A/N: Here it is, another chapter so quickly! What? It's a long one but hopefully you like it!
Please review and follow, since that's the only way to catch my irregular update schedule!
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Chapter 11: She Talks to Angels
They left Charlie clicking away on her laptop in the bunker's library. Beth was still amazed to see someone sitting in front of a laptop again. She never thought she'd ever see someone doing something so normal again… but somehow it didn't seem normal anymore. It had been almost 2 years since Beth had used a laptop.
There was no internet of course but Charlie was using her laptop to recover files from Kevin's old hard drive. Charlie had explained to Beth that they had found Kevin's belongings smashed and scattered in the science lab of some old high school. The room had been covered in dust—clearly no one had disturbed it in a while. There had been pools of dried blood and a decayed corpse. It had been dismembered apparently… but Charlie stressed that Dean was certain it was Kevin despite the fact that it was in pieces and had been dead for at least a year. Beth didn't ask any follow up questions about how Dean knew the remains belonged to Kevin.
After a full day and night of the Winchester's planning and packing, Beth helping when she could and Charlie grunting from behind her laptop screen, they were finally ready. Dean finished fiddling with his car when the Sam and Beth tossed their bags in the back of the Impala and then the three of them were on the road.
The drive was long and the Winchester brothers were not very chatty today. Dean had Metallica blaring out of the speakers but that fact somehow didn't stop Sam from reading some old leather bound book. Beth leaned her head against the cool window and watched the sun rise as they drove.
Three days ago Beth had been reading books about Purgatory in the bunker's library. Sam told her they had read all of the books before and that it was probably useless. So she eventually took a break and began reading an awful book about hell. It was a first hand account of someone who had been possessed by a demon and travelled through hell. She was having a difficult time wrapping her head around the entire idea of hell and almost put the book down because of how horrifying it was.
But then she found the part where the demon left hell. Briefly, it mentioned that after he finally got rid of the demon he woke up in a forest in South Dakota.
After pouring over every word in the book and not finding any more information about getting out of hell she showed it to Sam—he looked at her like she struck gold. Charlie and Dean had still been out looking for Kevin.
"This sounds like Purgatory," Sam had told her. "Dean hasn't talked about it much but it matches the description in the other book," he waved idly towards the bookshelves behind him. He was quiet for thirty minutes, reading and re-reading the book and comparing it three other books he had laying open on the table. Finally he looked up with a smile, "I think this is it! I think you found a way into hell that goes through purgatory!" He pulled out maps and compared coordinates with levity in his movements.
So now, Dean was driving towards Black Hills National Forest with the music rattling her teeth.
The brothers chatted about things she didn't understand. She tried to pay attention, to learn about their world, but she found her mind wandering the entire drive. As the scenery flew by she wondered what Maggie was doing and if her family found another safe spot to stay. She hoped they could find a spot like the Winchester's bunker. Something inconspicuous and hidden. Beth realized that this had been the problem with the prison: it had been too big and too easy to find that someone was bound to try to take it eventually.
All of this new knowledge about angels and hell made her wonder what happened to her family that had died.
"What happens to a walker after they die?" she blurted without pretext to the brothers.
"They stop moving," Dean said jokingly as his eyes flicked from the rearview mirror to the road again.
"Do they go to heaven or hell or get stuck in purgatory?" Beth insisted.
"I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it," Sam answered honestly.
This confused her. In all their work with these other realms, they never even thought about where the walkers end up?
"You haven't known anyone who turned, have you?" This was the only thing that made any sense.
"Not personally… no," Sam said sympathetically. His tone told her that the sadness must have been evident on her face.
"Basically everyone we know was already dead or immune," said Dean from the driver's seat.
"Immune?" she said excitedly. "How are people immune?"
He shook his head, "Not people, angels or demons or people who have demon blood in their system."
"People with… demon blood?"
Dean tossed a loaded look at Sam, who answered, "It's rare… but it can happen."
The car lapsed into silence again after this but time, Beth noticed, the silence this time was awkward.
