Chapter 10

The chain around the vampire's chest and torso had protected him to a certain extent. The rest of Benny's body was a pulped and bleeding mess, cuts, deep and shallow, criss-crossing each other, contusion over contusion, standing out lividly against the dead white pallor of his skin. Dean looked over the injuries, his face like stone.

"I've got everything, Benny, everything we need," he told the vampire quietly. "We gotta get out of here, now."

Benny's head rolled back and he tried to nod, his throat working as he tried to speak.

"Don't." Dean looked at his mouth, split and swollen, the broken teeth and gaps. "I'm going to stand up, think you can walk – a bit?"

He looked at the vampire's legs. They were bleeding freely, slashed to ribbons but straight, he couldn't see that the bones had been broken. Benny lifted his hand and Dean took it, pulling him onto his feet. The vampire staggered, and Dean lifted his arm, mouth compressing tightly as he saw the bone end piercing through the muscle in the vampire's forearm. He shifted his grip, so that the forearm could hang without weight, and Benny groaned, the sound low and distorted.

He would be okay in the morning, Dean thought, catching himself as he realised that they wouldn't be here in the morning. He would be a lot better when he was free of this place, he amended silently to himself.

The climb down the hill was slow and agonising, Benny stumbling and shaking, his breath hissing out between the broken jaw bones, blood soaking into Dean's side as he tried to take more of the vampire's weight. The camp was burning fiercely, lighting up the night, and he could see the Colonel's men running against the flames, most of them without a useful purpose, the chain of command broken.

He kept to the foot of the rise, staying in darkness as much as possible, and headed for the gun embankment.

Flickering frozen images of the men he'd (tortured) killed blinked in and out in his head. He didn't regret what he'd done (what it had felt like) for one second; he hadn't felt that rage (that murderous black rage) since … not for a long time. He'd crossed a boundary, he knew, but this was Purgatory and boundaries were crossed all the time, what happened here wasn't the same thing as what happened in the real world.

He'd seen the vampire (and ice had filled his veins) and reacted. There wasn't anything more to it than that (and memory had risen, memories of what to do and how to do it).

He would get Cas and they would get out, and what had happened here (what he'd done) would stay here, with the men (he'd condemned to death) who managed to survive this night (some of them might've been good men), all psychos anyway, and he didn't regret it for a second, firing their weapons and destroying their chances of returning home (no one ever goes home) and no one would know what happened once they got back home (Benny wouldn't talk) and things could finally go back to fucking normal (nothing would ever be normal again).

Struggling with the vampire's weight, Dean tried to push the oddly doubled thoughts out of his head. He wasn't any good at lying to himself, a part and parcel of his inability to lie to his family. But he didn't have the time or the inclination to get that mess straight now; he just needed to finish the job, to get them out of here. He would deal (bury) with everything once that was done.

He shook his head and looked around. They were close to the hill now. The sirens had told him of another way out, under the gun embankment, a cave in the hillside that led down through the mountain to the valley below. He lifted Benny slightly, seeing one of the vampire's feet twisted and dragging as he headed past the big guns.

Behind him, he could hear the roaring of the fires, a beacon to everything in this part of monster-land that all was not well at the human camp. He could hear the shouting and the screams of the men, the fire of small arms and the louder cracks of the rifles. The sirens were effective killers, turning man against man, and he had the feeling not many would still be alive in the morning. They would murder each other and flesh and blood would only heal if death had not come.

He saw the inky darkness move at the edge of his peripheral vision and stopped, dropping Benny as his eyes searched frantically for a confirmation of that movement. Another part of the darkness shifted and there was a gleam in the black, reflecting in the firelight behind him.

Oh … shit.

"Stay here," he told the vampire. "Keep your head down."

He ran for the guns, a few yards ahead and to his left, hearing heavy thumps on the ground to the right, pacing him, tracking him. The nearest gun was the Steyr. Single shot, bolt action, he told himself, jumping to the top of the bank, hands reaching out for the smooth stock, fingers finding the safety and trigger and bolt automatically as he dropped to his knees behind it. A hard edge pressed against one knee and he hoped like hell it was a box of ammunition.

