him with a stare that made Dean's skin crawl.
"No shades of gray, remember?" Gordon asked.
"Yeah," Dean rasped. "It's time you widened your horizon, asshole."
Gordon's expression didn't change, and the hardness of his face was as uncanny as his fangs, if not more so. "No," he said. "It really isn't."
Gordon hauled Dean into town and navigated the dusty alleys with the air of a local. Dean followed without protest, even though he was burning for a chance to shake off Gordon by now. He had to remind himself to be patient; they hadn't reached the registry yet. Once Gordon found out Sam never crossed the threshold to Purgatory, his confusion might be the kind of distraction Dean needed.
It soon became clear that Monster Town deserved Gordon's nickname. The settlement was larger than it had looked from above, flat one-story houses crouching in the shadow of tall shrubs and blending with the natural rocks that protruded from the ground like teeth. People moved in and out of the dwellings, occupied with surprisingly mundane tasks, carrying firewood or mending roofs.
A lot of them could have passed as human, the features that marked them as different being discreet enough to fool the casual observer. Dean registered their pointed teeth, though, the slitted eyes and flesh-colored scales. One guy licked his lips with a forked tongue, another walked with his knees bending backward.
Following the tug of Gordon's leash, Dean felt uncomfortably exposed. He tried to think of a past situation where he'd come up against similar odds and failed.
Maybe walking into the lion's den with his hands tied in front of him hadn't been such a hot idea after all.
Steering them toward a square that seemed to be the town's center, Gordon pulled Dean closer.
"I know you're jonseing to take another swing at me," Gordon told Dean in a casual tone. "But take my advice, Dean, and don't. Down here you're the pizza delivery and most of the townsfolk won't share my restraint."
Dean caught the hungry stares from the monster souls they were passing and had no trouble believing it. More than ever he wished they would reach their destination already. Gordon might land a couple more punches when Dean made his move but Dean wouldn't mind a fight, regardless of his chances. Accepting Gordon's upper hand for so long chafed at him like sandpaper.
Patience, Dean repeated. Wait for the right moment.
"You know I'll beat the crap out of you," Dean murmured, and Gordon nodded, eyes scanning the souls that moved about the square or stood together in groups.
"I know you'll try."
You keep on knowing that, Dean thought grimly and pressed his wrists out against the leather straps. His ties allowed him a lot more room to move than they had when they first set out.
Dean followed Gordon into the open space, trying to take in as much of his surroundings as possible. Monsters of all shapes and sizes gathered on the square, sitting around tables, some playing cards, others passing bottles back and forth.
Once again, not what Dean had expected - but then again, how else would they spend the time? At least Eve's brood didn't make a sport of torture, like the demons did in Hell. The thought had barely formed in Dean's head when he swallowed it back down.
A row of tall stakes had been driven into the center of the town square, their wood blackened by pitch. As Dean came closer, he saw a man kneeling in front of one of the stakes, his hands tied to a metal ring by a length of leather. The scene reminded Dean uncomfortably of a book he'd read about the Roman Inquisition, especially one chapter that mentioned the inquisitors scourging people in public and displaying them in marketplaces just like this.
It made Dean wonder. If the town's people treated one of their own like this, how would they deal with an intruder?
Coming closer still, Dean also noticed markings on the ground: sigils had been burned into the sand and enclosed the prisoner in an even circle. Not unlike a devil's trap, Dean thought, and sized up the kneeling figure with new interest. The poor schmuck looked like a hard grip would snap him in half; his limbs too long and slender and the knobs of his spine showing on his bare back.
Dean frowned. Even from a distance the guy's skin looked wrong, its texture rough and knitted like canvas. What kind of monster-
He was walking past the far side of the stake when the man lifted his head and looked at Dean with eyes blue as the sky in summer.
No, Dean thought. Please, no.
He remembered his stupid hope that Cas had ended up somewhere not-awful, and felt bile push up into his throat.
The thought flashed through his mind that at his core all Cas had wanted was to save as many people as possible. Just like Sam and Dean. What had Cas, what had any of them done to deserve punishment like this?
Dean must have slowed down because Gordon stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Following Dean's wide-eyed stare, he said, "I see you discovered our angel."
Dean opened his mouth but no sound came out. Gordon snorted at his lack of words.
"Yeah, I know, hard to believe." He pulled Dean to the next stake down the row and looped the end of the rope through the metal ring attached to it. "From what I hear, he breached Purgatory and enslaved a handful of the nastier denizens."
"What happened?" Dean asked, his voice hoarse and cracked. Cas had returned to staring at the ground, giving no sign that he was listening to Gordon and Dean talk.
Cas.
Dean formed Cas's name in his head but got no reaction. If he'd stretched out his arms he could have reached Cas, but the shock of finding his friend like this sat so deep that Dean didn't even think of moving.
Why didn't the seal in his shoulder respond to Cas's proximity? He was right there, wasn't he?
Answering Dean's earlier question, Gordon shrugged. "They escaped," he said. "Dragged him here so now they get to pay him back. I heard they use a spell to force him to manifest without a - what did they call it? A container."
A vessel, Dean corrected, unable to take his eyes off of Cas's bowed body. No, not his body, his confinement, pulled over his grace like the hood falconers used on birds. They force him to manifest. Gordon's words echoed in Dean's head and the anger on Cas's behalf came sudden and fierce, crushing the breath from his lungs.
"Hurts him like hell apparently," Gordon added. He finished tying Dean to the stake and patted him on the shoulder. "You wait here," he said. "I got to talk to some people."
"What?" Dean blurted and only then caught up to the fact that Gordon had fettered him like a horse. "Gordon! Hey!"
"If someone wants to eat you, say no," Gordon called and joined a cluster of gray-clad folk at a nearby table.
