SPN RBB FIC: Hearts and Grace Entwined, Rated PG, Dean/Castiel 1/2

[wolfling]

Darkness.

It was all around him, smothering him, pressing down on him with the weight of... well, of a leviathan. It blocked out everything, and it was constantly threatening to crush the last of his light as well. All he could do was curl into as small a target as he could and cling to the tiny spark of grace he had left.

Everything in him shrank down to the single-minded task of survival, his sole focus being to keep the darkness from swallowing what remained of him. He didn't have any strength left to plan or even really to think. He'd been reduced to a single imperative: to not be destroyed.

He had no idea how long that state continued; it could've been days, or it could've been centuries, but either way it did eventually end. It ended with a shriek that seemed to shake the universe with its frustrated anger, and a disoriented tumbling from the heavy smothering darkness to a place no less dark but far more empty.

For a long time, he just lay there, staring up into the starless sky above him, aware of his body --vessel came the unbidden mental correction -- for the first time since this had begun. He stretched his arms and legs out as far as they could go, relishing in the fact that they moved as he bade without fight or argument. He was once again the sole controller of his limbs.

Thoughts, memory, took a bit longer to return than simple movement. When they did he almost wished they hadn't because what he remembered made him want to curl in on himself in shame.

He was Castiel, an angel of the Lord whose desperation to stop his brothers from restarting the apocalypse had led him to make a series of questionable decisions. He was Castiel, who, in hubris, had taken on a power that had never been meant for such as him and set himself up as the new God. He was Castiel, the idiot who had unwittingly released a threat as great as any apocalypse on the world. He was Castiel, the angel who had swallowed the leviathan and had subsequently been destroyed by them when they took over his vessel.

Except, apparently, not quite that last bit. He wasn't sure how, but he somehow had managed to survive, though only just. But it was enough; he was once again in sole possession of his vessel, it responding to his control alone. He brought his hand up in front of his face, watching as his fingers curled into his palm then stretched back out, all at his command. It was a small thing, a tiny victory in the face of the overwhelming disaster that could be laid at his feet, but Castiel relished it all the same.

But far too soon, his thoughts moved beyond that simple satisfaction to something much more imperative and alarming. If the leviathan were no longer within him, where were they and what kind of devastation were they causing?

As if in answer, another angry roar rent the silence and the dark sky above him was suddenly blocked out by something even darker. And massive. Very massive.

Castiel had no doubt that what he was seeing was a leviathan in its corporeal form, something it would never be able to manifest on Earth. So this couldn't be Earth. It also wasn't Heaven, and he didn't think it was Hell, which left...

Purgatory. Castiel felt a surge of complicated tangled emotions at the thought, though heavily prevalent was relief. If the leviathan were back in Purgatory then they weren't on Earth running amuck, all of which would have been his fault. Moreover, chances were that if the leviathan were back in Purgatory, it was because the Winchesters found a way to send them there. That Sam and Dean had found a way to clean up his mess.

His musings were interrupted by another roar above him and a massive shadow sliding even closer and it suddenly occurred to Castiel that lying out in the open was possibly not the best place to be.

Moving slowly, he sat up and got his feet under him, all the while keeping a weather eye on the intimidating shadows milling about above. He didn't perceive any reaction to his movement so cautiously he straightened up and tried to get his bearings, a task which proved to be more difficult. All he could sense in every direction was more of the same black featureless void. Even the leviathan circling above him seemed to be made up of more solid bits of the same thing.

One of the leviathan shadows moved lower and Castiel could feel its malevolent attention reaching out, searching for something on which to turn its wrath. He fought the urge to just curl himself into as small a ball as he possibly could to escape its notice. Even if that worked, it would only be putting off the inevitable. No, the only choice he had was to move, even if he had no clue which way was the way out or if a way out even existed.

He would just have to pick a direction and hope that luck hadn't forsaken him yet. He spun in a circle several times before stopping and settling on one particular direction. Nothing made it seem more or less likely that this was the way out, but he would have to take it on faith, as little of that as he had left.

With one last glance at the shadows overhead, Castiel spread his wings and flew.

*****

It wasn't something he admitted to -- hell, the only person who even knew he did it was Sammy, and his little brother had enough tact to never acknowledge it -- but when Dean slept with Cas' trench coat he tended to sleep better. Longer, deeper, and with far more rest and far fewer nightmares.

Dean snorted at himself as he bunched the coat up and lay his head down on it, using it as a makeshift pillow. Just how pitiful was it that a grown man needed a security blanket to sleep, or that said security blanket was a rumbled, beat up old trench coat which, by any rights, should have started to mildew by now? Yeah, it had once belonged to an angel of the Lord, but Cas was long gone, destroyed by the monsters his hubris had let loose. Now it was just an old coat.

Except that it wasn't, not really. Not to Dean, at least, though again he would never admit it out loud. Maybe it was just his imagination, or maybe it had something to do with having been worn for so long by a being as powerful as Cas had been, but the coat, against all logic and sense, still seemed to smell like the angel. It was nothing that Dean would ever have been able to describe even if he'd been willing: something between the air after a spring storm had passed and fresh laundry still warm from being dried. It comforted Dean, made him feel safe and protected even when he knew he was neither of those things.

