Thank you to everyone who reviewed or followed this fanfic, I do appreciate it. Also, if anyone does have any requests for fics (either Supernatural, The Hobbit or Harry Potter fandoms), feel free to suggest them, as I'm now taking requests again! Here's Part 2.
…
He doesn't remember going to sleep.
His head hurts like a bitch, his skin itches and it feels like someone – or rather something has tried to turn him inside out while he slept. And to make things worse, he ain't in Kansas anymore. The motel room is gone, switched for somewhere that looks awfully like an abandoned warehouse and what is it about fuglies that makes them gaga for these places? One of these days he's gonna hunt something with some kind of taste in interior design – this icy, bare concrete is doing nothing for his joints.
As the blood returns to his extremities, he finds to his dismay that he's unarmed. Whatever it is, it's clever. And it clearly has a fair bit of juice behind it, what with the teleporting and all. Not good. He's down a man, without a weapon and he has no goddamn idea what the hell he's supposed to be hunting. The odds might be against him, but this thing hasn't accounted for the blistering drive of severely pissed off Winchester burning in his blood.
Leviathans are taking over the freaking planet, Cas might be gone forever and Sam has ditched him for better company – whatever it is – it's going down. And it's going down screaming.
He flexes numb fingers, wondering distractedly why he isn't bound hand and foot. Maybe it doesn't have opposable thumbs – or perhaps worse…. maybe it likes to play with its food. Great, just great. He crawls unsteadily to his feet, taking in the delightfully washed out grey walls and the inch thick layer of cobwebs that covers every surface with wild abandon. Clearly no-one's been here for some time.
The warehouse has the same air of utter silence as the motel before. But it's more than silence – it's almost as if sound has never existed at all. Every scuff of the floor, the crack of his knuckles, the creak of the half open door – swallowed whole. He peers around the doorway, hand unconsciously at his empty belt, grasping at air. A long, dark corridor stretches out ahead of him, towards a door that glows ever so faintly around the edges. It beckons alarmingly, tantalisingly and he steps through the doorway in a trance-like state. Whatever it is, it's at the end of this corridor. And it wants him to find it.
That's disconcerting. He misses the old days – wendigos, vampires, werewolves. All of them vicious bastards when it came down to it, but you could kill 'em straight with a little tracking and a bit of know-how. And they certainly didn't kidnap people from motel rooms, zap them to the middle of nowhere and play fricking hide and seek before chewing on your carcass. And Sam had been by his side of course then. He'd been such a kid then – even at twenty two. Damn, he misses that version of his little brother. Back when Sam was Sammy and Dad was still alive – those were the days.
It wasn't the same anymore. He used to do this job because he loved it, loved killing the monsters, loved saving people, loved being on the road with his Dad and Sam. Now it was just the killing. He'd never been tired of hunting, but now most days he felt like locking himself in a motel room and drinking himself into oblivion. Hunting had lost its charm.
He blinks in the darkness, feeling completely isolated in the inky black. Waving a hand in front of him, he can barely make out his fingers. The doorway ahead glows warm and bright, kindly and inviting. Dimly, he wonders what fate lies ahead of him through the doorway – wonders who, if anyone, will find his body if he fails? Would he lie undiscovered, unburied and forgotten, gathering dust like the rest of the warehouse until he has utterly rotted away? How long would it take Sam to realise that he was missing?
Probably months, he muses. By which time, he'd be long dead and no-one would ever know where to look. The thought is simultaneously sobering and depressing. His anger has all but faded to nothingness, his energy sapped by the dark.
Wearily, he staggers forward blindly, seeking out the bright, bright light.
And the whispering begins again.
Except this time, he can understand them.
Dean, Dean, Dean.
They are calling him.
And they are angry. So angry. He can hear the hate in their voices. The pain. Crying out to him, crying out for him – to damn him, to drag him down to hell. To burn.
Dean, Dean, Dean.
His guts twist, telling him to run, to leave, to turn around and find a way out – but he can't move. He can only stagger forwards, forwards. Because some part of him knows – just like Osiris knew, just like the yellow eyed demon, like Cas, like every single mind-reading fugly knew – that he was guilty of things, things that could never be forgiven. Things that he could never forgive himself for.
And he deserved to be punished.
He stretches out shaking fingers towards the handle, watching the glow bathe his fingertips like a soft caress. The light is surprisingly cold – akin to dipping his fingers in an ice bucket – but he does not withdraw, despite all his instincts screaming at him to move.
He grasps the handle, pushing the door tentatively inwards to soak in a scorching radiance of yellow-gold light that envelops him utterly.
He is blinded, vision blistered by the sheer brightness before him.
And a silhouette, a silhouette in the centre of the room, unilluminated in the brightness. It is jarringly, painfully familiar and for a half-second he stands there in disbelief.
Sam?
….
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