SPN fic: Starting From The End Of Times (3/5)

[anniehow]

It took them another two and a half days to reach Chuck’s place, which they found eerily intact, albeit completely empty. Not only of holy prophets and renegade angels, but of all of Chuck’s writings and his material possessions. There was a “for sale” sign in the shabby lawn, but the real estate agent turned out to be non-existent. Dean and Sam stayed there only as long as they had to.

The space Dharma had indicated on the map was beyond the river and it housed about eighteen farmhouses, with their fields, woods, and assorted unmarked sheds and animal shelters. Of these, twelve properties where abandoned, one was owned by a very old lady who never stirred out of her house, and the rest were active farms, though of course the open spaces were not under constant surveillance. The Winchesters hoped Castiel was hidden in one of the abandoned houses, because otherwise… well, an abandoned house sounded most logical, so that’s where they started.

They hit pay-dirt in the third house they checked, a three-storied mansion that had never even been finished before the owners flocked to greener pastures. The windows were boarded up, but the door was open. Sam went in first, taking the left side of the house. Dean went right. One room over and he spied Castiel through the doorway of a huge, round-looking room.

Dean stopped and gaped for a few moments: it was a breathtaking sight, even to someone who had seen as much as him. Castiel seemed to be asleep, or in stasis or something, floating weightless in the center of the room, about four feet above the ground. His coat and his tie billowed around him as though he were in zero-gravity, or at the bottom of the ocean, but he was perfectly still. The most amazing thing, though, were the wings. Huge, bigger even than what the shadows he’d once seen suggested. They hung, half unfurled, from his back, spanning the whole room. The sunlight poured golden and warm from two French window, highlighting a myriad of dust motes in the unmoving air.

Dean realized he had failed to call Sam only when his brother came to stand next to him and gasped at the sight. They exchanged a look, too much in awe despite themselves to go beyond the threshold. Then Sam took a sharp breath and grabbed Dean by the arm, shaking him. “It’s an illusion,” he whispered. Dean shook his head, uncomprehending. “Look at the light… it’s sunset now, and those windows are facing east. Besides, all the windows at ground level are boarded up. We saw that when we checked the perimeter, remember?”

Dean shook himself. He did remember. Suddenly the sight that had seemed so peaceful and otherworldly became creepy and ominous. “So the question is: is he really there or what?”

“He did warn you about a trap…”

They exchanged glances. The smart thing to do would have been to turn tail and run.

They looked inside the room again. The image, though fake, was perfect. The feathers rippled in the sunlight and the hair swayed gently as though ruffled by a breeze. But they didn’t have a choice, did they? After coming all the way here, they couldn’t just leave.

Dean motioned for Sam to stand back and cover him. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, took out his knife and entered. It was like stepping into another world: the thing that immediately hit him was the stench of old blood, even though the sight was certainly more striking.

Castiel’s feet were still dangling about four feet from the ground, but now it was because he was chained by his wrists to a hook in the ceiling, like a piece of meat. Blood sigils covered every inch of the room, glinting ominously as though still fresh. Castiel himself looked dead, eyes closed and head slumped forward, but he didn’t seem to have a single mark on him. The wings, which had appeared so real in the illusion, were nowhere to be seen. Dean did a quick sweep of the room, but there was nothing else there. He could see Sam hovering beyond the doorway, looking frantically in and hopping from foot to foot.

“Dean?” he called, “are you still there?”

Dean stepped back out, making his brother jump. “The illusion covered you,” Sam explained. “So? What’s really there?”

Dean turned. The illusion was still going from this side of the doorway. “He’s in there all right. Come on.”

They both entered. Sam tensed up when he saw the real room, but didn’t comment, only nodded twice, sharply, and then started checking the symbols around them. Dean instead went directly for Cas, mouth turned down and expression grim. When he got near enough he saw that his eyes weren’t closed, they were actually half open and glassy, pupils so contracted that it was even difficult to see them; it looked like he only had the blue irises.

He also wasn’t breathing.