The upshot of all of this was that Dean had taken to keeping the trench coat stuffed into the bottom of his duffle bag, and it had become part of his bedtime routine to pull it out and either bunch it up to use as a pillow or spread it over him like a blanket. Sam had to have noticed, but after a single longer than needed look the first couple of times he ignored it for which Dean could not have been more grateful. Because there had been many nights that if he hadn't have had the coat and its freaky weird effect on his psyche, he wouldn't have been able to sleep at all.

The coat seemed to somehow keep the nightmares at bay, but that wasn't to say that Dean didn't dream at all when he slept with it. They were just good dreams, the kind where Dean was at peace and content and, dare he think it, even maybe happy. The kind that made the risk of derision and taunting for having a security blanket worth it.

Things stayed that way through them defeating the leviathan and even a little while after that. Until the one night the dreams changed.

It wasn't a nightmare per se, at least not like any of the other nightmares that had become a staple of Dean's sleeping hours over the years. No, this was more... disturbing than terrifying, though he'd had the feeling that it could slip into terrifying any second with the smallest of nudges.

It was about Cas, and Dean thought he might have willingly succumbed to the terrifying if it meant getting to see him again, even if it was just in a dream.

There wasn't much to it really, just Cas flying through a black void, shadows seeming to twist and flow menacingly overhead. It wasn't the visuals that made the dream disturbing; it was the atmosphere. The feeling that seemed to be sinking into Dean's very soul as he watched Castiel, significantly dressed as usual except for the trench coat, fly that the angel was the last spark of good in a mire of very bad, very horrible things. Not even evil, per se, just... horror.

The dream stayed with Dean when he woke up, and he found his thoughts kept going back to it time and time again during the day that followed.

Too much it seemed, as since over lunch in a rundown diner, Sam put down his fork and stared at him. "Alright, what gives?"

Dean shook off the memory of the dream and gave his brother an annoyed look as he picked up his burger. "What do you mean 'what gives'? We're talking about the case."

"We were talking about the case," Sam corrected. "Five minutes ago. Then you checked out of the conversation in favor of staring out the window."

Dean blinked. Had he? "Sorry," he muttered, turning his gaze onto his food. "Just... thinking about something."

He tried to ignore Sam's expectant silence, and succeeded well enough that Sam sighed and asked exasperatedly, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"You going to share with the class what you were thinking about?" Sam's tone was such that Dean knew he was about half a second away from bitchfacing.

"It's nothing," he replied, and yep, there was the bitchface. Dean grinned, but smothered it quickly when bitchface intensity went up. "Really, Sammy, it is. Just had a weird dream last night that I'm having problems shaking off."

And just like that, Sam's bitchface transformed into brotherly concern. "Nightmare?"

"Sorta. Maybe. Yes. But not really." Dean made a face at himself. "It wasn't out and out nightmarish, not the usual Winchester horror show. Just..." He waved a hand, trailing off.

"Disturbing?" Sam suggested.

"Yeah." Dean took a bite of his burger and chewed it thoughtfully. Disturbing was the word for it all around.

"And?" Sam prompted after a moment.

"And what?"

Sam rolled his eyes expressively. "You going to tell me what was so disturbing about it?"

Dean eyed him in return. "You're going to keep pestering me until I do, aren't you?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Sam replied with just a hint of smugness.

Great. His brother was in a caring and sharing mood. Dean sighed. "It was nothing really. Just... Cas."

"You dreamt about Cas?" And now Sam was giving him the big Puppy Eyes of Sympathy. Great.

"Yeah." He took a big bite of his burger, hoping Sam would take the hint that he didn't want to talk about it and drop it.

Yeah, no such luck. "Was it... bad?" Sam asked hesitantly, and Dean was reminded that Cas had been Sam's friend as well. Not that he ever forgot that, precisely, but it was knowledge that tended to fade to the background most of the time.

"Not really," Dean replied grudgingly. "Except..." He trailed off and shook his head, deciding not to make Sam pull the details out of him one point at a time. "It was just... Cas. Flying."

"That's all?"

"Yeah. It was dark, Cas was the only thing I could see. Except..." Dean's voice had dropped in volume, and Sam leaned in to be able to keep hearing him. "There were... shadows. Don't know of what, just that they weren't good. But more than that..."

"Go on," Sam encouraged after a moment of silence. "What more?"

"It was just... this feeling, okay?" Dean stared down at his plate of food as he talked, knowing how he sounded. "Like something was waiting, something inhuman and incomprehensible. Like it was waiting in the dark, or more like it was the dark. And it was waiting. Just biding its time. Like... Cas was the last bit of good and light in the world, and it was just waiting to smother him." He shrugged, doing his best to shake off the feelings. "Stupid, huh?"

"No," Sam told him. "Sounds like it was a hell of a nightmare."