Episode 7: Into the Mystic (Continued)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: murron
Characters/Pairing: pre-Dean/Castiel, Sam, Bobby, OC and canon characters
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~17,000
Warnings: language, violence
Betas: nyoka & zatnikatel
Art: Chapter banner by animotus; cover art by slinkymilinky, which you can also find here, and comic by made-of-tin, which you can also find here (both pieces of fanart contain spoilers for the episode).
Summary: You realize that no one who tried this has ever succeeded, not even in the old days?
"Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as enduring as the grave.
Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame."
-Song of Solomon 8:6
Prologue
The sword froze an inch above Dean's head, so close Dean felt the cold radiate off the metal. For a second, his vision filled with the blur of gold and swirling white robes, then the angel stilled.
"You didn't flinch," he said.
"What?" Dean croaked. He couldn't breathe, the muscles in his body pulled tight enough he thought they'd snap at any second. Forget about flinching. He was surprised he hadn't wet his pants.
Wings settling elegantly against his back, the angel lowered his sword. "You didn't flinch," he repeated, pronouncing the words patiently.
Dean swallowed. "Is that good?"
"It's a start." With that, the angel withdrew his arm and sheathed his sword in a scabbard he'd slung over his back. His blazing aura dimmed to a less spectacular patina, so Dean could see his face. Dean let out a furtive breath, resisting the urge to run a hand over his eyes.
With his hawk nose and sweeping brows, the gatekeeper could have passed for an ordinary guy had it not been for his copper-and-gold eyes. Eyes which, for the moment, watched Dean as if he waited for a cue. Problem was, Dean had no idea what a situation like this required in terms of protocol.
At length, the angel sighed. He folded his hands and when he opened them again, a wooden cup nestled in his palms.
"Here."
When Dean hesitated, the angel held the cup up to his face. "It's customary to offer the traveler a drink of water between the desert and the fire."
"The fire?" Dean asked. His stomach twisted nervously but he took the cup and lifted it to his mouth. Better to play along.
Dean swallowed the lukewarm water and thought of his mother's kitchen, the cold film on the glass she'd set out for him. The ghost of her hand seemed to brush his cheek, and Dean's heart contracted with a longing he'd never truly lose.
"The purifying fire souls must pass through if they don't have a clean conscience," the gatekeeper explained. He cocked his head. "How's your conscience today?"
"Uhm." Dean cleared his throat and stalled for time by taking another drink. "Average?"
The gatekeeper's mouth twitched. "You're alive aren't you?" he asked. When Dean didn't answer, he added, "Lover, brother, or father?"
He said it casually but Dean nearly dropped the cup. "What?" he choked.
The angel shrugged. "It's usually the only reason why the living come here. To see a beloved deceased one more time or to tell them something they failed to say when the person was still around."
Dean tightened his fist around the cup, not sure how to respond.
Waiting for his reply, the angel raised his brows. "So?"
Dean bit his lip. Telling the gatekeeper to mind his own beeswax probably wasn't a good strategy. "I'm looking for a friend," he said, settling for the bottom line and hoping he would not have to explain further.
The angel made a 'hmm' sound as if he turned Dean's answer over in his head. Something flickered over his face, a mask of light and color, giving him for a second the appearance of a beast of prey, a lion, maybe. Finally, he nodded. "Very well. Follow me."
Dean took one last look at the desert behind his back, the flat earth glowing carmine red under the setting sun. He saw no trace of the house where his mother had waited for him in the mountain valley. Tucking the image of Mary safely away in his memory, Dean joined the angel by the gate.
"If you're alive, you're not due for the fires yet," the gatekeeper said. "I assume you'll want to return to your body after you talked to your friend?"
Dean weighed his next words carefully, but something told him it wouldn't be a good idea to lie to this guy. "I'm not here to talk to him," he said. "I'm going to bring him back with me."
To this, the gatekeeper said nothing. His eyes narrowed though, the gold irises flaring so sharply Dean almost did flinch. Before he could help it, his gaze slipped to the pommel of the sword that showed above the gatekeeper's shoulder.
"That is rare," the gatekeeper commented. His voice was so neutral Dean couldn't tell at all if he disapproved or if he was only surprised. In the end, though, he pulled two keys from his robes, one gold and one silver, and Dean's stomach flipped with anticipation.
"There are rules you have to follow," the gatekeeper said as he fit the first key into the lock. Dean watched the angel's hands on the key, struggling to concentrate over the boom of his own heart. What if the keys didn't turn and the gate remained locked, what then? The angel's first question echoed in his head.
Are you deserving?
He'd call himself a great many things. 'Deserving' wasn't one of them.
"You must exit by the door you've entered through," the angel told him. "This is crucial. You must draw the key sigil in your blood." At this, the angel drew a glowing symbol in the air which disappeared so fast Dean struggled to memorize it.
"You must speak the words that request passage," the angel continued and recited a short summons in Enochian. This, too, he said fast and only once. Dean repeated the spell two times in his head and hoped it would stick.
Standing by the angel's shoulder, Dean could see through the bars of the iron gate and the view on the other side made him shiver. The gateway stood on a precipice, and the world clean ended beyond the threshold; the ground broke off and there was nothing but sky from here on out.
It was like standing at the open door of a flying plane. Not like Dean had ever done that.
"Remember," the angel said and inserted the keys into two identical locks in the gate. "Use the same door for going in and going out. The Balance depends on it."
Dean wanted to ask what he meant by that but got distracted by the angel's long fingers closing around the first key. The key turned and an audible click sounded from the lock. "Have you understood these rules?" the angel asked.
Pulse hammering against the side of his throat, Dean stared at the sheer drop behind the gate's threshold. What was he supposed to do? Grow wings? But not only did he nod and say 'yes', he also drew closer.
The gatekeeper turned the silver key, and the lock clacked a second time before the gate swung open. Wind blew through the gateway and swept over Dean's face, carrying the scent of mountains, of snow and a wide sky.