Dean allowed himself a moment for his anger, even though there was nothing to kick or punch and he had to settle on clenching his fists so tight they shook. The angels had done this to Cas, then lied to Dean… or not? Could it be just a decoy? Nobody had come yet, and they hadn’t been smote from up high either…

“Sam, help me take him down…” He called, sheathing his knife and wrapping his arms around Castiel’s thighs, lifting as much as he could. Fortunately for them it was a simple hook with a simple iron chain, and once it wasn’t pulled taught by the weight of the body, Sam managed to shake it free.

The brothers eased down the body, and laid him on the floor. The limbs were stiff, and the arms wouldn’t bend back down. He’d been chained up with his palms facing out, which had to have put enormous strain on the shoulders. The head lolled to the side like a doll’s. And it was quite clear that the body was legit.

“Poor bastard,” Dean said with feeling. He put his hand on the unmoving chest, a desolate sense of sadness washing over him.

“He did what he thought was right,” Sam whispered, sounding bitter. He reached out and pressed his palm over the eyes, closing the lids. “You do realize that this was a trap for you, just like he warned us? Zachariah could have taken you here any time, showed you that image, told you that Cas was in here, then whisk you away before you could take a closer look. He wouldn’t even have had to lie.”

Dean nodded. “Just ‘omit a few pertinent details’. Yeah, wouldn’t be the first time.” He stared at Castiel’s slack features, the lips slightly parted, when the eyelids fell back again, halfway, and he spied the pupils. They weren’t pin-points any more, but had dilated unevenly: one eye was almost fully open and the pupil looked normal, while the other was still mostly closed and nearer it’s former appearance.

Dean stood very still. “What if he’s still in there? What if he’s still alive?”

Sam looked doubtful. “He’s not breathing, and there’s no pulse. Although, angel- I have no idea.” He looked around the room, warming to the notion. “We could try and carry him out or here,” he proposed, getting to his feet.

Dean remained down, sitting on his haunches. “Lungs are overrated anyway,” he mumbled, confusing Sam. Then he shook his head. “We can’t pull him out if we don’t know what kind of magic we’re dealing with, with all these sigils…” he blinked, something nagging him at the back of his mind, like some nugget of memory he’d forgotten, but not completely.

He flashed back to his dream, but not the part with the real Cas, the part where he had started to slowly unbutton the white shirt of the fake Cas, running his hands on the skin underneath. It hadn’t been smooth, but distinctly scarred. His fingers twitched. He tried to wrestle his thoughts to the matter at hand, and remembered the blood seeping from the real Cas… “He’s bound- Sam, he’s still bound,” he said suddenly, grabbing a hold of the shirt and yanking it out of the pants.

“What the-?” Sam knelt right back down. For a moment, Dean didn’t move any further, then he brushed the tie to the side and unbuttoned the shirt from the bottom up, and sat back, simply staring.

“Is that a tattoo??” Sam went on, poking gingerly at the exposed flesh. On Castiel’s stomach, centering around his navel and spanning all the way up to the edge of his ribs and down to his groin, there was a black circle filled with symbols, set in a spiral. “Oh my god, it’s charred! Dean, they fire-branded him!”

All Dean could do was gape silently while Sam worked himself into a frenzy. He hadn’t known it was going to be there, not really, but at the same time he’d felt almost compelled- just what had Castiel showed him in all those dreams he couldn’t remember?

“We have to break it, it must be what’s keeping him unconscious… I think we have enough to make a flame-thrower in the trunk, but I’m not so sure about what we can heat up… Do we still have the iron pokers? We’ll also need something to handle them with-“

“I’ll do it,” Dean said quietly, halting his brother with a hand to the shoulder. “Go out to the car and start the engine. Keep a look out for any incoming archangels.” He took out his knife again, looking intently at the body lying next to him.

Sam blinked, taken aback. “Dean, I’m not leaving you here on your own,” he stated.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen, and we can’t afford to get caught with our pants down, and-“ he lowered his eyes, training them on his knife, “and… I just- I should do it. This.”

