Work Text:
“Never is an awfully long time.” –J.M Barrie
By the time the three vamps are lying gutted on the ground, the portal has already taken Sam Winchester, swallowed him up in a flash of blue light. Back home, back to a forest in Maine.
Back to Dean.
And Benny’s on the run again, in the endless circle of hunting that’s Purgatory.
It's ironic, really: all that time spent trying to escape this place and now he's back by his own choice.
“It's war, that's what it is,” Dean said to him once. “A war that never ends and nobody wins. They just keep going.” He'd grinned, without humour. “Story of my life.”
Benny had wondered, then, what kind of life had a story like this place
He glances back toward the bodies of the vamps, alert for the sound of others drawn to the kill. The angel’s didactic voice rises to the surface of his memory.
It does present a curious curl in the metaphysics doesn ’ t it? If you murder a monster in monster heaven, where does it go?
Benny’s wondered about that too. Not enough to try finding out himself, though. What if there is someplace else after this and it turns out to be worse?
Anyway, things are simpler in Purgatory. There’s no endless pulse of humanity calling out to him in painful, complicated ways. No hunger. Only trees and teeth and sharp, deadly souls.
He hears a faint crack from somewhere in the bushes and glances around, warily. He won't last long out here alone. There'll be more who remember and have scores to settle. He learned the hard way the first time around that it’s better to travel in a group.
Alliances in this place are shifting, some monsters preferring to stick with their own kind; others to hunt alone. Most vamps tend to appreciate the value of a solid fighter at their back though. He oughta find a nest, if any will have him, or at least someone to guard his back against the eyes creeping up behind in the dark.
Instead he searches out places to hide, snatches sleep in restless patches. The landscape is familiar; he’s been this way before. Last time around, he and Dean took it in turns to sleep. He always thought it was kinda funny that, even after decades in Purgatory, he’d still slept heavier than the human.
There's no need to keep moving now. No way out, no angel to find. But somehow it's easier than staying in one place.
***
Andrea must be here somewhere.
He imagines finding her, as though death could erase everything that happened. As if she'd somehow once more be the girl with fire in her eyes and unlimited grace in her smile, who made him see humanity as something precious, instead of a thing to be casually taken. He remembers the look in her eyes as this knife plunged through that perfect body and sliced off her head.
“You're not her” he'd told the thing that used to be Andrea. Sometimes he even believes it.
There's no wind, but the leaves in the bushes seem to rustle anyhow, soft and disconcerting. There's a cave round here somewhere. Him and Dean rested up in it, a while back.
Memories curl around him like smoke, warm and deadly.
When he first found his human they’d gone days without rest. He was almost afraid to take his eyes off his ticket out, in case it vanished or got itself sliced up, or eaten, or any one of the million-and-one things just waiting to happen to a human down here.
Benny'd hated Purgatory, then. He'd dreamed of the ocean, the smell of summer breezes, the feel of a ship under his hands. The touch of Andrea’s soft skin against his own; kindness and the luxury of being gentle.
And revenge, of course. Everything in Purgatory dreams of revenge.
“I'm gonna get Cas and get the hell outta here. You wanna hop along for the trip, fine.” Dean had said, more than once. Everything he did had that single-minded purpose behind it: find his angel and get out. It was in the way he moved, talked, hunted.
Benny knew how to kill. He'd been doing it for a long, long time. He knew how to survive in Purgatory, how to get the information he needed. He was good at it.
He was nowhere near as good as Dean.
***
The shifter’s been tracking him for a while now. That explains the rustling in the bushes earlier: shifters can alter their size. He lets it think it’s in with a chance, waiting for it to run at him, before turning in a single swift movement to take off its head.
He watches the light fading from it's eyes. Thinks of Dean torturing monsters to find his goddamn angel: the intensity of it, the way he reveled in it. Making them scream for their lives, knowing there was no hope and hoping anyway.
Dean killed like he was made for it.
