Chapter Text
It’s Cas who finds her. Retrospectively, Dean’s not really surprised. What continues to stump him is the fact that Cas didn’t just kill her on the spot—dude’s come a long way from his ‘smite first, ask questions later’ policy for non-human kids—Dean’s never sure later if Cas actually has come that far, or if, just maybe, he saw the connection, sensed where she came from, and stayed his hand. Maybe Cas just has a soft spot deep down for the lost, the broken, and the damned. Dean wonders but he’s too afraid to ask, unsure if he really wants to know.
Cas calls his name, and the low growl of his voice resonates through the gloom of Purgatory, it draws Dean over instantly. Since he’d found Cas, he’s been finely tuned to his presence and his tics—his tone suggests confusion, danger, and Dean responds accordingly, sprinting in the direction of Cas’ voice. Dean expects Leviathan or worse, but what he finds in the small clearing is Cas standing over the body of a solitary smoked out vamp. The corpse has what looks like a rudimentary knife in its throat, and Cas has a particularly nasty frown on his face.
Benny comes up next to Dean a moment later and pauses, his usually relaxed expression turns contemplative almost instantly, and when Dean shoots him a questioning glance, Benny jerks his chin towards Cas.
Dean follows the direction of both of their gazes and….well, he doesn’t expect to see a child crouched low against the trunk of a tree.
It’s a scrawny thing, matted, dirty, cornered, and glaring at the three of them with wild eyes. In all the months that he’s been here, Dean’s never seen anything less than a fully grown monster. This bedraggled scrap of a thing leaves him not doubt as to why—Purgatory isn’t exactly a fucking nurturing environment.
“What the hell?”
The kid turns at the sound of his voice and hisses, bares pointed teeth at him; its eyes flash yellow in a face streaked with blood and filth. Some niggling sensation rises up in the back of Dean’s brain—a strange feeling of déjà-vu. He ignores it, shrugs, and lifts his weapon to put the little monster out of its misery before it can do any harm.
Cas blinks solemnly, almost sorrowfully, as the creature flinches. He holds out a hand to stay Dean’s advance.
“Dean,” he warns.
He pushes forward, but Cas proves to be immovable, “What gives, Cas?”.
Dean is about to tear him a new one because they’re not adopting a damn pet in this hellhole, but then Benny fucking chimes in.
“Easy there, brother,” he drawls. He and Cas share a weird look because apparently they’re suddenly on the same page, and, yeah, that’s not weird or creepy at all. Dean has the increasingly unpleasant sensation that he’s missing something important.
“What’s the hold up?”
He goes to move again, but Cas places a hand on his shoulder and Dean stills involuntarily, feels inclined to punch him just for the hell of it. The angel frowns and nods at Benny, who nods back and approaches the feral little thing crouched among the debris.
It growls and backs farther against the tree trunk. Sharp teeth, pointed claws, blood spattered everything, eyes gleaming in warning, it looks like it’s gonna do some damn damage before they take it out. It reminds Dean inexplicably of those tiny dinosaurs in the travesty of a sequel to Jurassic Park—the ones that look really cute but still manage to eat your damn face off while you’re alive. Dean does have to at least grudgingly admire that the little thing’s a fighter, feisty even, she’s surrounded and probably gonna die, but she’s facing the end with her chin up.
Benny lowers himself to its level, hunkers down; it hisses a warning.
“Easy, girl,” his voice is a gravelly Southern drawl, slow and soothing, sweet like molasses. He smiles back at Dean over his shoulder, “ain’t nobody gonna hurt you; ain’t that right, Dean?”
Dean rolls his eyes.
The kid bares her fangs at Benny, and Benny shows her his own. She tilts her head when he retracts them, and, when Benny offers the child his hand, she considers it with a confused frown before examining it critically, sniffing it, tugging experimentally at his fingers. She sits back on her haunches again and contemplates the bearlike creature before. Her features have relaxed slightly, her eyes have stopped glowing.
Dean turns to Cas for some kind of explanation of this weird ass behavior, but Cas is watching the proceedings intently, like there might be an exam later.
Eventually, after some serious thinking, apparently, she moves closer, infinitesimally closer, and bares her throat to Benny. He smiles, “’Atta girl,” and lays a paw-like hand on her head.
Dean has had enough of this shit, “Does somebody want to tell me what the fuck is going on? Is there a reason that we’re not killing Frankenstein Jr. over here?”
Dark eyes in a small haggard face stare up at him with something like anger from the forest floor. There’s something about the set of her tiny mouth that Dean finds achingly familiar, makes him break out in a cold sweat. Benny shares another look with Cas, who turns to Dean almost mournfully, certainly regretfully, and Dean very suddenly and decidedly does not want to know what the fuck is going on.
“I cannot allow you to kill your child.”
“My—” Dean blusters because one, he doesn’t have a kid, and, two, there’s no way that a kid of his would end up in monster—“Shit.”
Emma hisses at him again; Dean’s pretty sure he deserves it.