/
It was dark already when Dean pulled into a motel parking lot off of highway 18. Dean let Beth and Sam clear the room while he pulled most of their gear out of the trunk. It was already organized, one duffle was specifically packed to take into purgatory but he guessed that he wouldn't be able to sleep and he wanted something else to occupy himself with.
He was right.
He spent most of the night trying to count the number of bumps in the ceiling while Sam snored quietly in the next bed.
Beth had her own room again, which he guessed meant that she still hadn't deemed the brothers as completely trustworthy. But he was relieved that she wasn't in the room with them. After their poker game, he was finding her distracting. He knew a shrink would say it was just some sort of Oedipal complex because she was blonde and fed him like his mom. But Dean was inclined to think it was just because he hadn't gotten laid in so long.
His mind fixated on purgatory. Every time he thought about the sleepless nights he spent running for his life in that hellhole he was reminded that he should sleep now. But he couldn't even bring himself to shut his eyes.
When the sun came up and he hadn't slept a wink, he wasn't even surprised. He just kicked Sam's bed to wake him up and started taking the bags back to the car.
Dean was surprised to see that Beth was already awake, leaning over the hood of the Impala and eating a granola bar like some sort of magazine ad. Only she was engrossed in the maps she was studying spread out on the car and clearly had no idea that she was doing anything remotely suggestive. Which somehow made it worse.
He averted his eyes and went to toss the bags into the trunk.
"How long have you been awake?" he asked her, grabbing some of the food she had placed on the roof.
She stared at him as if it was blaringly obvious. "I cared for an infant for the last ten months. My sleep schedule is far from what I'd call regular." Inexplicably, she smiled. She was always smiling. He'd never met anyone so happy in his entire life. It must be like Disneyland on ecstasy in that brain of hers.
"You really raised that kid huh?" Dean chewed on a stale poptart that he assumed Beth had stolen out of a vending machine and wished it was pancakes and bacon.
"I tried my best… but I didn't know anything about babies. It was really everyone helpin' out, taking shifts, and teaching me things. " Beth blushed slightly and he could tell she was being humble.
He thought of Sam as a baby. Even though Dean would never claim to have raised Sam, his dad did little more than teach Dean how to change a diaper before handing Sam off to him.
Dean suspected it had been a similar case in Beth's situation.
But he didn't say any of that because Sam walked out of the room at that moment and joined them.
"You know where you're going?" she asked Dean as she folded the maps and slid off of the hood of his car.
"Of course I do, Magellen Barbie." He snatched the maps from her hands; Sam grabbed the rest of the food and the three of them piled into the Impala.
After another three hours of driving, and several hours of hiking while Sam used a compass and a pedometer to try to track their progress, they finally stopped.
"I think we're here," Sam confessed hesitantly.
"You think?" Dean was impatient.
He hated hiking. Loathed it actually.
Cars and roads were invented so that people didn't have to hoof it through the forest.
"This is the best I can do. There's no way to know our exact coordinates without a GPS and the internet," Sam tossed his bag into the dirt and started looking around.
"What will this door look like?" Beth asked. They hadn't seen any croats since they entered the national forest but she kept pulled her knife out anyway.
"Won't look like anything until we open it. You got the incantation Sam?"
He hitched his bag onto his shoulders and tightly gripped the machete in his right hand. If the leviathans and vampires were still running around purgatory, he would need it.
Sam and Beth both mimicked him and heaved on their own bags but he stopped them quickly, "What the hell do you two think you're doing?"
"Goin' to purgatory," Beth said at the same time as Sam said, "We're going to find Cas."
"No," Dean commanded and he tugged the strap of Beth's backpack off her shoulder. "You are still a rookie, and I don't even know if I can trust you to have my back yet. And you—" he nodded his head at Sam, "need to stay here in case something goes wrong."
"I'm not letting you go back in there alone Dean! Last time, you were stuck for a year," Sam's voice was loud and desperate.
"That's exactly why you need to stay here. If I get stuck in there again, you need to keep working on the hell trials with Charlie and ending the Croatoan virus. If we both go and both get stuck what will happen to the world?"
