Title: And the Night was filled with Many Things Calling for his Death
Author:
the_poetteArt:
dahlia94Beta:
anon-unknown001Rating/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.
It must be his eighth question in a row. But Cas’ voice resounds steadily in their place of rest with its reassuring volume and roughness. He goes through his explanations of the flatlands above them. How like Icarus they flew too far into danger when they shot through “Bobby’s” house. Purgatory is surrounded by this outer layer, and if they wanted to be sucked dry until their bones turn to dust, they could always continue on because the only way back is breaking through that negative space hovering above them but that would pronounce their complete death.
This is why no one escapes Purgatory. The door locks from one side and the only exit route must be summoned on Earth.
By lucky happenstance, Sam has a found a way to communicate from Earth.
Apparently, human dreams lie within a dimension all their own. As long as Dean is alive and human, his mind will wander there. But dreaming in Purgatory isn’t like dreaming on Earth. The distance between him and Sam, despite the dream root, should have been insurmountable.
Cas has always been right about blood spells. They are powerful, even here. Whatever else rituals require, blood will always strengthen them; the kind of supernatural mojo boost signal Cas unknowingly provided with his bloodletting.
It made the dream root strong enough that Sam bridged the barriers of Purgatory; made it strong enough to be ground in Purgatory’s strange reality. Strong enough to waste a bullet apparently (as much as Cas explains, that part is still a bit untenable to Dean).
Weakened, as he was by the things in “Bobby’s” house and the vampire dust upstairs, it almost drained Cas dry. It will be a long time before he can recharge his batteries to do it again.
As Cas gains strength, the blood diminishes from the floor, from his clothes. Still his face is ashen and drawn, skin stretched into troubled planes under the strange light of the cavern. His vessel, he says, is almost fully healed, but he avoids the topic of his true form in a way that’s most telling.
Dean hates that Cas has adopted some of the Winchester’s less than stellar habits.
“We must try to maintain ourselves in this level, tipping too far will drag us back to the beginning again,” Cas warns from his place on the floor. He hasn’t moved from the position he fell in, even as Dean drags himself around avoiding standing at all cost as he crawls on all fours investigating, much like a dog would a new surrounding.
It’s strange to see Cas prostrate on the ground, almost casual-like. The blood still crusting the back of his overcoat proves otherwise.
Looks like angel air is off limits.
“Beginning?” Dean fishes out a jagged rock from a pile hoping this one might make a proper spearhead. He keeps Cas talking, and doesn’t know whom it comforts more.
“There is no lineated arrangement of time, Dean,” Cas already sounds stronger than a minute ago. “The past. The present. The future. All occur simultaneously.”
“Well that’s gotta be a bitch on timeshares,” Dean starts to scrape the sides of this stone against another, trying to create a sharper point.
“I understand that reference,” Cas’ muted amusement adds color to his face for a moment, “Daphne wanted to buy a timeshare. We never did agree where though.”
And Dean’s doesn’t like to think of the woman whose husband he stole and never thought to tell her about or return. Guilt rears its ugly head, and he tells it to pipe down and get back on topic.
“So what we saw was the beginning?” If he scrapes too hard against the stone, at least he didn’t shave his skin off. “All the scary dark stuff?”
“Primal forces, Dean,” Cas eyes drift back to the bleak dark, “The things without name, hungry things consuming each other. God probably thought they would take care of themselves here in Purgatory, locked away for all eternity with nothing else to feed on. That they’d just burn out. They did just the opposite. They thrived, feeding off each other. Always hungry. That was the beginning of Purgatory.”
“You’re saying we were literally in the past.” Dean stops scraping stones, his stomach tightening when he thinks back to mouths and eyes.
“In a sense,” Ever-so-slowly the scrape and shift of Cas’ shaky limbs lift him and arrange themselves so he’s sitting cross-legged on the rock floor. His breath is a harsh stuttered burst of air after the quiet once he’d settled. “It’s always the past, but it’s always the future and the present too.”
“Well hell, Cas, Thanks for making that all clear,” Dean’s mind is spinning with the overload of information that doesn’t even break the surface of sense. “I’m just gonna forget what you said.”
“You mustn’t forget,” Cas warns him in a way that’s all serious, forbidding that Dean’s attention should wander, “When Leviathan roamed the Earth, his presence destroyed everything in his path. Until the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And then God said let there be light and he separated the light from the dark and made it Purgatory. And God cast Leviathan through its door, locked him away for what He hoped was forever…”
From the way Cas’ eyes go inward with remorse Dean can imagine the tagline in his thoughts reading: and then some stupid angel came along and set them free.
