Supernatural Spoilers: The Second Death includes references to events, characters, and themes that occur on the show through episode 07x23 "Survival of the Fittest."

Walking Dead Spoilers: The Second Death includes references to events, characters, and themes that occur on the show through episode 06x09 "No Way Out."

The Second Death
Chapter 1: Purgatory

Dean Winchester was lying on the cold, hard ground, vaguely aware that he didn't belong there, but his consciousness returned to him in fits and starts. One moment, the sensation of grass and dirt under his hands became palpable, and the next, numbness and blackness descended, forcing him into a pendulous state between concerned confusion and the bliss that came from the fog of sleep.

"Wake up!" Castiel yelled.

The urgency in his voice spurred Dean out of his complacency. His eyes snapped open, and he sat up. A whirl of dizziness stopped him from standing.

"Good," Cas commented. "We need to get out of here."

The angel's voice had a clarity that it hadn't had since his stint in the loony bin. Dean wasn't sure if that was reassuring or worrying.

The hunter stood, looking around in an attempt to assess the situation. He recognized nothing.

"Where are we?" Dean asked.

"I have no idea."

The hunter reexamined his surroundings. The overgrown grass was thick and green, and the trees and other plants in their general vicinity had been placed in intervals, a clear arrangement of parts. SucraCorp was more parking lot than anything else because leviathan didn't give a shit about landscaping.

"You bring us here?" Dean asked Cas.

The angel's brow knit together in bewilderment as his eyes darkened. When he shifted his hands to his hips, the trench coat opened enough to reveal the uniform provided by the mental asylum he had resided in not long ago. The expression on his face was a stark contrast to his recent transformation into an oddball pacifist with a ridiculously strong love of bees.

"If I brought us here, I would know where we were," Cas replied.

"You think Dick Roman did this?" the hunter asked, resisting the urge to reply with a snide remark. "Last thing I remember is him exploding."

"We should be dead," Cas said mildly.

"Come again?"

"The weapon we used was ancient and powerful, devised by God himself," the angel explained. "Mortals rarely survive an encounter with such things. Slaying such a powerful leviathan - "

"Whoa, hang on!" Dean interrupted. "You're saying we could've died?"

"Our plan was to infiltrate a building full of monsters that not only predate angels but are more powerful than them as well. The likelihood of failure was incredibly high. Our deaths were a near certainty."

Dean gritted his teeth. Castiel had gone from a five-year-old bouncing off the walls to a monotonous stooge of heaven in the blink of the eye. All the personality changes were giving him whiplash.

"Why didn't you mention that this weapon would ice the person using it before?" he asked.

"It hadn't occurred to me until a few minutes ago," the angel replied.

Dean decided to drop the topic for now, as they were both still alive and needed to figure out where the hell Sam and Kevin had gone. He grabbed one of the burner phones from his jacket, but when he held it out, it had 'NO SERVICE' across the screen. He searched his pockets for another, only to find it also had nothing. Five phones across every carrier on the planet, and not one of them had any signal.

"What the hell?" he muttered. He turned to Cas and asked, "You getting anything from Sam of Kev?"

Cas gave him an incredulous look before he replied, "Both your brother and the prophet have sigils carved into their ribs that prevent any angel from tracking them, and neither has prayed or called."

Dean sized Cas up, unsure of how to ask his next question. He'd never been any good with that kind of crap, and he wasn't going to figure it out now, in some random-ass field with a half-cocked angel.

"You don't sound crazy anymore," Dean said bluntly.

"That is because I am no longer 'crazy,'" Cas replied, correctly applying sarcastic air quotations. "Unfortunately."

"So, you're not off your rocker anymore," he said. "Gotta say, I thought you'd be happier about it."

"I am no longer mentally stunted from the anguish and torment visited upon me from absorbing the centuries-long retribution that my brother visited upon yours," Cas replied. "And now those memories are no longer blunted."

Castiel's monotone and flat affect delivered his admission like a punch to the gut. Dean had watched Sam bow under that suffering until it broke him, yet Cas stood before him, miserable perhaps, but not crushed or defeated.

"Look, we gotta find Sam and Kev," Dean said after a very long, awkward silence. "Shouldn't be too hard to find the nearest gas station or convenience store. Come on."

