“Something made this,” says Dean as they descend, “This was made by something.” Even in the pitch dark, he can feel that the stairs beneath his feet are too level and too regular to be natural slabs of rock. And that’s before he reaches out to steady himself against the wall and finds a railing waiting for him there.
Castiel just keeps walking, step by step, his sword drawn and ready. “Likely,” he quietly agrees.
“And what happens when we run into whatever lives here?” Dean whispers.
This time Castiel pauses and looks over his shoulder at Dean. “Do you wish to return to the woods?” he asks.
Dean shudders, remembering. “No,” is all he says.
They keep walking.
Dean can tell when they are almost at the bottom by the way the sound of their footsteps echoes more dully against the approaching floor. He almost mentions it to Cas, but then they are both stopped in their tracks by a sudden bloom of light from up ahead.
Dean grabs out blindly, trying to find Castiel’s shoulder even as he covers his eyes against the painful brightness, his instincts telling him to run back the way they they’ve come. But Castiel is already stepping forward. His eyes are wide open, his pupils drawn so tight that his irises appear as solid circles of blue. As he walks into the light, his sword rotates behind his arm and disappears.
Because Dean doesn’t have much of an alternative, he warily follows Castiel.
Around the corner, the source of the light is revealed. With his eyes still accustomed to the dark, Dean can barely look at it directly, but he can make out a sort of human shape. It is naked, and every inch of taut flesh stretched over skinny limbs glows from within in the same color as Castiel’s eyes. Only the head and face are obscured by a mountain of tangled red hair. On the cave wall behind it, the illuminated rocks jut in the shape of outstretched wings. It sits cross-legged, its hands on its knees, its head bowed, waiting.
Purgatory warps all who enter it. Those that have spent any length of time here are stripped down to their basest forms or transfigured almost beyond recognition. Dean has gotten so that he can tell what some things used to be - a vampire, a shtriga, an okami - twisted though they might be. But he has never seen anything like what now sits before him.
“Cas?” he whispers, questioning.
Castiel just stands and stares.
Slowly, almost glacially, the figure stands. The wing-shapes that Dean had thought were part of the wall move with it, scraping heavily as they drag on the ground. And now he can see that even its skin is broken into shining facets, and its joints slide like stony hinges. Its hair is the only part of it that looks soft, that looks like it might once have been something like a human.
And then it looks up, its hair parts, and Dean sees its face.
Dean is expecting a monster. He is not prepared for the grace and beauty hidden beneath those fiery curls. Though his eyes have long since adjusted to the light, Dean can’t help but look away.
Purgatory turns most of it visitors into monsters. It has turned this one into a goddess.
And on second glance, there is something in its face that is unsettlingly familiar.
It gazes at the two of them and, slowly, like a cliff face shifting, it smiles.
“Hello, little brother,” says Anna, “Hey, Dean.”
(Source: icebergsandglaciers)
