A/N: Just one more after this, and an epilogue! Thank you to Eryaforsthye, Psychee, Miss Mudblood and Anna Darsin for reviewing the last chapter. I've gotten four for each chapter, and I'd love to get at least five for this one! Thanks so much for sticking with me. Also, some swearing here, but with Dean talking a lot, it became unavoidable.

"Cas…" Dean can only trail off, watching the exhausted angel. He's never seen anyone look so defeated.

"I have…I have done everything wrong," Castiel admits. "I have turned on you, turned on my Father, on everyone…I sided with humanity only to declare myself above them. How could God make a creature like me?" He stares at his hands, tone dripping with disgust.

"Not everything," Dean argues. "You pulled me out of hell, Cas, and you saved Sam, and you helped stop the fucking apocalypse!"

"When I saved Sam, he had no soul," Castiel points out. "And I was hardly effective against the apocalypse."

"You pulled me out of hell," Dean repeats, sticking to the one argument that is still standing.

"That is…one of the few things I do not regret," Castiel admits. "I have killed…too many. I have done too much wrong. There is no one I have not betrayed. You, and Crowley, and Balthazar," he looks frankly pitiful. "Perhaps I deserve this."

"The hell?" Dean is on his feet in an instant, despite his aching limbs. "You don't deserve this, Cas."

"Purgatory is a place for monsters," he spoke gravely. "I am one."

"You are not a monster, Cas!" Dean knows he's being louder than he shoulder be, but he can't help but feel like he has every right to be. "If you deserve this, I do, too."

"No, Dean," and Cas is shaking his head. "You have always done the right thing. You have not turned on your friends, or murdered thousands, or…no. You should not be here."

"God damn it, Cas, you're not a monster!" He's shouting now. "You are not a monster!"

The angel is remarkably calm. "If it helps you sleep better at night," he says mildly, and Dean wonders if he's simply too tired to argue, or if he's trying to be condescending, or if he really thinks he has no right to argue with Dean.

"Cas…" he starts but trails off, but has no idea what to say.

There is rustling in the forest around them, then, and Castiel breaks in. "We need to keep moving," he comments, still quiet. He stands with obvious effort. "I believe the monsters heard you."

Dean just counts himself lucky that Castiel didn't say "other monsters". Yet.

The forest is darker than it has ever been, and Dean is struggling not to trip over his own feet, or the gnarled roots and sharp stones that mar the path. He'd ask Cas to maybe turn the lights up a bit if he wasn't already for obviously drained, pale and wide-eyed as he practically dragged his somehow still-injured leg behind him and gasped for breath. Dean was pretty sure he hadn't fully healed from their latest monster, either, even after doing his angel trick.

He wants to say something to make Castiel feel better, but he can't even comfort himself, and he knows anything he says will sound fake. Hell, he was the one yelling at Cas that the Leviathans were his fault, that he needed to clean up his mess. Cas knows that Dean knows what he's done.

He didn't realize the angel was kicking himself over everything this much, though. That Cas thought he deserved this.

Dean is distracted from his thoughts when he trips over a particularly large root that he can't see. He swears when he hits the ground, and Cas turns around, and naturally that's when the screaming leathery thing swoops down from above.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean snarls, as he struggled to pick himself up and attack the thing at the same time. His stake was broken, left in the chest of the insect fear monster, and they'd neglected to make a new one. He's going to pay for it now, he realizes, as the gashes on his side split open yet again while the thing sinks its fangs into his shoulder.

Cas stabs at it with the stake, but it's a pretty weak attempt and largely ineffectual against the bat monster they're now facing. It swings around for another attack, and Cas tosses his weapon to Dean, who may be scrabbling in the dust but isn't nearly as drained.

It evidently didn't expect Dean to be armed, because it snarls in surprise when he jabs it in the eye. Yellow liquid sizzles on the tip of the wood, probably reacting with the blood that is already there. It rears back and tries to get in another chomp, but Dean is ready and wields the stick like a baseball bat, slamming it in the side of the head and sending it whirling away.

It tries to make another pass, but Cas hisses, "Aim for the wings," and Dean slashes through the leather like it is paper, shredding the batlike flaps that are keeping it aloft. Their attacker collapses to the ground, howling, and drops to all fours before racing off into the night like a large, malformed rodent as opposed to a large, malformed bat.

Once it is gone, the adrenaline fades, and Dean rocks back on his heels. His side is throbbing again, and his shoulder is laced with pain from the bite. "What the hell was that?" he asks out of habit, even though it's unlikely that Castiel knows.

He's surprised that Cas answers. "A harpy," he responds. "Servants of hell, generally unintelligent. That one was…larger, than most."

"You've seen them before?" he is even more surprised by this.

"Yes," he is frank. "When I rescued you."

"Oh," and he feels somewhat stupid. Maybe he has seen them before too, although of the things that happened in hell, the creatures were probably the least of his worries. "What is it doing here?"

"It was most likely deemed…untrainable, by the demons," Cas conjectures, with a half shrug to indicate he's not sure.

"Huh." They're both quiet for a minute. "What does a trained one look like?"

"Much the same," the angel informs him. "But it attacks on command."

"Great," he throws out, sarcastically, before they lapse once more into silence.

They walk a little farther, until they're both too exhausted to keep going, and then sit down and replace their weapons. Dean's is snapped in half and buried in a monster's chest, Cas' is half-eaten-away by the acidic eye fluid that coats the tip. It takes longer than he would like to find suitable sticks, and even longer to chip away the end into a suitable point, although it might just be his aching limbs and heavy eyelids that make every movement seem like lifting a mountain.

It's finally done, and he curls his fingers around the stake, determined to be ready for the next monster, while slumping back against a tree.

"You should sleep," Castiel tells him, and Dean wants to refuse, but he really can't, because he's already drifting off.

When Dean wakes, it's a pleasant surprise, because they're not being attacked. He sits up, and notes that he can see better than before—Castiel is recovering, at least marginally, from his injuries.

"How long did I sleep?" he asks, even though he thought he'd long since broken the habit. The angel only shrugs in response, which Dean expected the second the words were out of his mouth.

"I…cannot keep track of time, here." He sounds almost apologetic.

Dean realizes the thought of escaping has faded into a barely-there hope. He can't see a way out, anymore. "You think we'll ever get out of here?"

"I don't know," Cas' voice is dull. "We could die, I suppose. It would get you out, at least."

"Sorry, I thought dying wasn't part of the plan!" Dean snaps.

"You would go to Heaven," Cas continues as if Dean hadn't spoken. "I'd probably stay here."

"Look, Cas, we're not dying, and if you did, you wouldn't go to Purgatory. You're not a monster."

Castiel shrugs.

"Look, nobody's perfect, okay? What has God done that's so great? He made all this shit, he better take care of it! And it shouldn't be your job to do his job. He should be stopping the apocalypse, dealing with the crazy angels. For all this Purgatory is for monsters thing, seems like he ought to be closer to here than to heaven!" Dean is practically snarling, because he needs to get it into Cas' head. "I forgive you, okay! And you can't keep thinking that you let down your Father or whatever, because if it's such a big deal, where is he!"

Castiel says something, very quietly, that Dean misses. "Sorry?"

"…I believe in Him."

"What?" Dean can't believe this.

"What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, dare its deadly terrors clasp?" Castiel is reciting again. "He may have made monsters…but I, I might be one too. He may have abandoned us, left us to die, to take care of ourselves against things He created, but…I believe in Him."

"Why?" Dean demands.

The angel fixes him with haunted eyes. "What else is there to believe in?"