Dean relaxed a little at Sam's calm acceptance. "Yeah, well, not like we're not both experts at living with nightmares now, huh? Sorry I've been so out of it today. It was just a dream."

"S'okay," Sam said, waving away the apology. "Do you want to take some time? The case can wait till tomorrow..."

"Nah." Dean gave himself a good mental shake and focused his attention back where it belonged -- on the hunt. "Gotta take this bastard out before it leads any more kids into the woods. Tell me what you got from the coroner again and I promise I'll pay attention."

Sam gave him one last concerned look before launching into the case details. Dean gave him his full attention, pushing the dream to the back of his mind, inoring it for now.

But he couldn't forget it. Not entirely.

*****

Angels did not tire easily, but tire they did if they kept at something for long enough. Castiel had no idea how long he'd been flying through this black abyss, but it was long enough for even an angel's stamina to begin to wane. Soon he was going to have to rest and the thought of stopping where the leviathan shadows would be able to find him was not one he relished.

So he gritted his teeth and kept flying long past the ends of his endurance and then kept flying some more.

Finally his persistence - stubbornness, Dean would have called it -- paid off. The blackness around him began to change, becoming less unending impenetrable darkness and more the darkness of a moonless night. There was a sky overhead and below him the welcome sight of actual ground, no matter how barren and black it was.

He landed, the action far less graceful than usual, and managed to keep moving through sheer willpower until he found a depression in the rocky ground. It was really too small to be called a cave, but Castiel managed to wedge himself into it regardless. He wasn't sure if it would be enough protection from the leviathans' regard if they decided to really look for him, but it was better than nothing.

After that, Castiel... drifted. It wasn't sleep -- angels didn't sleep -- but it was something similar, his mind going where it would undirected by him as he slowly rebuilt his energy stores.

Later on, he would reflect that he shouldn't have been surprised when his thoughts drifted to Dean, but at the time he was. The image of the hunter sprawled out on a motel bed, hands clutched around his pillow was so clear Castiel felt he could reach out and touch him. Indeed, he felt his fingers twitch in compulsion to do so. The only thing that restrained him was the knowledge that trying would only destroy the illusion that Dean was right in front of him.

And then the illusion stirred, raised its head and looked right at him. "Cas?" Dean said in a hoarse disbelieving whisper.

It couldn't be real. It couldn't... "You- You can see me?" Castiel ventured hesitantly.

Dean's eyes widened even more, and he shifted forward towards Castiel, but not reaching for him. "Yeah," he said, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Yeah, Cas, I can see you."

"How-" Castiel began but cut himself off, instead going with, "Are you alright?"

That made Dean's mouth quirk upwards into a small sad smile. "Yeah, Cas. I'm fine."

"Good," Castiel said, meaning it. That he had surmised that the Winchesters were alright was one thing, but having it confirmed, even by what may be a hallucination, was another thing entirely. A better thing. "I had confidence that you had survived, but..."

"It's nice to have it confirmed," Dean finished for him. "Yeah, I get that." He was staring at Castiel almost hungrily.

"And Sam?" Castiel asked, suddenly remembering exactly what he'd done to him. I took down the wall in his mind. How could I...? "Is he-"

"Sammy's fine," Dean told him quickly. "He might be a little crazier than before, but he's dealing with it. Actually the kid's so well adjusted now, it's kinda freaky."

"I'm sorry, Dean," Castiel apologized. "I never should have-"

"No, you shouldn't have," Dean told him, but softened immediately. "But it's not like Sam and I have never done something we shouldn't have. It's forgiven."

Castiel felt something that had been screwed up too tightly inside him loosen at that. "I'm not sure I deserve it, but thank you."

"I'm sorry we weren't able to save you," Dean said, the look accompanying the words one of the most heartfelt Castiel had ever received from the human.

"You stopped the leviathan," Castiel said. "That is all I could ask." He glanced around him. "And I cannot say this is an inappropriate punishment for my transgressions. Some would probably even call it poetic."

Dean frowned at him. "What's poetic about being dead?"

"I don't think I am dead." Castiel paused, taking inner stock. When an angel died, their grace was scattered to all the corners of Heaven and Earth. His, on the other hand, felt very much still whole and intact.

"If you're not dead, then where are you?" Dean demanded.

"Purgatory."

"Purgatory?" Dean echoed. "How the hell- Oh crap. The Leviathan still had its tentacles wrapped around you, so when we sucked it back into the hole, you went with it. Dammit!"

He looked so distressed that Castiel wanted to make him feel better. "You couldn't have known."

"We should've. It was a rookie mistake." Dean got up off his bed and started pacing as he talked. "I mean the Big Bad tells us you're dead and we just believe him? 'cause they're oh so trustworthy after all. Shit, Cas, if we'd've known-"

"You would've done exactly the same thing," Castiel broke in. "Because you had to. The leviathan had to be stopped."

Dean grimaced, though he didn't deny it. "It still sucks."

Castiel glanced away from the image of Dean to the barren black landscape he was trapped in. "Yes," he agreed, speaking to the emptiness around him. "It does."