There was something so familiar in that scent it made Dean's heart beat a little slower. He recalled, briefly, what Marco had said to him in the desert.
We all know that you can reach him.
With a faint rustle of wings and robes, the angel stepped aside and held the gate open for him. Again, his expression flickered, his face shifting from human to animal and back again. "You may enter."
Breathing deeply, Dean stepped up and set the tip of his boot on the threshold.
"You realize that no one who tried this has ever succeeded, not even in the old days?" the gatekeeper asked.
"There's a first time for everything," Dean muttered and handed back the now empty cup. "Thanks for the water."
Dean shut his eyes when he passed through the gate, part of him still expecting to arrive in a fiery pit. For a second, he had the weird impression of stepping out into thin air, then his foot set down on soft grass and the evening song of birds swelled around him.
I
The Garden
On the summit of Mt. Purgatory, the sky stretched like a powder-blue sheet over a wide lawn that hadn't been mowed in a while. There were no flowerbeds, no hedges, no landmarks except for an alley of sycamore trees and a pale path disappearing into their shadow.
So. God had modeled Purgatory after a country issue of Fine Gardening. Good to know.
Dean stood ankle-deep in grass and dark red poppies, a soft breeze tugging at his clothes. The air smelled fresh, and the only sounds came from the rustling of trees and the drumming of a woodpecker. Dean looked around, half-expecting to spot a dainty damsel or two plucking flowers, but no dice. He sucked his lower lip in between his teeth and turned around, gaze passing over the empty meadow.
Dean took in his surroundings for a long moment before he stretched, easing the tension from his shoulders. He noticed that he no longer carried the aches and pains he'd gained in his time in the desert, and he'd also lost the knife Marco had given him. It seemed like passing through the gate meant an automatic reset. But, now what?
With a pang, Dean realized he had no idea where he should look for Cas. He'd been so focused on gaining access to Purgatory, he hadn't even thought to research how the whole soul-to-grace communication was supposed to work on this plane. He'd assumed the way to Cas would be obvious, that it would stretch out ahead of him like the yellow brick road.
Looking back, Dean couldn't believe his massive stupidity. What had he expected? A neon arrow pointing in the right direction?
The connection between you burns so bright, Missouri had said. Her observation still made Dean - not uncomfortable, exactly, but it did weird him out a little. He couldn't get used to the idea that he and Cas were joined somehow, and god, even that word made him humph and fidget.
I've never seen the likes of it before.
He just didn't think he was made to be part of something like that.
Right now he had to get a grip though. After all, he didn't need to define the connection he just had to use it. Somehow.
Maybe he needed to initiate contact.
"Profound bond, go," Dean muttered and felt the heat rise in his cheeks. He touched the handprint on his shoulder, a gesture that still felt awkward, and tried to send out his thoughts like he had on the train in Kansas.
Cas.
Shutting up the inner voice that called him a moron for even attempting this, Dean breathed out, closed his eyes, and tried again.
Cas. Can you hear me?
No answer.
With a sinking heart, Dean lowered his hand - but who was he kidding, the lack of response didn't surprise him. Perhaps Missouri had been wrong, and the link he and Cas had shared lasted only long enough for Dean to throw his best friend into Purgatory.
It would figure.
Dean scrubbed a hand over his face and slammed a lid on the disappointment that crept up into its accustomed places. No despairing now; he had to believe he could still fix this. He couldn't worry about the leagues of uncharted Purgatory ahead of him, couldn't acknowledge the possibility that Cas might not answer because he was gone, the scraps that had been left of his grace torn apart in the downrush of exorcised souls.
Dean thought of Cas's empty body stretched out on a scorched field and then banished that memory, too. He set out for the sycamore trees because, hell, he had to start somewhere.
Despite Dean's good intentions, though, the impossibility of his task settled like lead in his stomach, and the closer he came to the trees the worse he felt. A sense of unease niggled at the back of his brain, reminding Dean of mornings when he'd left Lisa's house and couldn't remember if he turned off the stove. When the clench of his gut wound tight enough to hurt, he stopped and rubbed a hand over the hard muscles, confused. He'd come within spitting distance of the first tree but instead of moving on to the path, Dean frowned and looked back over his shoulder.
As soon as he turned around, the knot in his stomach eased and the breeze purled around him like a current.
"That way, huh?" Dean said. He took an experimental step and a surge of rightness welled in his chest. Another step and a spark of warmth settled deep in his shoulder, right under Cas's seal.
Dean's hand flew up to that spot, fingertips blindly tracing the scar under his sleeve.
"Okay," Dean huffed, and he almost laughed, because, damn, who needed a neon sign. This was way better and for a second there, Dean didn't even freak out. He just felt relieved.
On top of Mt. Purgatory awaits the Garden, beautiful Eden, a place before sin and doubt.
And maybe it is that, a miracle land with fried chicken flying round your head and grapes growing into your mouth but the gateway to the Garden?
Not as grand as it was cracked up to be.
Picture a parking lot in front of a post-apocalyptic Seaworld, a wide swath of sheer rock and a gray wall hiding the no doubt Elysian landscape behind. Add to that the actual entrance, a row of turnstiles hemmed in by empty ticket booths.
Not grand at all but jeeze, that place hauled in the masses.
The crowds at the edge of the Garden never dispersed. Day in and day out, hundreds of people pressed up against the wall, cluttered the square in front of the entrance, in the hope that today they'd be among the lucky few to slip through the gates, to walk onto the fabled grass which had to be oh-so-much-greener on the other side.
Never mind that the entrance had been closed for a decade or two.
People said there'd been angels once, fierce and glorious Regulators manning the booths, but they'd packed up and left long ago. Better things to do - and who could blame them?
