A/N: If anything is discouraging, it is getting no reviews. Which is, in fact, what happened. A combination of this and a busy real life have contributed to me not being done until now. Well, here's chapter five. Epilogue will follow soon. Please, please review—it's the only way I know if you like it! Even just a sentence is awesome.
They don't speak again after that, not for a long while. Dean is exhausted, beaten down by their seemingly endless time in Purgatory, a time that could be days or weeks or months or years on Earth but feels like an eternity to him now. He has nothing left to give—certainly nothing to give hope to the equally exhausted, utterly disillusioned angel.
The light goes in and out around him, as Castiel struggles to maintain the foggy glow. It's disconcerting, Dean feels, that he could plunge into total darkness at any moment, should Cas's strength suddenly give out. He's actually surprised that he isn't more worried, before it occurs to him that, despite everything, he trusts the angel. Trusts him that he won't panic and teleport away again, abandoning him as he had in the first moments of their imprisonment. Trusts that he won't leave him to the monsters, that he won't dismiss the light and let Dean flounder until he is eventually consumed in the blackness.
It's actually nice, he decides. The soul speck of good in what has been close to hell. He trusts Castiel again, something he wasn't sure he could ever do after the Leviathans, the betrayal, what he had done to Sam. Sam, Sam was his family. Anyone who hurt Sam should never be forgiven, never be spoken to again….shouldn't he never let Cas forget what he did?
But he has. Maybe it was necessity; maybe it's just a delusion, a trust that will fade as soon as they escape from the twisted shadowy forest. But maybe….maybe it's because Cas is family too.
He drifts over towards the angel, who is fixing his eyes to the ground, putting one foot in front of the other as though it takes all his energy and concentration. It probably does. He rests a hand on his shoulder.
Cas looks up, surprised. Shocked, even, that Dean is acknowledging him. And Dean remembers why he has forgiven Cas—because Cas will not forgive himself.
"Hey," Dean says, greeting him calmly, casually. He's not going to outright tell the angel that he's forgiven, turn this into a chick flick or a heartfelt speech. But he hopes the angel knows he is forgiven.
"Hey," Cas responds, and it's less natural, a lot stiffer, with just a tiny hint of a question in it, and his eyes are incredulous, because he does, in fact, understand.
He just thinks Dean is wrong.
He might be a bit stubborn or a bit competitive, but Dean decides, right there, that he's going to change Castiel's mind.
The most horrifying monster they meet is not particularly frightening. It has no yellow claws, hooked fangs, massive beating heart, or flaming eye sockets. It does not flap batlike, mutant wings or come swooping from above.
It is a man.
The man is not particularly frightening, either, as though he has not been in purgatory long enough for his feature to twist like the features of the other monsters, for his limbs to grow crooked like the ever-reaching limbs of the dark, dead trees. His spit does not sizzle and eat away at the ground, and his roars do not shake the trees like wind, if wind ever dared to blow through.
His eyes, though, are terrifying.
They are not swallowed-up blackness like the eyes of a demon, all shiny and buglike. They are not red and glowing like the eyes that are always watching them from the darkness. They are simply eyes.
But they do shine and glow, but with no color, simply pure menace. The unparalleled hate that stares out of them is more frightening than the ink or the flames.
He shudders to think what this man could do, would do. Not more than the monsters, who would tear them limb from limb and eat their hearts, he knows. But they would do it on instinct, on the flames of heat and survival.
This man would do it gleefully.
He is ragged, his skin is pale. His clothes is torn and filthy, his feet bare and bloody from the roots he is no doubt tripping over. His nails are caked with dirt and dried blood. His shirt is in rags, completely torn away from one shoulder, which is lacerated. The wounds are untreated and festering, virtually rotting away. Peeking through the few fibers that remain and the reeking flesh, Dean can see the white bone.
The hate in his eyes flickers, replaced with uncertainty—something in his animalistic, desperate mind seems to convey recognition. He raises a hand to shield his eyes.
"Why…why is it so bright?" He sounds lost, almost frightened, and if not for his grotesque appearance Dean would feel bad for him. Because Dean is lost and barely surviving here by himself, and he can hardly believe that someone else is still here, alive. With no Cas and no light.
"…you are unaccustomed." Dean is on guard, but can feel only pity for the broken creature before him. But Castiel, who responds, sounds vaguely monotone.
"Who are you?" The man suddenly snarls. "It does not matter!" He charges at them, and Dean swings the newly made stake at him, impaling him in the eye. No acidic fluid spews out, merely blood and aqueous substances that dampen the tip of the wood and hit the dirt, raising tiny dust clouds around the point of impact.
