title: what fun it all would be (2/4)

summary: Nothing dies in Purgatory, but they are forever finding corpses.

pairing: Dean/Castiel

warnings:language, violence, gore, suggestive situations, eventual character death

ii.

Emma's got a birthmark on her wrist that kind of looks like a spider. It's ugly and sometimes it itches, and her cousin J.B. says it's probably a sign she's an alien and the mother ship'll be back to pick her up any day now. Dad says if anyone's an alien, it's J.B., except when the mother ship comes to get him they won't be able to find him under all that hair. Emma laughs, but she still feels kind of scared, so when Dad's tucking her in that night, he sits on her bed and looks at her for a minute. Then he says, "I'm gonna show you something."

He shrugs off his over shirt and rolls up the sleeve of the t-shirt he's wearing underneath. There's a big ugly mark there, pink and white and melted-looking. It's not spider-shaped, it looks kind of like the finger-paint turkeys they made at school for Thanksgiving by painting their hands and pressing them onto paper.

"Ewww, Dad!" she exclaims, wriggling out of her blankets to inspect it. It's simultaneously gross and fascinating, like the worms she finds wriggling on the sidewalk after it's rained really hard. "Where'd you get it?"

Dad says, "Secret," and rolls his sleeve back down. Then he wrestles her back under the covers, tickling her armpits when she tries to escape. Pretty soon she's shrieking with laughter, and Dad's trapping her in her blanket, rolling her up like a hot dog. "Time for Ballpark Franks to go to sleep!"

Emma makes one more bid for freedom, flopping in her cocoon, then collapses onto her side. She's still breathless from laughing so hard as Dad goes to turn off her lamp.

Then something occurs to her. "Dad!"

He glances up at her, still smiling. "What, baby girl?"

"Does Papa have one too?"

Dad's still for a minute. Then he says, "Sure he does. It's in the shape of a My Little Pony, just like Uncle Sam's."

"Daaaad."

He snickers and squeezes her foot through the blankets. "Go to sleep, kid."

- o -

After a hunt-Dean can't remember which one anymore, thinks maybe it was that weird wishing well case with the Sandwich of a Thousand Upchucks-Sam started nagging him to use that lame-ass alcohol hand sanitizer crap from those chick stores in the mall. He went on a soapbox-ha-about how regular soap doesn't kill all the crap they had on their hands from grave digging and all that shit, had this whole Stanford explanation about how hand soap didn't get rid of things all the way, just killed the weakest germs, and the ones that can survive it just keep living, over and over, a Battle Royale of the germs, until the only ones left on you are the leanest meanest ones, the ones that are the most dangerous.

Here in Purgatory, the weakest parts of Dean are getting killed off and left behind so only the ones best able to survive are left. It's why his lips don't bleed from the extra layer of teeth anymore, when before they used to chafe. It's why he's not dying half as often as he used to, moving too fast and too viciously to be killed before he kills first. It's why he's always thirsty now, no matter how many stagnant ponds they find, gulping greedily until the front of his shirt is soaked, hanging heavy and sopping against his skin. Always wanting something else. Something more.

Beside him, Cas crouches at the stream's edge, and exhales.

- o -

Sometimes Dad doesn't pick her up from Kid Care. Sometimes Papa comes instead, looking tired and faintly puzzled as he signs the paper in the big white binder. He always holds Emma's lunchbox for her and lets her sit in the front seat of the car and choose which CD to put in.

Emma knows what that means. It means that when they get home she'll be able to hear Dad throwing up in the bathroom. Or the clank of his tools in the backyard and angry scraping sounds, harsh breathing. No scratchy music from the radio that usually plays when Dad's working on the cars, no voice singing, Then what's to stop us, pretty baby under his breath.

Or maybe worse, the driveway will be empty, and Dad won't be home at all. His chair at the table will be empty when they eat dinner, and he won't be home to make silly sentences with Emma's spelling words or see who can make the most toothpaste foam when it's time for Emma to brush her teeth for bed. And Papa will read an extra chapter at bedtime and pretend not to notice that Emma's bedtime has come and gone, and they'll both pay more attention to the open window than the story, listening for the Impala to rumble up the driveway.

And Emma will eventually fall asleep, wondering if this is going to be the time that Dad doesn't come home.

- o -

Dean's started calling 'em Trees of Life. He and Cas find them pretty often, maybe every ten miles or so: huge sprawling trees in the middle of the forest that have a whole nest of roots slithering up out of the ground around them. They always knows when they're getting close to one because of the smell, and sometimes the sounds. There's bodies crammed inside the nooks and crannies made by the roots, new bodies uncurling and crawling up out of the cracks, and dead ones rotting still all curled-up like instead of crawling out they decided to just stay put, and die. They're wrinkled and misshapen, like full-sized aborted fetuses that didn't come back to life right, or at all.

They avoid the trees when they can, trek around to give them a wide berth. But this one's sprawled across the path, bordered by a steep drop into a ravine, and there's no moaning or growling coming from it like something dangerous is in the process of pulling itself to life. So they pick their way through the roots, Dean taking point and watching the ground beneath his boots, looking for anything that looks like it's above to move, to pop its crusty eyes open and lunge for him.

