Spnfic: And the Night was filled... 2/4
Title: And the Night was filled with Many Things Calling for his Death
Author: the_poette
Art: dahlia94
Beta: anon-unknown001
Rating/Warnings: PG-13/R for language, violence, potentially disturbing imagery. Some Crazy!Cas
Characters: Dean, Cas, a little bit of Sam.
Genre: Gen, Angst. hurt/(not much)comfort
Word Count: 16,300
Spoilers: Season 6 and 7
Summary: AU of Purgatory written before season 8 aired. It starts with a house in the middle of the conscious black that bares its teeth and eyes. There’s no Benny the vampire with a neat escape hatch. There’s just Dean, who can’t forgive and forget, and Cas, who can’t hold onto his sanity.
Author’s Note: This is my first fic ever in Supernatural, so I’m super stoked I’m submitting it for spnaubigbang. This fic is supposed to leave off at a cliffhanger. It’s going to be part of a much larger series. So I hope you enjoy part I.
“Did you know that water is a universal solvent?” Cas' voice is a careful, tranquil observation. “All things of the Earth contain it. 71.11% of the Earth's surface is covered in water. Blood-Human blood is 92% water. It's a key ingredient for most rituals because of this.”
It's been like this for hours, for days, maybe years have passed them by with the deceptive lull of Cas' baritone dragging them both to complacency. After the running, Purgatory is a waiting line. Should he be thankful? Worried? Something's going to turn a sharp left soon, or Dean hasn't learned his lessons.
“Most spells obey the basic principles of chemistry. The elements are more varied than your periodic table can provide but that's only because your scientists haven't discovered them all. What they also don't know is that water is a multi-dimensional solvent. Because it is comprised of this basic element, blood is transmutable. Rituals work in Heaven, Hell, and as you can see, in Purgatory.”
After a while of this, Dean can imagine Cas' job in heaven, before the war and the apocalypse. He thinks of a bookworm, like Sam (that smarts a little as he considers), cataloguing the universe. Cas has always been curious, that seemed a part of his personality before Dean came along. He can imagine Cas observing the Earth while it changed beneath him, making notes: here come the apes, oh look they're standing on two legs, working their way up to heavy metal and Mc-Mansions. What does the footnote on Dean look like?
Dean might have asked...before.
He has worked his way all through “Bobby's” house...twice now. Cas' voice chases him up the stairs to the second floor, the walls echo with his science lessons, or are they down to history now? He upturns another cardboard box in another of the closets. He's left a disaster zone in his wake, a flotsam and jetsam of keepsakes, armory, spell ingredients (imagining the look of murder on Bobby's face in the afterlife if he ever found out). He doesn't really know what he's looking for, just that he began his search after disassembling and reassembling the pistol on the desk until it made him uncomfortable.
A photo of a man in his thirties stops his hand. A long-suffering expression smoothed over by the young blonde woman at his side, thirty-something Bobby stares up at Dean, the happiest he's ever seen him. Hairdo as long as Sam's and scruffy beard, he resembles a dirty hippie.
Dean's heart jumps, he's never seen this picture. Ever. He plucks it from the pile of miscellaneous things he'd tossed on the floor. He's found it. He takes the tattered edged photo, and practically runs with his evidence downstairs.
“Cas,” he calls out harsher than he means to on the last step. Postcard-sized photo in hand, he marches through the doorway trying to reign himself in with his search for answers; no good startling the only guy who might have them.
Downstairs has changed a little. Dean has barricaded the doors with bookshelves, and booby-trapped a couple windows. And while it probably didn't do anything, it has made him feel infinitely better. He knows without looking, that Cas is at his post before the marked up windows, unmoved since he last saw him; expression probably the same as he lectures at nothing and no one.
He starts to call out (gently this time) when his step slips out from under him. He almost lands in the puddle of blood that has grown in his absence. He hasn't been upstairs long enough, but the diameter of it has reached “Bobby's” desk, where his pistol lies half-assembled. Cas himself is untouched by the mess of it; even his shoes remain spotless white as he rests at ease at least an inch in, probably angel mojoed away.
Dean takes a careful step backwards out of the blood, watching the steady flow of it drip lazily from the soaked arm of the overcoat. The angel blade is still gripped tight in Cas' other hand, the point of it drawn to the floor. He keeps unbroken watch of Purgatory through the grime of dust and blood smeared glass.
The dark has changed since Dean last looked out to it. Through the segmented windows he can see the haze of shapes that draw the horizons of this place jagged. On Earth it would resemble a tree-line. On Earth the things shooting up from the ground would be the trunks of trees. Here he isn’t sure; only that it's all living, all-aware. There are more red dots flickering in and out of existence than there were before, only feet rather than yards away. They pull the broken horizon with them, encroaching further in, and breath no longer as one-but a great many things.
“Blood spells are powerful, Dean,” Cas' voice bursts out in the quiet, aggravating the air with its somber heaviness. Is it reassurance? A warning? No answer. The strange puzzle of Cas stands bleak against that terrifying backdrop inching its way toward them, his back still facing Dean.
“Cas, are we ok here?” Dean stands just a foot out of the blood ring, body stiff as adrenaline waits for the go ahead, ready to get his pistol and fight his way out of anything.
“For now,” again that not-answer. As long as Cas isn't popping out of sight, guess that's good enough for Dean. Just in case, he heads over to the desk, red boot prints following him as he finishes assembly of the pistol fast without a glance down. Last to go in is the magazine. A loud click goes off almost in reply, a statement to anything that wants to screw with them. Satisfied, Dean sets her down again, easy reach, and remembers the photo he flung on the desk.
“Hey, Cas?” Dean picks up the discarded print of paper, wondering. “If this construct is coming out of my brain, how come there's some stuff here that I've never seen before?”
“It's probably something subconscious, something that you don't remember,” Cas doesn't look back at Dean as he doles this answer, another lecture issuing out of his lips robotic-like. “Human memories are inadequate in some respect,” he huffs out, and only his shoulders explain how very put-out he is.
“No. I would've remembered seeing this,” Dean persists. “Hell, the black-mail for that haircut alone, Bobby wouldn't have lived it down if me or Sam found it.”
Despite everything, there's a smile pulling at the corners of Dean's mouth as he looks at Bobby. This is the Bobby that never lost his pretty wife to the darker crap plaguing the world, no clue about how bad it could get. The smile turns bitter as he thinks over it too long, mood spoiling as he unwrinkled a corner and tries to smooth out the creases of a good memory.
Before he can blink, the picture's gone, out of his hand like some magic trick. He is about to sound the alarm, when he notices the photo pinched in Cas' bloody fingers.
