Fic: Finding Serenity - Dean/Castiel pre-slash/friendship - PG - Supernatural/Firefly Crossover
Finding Serenity
Read on AO3
Author: angel_kink
Beta: harmonyhelms and princessaudrii
Written for: virtual_toast
Fandom: Supernatural/Firefly crossover
Pairing: Dean/Castiel friendship/pre-slash
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3300
Summary: Dean and Castiel are sucked into a vortex and deposited more than 500 years into the future on a small vessel deep in the vastness of space. Together they must convince its suspicious crew that they mean them no harm and just want to return home.
A/N: This was written by a prompt from virtual_toast: “Dean and Cas end up in the Firefly!verse. The crew takes them on board and are conflicted as to whether Dean and Cas are trustworthy.” This was written for my Fic Drive.
“Dean!” Castiel shouted as the vortex swirled in front of them.
The ritual was supposed to suck the escaped souls back into Purgatory, cleaning up the remnants of the mess with the Leviathans, but something had gone horribly wrong. The souls had been sucked in and it’d closed up, but after a few calm seconds it exploded in a prism of light and they were engulfed by hurricane force winds.
“Cas!” Dean reached out and grabbed onto Castiel’s coat sleeve, hoping to anchor himself against the force of the storm the vortex had created. Sam had been outside at the Impala making sure that the warding they had in place around the building hadn’t been disturbed so he was safe for the time being. But Dean and Castiel had already had one bad run in with a doorway to Purgatory and the traumatic memories of that terrible day still haunted him. And it was happening again. They were going to be trapped and this time there might not be a way to escape.
Castiel grabbed Dean’s hand in the chaos and held him firmly against the wind. Just as quickly as it’d formed, the vortex dissipated leaving Dean and Castiel clinging onto each in a large, silent, room that looked suspiciously like the interior of a warehouse. Dean didn’t really have good experiences in large abandoned warehouses and he really, really wasn’t looking forward to finding out what horrible scenario awaited them.
“Dean, this isn’t Purgatory.”
“No, you think?” Dean let go of Castiel and began to take in the details of the room around them.
“Yes,” Castiel said, either not understanding or willfully ignoring Dean’s sarcasm. “I believe we are safe for the time being.”
“I’m not going to feel safe until we know where we are. We could be on the other side of the world for all we know. Come on,” he said as he drew his gun and made his way towards a corridor at the back of the room.
When they entered the corridor it opened up into a room with what appeared to be a small medical office just to the left. Beyond that were two smaller corridors that led to a few very basic bedrooms, but there was not a single door to the outside world. The only escape from their predicament was up the stairs, but Dean was hesitant to go up when he was trying to get his way out of something. Too many bad horror films highlighted that terrible bit of logic and Dean wasn’t about to become a movie cliche.
“Cas, can you take a look around outside? We need to know at least what country we’re in. Or what dimension.”
Castiel nodded and disappeared in a flutter of wings. Dean began to backtrack towards the larger room when he heard the click of a gun and he froze in place. He took a deep breath and quickly spun around, aiming his own weapon at his assailant before he could fire.
“It’s not nice to draw a gun on a man on his own ship,” the stranger drawled. He wore tan pants and suspenders over a dark brown button up shirt. He had a leather thigh holster, Dean noted with a bit of envy. If Dean didn’t know any better he’d say he was a cowboy straight out of a western. Hell, he’d been to the wild west before so it wasn’t exactly out of the realm of possibilities, but he wasn’t exactly ready to place money on any of those theories just yet.
“Hey, buddy,” Dean said, holding his gun steadily at the stranger. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here. So just show me the exit and I’ll skedaddle.”
“That’s unwise, Dean,” Castiel said, appearing directly next to Dean in the entrance of the corridor.
“Wong ba duhn! Where did he come from?” the man said as he aimed his gun at Castiel instead. His eyes darted between the two of them, confused and slightly panicked, but determined to keep his resolve.
“Dean, we are in the middle of space. There is no atmosphere. If you leave this ship you will most likely die in a matter of seconds.”
