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It turned out that Purgatory had deer-things.
Dean heard a crash in the brush to his left and spun, hands extended, just in time to catch two-hundred pounds of muscle leaping at thirty miles an hour by the two-tined antlers and roll it to the ground. He landed with its long neck trapped under his torso, one wrist bleeding from a scrape by its sharp antlers, powerful pointed hooves digging at the loam and his back for purchase. He twisted the creature's neck around to the side, grunting with effort, until he heard a muffled crack and the purposeful thrashing slipped into the mindless rhythm of convulsions. He wobbled to his feet and drew his knife. The deer had tusks like a warthog, three antlers instead of the usual two, and a long heavy ridge of bone guarding the bridge of its nose. Its eyes were wide and forward-set, pupils round and orange. Its belly was tucked up like a dog's. Dean slit its throat and watched the panic fade from its eyes as its red blood soaked the dry leaves.
It'd been anywhere between a week and six months in the dark woods, and Dean was Jack London hungry, The Love of Life hungry, wrestle a sick wolf down by a hand between its jaws and gnaw its throat open for the blood hungry. There were plants, but never enough of the ones that didn't make him sick. There were insects, but never enough for a mouthful. Everything else had been a human once, and cannibalism was for Hell.
But Purgatory had deer-things.
Dean risked a fire and roasted up a shoulder, licking the blood off his hands as his stomach churned. He lost patience and ate it rare. He stuffed himself until he hurt, he carved off a crude sack from the deer's skin and packed it with chunks of leg, he snapped off an antler to use as a weapon, he cleaned off one of the leg bones, and when the fear of the eyes in the dark drove him to smother the fire and move on, he had food for a week, a backpack, a club, something sturdy to dig with, and a full belly.
Castiel found him again two deer later. Dean rounded on him at the noise of wings, a sharp antler in his left hand and his knife in his right, wary and eager, and it wasn't until Cas said, "Dean," that Dean recognized him and relaxed. It was hard to focus on his face. The woods must be getting to him.
Cas peered at him and stepped closer. Dean ground his teeth and stomped his foot. "I forgot what I was about to say," Cas said. "Have you been eating something that doesn't agree with you?"
"What?" Dean asked. "No." Quite the contrary. "Just meat. I feel great."
Cas looked at him again, some angelic opaque expression. He must be recovering from downloading Sam's Cage trauma. He'd been easier to read last time before he'd disappeared. "There are no rivers here, only streams," Cas said. "Downhill and uphill but no hilltops or valleys. If the map were on a jigsaw puzzle, it'd be impossible to assemble."
"Damn," Dean said. He knew navigation was a problem for him, but he'd hoped Cas would have better luck.
"In a perfect world, I'd enjoy jigsaw puzzles, but in the world as it is, the laws of probability doom them to spread frustration and despair," Cas rambled. "Any departure from their original composition perverts them into things of evil."
"I never had time to finish one, anyway," Dean said. "You see anything useful?"
"I don't know what that means when you say that," Cas said, fiddling with his pockets. "I see something that might be bad." He looked at Dean and stared for longer than Dean thought necessary.
"So, spill. What's wrong now?"
"Your eyes are the wrong color and they shine in the dark," Cas told him.
Dean froze, heart suddenly pounding. "What -- what color?"
"Orange."
Like the deer-things.
So apparently "you are what you eat" was in effect for human beings drawn body-and-soul into Purgatory.
"For other breeds, as well," Cas remarked. "Predators hybridize with their prey. Perhaps you should hunt something more human-like."
Dean was distressingly close to thinking about that one. "Nothing's human-like here. If they look human, they're just more evil."
"Jinn and ghouls are not evil," Cas said. "Nor are shapeshifters. The chance of committing violent crime in shapeshifters is only sixty times that of the average human."
Dean still wasn't liking the idea. All this talking about food was making him hungry, but maybe that was just the deer. He looked at himself in the reflection of his knife. It was too dark to see color. "If they're human-smart, I won't be able to catch them," Dean argued. "Probably. Not without wasting bullets. Cas, what happens to things down here when they die?"
"They are reborn from the soil and the hunger of the living, after time immeasurable."
That sounded Lovecraftian. "And if I starve?"
"The fallen will be reborn from your withered flesh, and your consciousness will be divided among them, like a pack of cards."
That sounded even worse.
"Your chances of escaping this place, slim though they are, will be atom-small. Though I may be able to gather the monsters that bear your fragments together and drive most of them out to the living world, once Sam finds a way to reach us --"
"Don't say stuff like that," Dean protested. "Don't -- I can't --"
"I thought that was what I'm supposed to say?" Cas asked. "Isn't false hope better than no hope?"
Dean rubbed his temples. "Goddamnit, Cas. Shut up for a bit, okay?"
There was the flutter of wings, and Dean was alone.
"Shit."
Dean lived.