*****

Sam was jolted from sleep by his brother shaking his shoulder.

"I just saw Cas," Dean said as soon as he saw that Sam was awake.

"What?" Still slightly sleep befuddled, Sam glanced around the room, half expecting to see the familiar trench-coated figure of the angel before he remembered he was dead.

"In a dream, dumbass," Dean snarked and was up and pacing the room like a caged tiger.

Oh. So this wasn't a visit from the beyond, this was his brother having another nightmare, this time disturbing enough that he woke Sam up. Voluntarily. Putting on his most sympathetic expression, Sam asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Course I d-" Dean stopped mid-word as well as mid-stride and turned to glare at Sam. "Dude, this isn't about me having a bad dream. I saw Cas."

Sam was wishing he had some caffeine before having to have this conversation. "In a dream, you said."

"Yeah. An angel dream. Y'know how they feel free to go traipsing about in a man's subconscious when they can't get you on the phone."

Sam had a vivid horrifying memory of Lucifer crawling through his dreams, long before his time in Hell had gifted him with a Lucifer of his very own riding around in his subconscious, and he knew that Dean had had more than one angel traipsing through his dreams over the years, but still...

"Are you sure? Couldn't it just have been a weird dream?"

"I know the difference between a weird dream and a real one, Sam!" Dean glared. "This was real. He was real."

Right. It could still be wishful thinking on Dean's part, but Sam was inclined to believe him. "So Cas is alive?"

"Yeah. Maybe. Sorta. He's not gone at any rate. Just trapped."

Sam frowned. "Where?"

The look on Dean's face told him he wasn't going to like the answer even before he spoke. "Purgatory."

"Shit." It made sense though given the situation. If Cas wasn't dead, he'd at least been tangled up with the leviathan enough that he and Dean weren't able to reach him. So Cas getting pulled along with the leviathan when they managed to send the bastards back home wasn't that big a surprise.

"Yeah, pretty much my reaction too," Dean said, finally sitting down on the edge of his bed, looking haunted. "After everything that's happened, for Cas to end up locked up there with those things...."

There was really only one thing Sam could say to that. "So we go and get him out."

The look Dean shot him was relieved as much as anything. "No arguments about how playing around with Purgatory is way too dangerous and something only a freaking idiot would do?"

"I thought that was pretty much a given," Sam said with a shrug as he got up and reached for his clothes. "But it's Cas. He pulled you out of Hell, tried to do the same for me. We owe him. More than that, he's family."

"And everyone knows that the Winchesters are always idiots when it comes to family," Dean said, mouth quirking up into a half smile. "Thanks, Sammy."

"He's my friend too, Dean," Sam said honestly. He knew though that what lay between Dean and Cas was, to use the angel's words, much more profound than what lay between himself and Cas. Which was just another reason he wanted to get Cas back -- Dean had lost far too many people he cared about; if Sam could help him get one of them back he was going to do whatever it took.

*****

Castiel wasn't sure how long he rested, his thoughts drifting aimlessly after the vision of Dean, but he finally pulled himself out of it and began moving again.

Now that there was ground, or at least a reasonable facsimile of same, he found himself strangely loathe to leave it until he knew how the rules worked around here. Besides, the leviathan were still far too close for him to wilfully risk doing anything that may increase the odds of them spotting him. Discretion for once, he thought, would be the better part of valour, so he kept his wings folded and struck out on foot.

It seemed to have been a wise choice because, after only walking for several hours, the landscape began to change, becoming more solid and less just a bare idea of one. The feeling of the leviathan looming overhead, while not disappearing, at least began to lessen as well. Castiel found his tension easing in response as the threat of imminent attack faded just that little bit.

He began to hear noises, claws clicking, scales slithering, growls and voices barely audible, all the things that always seemed to lurk in the fearful dark, and Castiel was reminded that the leviathan were not the only inhabitants of Purgatory.

The souls of monsters were here too, the souls that he had devoured and used for his own ends. Somehow he didn't think they would be any happier to see him than the leviathan would be, and Castiel folded his wings even closer to his body in an instinctual effort to make himself smaller and easier to hide.

The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself. Any kind of fight he may get into held the possibility of alerting the leviathan to his presence and that... that would be unpleasant to say the least. So as other figures appeared in the landscape that Castiel was walking through, he kept his head down and power contained and shielded as much as he was able, pretending to be just another monster soul trapped here.

It wasn't difficult to pretend. In fact it was closer to the truth than he wanted to admit. He was most certainly trapped here, and after all that he had done, the title 'monster' fit him better than angel.

Maybe he was where he belonged after all.

*****

Sam carefully drew the sigil on the dirt floor of the cabin cellar while Dean stood nearby with their packs of weapons and supplies and fidgeted nervously.

"You sure this is going to work?" he asked for at least the tenth time. Sam would've been more annoyed about it if he didn't know exactly how anxious and worried about Cas his brother was.