“The fuck?” Dean said, momentarily taking his eyes off the stranger to look at Cas. “Not to knock your abilities, Cas, but you’ve gotta know where in space we are, right? Near Earth at least? Even in our own galaxy? Can you get us back home?”
“Guys,” the stranger said, drawing Castiel’s attention to himself. “Hey, now, I’m the Captain of this ship. Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the Serenity. That means I’m in charge here. Now somebody better tell me what the guai is going on here or I start shooting. Dohn mah?”
“I really wish I knew, pal,” Dean said as he looked back at the Captain. Dean sighed and slowly lowered his gun. “Look, I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want to be here. Wherever the hell ‘here’ is. And what the fuck do you mean ‘space?’” Dean said as he turned his attention towards Castiel. “Last I checked, we didn’t have cowboys in space. Or giant moving warehouses. Our space station is a tiny little white tube, for God’s sake!”
“I believe we may have moved forward in time as well as through space. There are no other angels, Dean. I’m alone on the celestial plane. Things are not the same as they are in our time.”
“What year is it?” Dean asked as he turned back to the Captain.
“2517. And confusing me more isn’t making me want to shoot you any less,” he said, lowering his gun only slightly, but keeping it aimed in their general direction.
“Look, we’re not from here. That much should be obvious,” Dean said. “We’re from 2012. We got sucked through this thing, this vortex thing, and we ended up here. We were aiming to send something somewhere else and I don’t know what went wrong or how we ended up here, but we just need to figure that out and undo it. I know that sounds crazy, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”
“Trust you? I have no idea who you are, other than two stowaways on my ship.”
“Look, I know my story sounds nuts but, well, crazy is kind of my life at the moment. Well, always, actually, but especially right now.”
“Well,” the Captain said, slowly holstering his gun. “Seems you and I have more in common than I realized. Crazy seems to find it’s way onto my ship every gorram day. Let’s see if we can figure out how to get you guys off of it in a way that doesn’t involve the airlock or guns, shall we?”
-
“Teleporting time travelers,” the girl in the overalls said, grinning from ear to ear. She was one of seven other people besides the Captain that seemed to call the ship home and seemed to be the most curious. She stepped right up to them while the others hung back in the doorways to the common room or leaned against the walls opposite of them. “That’s strange even for us.”
“You can call me Dean,” he said with a wink. “And that’s Cas.”
“Kaylee,” she said, blushing slightly. Of the four women present, Dean felt an instant soft spot for this one. Her upbeat spirit and tomboyish nature reminded him a bit of Jo.
“Our time travel is unintentional, I assure you,” Castiel said. “And Dean is not capable of teleportation. Of the two of us, only I have that ability.”
“Tell me again why we’re believin’ this da bian hua and why they’re not swimmin’ in the black?” the gruff looking man with the beard said. He was fiddling with his gun, obviously itching to raise it and put them on the defensive, but Mal didn’t want them harmed so he resisted the urge.
“Because, despite common misconception, we don’t actually go around killing people at random,” the Captain said. “Let’s get them off my ship without the bloodshed, alright? They haven’t done anything wrong yet.”
“They’re stowaways,” the gruff man retorted.
“And my sister was a stowaway,” the younger more polished looking gentleman said.
“And maybe we should have spaced your wei shian dohn wu sister!”
“Jayne!” the Captain barked, silencing him. “Now look, their story is out there, I get that, but that’s no reason to kill them. We can keep them locked up in the pantry until we reach Jiangyin.”
“Wait,” Dean said. “I thought you said you’d help us?”
“I said I’d help you get off my ship without killing you. We’re taking you to the next planet and cutting you loose. If your story holds atmo you can find your way home from there just as easily as you can from here.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“That’s what’s gonna happen. Suck it up. Wash,” he said, turning to the light haired man who’d remained silent up until this point. “How far are we from Jiangyin?”
“About ten hours, give or take. There are outposts that are closer than that, though.”
“No, we’re not wasting any fuel. This cargo has a time limit and they aren’t paying us enough to take any detours, so we’re going to Jiangyin, alright?”