There was no way in hell that he would ever let Sam go into purgatory. Never sleeping, always being hunted, especially targeted because of their last name. Because of how many of those monsters they personally sent there.
"Dean—" Sam began to protest with his puppy dog eyes.
"No. I have been there before. I know the place and I know Cas. I can find him."
Beth was scowling and biting her cheek but she didn't say anything.
"Now, do the damn spell Sam. And if I'm not back in a few days just get back to the bunker and help Charlie," he tossed the Impala's keys to Sam who still looked like he was going to protest. "I know how to contact you if I need help. Just promise you'll get some shit done while I'm gone this time and don't put any dogs in my car."
Sam, finally understanding that Dean wouldn't budge, tucked the car keys into his pocket and nodded.
"Fine. I'll wait up here. But I'm not going to wait long," he finally dropped his bag. "If you're not back in three days, I'm coming after you."
"Hell no."
"If you know the place so well, it shouldn't be that hard. So I'll see you in three days either way," Sam opened the book to the page with the incantation and he stared at Dean.
They both knew the conversation was over. Winchesters were stubborn and neither brother was going to let the other take such a huge risk alone. Not anymore.
"Fine, see you in three days."
/
Sam and Beth sat around for two full days. They trekked back up to the road to get more supplies from the car but otherwise just read books and played cards in the clearing by the entrance.
She enjoyed Sam's company. He was eager to please, always patiently answering her questions, sharing food with her and they kept good conversation going. He had what her mama would have called 'an honest face.' He was easy to be around and it immediately felt like they had known each other for years.
He had just finished telling her the story of how Dean broke into his apartment at college to pull him back into the hunting life.
"…He was right, of course. I was out of practice. I was busy taking classes on polycentric cultural norms while he was still hunting with an ex-marine," Sam smiled at the memory and it was infectious.
"So you must be really good at this if you've been training since before you could even walk, huh?"
"I guess," he shrugged.
"If you knew that it was going to end up like this… would you have ever left for school?" She immediately bit her lip as if she could take back her question, afraid that it was too personal.
"Maybe. I mean… leaving Dean like that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. And maybe if I hadn't left, Jess would still be alive." He trailed off.
Sam was lost in thought and even though she wanted to ask who Jess was, she thought better of it. It didn't really matter; Sam would tell her if he wanted to.
After a minute, she changed the subject and pulled him out of his morbid reverie. "Do you think… maybe… since you're the expert…if its not too much trouble…" she stammered, losing her nerve and closing her mouth entirely.
"Oh, just spit it out. I've lived with Dean my whole life. I guarantee I've heard worse," he teased as he leaned forward on the folding camp chair he sat in.
"Could you teach me how to fight?" she blurted out so quickly that her words almost garbled together.
"Is that it? We could definitely work something ou—"
His answer was cut off when the portal blasted opened again and two figures stumbled out of the light.
Dean was holding up a man. Between the long, straggly beard and grime smeared across his face, she couldn't even tell what he looked like. The only sight that stuck out were his bright blue eyes full of terror. The stranger's arm was wrapped around Dean's shoulder and Dean's arm was around the man's waist, holding him up from completely collapsing. But when the man saw Beth and Sam, he jerked back and swung out wildly with his knife.
"Cas, Cas! Calm down, it's okay. It is just Sam. You're safe. You're not there anymore," Dean said firmly but soothingly.
Cas? Isn't that the name of angel? This can't possibly be an angel… she thought as she looked at the dirty, erratic man.
The stranger gripped Dean's shoulder as if it was a life raft in the middle of the ocean and his knuckles turned white. Beth wondered if the grip hurt Dean but he showed no sign of pain. He just looked calmly at the newcomer until the guy lowered his weapon.
Dean carefully lowered the man to the ground.
Beth wanted to run over and inspect the man for wounds. She'd been helping her daddy heal people since the walkers first started stumbling around so it was second nature to try to help people.
She hesitated when she got closer to the man, nervous that he might lash out at her.
She looked over at Dean, but Dean wasn't looking at her. He was still looking at the man now lying still on the ground. His breath was heaving and she couldn't tell if it was from running or from a panic attack.
