And the Wild Things Roared Their Terrible Roars - Supernatural/TheVampire Diaries - Gen - Part 2/3
Title: And the Wild Things Roared Their Terrible Roars
Author: Twisted_Slinky
Artist: Patriciatepes
Fandom: Supernatural/The Vampire Diaries (tv)
Rating: PG-13 (for violence and some language)
Warnings: Spoilers for Supernatural up to the beginning of season 8. Minor spoilers for The Vampire Diaries up to the beginning of season 4.
Summary: Once upon a time, a hunter found himself trapped in Purgatory. While there, he met a vampire, and together they hatched a plan of escape. The vampire's name? Damon Salvatore. Gen.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or The Vampire Diaries. Written for fun, not profit. I also do not own the quote used as the title or at the beginning/ends of the parts; they come from the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
LINK TO PART 1 (Prologue)
NOW
Part 1
"Let the wild rumpus start!"
Here
The flash of light was blinding, and when it receded, he found himself in a dark forest. Alone. For just a moment, he thought he was back in Purgatory-that it hadn't worked, and he was at the beginning again, reliving those first few moments he'd spent, dazed and confused by his new surroundings, awaiting a certain death by gnashing teeth and tearing claws. Only…
There were no red eyes in the dark, watching him with bloodlust. The air was chill, alive, and he could hear the rustle of an owl shifting in its perch above.
Dean felt his throat close, his head swelling with a sudden rush of emotion he hadn't expected to feel ever again.
He was home. In his own world for the first time in a year. But there was still something missing, something reminding him of his first few minutes in Purgatory: Castiel. Cas, there in front of him one minute, gone the next, leaving him with a sickening sense of déjà vu.
Christ, that wasn't how it was supposed happen. They were supposed to be back together. All of them.
Dean's feet moved of their own accord, crunching leaves and twigs beneath, and Dean wished that, just for a while, he could switch his mind off and forget what was missing.
Cas was gone, and he couldn't search the world over for the angel, because Cas couldn't be found here. This time, though, Dean wasn't left entirely alone to face the darkness of the forest. He squeezed his own forearm, feeling the heat beneath the tattered remains of his jacket: a monster's soul.
"Hold on," he muttered. "Just hold on, Damon."
There
The story began long ago. There was a plan. A grand plan. Featuring destiny and love and hate. Brothers and blood. Sacrifice. But all stories with a beginning had an ending as well. Somewhere in the epilogue, another tale was birthed:
Damon blinked, his bright eyes even bluer when contrasting the grime lining his face. He'd heard it, hadn't he? The voice. Sometimes it whispered to him, from afar. From above, where the other souls of Purgatory remained. The words were never clear, and often he couldn't be sure if they were real or in his head, but this time…this time, the message had been loud.
"Find the hunter."
Damon's brow wrinkled as he glanced around the forest, confused. Even with his preternatural senses, he seemed, in this rare moment, to be completely alone. Perhaps it was just in his head, then, the words. After all, he wasn't deaf to the rumors passed between the monsters-there was a human here. A real, living human. In Purgatory.
Granted, the poor bastard probably wouldn't stay that way long. Damon couldn't help it-he chuckled to himself. A monster hunter trapped in monster land, now that was just rich.
Only, the gossip didn't end there. And the voice had more to say on the matter as well.
"Fine. Fine," he muttered. "I'll find the damn hunter. But I don't promise he'll be happy about it."
Purgatory was all about some fighting.
Damon had expected more...peace. Sure, confusion and loneliness was a given, but he thought the afterlife would be a bit boring, quite frankly. It wasn't, at least not in his corner of Purgatory, which was, as it turned out, not the real estate he'd been promised.
God, he'd always known his reputation with the witches would come back to haunt him again...
Back to the fighting: it was a constant. Right along with running. And hunger. Damon felt a tickling pulse at his own eyes, his monster showing under the mask, and his fangs slid down as he took in the scent from the battle.
Human blood had spilled. Fresh human blood. There was nothing else like it. Which was never truer than it was here.
"Damon, help him."
There went that damned voice again - Damon winced, feeling that rare moment of shame associated with his nature, and his mask of calm slid back into place. The hunger was tucked away for now, and he remembered why he'd been tracking this particular group of beasts to begin with...Because they'd been hunting the hunter.
These monsters, they were vampires. Of a sort. Maybe of the oldest sort, but, obviously, he couldn't currently challenge Klaus' claim as an original. The point was, they were rare in Damon's lifetime, these particular, jagged-toothed ghouls, and he'd only ever run across them once, and, well, back then he hadn't been in the mood to ask questions. But here, in this part of Purgatory, there were many of them, from all the ages, and Damon had to wonder what else existed on his Earth. What other things had been walking in the shadows beside him over the decades. Purgatory had taught him that the creature-features who associated themselves with Mystic Falls, they were only the tip of the supernatural iceberg.
