The Other Side Of Purgatory

This place, it isn't like any other place. There's no variation here. Back in the normal world, the sun shone bright or the night settled dark. The breeze danced on a spring day. Mornings were cooler. Shade was nice. Afternoons were hot. The sun warmed your skin. Even the dead warmed in the rays of the sun. I can't say how heaven works, I've never seen it. If I had to say, to guess, Heaven was probably a cold place. Hell, I've heard the tale, was mostly hot. This place though? Here?

Nothing.

It's not hot or cold. It's no where in between. It's not sunny or deeply dark. It's this overcast twilight all the time. Sometimes brighter, sometimes not.

Time. That's another thing about this place. There is no time here. There's no morning. No noon. No real night. No real changes. This is an eternal forest frozen on a day dreary sometime in the fall, just before the sun sets and just after.

No time. No change. No hunger.

It didn't take long to notice it. My first breath of the stale air was the first I'd taken in way too long without even the slightest twinge of hunger. A sweet relief nearly worth dying for. Well... that's a story for another day.

This place? It's nothing but existing. 

There's no love here. No hate. No friends. No family. No great battle or quest for redemption. It's just existing and fighting to keep on existing.

I landed here hurt, angry, and confused. There wasn't supposed to be anything once your body desiccates and your best friend's shouting your name. Yet, here I stand on this soft bed of dead leaves, breathing this dead air and looking around at these dead trees.

Where do bad things go when they die?

We go here.

Purgatory.

Purgatory was separate from both Heaven and Hell. It was once described as the backside of nightmares. All blood and bone and darkness, filled with the bodies and souls of all things hungry, sharp, and nasty.

I came in swinging. Didn't encounter another monster for a while but when I did, I attacked and it felt good. Not just good. It felt great. It felt right. I hadn't tore another thing apart like that before. Obliterated, I left that monster strewn in pieces. I looked down on it, wiped the sludge from my chin and set off to find another one. Wasn't any kind of plan. It just felt good to fight. It felt good to win. It felt good not knowing if I would win. It just felt good.

Truth be told, Purgatory's the happiest I've been... maybe ever. Things get simple here. The anger I came in with? Destroy enough monsters and that ebbs away. The hurt? Same. The confusion fades as you realize this place hasn't got rules. It's whatever you want as long as you fight. Everything that was so important? That all just slides back. It slips further and further away from you till you hardly remember why it was important at all. And there's that added perk of no hunger. No thirst.

Ever felt more and less yourself at the same time?

I never felt more a vampire than in this place, where my base vampire drive wasn't here with me. Without that hunger, there's no need to hunt. Now, I hunt because it's fun. Not to eat. Now, I hunt and fight because there's nothing else to do. Now, I hunt because I'm good at it. Now, I fight because I win.

Without hunger, without time, when this place is full of nothing but monsters just like me? What better way to stay entertained than killing everything you meet? And that's just what I did.

Then this place of constant sameness suddenly changed.

Imagine a place with no temperature. Imagine a place that's dead, through and through. Then imagine dropping a hot coal with a heartbeat right in the thick of it. That's the moment Dean Winchester landed in Purgatory.

There was the heat, the heartbeat, and a reverberation I could feel in my bones. For a moment, it was all in the same place, then the vibration blinked out, leaving just the heat, the heartbeat and the curiosity driving to hunt it.

I found him easy enough. Feverish drumming in the silence, how could you not? Every other monster near found him too. I hung back, watching. He was human, alright, but to see him fight you know there's monster in him. His jaw set, hard, his eyes burning yet cold. He fought bare handed and used the monster's own weapons against them. He was fighting these two monsters and one was about to jump him from behind while he was manhandling the other. 

I ran out and took down the second one before I could even think about what I was doing. The sludge was gritty, black, and tasted like shit but I'd swallowed so much of it by that point. I tore the monster's throat out, then turned to face him.

He was staring down at me with this cold glare, reading the situation faster than I could stand. I picked up the dropped blade. A weapon might be handy if things went south. He was judging and weighing if I'm going to attack him, poised and ready to fight. If he came at me, it'd be the first fight I didn't want in this place. It'd be the first fight I'm sure I'd lose. This man? He didn't fight because he was bored. He didn't fight because it was fun. He didn't fight because he won. He fought because he's got a purpose. He fought because he's got a drive. I didn't want to go up against that. 

"Who the hell are you?"

His voice was gruff, matching his appearance. He was built hard and wearing simple jeans and layers of shirts and a jacket, but that didn't matter here; I had had his jacket on since I'd touched down. His face, chiseled from stone, the same stony expression... and that glare: if looks could kill.

I held my hands up in the classic 'I'm unarmed' gesture, dropping the weapon I'd picked up in the hopes of making myself seem less of a threat.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said slowly. "I'm here to help."

"I'll ask you again," he growled, icy green eyes narrowing and raising the blade stolen from some monster. "Who and what are you."

"Alaric Saltzman." The name felt strange on my tongue; it'd been so long since I'd said it out loud. "I'm a vampire."

"A bloodsucker? And you say you want to help? Why should I believe that crap?" I heard it but I knew he really couldn't care less. He'd already killed me nine ways from Sunday in his head and the conversation wasn't really slowing him down. 

"You shouldn't," I said, holding the man's glare with an honest expression. "But it's the only offer you're gonna get."

His stance didn't shift. He didn't trust me. Hell, I didn't trust him but the man was hanging on to my every word and it was the longest conversation I'd had in a long time.

"How do I know this isn't a set up? How do I know I ain't gonna end up like your friend over there." He gestured to the dead creature over my shoulder.

I shrugged. "First rule of Purgatory: you can't trust anybody."

He was scrutinizing me and the I didn't know what he was looking for but eventually he shifted. What he'd said or what he was thinking, he was weighing if I was telling the truth. Weighing if he was willing to work with me with what I was.

"Fine." There was that blade pointed in my face again. "But first, we find the angel."