Cas doesn't move away from the set of windows, but standing in the blood, he's done an about-face. His head lowers as he gazes at the picture in his grasp. There's something in the air, something heavy and contemplative and it doesn't belong to Dean. The whole house is riddled with the atmosphere, tuned into Cas in a way that's all feeling and unseen.
Like electricity jumping to attention, Cas begins, and nothing of the deep quiet that has overtaken them wants to interrupt. Even the natural creaks, part of the old house, have stopped out of respect.
“We were preparing for Stull Cemetery,” After the silence, his voice is thick and unused. “We couldn't let you face your brother alone. Together, Bobby and I, we decided to follow you-'idjit needs backup, might as well be us-as he put it.” He swallows the pale imitation of Bobby’s gruff voice, face full of regret.
“He dug into his bag for what seemed like an eternity-in the state I was, I believed so anyway. I thought he would come up with a weapon, something he would go down with in a blaze of glory. It was this...” he doesn’t look up as he examines the photo as if Bobby can stare right back, his soul being read by an angel. “He put it in the breast pocket of his shirt, without a word. We drove without a plan, just to follow you.”
Cas shifts on his feet, uncertain gestures that display the discomfort he speaks with, like knives under his ribs.
“I saw you put his soul to rest,” the guilt in there when Cas says this is sharp, renewed as if it never healed-like it ever will. “I'm sorry for spying. That's what you said spies do-I'm sorry.”
“Cas...” What’s there to say, other than the important things Dean would rather avoid and not have to do now. Negligent, he focuses on the picture in a bloody hand. “Is this coming from you, Cas?” he asks with fear in his gut, adrenaline firing high in his heart.
“I followed you because you needed backup, Dean. You and your brother. You had no one else, it might as well be me,” Cas goes on like he hasn't heard Dean's question at all because he’s stuck trying to answer his own.
The picture has returned to Dean's loose fingers. There's a smudge of red beneath Bobby's cheek. Before the windows, Cas resumes his post; his face shut away and back turned to Dean. It might be his imagination, but the dark of “Bobby's” house sets in like a stain, and Dean realizes the lights haven’t been on in the house since he got here.
“I suppose this construct isn't yours alone,” Cas' voice drifts around the house over shoulders slumped with repercussions and regrets.
The windows begin to tremble in each frame, a thrumming noise pressed against the glass. It sounds like bees, or the higher vibrations of angel-speak, or the combination of both. Dean isn't sure. It bears down on him growing to a crescendo that wants to hollow out his eardrums, and sets his guts on fire. Is this what it's like in Cas' head? Is there just a fragment of it piercing this strange reality? Will it cut him? Drive him mad?
His brain is liquefying, the pressure is staggering. He fleets up the stairs desperate to put some distance from the noise. From Cas.
He makes it to “Bobby's” bedroom, hurtling emotions shutting the door behind him. His body shudders against the doorframe. He leans almost to the floor, with the ringing in his head. Slowly, his hands come away bloody as he removes them from the sides of his skull. That terrible noise has stopped, at least. His heart is thrashing for escape, desperate in his chest. He has to tame it before it bursts out, and he loses it completely.
Gotta think. For a moment. It's not like he's going to stay up here forever. He just needs time.
Damn, he's left the pistol downstairs. What is he gonna do with it anyway? Shoot Cas? It's dismissed as hysterics. But the fear is so strong and hard to let go because he's trapped in a cage with something dangerous trying to keep other dangerous things from entering.
Rock. Dean. Hard-place.
He gives a humorless laugh out to the air, although it sounds like something unraveled and frantic. He kneels for a moment, just a damn moment, among the clutter he has created; gives himself time before he has to move, before he has to go back, away from breathing space and thinking space, back to the bleak and confused thing downstairs.
Dean scrapes a fist against the moisture of his eyes, beating it down, mastering it, containing it. He stands as if he never swayed, and makes his way over the objects in “Bobby's” home as if they didn't matter. He goes to the bathroom in the master bedroom, avoids the mirror and plants a bloody hand on the corner of the sink for balance. He turns the faucet, places his hands under the cool water until the red rubs out of them. When the water clears, he splashes his face like an animal in the wild.
Just the rush of that action, draws him back to himself. He breathes out, measuring the tempo of his thoughts and his heart. The dissonance hasn't disappeared, not by a long shot, but it gets better. It has to get better.
“Dean...”
The voice isn't Cas'.
Androgynous and frail, it's more aspiration than sound. He waits, hands still under the flowing water. Waiting, listening. The water goes freezing on his fingers, sucking warmth. He looks down; black liquid running over the lip of the sink, smearing down his jeans onto the bathroom tiles. There's a puddle building on the floor similar to the one downstairs. He jolts back away from it. He turns from the bathroom to the bedroom door. Both hands over the knob, he jerks it open.
All of Purgatory scrambles forward from the other side of that door. He looks into its gaping mouths, sees the starved hunger of its eyes. It's going to latch onto him, empty him out, and lick him dry. He leans, either away from it or toward it.
It's overwhelming, God he can't tell.
A hand wraps around his shoulder, takes him back from them.
He lands on palms and knees, aching and retching on the wood floor. “Bobby's” desk is above him. “Bobby's” bookshelves surround him in a familiar embrace. “Bobby's” curtains have been pulled, blood-scribbled windows put away behind them. Cas casts a long shadow high above him, but there are no lights on in the house to make it.
“Dean,” a soft measure of concern that is careful not to overwhelm him, it bears his weight. It says I am here with you. And it sounds like Old-Cas. The Cas he's been praying to since the start of this nightmare. But prayers always go unanswered, of all places, why would they come true here? Whichever Cas is here, his hand hasn't let go of Dean's shoulder. Apparently, he's not standing so high. He's kneeling on the ground, with Dean.
“They were trying to draw you out,” Cas’ voice is a careful prod in the dark.
Under Cas' other hand, the floor creaks dry. The dark puddle of blood is gone. Dean looks over his shoulder, turns his reluctant eyes to Cas. Though he sounds like Old-Cas, he's still dressed in that same hospital getup. There's something so stupid about wanting those white scrubs to change into that familiar dress suit, and blue tie: Jimmy's Sunday best.
“I’m sorry, Dean.” There's something so meaningful about the way he says it. He sounds like Old-Cas. Dean will settle for that.
“What...?” the bile clinging on Dean's lips makes that question acid and raw. It's incomplete; a thousand different things dragging behind it and stuttering at the tip of his tongue. What do you mean? What's happening? What was that? What’s that picture doing here? What are we going to do? What happened to the blood? What happened to you? What's happening to me? What do you mean, Cas!?