Benny cleans the knife on the grass, wipes it dry on his jacket. The woods are quiet around him, but that don’t mean nothing. There’s all manner of monsters out here and the one thing they got in common is the instinct to hunt. For most of them, it’s all there is. All that matters.
***
“What you got Up There, anyhow?” Benny had asked, sometime in the first month, jerking his head skywards over the body of the rugaru lying messy on the ground, up to where he figured Earth might be. “What you goin’ home to?”
Dean had glanced away, cleared his throat before answering. “I got a brother. Sammy. We been hunting together pretty much all our lives. I gotta get back, you know.” He shook his head. “He must be going out of his mind.” He looked up. “He needs me. And Cas. He don't belong down here. I gotta get him home, man.”
There had been a different kind of intensity in him then. Or maybe it was the same, only seen from the other side. In Purgatory, life was so long ago you remembered only the shadows it carved out inside you. He remembered the strangeness of it, to have it breathing so close once more.
“Well then,” Benny had said, after a beat. “What're we waiting for?”
“What about you?” Dean had asked, as they trudged through the forest. “You miss out on chomping down on some juicy human-burger that much?”
“Naw. I told you, I don't do that no more.” Benny had said, though he knew Dean wouldn’t believe him. He’d paused. “I got me some unfinished business up there.”
Then the second rugaru had attacked, and there was no more time for talking.
***
The first time Dean saved his life, it came as kind of a surprise.
“Thanks, brother” he'd said, accepting the bloody hand lifting him out of the dirt.
Dean had shrugged . “We got a deal don't we? And I ain't your brother.”
It bothers a little him that he can't remember exactly when Dean stopped saying that.
***
He walks on, taking the easiest course with no particular attention to route or direction. He kills the things that hunt him.
It felt pure, Dean had said. It strikes him now though that Dean’s purity had been one of purpose.
Benny has no purpose in Purgatory.
“Reminds me of something, this place,” Dean had said once. It had been his turn to sleep, and his voice was blurry with tiredness. “Some book Sammy was reading, way back.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It was this island, right, and everything on it goes in circles.” He yawned, and Benny could hear in his sleep-softened words an echo of the boy he must once have been. “There’s kids on it, and they’re hunting. Hunting the beasts and the monsters. But the beasts, they’re hunting out the Indians, to eat ‘em, and the Indians are hunting the kids, to scalp ‘em. And every night, they go round like that. Round and round the island. That’s what it’s like here.”
“Jesus,” Benny had said drily. “Some books you kids got now.” But the story had a nugget of familiarity to it, and after a while of rummaging around behind his eyeballs, it slotted into place.
The jarring surprise of it had almost made him laugh. “Wait a minute. Peter Pan? You saying Purgatory’s your Neverland, brother?”
He waited for the irritated response, but Dean was already asleep, curled up like a kid out camping, his breathing slow and restful.
That had been an exception. Mostly, when it was Dean's turn to sleep, he didn't look anything near what Benny would call restful. More like he was trapped somewhere even worse’n here and trying to claw his way out with a bent fork.
“What you dream about?” Benny’d asked him once, when he was feeling dizzy from lack of blood and sleep.
“Hell” Dean replied shortly.
Well shit, Benny had thought. What d’you say to that?
“You go there much?” he’d asked, trying for lightness. “I always heard Florida was a better choice for vacations.”
Dean had stared into the fire, something lost and haunted in his eyes looking out behind the jade hardness that usually resided there. “Once was enough.”
“Jeez” Benny said, after a pause. “You get around some, brother.”
Dean kept his eyes on the flames. “You got no idea.”
* * *
He finds the cave they’d sheltered in after the rugaru fight. This time around it’s already occupied by a werewolf who don't take too kindly to a vampire in her territory. She's old and strong, but Benny's stronger. He lunges in with Dean's knife, jerks it out quick and takes off her head. She got in a few good swipes, but vampires heal fast. Not like humans.