The blackness moved again and strode out, the creature's massive, unlikely frame outlined along one edge by the fires. Dean looked through the scope and fired, instantly deafened by the noise, his ears ringing loudly when he slid his finger from the trigger.

He'd hit the leviathan in the chest area, he thought, the armour-piercing round going in deep as it exploded on contact, and suddenly the creature was on fire, from the inside, coruscating like a demon inside a host, the elongated head thrown back on the end of the long, sinuous neck, mouth open wide and light showing the rows of pointed teeth.

Working the bolt, another round loading into the chamber as the spent shell was ejected, he caught another movement in the corner of his eye and he shifted his position over the soft ground. The gun swung around on its pivot, smooth as silk, and he half-closed his eyes, the barrel stopping, his finger muscles drawing back on the trigger slowly. Slow is fast. Slow is fast. Caleb's training held after all the years that had gone by. The second levi lit up and Dean saw movement at the edge of the plateau as the others turned away, dropping below the edge.

Scrambling down the bank again, Dean ran to Benny. The leviathan might hang back a bit longer, but not forever. The vampire lay where he left him, and Dean's face hardened as he took in the fresh blood spilled over the ground beside him. He crouched, sliding his arms through the straps of the pack, and dragging Benny over his shoulder, his feet shifting slightly on the ground as he balanced the vampire's weight. Then he straightened up, and started walking again, expecting to feel the weight and the feel of Benny's body disappear at any moment. How much could he endure, how much blood could he lose before his vampire's soul died?

The shouting had gotten closer and that was to be expected, he guessed, the firing of the Steyr like a fucking neon sign to those in the camp that someone was down at this end. Couldn't be helped.

He lost a lot of the ambient light from the fires as he followed the curve of the hill, slowing down further to avoid pitching head first over an unseen rock or crevice or hole. The cave was just ahead, just a few more yards. He could leave Benny there and get Cas, and then the angel could help him with the vampire. Just a few more yards and they were home free. He could do it.

He couldn't see the low rock ledge that was in front of the cave, and tripped, stumbling forward and landing on both knees with a crack. Pain shot up along his legs, through his groin and into his back and he grit his teeth, letting his breath out through them in a soft whistle. Getting back up, he could see the cave mouth, darker against the darkness of the night. Thank fucking god. He walked in cautiously and knelt again, lowering the vampire to the floor with a long exhale of relief. Fingers pressed against the artery in Benny's neck, feeling the slow beat there. A hand on the vampire's chest registered the slight rise and fall. He was dying but not dead. Not yet. Dean slid the pack off his back and set it beside the vampire, getting wearily to his feet again and heading out of the cave, and back along the ditch.

Castiel.

The angel would know. Not here maybe, where things were confusing as hell, but once they returned, Cas would know. Would see it in him. What he'd done. Did it matter? He didn't think so. The potential had always been there, nothing had been erased, nothing had healed in the long years. And it wouldn't be so different, seeing the disillusionment in the angel's eyes, the disappointment, than it had ever been seeing the same things in his brother's. He could live with it.

Starting up the bank at a crouch, he dropped at the top when he saw the flaming torches, the flames bouncing jerkily as the men carrying them ran and climbed the hill above him. Goddammit. He rolled down the other side and started to climb, scrabbling over the tussocks and loose rock, the pain in his knees forgotten, his weariness and the aches in his body shed. The revolver was in his hand, the safety off and he looked down at it in surprise, not remembering pulling it. He was almost half-way up the slope when the leviathan returned, and he stopped and turned, hearing a short shriek and a deeper growling from behind him.

"Just kill the sonofabitch, he's the one drawing 'em here!"

"How the fuck are we supposed to do that?"

"Cut him into pieces, that works with most of them."