"Pretty sure," he answered just as he had all those other times. "The spell and the recipe for crafting the amulets are from the same book as the ritual we used to open Purgatory and suck the Leviathan back home in the first place. If that worked, stands to reason this will too."

Dean nodded, just as he had the previous times they'd had this conversation. Sam mentally counted to five and right on cue, Dean asked his usual followup question. "And this isn't going to mess with the barrier? We're not going to weaken it or anything passing through it like this?"

Privately Sam wondered if it would make a difference if he said yes and rather suspected it wouldn't. Not when it came to rescuing one of their own. And that held for him as much as it did for Dean; after all, Cas had taken the risk to brave Lucifer's cage to get him out. Even if he hadn't -- totally - succeeded, the thought and the intent had been there and Sam could do no less but try and return the favor.

Luckily, they weren't risking opening the world to the leviathan again at least. "Nope," he replied. "The barrier is like a lock and the amulets are the keys. You don't weaken a lock by using a key do you?"

"No, but you do open it," Dean muttered.

Finishing the sigil, Sam stood and walked over to his brother. "This is going to work," he told him, projecting as much calm confidence as he could. "I know what we're doing. Trust me, okay?"

Dean let out a breath. "I do, Sam," he replied. "It's just... it's Cas, y'know?"

"I know," Sam said with a sympathetic smile. They'd lost so much in the last year, and it had hit Dean even harder than it had hit him. The chance to get Cas back must seem like almost too much to hope for to his brother. Even if Cas hadn't been his friend as well Sam would've been determined to do this, if just to give his brother that hope. "I promise, Dean, we're going to get him back." He handed one of the amulets to his brother, put on another and put the third -- the one he made for Cas -- in his pocket. "You ready?"

Dean shook himself, put on the amulet and then settled his pack on his shoulders, handing the other to Sam who did the same. "As I'll ever be. Let's get this show on the road."

Sam centered himself, then spoke the words that would open the portal. Magic seemed to hang heavy in the air for a moment, then the air above the sigil wavered and seemed to part, showing a curtain of shimmering black... something.

He turned to Dean. "Ready?"

Dean nodded, stepping up to stand beside him. "Here goes nothing," he said, and side by side they stepped through the portal.

*****

They hit hard, and Dean instinctively tucked and rolled to avoid injury. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sam doing the same.

Dean got his feet under him as soon as he could, hand on his gun as he looked around at their new surroundings.

It was dark like a moonless night, only somehow the dark felt thicker than that, more substantial, like maybe it should be hard to breathe though it didn't seem to be. Not yet at least.

After a moment or two Dean's eyes adjusted enough that he could make out more than just darkness. It appeared that he and Sam were standing in the middle of a highway bordered on both sides by scrub and bushes and not much else. It was such a prosaic scene that, if it wasn't for the oppressiveness of the dark, Dean would've doubted that they'd actually made it to Purgatory.

He didn't doubt it though -- nowhere on Earth would just the feeling of the air make his skin crawl.

"So," Sam remarked, head swiveling to look behind them back down the road they were standing on. "You think this road leads to a garden, like the one in Heaven did?"

"Only if it's a garden infested with leviathan," Dean said. "What is it with afterlives and highways anyway? Don't we get enough of those in the real world?"

"That's probably why," Sam answered with a shrug. "Purgatory, Heaven, Hell, they're made up of as much thought as substance so they're always going to appear as something familiar."

"Makes sense, I guess," Dean admitted. "Guess we should count ourselves lucky we're just getting roads then and not some of the more... extreme landscapes in our heads." Like Hell.

"Yeah." Sam walked a few steps up the road, then turned and walked a few steps in the opposite direction. "Though some sign posts would be nice. I have no idea where we are or which direction Cas is in."

Dean snorted. "What, you were hoping for a sign with an arrow that said, 'One Wayward Angel, 5 miles'?"

"I'd settle for some clue as to which way to start looking in. This is going to take a long time if we have to search the entire dimension."

"Agreed," Dean said, but even as he spoke, he found himself looking in one specific direction, the direction his gut was telling him was the right one.

Sam was frowning at him. "What is it?"

"Cas is that way," Dean replied, pointing down the road.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." He frowned, not sure how he knew, but he could practically feel it in his bones, as certain as if there had been a sign pointing the way.

"Let's go then," Sam said, beginning to walk in the direction Dean indicated.

Dean fell in step with him automatically. "That's it?" he asked. "No questions about how I know or anything?"

Sam shrugged. "I figured it's probably part of the same thing that let Cas reach your dreams from Purgatory. He always said you two share a bond. Maybe that bond's giving you a kind of angel radar for him. Anyway, it's better than wandering aimlessly."

"True," Dean admitted, turning the whole situation over in his mind. Did he have Cas-dar? And did it bother him if he did? No, he decided. Profound bond or not, if whatever this was let them rescue Cas from this place, the only thing he'd be was grateful.

*****

Castiel kept his eyes focused on his feet and his wings pulled in tight against his back as he passed another group of creatures.

