The Outsider
The Outsider
Word Count: 3k
Characters: Benny Lafitte, Dean Winchester, Castiel
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, but if I did, I'd probably write fanfic about it anyway.
Summary: First there was a vampire. Then there was a vampire and a human. Then there was a vampire, a human, and an angel. Somewhere along the line, they became a team.
And then they weren't.
There was a human in Purgatory.
There had been whispers before, a few times actually.
But like most rumors, when you poke at the story enough, it would fall apart. This fellow heard it from this one who heard it from someone who is probably dead now, so no details can be confirmed.
This story was different.
The storytellers said "I saw him."
They told of the fiercest hunter ever, a human with inhuman reflexes, uncanny instincts, and unbelievable skills.
He took down entire nests of vamps and camps of ghouls and a family of shapeshifters. Alone. And apparently while suffering the shakes, sweats, and delusions that come from drying out a hard liquor habit.
Those who had crossed his path had no desire to do so again.
Benny headed straight for the last place the human had been seen.
Not to try to feed, like some of the other foolhardy residents of this place, but to make an ally.
He had no illusions about the matter. The human wouldn't trust him, if he was even half of what the legends said. He'd be a fool to trust anyone in this place, and any human who could survive a month so far in Purgatory obviously wasn't a fool.
But Benny could offer the one thing that no one else here could or would.
A way for both of them to get out.
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The human was tough. You had to give him that.
Benny watched from the shadows as the human pinned Villanueva to a tree, demanding the angel's location.
Poor soul, like the angel could get him out of here.
Benny continued to watch as Villanueva's head and body parted company.
With a roar, Lefty came charging out of the woods, tackling the human.
The human ended up on his back in the leaves, his weapon just beyond his fingers. He didn't give up, though. He held off Lefty with one hand, never taking his eyes away, while scrabbling for his weapon with the other.
It was time to make friends.
Benny stepped forward, grabbed the back of Lefty's jacket, and pulled him off the human, flinging him to the ground a few yards away.
Lefty was missing his head by the time the human grabbed his and Lefty's weapons and made it to his feet.
The human and the vampire circled each other until Benny gave his most charming smile.
"What? No thanks for saving your hide?"
"Sure. I won't shove this up your ass." the human snarled.
Benny hadn't expected anything less. "Mm. Awful strange way to punch your meal ticket, friend. I got something you need."
He had to give the human credit. The human listened to his proposal. And he was willing to try, but only if they found the angel first.
"Three's a crowd, chief." Benny answered.
The human just smirked. "Well, hey. Either you're in or you're out." He replied, throwing Benny's words back at him.
Damned if Benny didn't think he could actually like this fellow.
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The human is damned stubborn, too.
He leads them all over Purgatory, crossing and recrossing their old trails, chasing any whiff of the angel.
Benny told him that the angel is long gone, probably yanked out of there by his brothers the first night. That's probably how Dean found himself all alone within minutes.
Angels ain't supposed to be here.
Then again, humans ain't either, and Benny's not quite sure why the rescue team for Dean's little feathered friend didn't pull him out of there too.
Dean insists that the angel is still there. That he wouldn't leave without Dean. That he's in trouble, and Dean has to find him.
Benny decides to indulge the poor human's whims a bit longer. A few more weeks is nothing compared to fifty years, and every additional drop of trust he can foster between them will only help in the long run.
"We'll camp here for the night, then head toward the maple grove in the morning." Dean announced, referring to the angel's last known whereabouts.
"Whatever you say, chief." Benny shrugged.
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Benny wasn't sure if the human was crazy or just desperate.
Every night, as they got ready to hunker down until morning, the human would wander off, almost out of sight, and whisper urgently. At first, Benny thought he was talking to himself, but he set himself to listening one night, and realized the human was praying.
To the missing angel.
Sometimes the angel was "Cas, buddy," and sometimes he was "you feathered dick" but the prayers went out every night.
And they always ended with the same promise.
"I'm gonna find you."
Benny wasn't sure how this all fit together yet. Dean said Castiel was like another brother, but Benny couldn't imagine how the angel worked into that dynamic. Benny had never seen pure affection like the look that crossed Dean's face when he talked about Sam. Sam who was the smartest student, the fastest runner, the best marksman with a shotgun, and the quickest to think on his feet. Sam who always tried to be as big and strong and tough as his big brother so Dean would be proud of him. Sam who tried to be the best hunter ever to keep his big brother safe, not
because he wanted to hunt like Dean did, even though it sounded like Dean didn't want to hunt nearly as much as he wanted to make his daddy proud.