Dean's head snapped around at the shouts from above. He launched himself up the slope, his head pounding as he saw the figures crowded around the timber frame, the torches dropped to the ground lighting them up. Slowing, the revolver's barrel rose as he aimed it at the back of one of the men up there and pulled the trigger. The gun's big retort was drowned out by the noise that filled the plateau, of fire and death and black beasts hunting.

His target jerked forward and dropped, its companion staring down at the body for a moment, then turning to look down the slope. In the patchwork darkness of the hillside, Dean could see the man's eyes searching for him, and he raised the gun again, drawing a bead along the sight in line with the round silhouette of the man's head and squeezing. From this distance he couldn't see the hole, but he saw the man fly backward, knocked from his feet by the impact. The others ran to the back of the frame, out of his range and out of his sight, and he started to run, clawing at the ground to move faster.

White light spilled down the incline toward him and his head snapped up. The light came from the angel, growing as the men behind him cut into him.

No, the thought burst into his mind, fracturing his walls, destroying his cold perspective. How could they have an angel's sword down here? Or was Cas more vulnerable to ordinary weapons down here, cut off from Heaven by the veils in between?

He didn't hear the pounding behind him as he ran up toward the angel, or the stentorian breathing. The impact lifted him and sent him flying out to the right, the revolver spinning out of his hand into the dark, his ribs flexing sickeningly as he landed on his side, the rock under him driving the breath from his lungs, a slow warmth trickling down his back and soaking into his shirt. Grey mists were closing in around him, and he fought them back, rolling onto his stomach and forcing himself onto one knee.

On the peak of the hill, there were screams, the light from the burning brands extinguished one by one until only the angel's white light remained. Dean could see shapes, harlequinning that light, big, black shapes that moved almost like birds, flattened reptilian skulls outlined then vanishing as more and more beasts surrounding the angel.

The guns, get back to the guns. The thought galvanised him, and he tried to rise and turn, pain thrumming down his back and through his chest, his legs wobbling suddenly and he was falling. He tucked his head into his arms as he rolled back down the hill, each new impact with the rocky ground compounding the pain. The long fall stopped a few feet short of the bank holding the guns and he lay there for a second, winded and enclosed in a fiery shroud of agony.

"Dean!" The scream came from the top of the hill. Dean opened his eyes, twisting around and looking up. A burst of argent light escaped from between the shapes that surrounded the angel, then it was gone, and he saw the shapes converge on the frame, their darkness smothering that light, killing it, wiping it out.

No.

No, it was going to work, dammit, Cas, it was going to work, we were getting out, all of us, together. No!

The howling whine of a bullet hitting the rock next to him pulled his attention back to where he was and he looked across the hill, seeing a group of men heading for him.

Just for him or for the guns on the bank, he wondered? Didn't matter either way. He rolled to his feet, pain blossoming across every part of his body again, and turned, running down to the bank, and rolling over the top, ignoring as best as he could the stabs and aches and throbbing of his injuries.

In the darkness of the ditch he crouched, doubled over and moving slowly away from the hill. He climbed out once he was past the guns, a last glance up the hill showing nothing but darkness on the peak.

Face it. Accept it, he thought bleakly. Cas was dead.

The levis had gotten past and had taken him. You waited too long. You should have gotten him out earlier, before the levis got involved, when it was still light. You could have stashed him somewhere, most of the men had been out of the camp, it would have been okay, or even if it hadn't, you could have made it work, somehow. How could you have left him there?

Somewhere, deep inside, there was a protest. But it was faint and he pushed it aside. Sometimes you didn't have to see the body to know that there had been no hope at all. And he deserved the vitriol of his thoughts. He'd risked Cas' life needlessly and it had been the angel who paid for it.

When he got back to the cave and crawled over the rock ledge that marked the entrance, he thought for a moment he'd lost Benny as well, the vampire lying hidden behind the curve of the wall, invisible from the entrance. He saw a foot, canted to one side, behind that curve and sat back on his heels, eyes closing with relief.