If this construct belongs to Dean at all, Cas must hear all his questions piling high and burying them. The strain is showing in the blue of his eyes. He looks worse now that he's up close, all the cracks showing. He’s pale with concentration as he tries to answer them all.
“There is nothing here, Dean” Cas starts slowly, shifting his weight carefully as he rises from the floor. “There are no trees, no plants, animals, or insects. Empty.” His eyes start to dart around during his explanation, body vibrating with nervous energy again, “Nothing to draw from…” he mutters distractedly, losing what bit of Old-Cas there was in his voice. “Even insects have something to contribute-”
“Dammnit, Cas!” Dean explodes from his crouch, finding strength. He slams against Cas' slighter form with all his weight in anger. He shakes him by the lapels of that overcoat and moves them bodily to the curtained windows. “Start making fucking sense-!”
“-I'm trying, Dean!” Back pressed against the curtains that hide the blood drawn windowpanes, Cas shouts at him with equal frustration and fury. It's the first time he's growled out at Dean since the hospital in Northern Indiana, since he remembered himself. “I'm...trying.” Beneath Dean’s gripping fingers, Cas trembles with weariness and self-recrimination; body cold and trembling with it. This is what makes Dean let go.
Slumped against the curtains, Cas refuses to look up. His lapels are wrinkled from Dean’s hands. His composure is harder to gain this time. The effort is so physically obvious. His fists drag against the curtains and pull the fabric taut. He pushes slowly from the wall, performing a balancing act with great weights on. He sets his shoulders, aligns his spine-his default mode: a soldier at attention. The shaking subsides, completely gone as he takes steps away from the wall and the window. He stands on his own near the couch. The only thing that gives him away is the tenseness of his jaw, making him a sharp instrument.
“There is nothing here,” he begins slowly cautiously, like a man walking over ice afraid to slip. “There is nothing here for the sigil to draw from.” It’s here he finally stares at Dean, all the uneasiness of before strangled down. “The bloodletting. I’ve put too much of myself within this construct. I should have realized…” he voice drifts off but he doesn’t lose focus. His eyes are blazing even in the absence of light.
“You’re powering this thing,” Dean is starting to get it. “The picture, the angel radio stuff…that was you.” There’s another kind of light in the depths of Cas’ eyes as they graze him. Dean recognizes relief. He can’t imagine what it must feel like to have so much stuff stored inside (the good and bad) shuffling around and getting plucked at random. To be misunderstood.
They haven’t been on the same page in such a long time. It feels like a new leaf is turned and maybe they’re still in the same book, at least-trying to find each other.
“The bloodletting transmutes the grace I have to the sigil. I told you blood is a multi-dimensional solvent.”
“Yeah, Cas.” Dean almost feels fondness as he regards the complicated creature before him, his once-friend. “Yeah you did.”
He wants to be drawn in by the relief that he’s starting to feel seeping in through his many worn edges. Still there’s one question that dams him up, tight and untrusting.
“That…thing upstairs,” there’s no other word that can describe it, “was that…you?” Dean’s voice goes ragged as he asks, gagging under the memory of whatever the hell that…thing was, dreading if it was any part of Cas.
Whatever bridge had been building between them breaks down in the aftermath of that question. Cas gives a defeated shake of his head. If Dean could take it back, he would. Perhaps he should’ve known. In the face of the torn look cast in the cobalt eyes saying of course you might think that. Before him, Dean feels ashamed now that even had to ask.
Diligently, Cas struggles with the answer; “I have been stretching myself too thin…” He explains gravely, “They’ve found a crack in my defenses, managed to spill through-” He halts, his eyes traveling inward as he shudders. Those nervous ticks are edging their way into the apologetic shrug of his shoulders. “They remember the pathways. We were one…once.”
Again the house seems to pick up on Cas, because from what Dean can guess, it is Cas-a part of it, anyway. The whole place shudders with him, and up from the windows starts a familiar hum.
“Hey-” Dean grabs on a shoulder, trying to get Cas to focus again. “You gotta stay with me, man.” At that, the vibration in the air stills completely. Dean gives a sigh of relief, never wanting to hear that terrifying thrumming again.
“Good,” he tells Cas with a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. “That’s good.” Confident enough that Cas can hold it together, Dean lets go.
It doesn’t feel lighter now than before, nothing’s that easy, but Dean can almost start to say maybe. Maybe he can hope again.
Once more, his eyes drift over the length of floor space, no blood, completely clean. “Bobby’s” couch and desk looks the same, but the energy that surrounds them has shifted. Dean can’t explain the how or why, just the instinct honed in him since childhood signaling off something.
“What happened to the blood?” Dean goes for the direct approach.
“Here,” Cas with his monosyllabic answers that give nothing.
“Where?”
Cas casually indicates everything about them, but there are no drops of blood anywhere.
“It uh…feels different,” Dean voices what he’s been thinking.
His companion looks upon him with surprise and appreciation, “It’s the sigil. I’ve rewritten it, closed in the boundaries.”
That’s it. The space feels smaller. Makes sense, if Cas is spreading himself too thin. The lack of blood is worrying though, but this place is just a trick of the senses. He can’t trust what he sees. He remembers that airy voice calling him, the Leviathan goop in the bathroom, how he had been compelled to the door. He’s got to trust his instincts and keep an eye out for the both of them.
Dean looks out into the kitchen, realizing for how many times he’s passed it, he hasn’t felt hunger. It’s been hours, or days since coming here. He should have had hamburger cravings a while ago.
“So, guess this place is like Hell, right?” Dean drives past the sudden obstruction in his throat whenever he brings up downstairs. “Didn’t need to eat there…I don’t even feel like pie right now.”
Unnatural.
“Only monsters are hungry,” Cas comes alive with the change of topic, scholarly tone returning, “They are insatiable, incomplete of their humanity. Empty, like this place. You’re still a man. You can't eat the things here, Dean, or you'll go hungry too.” It’s a caveat.
“Good to know,” Dean suspects he wouldn’t find the things in this place appetizing anyway.
Beneath the curtains, the muffled tapping of glass gains Dean’s attention. It’s been awhile since he’s checked the windows. Dean extends an arm to draw the shades back, but Cas’ hand shoots out to stop him. Bloody fingers enclose his wrist grinding the bones slightly. Cas shakes his head, eyes narrow and warning.
“What’s going on here?”
The tapping stops abruptly; it’s almost like Dean has gone deaf. He’s given a second of confusion, a second of dead-like silence that can only build to something worse.