“Yes, of course. Let’s keep the strange teleporting time travelers onboard. What could go wrong? And now that I’ve said that, everything. Whai w’rin bu jwo.”
“Zoe, Jayne, escort them to the pantry. Make sure they stay put.”
“Yes sir,” the girl in the boots said.
“With pleasure,” Jayne responded, cocking his gun with a huge grin on his face.
-
They were escorted at gunpoint to the pantry where they had their hands zip tied around a pipe in the back of the room. Jayne was left on guard with a rather large gun cocked, loaded, and aimed directly at them. Dean had been in worse situations before, sure, but being 500 years and millions of miles from home made it feel absolutely impossible. He could get out of this situation, but then what? Where would he go?
Dean closed his eyes and began to pray hoping that even though Heaven was absent, his message to Castiel would still go through. He’d prayed to Cas hundreds of times before, but he was never quite sure how the whole prayer thing actually worked.
”Hey, Cas, can you hear me?” Dean opened one eye and looked at the angel. Castiel turned to him, still for a moment, and then nodded ever so slightly.
”You needn’t close your eyes for us to connect psychically. I can hear you as long as you aim your messages to me.”
“Right, okay, yeah,” Dean said as he opened both eyes and looked at their guard for any sign that he knew what was happening. ”Why here?”
“I don’t quite understand your meaning.”
“Look, we’ve time traveled before. But we always generally knew where we’d end up. We were on earth. We didn’t really cross huge distances. Somehow we landed on a super tiny spaceship in the middle of space? The odds of that have got to be, forgive the pun here, but astronomical, right? Why here?”
“You make a good point,” Castiel said, glancing over at their captor was now picking his nails, momentarily distracted. ”I should search the ship. Perhaps there is a religious artifact that could explain how our moment in 2012 has linked with this moment in 2517. Perhaps something that was tied to the ritual that we used to initially open the vortex.”
“How do you plan on getting around Beavis over there?”
Castiel suddenly disappeared letting the zipties fall slack around the pipe. He reappeared directly next to Jayne a short moment later.
“What the-” Jayne began, but Castiel placed two fingers to his forehead and his eyes immediately rolled back into his head. He collapsed to the floor with a loud thud.
“Right,” Dean said. “Can you get me out of these ties?” As soon as he’d finished the sentence, the ties disappeared and Dean rubbed his wrist to get circulation flowing again. “Thanks.”
“I’m going to search the ship. Stay here,” Castiel said and disappeared.
“Sure thing,” Dean says at the emptiness of the room.
He obeyed Castiel’s instructions for a good five seconds before opening the door and peeking out. Dean opened the pantry door only an inch, quickly noting that there didn’t appear to be anyone in the main kitchen. He took a hesitant step into kitchen, but before he could go much further he was startled by the sound of a girl’s voice.
“Why does your friend have wings?” Dean jumped, but calmed quickly when he realized it was what appeared to be the youngest woman in the group standing barefoot just behind the pantry door. Her long brown hair hung messily over her shoulders and her she fiddled with the sleeves of her sweatshirt as she looked him up and down. “He’s not like other people.”
“You can see his wings?”
“Can’t you?”
“No, I’ve only seen their shadows.”
“What is he?”
Dean hesitated for a moment. “He’s an angel.”
“Then why’s he in a trenchcoat?”
Dean laughed. “That’s kind of his thing. It’s the ‘holy tax accountant’ look.” When she just stared at him blankly he nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “Jeez, do you even have tax accountants? Fuck, I really need to get home.”
“I’ll need to make some more revisions to Shepherd’s bible. It is more inaccurate than I’d initially thought. It’s filled with contradictions and faulty assumptions. He should just throw the whole thing out and start over.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Dean said just as Castiel reappeared next to him with a large crate. The box made a rather large thud on the ground as it landed, prompting several of the crew members to come running.
“It’s almost like you want to get shot,” the Captain said.
“Sir, they’re messing with our cargo now,” the woman in the boots said. “I rarely agree with Jayne, but these boys are just asking to be shot.”
“Be that as it may, I really detest spilling blood on my ship.”
“As the ships doctor, I feel like I should have some say in the well being of the people on board,” the well dressed man said.