His panic returned when he crawled up to the vampire and pulled his lighter from his pocket, the wavering flame lighting Benny's face. Swelling had distorted the vampire's features and Beny's breathing was harsh and laboured, his heart beat slow and irregular. Pushing one eyelid up slightly, Dean saw that the blue irises were almost obscured by the huge black pupil, the whites seemed grey.

"Benny?" he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "C'mon, man, open your eyes."

There was no response, and he clamped down on the impulse to shake the fucking fang, to make sure he wasn't drifting off, leaving, giving up, dying.

Kneeling beside the vampire, the lighter in one hand, he looked down at the misshapen face. He'd thought he'd had it all under control. Thought that the plan would work out. Now, he wasn't sure why. When had things ever just worked out, without him losing someone? Thinking back, he couldn't recall a single occasion.

Ellen had called him a leader (yeah, led them to their deaths). He'd left Adam to Michael after promising him it would be okay (his attention taken up with Sam, how could he forgotten about his other brother?). Called Uriel and Cas down on Anna. Led the demons straight to Pamela. Brought death to Ash (if we hadn't asked him to look for the signs, would he be alive now?). And Rufus. And Bobby –

Feeling sorry for yourself gettin' the job done, son? Bobby's voice was strident in his head, cutting through the seeping guilt. You want to save this monster, you know what you have to do. (Benny was afraid. Afraid that the blood would wake a hunger he couldn't control) So? Get on with it. Might as well die saving something as die from sorrow sittin' on yer ass.

He couldn't lose another one.

His expression hardened as he looked around the low-ceilinged hole, lifting his hand and the lighter's small pool of light expanding. To one side there were a few piles of dried vegetation, blown in, maybe. He reached for them and made an untidy heap to one side of the vampire, deeper inside the cave. The grasses and leaves and small branches caught immediately. Looking back at Benny, Dean pulled out his knife, cutting a small incision without hesitation along the vein that ran from wrist to elbow. His blood welled out, slowly at first, then faster, and he moved his arm, turning it over so that it dripped into Benny's open mouth.

Under the flickering and vagrant light of the small flames, he watched the vampire's face obsessively, eyes moving repeatedly over the features, looking for any sign that his blood was doing anything at all.

The change, when it came, was sudden and shocking. Benny's eyes flew open and stared into his, their colour rich and vivid and the pupils tightly contracted despite the low level of light. His mouth pulled back from his teeth and Dean saw the fangs descend over the broken human teeth, through torn gums. He gripped his friend's wrists, his stomach roiling as he felt the broken bone shift under his fingers, pushing him back down hard against the dirt, lowering his head until he was only a few inches from the vampire and he could feel Benny's exhales hard and fast against the bare skin of his throat.

"Listen to me, Benny, listen," he said, staring into the vampire's too-bright eyes. "You're going to die without blood, you understand? You'll die here without my blood to help."

Benny blinked once, his gaze remaining fixed.

"So … hey … listen to me! I need you to focus, you get it?" he said, raising his voice a little as the vampire's gaze began to slip from his. "I need you to take control of the hunger and hold it away from me, so I can save you, you getting' this, Benny? You hearin' me?"

Benny stared up at him, and for a moment, he thought that the vampire wasn't, that he couldn't hear him past the thunder of the blood rushing through his veins, over the booming of his heart beating in his chest. He leaned over Benny's chest, holding him down with his weight, knowing it was only the vampire's current state of weakness that let him do it.

"Benny, hear me, man," he said, staring into the blue eyes, willing the vampire to remember, willing him to have the strength to not just attack. "C'mon, man. Fight it. Please. You need this."

The vampire blinked again, his pupils expanding a little, and Dean held his breath, watching the tiny changes in the muscles of the vampire's face as the snarl lying just below the surface smoothed away, seeing the fangs begin to slowly retract back into the gums.

"Hold onto it, Benny," he said softly. "You need a lot more."