It was always a bitchkitty of a time when Dean got hurt. He'd sit there, teeth gritted while Benny did his best to patch him up. One time they had to hole up for a fortnight, waiting for him to heal. On the twelfth day a wendigo had come storming into camp and Benny had thought for sure he was about to find out just what did happen when you passed away in Purgatory. The wendigo had him up against a tree when it roared up in a sheet of flame, dropping Benny to the ground where Dean was standing, staggering slightly with a flaming branch in one hand and that newfangled firelighter he carried in the other.
“Why didn't you yell for me?” Dean'd shouted.
“Cause you're a pain in the ass when you first wake up,” Benny had smirked through the pain. “'Sides, it wasn't like it was a silent affair. I figured you'd get here eventually. No point disturbing your rest for a little thing like that -” He’d gestured over at the giant flailing figure of the wendigo, crashing away into the forest in its death throes.
Dean’d been too pissed to smile at the joke then, and for the rest of the time in that cave he’d watched Benny with different kind of wariness.
With vamps it had been easy to keep a distance. Everything was blood and hunting, and Benny had drifted in and out of different nests, following the trail of information. Searching for a way out.
But with just two of them, it had been different. With only each other’s company through the endless twilight, the boundaries of silence began to thin and fray. Mostly they'd talked about neutral things. Stuff they’d do when they got out. Small childhood anecdotes. Nothing dangerous. Nothing raw, although sometimes Benny thought there was nothing left of Dean that hadn’t been scraped and broken to jagged edges.
Benny had told him about growing up in Louisiana, lifetimes ago. His brothers and sisters when they were small. Anna-Maria, the girl he'd married who died of typhus fever three years later, leaving him with two kids barely toddling.
Those few weeks, working in the bar with his great-granddaughter had been like stepping back into a world he'd thought long dead. Every time she smiled he remembered the way his own Lizzie looked when she’d used to run to him with things she'd found in the woods, bursting with hushed excitement over a bird's nest or a jar of fireflies. And her laugh - that was Henri's, that same funny snorting chuckle he'd had before his voice broke.
He hopes Elizabeth's doing okay, that he didn't smash up her life too bad.
***
Last time around he’d built a fire in the mouth of this cave.
“Ain’t this gonna get us killed?” Dean had asked.
“We already got your humanity beamin' out like a beacon. There’s all kinds of monsters use fire. Somehow I don't think a little smoke's gonna make too much difference. Less'n you got another way to dry out after dragging us both into that river?”
“It was a stream” Dean had muttered. “Not a river.” Then: “Have it your way then, asshole. Just don't blame me when the other monsters show up to have a little taste of us along with their marshmallows.” A pause. “Oh man, marshmallows. I miss marshmallows. And burgers. And pie. First thing I'm gonna do when I get back is take a hot shower and then go to the nearest place and order as many kinds of pie as I can eat. And watch bad TV with Sam.”
Benny should stop thinking about Dean. He’s done them both a favour coming back here. Chief’s got bigger things to worry about than him; always has.
This time around, he doesn't bother with the fire. It's not like he needs the heat, after all, and he's got the feeling there's something else out there, watching in the greyness. Best not to draw unecessary attention.
But it is cold, without the fire or the warmth of blood burning inside him. He doesn’t want to think of Elizabeth, her horrified face staring at him, so like the blurred, beloved faces of memory. Or Andrea, beautiful and dead, in the house of his Maker.
My poor Benjamin, a voice says mockingly in the back of his head.
Benny’s always needed somebody; he knows that about himself. Needs someone to follow, to keep everything straight, keep all his ducks in a line.
I ’ m gonna be waitin ’ there for you, when you get topside.
Even when Dean was here, green eyes and cheekbones and bloody determination, it had always been about his brother and his angel. Dean Winchester would use himself up trying to keep the ones he cared about safe. Benny’d known that too.
It’s dark in the cave, enough that it almost feels like night.
In the dark. In the dark, he can remember.
The press of Dean’s hands, hot on his shoulders. The drum of a heartbeat, thudding through him, so that he can almost pretend it’s his own. Dean’s voice, breathless against his ear, the faintest edge of a question:
“You want this?”
