but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

It was cold, worryingly cold, disastrously cold.

Dean rubs his hands down his arms in an effort to keep warm but it’s no use; it feels like icewater’s blooming in his veins and seeping into his bones, into his heart.

But Purgatory’s bleak sunlight still beats down, and he reckons it’s about mid-afternoon in Purgatory time. Unless purgatory had odd winters in addition to freak storms and freakier explosions of light during the night, something was amiss.

To his right, Castiel shivers. The angel, Dean realizes with a pang of worry mixed with a sick sort of pleasure, looks even worse off than he. That’s a first.

“It’s c-cold,” Castiel says, unnecessarily.

“No shit,” Dean mouths and looks around. It wasn’t even foggy. Rather, the air and light seemed to shimmer with a brittleness kinda like glass. “Hey, Cas —”

That’s when he hears screaming. Sees things.

A fire. An abandoned town covered in dust and spirits. Sammy with a knife hilt-deep in his back. An endless realm of torture and despair, Alistair’s face. Sam’s mouth dripping blood and his eyes black as evil. 2014. The grocery exploding with Ellen and Jo inside. Stull’s. Lisa’s. Castiel in a circle of holy fire. A lake.

Castiel them both out the place and out the memories. They’re still cold minutes later, speechless, and Castiel’s face is white and deadened.

“They go by many names,” Castiel explains, used to Dean demanding what the hell all throughout their trek. “Most humans now call them Dementors.”

Dementors. Harry Potter. Oh hell Sam would love that — no, actually, he wouldn’t. Not this close to his brother.

“They drain your temperature, among other things,” Castiel shrugs, smiles faintly, and this probably meant the angel was close to hysterical. “Like hope, peace. One’s soul.”

And is that why Cas was so affected? Angels don’t have souls, and even if they had, if they grew souls at all, what good memories could they have? That’s the protection, wasn’t it? Good things or whatever? What does the angel remember from a thousand years with a father like that, brothers like his? Laying waste to Sodom and Gomorrah? Creating pointless realities? Playing with time? Making sure the world ended on a Sunday?

Cas must have it worse too, considering… well, everything. Considering Dean. Falling. Hallucifer. That must be a fuckton of bad memories to use against him.

Dean kind of wants to kick himself, but that’s no use, and Sammy always did say that the best thing to do with a bad memory was turn it into a good one.

He bumps Cas’ shoulder with his own, stopping just short of taking the angel’s hand. They almost had their souls sucked by the looks of it, they were obliged.

“We’ll make lots of good ones, okay? Promise you.”