A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long. I'm hoping for two to come out this weekend, and then an epilogue next week. Also, thanks to my friend Fisher for monster ideas and to everyone who reviewed! I love reviews. (hint hint)

Purgatory had always been miserable, hopeless, an endless punishment for some perceived wrong with no escape. But thinking about it, Dean figures that this was the moment everything really went to hell.

(And Dean's been to hell. Dean knows.)

But when it looms over them, he is filled with a rush of pure dread. There is no way out of this one. This thing is going to kill him, he just knows it.

He freezes in sheer terror. The thing is coming down upon him, and there is nothing he can do.

Dean's reverie breaks when Castiel throws himself between him and the thing. Abruptly, it is blocked from view, and the hulking beast with the crusty translucent skin and huge, pulsating heart he can see through its chest is no longer so paralyzing. It is a monster, nothing more.

It tosses Cas aside like a rag doll with a hooked claw, and Dean snatches up the stick he'd dropped and lunges at the exposed heart. He can swear he can see the veins and he wants to run away—

Dean drops his gaze from the heart, and the unnatural panic fades. So that was it. He'd have to go in blind. Avoiding the view of his target, he throws himself at the monster, which snarls and flails its claws at him as he stabs it in the chest. The transparent exoskeleton crunches, and then crumbles, under the force of the blow, which sends the tip of the stake deep into the creature's heart.

It collapses, forcing Dean to jump backward to avoid being crushed under its tremendous bulk. It really is grotesque, he decides, examining its insectoid limbs and hideous chest. The fear it projected has vanished with its death, and he feels only a sense of triumph and relief as he looks down at the corpse.

"Hey, Cas, thanks. Don't think I've met one that does that before," Dean calls, in an attempt to sound cavalier, when the truth is the angel just saved his life, again.

What bothers him is that the angel doesn't answer. Castiel has always been pretty good about taking the life saving thing in stride, so it prompts Dean to turn around.

What he sees is his only ally lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.

"Shit."

"Cas, come on." He turns Castiel over onto him back, and the angel lets out a small cry as he is forcibly uncurled from the fetal position. "You're okay."

In fact, he isn't, but he doesn't bother to correct Dean. "Humans…have such odd ideas," he manages, and Dean is a little startled.

"Sorry?" Dean is less focused on the delirious ramblings and more on the gaping wound in his friend's side that was left by the monster's gigantic claw.

"Many…seem to believe…that He could create no monsters. Could bring no darkness. Could do no wrong."

"Not following, Cas. Can we, uh, worry about the fact you're dying, here? Then focus on why we're stupid little apes."

He's pretty sure the angel doesn't even hear him. His eyes are glazed, fixed on some point off in the darkness.

"Come on, Cas," he repeats, pressing his hands down over the wound. He's unsure if it's the angel or his vessel bleeding, but either way it doesn't mean anything good. The blood is coming out pretty steadily. "Hang in there."

It isn't the first wound they've gotten, but it's the first one that isn't internal that is bad enough to necessitate bandages. Bandages that they don't have.

Dean swears again, casting about for something, anything he can use. He could use the angel's trench coat, but sterile it is not. Well, nothing he used would be, but the combination of fresh and dried monster blood that it has collected is more than a little off-putting.

"Cas, hey, look at me." Castiel's eyes, already glassy, seem to be dimming. "Come on, Cas!"

He would have thanked God for what happened next, had he thought God had anything to do with it. As it is, he's pretty sure it's just his angel whose eyes refocus and who gasps in pain.

"Sorry, dude, hang in there, I need…" and he's not sure what he needs except maybe bandages and a way out of here and something to hope for.

"Close your eyes," the angel manages, and Dean follows his command automatically. Even with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, he can feel the blinding brilliance on the other side of them as Cas reverts to 'angel form'. When the brightness has faded, he opens them to see the angel is still on the ground and soaked in blood, though the wound has sealed itself.

"Didn't know you still had enough-" here he gestures in a futile attempt to fill in the concepts he has no words for "-angel juice to do that."

"My grace is faded," the angel admits, and Dean can hear the wheeze in his breath and see the pallor of his face. "But I am okay."

"Good," and Dean feels a rush of relief. Castiel is okay, he is okay, and they will keep going. "Good."

"So, uh," they've been trekking through the forest for several hours more, and Castiel is breathing heavily and moving more sluggishly. Dean's wounds are bothering him again, the broken ribs making his sides ache while the still-healing gashes occasionally send shooting pain up his abdomen, and he knows the angel has had even less time to heal. "What were you saying earlier, about us being stupid apes or whatever?" He's reaching for any conversation topic he can find that will take his friend's mind off the pain he's in.

"Humans seem to think that God can do no wrong." His tone is sharper. "That he has made all good in the world, and nothing bad."

"Well, yeah, people kind of like to think he's looking out for us." Dean struggles to phrase it so Castiel will understand. "Besides, isn't that kind of true? You know, the not-doing-a-good-thing isn't the same as doing-a-bad-thing?" He figures Cas is still bitter about the Almighty's blatant lack of attention during the apocalypse, and figures he has a right to be.

But he shakes his head. "No, not just that. That he has created all the good, the people and the flowers and the light, but not the bad, the monsters and the poison and the dark."

"Well, you know, the whole dark is just the absence of light thing? Maybe…the bad things aren't God, just the lack of." Dean has never been a real believer, but he's consistently found nothing worse than an angel losing faith in God. If he could restore the confidence Cas had felt in his mission, in his father, and in himself the angel had possessed when Dean first met him, he would do it in a heartbeat.

"He has not just made good things," Cas shook his head. "That is not in his nature."

"Give me one thing that doesn't make sense about that," Dean tells him. He's a little injured that his attempts to comfort the angel have been so easily brushed aside.

"That monster, it frightened you."

"Not really," Dean protests, "It just sort of…mind-zapped me. I wasn't scared of it."

"But you felt fear," Castiel clarifies.

"Well, yeah."

The angel looks abruptly weary, stopping and turning, and he looks small and pitiful and alone in the near darkness, hands in the pockets of his blood soaked coat. "God made that creature. He built it." Cas shudders. "And what shoulder, and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand? and what dread feet?"

Dean started to speak, realizing Cas was quoting again, but the angel wasn't done. "He did. He made it, and He made here, for the monsters. He made hell, Dean, and purgatory, and every monster you have ever faced. My father made all those things, everything wrong with the world and everything right."

"There's a lot of right," Dean offers another platitude he doesn't really believe, but he isn't sure he can handle Cas's crisis of faith right now.

"There is more wrong," Cas shakes his head. "What kind of person would make a creature like that?" Cas turned and continued to walk, but glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Dean was following. After a moment, he turned again to Dean, and asked him quietly, "What kind of person would make a creature like me?"