His own voice, rough and scraping in his throat. “Hell yeah.” There had been blood on Dean’s face, from the last kill, and the rock face behind them had dug uncomfortably into his back, but there had been a moment of consideration in those wide eyes that made him tilt his hips, grinning crookedly. “Come on chief. This ain’t my first rodeo.”
Dean’d flushed, with embarrassment or desire, and pushed him harder into the rock, hands running up under Benny’s shirt.
They were both covered in blood and dirt, and there were things all around that could ambush them at any moment. It was rough and hot and too-fast, and the most alive Benny had felt for such a long time.
They never talked about it. Dean spoke carefully, in guarded moments, and Benny’d understood what he wasn’t saying: what happens in Purgatory, stays in Purgatory. Dean was human, after all, and humans had needs. A year was a long time.
It had gone on like for that for a while. Months, Benny supposed. Months of running and fighting and fucking in dark corners.
“Don’t it bother you?” He’d asked once, afterwards, breaking the unspoken rule. “Me bein’ dead. Undead.” He’d flashed his fangs, and Dean had grimaced, then shrugged.
“I dunno. Some, I guess. Does it matter?” He’d taken his knife out, wiped it down on his trousers. “We got each other’s backs don’t we?”
Benny had smiled, vampire grin shifting into a human one. “Guess we do, chief. Guess we do.”
***
Most of what he knows about Dean’s history is a tapestry of names.
Sammy is home, warmth, the centre of the universe. Sam Winchester is the reason Benny’s back here, and ain’t that just no surprise at all.
Kevin and Charlie are family too, the family that’s alive. There are other names too, Benny knows, a litany of names that Dean thought but would not say and Benny does not know. Family that was lost.
Lisa is a lover, he guesses. Not dead, but not Dean’s anymore, either. Another kind of lost.
Alastair is nightmares and madness and broken edges, something all bound up in knots, that could only be released at the point of a knife.
And Cas, the angel they had been hunting for… Cas was complicated.
The angel in a trenchcoat. He’d tried to imagine what Castiel would look like, thought of wings and halos and white lights.
Dean’s angel wasn’t anything like he’d imagined. He was small and covered in dirt, maybe the most awkward person inside their own body that Benny’d ever seen.
They’d found him in the clearing, just like the mutt had said, and Dean'd looked, for the first time Benny had ever seen, uncomplicatedly happy. Dean would have excused Cas without question, unconditionally, Benny saw, like a kid with a shitty parent.
He’d felt loyal, and meanly pleased to be the one standing behind him, saying: “Way I hear it, you two hit monsterland and Hotwings here took off. I figure he owes you some backstory”
There’d been a moment, when they were talking, where Dean’s habitual shield slipped back down and he’d looked at the angel with the same wary hostility he did the rest of the world, mixed up with anger and disillusionment.
“I prayed to you Cas! Every night!”
And Benny’d felt righteous and vindicated, right up until the angel said: “I’ve been trying to keep one step ahead of them, to – to keep them away from you! That’s why I ran.”
Well, shit.
Course, Dean wasn’t gonna leave after that, was he? No matter what Benny said.
“I need you.” Dean had said, green eyes steady on Cas’s face. “I’m not leaving here without you.”
***
Travelling with the angel had been like travelling with the world’s most pedantic maiden aunt. Him and Dean clearly had more history than a world encyclopedia. On the outside, Castiel was just a guy with some issues and in need of a shave. But when he looked at Benny with those bright, disconcerting blue eyes - that was something else. Like the Old Man, but worse. He got the feeling – and hell it was probably true – that the angel could see all the way down into the core of him. And that when Cas looked at him, all he saw was nothing. Nothing of any significance whatsoever.
It had taken him a while to figure out that Castiel was jealous, and wasn’t that just the funniest thing this side of Earth. The angel who they’d just spent months tramping through woods after, who was drawing monsters to them like a magnet, was jealous of the guy who’d just trailed after Dean, a sidekick in the hunt for his goddamned angel.