Then he started walking with determination. He didn't know which direction he was going or where he was, but he figured it wouldn't be long before they found someone who could give them directions.

It took about thirty minutes of power walking to hit a road. Any hope of flagging somebody down disappeared after a few minutes of waiting. There was nothing but silence and wind, and the road was devoid of traffic. From the looks of it, cars didn't come through here very often.

"Come on," Dean said. "This must lead somewhere."

So they turned and followed the road, though there was no reason to think they'd encounter a car. Dean had driven roads like this a thousand times, and more often than not, the Impala was the only vehicle in sight. It was like that with a lot of the thoroughfares that cut through the countryside.

The sun started to go down, and Dean decided that enough was enough.

"Okay, you need to zap us somewhere," he said abruptly.

"That would be unwise," the angel replied.

"Unwise?" Dean repeated. "I haven't seen a sign on this road yet. It could be a hundred miles before we hit a town. It's getting dark, and I'm fresh out of flashlights."

"Three," Cas said.

"What?"

"Three miles up the road, there is a barn and a gas station," he explained. "We've walked much farther than that already."

Dean rolled his eyes. He would never admit it out loud, but he was grateful that there was something ahead. None of his burners had any service, and he really needed to wash up. He picked up the pace, anticipating pie and all the other convenience store food he loved so much, ignoring his brother's nagging about not consuming anything with corn syrup, since they had to assume that the leviathan tainted the entire country's supply.

Still, a man could dream of a great big slice of cherry pie.

They passed the barn first, which was worse for the ware. It was covered in new patching planks, as if someone had fixed it up, but the structure itself didn't appear to be that old. Cas investigate it, running his fingers over the siding, and he detected blood and decayed flesh. It was in tiny quantities here and there, and it had been there for weeks.

"Cas, come on," Dean said. "The barn isn't gonna have a phone."

Castiel had drawn the same conclusion. Recently, in the last month, someone reinforced the damaged walls and covered all the windows with good, solid wood, but that was only after someone - or, more likely, several someones - had literally clawed their way into the barn, leaving behind bits of fingernail, skin, and blood.

"Cas?" Dean asked as he doubled back. "You got something?"

"No," the angel replied. "Let's go."

Dean knew something was amiss, but he wasn't sure if it was something he needed to know about. For all he knew, Cas had triggered some long-lost hell memory and needed a minute to collect himself. It made more sense than being genuinely concerned about the state of some barn. So they continued without another word about it, and they soon reached the gas station.

It was closed.

No, worse, it was abandoned. Several makeshift signs read "OUT OF GAS, MOVE ON." They were posted all over, and from the state of them, they'd been there a while. They continued to the door of the store even though it was dark inside. Dean peeked in. The place was in disarray because the shelves had been emptied none too carefully.

"Looks like the place was looted," he commented.

Before he could smash the door's window open to get to the inside handle, Castiel twisted the doorknob.

It was open.

"Seriously?" Dean asked. "Haven't these people hurt of locks?"

Castiel went in, and Dean followed.

"Hello?" Dean said loudly. "Our car broke down. We could really use some help!"

"I don't think anyone's been here in a very long time," Cas said.

"Sure looks like it," Dean replied. "Except for that."

He pointed to the refrigerated storage. Nothing was inside, yet there was condensation on the glass. It was still on.

They moved noiselessly through the tiny store, first through every isle, then to the backroom and then onto the basement. No one was there.

The sun went down, leaving them in darkness until Dean discovered a flashlight that had been left in the backroom.

"Still no reception," Dean said as he checked his burner phones.

"The landline doesn't have that sound it's supposed to," Cas said, holding up an old fashion rotary dial phone.

"It's not plugged in," Dean said. "We gotta find a phone jack."

The growling of his stomach interrupted his next thought.

"You need something to eat," the angel said. "Take the flashlight and find something. I'll search for this phone jack."

Normally, the hunter would've rejected the idea, mostly because Cas didn't seem to know what a phone jack was, let alone where to start looking for one, but he was too damn hungry to bother.

Dean discovered a few canned goods and an old bag of Doritos in the basement, along with a few bottles of water. The Doritos had expired in 2010, which predated the leviathans, so he figured it was safe. All in all, it wasn't takeout, but it was something. He used the backroom's microwave to make the soup he'd found, though he enjoyed eating the cranberry sauce right out of the can. Sammy would flip his lid if he saw that.