He tried to stave off the absorption, the hybridization, whatever it was, but there were so few plants that weren't poisonous, and never enough insects to make a mouthful, and the insects and plants were probably monsters in their own right, anyway, so he had to kill and eat. The deer were easy. The deer were stupid and hungry, couldn't see him for a threat with his blunt teeth and plodding human tread. But he could see them. He could see things move in the dark with a vividness that was almost like touch, and he could hear the eagerness in their steps, and when they charged him, he charged back. He used to wait until he was thin with hunger, then fashion a spear with a cross-bar and kneel to stop them at the charge, but the spear was a pain in the ass to build and carry. Taking them down bare-handed was more fun.
Stalking them was even better.
He took down a wolf once. He pounced it from behind, after stalking it through the woods on bare silent feet; when he was five yards away, he exploded after it, hard toes driving into the ground, breath rasping; when he hit, he struck its face with his shoulder and let it get a good mouthful of deerskin poncho, kneed it in the ribs, and ripped its throat out with a broken-off antler. His knife had been lost a few deer back. He ate the wolf raw; no trichinosis in Purgatory, and his matches had gotten wet. God, it was good. He didn't know if it was a humanoid wolf, a werewolf or a skinwalker, or just something extinct that had been like a hellhound or a black dog, but he couldn't resist, he couldn't bring himself to care. He kept the skin.
After the wolf, it just seemed natural to go after something two-legged. It had teeth like a vampire and markings like a Jinn -- some purgatory mix. It had made itself a little cave to hole up in; anything stupid enough to let itself to get cornered was asking to get eaten. Really, Dean was doing it a favor.
Dean was running, had been running for as long as he cared to think about for the moment, when Castiel found him again. At the flutter of wings, Dean twisted midair, crouched, and pounced on the upright figure's shoulders. His weight should have borne them both to the ground, where Dean could dig out its vitals with his nails and teeth and a spike of femur, but the being was stable as a boulder under the impact, incalculably stronger than Dean. Alarmed, Dean pushed himself away and bolted.
The wings came again, and the creature snatched him and gripped him by the shoulders. Dean kicked and tore at it with his sharp toes, gaped his jaw, and let out a challenging scream. “Dean!” the creature barked back, undeterred. “Dean! Are you afraid?”
Dean went limp. The creature didn't drop him. He started fighting again, digging with his bone dagger at the nerves at the crease of the creature's bicep.
“Dean!” the creature repeated. It seemed it was trying to communicate. But with what? Dean eyed the woods around them and struggled more wildly. If he was caught now, he would only be more helpless once the creature's allies arrived.
The creature gripped him bruising-hard by one arm, and, as Dean wriggled and jerked away, reached out to touch him on the forehead. A collection of strange and frightening images streamed through his mind. This must be part of its feeding process. He was so screwed.
Like a picture being flipped right-side-up, the images fell into place, and clarity returned. Dean gripped Cas's forearm and dropped his dagger. “Cas,” he rasped. “Uh.”
Cas showed his teeth briefly. “Dean. You're you. You look . . . unshaven.”
“I, uh.” Dean felt his hairy jaw as Castiel released the vice-grip he had on his arm. “I been out here a while.” He found it hard to focus on Cas's face. He grabbed his arm and sniffed his coat, but that didn't help because he wasn't sure what Cas was supposed to smell like in the first place. How could he not know that?
“Dean,” said Cas slowly, “maybe you should eat more bipeds. Like jinn, and ghouls.”
“Too smart, they'd stab me,” Dean explained, collecting his dagger and readjusting his skins around him.
“Your diet is critical to your mental and physical health,” Castiel said. Dean didn't see how that was relevant, so he didn't answer. “I'll help you hunt.”
“Cool,” Dean said. Then, because it felt right, he pulled Cas's head down by the ear and gently gnawed on the back of his neck.
At first, Dean was just glad to have free meat. Cas could fly. Cas was stronger than anything Dean had ever seen in the woods. If Cas wanted something dead, it was dead, and he didn't even make Dean share.
But as Dean lived, and took in more creatures that were approximately human, he himself grew more approximately human, and eventually he remembered what the problem with cannibalism was.
“If only there were other yous,” Castiel mused one day, as they hunkered down under a fallen tree. “Or preferably other humans. You're just technically one. You're a blend. A house red.”
Dean rubbed at the marks that traced his veins. His fingernails were sharp and thick enough to leave a gouge in most things' hides, which was handy for all the times he dropped a weapon in a fight, but they were nothing like Castiel's, nothing like they should be. He was glad he wasn't dead: then he'd be even less of himself.
The black marks in his skin squirmed, glowing faint blue. Jinn weren't animals. In keeping himself whole, he was destroying everything else down here that thought and acted like a human. If he went after something genuinely evil, like vampires, he wouldn't object so much, but that would be as bad as the deer and wolves.
They'd been down here for at least a hundred and twelve kills. That was over a year, maybe a year and a half. Dean's ego wasn't so big that he'd cause this much suffering and destruction just to stay Dean for all eternity.
“I don't see the point,” he said.
Castiel sighed. “The point is . . . the point is. It is, the point. It just is.”
“You're rambling.”
“Have faith,” Cas said, a note of pleading in his voice. “It's one of those human talents.”
“I'm going back to eating things that don't beg me not to kill them,” Dean said. He glanced at Cas, then up at the dark clouds. “And I'll try some faith. Might as well.”
“It might have been just hours for Sam,” Castiel suggested.