And it does.
The silence sunders with a sudden blast. Beneath the curtains, the lines of blood glow fiercely under the cloth. All at once, the tapping resumes with vitriol and consistency. For a moment, it sounds like harsh rain against the glass.
For each pelt of Purgatory rapping at the windows, the sigil shudders and streaks out like red lighting. The air ionizes and flashes. After the strange light show, the non-light of “Bobby’s” study goes dim. From the corner of Dean’s eye, the wallpaper seems distorted and darker in some places. The blood wards sizzle and flare once more. Cas gives a grunt, and it’s like the mirage of the macabre finger painting of bloodlines from before now scrawl over every inch of “Bobby’s” walls. In alarm, he turns to study the mess of them directly, but by the time he glances there, the marks are gone.
“Cas?!” The alarm is growing in Dean.
“Don’t,” Cas commands, and this is the Cas he knew; the one that burned and bled with certainty, even while he was hunted down and brought low. “They won’t get to you, Dean,” he growls out, “I won’t let them.” Again he makes his vows and casts them in duty and steel.
When the sigils flash again, Cas bleeds from his mouth, from his eyes. It runs down the sides of his face the color of ink. The angel sword is back in his hand; it glints white in the dark with a cold bleached light.
“Cas, you gotta stop,” Dean returns the grip on his arm, even as fear works into his bones, makes his limbs shake. “Whatever you’re doing-you gotta stop.”
Cas just shakes his head, shoulders drooping in obvious exhaustion. “Why must you always debate with me?” he says with no trace of bitterness, only melancholy. “Isn’t that what got us here?” He releases Dean’s arm and slips his own hand free.
“Don’t lay that on me, Cas. You made your choices. Listening to Crowley. Lying to me. And Sam…” thinking back on it revisits a bitter burn, the fire of it flaking away the memory of any affection he might have had for this thing before him. Restless with the ache of it, he can’t even look at Cas. “What you did to Sam-I can’t even…” the fire has burned any kind of response away, and if he looks at Cas he can’t be responsible for his actions.
At least the anger is tramping down the fear.
The floors, the ceiling, and walls groan like a great weight is being placed on them. Again the windows draw Dean’s attention with their incessant tapping. It’s getting worse.
“What’s happening?” With a free hand, Dean casts aside a worn curtain. Cas doesn’t stop him this time.
They’re pressed against the glass; bodies roiling over each other with the hunger to get in. Their collective fogging breaths, the jagged cut of teeth. Predatory intent gleaming in the red of their insect eyes; so many things press so close together there are no more broken horizons. He can’t keep track of them all, but the wards burn and hold.
It’s a cage, and the bad things are scratching their way in.
Beneath their collective weight, the glass threatens to shatter. At his back, Cas staggers and grunts against an invisible weight that just struck him.
“We’re leaving,” Dean practically runs and drags Cas easily with him. He brings them out of “Bobby’s” den into the hallway. Whatever the hell waits for them outside, he’ll face it. It’s better than waiting like sitting ducks. He reaches the entrance, and pushes the bookcase that he had shoved there earlier. He takes a breath and yanks the door open. He runs through with Cas trailing him. They step into the hallway, “Bobby’s” study to the left of them, the same creaky staircase on the right.
Confused, he turns them back around again, through the doorway a second time. Rushing past the doorjamb, they end up somehow back in “Bobby’s” hall. This time the walls look worse, every inch covered in the manic scribble of Cas’ blood wards. Even the ceiling starts to drip above their heads, rivulets of blood running down the insides of the house.
Their third attempt to leave ends the same way.
“Shit.” The walls begin to shudder. The wrist locked around Dean’s arm does the same. “Cas, what the hell do we do?!” The creature at his side keeps bleeding, his eyes far away; his face exhausted and pale with the effort of keeping Purgatory away from them.
Dean pushes through for the exit in the kitchen, the buzzing growing about them.
“Hey! Knock it off!” Dean squeezes the arm in his hand hard. Before it can grow, Cas physically stops himself. He gives a minute shake of his head, casting it off before it has a chance to dig in. Running through the threshold of the kitchen, Dean notices the crunch of leaves under his boots. By the sink, he sees a man with his back turned to them raking leaves. He realizes it’s himself.
Dean doesn’t let the confusion stop him, even as he sees Crowley lurking in a corner. It’s not real, just a little bit of Cas seeping in, his strange disjointed memories. He goes to the exit, pulls it open, steps through, and somehow ends up looped to the kitchen again. This time the surroundings look like Lisa’s backyard.
“This is my regret,” Cas mutters against his shoulder, body swaying into Dean’s space punch-drunk, “I should’ve asked you right here. But I-I couldn’t…don’t you see?”
He sees a copy of Cas staring at the other Dean; Cas as he used to be, black suit, and blue tie askew, expression torn.
Dean turns to acknowledge the Cas at his side, his once-friend. “You were there-the whole time.”
“Yes,” Cas utters breathlessly, “I was.” Cas’ legs giving way beneath him, Dean steadies him and moves them to “Bobby’s” study, walls still dripping red with blood.
Cas is still fighting. Underneath the crazy he's still trying to buy them more time-as if there’s any hope of outrunning. And if this broken thing beside him can manage that why not Dean?
The house creaks angrily around them. The tapping at the window grows violent, the slap of many hands against the panes, almost taunting. The glass starts splintering, and Cas gives a groan of pain and coughs out black liquid from his depths. The things outside begin slipping through the slithers. Cas’ breath hitches against his neck, almost stuttering to a stop. Dean bears most of his weight.
Making his decision, Dean drags them to “Bobby’s” desk. The gun lies forgotten where he left it, with its ivory grips and five bullets. He takes it in hand, roughly shakes his half-aware friend.
“Cas,” he barks out darkly, refusing to be denied or deflected from his intentions. Nudging the dark head braced against his shoulder until he meets blue eyes, Dean tells them, “Get ready to get us. The Fuck. Out of here.”
Cas nods once, and closes his eyes in pinched concentration. Dean takes his gun, points it at the blazing red eyes of Purgatory. He can hear them over the crackling glass, whispering venom in their direction. He aims for the still unbroken line of the sigil.
Here’s bullet number one, fuckers.
Dean shoots. The glass shatters around them like a broken seal. The atmosphere sucks at them with building pressure. Against it, the wood of “Bobby’s” home gives a death groan. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything fractures inwards. The hungrier things lurch toward them like a dark wave. They cry out enraged, jagged limbs extended to overcome them.
Dean hears the flap of something frail and long forgotten before they’re both swept away.