He let go of Benny's wrists, raising his arm cautiously over his mouth again. The vampire looked up at him for a long moment, the neon colour fading out of his irises, his breathing slowing, steadying. Then he lifted his hands and closed his fingers gently around Dean's forearm, dragging the cut down to his mouth, his lips sealing around it. He closed his eyes and Dean felt the powerful suction of the vampire's hunger, felt his blood pulled from him, watched Benny's throat as he swallowed steadily.

The vamp could drain him as thoroughly this way as he could tearing holes in him, he thought dazedly, feeling a little light-headed as more of his blood flowed from his veins down his friend's gullet. As from the localised pain, he had a feeling he wasn't going to know how much was too much, wasn't going to feel the last couple of pints go.

Looking down, he could see the bruising and swelling receding, more rapidly the longer Benny fed. He watched, with a slightly delirious astonishment, as the broken end of the tibia in the vampire's forearm slid back below the skin, the skin closing up behind it. He looked up and saw the cave wall swaying nauseatingly in front of him, the flicker of light and shadow from the dying fire adding to his disorientation. He couldn't keep his balance, he realised slowly.

Benny's eyes opened, and he pushed Dean's arm away from him, sitting up as the man swayed helplessly from side to side.

"Hey, cher, take it easy," he murmured, wrapping an arm around Dean's shoulders to hold him upright. He didn't know how much he'd taken, only knew that the pain had almost gone, he could see again, hear again and … he owed his life to the human by his side.

"Feel dizzy," Dean said petulantly, pushing at the vampire's strong grip. "Get off me, man, people are gonna think somethin's goin' on."

The vampire smiled a little. "Somethin' is goin' on, frère de sang. You let me take too much of your blood, brother."

He looked around the dark cave, his eyes picking out the details easily. "Where's the angel, Dean?"

Dean looked away, anguish contorting his features, then gone. "He's dead."

"I'm sorry, cher."

"Happens to everyone, right?" Dean asked, twisting away from the vampire and falling onto his hands, his head hanging down. "Boom, one day, everybody's gone."

"Dean."

"I'm fine," He coughed weakly, leaning against the wall of the cave. "Fine."

"Let's get out of here."

"Don't think I can stand up, Benny," he admitted reluctantly, squinting at the vampire as the last of the small fire's kindling was consumed. "Everything's rolling around. I got a hangover and I didn't even have anything to drink."

"You got me here, I'll get you out," Benny said quietly. He picked up the pack and hooked the straps over his shoulders.

"There's a way through there," Dean told him, trying to remember all the things he was supposed to have done, waving vaguely toward the back of the cave. "The chicks told me about it."

"Chicks?"

"I'm tired, Benny," Dean closed his eyes, resting his head on his arms. "I'm so goddamned tired."

"I know," the vampire said, looking down at him. Would it matter if they rested a little first? Getting out was so close he could almost taste it, real air, real everything. "Not far to go, Dean, we'll rest when we get there, eh?"

He leaned over and gripped Dean's wrist, pulling him up. They would rest, let Purgatory's power restore them, but not here. Not so close to that place, which would be overrun with monsters before light. He turned and looked around the walls, seeing the narrow slit in the far corner easily.

Dean woke in darkness, opening and closing his eyes several times before he realised that he was in darkness, not gone blind or just dreaming of waking. He felt tired, and sore, but otherwise alright.

"Benny?"

"Yeah, I'm here, brother," Benny's voice came out of the darkness to his right and he rolled over, lifting a hand in the air, feeling the strength of the vampire's fingers around his own.

"Guess the blood worked then," he said lightly, releasing the vampire's hand.

"Sure did."

"And you didn't lose it," Dean pressed, glad that for the moment he couldn't see Benny's expression.

He heard the smile in the gravelly voice.

"No. How're you doing?"

"I've definitely been better," he said, lying back, tucking his arm beneath his head, feeling the thickness of a dressing wrapped around his forearm. "Where are we?"

"In the cave in the mountain. Not far from the lowest entry. I wanted somewhere you could heal up a little before we open the portal."

