Huh. Apparently concussions make him sound like Sam when he thinks--probably because Sam's the one who gets them all the time. Kind of amazing that the guy can still walk and talk and tie his shoelaces and everything.
After that, things start happening again--he blinks his eyes open, immediately squinting because even though he's propped up against a shady tree, the world is far too bright. He tries to lift a hand to investigate just how large a hole has been knocked in his head, but there's rope tied around his wrists--and his ankles too, when he checks to make sure they're still there.
"Easy there, Chief," a familiar voice says, and he carefully turns his head to see Benny just a couple trees over, brushing down Dean's stolen horse.Benny.
And Dean knows he's still tucked away in Purgatory, knows it's just another figment of Dean's memory, no more real than the specter conjured up by that freaky box left behind by Cuthbert Sinclair, but it feels oh so very real.
Probably because never in even the wildest depths of Dean's imagination could he have dreamed up the image of Benny in tights.
"What happened?" he asks; the inside of his skull reverberates unpleasantly. He makes a second, successful attempt at evaluating the damage from when he'd been knocked out, and is relieved to find that his nerve-endings are lying and his brains are still safely inside, where they're supposed to be.
"Well now, Robert's been getting a bit inventive with his traps--rigged up a log on a rope, sort of like a battering ram. None of the rest of us thought it would work."
The rest of--? It takes a bit of squinting and more careful rotation of his head, but after a minute or two he's able to locate the band of merry men whooping it up a little ways further into the forest--just far enough that Dean's ears have been tuning them out. One of them seems to be working on some rope-log contraption, which looks pretty familiar. "Great, so I got Ewoked. Sam's never going to let me live that down."
"Sam?" Benny echoes, and he stops brushing the horse, cocks his head a little like he's listening for someone sneaking up on them. "He a buddy of yours?"
And Dean probably ought to attempt subterfuge, make these guys think that there's someone looking for him, but his head hurts too much, and it's Benny, so he opts for honesty. "My brother--someone locked him in a tower. I was going to go break him out." Somehow. He really ought to have grabbed at least a crowbar on his way out of the castle.
"Hm." Benny eyes him thoughtfully. "Well, Chief, guess that explains why your pockets were completely empty, despite the crown."
"Crown?" Oh, right--that explains why it feels like someone knocked a hole in him--he'd had a ring of shiny metal attempting just that when he hit the ground. He prods his head again, just in case. Still intact.
Benny's looking increasingly amused. "They're all trying to figure out how to split it five ways--me, I just took the horse as my share." He pets said horse on the nose and then settles down next to his own tree. "Sounds like you have quite a story to tell--wouldn't mind hearing it. Not a lot of ways to pass the time around here."
"Guess I might as well," Dean sighs. Not like there's any point in fronting, given that he already looks like a complete idiot--and anyway, it's Benny. Benny's good at not judging.
