Chapter Text
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PART 1: ACROSS THE ACHERON
So this is the world you left behind,
This is the guilt that consumes you
So die alone, this is the one thing that I won’t do
Say your prayers, ‘cause I ain’t leaving here without you
– “Natural Born Killer”, Avenged Sevenfold
⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱
Running, racing, failing but still trying in vain to escape a fearsome forest of darkness and danger.
He pants, huffing and harsh, drenching his lungs with high-octane oxygen, adrenaline permeating his system and keeping him on high-alert. That’s where he needs to be – a trained killer with honed instincts just sharp enough to stay one step away from the ever present, razor-sharp knife’s edge of death’s abyss.
It’s hunt or be hunted, kill or be killed in this godforsaken plane Dean’s trapped within, and he’ll be damned if he succumbs here at the teeth or claws of any monster he’s already ended in the world of the living.
Their telltale growls and the rustling of leaves approach rapidly behind him. He snakes away from the path he’s on, winding sideways to mislead the vamps on his trail. A seasoned hunter with his rough-hewn, homemade machete in hand, he’s not afraid to face them by any means. But outnumbered, Dean would rather lure them to a vulnerable position and spring a surprise attack versus barrelling in, hacking recklessly with no real plan.
He’s seen enough of what that kinda guns-blazin’, half-cocked attempt accomplishes…
Breaking through the dense brush, he finds himself on top of a small bluff, surrounded by bleak woodland vistas crowding the mottled-gray horizon.
The sun never seems to come out from behind the scraggly clouds on this plane of existence, if there even is one here. A singular, sorrowful caw from a crow echoes, bouncing off of the claustrophobic tree clusters in warning.
Seeking somewhere he can hide and catch his wind before his enemies rush him, Dean spies a yawning black cave entrance halfway hidden behind a thicket of thorny vines. He darts inside.
He’s immediately encircled by hushed blackness. His heart hammers behind his ribcage, a visceral, persistent reminder of the life (if this can still be called living? Where the hell do we even go when we die again in here?!?) he’s compulsively compelled to protect.
Dean has no earthly clue how much worse it can get than this place, other than the very bowels of hell itself. And he sure don’t want another taste of that unspeakable horror nor to encourage that morbid thought any further, so the Righteous Man swallows his complaints and carries on valiantly, doing what he does best: fightin’ the good fight ‘til he can’t fight no more.
I’ll be goddamned if I don’t go down swingin’. Ain’t scared of these nasty fuckers.
The vampires’ animalistic snarls precede them as they clamber up the hill towards him. Dean’s grip tightens on the handle of his machete and he grits his teeth in anticipation of the inevitable showdown. From his hidden vantage point, he watches as they burst into view, mangy heads swiveling and hissing rabidly through hungry fangs.
Now it’s just a matter of seeing who’s most determined and bloodthirsty out of the bunch – Dean Winchester, or the trio of purgatory bloodsuckers after his sweet ass?
Oh, and it’s sweet alright, but these motherfuckers ain’t never gon’ get a taste, he thinks, exiting the cave in a smooth lunging attack motion.
The all-too familiar thin veil of maroon-tinged battle bloodlust descends, draping over his vision and countenance like a deranged security blanket.
Time seems to slow to a tenth of its usual speed, suspending him in its delayed, deadly momentum.
Dean easily sidesteps their leader’s attempt to tackle him, arcing gracefully to slice its head off with a clean sweep of his weapon and a grunt of exertion. The other two now converge upon him, shrieking with rageful vengeance, but neither get close enough to even so much as scratch his skin before their heads are also rolling to the ground with gross, liquidy squelches.
Breathing hard, Dean casually kicks aside the decapitated vampire head in his way as he heads over to wipe his machete clean on a swath of something resembling dreary, overgrown heather. Well, folks, at the conclusion of this Battle Royale, we have a winner! The score reads Winchester: 3, and Purgatory Vamps: 0. And the crowd goes wild!!!