“Only when I say you do,” the Captain replied.
“Preacher man,” the young girl said as an older gentleman entered the room. “This one’s an angel. I need to borrow your book again. There’s quite a bit more that needs to be fixed.”
“Well I’ll be...” the preacher said as he entered the room and stared at Castiel. “And how do you know that, River?”
“Because he has wings and Dean said that’s why.”
“She is correct,” Castiel said, cutting into the crew’s conversation. “Which is why I need you to listen to me when I tell you that this cargo you’re carrying is very important and I will need to momentarily borrow it.”
“‘Borrow it,’” the Captain repeated. “That wouldn’t just be a fancy term for stealing, would it?”
“Once we harness its power to get back home we will have no more need for it.”
There was a silence as all eyes turned towards the Captain, who was contemplating the decision. “You won’t break it?”
“Unfortunately I cannot promise that there will be no physical changes to the object during the course of the ritual.”
“Captain,” Zoe said. “What’s your decision? We should figure out what to do with them sooner rather than later.”
“Hold on, let me think,” he said as he slowly walked over to the crate. He rubbed his hand over his chin, thinking. Then he abruptly shoved the lid off the crate and stepped aside. “Have at it, boys.”
Dean approached the crate and peered inside. There was a large stone covered in enochian sigils, latin text, and other languages the Dean could not identify. It was similar to the stone that they’d used as a marker to open the vortex to Purgatory, but slightly more weather beaten. It was then that Dean realized it was most likely the exact same one. It’d been more than five hundred years so of course it’d be more worn.
“How do we open it back up?” Dean inquired as Castiel lifted the tablet from the crate and examined it. “Are we going to need to do the whole ritual all over again?”
“No,” Castiel said. “Opening up here was a mistake. We simply need to retrigger that same vortex and pass back through it.” Castiel glanced around the room at the residents of the space ship. “It would be best if you all leave the room as we do this. The results can be unpredictable and it’s possible that you could be consumed by the vortex much like we were.”
“Right,” the Captain said as he glanced around at his crew. “Everyone to the cockpit while these boys find their way off my ship.”
“Good luck Dean,” Kaylee said with a soft hand on his shoulder. Dean patted her hand.
“Thanks.”
“And you too, Castiel,” she said turning to the angel. “Good luck doing your angel things.” Castiel nodded.
As River passed she reached out and ran her fingers through the air, causing Castiel to shudder. Dean put two and two together and felt a brief flash of jealousy that this girl, whoever she was, could see such an elusive part of Castiel. She didn’t mean any harm, though, and Castiel nodded in acknowledgment.
“I shall make note of that for Book’s bible.” River then turned and lightly gripped Dean’s shoulder, looking him sternly in the eye. “Make sure he grooms his feathers regularly. They’re too delicate to ignore.”
Dean blinked, unsure of exactly what the proper response to that was. “Uh, sure.”
One by one the crew said a brief goodbye until there was only the Captain and the Preacher left. The Preacher looked Castiel up and down.
"You have many questions,” Castiel said. “But I can give you no answers. That is not what I am here for."
"The difference between knowing something and believing in something, is that Faith requires us to believe without knowing,” the Preacher replied. “For those of us that know it's sometimes harder to have Faith."
Castiel tilted his head in contemplation, then slowly nodded. "You are a wise man and truly a Shepherd of lost souls."
The Preacher left and the Captain approached and nodded at Dean. “Good luck,” he said simply, patting Dean on the shoulder. He looked at Cas. “I’d say a prayer for you, but I’m not much of the praying type.”
“It isn’t necessary. I am the only one who would hear it and I’m right here.” The Captain gave them a strange look, but nodded and exited the room.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Dean said as he looked down at the tablet. “Let’s go home.”
Castiel recited the same incantation that he’d said back in 2012 before their ritual went terribly wrong, but for a moment nothing happened. They looked at each other briefly, but before either of them could question if the spell had worked the vortex appeared in the middle of the room. Dean instinctively reached out and grabbed onto Castiel’s hand, not wanting to let his angel out of sight for even a moment. They shared one final glance and then jumped into the vortex, which promptly closed behind them.
