You are brave.
You are braver than I ever will be, with your face half-bloodied and your eyes already knowing they are nothing, nothing, nothing. You don't crumble, you soldier on, like the Lionheart you are, over the whispering plains made of nothing, over the carpet of air repetitive.
You stop. You look for a sign of the world you know- something, anything. Anything to convince you that you are not gone, you are just dreaming, you are hidden behind a veil.
That's it- this is only a veil.
You fish in your pocket for a hopeful slip of paper to remind you why you're here. You come up with a handful:
Go for it, Team Free Will. –Chosen One
I'm not sorry there's no more pie, you douche. –Sam
I'm sorry I can't be with you, but I know you carry me in your heart. –Bobby
I'm here with you. By your side. –Castiel
And a few more anonymous ones:
If it is a war, I'm fighting it. But they better find another planet to conquer.
Yesterday was Tuesday, but today is Tuesday too.
It's all worth it.
We stay together. We're a team.
Eat like a rabbit.
The notes don't all make sense, and they definitely don't tell you your name, so you scatter them on the floor like swept-aside, once-loved autumnal leaves. You bite on your lower lip, keeping up that impenetrable façade of toughness, of infallibility, not allowing yourself to break down.
You are brave.
When I walk behind you and mutter your name under my breath, your face doesn't shift at all, like it was something you just wanted to find to pass the time. You already know you are merely a phantom of a penumbra, and that makes my job far easier, Dean John Winchester.
I look into your eyes for a while, those eyes the colour of the tired, washed-out sea, and see flashes of your life. Bright orange-red sparks dancing around your frame shrouded in shadows, and the sky illuminated an effervescent red from the flames. Iridescent bubbles bursting into the air as you and your brother laugh, enjoying the sole carefree moment you have, before the bubbles burst, and your lives burst with them also.
You are not who you used to be.
You've been here before. I know from the way you dare to look me in the eye and walk slowly away, with that gait filled with feigned confidence. You are a warrior, I can tell. Everything about you mutters, it's just a veil just a veil just a veil.
You stop trying when you realise I'm just the same distance away from you as I was before.
"Where is this, reaper?" You stop trying to pretend that you don't know a thing as it slowly comes back to you, but not the name, never the name, no matter how many times I call you by it. The last thing a forgotten Lionheart like you needs is a name, because you are a pile of bones just the same.
"Purgatory," I reply.
"I've never seen this side of it before. How big is Purgatory, anyway?" You speak as if you are a regular customer at a diner, ordering up one serving of a casual, unnoticed death. (It doesn't matter what the notes say because what is on paper can be ripped up and eaten, just like your heart has been)
I don't answer to that, but take in how your face has grown slightly appeased, as if you're happy somehow that for once, you know that you won't have anyone to protect, not even yourself. I take in how the washed-out eyes begin to glow incandescent again, like you've found meaning in this forest of tangled, lost souls.
"Welcome home," I say.
a/n: I know the reaper is slightly ooc, but I hope you enjoyed that! Please leave a review if you wish to make or break my day :)