"Why?"

"You let me take too much, cher," Benny said, a thread of exasperation underlying the gentleness of his tone. "You were … not very coherent for a while there."

Dean considered that. He didn't remember much about it. He remembered the cave tilting and rolling at one point. Had he pulled away from the vampire?

"Dean, what you did … to those humans …" The vampire sounded hesitant, uncertain about what he was going to say.

"What about it?" He had only snapshot images of the bodies of the men he'd killed, had left to die. No continuation of memory on exactly what had happened.

"It – it didn't seem like you," Benny said softly.

Dean looked at the static memories of what he'd done, silent for a long time. "Oh, it was me, Benny. It was definitely me." The images were sickening, vivid and graphic and he knew where they'd come from. "I'm no better than they were. Just as … flawed, just as broken."

"No, you're not," the vampire said, his voice hard with conviction. "They were … worse than monsters."

"People often are," Dean said lightly. "Don't kid yourself."

"Why?"

"I don't know," he paused, unable to recapture that first moment, when he'd seen the vampire, bloodied and in agony, hanging as a plaything for the creatures who'd called themselves human. "Because of what they'd done – to you, to themselves. I don't know."

"Does it happen that way to you?" Benny asked diffidently.

Dean closed his eyes, knowing what he meant, even without a solid memory of exactly how he'd been. The machine had been in control, as it had before, in a different place. What he retained when that happened was emotionless and dry, without any kind of resonance. He saw everything without colour or texture, saw it as a thing, no more important than any other thing. He wondered why the vampire was so curious about it.

"No. Not in the real world," he said.

It could, though, he thought. The right trigger, the right reason and he could blank out again, rip his way through anyone or anything that stood in his way. He'd been very close before. "Benny, the things that I've done here – the things that we've done. They stay here, right?"

"Of course," the vampire sounded offended.

"What we've seen. All of it," Dean pressed, turning his head slightly to look in the vampire's direction. "When we get out … nothing will be like this. We don't get to do the barbeque get-togethers, the occasional drink at the bar thing – you understand that, right?"

"I understand, cher." The vampire drew in a breath. "Will you tell your brother? About this?"

"No." The word, the decision, came out without needing to consider it. Another secret from Sammy, but at least that way it wouldn't destroy anything further between them.

"He wouldn't understand?" Benny gestured vaguely. "That it was different here? That we were at war?"

Dean's lips curled into a derisive smile. "No, he wouldn't. He wouldn't understand any of this, Benny."

Maybe he was underestimating his brother, maybe Sam would understand what he'd done. But he'd been bitten by that maybe before, and he had lost too much to risk losing anything else now. Everything he'd believed about himself, everything he'd had the least shred of pride in, the things that he'd liked about himself, as few as they'd been – they were gone now, wiped out with the blood he'd spilled, with the pain he'd revelled in, with the decisions he'd made. He was a hunter. If he could hunt with his brother, he wouldn't fall over the edge again, he thought.

But Sam could never know that he had here.

"If you need a brother who does understand …" the vampire's voice was very low, and Dean closed his eyes. The vampire had no idea of what he was offering, of what it was stirring inside of him, how much he wanted that backup and how much it hurt to turn it down.

"I know," he said. "If you need something, you call, and I'll be there. But … otherwise …"

"Yeah, no contact," Benny said, the drawl noticeable again. "I'll remember."

He'd thought there was a way to figure it out, make it all work, somehow. But there wasn't, not really. No way to heal. No way to forget. No way to carry the purity, the trust and friendship and loyalty and hope back to the real world. He didn't know why he bothered to keep hoping that things would be different. They never were.

Good things do happen, Dean. The angel had told him that once. Not in my experience, he'd replied. And wasn't that the truth? Had he ever had anything good happen? Not saving-the-world good, but just good for him?

He pushed the thoughts aside and rubbed a hand over his forehead.

"Did you look over everything in the pack?"