It had made him want to laugh sometimes, the furious, helpless way Cas glared at him, when Castiel was more to Dean than Benny would ever be.
Cas pulled me outta Hell. Still got the mark.
Cas and Dean, they were intense. Complicated. Entangled.
The only thing that Benny could be and Cas could not, was easy.
And so they’d hunted out the portal, tired and dirty and bickering and killing, with Dean, the unlikely peacemaker in the middle, determinedly dragging them through Purgatory.
It was never gonna work. Even Benny had seen that. But Dean couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and the force of his denial carried them with it like a river in Egypt.
He’d made them, for a while, into a weird little family.
***
Now, Benny can practically feel the forest breathing outside the shelter of the little cave. If Cas was here, he’d frown in that dumb, habitual way of his, using weird-ass seraph powers to sense whatever’s lurking out there, so they could kill it or run.
Dammit. Who’d have thought he'd ever miss the world’s most annoying angel?
He thinks of the first time he saved Cas's life, the wide-eyed surprise in those ageless eyes, the clasp of Dean's hand warm on his shoulder afterwards.
***
Their last snatched stop in Purgatory had been in the giant, hollowed out cavern of a dead tree. From the bones on the floor, monsters had clearly used it before, but it smelled empty, like musty leaves and old death.
They'd been bone-tired, sore and wounded, pushing themselves for days before they weariness got to them. Cas was standing guard, patrolling the borders. Apparently seraphs didn't need sleep. That's what the angel had said, anyway, though he’d looked as done-in as Benny felt.
“Come on, Cas. You need to rest” Dean had said, his tone half-exasperated, half-pleading.
“I'm fine,” the angel had grated. “Someone needs to patrol the area, in case we are attacked.” He'd looked only at Dean as spoke, ignoring Benny as usual.
Dean had looked over for support, and Benny’d shrugged. Far as he was concerned, the angel's determination to punish himself was his own affair. If it meant Benny could get some shut-eye without becoming somebody's dinner, that was all to the good.
They'd curled up in the semi-darkness, close enough that he could feel the warm curve of Dean's back against his own, guarding it, ready for the next attack. Too exhausted for anything else; even if it hadn’t been for Cas’s sentinel presence outside. He'd been thinking of what it would be like to see the sun again, to walk in the moonlight. To be out, amongst humanity once again.
He'd fallen asleep like that, lulled by the rhythm of Dean's breathing.
***
He wakes with a start, alone on the cold stone floor of the cave. He blinks and tenses, keeping his arm steady as he reaches silently for the knife.
Something is hunting him.
The dry scrape of a footfall would not be audible to human ears, but it's all the warning Benny needs. He waits for the monster to close in, tightening his fingers around the knife. Then, in one movement, he lunges.
The attacker is smaller and slighter than he'd anticipated. She dodges the knife, aims a kick at his knee. It connects, but he grazes her on the way down and she hisses and pulls back for the couple of seconds he needs to recover.
They circle each other, his stance wide and wary, her in a low crouch. Her knife is stone, with a bone haft, sharp and deadly. A kid, he realizes, with something like surprise. Thin limbs and dirty blonde hair falling around a childishly round face.
“Where is he?” she demands, harshly. “Where's Dean Winchester? I know you travel with him, vampire! I know the Winchesters are back!”
He keeps his eyes on her knife. “Old news, kid. Sam Winchester was here. all right, but he skipped town days ago.”
Her eyes narrow, flashing red, the skin around them wrinkling monstrously. “Why should I believe you? Where one Winchester is, the other follows. Everyone knows that.” She makes a swipe for him, and he dodges, barely.
“Cause if Dean Winchester was here, you'd be dead!” he snaps at her.
She draws herself up suddenly looking oddly smug, a little girl with a secret. “No I wouldn't. He won't kill me. He can't.”
Benny looks her up and down. “Oh yeah. And what makes you so special?”
“I'm his daughter,” she says, and there’s a flash of something there -pride or defiance, it’s hard to tell- her face switching back to human once more.