Still. Once people - pardon - souls, reached the top of the mountain, they stayed, watching this last hurdle before Paradise with glassy eyes and vacant faces. Like their brains, or what passed for brains in here, couldn't grasp that after everything they went through, all that holy purifyin', clambering up the mountain terraces with stones of penitence on their backs, they'd wash up in a dead-end. No redemption, no lawn-chairs for the wicked.
Pathetic? Definitely. But compared to the critters that slithered around at the foot of the mountain, these waiting masses were almost easy on the eye. Like cows, maybe.
They were so transfixed on the glimpses of the Garden beyond the turnstiles, they didn't even react when something finally moved on the far side of the entrance.
No, not something. Someone. A single person, striding up to the checkpoint.
That person hesitated in the face of the crowd but they didn't stir, not even when he climbed over one of the turnstiles. Not an angel, so maybe that's why they didn't bother.
Just a soul, wearing a scuffed t-shirt and washed-out jeans, his John Wayne don't-fuck-with-me frown recognizable even from the distance…but it couldn't be.
Could it?
People didn't stop him, not even to tell him he was going in the wrong direction, but they didn't make room for him either. Dean Winchester pushed his way through the throngs of stumped pilgrims, squeezing past rigid shoulders and uncaring bodies. He headed for the back of the gathering, the place where a road plunged down the mountainside.
The gaps Dean opened closed again behind him, souls moving up and waiting elbow against elbow, not sparing Dean an extra glance.
All except one.
One watcher, who'd only come here for a bit of distraction really, separated from the crowd. He followed Dean to the road, making sure to leave enough distance so he wouldn't be spotted.
II
The Sea
The road down the mountain was packed, human souls milling up the slope in droves. When he first exited the Garden, Dean had been daunted by the wall of gray faces, expecting some kind of trouble or resistance. Instead, they ignored him.
Dean knew he should be grateful, never look a gift horse in the mouth, but their passivity made his heart turn over in his chest. With their dragging steps and silent procession, these people reminded him of refugees, hollow-eyed and emaciated. They all had ashes in their hair and on their skin, dry white flakes crusting their cheeks and clinging to their lashes. The ash was in the wind too, tumbling over the crowd like snow.
He'd come a good way down the mountain when the train of pilgrims finally thinned out, leaving only a few stragglers lurching after the bulk. Dean felt bad for it, but once he left the crowds behind he could breathe easier.
The road wound down the mountain in looping serpentines, a ragged rock-face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Dean kept a weather eye on the road's edge but he couldn't help admiring the view. It was like easing his baby along the Pacific Coast highway. The top half of the mountain looked out at a craggy mainland, hills of stone and pale earth rolling away from the sea.
Mt. Purgatory seemed to be the furthest peak of a peninsula, its slopes plunging into the ocean. Following bend after bend in the road, Dean looked down at the coastline, the vast blue sea and flocks of sea-gulls, winking in and out of sight like mirages.
The lower Dean descended, the better he could smell the sea, breathing in the salt-and-brine tang that mixed with a trace of smoke in the air. The latter Dean tried to ignore, but the acrid stench of burnt hair and skin was all too familiar.
Dean had read Dante, brushing up on the classics when Crowley had revealed his game plan. Bobby owned two illustrated editions of The Divine Comedy, and Dean remembered engravings of the different terraces on Mt. Purgatory, seven levels for the seven deadly sins, each equipped with its own theme park of punishment. The envious had their eyes sewn shut; the lustful were trapped in a wall of flame, etcetera etcetera. Dante sold these trials as purification, but Dean called them torture, and he'd received and dished out enough of the latter to know it didn't cleanse people. It broke them.
If Dante's circles of holy suffering existed, however, they had to be located on the far side of the mountain. Or perhaps they hid on the inside, tucked away in caves and riddling the mountain like tree-rot.
Good thing Dean's newly developed gut-feeling led him away from the smell of burning flesh instead of closer. By the time the air cleared, Dean even dared to believe that Cas hadn't fallen into the purifying fires, that he'd ended up somewhere less hostile.
As Dean headed to the foot of the mountain, the handprint on his shoulder radiated a low, steady warmth. Despite the emptiness that surrounded him and the eerie silence that cloaked the mountain, Dean had to clench his teeth to keep from smiling. For the first time in his life he'd received a palpable sign that he was on the right track, and the confirmation made his heart beat a little faster, hope flickering in his chest like a storm lantern.
Before long, the road narrowed into a footpath and thorny bushes dotted the slope. Dean cast one last look up the mountain but the shadows of the heights hid the garden from view.
By the time Dean left the mountain, a fine white mist crept in from the sea. The light dimmed, maybe because of the fog, maybe because the days faded in Purgatory too, Dean didn't know. Temperatures dropped, and Dean covered Cas's seal with his palm, protecting the guide-warmth by instinct.
When the footpath trailed off into rough terrain, Dean used the ebb and flow of heat in his shoulder as a compass, navigating the ridge that connected the mountain to the mainland and climbing down over slabs of rock. Looking down, he spotted a crescent bay, the waterline already obscured by a blanket of mist.
Seemed like he'd be finding himself at sea level soon.
Lowering his body down a fringe of rock, Dean was feeling for a foothold with his toes when he heard the sound of shifting gravel above his head and a handful of smaller stones trickled down the slope.
Dean whipped around, gaze flying up, but no one showed on the ridge. He was still the only traveler. He waited another second, then continued his descent.
One Christmas Eve when Dean was eight, he'd watched The Last Unicorn, that weird cartoon movie with its somber colors and scary creatures. He remembered sitting on the couch, Sammy tucked close to his side and clutching at Dean's sweater. The red bull had scared them something fierce, although Dean had done his best to hide it. To this day he recalled the scene with the demon bull, lumbering over a gray beach like a thing risen from the dead and herding the unicorns into the waves.