Chapter 3 Drain Dry
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Author: the_poette
Art: dahlia94
Beta: anon-unknown001
Rating/Warnings: PG-13/R for language, violence, potentially disturbing imagery. Some Crazy!Cas
Characters: Dean, Cas, a little bit of Sam.
Genre: Gen, Angst. hurt/(not much)comfort
Word Count: 16,300
Spoilers: Season 6 and 7
Summary: AU of Purgatory written before season 8 aired. It starts with a house in the middle of the conscious black that bares its teeth and eyes. There’s no Benny the vampire with a neat escape hatch. There’s just Dean, who can’t forgive and forget, and Cas, who can’t hold onto his sanity.
Author’s Note: This is my first fic ever in Supernatural, so I’m super stoked I’m submitting it for spnaubigbang. This fic is supposed to leave off at a cliffhanger. It’s going to be part of a much larger series. So I hope you enjoy part I.
“Did you know that water is a universal solvent?” Cas' voice is a careful, tranquil observation. “All things of the Earth contain it. 71.11% of the Earth's surface is covered in water. Blood-Human blood is 92% water. It's a key ingredient for most rituals because of this.”
It's been like this for hours, for days, maybe years have passed them by with the deceptive lull of Cas' baritone dragging them both to complacency. After the running, Purgatory is a waiting line. Should he be thankful? Worried? Something's going to turn a sharp left soon, or Dean hasn't learned his lessons.
“Most spells obey the basic principles of chemistry. The elements are more varied than your periodic table can provide but that's only because your scientists haven't discovered them all. What they also don't know is that water is a multi-dimensional solvent. Because it is comprised of this basic element, blood is transmutable. Rituals work in Heaven, Hell, and as you can see, in Purgatory.”
After a while of this, Dean can imagine Cas' job in heaven, before the war and the apocalypse. He thinks of a bookworm, like Sam (that smarts a little as he considers), cataloguing the universe. Cas has always been curious, that seemed a part of his personality before Dean came along. He can imagine Cas observing the Earth while it changed beneath him, making notes: here come the apes, oh look they're standing on two legs, working their way up to heavy metal and Mc-Mansions. What does the footnote on Dean look like?
Dean might have asked...before.
He has worked his way all through “Bobby's” house...twice now. Cas' voice chases him up the stairs to the second floor, the walls echo with his science lessons, or are they down to history now? He upturns another cardboard box in another of the closets. He's left a disaster zone in his wake, a flotsam and jetsam of keepsakes, armory, spell ingredients (imagining the look of murder on Bobby's face in the afterlife if he ever found out). He doesn't really know what he's looking for, just that he began his search after disassembling and reassembling the pistol on the desk until it made him uncomfortable.
A photo of a man in his thirties stops his hand. A long-suffering expression smoothed over by the young blonde woman at his side, thirty-something Bobby stares up at Dean, the happiest he's ever seen him. Hairdo as long as Sam's and scruffy beard, he resembles a dirty hippie.
Dean's heart jumps, he's never seen this picture. Ever. He plucks it from the pile of miscellaneous things he'd tossed on the floor. He's found it. He takes the tattered edged photo, and practically runs with his evidence downstairs.
“Cas,” he calls out harsher than he means to on the last step. Postcard-sized photo in hand, he marches through the doorway trying to reign himself in with his search for answers; no good startling the only guy who might have them.
Downstairs has changed a little. Dean has barricaded the doors with bookshelves, and booby-trapped a couple windows. And while it probably didn't do anything, it has made him feel infinitely better. He knows without looking, that Cas is at his post before the marked up windows, unmoved since he last saw him; expression probably the same as he lectures at nothing and no one.
He starts to call out (gently this time) when his step slips out from under him. He almost lands in the puddle of blood that has grown in his absence. He hasn't been upstairs long enough, but the diameter of it has reached “Bobby's” desk, where his pistol lies half-assembled. Cas himself is untouched by the mess of it; even his shoes remain spotless white as he rests at ease at least an inch in, probably angel mojoed away.
Dean takes a careful step backwards out of the blood, watching the steady flow of it drip lazily from the soaked arm of the overcoat. The angel blade is still gripped tight in Cas' other hand, the point of it drawn to the floor. He keeps unbroken watch of Purgatory through the grime of dust and blood smeared glass.
The dark has changed since Dean last looked out to it. Through the segmented windows he can see the haze of shapes that draw the horizons of this place jagged. On Earth it would resemble a tree-line. On Earth the things shooting up from the ground would be the trunks of trees. Here he isn’t sure; only that it's all living, all-aware. There are more red dots flickering in and out of existence than there were before, only feet rather than yards away. They pull the broken horizon with them, encroaching further in, and breath no longer as one-but a great many things.
“Blood spells are powerful, Dean,” Cas' voice bursts out in the quiet, aggravating the air with its somber heaviness. Is it reassurance? A warning? No answer. The strange puzzle of Cas stands bleak against that terrifying backdrop inching its way toward them, his back still facing Dean.
“Cas, are we ok here?” Dean stands just a foot out of the blood ring, body stiff as adrenaline waits for the go ahead, ready to get his pistol and fight his way out of anything.
“For now,” again that not-answer. As long as Cas isn't popping out of sight, guess that's good enough for Dean. Just in case, he heads over to the desk, red boot prints following him as he finishes assembly of the pistol fast without a glance down. Last to go in is the magazine. A loud click goes off almost in reply, a statement to anything that wants to screw with them. Satisfied, Dean sets her down again, easy reach, and remembers the photo he flung on the desk.
“Hey, Cas?” Dean picks up the discarded print of paper, wondering. “If this construct is coming out of my brain, how come there's some stuff here that I've never seen before?”
“It's probably something subconscious, something that you don't remember,” Cas doesn't look back at Dean as he doles this answer, another lecture issuing out of his lips robotic-like. “Human memories are inadequate in some respect,” he huffs out, and only his shoulders explain how very put-out he is.
“No. I would've remembered seeing this,” Dean persists. “Hell, the black-mail for that haircut alone, Bobby wouldn't have lived it down if me or Sam found it.”
Despite everything, there's a smile pulling at the corners of Dean's mouth as he looks at Bobby. This is the Bobby that never lost his pretty wife to the darker crap plaguing the world, no clue about how bad it could get. The smile turns bitter as he thinks over it too long, mood spoiling as he unwrinkled a corner and tries to smooth out the creases of a good memory.
Before he can blink, the picture's gone, out of his hand like some magic trick. He is about to sound the alarm, when he notices the photo pinched in Cas' bloody fingers.