He stares. She's lying. Got to be. This girl must be, what, fourteen? Sixteen? Dean would've had to be a kid himself.
But there's something about the lines of her face, the twist of vulnerability around her lips that's belied by the hard angle of her body – yeah, that's like Dean alright. He wonders just how many secrets Dean Winchester carries, hidden away behind those hard green edges.
“Well, damn,” he mutters. Then, in a louder voice: “Put the knife down. You're either gonna try and kill me or you ain't, and I figure you ain't.”
Her face twists, head tilting. “Oh yeah?”
He looks at her, considering. “Yeah. For one, you'll get yourself killed, and for two, if you're looking for Dean, then I'm your only lead.”
She glares at him. “I could take you. Besides, how do I know you won't kill me, if I do?”
“Cause Dean's my friend. I ain't gonna kill his kid, if you are his. Now, you gonna put down the knife and tell me your name, or are we gonna make like every other idiot here and try our best to get killed again?”
She puts her head on one side, and the tip of the knife lowers, fractionally. “Emma.”
He nods, making a show of putting down his own knife- in easy reach still, he ain't that dumb.
“Benny.” He sits down on a jutting shelf of rock, making himself comfortable, “Now what d'you want with Dean. Cause I figure, by the look of you, that it ain't just a family reunion. What the hell even are you?”
“I'm an Amazon” she tells him, with an edge of quiet pride. She frowns again. “Or I was. Until Sam Winchester shot me.”
Benny frowns. “But you ain't looking to kill him?”
“Oh, I am.” Her eyes turn suddenly, briefly monstrous once more. “But Dean's my father. So I have to kill him first.”
Benny stares at her quizzically, until a growl from the trees takes both their attention. “Friend of yours?”
Emma shakes her head, pale, her grip tightening around the knife. Benny just has time to get into a fighting crouch, his own weapon ready, when the monsters are on them.
There's two of 'em, and Benny hasn't a clue what they are- some unholy mix of dog, monkey and human, with long, silver cat-claws.
Emma's a pretty good fighter. She's holding her own against the second one, ducking and dodging, getting quick stabs in, as Benny jabs his knife into the side of the first. It lets out a howl as he uses the knife hilt to pull it in towards him, which becomes a gurgle as he rips out it's throat. He turns to watch her slit the other's open, ear to ear, her childish face a monstrous mask again.
That’s when the other two he hadn’t spotted jump him from behind. They’ve got his arms so the ground hits him face-first, spikes of pain shooting up his forehead as his nose is mashed into the dirt. He struggles, trying to roll onto his back and yells as teeth bite into his neck. He bucks, trying to get an arm free but these bastards are strong. The teeth retract, the creature pulling back to go for the jugular. He writhes, straining his muscles, pulling his neck away. He tries for a roll, a throw, anything, but he’s still face-down in the mud. It’s not working and the teeth are coming down-
The creature yowls and a spray of hot blood covers his shoulders. Emma. He'd almost forgotten her, he realises. He'd been thinking of her more as a distraction than an ally. She’s taken its head off from behind. There’s a release of weight. He doesn’t need to breathe, but the air that comes rushing into his lungs is a relief nonetheless. It's been so long; he's forgotten what it's like to have someone to count on in a fight.
Both creatures are off him. He springs up, hand curled tight about his knife, shoulders aching from being wrenched back, in time to see the remaining monster leap for Emma’s throat.
She dodges, but claws glance off her side, sending her weapon spinning to the dirt. The creature shrieks, bone-chilling. It’s got nothing to lose. It dives for Emma again, knocking into her this time, pinning her to the ground. She struggles beneath it, reaching desperately for her knife. The creature throws its head back, ready to strike and Benny moves, faster than a human could. He slams into it, knocking it sideways as he stabs his knife into its back. Emma rolls, grabbing her weapon. The creature’s yowl is cut off as Benny takes off its head.