The man howls and staggers back. Castiel casually raises a hand to snap his neck (Dean would intercede, but he feels that it would be more like putting him out of his misery than anything else) and then pauses.
"Where did your friends go?" His eyes seem to sharpen. "There is a way out."
"They've left me behind," he snaps, and his eyes take on a maddened gleam. "But I have shown them."
"The hell?" Dean articulates, but the man lunges again, and Cas catches him by the throat and snaps the man's neck with his own forward momentum.
"He was traveling with others," Castiel informs him, casting no backward glance to the lifeless body and quickening his pace. "He would be dead otherwise. We have made his end much less unpleasant than it would have been had he been left."
"Cas, the hell is going on?" Dean is irritated.
"There is a way out of purgatory; the very point is that it is temporary. Should one prove themselves, they will be freed." And Dean has no idea what Cas is talking about now, or if he's caught their latest assailant's crazy disease, but he's willing to buy into this for now. The damn bible said it was temporary, didn't it?
"Sure, so how do we prove ourselves?"
"The man said he'd been abandoned. Others escaped; he told us as much. He was not alone for long, or he would be dead. We follow the path he took to us."
"Yeah, how?" Dean groans.
"There is blood, in the dirt. Human."
"And you can tell it from monster…how?" He wishes the angel could explain it in one go so he wouldn't have to drag this out piece by piece.
"It is…corrupted. Tainted. But not wholly wrong."
"So, angel-sense, that's what you're saying?" Dean demands.
"I…if you want to call it that, yes." Castiel agrees.
They follow the blood. The trail is initially intermittent, hard to follow, but they reach a point where the droplets grow larger and then turn into a steady stream. There is more of it, but it is dry, caked into a jagged rust-red line where the man wavered back and forth along his course.
"Here," Castiel says, and Dean notes it has grown brighter.
"You doing that?" But the angel shakes his head, and Dean edges cautiously forward, but no lightning bolt comes down to zap him, so he enters the clearing.
It is bright, a glow emanating from nowhere, although the trees around are still black and twisted and the sky is still an endless expanse of ink. The body of a man, ill-kept and dirty, lies on the ground. Blood trickles from not-too-fresh wounds, pooling around him. His body appears to have been gnawed by several critters. Wherever the glow comes from, it doesn't keep the monsters away.
"So, what?" Dean spreads his hands.
Cas points at the ground, which is unremarkable packed dirt edged by creeping roots except for two stone crosses. They are etched with lettering in a language that Dean can't read (that looks vaguely like Latin).
Castiel scans them quickly (he can apparently read the lettering) and appears to consider it.
"How do we get out of here?" Dean asks, because he knows he is impatient but he can't stand the thought of being trapped here any longer.
"They're instructions," Castiel notes. "Can't you read them?"
"Uh, no," Dean snaps. "They're in Latin or something."
"Oh," and Castiel fixes his gaze on him. "You should be able to—no, you have nothing to prove."
"What the hell are you saying?" Dean demands, but Castiel stonewalls him.
"I'll explain." Castiel turns and points. "Stand on that one."
"That what?" He knows, but he is already irritated by Cas not explaining.
"The cross, the one I'm pointing to." And Castiel turns around.
Dean does, but he argues again. "Look. You gotta let me know, Cas, what's going through your head right now?" Because this is honestly, irrevocably aggravating.
"And when the stars threw down their spears, and watered Heaven with their tears, did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee?" The angel is almost absentminded, reciting it. He walks over to the other cross and looks at it.
"What, more poetry?" Dean snaps, "Come on, Cas, what are we doing?"
"To prove you don't deserve to be here, the instructions explain," he reluctantly tells him. "To prove you do not deserve purgatory, you first must prove you are not a monster."
"Yeah, that should be pretty easy," Dean bites out.
"You never were," Cas responds. "We are here from the weapon to kill the Leviathan, I released the Leviathan, I am responsible. You should not be here. That is why you cannot read the letters."
"So?" Dean shifts impatiently. "You aren't either."
"No, I'm not." Cas agrees, smiling slightly. It's somewhat disconcerting. "But we are here because of me, and I am proving it. The crosses are scales, and when one steps on the latter," he indicates the one he is standing next to, "It releases the person on the former. I am putting someone before myself. I suppose, in His eyes, I am no longer a monster." He steps calmly onto the stone. "Goodbye, Dean."
"Cas, you can't do this," Dean snaps, but even as he does he has the odd sensation of falling.
He awakens in a forest, propped up against a tree. Roots dig into his arms and dirt covers the ground.
He opens his eyes and sees the stars.
A/N 2: Stay tuned for epilogue! Thank you for reading, and please review!