"Never too old to learn something new," he said, smiling bitterly.
Then he moved, fast. The first of them didn't even notice his presence until he twisted its head a good one-eighty and tossed it aside for later. That got the group's attention.
The hunter rolled out from under one of the vampires, reaching out for a fallen blade, one of the crude, hook-shaped weapons of Purgatory, and used the distraction to take his assailant's head. Damon raised a brow as he watched the man move. The hunter wasn't what he expected - for starters, despite the fact that he'd been searching for him for what must have been a few weeks, the man looked strong, not the weary, hopeless husk Damon had expected to 'rescue'.
The young man looked up - because Damon now realized that, beneath the blood and dirt, he was relatively young for a hunter - and his fingers tightened around his weapon.
Damon reached out to snag the shirt of the last remaining attackers and tossed him at the hunter. The man swung without hesitation, decapitating the creature with a single blow, as if the fluid movement had been rehearsed.
Damon let out a playful whistle of admiration. "Not bad. You seem to be doing surprisingly well here. Maybe I should just leave you to it."
"Who the hell are you? The welcoming committee?" the man barked.
Damon waved him off. "Oh, me? I'm a nobody. Just another vampire." He grinned when the hunter straightened, his shoulders tensing in preparation for a move. "I'll just let you get back to your hunting."
The man's eyes narrowed in confusion, and Damon took pity on him. "Unless," he added, "you'd like to...I don't know...get the hell out of Purgatory?"
"Bull shit."
Damon heard it, the unsure quake in the man's bark. "Nope. There's a way out from this side. If, say, you don't belong here...And, I might be wrong, but you don't look like one of us."
The hunter raised his weapon but didn't move forward, his eyes raking over Damon with open suspicion. There was a curse on the tip of the man's tongue, but he straightened before he ever voiced the complaint. "Talk," he snapped.
Damon grinned. Oh, how he'd missed the brave and valiant vampire hunters. They were a breed unto themselves.
"Well, that was...violent."
Dean looked up from where he knelt, his hands digging in the dirt, using the soil to pull off some of the sticky blood that had worked its way between his fingers. He made a face at Damon, annoyed. "What? You've never interrogated anyone before?"
Damon leaned back against a tree, brow raised. "Oh, sure. But see, I mistook your 'we're asking for directions' to actually mean we were asking for directions to the river, not torturing ghouls for informations on the whereabouts of your missing angel. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, or so some idiot once told me."
"I told you, we either leave with the angel or we don't leave at all. And we're not trying to catch 'flies'...We're running on Purgatory's rules here. Violence is one thing we all understand."
Damon rolled his eyes. "How dramatic. I know violence, kiddo. Kinda been around the block a bit longer than you."
Dean smirked. "Yeah, grandpa, I get it. You're old and formerly evil."
" 'Formerly.' That gets cuter every time I hear it..." Damon trailed off, then shrugged one shoulder, as if deciding to continue, against his own better judgment. "Is this angel even really worth it? We've been looking for him for weeks - at this point, he's trying to dodge us. The guy abandoned you the moment you got here, and from what you've told me, he wasn't exactly a reliable ally before that."
"You don't understand." Dean frowned, shaking his head. "Like I said, we're not looking for the exit until we find him."
"Fine." Damon huffed, then cocked his head, hearing the sound of yelps and howls in the distance. "You have horrible taste in friends, Dean. Present company excluded, of course."
"You think we're friends?"
"Dean-o, I'm practically your BFF."
Dean might have been turned around, but Damon could see the slight pull of his cheek, a grin. "Screw you, you manipulative son of a bitch," the hunter muttered, to cover himself. "And, 'BFF'? What, did you spend all your free time hanging out with teenage girls?"
"You have no clue."
"Perv-" The comment cut off, Dean no longer paying attention. He stared out into the woods, then stood up slowly, his weapon at his side. "You hear that?"
"You mean the pack of gorilla wolves that were tracking us while you played Operation on Ghoul 1 and Ghoul 2? Yes. I hear that."
"Thanks for the heads up."
"Any time, bestie." Damon rolled his shoulders, pleased with himself, and stilled, realizing that, for the first time since his demise, he felt...alive. Strange. "Let's get violent."
"Know that guy?"
Damon shrugged, then rolled the decapitated head with the toe of his boot to get a better look. Definitely his breed of vampire, but the face wasn't familiar. "Nope. You?"
Dean gave him a look of pure annoyance.
"Ah," Damon noted, "that must be the patented 'bitch-face' you keep describing. You brother must have learned it from you."