She stares up at him, her face a red-eyed snarl. Then it shifts, and she’s looking up at him with round, dark eyes.
“What?” he says, feeling his fangs retract back as his lips curl up in a crooked smile. “No thanks for saving your hide?”
She scowls at him, before a sound from the shadows takes both of their attention.Emma rolls to her feet, coming up to a defensive crouch. They stand back to back, eyes circling the clearing. He starts to whistle, the old tune curling into the air. The tension sings around the notes as they circle.
The last creature drops from above. It doesn't stand a chance. Benny stabs it from behind, Emma's knife slicing through it's throat a seamless moment afterwards.
She looks at him over the body, knife bloody in her hand, breathing hard from the kill. Her eyes are not even a little bit green, but she fights a hell of a lot like Dean Winchester.
“So” he asks her, a little later, rinsing the blood from his face in the nearby stream. “How is it you gotta kill Dean? What's he done to you – 'sides the obvious, I mean.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what he's done. He’s my father. I have to kill him,” she says, as she had before, as if that explained things. “I'm an Amazon.”
He looks at her, one eyebrow quirked. “You care to expand a little on that?”
She looks up at him, away from the knife she's carefully wiping the water off, puts her head on one side. “How many kids have you seen in Purgatory?”
He thinks about it. “Some. Not many though.”
She nods, putting the knife away. “Exactly. They either stay with their family or run in packs. And for Amazons, family is everything. Mothers and sisters, together forever.” She looks down. “Except for me.”
Her eyes when she glances up again are wide and dark. “Every Amazon has to kill her father. We grow up fast. I was less than three days old when I died, but I was old enough to do it. I failed. I hesitated, took too long. I wanted to talk to him. I wasted time. So Sam Winchester killed me. I disgraced my tribe, and they cast me out.”
She stares into the water, looking in that moment, disconcertingly like a younger version of Dean. “Then I heard he was here. If I kill him, I can be with them. My family.”
My family. That's like Dean too.
She continues. “I tracked you guys halfway across Purgatory. The Lost thought I was crazy.”
“The Lost?”
She frowns, like he's being dumb. “Yeah. The pack I was with. Biggest gang of kids in Purgatory.”
He snorts, and raises his eyebrows, remembering what Dean had said about Purgatory “The Lost? You shitting me? Like the Lost Boys?”
She looks doubtfully at him. “Um. I suppose. I went back to them afterwards, but they wouldn't have me.” She scowls. “Stupid Pete. Thinks he's so smart, but really they're just scared. Everyone's heard of the Winchesters.”
There it is again, that flash of pride.
“Then I heard that you and Sam Winchester had been seen near the rift.” She bites her lip. “I guess I missed my chance after all.”
There's a catch in her voice, and she looks away, so he can't see her face. “Guess I'm on my own now.”
She looks so young standing there, and, he realises, suddenly and almost painfully, that she will always look like this. Dean's daughter is dead; what he is seeing is her soul.
The dead cannot change. The children of Purgatory will be children forever. Emma will never grow up.
He shrugs, drying off his own weapon on the remains of his jacket. “You got me, dontcha?”
Her face snaps round, suspicious and wary. “You? I thought my father was your friend.”
He raises his eyebrows, crooked grin tugging at the side of his mouth. “He was my friend. Now you are. Course, I'm not sure I can let you kill him yet. Chief and me-” he feels the smile curl up a little further, rueful. “-we got a little too much history for that. I guess we'll cross that river when we come to it.”
She stares at him. “Are you serious? What, one fight and we're gonna be buddies now?”
The sarcasm in her tone makes him laugh. “Your call, kid. But I could use another pair of eyes at my back. You got a way with killing; same as he does.” The wry half-smile tugs at his lips again. “What you might call a purity of purpose. And how else you think you're gonna find him, out here in the grey?”
Emma frowns at him, still wary. “What makes you so sure he's coming back?”
Benny looks at the dark trees under the endless twilight, at the girl standing crouched with a knife by the rushing water.
“This is where all the monsters come to, in the end.”