Chapter Text
If there was one thing Dean did with confidence, it was stupid things.
Of course, he wasn’t the one who considered them stupid –most of the time. But that didn’t take away that some of those things, while they were indeed stupid, were also necessary. Were a necessary evil, in a sense. And if someone had to do them, Dean was glad it was him instead of anyone else.
The concerning stupid things differed each time, sometimes risking more than other times, but always coming back to that same word. Stupid.
That’s the exact word Sam was using now, too, when rattling off all the reasons why Dean should not be doing this, but Dean had tuned out halfway reason one. Though he’d vaguely kept count and was certain Sam was around number ten right then, a little more elaborate than Dean would have liked with each too, but his mind had more important things to think of while ignoring his brother.
Because, really, Sam just didn’t understand. Sam couldn’t understand. Couldn’t understand why Dean needed to do this. Why this had to be done.
Someone had to get Cas back from the Empty, and Dean would be damned if it wouldn’t be him. If it wouldn’t be now.
“Honestly,” Sam’s sudden change of tone broke through, having Dean’s eyes snap back up and meet his brother’s, “who are you to think you can do something no one’s ever done before. This is the Empty, Dean. Not Hell, not Heaven, not even Purgatory.”
“As if we haven’t done shit no one’s ever done before, Sam.” Dean retorted, trying not to let the anger rise in him at his brother’s misgivings. At his brother’s doubts. Doubting Dean. “Do you want me to recount some? Give you examples? I could probably go all day if I would.”
The way Sam’s shoulders sagged made it clear he was giving up on his already futile attempt of getting Dean to reconsider. It was something Dean had told him to do even before he’d started rattling off his reasons not to, but did the two of them ever listen to each other? Eh.
“You’re really set on this.”
There wasn’t really a question in the words, Dean didn’t think Sam had intended it as one at all either, and even if it had been, Dean would have responded exactly the same. “Dead set.”
“Using the word ‘dead’ is not instilling confidence, Dean.”
Dean shrugged, letting the corners of his mouth tug up a little. He had to find some humor in this situation, or he’d be finding himself going into this with the entirely wrong mindset. And this was the one thing he couldn’t let go sideways.
“Alright. I’ll- I’ll summon Rowena, figure out the exact ingredients from her, she should know. Then we’ll do the spell when the moon’s right.”
“What’s the moon gotta do with this?” Dean frowned, not remembering that to be part of the spell they’d found, after tirelessly leaving through every single available bit of information both in the bunker and in any library they had found that had any.
“This is why we leave the spells to me.”
“Shut up.”
──────•✦•──────
The moon had to be as eclipsed as it could be if the actual lunar eclipse was out of question –which it was, considering it would take at least several months until that would happen again and Dean wasn’t waiting. Not even when Sam warned him it might not work with what he called a ‘penumbral’ lunar eclipse, and that they might not get the ingredients together again before the total lunar eclipse in a few months. But Dean wouldn’t hear it. If it could work now, he wasn’t waiting a few months. If there was any chance at all.
They had everything set up in the field nearby the bunker, the moon already high above them and slowly reaching the partial lunar eclipse they’d use to fuel the spell further. A large camping table had been dragged out along with all the ingredients and a bowl big enough to mix them in, set up with one brother on each side.
Sam was using a finger to trace words on a piece of parchment, putting things in the bowl after double checking he had the right thing and the right amount. Dean was shifting from foot to foot nervously, eyes following every move, every ingredient, and glancing at the moon once every few moves on Sam’s side, his fingers tapping his thighs to keep them from tugging on his hair –which had grown long enough for him to actually fidget with. It hadn’t been this long in, well, he couldn’t even really remember. Since he’d been a kid, probably, really. And-
“Stop fidgeting.”
“Can’t.” Dean leaned forward to grip the side of the table tightly, in an effort to keep still either way. But they were getting close, they were about to cast a spell that would get him into the Empty, that would get him a step closer to finding Cas.
All Sam did was sigh, soft and barely there, but audible enough for Dean to scowl at him. Sam kept his focus on the spell regardless, putting crumbles of something Dean wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was over the heap of things in the bowl. Then he dusted off his hands and straightened up, having Dean straighten up too.