Read on AO3
Author: angel_kink
Beta: harmonyhelms and princessaudrii
Written for: virtual_toast
Fandom: Supernatural/Firefly crossover
Pairing: Dean/Castiel friendship/pre-slash
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3300
Summary: Dean and Castiel are sucked into a vortex and deposited more than 500 years into the future on a small vessel deep in the vastness of space. Together they must convince its suspicious crew that they mean them no harm and just want to return home.
A/N: This was written by a prompt from virtual_toast: “Dean and Cas end up in the Firefly!verse. The crew takes them on board and are conflicted as to whether Dean and Cas are trustworthy.” This was written for my Fic Drive.
“Dean!” Castiel shouted as the vortex swirled in front of them.
The ritual was supposed to suck the escaped souls back into Purgatory, cleaning up the remnants of the mess with the Leviathans, but something had gone horribly wrong. The souls had been sucked in and it’d closed up, but after a few calm seconds it exploded in a prism of light and they were engulfed by hurricane force winds.
“Cas!” Dean reached out and grabbed onto Castiel’s coat sleeve, hoping to anchor himself against the force of the storm the vortex had created. Sam had been outside at the Impala making sure that the warding they had in place around the building hadn’t been disturbed so he was safe for the time being. But Dean and Castiel had already had one bad run in with a doorway to Purgatory and the traumatic memories of that terrible day still haunted him. And it was happening again. They were going to be trapped and this time there might not be a way to escape.
Castiel grabbed Dean’s hand in the chaos and held him firmly against the wind. Just as quickly as it’d formed, the vortex dissipated leaving Dean and Castiel clinging onto each in a large, silent, room that looked suspiciously like the interior of a warehouse. Dean didn’t really have good experiences in large abandoned warehouses and he really, really wasn’t looking forward to finding out what horrible scenario awaited them.
“Dean, this isn’t Purgatory.”
“No, you think?” Dean let go of Castiel and began to take in the details of the room around them.
“Yes,” Castiel said, either not understanding or willfully ignoring Dean’s sarcasm. “I believe we are safe for the time being.”
“I’m not going to feel safe until we know where we are. We could be on the other side of the world for all we know. Come on,” he said as he drew his gun and made his way towards a corridor at the back of the room.
When they entered the corridor it opened up into a room with what appeared to be a small medical office just to the left. Beyond that were two smaller corridors that led to a few very basic bedrooms, but there was not a single door to the outside world. The only escape from their predicament was up the stairs, but Dean was hesitant to go up when he was trying to get his way out of something. Too many bad horror films highlighted that terrible bit of logic and Dean wasn’t about to become a movie cliche.
“Cas, can you take a look around outside? We need to know at least what country we’re in. Or what dimension.”
Castiel nodded and disappeared in a flutter of wings. Dean began to backtrack towards the larger room when he heard the click of a gun and he froze in place. He took a deep breath and quickly spun around, aiming his own weapon at his assailant before he could fire.
“It’s not nice to draw a gun on a man on his own ship,” the stranger drawled. He wore tan pants and suspenders over a dark brown button up shirt. He had a leather thigh holster, Dean noted with a bit of envy. If Dean didn’t know any better he’d say he was a cowboy straight out of a western. Hell, he’d been to the wild west before so it wasn’t exactly out of the realm of possibilities, but he wasn’t exactly ready to place money on any of those theories just yet.
“Hey, buddy,” Dean said, holding his gun steadily at the stranger. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here. So just show me the exit and I’ll skedaddle.”
“That’s unwise, Dean,” Castiel said, appearing directly next to Dean in the entrance of the corridor.
“Wong ba duhn! Where did he come from?” the man said as he aimed his gun at Castiel instead. His eyes darted between the two of them, confused and slightly panicked, but determined to keep his resolve.
“Dean, we are in the middle of space. There is no atmosphere. If you leave this ship you will most likely die in a matter of seconds.”
“The fuck?” Dean said, momentarily taking his eyes off the stranger to look at Cas. “Not to knock your abilities, Cas, but you’ve gotta know where in space we are, right? Near Earth at least? Even in our own galaxy? Can you get us back home?”