Dean snorts in sardonic amusement at his own thought theatrics, tucking his trusty ol’ MacGuyvered machete back into its rawhide sling at his back next to the handmade bow and arrows. I mean, hey, shit – if I ain’t talkin’ to myself in this goddamn place I’d likely be screamin’ and cryin’ to myself instead, so obviously option one’s the only way to go.
His throat burns with a thirst that screams to be slaked. Creases and cracks in his fingernails and skin on his hands are stained crimson from dealing out death, so he trots down the side of the slight cliff and seeks out the nearby river.
Scanning and surveying areas surrounding him which may harbor potential threats is second-nature to him; easy as blinking and natural as thinking. Dean takes a private moment to appreciate the accuracy of his internal compass, which has never been more necessary to his survival than now.
When he reaches the river, he kneels, splashes his face with the clear, cold water and scrubs at his bloodied hands perfunctorily before cupping them and drinking down water they hold with greedy gulps until his stomach begins to ache. Stumbling to his feet, liquid sloshing about in his stomach and cursing at the way his bad knee creaks, he assesses his current situation during this brief lull in the near-constant violence.
Perversely, he ponders the point of purgatory being just like Earth, but on steroids and injected with nothing but straight-the-fuck-up violence – no masks, no disguises, no bullshit. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten; as Above, so Below.
Dean’s lost track of how long he’s been stuck here (and how long it’s been since Cas vanished), but it has to be over two months at a conservative estimate since Dick’s fatal eruption (So, hey, get this: did you know that standing too close to exploding Dick apparently lands you in purgatory??! I didn’t, but it actually makes sense in retrospect). He’s unsure of this place’s time scale relative to that of Earth’s, but he’s hopin’ and prayin’ to an absent God to escape this demonic dimension before he loses too much time from his real life.
Ever the friggin’ optimist, now are we, Dean thinks to himself acidly. As if getting outta here is anything more than a fart in a pipe dream… and as if finding Cas ain’t nothin’ beyond my wildest wishes coming true, too…
He’s unaware, but his whole face falls as if caving in on itself with worry and despair, pain etched in every wrinkle and pulling his lips down with its weight, reflected in sorrowful virescent eyes. Cas, goddammit man…
Dean’s helpless to replay that first hour in Purgatory when he lost Cas over and over and over in his head, like a broken, skipping projector, stuck in a perpetual loop and mercilessly reminding him of this epic failure until it’s engraved onto the backs of his eyelids and he sees it when he sleeps.
The leviathans had converged around them, eyes glowing red in the darkness of the trees like a serial killer’s Christmas lights. Dean was searching frantically for a weapon that could behead them, knowing all too well how useless his Colt would be against these creatures.
When he’d called out to Cas to figure out their gameplan, his best friend was gone. Seemingly vanished into thin air – flown away, leaving Dean behind with insatiable monsters on his tail. Where exactly he’d gone and why; an unsolvable mystery to this day…
Strangely enough, after a while, the blazing coals of the leviathans’ evil eyes disappeared, as if they lost interest in the aroma of Dean’s human flesh versus the temptation of something or someone else’s.
Dean had stood there all evening, awake and glued to the forest floor, switchblade in hand and jaw clenched against the fear and loss threatening to creep up on him until ink-black midnight gave way to a murky, pale dawn.
All his nonstop efforts the next several days to locate Castiel left him empty-handed and heavy-hearted, a trail of bodies in his wake and bloodstains accumulating on his clothing like accusations. Why did that sonuvabitch have to be standing right next to me? Why did I talk him into coming with us to the final Levi bossfight when he was all about being a “peace-love-and-bees” crazy kinda hippie? He offered to go with me, and look what happened. And dear God who is most certainly not above, where the hell did he go???
These and more useless, guilt-ridden, cyclical thoughts chased each other around the inescapable maze of his mind for weeks on end ‘til Dean was about ready to implode. While physical violence raged on in the outside world, enemies respawning like he’s stuck on hard mode in the most wicked, brutal RPG singleplayer videogame ever made, the internal battles were what threatened to truly break him.