“Listen carefully,” Sam started, looking at Dean intensely. “When the spell is done, you’ll be literally dropped into the Empty. We only know it’s a vast darkness, from what Cas has said, so it’ll be easy to get lost in. There will be a light to guide you, but there’s no saying how strong it will be. Do not lose it. Do not go off track. Whatever happens, whatever you hear, don’t lose sight of the light. Don’t, not for a second, take your eyes off it. Please.”
Dean took a deep breath, allowing his hands to curl into fists for a moment. Then he nodded, taking a few steps back to the flatter bit of grass they’d picked out before, where lines were already carved into the earth to anchor the opening the spell would create. He glanced down briefly, just a second, to make sure he was right in the middle of the lines, before he looked back up at Sam. “Do it.”
“Stay with the light.”
“I will.”
“And bring Cas back, but yourself first and foremost.”
“We’ll see you soon, Sammy.”
Holding his brother’s gaze for just a little longer, Sam eventually looked down at a different piece of paper he’d had lying on the table and picked it up. He closed his eyes briefly, seemed to take a deep breath much like Dean had earlier, before he was starting up words that formed the spell.
At first, it looked like nothing happened.
Then a spark, and another, and a third, before the ingredients in the bowl got engulfed in a blue fire, edged with bits of a lighter orange-red. The blue gradually grew darker, until the shade no longer resembled what Dean had thought of as Cas’ eyes. It was like watching them be enclosed in the Empty again –in the darkness of it, and it hurt all over again. But there was a pinch of brightness too, for this was what would bring them back together. This was what would bring him to Cas, to get him back. To make all as it should be.
Sam kept speaking, his eyes locked on the paper, voice almost sounding booming across the empty plain.
The moment Sam spoke the last word on the paper and went to lower it, went to move his eyes up as if to look at Dean, a hole opened up in the ground and Dean felt himself falling.
Falling, and falling, and falling.
Falling into nothing but darkness.
Nothing but empty.
──────•✦•──────
The Empty was exactly how Dean had imagined it; a vast nothingness.
Everywhere he looked, no matter how he turned, there was only darkness. There was only empty space.
Still, there was a ground beneath his feet –or something solid, something to stand on. Something that kept him standing and allowed him to move, to take steps and walk about. He didn’t walk far though, just a step aside to try it out, too uncertain of where to go to move too much.
The worst part was that he’d have to get back here too, to probably exactly the spot he’d started in. Where he’d arrived. But how? He hoped the same guiding light (what a cliché though, jesus Sammy) would help them out there.
Just as Dean found himself thinking of said guiding light, something started shimmering below the floor he was standing on. It was as if the light was below layers of something, below water maybe, or multiple windows, maybe in a different universe all together –like how those weird other universe Sam and Dean had been sort of inside the bunker wall that one time.
The light got brighter, as if it was breaking through the layers, until it phased itself through what Dean kept calling the floor for simplicity.
It was similar to how Dean remembered the fairy had been, before he’d locked it in a microwave and had exploded it (oops?). Though this light was steady, crackling slightly instead of buzzing, instead of tinkling like little bells, and didn’t move. Not at first.
Not until Dean found himself to say: “Alright, let’s do this.”
The light slowly moved then, going ahead of Dean.
Dean took a step, swallowing thickly when hearing a faint echo of his foot hitting the floor. And with each step he took, the echoes kept coming. With each step he took, the light picked up its pace. Until the falling of his feet sounded like drumming, fast paced and chilling.
Dean was running. Running to keep up with the light. Running to what he hoped would be Cas. Running to get back what he’d lost.
“Why do people keep. making. noise.”
The light shattered, fizzled out as if it was fireworks, shimmers dropping down and sucked up in the darkness of the floor below –of the emptiness- as Dean skidded to a stop. His eyes immediately found the monster that haunted the vast nothingness, looking like a black goop of... goopiness.
“You’re...” Dean started, grimacing when the goop shifted into a somewhat human shape, vaguely shaping and reshaping. “Who are you, exactly?”
The Empty monster paused its reshaping for a moment, seeming to consider Dean, seeming to recognise him. Then it moved closer, like one big pile of goop rolling, the pinpricks of light possibly being its eyes trailing over Dean. It paused right in front of Dean, and where Dean had expected to smell something like... like... decay, like death, something awful, he was almost pleasantly surprised there was just nothing.
