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When he opens his eyes, the first thing he remembers is the last thing he remembered seeing; Sam Winchester’s sneering face as he wrapped a string of razor wire around his neck, and pulled with all the strength he had.
God fucking dammit.
Gordon stares blearily up at the sky, or what little he can see of it; he’s in some kind of primeval forest where the treetop canopy starts at least 100 feet up.
And… he’s dead.
Goddamn Sam Winchester.
There’s a snap behind him and he leaps to his feet, grabbing a rough branch off the forest floor as he does. He’s swinging it even as he turns, clocking a ghost square on the skull. The hit connects and she stumbles back against a massive tree trunk instead of vanishing, and he grins.
Wherever he is, there are still monsters to kill, and they go down easy here.
Gordon learns from the other monsters, the ones who are talkative. He learns where he is, and where to pick off the newest souls, and what the Winchesters are up to. A witch, some demons, a crocotta. His eyes work differently here, or his awareness does; he now sees the monsters behind their human facades.
Purgatory seems like a pretty shitty reward for dedicating his life to killing monsters, but then he does still have a mouth full of fangs and an unholy hunger for blood. This place probably suits him better than heaven or hell. He always did like the hunt more than anything else on earth.
He steers clear of the Leviathan, finds a portal deep in the woods where new souls are apt to appear. By this point he has a branch whittled to a fine point, and a broader blade he’s hewn and polished from stone. Every time a new soul appears at the entry, he asks it, “You know Sam Winchester?”
Some have never met him. Some have never heard of him.
Some were just killed by him.
The demons are the chattiest. Vampires, shapeshifters, ghouls, they’re simple creatures. Used to hiding in the shadows, pretending to be human for as long as they can. Used to being on their own or with their own kind. Demons, he learns, are used to bargaining their way up the chain. They ooze information. And there’s so many of them, since Sam Winchester opened the gates of Hell and unleashed a demon horde upon the earth.
“Well, I mean…” says one demon. It’s wearing the skin of a middle-aged businessman, and the suit too, but Gordon can see the writhing, twisting core of its essence. It’s damned unsettling. “There’s some say he’s going to free the devil himself, the path he’s on. Others say he’s on the side of the angels. I don’t know about any of that. But he put me here, and if he shows his face around here I’m going to rip it off and stuff it down his--”
Gordon sighs, done with demons and their bluster. He chops off its head with one swing from his blade and settles back in to his little camp to continue watching the doorway.
Sam Winchester has sent a lot of monsters to their end, and Gordon starts to have doubts. About the clarity of his mission. His certainty that Sam is evil.
Until he meets Ruby.
She appears gasping for breath on the forest floor. Pine needles, he knows from experience, are digging in to her lower back, her ankles, anywhere her skin touches the ground.
She looks like a tiny slip of a thing, white with brown hair, but he can see the demon beneath. It’s old, and very powerful. She comes up swinging like Gordon had when he'd entered, and they trade a few blows before he can get a word in edgewise.
“You know Sam Winchester?” he asks, as they circle each other warily. Her face changes then, both her faces, and her eyes take on the shine of an acolyte.
“Sam set him free,” she says, grinning triumphantly. “Lucifer’s walking the earth again and Sam did it, I did it, for it is written that the first demon shall be--”
God, how Gordon hates religious nuts. He draws back his blade but she’s gone before he can swing it, running fast over the moss-covered ground. Her giddy laughter hangs in the damp air long after she’s gone.
He’s feeling a little triumphant himself. He knew--he’d known--that Sam Winchester was the Antichrist. And now he has proof. Vindication.
He’s going to be busy in the coming months. Hell on earth is sure to send a lot more bad guys his way. He returns to his camp and sharpens his blade.