Dean didn’t so much as “wake” from sleep most nights – no, that was far too gentle a term to apply to his sudden jerking and thrashing into consciousness, followed by immediate, frantic flailing for a weapon. Unfortunately or fortunately, about half these times were no nightmare-induced false alarms but rather sharply honed hunter’s instincts at play – he found himself thrust into combat within seconds of awakening.
Yeah, you could say things were not going too well for Dean (or Cas, presumably) since Dick’s inopportune implosion.
When not actively engaged in deathmatches with creatures he’d probably already killed once in the real world, Dean again found himself on the torturous hamster wheel in his head, slave to his traumatic memories, negativity and self-loathing he held within; at this rate, he’ll end up frozen, floating in this suspended state of Frankenstein animation forever.
I wonder if Sammy’s out there looking for a way to get me back home. Hell, I hope he’s even alright, he ponders half-heartedly, sighing a wistfully bitter breath before slamming the door shut on all his self-deprecation-slash-pity.
The hunter then refocuses his pragmatic side, and trudges off to take care of basic necessities for survival.
The wild turkey goes down clean and without a fight, his flint-headed wooden arrow piercing straight and true through its heart. It lies dying, twitching on the ground that’s thickly carpeted with layers of dead leaves, red and brown mottled feathers giving a slight shiver in the last of its death throes. Shit, can’t tell what kinda turkey or bird or whatever weird species of purgatory poultry this is, but it does taste just like chicken and it ain’t killed me yet, so I reckon’ that’s good enough for me. Dean yanks the arrow out from the bird’s carcass, then snatches the fowl up by its hind legs and sets back off towards the convenient cave he stumbled upon earlier.
Being an extraordinarily skilled hunter of terrifying, superhuman monsters did have its perks, as far as survival skills went. Plus, say what you want about John, but he sure did train his boys right when it came down to brass tacks and bullet shells (as he was wont to say), so Dean’s tracking skills and knowledge of the wilderness are just as on point as his marksmanship. At least all of these combined abilities give him a fighting chance, so long as he manages to keep re-slaying these vamps, leviathans and other eldritch creatures of the night before they can get the best of him.
Later, after setting up a makeshift shelter, Dean sits within the relative safety of the cave by a small fire that he started with a bowdrill, lots of kindling and love. The turkey’s plucked and gutted (feathers set aside to make more arrows with later), and it’s roasting nicely over a makeshift spit he jerry-rigged from some strategically balanced branches. Sure could use a cold beer and some good company right about now, he mopes to himself as he tears into a piping hot leg without much enthusiasm, chewing mechanically despite his stomach gurgling its approval. God only knows when that’ll happen again, if it even ever does… Somewhere over the freakin’ multidimensionally travelling rainbow, man.
Shifting, evanescent flickers of orange flames reflect off of tired verdant eyes. Dean stares into the fire’s blazing center until most of the turkey is devoured and it dies down into glowing embers littered with discarded bones. Wiping greasy hands upon the moss that creeps up the cavern’s walls, he grimaces at the filthy state of himself. Dick sure didn’t give us no notice to pack a change of clothes or nothin’ before zappin’ us here, the damn prick, Dean grumbles inwardly. He has no mirror, but from the status of his dirt-and-blood encrusted clothing, he’s positive that the rest of himself has never wanted more for a shower in his entire combined life than it does at this very second.
Little does he realize, though, how the stubborn nobility of his beauty manages to pierce through all the layers of grime and muck anyhow (Cas would see it, if he were there to do so).
Dean sleeps (or tries to) curled into himself on a rough bed of heather and wheatgrass that’s far enough from the remnants of the fire to not catch flame, but close enough to its waning warmth to lend him the barest hint of comfort throughout the cold, empty night. He’s fitful and restless, tossing and turning within dreams of distorted desire and torturous desperation flooded with the blinding blue-white light of Grace that keeps slipping through his fingers like smoke.
⊰⋯ ҉ ⚸⛧𓆩♡𓆪⛧⚸ ҉ ⋯⊱