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It’s everywhere, all at once—nothing. No light, no air, no color. No pain. No feeling. Nothing but utter blackness and sheer terror, and Castiel’s voice echoes in the chasmic abyss.
Castiel walks for what has to be hours, maybe a day above a bottomless floor; his reflection doesn’t look back up at him, but something is watching back with eyes as black as tar and just as invisible as the night. His footsteps echo, even more disorienting. No walls, no windows, just an expanse of black that stretches on forever. No entry—no exit.
He can’t escape—there is no escaping this hell, this afterlife. Not this time.
Meeting himself is just as terrifying as he always expected, but the eloquence is lost. Its voice doesn’t fit it, and its face moves in ways Castiel never thought it would. All anger and agitation, confusion and frustration, coiled inside of a body that isn’t even its own. Just an approximation. Just the only body The Empty has ever physically seen with its own eyes.
It blinks constantly with its lips curled somewhere between absolute hatred and amusement, like it can’t stand the pure thought of Castiel’s existence. In a way, maybe it can’t. After all, no one has ever woken up here since the creation of the universe.
And now, Castiel is tampering with its eternal slumber—fitting, after all he’s done to disrupt the ebb and flow of the Earth.
“I don’t see why you’re bothering,” The Empty says as Castiel walks, its hands behind its back, almost swaying. “You can’t get out.”
“There’s always a way out,” Castiel mutters. He looks above him, expecting to see stars; all that greets him is open black maw of nothing. There are exits to Purgatory, to Hell, to Heaven—The Empty has to have a door somewhere.
“See, that’s what you’re not getting,” The Empty chimes again.
It reaches out to Castiel and grabs his wrist, his own fingers digging into his flesh just underneath his jacket cuff. Sharp, jagged—yet, there’s no pain. All Castiel feels here is his own fear and the irritating presence looming over his shoulder, waiting for him to crack.
“No one escapes here,” The Empty speaks with venom, scowling. Its fingers dig in deeper, but Castiel doesn’t wince. “You’re upsetting me.”
“I don’t care,” Castiel spits back.
“You’re upsetting me!” it whines petulantly, stamping its foot. “You’re supposed to go to sleep!”
Castiel flexes his fingers, pulls his arm away. “I’m not tired.”
“Go to sleep,” it hisses.
“No,” Castiel says.
“Go to sleep.”
“No.”
“Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep—”
Castiel throws his head back in exasperation. “Will you leave?”
“You insolent child,” The Empty growls and gropes for Castiel again; this time, Castiel breaks into a sprint, his boots thudding with every step on the floor-that-isn’t.
Thankfully, it doesn’t follow.
The next time they meet, Castiel is attempting to scale a featureless wall, practically melting into the sable landscape. Amidst the darkness, though, there’s a wall, and Castiel is halfway up when The Empty pops its head around the edge and frightens Castiel into losing his place and falling. For seconds, for minutes, Castiel doesn’t know—but he hits the floor softly, coat rustling, hair settling.
The Empty stares at him upside-down, smiling—or frowning, Castiel can’t tell from this angle. “Your precious humans,” it starts, hands shoved in its coat pockets, “Did they ever tell you you were useless?”
“A time or two,” Castiel grumbles, covering his face.
Castiel doesn’t sleep, not here—if he sleeps, then The Empty wins, and if The Empty wins, then Castiel dies. He has more to live for than that, more to do than just walk around in a void looking for an exit he’s starting to believe isn’t there.
A snake has been following him for the last hour, black and formless and shedding is skin while it travels. It molds up from the floor, and Castiel knows he’s being watched, but can’t bring himself to care.
“I could sing to you,” The Empty speaks from the snake’s liquid mouth. “Think of it, Castiel, you could rest. If you just listened to me,” it crawls between his feet and snakes up his pant leg, worming out from underneath his waistband, “you could be free.”
“You lie,” Castiel hisses, and rips The Empty off of him, throwing the slimy length of it across the void, where it molds back into the floor.
“I think I read a book once,” The Empty says, just as Castiel’s bones begin to grow weary. “It could’ve been a book. I find things here all the time, stuff Angels were holding. One time,” it stops to laugh, “someone had a—”
“Can you please shut up,” Castiel growls, shaking his head. It’s colder here, impossibly darker than before. “I’m trying to think.”
“That’s your problem,” it chimes just two feet from Castiel’s back. “You’re thinking too much. That’s all I hear, you thinking, thinking thinking thinking. Does your brain ever shut off?”
Castiel draws his arms around himself; he sighs bright white, and his body begins to tremble. “No,” is all he says.