Cas doesn't move away from the set of windows, but standing in the blood, he's done an about-face. His head lowers as he gazes at the picture in his grasp. There's something in the air, something heavy and contemplative and it doesn't belong to Dean. The whole house is riddled with the atmosphere, tuned into Cas in a way that's all feeling and unseen.
Like electricity jumping to attention, Cas begins, and nothing of the deep quiet that has overtaken them wants to interrupt. Even the natural creaks, part of the old house, have stopped out of respect.
“We were preparing for Stull Cemetery,” After the silence, his voice is thick and unused. “We couldn't let you face your brother alone. Together, Bobby and I, we decided to follow you-'idjit needs backup, might as well be us-as he put it.” He swallows the pale imitation of Bobby’s gruff voice, face full of regret.
“He dug into his bag for what seemed like an eternity-in the state I was, I believed so anyway. I thought he would come up with a weapon, something he would go down with in a blaze of glory. It was this...” he doesn’t look up as he examines the photo as if Bobby can stare right back, his soul being read by an angel. “He put it in the breast pocket of his shirt, without a word. We drove without a plan, just to follow you.”
Cas shifts on his feet, uncertain gestures that display the discomfort he speaks with, like knives under his ribs.
“I saw you put his soul to rest,” the guilt in there when Cas says this is sharp, renewed as if it never healed-like it ever will. “I'm sorry for spying. That's what you said spies do-I'm sorry.”
“Cas...” What’s there to say, other than the important things Dean would rather avoid and not have to do now. Negligent, he focuses on the picture in a bloody hand. “Is this coming from you, Cas?” he asks with fear in his gut, adrenaline firing high in his heart.
“I followed you because you needed backup, Dean. You and your brother. You had no one else, it might as well be me,” Cas goes on like he hasn't heard Dean's question at all because he’s stuck trying to answer his own.
The picture has returned to Dean's loose fingers. There's a smudge of red beneath Bobby's cheek. Before the windows, Cas resumes his post; his face shut away and back turned to Dean. It might be his imagination, but the dark of “Bobby's” house sets in like a stain, and Dean realizes the lights haven’t been on in the house since he got here.
“I suppose this construct isn't yours alone,” Cas' voice drifts around the house over shoulders slumped with repercussions and regrets.
The windows begin to tremble in each frame, a thrumming noise pressed against the glass. It sounds like bees, or the higher vibrations of angel-speak, or the combination of both. Dean isn't sure. It bears down on him growing to a crescendo that wants to hollow out his eardrums, and sets his guts on fire. Is this what it's like in Cas' head? Is there just a fragment of it piercing this strange reality? Will it cut him? Drive him mad?
His brain is liquefying, the pressure is staggering. He fleets up the stairs desperate to put some distance from the noise. From Cas.
He makes it to “Bobby's” bedroom, hurtling emotions shutting the door behind him. His body shudders against the doorframe. He leans almost to the floor, with the ringing in his head. Slowly, his hands come away bloody as he removes them from the sides of his skull. That terrible noise has stopped, at least. His heart is thrashing for escape, desperate in his chest. He has to tame it before it bursts out, and he loses it completely.
Gotta think. For a moment. It's not like he's going to stay up here forever. He just needs time.
Damn, he's left the pistol downstairs. What is he gonna do with it anyway? Shoot Cas? It's dismissed as hysterics. But the fear is so strong and hard to let go because he's trapped in a cage with something dangerous trying to keep other dangerous things from entering.
Rock. Dean. Hard-place.
He gives a humorless laugh out to the air, although it sounds like something unraveled and frantic. He kneels for a moment, just a damn moment, among the clutter he has created; gives himself time before he has to move, before he has to go back, away from breathing space and thinking space, back to the bleak and confused thing downstairs.
Dean scrapes a fist against the moisture of his eyes, beating it down, mastering it, containing it. He stands as if he never swayed, and makes his way over the objects in “Bobby's” home as if they didn't matter. He goes to the bathroom in the master bedroom, avoids the mirror and plants a bloody hand on the corner of the sink for balance. He turns the faucet, places his hands under the cool water until the red rubs out of them. When the water clears, he splashes his face like an animal in the wild.
Just the rush of that action, draws him back to himself. He breathes out, measuring the tempo of his thoughts and his heart. The dissonance hasn't disappeared, not by a long shot, but it gets better. It has to get better.
“Dean...”
The voice isn't Cas'.
Androgynous and frail, it's more aspiration than sound. He waits, hands still under the flowing water. Waiting, listening. The water goes freezing on his fingers, sucking warmth. He looks down; black liquid running over the lip of the sink, smearing down his jeans onto the bathroom tiles. There's a puddle building on the floor similar to the one downstairs. He jolts back away from it. He turns from the bathroom to the bedroom door. Both hands over the knob, he jerks it open.
All of Purgatory scrambles forward from the other side of that door. He looks into its gaping mouths, sees the starved hunger of its eyes. It's going to latch onto him, empty him out, and lick him dry. He leans, either away from it or toward it.
It's overwhelming, God he can't tell.
A hand wraps around his shoulder, takes him back from them.
He lands on palms and knees, aching and retching on the wood floor. “Bobby's” desk is above him. “Bobby's” bookshelves surround him in a familiar embrace. “Bobby's” curtains have been pulled, blood-scribbled windows put away behind them. Cas casts a long shadow high above him, but there are no lights on in the house to make it.
“Dean,” a soft measure of concern that is careful not to overwhelm him, it bears his weight. It says I am here with you. And it sounds like Old-Cas. The Cas he's been praying to since the start of this nightmare. But prayers always go unanswered, of all places, why would they come true here? Whichever Cas is here, his hand hasn't let go of Dean's shoulder. Apparently, he's not standing so high. He's kneeling on the ground, with Dean.
“They were trying to draw you out,” Cas’ voice is a careful prod in the dark.
Under Cas' other hand, the floor creaks dry. The dark puddle of blood is gone. Dean looks over his shoulder, turns his reluctant eyes to Cas. Though he sounds like Old-Cas, he's still dressed in that same hospital getup. There's something so stupid about wanting those white scrubs to change into that familiar dress suit, and blue tie: Jimmy's Sunday best.
“I’m sorry, Dean.” There's something so meaningful about the way he says it. He sounds like Old-Cas. Dean will settle for that.
“What...?” the bile clinging on Dean's lips makes that question acid and raw. It's incomplete; a thousand different things dragging behind it and stuttering at the tip of his tongue. What do you mean? What's happening? What was that? What’s that picture doing here? What are we going to do? What happened to the blood? What happened to you? What's happening to me? What do you mean, Cas!?