“And in his prison, Leviathan ate of himself and became something new and monstrous. And from himself came other things new and monstrous. God was fond of symmetry.” His tone is cynical, losing some of its ancient depth as he remarks with all-too-human disappointment. “For Heaven there is Hell. Earth’s distorted image is Purgatory. You will see a lot of similarities, because Purgatory, at its base, was a part of the Earth before God divided it. The way Hell had been a part of Heaven before Lucifer poisoned it.”
“The fates like to call it symmetry...” Cas gives a bitter laugh, “I think my Father didn’t learn from His past mistakes.”
“So those…things we saw in the past hovering outside ‘Bobby’s’…” Dean goes slow, trying to grasp the concept Cas is trying to make palatable, “…was that Leviathan?”
“Not as we knew him on Earth,” Cas shrugs his shoulders, deep in thought. “His second evolutionary state. The things he left behind to become what he is now. Even Leviathan had an adolescence.”
“What?” If anything further explanations have made Dean more confused.
“If water can turn into ice, or to vapor-once time and external conditions force it to change physical states-can it still be classified as water?” Cas states without pause, and Dean is hoping his mind didn’t just run out into the crazy where he can’t follow. “Those things with teeth are no more Leviathan, than you are the Homosapien that first walked on two legs. But Leviathan has dominion over them, the way Eve had over her children.”
“Yeah,” Dean feels the light bulb go off in his head when he thinks back, “Lenore was influenced by Eve even though she was trying to be her own…monster. They were connected.” He thinks back to “Bobby’s” house, the thing with eyes and mouths that whispered at him. “That crap out there knew my name.”
Cas almost smiles, but the light of it springing to life seems to startle and disappear off his face as he continues dark and grave, “Everything we meet…they will all know you. You’ll see things older than me, Dean.” With a deflated air, he scratches absentmindedly on the dried blood of his overcoat, “They’re going to be older than me and stronger. That’s why you must know.”
How many other things will be gunning for us?
“Why don’t we just lay low, Cas?” It’s not in Dean’s nature to do it, but looking at that weary face before him drives him toward this option. “Until Sam busts us out. Hell, I just have to knock out so he can give us the signal right? He knows the ritual to make a door. Virgin blood-that’s easy-it doesn’t have to come from one virgin. And I’m pretty sure Garth’s never seen a pair of tits in his life. As far as blood from Purgatory natives, there’s gotta be a ton of Leviathans to drain on Earth.”
“And when Sam creates the door, where do you think it’ll open?” Again Cas’ stare goes sharp, as always, hitting on something vital. “What’s going to be on the other side to meet him?”
That’s something Dean hasn’t considered. He shudders to think of the teeth and dark and Sam in over his head despite his good intentions.
“Then what, Cas?” Just the thought of Sam in trouble already has gotten Dean back to anger. “Do we just lay down and die here?”
Cas looks at him with something fierce in his eyes. Dean recognizes that determined fire in all the times where there’d been nothing to hope for but a no-way-in-hell-hail-Mary-pass of a chance. He sees the wheels and cogs of a once great machine putting itself back together and working for his benefit.
“You’ve figured it out,” it issues out of Dean’s mouth, but not like a question.
“There are things I know. Things they showed me when they were…inside.” His hands go bloodless wringing at the edges of his coat. “I intend to use it to our advantage.”
“So, can I ask, the plan?” Dean smirks at the phrasing.
“Bring it all down on their heads,” There’s an answering smile in his voice as Cas issues out deadpan as ever. “Make sure the way can never open from here. Escape.”
“Nice.”
“Unfortunately, Leviathan knows what I know. He knows we’re here. Has probably taken measures against us.” Cas remarks; the strategist that Dean knew from when they were running from the devil emerges from the white-dusted figure before him. “What he doesn’t know about is Sam.”
“Our two-way radio dream-bridge,” Dean full out grins like he hasn’t in a long time.
“I’ll strengthen it as much as I can and guard it from…others.” In Dean’s ears, that sounds like a promise. “And when it’s time, you’ll signal Sam.”
“So, you know where this door’s going to open?”
“There is a point where all time converges,” Cas’ voice goes secretive, and Dean crawls to his side to hear him. “The first door. The door that my Fa-that God closed.”
“Good,” Dean nods his head to keep Cas going, “Where’s the map?”
“It’s not that easy.” Cas looks reluctant to dim that meager sense of hope that has finally broken the surface of this place. “Purgatory changes, Dean. The door is never in the same place, or time.”
“Great,” Dean says with a final vicious strike of the stones in his hands that echoes out his disappointments, but not his surprise. “Then how are we supposed to find it?”
There’s a quiet in the aftermath of that question that builds Dean’s anxiety. He doesn’t have strength enough to lift the stones in his hands and fashion a weapon. It all seems kind of useless now. He doesn’t stare at Cas, just the hands in his lap that suddenly seem heavy and numb.