Standing on the shore of Purgatory, Dean felt the same awe and sneaking terror he'd experienced while watching that movie. With the dark salt meadows to his left and the desolate coast stretching into infinity ahead of him, he couldn't shake the impression that he'd come to the fringe of existence.
By the time he reached the sea, the fog had thickened and wavered in dense slabs above the water. The sky had gone from pale blue to white, and it seemed to hang lower, blending with the mist. Dean heard the waves roll out on the ocean but saw no further than the tide line and the sea foam lapping on the hard-packed sand.
Checking back over his shoulder, Dean discovered that the fog had swallowed the mountain, erasing the way back as though it had never existed. Not a good thought.
Shivering, Dean set out along the shore and tried not to feel small as the landscape dissolved in white shade around him. Childhood fears skittered over his skin, and he imagined creatures watching from the murk, waiting to steer him into the surf.
Searching the fog for landmarks, Dean focused so hard on the way ahead that it took him a while to realize the warmth in his shoulder was growing weaker. By the time he noticed, the spark he'd carried had all but faded. Heart jumping to his throat, Dean stopped and clutched at his sleeve.
"Hey, hey," he blurted, as if the seal could hear him. "No, don't you dare."
To his dismay, though, the warmth dimmed further and for a second it was like Cas slipping through his hands all over again. Throat squeezing tight with panic, Dean grabbed his own shoulder, pressing the ghost of the exorcism he'd written on his palm against Cas's handprint.
"Cas, come on," Dean pleaded, willing the link to keep on working. One more second of holding his breath, then the heat rekindled and bled through Dean's sleeve into his fingertips.
Dean let out a sigh. "That's it," he muttered, and maybe Cas did hear him, who knew. "That's it, man. You hold on tight there."
Slowly, Dean moved his hand to the hollow of his neck and rolled his shoulder, loosening the muscles that had clamped tight with fear.
Maybe the connection only worked if he held up his end. Vowing to concentrate better, Dean kneaded his fingers into his neck, lowered his head, and noticed that the tide had climbed far enough up the shore to wash over his boots. Startled, he took a step back.
Was it his imagination or did the sea rush after him, trying to reclaim his feet?
He fell back another inch and frowned at the curling water. He heard the surge retreat from the beach and the shell-shards rustle in its wake. The ocean heaved behind the veil of fog but there was also something else, wasn't there? A slapping, slurping sound, as though something heavy rose from the water and flopped down again. Maybe Dean's eyes were playing tricks on him but a section of the fog seemed to grow darker, like a bruise.
A bruise that moved.
Hand frozen on his neck, Dean squinted into the fog and searched for the source of the noise even though a big part of him had no desire to see what was out there, thank you very much.
He was still tensing for a threat from the sea when a blow to the back of his head knocked him out cold.
III
The Salt Meadows
Dean woke to the sound of the sea, the distant swell of waves, and the much closer, rhythmic noise of metal grinding over stone. He opened his eyes, pried his salt-crusted lashes apart, and blinked at the grass in front of his nose.
He lay on his side, cheek pressed against a damp cushion of grass and heather. For a second he couldn't make sense of his surroundings, then he remembered the explosion of pain in his head. He stiffened, tried to get up, and noticed that his hands were tied at the wrists.
Caught, Dean thought, and a chill ran down his spine. But by who…?
"Good morning, sunshine," someone said behind his back, and Dean's stomach didn't only turn to water, it collapsed. That voice. No, it couldn't be. No one had that much bad luck.
No one except him, obviously.
Clenching his bound hands, Dean turned around.
Gordon Walker sat on a low wall, his arms crossed on his knees and a knife in his hand. He still wore the denim shirt Dean had last seen him in, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In fact, Gordon looked exactly like Dean remembered, with the minor difference of his head being reattached to his neck.
"You've got to be kidding me," Dean muttered and dropped on his back.
Gordon laughed, a deep, delighted sound that rolled up from his belly. He noticed Dean frowning and grinned wider, revealing the rows of sharp teeth in his mouth.
"I'll be damned," he drawled. "Dean Winchester in the - well. Not 'in the flesh', but you catch my drift, huh?" Still smiling, Gordon leaned back on the wall. "Whatever could have brought you here?"
Dean clamped his mouth shut, trying to measure the depth of trouble he was in. Gordon had been a crazy son of a bitch in life and something told Dean death hadn't mellowed his spirit. Not for the first time Dean wished he'd followed Ellen's advice and walked the other way when they first met Gordon.
Or maybe Dean just should have shot him.
Dean tried to rotate his wrists but Gordon had tied him up good, two sets of leather-straps digging into his skin. Squinting down his front, Dean saw his clothes were caked with sand, and he felt the pull of dried salt on his face. He must've dropped into the shallows when Gordon knocked him out. Awesome.
Rubbing at his gritty face, Dean was aware of Gordon watching him but refused to meet his eye.
"Didn't expect to see me here?" Gordon asked.
"Didn't expect to see you anywhere," Dean shot back, and Gordon chuckled again.
"What can I say? Your little brother chopped off my gourd, and I woke up here. Welcome to Freak Nirvana."
"No less than you deserved," Dean muttered and sat up. Nausea welled in his stomach, and the back of his head gave a dull throb.
"Yeah, I agree with you there," Gordon allowed. "Seems like there is a higher justice. Who would've thought."
Dean gave a derisive snort and took his first good look around.
Gordon had lugged him into the ruin of a house, a square of crumbled walls overlooking the beach. Seagrass choked the remaining stones and smothered a window-frame that had dropped to the ground. Only the house's door had weathered the decay: wood cracked and peeling, the door still hung to its frame by one hinge.
From Dean's angle, it looked like an entry to the sky.
Down on the beach, the fog rocked gently with the surf, and the motion made Dean seasick. It was either that, or Gordon's blow had left Dean's astral body with a concussion.