“Guys,” the stranger said, drawing Castiel’s attention to himself. “Hey, now, I’m the Captain of this ship. Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the Serenity. That means I’m in charge here. Now somebody better tell me what the guai is going on here or I start shooting. Dohn mah?”
“I really wish I knew, pal,” Dean said as he looked back at the Captain. Dean sighed and slowly lowered his gun. “Look, I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want to be here. Wherever the hell ‘here’ is. And what the fuck do you mean ‘space?’” Dean said as he turned his attention towards Castiel. “Last I checked, we didn’t have cowboys in space. Or giant moving warehouses. Our space station is a tiny little white tube, for God’s sake!”
“I believe we may have moved forward in time as well as through space. There are no other angels, Dean. I’m alone on the celestial plane. Things are not the same as they are in our time.”
“What year is it?” Dean asked as he turned back to the Captain.
“2517. And confusing me more isn’t making me want to shoot you any less,” he said, lowering his gun only slightly, but keeping it aimed in their general direction.
“Look, we’re not from here. That much should be obvious,” Dean said. “We’re from 2012. We got sucked through this thing, this vortex thing, and we ended up here. We were aiming to send something somewhere else and I don’t know what went wrong or how we ended up here, but we just need to figure that out and undo it. I know that sounds crazy, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”
“Trust you? I have no idea who you are, other than two stowaways on my ship.”
“Look, I know my story sounds nuts but, well, crazy is kind of my life at the moment. Well, always, actually, but especially right now.”
“Well,” the Captain said, slowly holstering his gun. “Seems you and I have more in common than I realized. Crazy seems to find it’s way onto my ship every gorram day. Let’s see if we can figure out how to get you guys off of it in a way that doesn’t involve the airlock or guns, shall we?”
-
“Teleporting time travelers,” the girl in the overalls said, grinning from ear to ear. She was one of seven other people besides the Captain that seemed to call the ship home and seemed to be the most curious. She stepped right up to them while the others hung back in the doorways to the common room or leaned against the walls opposite of them. “That’s strange even for us.”
“You can call me Dean,” he said with a wink. “And that’s Cas.”
“Kaylee,” she said, blushing slightly. Of the four women present, Dean felt an instant soft spot for this one. Her upbeat spirit and tomboyish nature reminded him a bit of Jo.
“Our time travel is unintentional, I assure you,” Castiel said. “And Dean is not capable of teleportation. Of the two of us, only I have that ability.”
“Tell me again why we’re believin’ this da bian hua and why they’re not swimmin’ in the black?” the gruff looking man with the beard said. He was fiddling with his gun, obviously itching to raise it and put them on the defensive, but Mal didn’t want them harmed so he resisted the urge.
“Because, despite common misconception, we don’t actually go around killing people at random,” the Captain said. “Let’s get them off my ship without the bloodshed, alright? They haven’t done anything wrong yet.”
“They’re stowaways,” the gruff man retorted.
“And my sister was a stowaway,” the younger more polished looking gentleman said.
“And maybe we should have spaced your wei shian dohn wu sister!”
“Jayne!” the Captain barked, silencing him. “Now look, their story is out there, I get that, but that’s no reason to kill them. We can keep them locked up in the pantry until we reach Jiangyin.”
“Wait,” Dean said. “I thought you said you’d help us?”
“I said I’d help you get off my ship without killing you. We’re taking you to the next planet and cutting you loose. If your story holds atmo you can find your way home from there just as easily as you can from here.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“That’s what’s gonna happen. Suck it up. Wash,” he said, turning to the light haired man who’d remained silent up until this point. “How far are we from Jiangyin?”
“About ten hours, give or take. There are outposts that are closer than that, though.”
“No, we’re not wasting any fuel. This cargo has a time limit and they aren’t paying us enough to take any detours, so we’re going to Jiangyin, alright?”
“Yes, of course. Let’s keep the strange teleporting time travelers onboard. What could go wrong? And now that I’ve said that, everything. Whai w’rin bu jwo.”