The further he went from the abyss where he started, the more populated it seemed to be, and the harder it became to stay hidden. In fact he'd given up on staying out of sight altogether as impracticable and had switched to the 'hide in plain sight' method instead.

This involved moving as if he knew where he was going, acting like he belonged here, and hoping no one would look at him and think 'angel'. The fact that he himself had seen a few species he couldn't name bolstered his confidence in the last. With so many different varieties of creatures he doubted 'angel' would be the first thing that would pop into anybody's head when they looked at him.

Or at least so long as he did nothing to put the idea into their heads. Which meant all displays of what Dean would have called his 'angel mojo' were off the table for now and for the foreseeable future.

Dean.

It came as no surprise at all to Castiel that Dean kept popping up in his train of thought. Not after the dream, vision, hallucination, whatever it had been. Wishful thinking maybe, though for some reason Castiel didn't think so. There was something about it that had felt real, that he had actually managed to somehow connect with Dean and have one last conversation. He didn't know how or why, but was grateful for it nonetheless. It was a moment of light he could call on in the midst of all this dark around him.

The way sound carried here was strange, reminding Castiel of nothing so much as a confused mixture of random prayers and the background noise from the Host. It was almost familiar and therefore something of a comfort in this ever changing, ever strange place. He let the disjointed words and snippets of conversations wash over him as he walked, not trying to listen to any one in particular so much as letting it all blend together and so create at least a vague impression of the whole.

At least until he caught the word "Winchesters" in the middle of the cacophony.

It stopped him dead in his tracks, head cocked to the side as he tried to trace that one voice and one conversation. It probably wasn't even about his Winchesters, he thought as he searched, if he hadn't misheard entirely. He'd just been thinking about Dean after all, and it was very possible his mind had used that to try and make sense of the voices all around him. After all, there was no reason that the Winchesters would be the subject of idle conversation in Purgatory, was there?

On second thought, it was Sam and Dean he was thinking about...

"-course I'm damn sure," Castiel heard the voice say when he honed in on it again. "I not only have his scent, I drained him of blood and turned him myself."

Another voice laughed disdainfully. "And how did that work out for you?"

"That's not the point," the first replied. "The point is I can sense and track him if he's anywhere remotely near and I'm telling you that Dean Winchester is here in Purgatory."

Castiel froze completely at that. Dean, here?

"Boris is right," a new voice came. "Winchester's here. And so's his freak of a brother. I was hunting them since before I was turned; there's no way they can hide from me."

Not only Dean, but Sam as well? For a brief moment, Castiel wondered what kind of bad luck would have thrown the two brothers into Purgatory, but then he realized why they had to be here. Him. That hadn't been a comforting hallucination. He really had somehow made contact with Dean and told him where he was. And Dean being Dean was never going to just let that lie. He was going to try and get Castiel back. And Sam being Sam, he was going to be right at his brother's side as they put their latest suicidal plan into action.

Only this time, it wasn't to save the world, or each other -- which as far as they were concerned pretty much amounted to the same thing. This time it was to save the hide of a worthless angel who was only getting what he deserved.

What Castiel didn't deserve was friends like the Winchesters.

"Fine, let's say you convinced me," the voice that had laughed said. "The Winchesters are here. Just what do you want to do about it?"

The one called Boris laughed in return. "Just what do you think? It'll be interesting to see what happens to two humans when we rip them apart here. Think they'll have a shot at making it to heaven?"

"Hell's more likely for those two," the third voice spoke up again. "Always assuming we can't tear about their souls as well as their bodies here."

"There's an idea," Boris said. "String 'em up and take them apart nice and slow. Think of the entertainment value."

"If you want maximum entertainment value -- bleed them drop by drop, while you make the other watch. Those two are so codependent, that they'll freak out more about each other dying, even if they're dying themselves."

"I like the way you think, Gordon," Boris said. "You've got a really creative mind when it comes to torture, especially for someone who was a hunter for so long."

"I've always been creative in interrogation techniques," Gordon replied. "Just the targets that have changed now."

Without really realizing it, Castiel had been drifting in the direction of the voices since they first mentioned the Winchesters and he now found himself in the midst of a dense clump of trees. The voices were louder, closer here, and Castiel could see light coming from a clearing on the other side of the foliage.

In the clearing were a number of beings -- vampires, Castiel recognized after a moment's observation -- standing in a loose circle, watching the two in the center debate.

"Probably a good thing," one of them -- Boris -- was saying. "You wouldn't have wanted to put your creativity up against mine if we'd met back then. It would've got... messy."

The other vampire -- Gordon, Castiel presumed - merely smirked in response. "It sure would've. But you would've been the messee not the messer."

Boris gave Gordon a grin that was much more a bearing of teeth than a sign of pleasure. "Perhaps we should dance one of these days, just to see what would happen."

"Any time you want to boogie you know where to find me," Gordon said spreading his arms in a come and get me gesture.

"I'll put your name on my dance card, right after the Winchesters," Boris replied.

Gordon nodded, hands dropping back to his side. "Agreed. We need to deal with them first. Can't let this opportunity go to waste."