He's so careful avoiding a nasty-ass wrist-spear-thing protruding from the decaying hand of what must've been a wraith that he nearly steps on a tiny hand.

A really tiny hand.

Curiosity gets you killed in Purgatory, Dean knows that from experience, but fuck if he's seen anything this small in the months-years?-they've been here. He compromises, doesn't crouch to look at whatever it is but uses his boot to toe away some of the matted leaves covering it.

It's a kid, or looks to be, maybe two or three. The eyes are sunken, and there's dark streaks spreading from its mouth and eyes, like rot under the skin, its clothes and hair so caked with dirt he can't tell if it's supposed to be a girl or a boy. He's thinking boy, thinking about Amy's kid with his stricken eyes and how Dean left him to get gutted by some other predator 'cuz he hadn't had the guts to knife the kid himself, like it somehow made a difference, not having the kid's blood on his hands when he had his mother's. He's thinking, fuck, I don't want to see this, and inhaling, and stepping past the tiny corpse.

Cas doesn't move with him. Dean realizes the near-silent whisper of his hospital clogs through the leaves isn't following only a few seconds after the fact, turns to growl, "Pick up the pace, Cas."

But Cas has stopped where Dean was. He's staring down at the kid, he's got that wide-eyed look he got the first time Dean took him to that whorehouse, and maybe it would make Dean crack something like a smile to remember that if this wasn't so fucking messed-up, if Cas wasn't crouchingto put his hand to the fucking corpse.

"Cas!" He's back at the angel's side in an instant, grabbing to wrench his wrist back because you don't fucking touch these things, they rear up and nab you (and he can feel Cas's pulse in that bit of wrist, strong and wet, and he swallows back hot saliva, forces himself to concentrate) but in the moment of distraction Cas has traced the index finger of his free hand down the small dirty hand. Dean has a minute to flash back to that dark room in the mental ward, the sparks showering down atop them, and think that Cas really has gone cracked, he's wanting dead things to pull his finger now-

Then the hand twitches, and curls around Cas's finger.

Dean's hand goes tight on Cas's shoulder, the other around his makeshift knife. But Cas isn't pulling back, though he's staring at the hand around his finger with something like horror, and the body-kid-thing-hasn't moved aside from that one reflexive motion.

"Cas," Dean says, low, like he doesn't want to wake the thing up. "What is it?" Cas doesn't have much of his angel mojo anymore, but usually he's got enough to be able to tell what they're dealing with, and to remember how to kill it.

Cas looks up over his shoulder at him. There's something swimming behind his eyes, something like sadness and something like pity and something like you don't think you deserve to be saved, and Dean's hand falls from his shoulder. "Not something we're going to kill," he rasps, and then he's reaching into the leaves, lifting the small body out of the roots. Leaves and other things fall from it; Dean realizes they're worms and maggots, sees more of them crawling in the thing's hair, falling now onto Cas's collar, some clinging to his dirty coat.

"Cas," he says. "We can't just-"

Cas doesn't say anything, just starts down the path again with the bundle in his arms.

When they stop that night, Cas volunteers to take first watch. Dean pretends to let him, curling up on his side with his back to Cas and the newest thing he's lifted from perdition, and thinks yeah, right, like hell is he having anything but a two-handed grip on consciousness (and his knife) while that thing's with them.

He lies awake for minutes in the darkness, then hours, running his tongue over his teeth and feigning sleep, listening for any sound below the rustle of cold wind through leaves. Finally he hears Cas shift, a tiny intake of breath.

"I don't know you," he murmurs so quietly Dean has to stop breathing to hear, "or how you came to be. But surely this is not where you are meant to be."

There's no response from the creature, at least nothing Dean can hear.

"Please wake up." Cas's voice is barely more than a breath.

Again, nothing, but then Dean hears something. A whisper of metal, a tiny intake of air. A faint, heady smell. And he's rolling over without realizing it, shoving upright, mouth open. Cas has his sleeve pushed up, a neat cut on his wrist weeping blood, and he's trying to drip it onto the thing's slack lips.

"The hell are you doing?" He's at Cas's side in a second, snatching his wrist back.

Cas looks up, gives Dean a I will smite you look that brings heat rushing to his core and a reflexive snarl to his lips. "Release me."

"Did it hypnotize you? Is it some kind of wraith?" Dean's got his teeth bared, is scanning the thing's hands for any sign of wraith-spikes, mentally running through all the monsters he knows that can hypnotize their victims and peripherally worrying at how little grace Cas must have left if he's vulnerable to mind-control by two-bit monsters.

"I am not under any outside control," Cas says stiffly. "This child is important, Dean."

The last child Cas gave a shit about was the Anti-Christ, and he'd tried to kill him. This one he's trying to keep alive? "Important to who?"

"To me," Cas says shortly, and turns away, the thing cradled in his coat.