"Yeah. All there. Ready to go," Benny said lightly.

"Guess we should get movin' then, open that sucker and go home," he said, rolling onto his side.

"It's still dark outside. We'll wait until it's light." Benny looked down at him. "Go to sleep, Dean."

Tiredness was dragging at him. Tiredness or some other thing, some other thing he didn't want to look at, didn't want to think about. He closed his eyes.

It was disorienting to be in the light again, Dean thought distantly, kneeling in the clearing and feeding the small, smokeless fire with the driest bits of wood he'd been able to find. Around him, the things needed for the soul transfer spell were laid out, Benny looking them over, his forehead creased with concentration as he muttered the incantation over and over again under his breath.

"Fire's hot enough," he said, looking up at the vampire. "You ready?"

Benny drew in a deep breath, his smile a little shaky for the first time. "Yeah."

Dean gave him a mocking half-smile. "Don't go rummaging around in me when you get in."

The vampire laughed, the tension disappearing from his eyes. "I'll be quiet."

Picking up the beaten metal bowl he'd scavenged from the camp, Dean put the items into it, one after another. He set the contents of the bowl on the fire, and picked up the sliver of obsidian carefully as Benny repeated the incantation over the burning bowl.

"You know the site of the grave?" Benny asked suddenly. "Gotta be the right one."

"I know it," he assured him, his voice tinged with a very gentle exasperation. "I won't forget."

He looked at the smoking ingredients in the bowl, watching them heat and char and burn down to a fine white ash. He dropped the hardened piece of fat into the bowl and it melted instantly, combining with the ash into a greyish sludge at the bottom. Pulling the bowl from the fire, he gestured to the vampire to kneel, and dipped his finger into the mixture, drawing the circle and the wards over his bare forearm, then repeating the design on the vampire's chest.

Raising his gaze, he met the vamp's eyes. "I'll see you on the other side."

"You will, brother." Benny closed his eyes and Dean lifted the glass sliver, slicing his arm open, wincing as he left the edge of the glass blade in the wound, and raised his arm to push the point into the vampire's chest.

When it reached the heart, the glass lit up, the solid black becoming translucent then transparent as a shifting molten red-gold light slipped into the crystalline structure and spiralled through into his arm. The pain of the monster's soul entering him was enormous, and he couldn't help the low groan that came out from between his clenched teeth, only a lifetime of self-discipline holding him still and unmoving as the soul slid out of the obsidian and under his skin, throbbing there like an infected wound. When the glass had returned to black, he let it fall. Benny's body dissolved into nothing and the wound on his arm closed up, sealing itself tightly, leaving only the finest white line to show the site.

God, good thing the vamp hadn't told him that, he thought, feeling his sweat dripping from his forehead, trickling down the back of his neck. He was something of a connoisseur when it came to pain, but he'd never felt anything like that. Opening his eyes, he looked down at his arm. Just stay put, Benny, he whispered silently. No jumping around in there.

It was time for step two, he thought, wiping his face and turning back to the fire. He added a few more sticks to it and picked up the bowl, getting to his feet and walking to the stream to rinse the residue from the bottom.

Blood and bone and fire, he thought, remembering the vamp's description as he put each of them in the bowl. The combined stink of the required ingredients as they burned over the fire almost drove him from the fire, the bone and the amber combination was particularly toxic, reaching down his nasal passages and making his stomach roll.

What the hell was it going to be like, getting home again?

The thought surprised him, a little, with its low-level anxiety. How could he go back to beds and food and choice and temptation and not knowing what to do, not feeling it in his gut?

He'd spent the last few months in a fever-pitch excitement to get out of here, and now that he was actually doing it, fear was gnawing at his insides, doubt that he could even fit in, crawling through his mind. He looked around the clearing, at the mountain towering over him to one side, the endless forests in their perpetual state of winter, the flat, grey featureless not-sky above him. Just that syndrome, he told himself, that prisoners who've been inside too long feel. It wasn't safer here, no matter what he felt like. It was only that he knew the parameters of this place now, knew how to survive here.