“You can call me Meg, if you’d prefer,” the Empty monster told him finally, as it shifted its shape into one Dean had grown familiar with over the years, the one of Meg –after she’d possessed Sam and found herself the new vessel, the one that had stuck around. “I know your buddy Castiel does.”
The mention of Cas, of the monster having interacted with him, had Dean tense. His jaw clenched, eyes laser-focused on the monster. “Where is he?”
The monster sighed, averted its eyes and letting them trail the never-ending darkness around them. “You hurt my eyes.”
Dean huffed, about to respond when the monster looked back at him, eyes narrowed, and spoke before him: “It’s too bright. Your love is too bright. Get it out of here.”
That had Dean baffled, head moving back a little as he blinked, as if slapped. “What?”
“I know your hearing is fine.” The Empty monster snapped, Meg’s face shifting into something of distaste. Then it tilted its head up, as if snootily turning up its nose, eyes once again narrowed. “I want you out. Gone.”
“Not without Cas.” Dean answered, standing his ground, his hands curling into fists. He had come here for a reason and he wouldn’t go down without a fight –wouldn’t leave without a fight. Wouldn’t leave without Cas.
The Empty monster rolled Meg’s eyes at that, slow and obvious, before settling them back on Dean. “What is it with you two. He wakes me up first, demands to be let out, then along come you. Is it not clear? The universe had not meant for you two to be together.”
“If you hadn’t forced that deal-”
Meg’s laugh interrupted Dean’s words, a loud ha! that nearly had Dean take a step back. “I forced nothing. I offered, he took. The life of that child was more to him than his own. I can, do and will not take responsibility for his choices. For anyone’s.”
“Fine.” Dean snapped. “But I’m not leaving without him. I don’t care what deal you two made.”
The Empty monster hummed, quietly and contemplative, tilting its head just a little at Dean. Then brought a hand to its elbow while moving the other hand up so a finger could tap Meg’s lips, once, twice. “And if he’s not here?”
“Wherever he is, is where I’ll go.” Dean answered, within a heartbeat. “I’ll get him from Hell if I must. From Purgatory, from Heaven. Wherever.”
Again the Empty monster considered him, his answer, his brightness by the looks.
“So,” it started then, dropping its hands to cross both arms over one another. “You have come to bargain for the angel’s freedom.”
“Yes.”
“By yourself.”
“My brother is waiting to pull me back, on Earth.”
The Empty monster nodded, slow and unbothered. “A bargain, but with no life to offer. Hardly seems like a deal I could be interested in. A human life tethered to my realm could prove interesting, though I have little doubt I would tire of playing quick. As I said, you shine too bright. Should I release the angel and keep you... no. No, I’d rather kick you back out. Yes, that sounds fair.”
“I could ask Jack- ask the new God for help to get you back to sleep.” Dean said then, feeling panic rise at the thought of how eager the monster seemed to kick him out of the Empty. To kick him right back to Earth, without what he’d come for. So he offered the one thing he knew for certain the Empty monster had been after –had been the cause for it to kick Cas out the first time. “That’s what you wanted, right? To sleep.”
“Forever, ideally.” The monster sighed out, regarding the nothingness around the two of them. It seemed to contemplate the possibilities once again, eventually settling its eyes back on Dean. “But I refuse to make it easy.”
The words nearly had Dean huff, because when had anything ever been made easy for him? But he kept himself from it. He didn’t want to set the monster off, to have it make things even more difficult than it was already thinking to. So he took a deep breath, straightened his back, and met the monster’s eyes straight on. “Make your offer.”
The Empty monster didn’t move, just held his gaze, letting the seconds ticking by feel like hours, until finally it spoke:
“Have you ever heard of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice?”
Dean felt a shiver of cold dread run up his spine at that question, not needing to hear the terms of the deal the Empty wanted to strike to know exactly how this was going to go. Still, he managed a bit of snark: “Who hasn’t?”
“If you can lead him out of the Empty without looking back, he’s yours to keep.” The Empty monster finally moved, just the edges of Meg’s mouth curling up as it smiled maliciously. “Look back once, and he’s gone forever.”