"Shuddup, wise ass." Dean jerked his head in the direction of the separated remains. "He said your name, not mine. So, look again."
Damon huffed. "Dean, trust me, if I actually remembered him, I would let you know. Not that it's exactly relevant. You still think I'm some sort of grand schemer, planning to lure you into a trap at any moment, don't you?"
"Crossed my mind a few times."
Dean started back through the trail-less forest. Their last lead had been in the form of a lizard monster that had hissed something about a mean winged ape at the water, so they at least had a direction to head in.
"And here I thought we were establishing some sort of trust." Damon snorted, at himself mostly, then followed after the hunter. He circled in front of Dean, walking backwards. "I'm a 'do-er', Dean. If I want someone dead, I kill them. I don't have the patience for grand plans - and, you know, off subject, how the hell haven't we ran into more people we know? First idiot to recognize me in this place, and it's probably some nameless flunky I tore the heart out of for stealing my Scotch."
"You're a dick."
"That's beside the point."
Dean let out a slow breath, then raised a brow of his own. "You're right. I've put enough things down here, you'd think I'd have my own fan club. Had a better reception in Hell...which, damn, if that doesn't prove how screwed up my life is."
"My theory is...Would you like to hear my theory?"
Damon grinned when Dean growled at the question.
"Do I have a choice?"
"My theory is that Purgatory is larger than what we're seeing. It's layered, and we're at the candy-coated center, where the true monsters roam, the ones who are too far from their humanity, or at least believe they are...And the layer closer to the human world, that's where most of the supernaturally-tainted souls wander, the ones who stand a chance at finding their peace. That last part, it's not theory. I know it to be true, because, well, my life is almost as screwed up as yours."
"So, what, you're saying you're such an unredeemable badass that you got tossed here, away from all your other vampire buddies, when you kicked it?"
Damon chuckled. "Oh, no, as horribly horrible as I was, I'm fairly certain my current location has far more to do with the manner of my demise than the state of my soul."
"You pissed off someone powerful. The same way you seem to piss off everyone." Dean shook his head, side stepping around Damon. "How am I not surprised...So, you ever going to tell me exactly how you bit it?"
"Doubtful." Damon clapped his hands. "How about a change of subject? What were discussing before Mr. Forgettable interrupted us? Oh, yes. Demon-fueled witches vs. born blood witches...Considering your extremely bad luck, any chance one of the latter might have put a curse on your family?"
A fire would have been nice. Damon, in his vampiric existence, had never sought out the comfort of a light in the dark, because he'd reasoned that he was the thing lurking in the shadows. But warmth...all vampires liked warmth. They ran a bit cold, as a rule, and as dangerous as a fire could be, there was also something comforting about the dance of flames in a hearth.
Purgatory wasn't cold. It was tepid. Lukewarm. Between one state and the other, and that's how night and days ran as well. It never seemed to be fully day, but a gray dawn, and its nights were always closer to dusk. Always the twilight in between. But the trees blocked out the meager light, leaving the world around them a blurry gray that made it hard for Dean to see where he was going.
Damon didn't mind resting. They both needed it. But it didn't feel necessary, just like food and drink wasn't necessary here, but thirst and hunger remained. Who could explain the afterlife?
That's why it's harder for Dean, Damon mused. He could hear the man's stomach growl every once in a while...Dean hadn't been dead when he'd arrived. Logic should have dictated that he'd die without something to eat, but Purgatory ran by its own rules, even when its occupants didn't belong here.
"You know, I wouldn't be so 'annoying' - " he tossed in finger quotes, even though his companion couldn't see him " - if I had a little nightcap to keep me satisfied," Damon said.
"For the last time: you're not drinking me, dude. Find a bunny."
"There aren't bunnies here. But fine, if you don't want to be stronger than our advisories, have an edge up on them...Fine." Damon shrugged, feeling Dean's shoulder blades against his own. He wasn't sure when they'd agreed to sleeping back to back sitting up, but who was he to argue with a paranoid hunter? "I'd settle for bourbon."
Dean chuckled silently; Damon could feel it through his spine. "All out," Dean confirmed. "And you seem to be holding your own without any appetizers, so you can lay off the BS. You've got a case of the munchies, that's all."
Damon snorted. "My, someone woke up on the Stefan side of the bed this morning."
Dean was quiet, and Damon rolled his eyes. He knew what the man was thinking, that the conversation had somehow drifted, and it was entirely his fault. "You know, I'm allowed to bring up my extremely frustrating brother without you having to think of your Superhero Sibling."
"Yeah. Well."
Dean Winchester. Wordsmith. Damon leaned his head back, just enough to knock into the hunter's skull. "Stop. Brooding."