Sam whose named was tattooed like a scar across his brother's heart in white ink the week after he dove into Lucifer's Cage. If Sam had ever noticed, he never mentioned it to Dean because the brothers didn't talk about things like that.
Benny had a brother once, but he hadn't appreciated that relationship Before. They got on like most brothers, he supposed, best friends one minute and worst enemies another, but mostly just there. Benny hadn't felt any great compulsion to get back to his parents and siblings After. It wasn't that they had done anything wrong, quite the opposite really. They had been a close, loving family.
He thought he'd done them a favor, letting them believe he went down with the riverboat, rather than burdening them with the truth of what he had become. Even Georgia, whom he had thought he loved, all those years before he met Andrea and realized what he had felt for Georgia was a young man's infatuation.
Maybe if he had known he left Georgia in the family way, he might have gone back sooner. But by the time Benny finally made it back to Clayton, Benny Junior had been a grown man with a wife and young'uns of his own. A fine man, which Benny owed to Hiram, for taking in his nephew and raising him as his own.
Benny had been too late to thank his brother in person.
Miles and years spread out beyond that night, and now Benny had no one. Andrea was dead, any of his family he had actually known was surely long since dead, and his nest, the ones who had become his family After, had turned on him and were the reason he was in Purgatory now.
That only meant there would be no one to mourn him if he died again, taking out The Old Man.
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Dean talked about Sam all the time. Benny knew the first time Sam hit a bullseye on the target was shooting some minister's old 22 rifle, that Sam's first word had been Dean, that Jessica was the girlfriend who was killed by the demon that was after Sam, and that Sam's first kill on a hunt had been a ghoul. Benny had heard about Sam's excellent marks in school, the exact moment he got taller than Dean, the first time Sam caught a fish, and how Sam was so stiff he could barely move the next day if the brothers had to sleep all night in their car. Dean had been killed for a couple months (twice) before he was brought back from the dead, and both occasions, Sam spent the whole time trying to get Dean back.
All in all, when it came to Sam, Dean sounded more like a proud parent than he did a big brother.
Benny even heard a good bit about Bobby, who had been like a daddy to Dean and Sam. Benny could see a gruff old man in a hat, could almost hear him say "Balls!" just from the way Dean described him.
It was all different when it came to the angel.
Dean didn't talk about him much. He said the angel was like family. He told Benny that the angel had pulled Dean out of Hell, and that Dean had saved the angel too. Benny wasn't real sure how all that worked out, that a human saved an angel, but he supposed it suited that Dean would have been the one to do it.
Otherwise, Dean didn't say much about the angel, even two months later, and that was what piqued Benny's curiosity. Dean said the angel had made some mistakes. From the bits Benny pieced together, at least once the angel had done something to hurt Sam, and one time Dean had thought the angel was dead. Coupled with the fact that Dean had admitted the angel disappeared on him the first night they landed in Purgatory, leaving the human in the middle of a swarm of hostile creatures, Benny didn't like the mental picture that was coming together.
But for some reason, Dean still insisted the angel was family and they weren't leaving without him.
Benny knew that sometimes, the ones you love the most are the ones who hurt you the most. That had certainly been true when Benny was a human. He had broken his mama's heart more times than he could count, but she never once thought of telling him not to come back.
After all, family is family.
_____________________________
After six months, Benny knew that angel was either dead or long since snatched away to Heaven.
Dean still didn't believe it.
He remained convinced that the angel was there, somewhere in Purgatory, and that he and Benny had to find feather boy. Dean insisted that he would know if the angel was dead.
Benny pointed out that Dean had known the angel was dead before, and it turned out Dean was wrong, so it could very well work the other way around this time.
Benny had found himself way too close to the edge of Dean's blade for making that suggestion.
Benny did what he always did, held up his hands, apologized, and then shook his head when the hunter's back was turned.
_____________________________
Another month went by, and they still hadn't found the angel.
Benny was starting to question the wisdom of staying with Dean, because the human seemed to draw more attention than anyone or anything Benny had seen in his fifty years here.
Even more, Dean still refused to consider the fact that the angel could't be found. The nightly prayers became more desperate, to the point Dean had actually shed tears a few times. Benny knew that he wouldn't have lived to discuss the matter if he'd been foolish enough to bring it up.
Dean's nightmares even shifted. The first few weeks the human called out Sam, or Bobby, or Cas, or Dad, or sometimes even Dick in his sleep.
Now it was all Cas.
He stayed for two reasons.
First of all, because this was the only human who had come along in fifty years, and there was no telling how long it might be before another came around.
Secondly, because Benny really hadn't realized how lonely this place was until he had Dean as a friend.