"Castiel…" she spoke gently, like one might speak to a cornered animal.
He still flinched and his blue eyes popped open at the sound of her voice.
"Sorry… I didn't mean to scare you. I'm Beth," she handed him her bottle of water.
He looked at the bottle then at Dean, who nodded his approval, and then the blue-eyed man greedily chugged down the water in long, desperate pulls. He looked sad and guilty when it was empty and handed it back to her saying, "I am still not accustomed to needing sustenance, I'm sorry I drank all your water."
She couldn't help but laugh at his formality, "That's okay. We've got plenty more. Take as much as you need."
Sam brought over another water bottle and knelt all the way down to Castiel's level.
"It's really good to see you Cas," Sam smiled genuinely but Beth noticed that the angel didn't return the gesture. Instead he just drank more water.
Dean was still staring at Castiel with an unreadable expression. Sam seemed slightly confused by the man's cold shoulder but didn't say anything.
Beth, unruffled by the men's attitudes, asked, "Are you hurt anywhere? Bleeding?"
There was so much blood and dirt on the man's clothes that she couldn't tell what was new or old or even if the blood was his.
"I don't know," he answered in shock.
"All right. Well let's get you cleaned up and then we can get back to the car and take you somewhere safe." She motioned for him to take off his jacket that was basically just shredded cloth at this point.
"No! We cannot leave my grace!" His eyes were frantic again, he looked to Dean and grabbed the lapel of Dean's jacket in a death grip, "We have to go back and get it…"
"I know, Cas. Don't worry. We'll get it back, I promise. Just chill out for now man." Dean pried Castiel's fingers off of him.
"For now, let's get you cleaned up," she suggested. This time, she didn't wait for the man to take off his own jacket. Instead, she just started stripping him.
He hadn't even formally introduced himself but now she was tugging off his clothes. Beth was normally shy about nudity but when it came to medical emergencies, nudity was an entirely different thing. She didn't see a naked person; she just saw the injuries and how she could help them. In moments like this she was happy that she had followed her dad everywhere—to vet appointments, animal births and after the walkers came, all the surgeries he did on people. Plus, she studied all of the medical texts she came across. She smiled as she remembered how Daryl, Glenn and Michonne used to bring big textbooks home for her.
The man was wearing several layers of clothing but when she finally got his under shirt off she found what she was looking for. There were several superficial cuts and countless bruises in various states of healing. But there was one nasty cut in particular along his abdomen. It wasn't new, but it hadn't healed over because it was infected. The pus and the smell was enough to tell her it was not in good shape.
"Sam, bring me the alcohol and any medical supplies you brought. Dean, bring me clean shirts," she commanded and after a moment of stunned silence they sprang into action.
After quickly patching Cas up to the best of her abilities while on a forest floor, she helped him clean the dirt and blood off of his skin and eased him into clean clothes from Dean's bag.
The man was still twitchy, even the smallest forest sound made him jump and reach for his knife, but at least he looked human again.
"Thank you, you have a very gentle nature, Beth," Castiel said with those big blue eyes looking at her admiringly. "I am happy to see one of father's creations instead of Lucifer's."
She felt herself blush at his praise, and didn't know what to say at his casual reference to The Devil. So she just stood up and began repacking the medical kit.
Dean moved back over to Cas and leaned against a tree. The pair talked in quiet whispers while she and Sam packed up their gear.
"So what do you think of your first angel sighting, huh?" he asked her jovially.
"Um… not really what I expected, I guess," she admitted quietly. She didn't want to insult the angel.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. But nothing is ever exactly like the legends."
"I just… thought he'd be more..." she faded off, not really knowing what the word was.
"Angelic?" Sam supplied for her.
She laughed loudly and then remembered they were exposed in the forest and quieted her voice so as to not attract walkers, "Yeah. More angelic. Maybe with some wings or a halo."
"He's got wings," the younger Winchester waggled his eyebrows in a way that reminded her of Dean.
"Yeah, the angel has got some pretty badass wings. Now let's figure out how to get them back," Dean chimed up determinately from where he stood next to the fallen angel.