“Zoe, Jayne, escort them to the pantry. Make sure they stay put.”
“Yes sir,” the girl in the boots said.
“With pleasure,” Jayne responded, cocking his gun with a huge grin on his face.
-
They were escorted at gunpoint to the pantry where they had their hands zip tied around a pipe in the back of the room. Jayne was left on guard with a rather large gun cocked, loaded, and aimed directly at them. Dean had been in worse situations before, sure, but being 500 years and millions of miles from home made it feel absolutely impossible. He could get out of this situation, but then what? Where would he go?
Dean closed his eyes and began to pray hoping that even though Heaven was absent, his message to Castiel would still go through. He’d prayed to Cas hundreds of times before, but he was never quite sure how the whole prayer thing actually worked.
”Hey, Cas, can you hear me?” Dean opened one eye and looked at the angel. Castiel turned to him, still for a moment, and then nodded ever so slightly.
”You needn’t close your eyes for us to connect psychically. I can hear you as long as you aim your messages to me.”
“Right, okay, yeah,” Dean said as he opened both eyes and looked at their guard for any sign that he knew what was happening. ”Why here?”
“I don’t quite understand your meaning.”
“Look, we’ve time traveled before. But we always generally knew where we’d end up. We were on earth. We didn’t really cross huge distances. Somehow we landed on a super tiny spaceship in the middle of space? The odds of that have got to be, forgive the pun here, but astronomical, right? Why here?”
“You make a good point,” Castiel said, glancing over at their captor was now picking his nails, momentarily distracted. ”I should search the ship. Perhaps there is a religious artifact that could explain how our moment in 2012 has linked with this moment in 2517. Perhaps something that was tied to the ritual that we used to initially open the vortex.”
“How do you plan on getting around Beavis over there?”
Castiel suddenly disappeared letting the zipties fall slack around the pipe. He reappeared directly next to Jayne a short moment later.
“What the-” Jayne began, but Castiel placed two fingers to his forehead and his eyes immediately rolled back into his head. He collapsed to the floor with a loud thud.
“Right,” Dean said. “Can you get me out of these ties?” As soon as he’d finished the sentence, the ties disappeared and Dean rubbed his wrist to get circulation flowing again. “Thanks.”
“I’m going to search the ship. Stay here,” Castiel said and disappeared.
“Sure thing,” Dean says at the emptiness of the room.
He obeyed Castiel’s instructions for a good five seconds before opening the door and peeking out. Dean opened the pantry door only an inch, quickly noting that there didn’t appear to be anyone in the main kitchen. He took a hesitant step into kitchen, but before he could go much further he was startled by the sound of a girl’s voice.
“Why does your friend have wings?” Dean jumped, but calmed quickly when he realized it was what appeared to be the youngest woman in the group standing barefoot just behind the pantry door. Her long brown hair hung messily over her shoulders and her she fiddled with the sleeves of her sweatshirt as she looked him up and down. “He’s not like other people.”
“You can see his wings?”
“Can’t you?”
“No, I’ve only seen their shadows.”
“What is he?”
Dean hesitated for a moment. “He’s an angel.”
“Then why’s he in a trenchcoat?”
Dean laughed. “That’s kind of his thing. It’s the ‘holy tax accountant’ look.” When she just stared at him blankly he nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “Jeez, do you even have tax accountants? Fuck, I really need to get home.”
“I’ll need to make some more revisions to Shepherd’s bible. It is more inaccurate than I’d initially thought. It’s filled with contradictions and faulty assumptions. He should just throw the whole thing out and start over.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Dean said just as Castiel reappeared next to him with a large crate. The box made a rather large thud on the ground as it landed, prompting several of the crew members to come running.
“It’s almost like you want to get shot,” the Captain said.
“Sir, they’re messing with our cargo now,” the woman in the boots said. “I rarely agree with Jayne, but these boys are just asking to be shot.”
“Be that as it may, I really detest spilling blood on my ship.”
“As the ships doctor, I feel like I should have some say in the well being of the people on board,” the well dressed man said.
“Only when I say you do,” the Captain replied.