The Empty just ignores him, keeps on talking. “Your humans don’t miss you,” it sing-songs, swaying again. “The one you keep thinking about, Dan, Don—”
“Dean,” Castiel corrects, clenching his teeth.
“They’re all stupid, and you know it,” The Empty muses. “They don’t miss you. The most they want out of you is your Grace. You’re a toy to them, you’ve always been a toy!”
“Just because you know my past doesn’t mean you know them.”
For the first time in hours, Castiel stops and turns. The Empty isn’t Castiel now—The Empty is a column of tar, amorphous and twisting and writhing, everywhere and nowhere at once. It moves and molds, diving and sinking, and Castiel feels sick just watching it. A hand touches his shoulder—his own, black nails taking on color, down to his wrists, forearms, shoulder. Lips touch his ear, his neck, and his skin crawls. “I know who you hate, remember?” it speaks, terrifyingly soothing. “I know who you love, and who you love can’t save you now.”
“He will,” Castiel whispers. “He’ll come.”
“He can’t,” The Empty bellows, low enough to reverberate. Somehow, the void shakes and shifts, twisting. “No one’s coming for you, Castiel. No one can save you, not even yourself. So if you’d just go to sleep—”
Punching The Empty is like crashing into a concrete barrier. It doesn’t move, but it just snarls and hurls its fist in kind, colliding with the side of Castiel’s face. This time, he stands his ground and fights, narrowly avoiding each punch; feet are his disadvantage, though. Several times, The Empty trips him and sends him to the ground in a heap, and The Empty straddles him until Castiel can push himself away.
No pain. Death is painless. Nothing registers, but his body still aches, still begs for mercy. Muscle memory, he thinks. Muscle memory keeps him fighting, keeps Castiel swinging and slashing with his blade, and each time, The Empty throws back harder, all while spewing hatred and lies.
“You’re impossible,” it shrieks, once again morphing and sinking into the ground. It raises sharply and submerges his feet, ankles, up to his thighs. It consumes him, freezes him down to his fingers, and all Castiel sees is black. No light, no sound—just its voice. “You’re a pathetic excuse for an Angel and you won’t sit still and you won’t let me kill you and you’re not listening to me and you think too much and you’re exhausting and you’re giving me a migraine and I can’t even have migraines—”
On and on it goes, and all Castiel repeats is, “Release me.”
“Oh,” it laughs, dispersing. Again, Castiel looks at himself, but The Empty just snarls, all teeth. “Oh, I’ll release you. You just won’t like how it happens.”
The floors opens beneath Castiel, and he falls, coat flying above his head while he screams—and still, The Empty falls with him, grappling for Castiel’s coat and flinging him into some far off corner, where Castiel collides with a wall. He slumps, winded, and The Empty nimbly lands on its feet. Hands grab Castiel’s collar, and Castiel groans into The Empty’s mouth, sighs against its lips; it kisses with no finesse, but there’s warmth there, more warmth than Castiel has felt in days.
The Empty grabs his waist—Castiel punches it in the mouth, hopefully knocking out its teeth. “You brute,” it screams, rushing in again; again, Castiel hits it, this time to the back of its neck. For a few blissfully quiet minutes, The Empty slumps and lays there, prone, before it merges with the floor.
“All you have to do,” Castiel huffs, shaking hand clutching his chest, “is let me go to Earth.”
“You’re beginning to annoy me,” The Empty groans from nowhere, voice echoing everywhere; Castiel feels it in his brain, reverberating through his veins. “Are you planning to torture me forever?”
Idly, Castiel straightens his tie, purely out of reflex. “For eternity,” he affirms. “Just let me go.”
Two hands clutch Castiel’s face, and for the last time, Castiel looks into his own eyes, frantic and terrified and just this side of red. “You make this far too easy,” The Empty speaks, guttural, and all Castiel sees is white.
He wakes up in the brambles, hidden in a valley Castiel can’t even begin to name—but the sun is shining, and the birds are pecking at the blackberries, and all at once, he feels peace. No voices, no looming presence, just the serenity of a July morning, thick with humidity and bright and warm.
His phone is in his pocket—his old pocket, in a coat reminiscent of years ago, now donned on his shoulders—along with fifty cents and a stick of gum. Nothing The Empty said was true, but the skepticism still lingers, an errant voice goading at him, feeding him lies. They’re waiting for me, Castiel tells himself, looking himself over once, phone in hand. The screen is cracked and dirty, but it works, only five percent of his battery left.
Make it count, thinks, thumbing over to his contacts. Dean’s name comes up first—he dials.