Could've been worse, Dean thought, and fought the nervous flutter in his stomach. Gordon could've ripped his throat out and then where would he be? He hawked up salty spit when the grinding sound started up again.
Turning his head, Dean saw Gordon had gone back to sharpening his knife. He ran the blade slowly across a whetting stone, giving Dean a generous view of the knife's sickle-curve. A good weapon for flaying skin, that. Dean tensed, pulled his legs closer and prepared to rush up to his feet.
"Relax," Gordon said, his eyes never leaving the blade. "If I wanted to eat you, you'd be bled dry already."
He tested the knife's edge with his thumb, pricked his skin, and licked up a drop of his own blood.
"You can do that down here, did you know that?" Gordon went on. "Drink people until they drop; they only get up again. One of the crooks of dealing with dead folk, you know? You can't kill them, you can only make them suffer. Speaking of which," he paused, smiling. "How's the head?"
"Super," Dean muttered and changed his position so he could face Gordon. As he shifted around, he checked the ground for shards from the broken window frame. Spotting a few pieces of glass, Dean waited for Gordon to look away before he scooped up a shard and hid it in his fist. He leaned against the rubble of an ex-wall and felt the glass dig into his skin, hoping the edge was still sharp enough to cut his ties. He also considered ramming the shard into Gordon's throat, giving him a taste of the pain Gordon seemed so eager to pass around.
Just come a bit closer, Dean thought. "So," he said and held up his bound hands. "Does this get your kink on? I didn't know you were that sweet on me, man."
He'd hoped his taunt would tempt Gordon to use his knife after all but Gordon didn't take the bait. He just pocketed his whetstone and tilted his head, raking his gaze over Dean's face until Dean felt more uncomfortable than he'd thought possible.
"What?" Dean demanded, and he shifted the shard in his palm.
"I'm just curious about why you're here," Gordon mused. "Seeing as you're not dead."
"Who says I'm not?" Dean challenged, but he didn't like the glint in Gordon's eyes. How much did he know? And who told him?
"I do." Gordon shrugged. "The deceased, their souls have a smell. It's hard to give a name to, but I guess it's like-"
"Rot?" Dean suggested.
"More like resignation," Gordon said, and he pointed at Dean with his sickle-knife. "You, on the other hand, reek of mission." He lowered the blade and sucked at his teeth, a pensive and entirely creepy gesture. "Something tells me you came here for something. Or someone?"
Dean opened his mouth for a smart-ass reply, because the last thing he wanted was Gordon finding out about Cas. The retort died on his tongue though, because the second he thought about Cas he was struck by the absence of warmth in his shoulder.
Gordon kept on talking but his voice faded to a warble in Dean's ears. How had he not noticed right away? He'd been awake for minutes, and he hadn't even thought to check...No, stop. Focus.
Forcing out a shaky breath, he brought his bound hands as close to his shoulder as possible.
Cas?
Chest rising and falling, Dean waited for the warmth to rekindle, acutely aware now of his wet sleeve and the chilled skin underneath. He waited even when it became clear nothing would happen and the cold from his shoulder spread through the rest of his body.
He'd lost the link. He'd allowed Gordon to get the drop on him, to lay him out flat, and now the one thread that had connected him to Cas had snapped.
Dean swallowed, and his heart kicked in his chest. He needed to find Cas's trace again, go back to the beach where he'd last felt it. Goddamn, he might still recover the trail. It couldn't be too late, he just needed to hurry.
Overcome by the urge to get moving, he wanted to jump to his feet, but suddenly Gordon was right in front of him, his face close up against Dean's. Startled, Dean jerked away, but Gordon hooked his sickle-knife around his neck and enfolded Dean's hands in one fist.
"Tsk, tsk," Gordon tutted and squeezed Dean's palms together. Dean gasped as the hidden shard cut into his flesh.
"It's Sam isn't it?" Gordon murmured. "He turned into a monster just like I said." He removed the sickle from around Dean's neck only to put the curved blade under Dean's chin. "Did you at least have the guts to kill him then?"
"Screw you," Dean gritted out, and the knife scraped against his skin.
"I didn't think so," Gordon said. "Someone did the right thing though. Otherwise you wouldn't be here." Leaning in, he tightened his grip on Dean's hands, and Dean clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. Blood dripped from his trapped hands and dropped onto his jeans.
Damn, he couldn't think through the white-hot pain cracking his skin. Sam? Gordon thought he was looking for Sam?
"You're here for him," Gordon stated. "You're here to get your freak of a brother. How many people did he kill when he turned Dark Side? And now you want to spring him on the world again?" A frown pulling at his face, Gordon narrowed his red eyes at Dean. "What kind of sicko are you anyway?"
"Look who's talking," Dean managed and Gordon switched on his Hannibal Lecter smile.
"Good point," he admitted and punched out Dean's lights again.
When Dean came to the second time, his left eye and jaw ached along with his head. He licked his lips, the tip of his tongue running over a split in his mouth.
How did all of this turn into a mess so quickly?
Gordon was still there, fixing a rope around Dean's wrists on top of the leather cuffs. Dean shrunk back by instinct but Gordon yanked his hands close and pulled the knot of the rope tight. Dean winced when his shredded palms rubbed against each other. He must've dropped the shard at some point.
"What I don't get," Gordon said, continuing their conversation as if they'd never stopped, "is why you came into Purgatory through the Garden."
"I like daisies," Dean deadpanned by default, forcing up the words through the haze of pain that clogged his brain.
Gordon ignored him. "People don't enter through the Garden," he went on. "They leave through it. Definitely the wrong place to look for a new arrival." Checking his knots again, Gordon stood and held the long end of the rope like a leash.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked. He managed to breathe through the ache of his cut hands and swollen face, but the emptiness that had replaced his awareness of Cas turned his stomach, made him feel even more queasy than before. When he moved to get to his feet, his head spun, and he sunk back against the broken wall.