______________________________
They finally found the angel.
They found a werewolf, who told them the angel was in a clearing three days' journey away.
It was all Benny could do to convince Dean not to walk straight through without rest for those three days.
They finally entered the clearing, and there was the angel, knelt down with his hands in the stream.
Dean froze for a moment, and Benny dared a glance at the human's face.
Everything suddenly clicked into place.
The angel was that kind of family.
Dean was in love with the angel.
It wasn't for Benny to judge Dean's feelings. After all, Benny had married Georgia, the illegitimate offspring of the daughter of a voodoo witch and a plantation owner, a girl who would tell him she loved him one minute and threaten to kill him the next, who had tried to kill herself after his supposed death, and then abandoned their newborn son to run away with a new lover.
No, it was far from Benny's place to judge someone else on their dysfunctional relationship.
It wasn't even the two men thing.
Somewhere in the 1940's, it had become scandalously fashionable among the wealthy for gentlemen to have gentlemen lovers. Benny had not been above kissing a fellow to get aboard his boat.
No, the reason that Benny's hackles stood up as he watched Dean embrace his angel and brush a hand over his cheek were because the angel was apparently still alive and well and in Purgatory.
Which meant that damned angel had deliberately left Dean alone to suffer the way he had.
And how about that, Dean had just decided to introduce them.
"Why'd you bail on Dean?" Benny asked without even pretending to be polite.
"Dude ... " Dean frowned.
Benny didn't back down. "The way I hear it, you two hit monster land, and hot wings here took off. I figure he owes you some backstory."
Dean of course, tried to defend the angel, until the angel admitted that he had left Dean high and dry. The angel tried to say that he had done it to protect Dean, but Benny had seen that subtle slump to Dean's shoulders.
Dean was beginning to understand. The "angel", such that he was, wasn't worthy of Dean. Benny knew it, and the angel knew it.
But Dean was the stubbornest human being Benny had ever met, and he was determined they were all going to get out of Purgatory together.
Well, Purgatory was a big place, and Benny had a little time to do a little more convincing before they reached the portal.
__________________________________
Benny had never, in his wildest dreams, imagined the angel would side with him against Dean.
Benny wanted to leave the angel behind.
The angel wanted to be left behind.
They spent another month criss-crossing Purgatory, trying to evade the monsters who tracked the angel's every movement so that they could get to the portal.
The strain wore on all of them, leaving them cross and snapping at one another.
"What does it matter what you believe?" Benny fumed. "You got your head so far up your ass, Dean, you don't even realize we're already done for. The angel knows it. We are never gonna make it with him next to us glowing like a beacon."
The angel agreed.
And then the Leviathan attacked.
The three of them swiftly neutralized the threat, covering one another the way Benny and his nest used to. It was really uncanny, the way a human, a vampire, and an angel worked together.
They survived another attack, killed another round of monsters, but none of them were foolish enough to believe there wasn't another attack imminent.
The only way to stop the attacks permanently was to get out. The problem was that Benny didn't believe there was any way all three of them could get out.
The portal was intended for humans. Dean could get out. Benny could probably get out, as he was once human.
Chances were that a born and bred supernatural being like the angel ain't gonna get out.
Even if he could, the three of them would be vulnerable to attack for however long it took to get through the portal.
Dean led them on through the forest, prattling on about how when they got home he was going to buy them all burgers and pie and get Benny and Cas new clothes.
As they walked behind him, Benny looked over at the angel.
Feathers looked at Benny sadly, tipped his head at Dean, and then shook his head no.
Benny nodded silently in agreement. On impulse, he held out his hand, and Feathers, although confused for a moment, shook it after a brief pause.
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When he found himself standing beside Hiram's windmill, Benny knew they'd made it. He smiled at Dean, shook his hand, hugged his neck.
He didn't look for Feathers.
He didn't ask Dean about it, either.
The slope of Dean's shoulders told him enough.
The agreed to part as they'd discussed, but to keep in touch.
Dean was going to find Sam.
Benny was going to take some time to get his feet wet in a world he hadn't seen in more than fifty years.
And after that, he was going looking for his nest, but Dean didn't need to know that.
Benny had no doubt they would see each other again. After all, the two of them were the only ones who would understand what they had been through in the past year.
When Dean had gotten his head around it, and probably a bottle of single malt under his belt, Benny would listen to him cry over the angel.
But before that, Benny expected him to call and be surprised that Sam had moved on with his life.
After all, Benny had tried to go back home, once. He had ended up introducing himself as a stranger to his own son.
He knew that sometimes, when you went back home, you found out home ain't quite like when you left it.