If this construct belongs to Dean at all, Cas must hear all his questions piling high and burying them. The strain is showing in the blue of his eyes. He looks worse now that he's up close, all the cracks showing. He’s pale with concentration as he tries to answer them all.
“There is nothing here, Dean” Cas starts slowly, shifting his weight carefully as he rises from the floor. “There are no trees, no plants, animals, or insects. Empty.” His eyes start to dart around during his explanation, body vibrating with nervous energy again, “Nothing to draw from…” he mutters distractedly, losing what bit of Old-Cas there was in his voice. “Even insects have something to contribute-”
“Dammnit, Cas!” Dean explodes from his crouch, finding strength. He slams against Cas' slighter form with all his weight in anger. He shakes him by the lapels of that overcoat and moves them bodily to the curtained windows. “Start making fucking sense-!”
“-I'm trying, Dean!” Back pressed against the curtains that hide the blood drawn windowpanes, Cas shouts at him with equal frustration and fury. It's the first time he's growled out at Dean since the hospital in Northern Indiana, since he remembered himself. “I'm...trying.” Beneath Dean’s gripping fingers, Cas trembles with weariness and self-recrimination; body cold and trembling with it. This is what makes Dean let go.
Slumped against the curtains, Cas refuses to look up. His lapels are wrinkled from Dean’s hands. His composure is harder to gain this time. The effort is so physically obvious. His fists drag against the curtains and pull the fabric taut. He pushes slowly from the wall, performing a balancing act with great weights on. He sets his shoulders, aligns his spine-his default mode: a soldier at attention. The shaking subsides, completely gone as he takes steps away from the wall and the window. He stands on his own near the couch. The only thing that gives him away is the tenseness of his jaw, making him a sharp instrument.
“There is nothing here,” he begins slowly cautiously, like a man walking over ice afraid to slip. “There is nothing here for the sigil to draw from.” It’s here he finally stares at Dean, all the uneasiness of before strangled down. “The bloodletting. I’ve put too much of myself within this construct. I should have realized…” he voice drifts off but he doesn’t lose focus. His eyes are blazing even in the absence of light.
“You’re powering this thing,” Dean is starting to get it. “The picture, the angel radio stuff…that was you.” There’s another kind of light in the depths of Cas’ eyes as they graze him. Dean recognizes relief. He can’t imagine what it must feel like to have so much stuff stored inside (the good and bad) shuffling around and getting plucked at random. To be misunderstood.
They haven’t been on the same page in such a long time. It feels like a new leaf is turned and maybe they’re still in the same book, at least-trying to find each other.
“The bloodletting transmutes the grace I have to the sigil. I told you blood is a multi-dimensional solvent.”
“Yeah, Cas.” Dean almost feels fondness as he regards the complicated creature before him, his once-friend. “Yeah you did.”
He wants to be drawn in by the relief that he’s starting to feel seeping in through his many worn edges. Still there’s one question that dams him up, tight and untrusting.
“That…thing upstairs,” there’s no other word that can describe it, “was that…you?” Dean’s voice goes ragged as he asks, gagging under the memory of whatever the hell that…thing was, dreading if it was any part of Cas.
Whatever bridge had been building between them breaks down in the aftermath of that question. Cas gives a defeated shake of his head. If Dean could take it back, he would. Perhaps he should’ve known. In the face of the torn look cast in the cobalt eyes saying of course you might think that. Before him, Dean feels ashamed now that even had to ask.
Diligently, Cas struggles with the answer; “I have been stretching myself too thin…” He explains gravely, “They’ve found a crack in my defenses, managed to spill through-” He halts, his eyes traveling inward as he shudders. Those nervous ticks are edging their way into the apologetic shrug of his shoulders. “They remember the pathways. We were one…once.”
Again the house seems to pick up on Cas, because from what Dean can guess, it is Cas-a part of it, anyway. The whole place shudders with him, and up from the windows starts a familiar hum.
“Hey-” Dean grabs on a shoulder, trying to get Cas to focus again. “You gotta stay with me, man.” At that, the vibration in the air stills completely. Dean gives a sigh of relief, never wanting to hear that terrifying thrumming again.
“Good,” he tells Cas with a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. “That’s good.” Confident enough that Cas can hold it together, Dean lets go.
It doesn’t feel lighter now than before, nothing’s that easy, but Dean can almost start to say maybe. Maybe he can hope again.
Once more, his eyes drift over the length of floor space, no blood, completely clean. “Bobby’s” couch and desk looks the same, but the energy that surrounds them has shifted. Dean can’t explain the how or why, just the instinct honed in him since childhood signaling off something.
“What happened to the blood?” Dean goes for the direct approach.
“Here,” Cas with his monosyllabic answers that give nothing.
“Where?”
Cas casually indicates everything about them, but there are no drops of blood anywhere.
“It uh…feels different,” Dean voices what he’s been thinking.
His companion looks upon him with surprise and appreciation, “It’s the sigil. I’ve rewritten it, closed in the boundaries.”
That’s it. The space feels smaller. Makes sense, if Cas is spreading himself too thin. The lack of blood is worrying though, but this place is just a trick of the senses. He can’t trust what he sees. He remembers that airy voice calling him, the Leviathan goop in the bathroom, how he had been compelled to the door. He’s got to trust his instincts and keep an eye out for the both of them.
Dean looks out into the kitchen, realizing for how many times he’s passed it, he hasn’t felt hunger. It’s been hours, or days since coming here. He should have had hamburger cravings a while ago.
“So, guess this place is like Hell, right?” Dean drives past the sudden obstruction in his throat whenever he brings up downstairs. “Didn’t need to eat there…I don’t even feel like pie right now.”
Unnatural.
“Only monsters are hungry,” Cas comes alive with the change of topic, scholarly tone returning, “They are insatiable, incomplete of their humanity. Empty, like this place. You’re still a man. You can't eat the things here, Dean, or you'll go hungry too.” It’s a caveat.
“Good to know,” Dean suspects he wouldn’t find the things in this place appetizing anyway.
Beneath the curtains, the muffled tapping of glass gains Dean’s attention. It’s been awhile since he’s checked the windows. Dean extends an arm to draw the shades back, but Cas’ hand shoots out to stop him. Bloody fingers enclose his wrist grinding the bones slightly. Cas shakes his head, eyes narrow and warning.
“What’s going on here?”
The tapping stops abruptly; it’s almost like Dean has gone deaf. He’s given a second of confusion, a second of dead-like silence that can only build to something worse.
And it does.