“Preacher man,” the young girl said as an older gentleman entered the room. “This one’s an angel. I need to borrow your book again. There’s quite a bit more that needs to be fixed.”
“Well I’ll be...” the preacher said as he entered the room and stared at Castiel. “And how do you know that, River?”
“Because he has wings and Dean said that’s why.”
“She is correct,” Castiel said, cutting into the crew’s conversation. “Which is why I need you to listen to me when I tell you that this cargo you’re carrying is very important and I will need to momentarily borrow it.”
“‘Borrow it,’” the Captain repeated. “That wouldn’t just be a fancy term for stealing, would it?”
“Once we harness its power to get back home we will have no more need for it.”
There was a silence as all eyes turned towards the Captain, who was contemplating the decision. “You won’t break it?”
“Unfortunately I cannot promise that there will be no physical changes to the object during the course of the ritual.”
“Captain,” Zoe said. “What’s your decision? We should figure out what to do with them sooner rather than later.”
“Hold on, let me think,” he said as he slowly walked over to the crate. He rubbed his hand over his chin, thinking. Then he abruptly shoved the lid off the crate and stepped aside. “Have at it, boys.”
Dean approached the crate and peered inside. There was a large stone covered in enochian sigils, latin text, and other languages the Dean could not identify. It was similar to the stone that they’d used as a marker to open the vortex to Purgatory, but slightly more weather beaten. It was then that Dean realized it was most likely the exact same one. It’d been more than five hundred years so of course it’d be more worn.
“How do we open it back up?” Dean inquired as Castiel lifted the tablet from the crate and examined it. “Are we going to need to do the whole ritual all over again?”
“No,” Castiel said. “Opening up here was a mistake. We simply need to retrigger that same vortex and pass back through it.” Castiel glanced around the room at the residents of the space ship. “It would be best if you all leave the room as we do this. The results can be unpredictable and it’s possible that you could be consumed by the vortex much like we were.”
“Right,” the Captain said as he glanced around at his crew. “Everyone to the cockpit while these boys find their way off my ship.”
“Good luck Dean,” Kaylee said with a soft hand on his shoulder. Dean patted her hand.
“Thanks.”
“And you too, Castiel,” she said turning to the angel. “Good luck doing your angel things.” Castiel nodded.
As River passed she reached out and ran her fingers through the air, causing Castiel to shudder. Dean put two and two together and felt a brief flash of jealousy that this girl, whoever she was, could see such an elusive part of Castiel. She didn’t mean any harm, though, and Castiel nodded in acknowledgment.
“I shall make note of that for Book’s bible.” River then turned and lightly gripped Dean’s shoulder, looking him sternly in the eye. “Make sure he grooms his feathers regularly. They’re too delicate to ignore.”
Dean blinked, unsure of exactly what the proper response to that was. “Uh, sure.”
One by one the crew said a brief goodbye until there was only the Captain and the Preacher left. The Preacher looked Castiel up and down.
"You have many questions,” Castiel said. “But I can give you no answers. That is not what I am here for."
"The difference between knowing something and believing in something, is that Faith requires us to believe without knowing,” the Preacher replied. “For those of us that know it's sometimes harder to have Faith."
Castiel tilted his head in contemplation, then slowly nodded. "You are a wise man and truly a Shepherd of lost souls."
The Preacher left and the Captain approached and nodded at Dean. “Good luck,” he said simply, patting Dean on the shoulder. He looked at Cas. “I’d say a prayer for you, but I’m not much of the praying type.”
“It isn’t necessary. I am the only one who would hear it and I’m right here.” The Captain gave them a strange look, but nodded and exited the room.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Dean said as he looked down at the tablet. “Let’s go home.”
Castiel recited the same incantation that he’d said back in 2012 before their ritual went terribly wrong, but for a moment nothing happened. They looked at each other briefly, but before either of them could question if the spell had worked the vortex appeared in the middle of the room. Dean instinctively reached out and grabbed onto Castiel’s hand, not wanting to let his angel out of sight for even a moment. They shared one final glance and then jumped into the vortex, which promptly closed behind them.