"Why'd you leave your grace in there Cas?" Sam asked, no longer whispering.
"The leviathan's wanted it. I do not know why. But they hunted me for it. I thought hiding it would make me less of a target," his voice got lost in a memory. Dean nodded in understanding. "But even if I didn't, I would not have been able to get through this door with my grace intact."
"Why not?" Beth asked, afraid she was missing something. However, Sam and Dean looked just as surprised as she felt.
"Grace can only be carried across the threshold of purgatory by an innocent soul," Castiel explained, still seated exhaustedly in the dirt.
"Cas, you dirty dog! You lose your innocence and never told us?" Dean joked and winked suggestively at the angel.
But Cas just stared blankly at him, "I don't understand why that makes me a canine."
The Winchesters both chuckled. "Never mind, Cas," Sam said.
"So if we're looking for a virgin I guess that means I am about 15 years too late and Sammy just popped his cherry last year I think."
Sam gave a fake laugh at Dean's words and then said, "How are we supposed to find a virgin during the apocalypse?"
Then, two pairs of Winchester eyes turned to her simultaneously.
Sam had the decency to look slightly ashamed, as if he didn't really want to ask her such a personal question. But Dean had no such look. His eyes ran up and down her body appraisingly and he raised his eyebrows at her.
"You're awfully quiet over there, Goldilocks. Anything you'd like to share with the class?"
"I… uhh…" she sputtered, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. She knew she must be as red as a tomato under the gaze of the three men.
"I apologize for interrupting Beth's sexual history but that is not the kind of innocence we are looking for," Cas finally stood up, though he was still tired enough that he was leaning against a nearby tree.
"What other kind of innocence is there?" Dean asked confused.
"The grace can only be carried by someone who has never killed a living soul."
Dean shrugged, "Guess that counts me and Sam out again."
"Beth? What about you..." Sam pushed his long hair out of his face as he looked over at her. "If you have, you can tell us, we will understand."
"No, I can't even count how many walkers I've killed," her voice shook.
It was going to be impossible to find someone who hadn't killed any walkers yet. There was no way they could get this angel's grace back.
"Walkers? This is a strange term for humans, but I suppose it is accurate that they walk," Castiel murmured.
"No, Cas she means the croats." He looked at Sam, "Do you think those even count? They already died before the virus takes over, so they're just soulless vessels right?" Dean was getting excited now; there was a gleam in his eyes when he looked to his brother for confirmation.
"Yeah. Everything we've seen shows us that the spirit of the person is long gone before they reanimate. It's basically just a corpse with a demon curse on it," Sam recited this information like he'd memorized it.
"So then her soul is still pure, or innocent, or whatever. That means she can carry your grace out for you Cas," Dean gestured at Beth wildly. It appeared he already volunteered her for the task. He started packing his bag up again with more food and water and weapons.
She felt like she was having an out of body experience. Her mind was yelling at her to shout 'no.' She had no idea what purgatory was like but if Castiel's state and Dean's brief conversation over poker were any indication—it certainly wasn't going to be a leisurely stroll through Disneyland.
Dean killed walkers more easily than most people swatted gnats.
And she had seen in his eyes that he was scared of purgatory.
That told her everything she needed to know about the place.
Sam's green eyes were assessing her reaction. He must have seen her freaking out because he walked over and placed one of his gigantic hands on her shoulder. His voice was gravely, but he kept it loud enough that his brother could still hear when he said, "You don't have to do this if you don't want to Beth. We can always find another way."
He was blocking her view of the other two men but she could almost feel their attention on her as if their gazes were heat rays.
"I want to do this, Sam. I came here to help and if we need Castiel's… grace… to stop all of this, then I'm gonna do everything I can to get it back," she smiled gratefully at him to let him know that she appreciated that he was looking out for her. But then she moved around him to pick up her own backpack.
She stepped over to Dean and tried not to cower under his look of admiration and appraisal.
Willing her voice to sound more confident than she felt, she asked, "So when do we leave?"
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A/N: Hope you liked it! Please review :) Next chapter will send Beth into Purgatory…