The silence sunders with a sudden blast. Beneath the curtains, the lines of blood glow fiercely under the cloth. All at once, the tapping resumes with vitriol and consistency. For a moment, it sounds like harsh rain against the glass.
For each pelt of Purgatory rapping at the windows, the sigil shudders and streaks out like red lighting. The air ionizes and flashes. After the strange light show, the non-light of “Bobby’s” study goes dim. From the corner of Dean’s eye, the wallpaper seems distorted and darker in some places. The blood wards sizzle and flare once more. Cas gives a grunt, and it’s like the mirage of the macabre finger painting of bloodlines from before now scrawl over every inch of “Bobby’s” walls. In alarm, he turns to study the mess of them directly, but by the time he glances there, the marks are gone.
“Cas?!” The alarm is growing in Dean.
“Don’t,” Cas commands, and this is the Cas he knew; the one that burned and bled with certainty, even while he was hunted down and brought low. “They won’t get to you, Dean,” he growls out, “I won’t let them.” Again he makes his vows and casts them in duty and steel.
When the sigils flash again, Cas bleeds from his mouth, from his eyes. It runs down the sides of his face the color of ink. The angel sword is back in his hand; it glints white in the dark with a cold bleached light.
“Cas, you gotta stop,” Dean returns the grip on his arm, even as fear works into his bones, makes his limbs shake. “Whatever you’re doing-you gotta stop.”
Cas just shakes his head, shoulders drooping in obvious exhaustion. “Why must you always debate with me?” he says with no trace of bitterness, only melancholy. “Isn’t that what got us here?” He releases Dean’s arm and slips his own hand free.
“Don’t lay that on me, Cas. You made your choices. Listening to Crowley. Lying to me. And Sam…” thinking back on it revisits a bitter burn, the fire of it flaking away the memory of any affection he might have had for this thing before him. Restless with the ache of it, he can’t even look at Cas. “What you did to Sam-I can’t even…” the fire has burned any kind of response away, and if he looks at Cas he can’t be responsible for his actions.
At least the anger is tramping down the fear.
The floors, the ceiling, and walls groan like a great weight is being placed on them. Again the windows draw Dean’s attention with their incessant tapping. It’s getting worse.
“What’s happening?” With a free hand, Dean casts aside a worn curtain. Cas doesn’t stop him this time.
They’re pressed against the glass; bodies roiling over each other with the hunger to get in. Their collective fogging breaths, the jagged cut of teeth. Predatory intent gleaming in the red of their insect eyes; so many things press so close together there are no more broken horizons. He can’t keep track of them all, but the wards burn and hold.
It’s a cage, and the bad things are scratching their way in.
Beneath their collective weight, the glass threatens to shatter. At his back, Cas staggers and grunts against an invisible weight that just struck him.
“We’re leaving,” Dean practically runs and drags Cas easily with him. He brings them out of “Bobby’s” den into the hallway. Whatever the hell waits for them outside, he’ll face it. It’s better than waiting like sitting ducks. He reaches the entrance, and pushes the bookcase that he had shoved there earlier. He takes a breath and yanks the door open. He runs through with Cas trailing him. They step into the hallway, “Bobby’s” study to the left of them, the same creaky staircase on the right.
Confused, he turns them back around again, through the doorway a second time. Rushing past the doorjamb, they end up somehow back in “Bobby’s” hall. This time the walls look worse, every inch covered in the manic scribble of Cas’ blood wards. Even the ceiling starts to drip above their heads, rivulets of blood running down the insides of the house.
Their third attempt to leave ends the same way.
“Shit.” The walls begin to shudder. The wrist locked around Dean’s arm does the same. “Cas, what the hell do we do?!” The creature at his side keeps bleeding, his eyes far away; his face exhausted and pale with the effort of keeping Purgatory away from them.
Dean pushes through for the exit in the kitchen, the buzzing growing about them.
“Hey! Knock it off!” Dean squeezes the arm in his hand hard. Before it can grow, Cas physically stops himself. He gives a minute shake of his head, casting it off before it has a chance to dig in. Running through the threshold of the kitchen, Dean notices the crunch of leaves under his boots. By the sink, he sees a man with his back turned to them raking leaves. He realizes it’s himself.
Dean doesn’t let the confusion stop him, even as he sees Crowley lurking in a corner. It’s not real, just a little bit of Cas seeping in, his strange disjointed memories. He goes to the exit, pulls it open, steps through, and somehow ends up looped to the kitchen again. This time the surroundings look like Lisa’s backyard.
“This is my regret,” Cas mutters against his shoulder, body swaying into Dean’s space punch-drunk, “I should’ve asked you right here. But I-I couldn’t…don’t you see?”
He sees a copy of Cas staring at the other Dean; Cas as he used to be, black suit, and blue tie askew, expression torn.
Dean turns to acknowledge the Cas at his side, his once-friend. “You were there-the whole time.”
“Yes,” Cas utters breathlessly, “I was.” Cas’ legs giving way beneath him, Dean steadies him and moves them to “Bobby’s” study, walls still dripping red with blood.
Cas is still fighting. Underneath the crazy he's still trying to buy them more time-as if there’s any hope of outrunning. And if this broken thing beside him can manage that why not Dean?
The house creaks angrily around them. The tapping at the window grows violent, the slap of many hands against the panes, almost taunting. The glass starts splintering, and Cas gives a groan of pain and coughs out black liquid from his depths. The things outside begin slipping through the slithers. Cas’ breath hitches against his neck, almost stuttering to a stop. Dean bears most of his weight.
Making his decision, Dean drags them to “Bobby’s” desk. The gun lies forgotten where he left it, with its ivory grips and five bullets. He takes it in hand, roughly shakes his half-aware friend.
“Cas,” he barks out darkly, refusing to be denied or deflected from his intentions. Nudging the dark head braced against his shoulder until he meets blue eyes, Dean tells them, “Get ready to get us. The Fuck. Out of here.”
Cas nods once, and closes his eyes in pinched concentration. Dean takes his gun, points it at the blazing red eyes of Purgatory. He can hear them over the crackling glass, whispering venom in their direction. He aims for the still unbroken line of the sigil.
Here’s bullet number one, fuckers.
Dean shoots. The glass shatters around them like a broken seal. The atmosphere sucks at them with building pressure. Against it, the wood of “Bobby’s” home gives a death groan. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything fractures inwards. The hungrier things lurch toward them like a dark wave. They cry out enraged, jagged limbs extended to overcome them.
Dean hears the flap of something frail and long forgotten before they’re both swept away.
Chapter 3 Drain Dry
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