Castiel was caught on the horns of a dilemma. These blood drinkers were going to go after Sam and Dean, who were only here in the line of fire because of him. He didn't doubt that Boris, Gordon and the others would find taking down the brothers more difficult than they were anticipating, but the chance that they could get lucky still remained. Unless....

Unless someone stopped the vampires before they could start. Someone like him.

It would blow his laying low to smithereens, and almost certainly would bring more trouble down on him, perhaps even more than he could handle, but Castiel found he didn't care. He'd failed his friends enough. He wouldn't do so again.

Taking a deep breath that he didn't need, Castiel let his grace unfurl slightly, doing the same with his wings. He pushed through the brush hiding him and was about to step into the clearing when he was grabbed from behind.

*****

"Y'know," Dean grumbled as they walked down the apparently endless deserted highway, "if we're going to keep getting roads in all these afterlife dimensions, it would be nice if we could get a car too."

Sam glanced sideways at him. "Wait, didn't you have the impala in Heaven?"

"When I first got there, yeah," Dean admitted. "But then it disappeared, and it was all me wearing toddler fashions and dead hunters dressed up like Mexican wrestlers."

There was a lot about their trip to Heaven that Sam didn't want to remember or dwell on, but there were a few things that were worth poking at. Especially when Dean was the one to bring them up. "I don't know," Sam said as casually as he could manage. "I thought the 'Wuv Hugs' t-shirt was a good look for you."

"Shut up," Dean shot back. "Or I'll 'Wuv Hugs' you."

Sam raised an eyebrow. As threats went, it was lacking something. "Really? You'll 'Wuv Hugs' me? That's the best you can do?"

Dean gave him a dirty look. "Well, I'm gonna kick your ass from here to Hell and back kinda loses something when we're standing in Purgatory, so I'm improvising."

"Point."

"Believe me, to 'Wuv Hugs' someone is truly, truly, horrible. You don't want the details. Trust me."

"If you say so, Dean." Sam didn't try very hard to hide his smirk.

"Oh, bite me!"

Sam chuckled and then they fell silent again as they continued walking. He resisted the urge to glance at his watch; time didn't seem to work right here any more than it did in Heaven or Hell, and no matter what the watch told him, it didn't change the fact that it felt like they'd been walking for days. There was still no sign of Cas beyond the feeling that Dean had dubbed his Cas-dar, and like it or not, Sam was starting to feel a few doubts creep in. Not enough to make him mention them to Dean yet, but enough to make him worry about what would happen if they couldn't find the angel. Not just for Cas' sake, but for Dean's too.

The whole thing with Castiel and the leviathan had hit Dean hard, harder than he'd ever admit. But Sam knew his brother, and he could see the wound losing the angel had left, especially the way it had happened. He honestly didn't think anything other than losing their parents, and Bobby, and Sam himself had hurt Dean so much, and it wasn't something he'd dealt with easily.

Truth be told, Sam didn't think he'd really had dealt with it so much as shoved it down with all the other emotional baggage he didn't so much deal with as just pretend didn't exist, with equal parts alcohol and self-hate making up his denial. And now that it seemed they had a chance to get the angel back...

Well, he didn't think he was going to be able to get Dean to leave without finding at least some sign of Cas. And, if Sam was honest, he would be hard pressed to leave himself. He might not have been as close to Castiel as Dean was, but the angel was still his friend.

Beside him, Dean came to a sudden stop, throwing up a hand in a gesture for quiet before Sam could ask any questions.

Sam gave it a count of twenty as he watched his brother frown and peer into the shadows along the road before he finally asked softly, "What is it?"

"Don't know," Dean replied equally softly, still frowning. "Thought I heard..."

"What?"

"Someone calling my name."

They both fell silent again, listening. Sam held his breath, but all he heard was the wind.

Dean finally sighed and shook his head. "Nothing now. Maybe this place is just getting to me."

"Or maybe something's messing with us," Sam countered. That would be what he'd put money on, if they were betting. Because something was always messing with them.

"Maybe." Dean dropped his hand to where he had his colt tucked into his waistband, not drawing it, but keeping ready.

Sam touched his shoulder gently, urging him back into movement. "Come on. Either way, we should keep going."

"Yeah," Dean agreed as they started down the road again. "It's not like Cas is going to find himself, after all."

They continued on in silence, but after a few minutes Sam saw Dean start again and before he could ask he heard in the wind what sounded like just the wrong side of comprehensible whispers.

"Hear that?" Dean asked in a low voice as his eyes darted back and forth, trying to take in all the shadows along the road at once.

Sam nodded, reaching for his own gun as he scanned their surroundings for anything as well. But as far as he could make out there was nothing but shadows and whispered murmurings.

"This sucks," Dean grumbled as they both slowly began moving forward again, when the mysterious whispers didn't manifest as anything more concrete or obviously dangerous.

"No arguments," Sam agreed.

"Something's definitely messing with us," Dean said, looking almost offended at the notion.