In one sense, it had been pure, simple, black and white. And he'd needed that, needed it badly after the years of being pushed around, manipulated by Heaven and Hell, by his conscience and his brother and an angel who'd managed to break his heart, offering friendship and taking it away, destroying his ability to feel trust. He'd needed to see what had to be done and just get on and do it.

It wasn't exactly pure here, though. It was murky too. Murky in the way that life was always murky, where a monster could become a friend and people could annihilate his last feelings of loyalty to his species.

He wanted to be able to take away that purity, to feel it inside of himself when he got home, and hunted again. He desperately wanted to feel like what he did, what he was good at and what drove him on really meant something, feel that clarity that was missing, feel that he could make a difference and save people's lives.

Was that even possible? To bottle up a feeling and take it away with you? Take it out when things got confusing and inhale it and get back to where you started from?

He didn't think so. Nothing was that easy.

He'd see his brother again. And they would hunt again. And maybe, from time to time, he'd feel the clarity, feel the clean, sharp edge of being capable and ahead of the predators, mind and heart and body working together in a harmony that felt like flying or singing or living.

And your humanity? The thought slid past his defences, wrapping around him. The part that knows right from wrong? That walks the high wire above the abyss and never falters or looks down? Will that be there when you get back?

That he didn't know. He hoped so, because otherwise he would be better off staying here with the rest of the monsters and one day being too slow, or not lucky, or just giving up and dying here, unmourned and unremembered, good for nothing but fertiliser for the next lot of trees.

He looked into the bowl and saw that the contents had become a thick, black liquid at the bottom of the bowl. He'd made the circle, working from the sheet of human skin Benny had given him. He pulled the sleeves of his jacket down over his hands and picked up the bowl, carrying it to the centre. As soon as the bowl was removed from the fire, the contents dried, forming a coarse sand-like powder. He set the bowl down and began the incantation. Three times his voice, low and deep, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar words and sounds, echoed softly in the circle. Then he took out the Zippo and lit it, dropping it into the bowl.

The coarse, grainy powder burned, amethyst and azure flames reaching upward and Dean saw a bright light forming in front of him, in the middle of nothing, a foot from the ground and reaching higher, getting wider as he watched. He picked up his axe and waited, watching the slit become longer and wider. When it was wide enough for him to get through, he jumped into it, feeling a vertiginous pull as he passed from one plane to the next.

100 Mile Wilderness, Maine

He landed awkwardly, the half-rotten log falling apart under his weight, his balance skewed. He looked down and suddenly realised he could see, despite the darkness. Overhead, the black sky was filled with stars and to the west, a small crescent moon added its soft silver light to the night, enough to see the outline of the trees, to see the pieces of the log he'd landed on.

Smell hit him next. An intoxicating, rich mixture of scents, of the forest and the animals that lived there, of the cold breeze that dried the sweat on his face, made him shiver slightly under his clothes.

He walked forward, along a faint trail, his heart thumping against the walls of his chest, his fingers tightly closed around the bone handle of his axe. He wasn't sure why he'd brought it through with him, ugly and imbalanced and anachronistic as it was, only knew that he couldn't leave it behind.

He reached a clearing, of sorts, in the thick trees and looked up. The constellations winked and twinkled at him in the clear air, so familiar and solid up there that he felt his throat close suddenly.

He was here. He was back. They'd done it. They'd made it through and he was home.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
~ Yann Martel

END

AN: This story wouldn't have been possible without the collaboration, hard work, enduring patience and analytical skills of Hundley, whom I would like to thank for all thoughts, comments, picking up of mistakes, tolerance of an endless stream of emails at all hours of the day and night, regional knowledge and personal insight into Dean Winchester.

This rendition of Dean's year in Purgatory and beyond is continued for the events of season 8 in Silver for Charon, and continues into season 9 with Disposable Heroes. Both stories are a reimagining of those seasons.