"I'm not - " Dean cut himself off with a groan. "And 'superhero'? Where the hell are you getting this stuff?"
"Uh, perhaps from the hours and hours you've spent describing your brother or your hunts with your brother or your brother's researching technique." Damon sat up straight.
"And all the friggin' times he's screwed up," Dean reminded.
"And," Damon mocked, "how he always comes out of it. The both of you. So long as you're together. So, apparently this kid has to be a superhero, because you expect him to pull our ass out of this place on his own."
"He's looking for a way. I know it."
"Sure. Maybe. Maybe not." Damon leaned back again, forcing the hunter to do the same. "Hell, if he's figured out where you are, the more power to him. Meanwhile, my brother probably thinks I'm in the spirit realm hanging out our dead pals. He's probably happier without..."
The forest was quiet. Damon didn't realize he'd left his sentence hanging until a howl sounded from their right. It was distant, no reason to think that whatever it was would catch their scent any time soon, but still, it was a good excuse not to speak. Dean didn't seem to see it that way.
"He's not," Dean declared. "He's not happier without you."
Damon wasn't sure who the man was trying to convince.
The next howl cut off, turning into a pained screech. One beast attacking another.
"This place," Dean muttered, something close to awe in his voice.
Damon remembered something he should have forgotten, a quote. With a slight grin on his face, he rattled it off. " 'And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws...'"
"Wait, was that...? Did you just quote Where the Wild Things Are? Wasn't that a bit before your time?"
There's laughter in Dean's voice again. Mission accomplished. Damon couldn't stand the hunter when he was in a mood.
"You don't want to know," Damon assured. "Let's just say getting under a librarian's skirt and into her book of spells sometimes involves filling-in at storytime."
"You reading to kids. Jesus." Dean shifted his weight. "Man...I used to read that book to Sammy when he was little. Can you believe I was the one who ended up having a nightmare about it?"
"Well, you knew about monsters."
"Still, it was more than a little embarrassing." Dean huffed. "And I hated that kid in the story. Max? Max was a brat to his mom."
"You're reading too much into it," Damon assured. "The story is advocating the power of the imagination. And you can't hate Max. You're Max, you idiot."
"Excuse me?"
"Need I point out that you're currently where the wild things are? They're planning to crown you their ruler."
"I'd give up the title for a cheeseburger."
Damon quirked a brow. "Of course you would, King Dean. But you haven't yet, have you?"
"We're going to find him soon." The change of subject wasn't really a change at all, and Dean sounded so sure that Damon didn't want to disagree. Maybe they would find the angel soon. Maybe then they could leave this dump and go for cheeseburgers. But Damon wasn't entirely sure he wanted to anymore.
The engine roared, setting him on edge, and he forced himself to be still instead of going for his new knife. This was the normal world. People didn't whip out weapons when they were startled. The loud produce truck rolled on past, the driver giving Dean a friendly wave. The man had been kind enough to drive him from the edge of town into its heart.
Mystic Falls.
It had taken him longer than expected to get here, nearly two days. Some part of him had forgotten how to travel, had expected simply to run across the states as if black dogs were at his heals, but he'd fallen into old ways quickly enough. He knew how to smile and spin a yarn to get charity from strangers. How to steal what he couldn't otherwise con. But he hadn't needed to go that far, and he didn't have the will for it now.
He'd barely managed the essentials, simply for the sake of blending in. He'd washed up. Gotten a change of clothing and a threadbare duffle to toss his stuff inside. Been offered a bite to eat by the guys he'd hitched with on his trip south.
Food. Tasting it again, he couldn't figure out how he could have ever went without it. He'd had a snack cake a few hours ago, but he was still starving. He wondered if the hunger of Purgatory had traveled out with him, if he'd ever feel satisfied again.
He got his bearings in the small town. It was relatively easy, even though he'd never been here before. Small towns were all alike at their bones...Well, maybe Mystic Falls wasn't like any other place, at least according to Damon's stories. He was amazed more hunters hadn't set up shop here - the 'Council' that Damon had told him about must have done a hell of a lot of work keeping the freelancers out.
Dean glanced up, stopping short when a few teenagers slipped out of a shop and onto the sidewalk in front of him. Their happy chatter sounded loud to his ears and he turned away from them, instinctually. He found himself looking up at the sign above.
The Mystic Grill. He could smell bread and beer inside. It wasn't exactly the diner setting he was hoping for, but hopefully they had something edible. He patted his front pocket, feeling the folded bill inside, the twenty the produce driver had slipped him along with a look of pity. Dean hated that look but the money was useful.
A tinge of pain started at his forearm and turned into a scolding burn at the crook in his arm. He grasped the sleeve over it, grinding his teeth to keep from cursing.
He needed to find Damon's grave.
"Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things."