Sam thought he heard a slightly louder voice hiss sibilantly, "Winchesterrrrrr..." and couldn't help but jump a little. "Again, no arguments."

Without consulting on it, the brothers shifted positions so that each one of them was responsible for scanning one side of the road as they continued to walk. For a while there was nothing but the whispers, now occasionally punctuated by laughs and growls and what sounded like their names being called, which would be enough to send shivers down anybody's spine, and Sam found he was no exception.

They were moving faster now, keeping their backs mostly to each other, both of them with guns drawn as they continued to scan the shadows along the road. The there and gone glints of eyes continued flickering in the dark, as did the whispers in the wind. The sounds became louder and the flashes of eyes more frequent and they found themselves unconsciously quickening their pace in response, as if instinctively trying to outrun it all.

Then, suddenly, it all stopped. There was nothing but black shadows showing on either side of the road, nothing but silence ringing in their ears, with even the wind having fallen still. Sam and Dean glanced sideways at each other, the tension ratcheting up to the snapping point. As one, they slowed but did not stop and got a tighter grip on their weapons. If this wasn't just an exercise in driving them crazy and something was actually going to happen, Sam thought, now was when it would.

Sure enough, a group of people stepped out of the shadows and onto the road about twenty feet in front of them. No, Sam thought as he got a good look at their features, not people. A group of ghouls. Led by the two who had tried to eat him and who had eaten Adam and his mother, whose faces they still wore even here.

"Sam and Dean Winchester," the thing that looked like their brother said, grinning at them with a truly wicked delight. "It's such a surprise to see you. No one -- and I mean no one -- expected you to be stupid enough to come here of all places."

"What can I say?" Dean replied with a smirk. "The brochures made it sound like a real happening vacation spot." He looked totally at ease though Sam knew he had to be as tense as he himself was.

"Funny," not-Adam said. "You're not fooling anyone with your comedy routine, you know. You can posture and crack jokes all you want, but you know and we know exactly how much crap you've stepped in by coming here."

"Or you only think you know," Dean shot back. "We took you down once. We can do it again." He looked and sounded completely confident, but Sam knew his brother's version of bravado when he saw it.

It looked like not-Adam did too. "You keep telling yourselves that," he said with a smile. "We'll see if you can still believe it when we're eating your liver while you watch."

The atmosphere changed, becoming more charged and deadly. Sam tightened his hold on his gun, knowing that any second now it was going to go from words to a fight that they stood very little chance of winning. Dean exchanged a quick look with him and Sam saw the same knowledge in his brother's eyes, and the same determination. If they were going to go down, they were going to take as many of these sons of bitches with them as they could.

Just as the tension was reaching the snapping point and Sam could see the ghouls in the front of the group start to shift their weight in prelude to attacking, a huge roar split the air, followed by alarmed cries from the ghouls at the back of the pack, cries that were abruptly cut off.

Sam strained his neck as he tried to see what was going on as the rest of the ghouls turned seemingly intent on the same thing. Another roar and another cry cut off mid-scream and the ghouls began to back away, slowly at first and then faster as they scattered and scrambled to get away from... whatever it was. Sam still couldn't see through the now fleeing mob of panicked ghouls.

Finally though his line of sight cleared enough for him to catch a glimpse at what had sent the ghouls fleeing.

It was about the size of a small horse, clearly reptilian, scales bright green and blue and orange like the plumage on a parrot. It crouched over the prone unmoving bodies of several of the ghouls, the long claws on its feet sunk straight through their skulls. Its long barbed tail was moving sinuously behind it as watched the rest of the ghouls run away with something that might have been a smile on a face a little more human. Something with less fangs and forked tongue.

Sam was starting to think that maybe the ghouls had the right idea here when the creature's attention shifted and its bright yellow eyes focused clearly on him and Dean.

"Dude, do you have any idea what the hell that thing is?" Dean asked in low urgent tones, his own gaze still trained on the creature.

Sam started to give a half shrug, thought better of the movement as its focus seemed to sharpen and remained very very still instead. "Hopefully not hungry?" he replied out of the side of his mouth.

The creature seemed to have not only heard him, but understood and found it amusing as the impression of a smile increased and it gave a kind of hooting sound that might have been laughter.

"It's laughing at us," Sam observed.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign."

"It's a sign that Tallis has a bad sense of humor," came an amused -- and strangely familiar feminine voice from the shadows along the side of the road. Sam tore his eyes from the creature to look in the voice's direction, only to freeze in shock as the speaker stepped into the light.

Madison.

She was just as Sam remembered her from that first day before they'd found out about what she was, all dark hair, warm eyes, teasing smile and curves in all the right places. It was how he'd prefer to remember her instead of how he saw her later, crying, in pain and begging him to end her life, a request he'd had no choice but to grant.

"Hello, Sam." Her eyes flickered briefly over to his brother. "Dean." Then it was right back to looking at him. "It's good to see you."

Every instinct Sam told him she really meant it. It looked like, just maybe, even in the monster afterlife, they might have some allies.

*****

Continued in part 2