Escape Gordon, find Cas without a lead...he had no idea how he would manage any of it.
Cas, I'm sorry, Dean thought. You should have someone better to come after you.
How could he ever have thought he'd be enough?
Why he even tried to get up, Dean didn't know, but he set his teeth against the vertigo and raised himself on his elbow. Curling his hands on the rubble, he recalled something Cas had said to him a lifetime ago.
I need your help because you're the only one who will help me.
Dean made a sound halfway between a grunt and a sob and pushed up on his knees.
To his surprise, Gordon grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. "If you want to find someone in Purgatory, you go to the hole in the ground," he said and clasped Dean's shoulder.
Dean froze, perplexed. "What?"
"The hole in the ground," Gordon repeated. "Everybody enters there, monsters, human sinners, scientologists. Heck, they even have a registry office assigning each newcomer a place to go when-"
Dean didn't wait for him to finish. He knocked off Gordon's hand and jammed his elbow into the man's collarbone, hard enough to crack bone. Gordon reacted lightning fast though, evaded Dean's second punch and yanked him close by the rope. Before Dean could counter, Gordon had his hand around Dean's throat and his thumb digging into the soft hollow beneath Dean's jaw.
"Let me go you son of a b-" Dean began, but Gordon cut him off.
"What did I say about insulting my momma?" he said, pulling back his upper lip as his teeth grew another inch. Once again, Dean tensed for the killer strike, but Gordon didn't bite and what the hell did he want anyway?
Dean strained against Gordon's grip and almost jumped out of his skin when Gordon framed his face in both hands.
"I'm going to do you a favor," Gordon said, close enough Dean saw the red veins webbing his retinas. "I'm going to help you find your brother. And when we do, we'll see how Sammy likes wearing a wire collar."
Using the rope for a harness, Gordon dragged Dean across the salt meadows, up into the hills, past shallow lakes and piled rocks. Driven by his blind vendetta, Gordon kept droning on about justice, about Sam reaping what he'd sowed. Dean thought about Sam jumping into Hell to save the world and itched to bash Gordon's head in with a stone. Instead, he clung to the knowledge that Sam was alive and safe with grim satisfaction.
It soon became clear Gordon had no idea what had happened after he'd died. He didn't even know about Sam's demon blood; he just assumed Sam had turned into a monster and some good Samaritan had seen fit to dispatch him. Just the way Gordon had predicted, by the way, and yeah, he wasn't above the old 'I told you so'.
Dean didn't burst Gordon's bubble. He let him look forward to a payoff with Sam. It gave Dean room to keep an eye out for the person he really wanted to find.
They even have a registry office assigning each newcomer a place.
If that was true, then there was a place where Dean could ask for directions, and Gordon was leading him to it.
The anticipation he'd carried down the mountain had flickered out when the warmth had died from his shoulder. Dean didn't fool himself - his situation was about as hopeless as it could get, and if it had been only his life at stake he might have provoked Gordon until he ripped Dean's manifested soul apart, speeding up the ending Gordon no doubt had in mind. This was about the life of a friend, though, and yes: if he didn't help Cas, no one else would.
No kamikaze stunts. He had to be smart about this.
The fear that not just the connection but Cas himself had stopped existing was never far from his mind, but Dean slammed an iron gate on his doubts and kept moving. His head had cleared throughout the walk, and the pain of his injuries had dulled to a manageable throb. All the while he rubbed his wrists in circles, using his own blood as lubrication to soften the leather straps.
He wouldn't give up. He'd cut off Gordon's head a second time, he'd hamstring every critter between him and the Purgatorian Yellow Pages, but he would find Cas.
If he had to scour every inch of Purgatory, he would find Cas.
IV
Hole in the Ground
Whoever named the entry to Purgatory 'hole in the ground' had a special sense of humor.
Standing at the edge of a birch grove, Dean looked down at a crater that could've housed the state of New York. The circular walls identified the valley as an extinct volcano but if this place had ever seen action, it had been a long time ago. Forests grew down the slopes and meadows covered the clearings.
Way down on the valley floor, Dean spotted a cluster of square buildings made from the same stone as the volcano. A single column of white smoke rose up from the settlement.
"What is this?" Dean asked, confounded by the pastoral scenery. When Gordon had told him about an entrance to Purgatory, Dean had expected - he didn't know. Mordor, maybe.
"Homestead of the furies, shades, and larvae," Gordon answered and, seeing Dean's expression, added: "Monster Town."
"You're joking."
Gordon shrugged. "The view isn't much but the real estate is dream cheap."
Dean pulled a face and winced when a new stab of pain flashed up from his jaw. "Hate to tell you, Gordo. You're not funnier because you're dead."
Gordon chuckled. "Yeah, I guess not. Keep walking."
They picked their way down the nearest slope, Dean stumbling every so often because he couldn't use his arms for balance. "So how come you're sticking it out in the boonies?" Dean asked, partly because he was curious, mainly because he wanted to get as much information out of Gordon as possible. "Why don't you pilgrim up to the Garden and apply for redemption?"
"Redemption is for human souls," Gordon said without turning. "I'm not human."
"But you were once."
"Doesn't matter. My soul soured the second I turned." At this he stopped and turned, waiting for Dean to scramble over a hump of frozen lava. "Once you got monster in your blood there's no turning back. You knew that the first time we met."
Yeah, Dean thought. That was before my brother became Lucifer's vessel and my best friend turned himself into a god.
Dean himself had been un-fanged by Samuel's magic potion. He wondered what Gordon would have to say about that.
Dean slipped off the hardened lava rock, missed a step and tumbled forward. Gordon caught him by the shoulder, stopped his fall, and fixed him with a stare that made Dean's skin crawl.