"Any luck on that phone jack?" Dean asked when Cas returned.

"Yes," he replied, pointing to a pile of books on a shelf. "Behind there."

He then proceeded to sweep everything unceremoniously off the shelf to reveal the jack in the wall. He placed the phone there and connected the wire.

Dean picked it up and heard the dial tone droning. He was impressed.

He dialed every number he had for his brother, and none of them connected. He didn't even get that annoying message about the caller you've reached not being available. He'd dial the number, hear a few clicks, and then nothing. He wondered if old phones like this had some kind of 'send' button he didn't know about.

"Let me," Cas said.

Dean shrugged and let the angel try the phone. He stopped him after he dialed nine-one because he had a sneaking suspicion that the next number would also be a one, and there was no way in hell he was going to explain to the police why he was in an abandoned gas station covered in blood, sweat, and black goo.

"What the hell, Cas?"

"Is there another method to checking the functionality of the phone lines?" he asked.

Dean thought hard. He knew there were numbers you could call for the time, date, and temperature, but for all he knew, that had vanished when cell phones became the norm. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time he used a landline, let alone how to check if it was connecting with others.

"Fine," he growled. "But if they pick up, you can't just hang up. You gotta tell them you don't need help. Otherwise they'll send someone here."

The angel nodded and dialed the last number.

The phone rang.

And rang.

And rang.

It kept ringing, but no one picked up. Eventually, Cas hung up.

"So, we ice Dick Roman and wind up somewhere completely deserted," Dean said. "You think the levis used this place for their testing?"

Castiel considered the suggestion. If people had locked themselves inside the barn, a leviathan would've punched through the wall, not scratched at the windows. The people inside might've tried to claw their way out, not in.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "Maybe."

"Right, well, it's too damn dark for me to see or do anything," Dean said. "How about you zap - "

"Sleep," Cas interrupted.

"What?"

"You sleep for approximately three to five hours a night," the angel said. "Your sleep deficit is tremendous."

"Sammy and Kev are missing, and you want me to get my beauty sleep?"

"You just said it's too dark for you to do anything."

"Yeah, which is why I was gonna say you need to zap us somewhere with electricity."

Cas put two fingers to Dean's forehead, and the hunter fell asleep instantly, collapsing boneless into the angel's arms. He carried him up to the attic. It was awkwardly short and mostly empty, save for a few blankets and cushions. Once he made sure Dean was safe, he yanked the ladder out of its place, making it impossible for anyone to enter.

The angel knew there was danger, but he couldn't identify it. He had sensed it since the moment they arrived here, wherever 'here' was. The constant stillness and silence wasn't natural, and he worried that any people they met would be more dangerous than a hungry vampire. That was the real reason he insisted on Dean's slumber.

The suggestion to teleport was sensible, but his internal world map was out of sync. His mind kept track of hotspots, certain key areas of the world, including the most recent Winchester safe house, the largest cities, and the few places where angels congregated on the earth. When he attempted to transport the unconscious Winchester to a safe place earlier that day, he realized that nothing was where it should be.

It was dangerous to call upon his more ancient angelic powers. Unlike teleportation and healing, the angels would sense it and know his exact location in seconds, and demons and leviathan alike would be able to track him. He cast a glance over to Dean sleeping on a pile of cushions and decided it was worth the risk.

He reached out and made contact with the hunter, his anchor, hoping it would enable him to sense Sam, though the rib carvings would make that nearly impossible. He let his hand wrap around Dean's forearm anyway. There was something immensely comforting in the simple act of touch.

Then Castiel tapped into that power born only to the Seraphim, his sight extended a hundred thousand fold, covering the entire face of the earth, his grip on Dean's arm tightening protectively as he realized there were no demons, no descendants of Eve, no deities, no witches, no spirits, nothing supernatural in this world, save for the last angel and his hunter.

Author's notes: The Second Death was started originally as part of Dean/Cas Big Bang 2016, but I discovered that the story was much longer (and larger) than I anticipated so I had to drop out of the challenge. I'll be posting it as I proof it before moving on to the latter (unwritten) half of the story.