- o -

Papa must notice her glum expression the minute she trudges into the house after Dad, because he puts down his pen and opens his arms. Emma stomps over to them and climbs into his lap, mashing her forehead against his so that their eyes are right in front of each other, and frowns.

"Papa," she says unhappily.

"Emma," he says back. "Why are you upset?"

"Ms. Mahon made me an ad executive. I have to sell commercials for the radio."

Behind them, Dad lets out a snort of laughter. Emma does not understand why Dad is forever being amused by things that make Emma angry. Uncle Sam says he has the same problem and that it's because Dad's brain is hooked up weird. Emma doesn't like when Uncle Sam says this about her dad, but sometimes she thinks it's true. Like now.

"Don't laugh!" she shouts at him, then goes back to Papa, who is still watching her sympathetically from an inch away.

"I don't want to be an ad executive," she whines to him. "I wanted to be a Biggerson's waitress!"

More laughter from the kitchen. And now Papa doesn't look sympathetic so much as puzzled. His head is tilted. "Why did you want to be a Biggerson's waitress?"

"Because," Emma says impatiently, all honestly, Papa, keep up with the conversation, "if the kids who work at Biggerson's make too much food and have leftovers at the end of the day, they get to eat them! I wanted to work at Biggerson's!"

Papa is smiling. His eyes are crinkled up at the corners, and he is shaking his head slightly. "Emma, my Emma," he says. "You are truly your father's daughter."

Emma snuggles comfortably under his chin. Then thinks of something, cranes her head back to look up at him. "And Papa's too?"

Papa just smiles softly and presses a kiss to her head.

- o -

Dean doesn't ask anything more after that. Doesn't let his guard down, either, the next night, or the next, when Cas whispers to (pleads with) the creature, and the smell of blood wafts into the air, and Dean pretends the tension thrumming through him is from knowing any Tom, Dick, or Jefferson Starship could scent it and come crashing down on them for it. That the quiver in his muscles and the saliva coursing to his mouth is in preparation for a fight. Nothing else.

But it starts to drive him crazy. He wants so badly. He can't keep lying taut as a bowstring, smelling Cas's blood and hearing his frustrated exhalations of "Why won't you take it?"

And that night when the first salty-sweet seeps into the air, he sits upright, is across the campsite to Cas before he even realizes he's done it. His blood is pounding, his mouth tastes hot and wet. He's snarling, "What even makes you think your blood is going to help her?"

Cas looks too tired to glare back. He's barely spoken these past few days, eyes glazed and mouth tight. It's a far cry from the piercing stare Dean's used to (misses), that he had even when Cas was holding up the board game and saying Would you like to go first?

"I don't know that it will," he rasps finally. "Angel blood may be...unpalatable, to a creature such as her. But she needs something. She's dying."

Dean's tongue traces his teeth. "Big deal, around here."

Cas shoots him a look that's angry and disappointed at the same time, and Dean snorts, looks away. Watches from the corner of his eye as Cas returns his attention to the thing's face. He'd gotten some water the day before, wiped most of the grime from its face and out of its hair, and it looks almost human now, bow-shaped lips and a tiny nose. But the dark streaks under the skin and the pits of its eyes have gotten, if anything, darker and deeper. It still grasps Cas's finger, and Dean wonders for the first time if it, or Cas, have let go at all since it first latched on.

He turns back to face Cas. "Lemme try."

Cas looks up. Studies him for a moment. Dean feels with sudden acuity the extra ridge of teeth under his gums, the unnatural detail with which he can see Cas's eyelashes and chapped lips in the darkness. Monster.

Cas carefully shifts the child into Dean's arms.

A tremble shudders through it the moment its head touches his elbow. It keeps shaking, violently, as he tightens his hold so it doesn't fall. He's suddenly one hundred percent positive he's going to break it, fuck, he hasn't held a kid this little since Bobby John, and yeah, look how that turned out, and there's another memory pushing at his mind, and he's shoving it back, doesn't want to fucking think about that.

"You sure don't smell like a girl," he tells it, trying to be whatthefuckever casual about this. He licks his thumb relatively clean, touches it to one of his canines and doesn't think about what it means that even his human teeth are sharp enough to draw blood.

It's trembling fit to thrash out of his grip now, reminds him of the werebat he hunted once with Dad, having his arms wrapped around it to keep it from taking off and feeling its powerful muscles heave against him, like holding a giant snake, a giant cockroach, all the things you'd never want to have close to your face. Dean grits his teeth and touches his bloody thumb to the small mouth.

It pulls away, letting out a weak, reedy cry. He feels a flash of hot, stupid shame, wondering what the fuck else he'd thought it was going to do, anyway. He goes to shove it back at Cas. But then he feels a sting, and suction, on his thumb. He looks down the see the kid's mouth latched around it, sucking greedily. The hand it hadn't loosed from Cas's finger for days is curled around his thumb now, tiny and wanting.

He looks at Cas. A weird feeling is spreading through him, almost like pride, like Look, Cas, no hands.

And for a minute, Cas stares back at him like he used to.