An arm reaches over to him. A hand takes his shoulder. It feels warm even as he’s divided from the touch by layers of his dirty clothes. He looks up and suddenly there’s Cas, eyes given new light for the first time in this place.
“You forget,” he says, warm and sure in a way that’s been missing for so long, “I’ve been known to bend time on occasion.”
Dean laughs out loud. He’s been running on empty for so long, he doesn’t remember being so full of one good thing. He lets it ring out in the darkness, unafraid. And that’s also a first since coming here. He returns the gesture by clapping his arm against that old worn down overcoat, takes a moment to feel the texture of it and the warm weight of the shoulder beneath it under his hand. A thought comes to mind.
Don’t ever change.
And it hurts to think of, but it also brings with it a kind of joy.
He doesn’t know how long they stay connected, bracing each other with stares and desperate grasps that cements them together, lifts them up and out of this place already. Who is comforting whom?
The answer doesn’t matter much anymore.
Dean is the first to draw away. He goes back to sharpening his tools and Cas goes back to staring at him and healing.
When the spear is sharp enough, Dean blows the dust off and tests the point. It’ll do.
“So what’s step one?” he asks after a while, throwing clinical gazes at his companion and heartened by the progress in Cas’ state so far. “I mean after you’re back to mint.”
“We do what you do best, Dean,” Dean perks up at the smite-worthy fire inlaid in that gravel voice. “Hunt.”
And that’s a plan Dean can get behind. He smiles grimly not at Cas but to the dark that surrounds their little rock bowl.
You hear that, assholes. We’re coming for ya.
They go back to the steady stream of questions batting back and forth; never pausing long enough for the dark to settle in around them. The white beam of light circles from the opening above them, but the dust doesn’t rain down. It doesn’t give out warmth. It doesn’t make the world seem less dangerous. If anything it could be a spotlight to anything that might be living here.
But Dean is taking his cues from Cas. The way he sits and stares, although not entirely untroubled is signal enough that everything’s as good as they can hope for here. So Dean crawls around searching for more spearheads to make.
It’s on one of these rounds that he catches Cas jabbing a sharpened stone into his hand.
“Hey!” Dean skimmers back to his side and grabs the rock, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I thought the point of you sitting here was to heal not make more holes?”
Cas ignores him and settles down to smear the blood on the floor between his knees. “I’m making your weapon more effective,” he says as he continues to draw those familiar lines, “Give me your gun.”
Dean hesitates but draws it out from the back of his jeans. He hands it over, facing its grips toward Cas. His companion stares up from his work. “Empty it.” Dean follows directions, taking out the clip and laying it on the floor between them.
Cas takes the clip and gets to the bullets. Just three. He presses them into the blood, rolls them so they’re covered while speaking under his breath. On the surface, that’s all he does, but Dean feels that strange invisible energy popping up from nowhere like it usually does when Cas works his mojo.
Cas doesn’t explain what it means. But it’s significant. Just how it started, it leaves without sign. He returns the bullets to Dean, covered by what looks like rust against the brass tint of each shell. Dean fits them back into the clip.
“Save them,” Cas says importantly, “until you need them.”
He does the same with the spearhead, and Dean silently goes back to searching for more. When he does, he settles down making them sharp. By the end he has a total of three spearheads. They’re all covered in Cas’ blood. He watches as Cas carves on their sides with his sword (appearing out of nowhere, as usual).
It’s hours or years, days or seconds as they continue to talk, continue to heal. Dean notices the strange spotlight overhead has dimmed. The stones above them groan and shift as they try to close the hole Cas made.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Cas observes in that quiet obvious way he has that suggests he means this in more than a literal sense. “The light has kept them away, but they’ll come back once it’s gone.”
Dean’s hand wraps around his hand-made spear. The rock is long and lean enough that it looks more like a dagger. Cas’ blade has smoothed the hilt enough that his fingers grip it easy. He can feel the strange carvings under the pads of his fingers, Cas’ blood coats the edges of it. His companion says it’ll act like a poison to anything that comes. The abominations of Purgatory can’t handle it.
“Who’re they?” Dean puts his gun at the small of his back, hearing the rattle of something far off in the distance.
Cas gives a weary sigh, but doesn’t answer.
“Cas,” Dean doesn’t turn away from the stalactites and stalagmites stuttering off into the dark. Some look like they’ve moved in the time they’ve been here. “You up to it?”
He hears the pop and creak of Cas as he shifts and rises behind him. He hears the slide of metal and cloth that marks the angel-blade’s presence.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Dean smiles, and meets the first of what pops out from the dark head-on.
END.
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