"No shades of gray, remember?" Gordon asked.
"Yeah," Dean rasped. "It's time you widened your horizon, asshole."
Gordon's expression didn't change, and the hardness of his face was as uncanny as his fangs, if not more so. "No," he said. "It really isn't."
Gordon hauled Dean into town and navigated the dusty alleys with the air of a local. Dean followed without protest, even though he was burning for a chance to shake off Gordon by now. He had to remind himself to be patient; they hadn't reached the registry yet. Once Gordon found out Sam never crossed the threshold to Purgatory, his confusion might be the kind of distraction Dean needed.
It soon became clear that Monster Town deserved Gordon's nickname. The settlement was larger than it had looked from above, flat one-story houses crouching in the shadow of tall shrubs and blending with the natural rocks that protruded from the ground like teeth. People moved in and out of the dwellings, occupied with surprisingly mundane tasks, carrying firewood or mending roofs.
A lot of them could have passed as human, the features that marked them as different being discreet enough to fool the casual observer. Dean registered their pointed teeth, though, the slitted eyes and flesh-colored scales. One guy licked his lips with a forked tongue, another walked with his knees bending backward.
Following the tug of Gordon's leash, Dean felt uncomfortably exposed. He tried to think of a past situation where he'd come up against similar odds and failed.
Maybe walking into the lion's den with his hands tied in front of him hadn't been such a hot idea after all.
Steering them toward a square that seemed to be the town's center, Gordon pulled Dean closer.
"I know you're jonseing to take another swing at me," Gordon told Dean in a casual tone. "But take my advice, Dean, and don't. Down here you're the pizza delivery and most of the townsfolk won't share my restraint."
Dean caught the hungry stares from the monster souls they were passing and had no trouble believing it. More than ever he wished they would reach their destination already. Gordon might land a couple more punches when Dean made his move but Dean wouldn't mind a fight, regardless of his chances. Accepting Gordon's upper hand for so long chafed at him like sandpaper.
Patience, Dean repeated. Wait for the right moment.
"You know I'll beat the crap out of you," Dean murmured, and Gordon nodded, eyes scanning the souls that moved about the square or stood together in groups.
"I know you'll try."
You keep on knowing that, Dean thought grimly and pressed his wrists out against the leather straps. His ties allowed him a lot more room to move than they had when they first set out.
Dean followed Gordon into the open space, trying to take in as much of his surroundings as possible. Monsters of all shapes and sizes gathered on the square, sitting around tables, some playing cards, others passing bottles back and forth.
Once again, not what Dean had expected - but then again, how else would they spend the time? At least Eve's brood didn't make a sport of torture, like the demons did in Hell. The thought had barely formed in Dean's head when he swallowed it back down.
A row of tall stakes had been driven into the center of the town square, their wood blackened by pitch. As Dean came closer, he saw a man kneeling in front of one of the stakes, his hands tied to a metal ring by a length of leather. The scene reminded Dean uncomfortably of a book he'd read about the Roman Inquisition, especially one chapter that mentioned the inquisitors scourging people in public and displaying them in marketplaces just like this.
It made Dean wonder. If the town's people treated one of their own like this, how would they deal with an intruder?
Coming closer still, Dean also noticed markings on the ground: sigils had been burned into the sand and enclosed the prisoner in an even circle. Not unlike a devil's trap, Dean thought, and sized up the kneeling figure with new interest. The poor schmuck looked like a hard grip would snap him in half; his limbs too long and slender and the knobs of his spine showing on his bare back.
Dean frowned. Even from a distance the guy's skin looked wrong, its texture rough and knitted like canvas. What kind of monster-
He was walking past the far side of the stake when the man lifted his head and looked at Dean with eyes blue as the sky in summer.
No, Dean thought. Please, no.
He remembered his stupid hope that Cas had ended up somewhere not-awful, and felt bile push up into his throat.
The thought flashed through his mind that at his core all Cas had wanted was to save as many people as possible. Just like Sam and Dean. What had Cas, what had any of them done to deserve punishment like this?
Dean must have slowed down because Gordon stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Following Dean's wide-eyed stare, he said, "I see you discovered our angel."
Dean opened his mouth but no sound came out. Gordon snorted at his lack of words.
"Yeah, I know, hard to believe." He pulled Dean to the next stake down the row and looped the end of the rope through the metal ring attached to it. "From what I hear, he breached Purgatory and enslaved a handful of the nastier denizens."
"What happened?" Dean asked, his voice hoarse and cracked. Cas had returned to staring at the ground, giving no sign that he was listening to Gordon and Dean talk.
Cas.
Dean formed Cas's name in his head but got no reaction. If he'd stretched out his arms he could have reached Cas, but the shock of finding his friend like this sat so deep that Dean didn't even think of moving.
Why didn't the seal in his shoulder respond to Cas's proximity? He was right there, wasn't he?
Answering Dean's earlier question, Gordon shrugged. "They escaped," he said. "Dragged him here so now they get to pay him back. I heard they use a spell to force him to manifest without a - what did they call it? A container."
A vessel, Dean corrected, unable to take his eyes off of Cas's bowed body. No, not his body, his confinement, pulled over his grace like the hood falconers used on birds. They force him to manifest. Gordon's words echoed in Dean's head and the anger on Cas's behalf came sudden and fierce, crushing the breath from his lungs.
"Hurts him like hell apparently," Gordon added. He finished tying Dean to the stake and patted him on the shoulder. "You wait here," he said. "I got to talk to some people."
"What?" Dean blurted and only then caught up to the fact that Gordon had fettered him like a horse. "Gordon! Hey!"
"If someone wants to eat you, say no," Gordon called and joined a cluster of gray-clad folk at a nearby table.
Episode 7: Into the Mystic (Continued)