“You're reaching, dude.” But he listened constantly to the woods, and not just for the rustling steps of other predators.
Living in purgatory took practice and skill, and more than that: talent. A spark. A core of iron. Grit. A soul that steadfastly drove itself toward its chosen aims, in spite of pain, tedium, and overwhelming odds. Faith. Dean had faith, and he had resolved to survive.
When he heard the suck of wind around a tear in space, smelled warm air stained with petroleum, saw light too bright to see by, and heard a humanoid voice calling indecipherably, he fled quick as flight on four limbs, silently as speed allowed. Cas winged down to block his path, and Dean pivoted and hunched in the underbrush, waiting for Cas to make him safe. Cas was faster than anything and stronger than most. He and Cas were loyal together.
Cas took him by the arm and guided him toward the bright light, into the warm dry air, toward the voice, and then the woods were gone, the earth was hard and dusty under his feet, the light was everywhere and blinding. Something prey-smelling gripped him tightly yet ineffectually about the neck, pressing itself close and vulnerable. Dean gaped his jaws and twisted for the kill, scenting salt and blood and fear, but Cas grabbed his mouth and shut it, saying, “no.”
The prey-creature buckled at its knees, and Dean reflexively clutched it, keeping them both upright. He sniffed its hair. Sammy.
He hadn't smelled Sammy in a very long time.
Dean was trapped and anxious, pacing, pacing, pacing. He couldn't go out until he remembered how to act human. He couldn't remember if he couldn't go out. He was in Rufus's cabin, though now it was Sam's cabin, because Rufus was dead. Dean spent the most time in it, but only Sam could decide who could go in and out of it, so the cabin was Sam's.
He looked at the trap-door to the root cellar. At least he wasn't in the cage. He was better. He was trustworthy.
Home's deep engine rumbled in the distance, and Dean flicked on the TV. Sammy liked it when he watched TV, watched humans doing human things, even though the screen rippled too slowly to fool his eyes and he couldn't focus well on the figures anymore. Dean figured it added a layer of challenge.
His body was changing in the Earth air, with the help of a slow spell. His mind had to match it when it finished. He still could barely tell man from woman on the TV screen, but he was a lot better at picking out words.
Sucrocorp. Agricultural-industrial complex. Black slime syndrome. Whole foods. Megasuit.
He kept his ears on the door as Sam's boots hit the front steps, then flicked them attentively at the TV just as Sam turned the knob. Dean remembered how to lie now.
“Dean!” Sam called, as if Dean hadn't heard him enter. Dean spun and hopped over the back of the couch. Sam shuffled in, his arms hooked into the loops of a dozen plastic grocery bags. Dean prodded and sniffed them as Sam made his way to the kitchen, then snagged a bundle of young green leaves and stuffed half of it into his mouth. “Dammit,” Sam muttered. “Figures your taste in food would improve after you turned into some kind of . . . hey, you're wearing pants!”
“Got cold,” Dean articulated around the chaw of parsley.
Sam's face shifted subtly, and he rocked back on his heels a full inch, his shoulders slackening. “I'm sorry, man. You want me to start a fire?”
Dean liked fire a lot better than TV. He vaulted over the couch to the pellet stove and dumped a scoop of wood pellets into the hopper. Sam shrugged, set the food down, and tossed him a book of matches, then yelped when Dean struck all the matches at once. Sam wet a dish towel and rushed over, skidding to his side just as Dean waved the matches out. “Dude,” Sam groaned.
Dean bared his teeth in the friendly way.
Sam huffed through his nose, rolling his shoulders so he looked bigger -- but that was in the friendly way, too.
Dean sniffed out another pack of matches and started the stove up, then played along and helped when Sam insisted on cutting up all their food and mixing it together before cooking it. Dean waited patiently, pacing around and around the cabin, until Sam deemed the food ready to eat. They sat down in front of the pellet stove to eat it with plates and utensils, and Dean opened the steel door on the stove so he could watch the flame as he leaned back against Sam's shins.
Things were coming back, like self-awareness, but not quickly. Dean could recall, now, that when he'd first started to read Sam again after Cas had lead him back to Earth, he'd known that Sam was afraid when he looked at him. Back then, he'd assumed Sam had feared him like prey did. But Sam was human, not a wolf or a deer, and reckless with himself, and so he had different priorities: Sam had been afraid of being forced to harm Dean. The Dean of two weeks back would have mauled Sam had he understood. The Dean of tonight, wise enough to love and not yet cunning enough to think to hide it, slumped on the rough boards and basked in the heat of Sam at his back and the fire at his front, picking at the moulting fur on his forearms and watching the flames dance.
“Let's head outside tomorrow, you're getting pretty stir-crazy,” Sam said. Dean raised his ears in approval. “I got you a hat.”
“Sunup?” Dean suggested.
Sam bumped him lightly with his knee. “Sure. You'll stick close, you won't disappear this time, right?”
Dean shook his head and bared his teeth. The Dean of three days ago would have protested, but this Dean thought Sammy was a wet blanket and lying to him could be fun. Another couple of months and he might be driving again, and now -- right now -- things weren't bad at all.