Dean wouldn’t meet Sam’s gaze. He kept his attention on the blade, scraping his thumb on the edge to test it even though he knew perfectly well that it had been sharpened and greased since the last time he’d used it, when he’d killed Ruby. He’d done it all personally.

After a moment Sam uttered a quiet ‘ok’ and went out, leaving them alone.

Dean heaved a sigh, then turned and faced the vacant stare of what, for all intents and purposes, seemed a lifeless corpse. Despite it all, he had the distinct feeling that Cas was watching him from inside there.

“Dude, I really hope this is right. If not… well, sorry.”

He considered straddling Cas’s thighs but he felt uncomfortable doing that, so he compromised by setting only one knee between the legs, and hefted his knife. This was something he’d done hundreds of times on souls, but he couldn’t say that he’d tried quite the same thing on a real body. He examined the marks closely, noticing how uneven they looked: some lines were as thick as his fingers, while others appeared to have healed somewhat and were as fine as if drawn with a pen. All of them were unbroken, as far as he could tell.

With a steady hand he began to cut from the bottom, the skin parting easily under the touch of his blade, and bleeding sluggishly. He only broke the first line of the outer circle, then stopped to see if there was any effect. No fiery wrath of heaven rained down from the sky; on the other hand he could almost swear that those half-open eyes were now trained on him.

He checked the wound, prodding with far less gentleness than he would have with another human being, but not nearly as roughly as he had with the countless souls that had passed through his ministrations. The cut was precise and neat, though not deep enough to penetrate through all of the burned flesh.

He positioned the knife again and slowly pushed the blade deeper, until he was certain that it had gone down sufficiently. Castiel- the body didn’t react. With mild frustration and plenty determination he grabbed hold of the hilt two-handed and sliced up, pushing all his weight behind it and making it all the way through the first symbol of the spiral.

To his utter delight and relief, Castiel gasped in a shuddering breath, and proceeded to continue to gulp in air. Dean immediately leaned forward and slapped him lightly on the cheek, calling his name. The angel didn’t reply, but when Dean angled his face and peered into his eyes he saw them focusing on him.

“Hey, there,” Dean smiled. Cas blinked slowly, staring at Dean expectantly. “Right. Still bound, eh? Ok…” He leaned back and gripped the knife again, this time holding the angel’s gaze. He pushed the blade forward until it was half-way through the circle, when suddenly Castiel gave a louder gasp, his whole body spasming and his back arching clear off the floor. Dean let go, alarmed, and tried to hold him still, but with a powerful jerking motion Castiel raised his arms, dragging the chain behind, and then brought them back down gracelessly on Dean’s back. For a moment Dean thought the angel was trying to hit him, then that he was trying to hug him, and then Cas managed to wrestle his uncooperative limbs down to his chest in an attempt to grab the hilt of the knife.

“What, you want it out? Sorry, no, ok-“ Castiel’s fingers wouldn’t work at all, but his glare was plenty eloquent, and Dean got into position again and pushed the knife further up, cutting through two other symbols, while Castiel futilely tried to help.

A small, wet whimper escaped the angel’s lips, and Dean flushed, a treacherous tiny part of him enjoying the process not only because it was going to free Cas, but precisely because of the power and the pain that he was currently wielding. Dean closed his eyes, deeply ashamed, and with a grunt of effort managed to slice clear through the rest of the symbols and the upper part of the circle.

He heard a lusty sigh, and when he chanced to look there was a small, contented smile lurking on Cas’s face. “Dean,” he croaked, voice as wreaked as when he’d appeared in the dream, “what are you doing here?”

“Eh… I’m- I’m the one who gripped you tight and lowered you from the ceiling, you dumbass.”

Castiel’s smile lingered for a moment, then he blinked and sighed. “Will there ever come a time when you’ll heed my requests and actually do as I ask, instead of the opposite?”

“What, no ‘thanks for busting my ass out, Dean’?” He blinked, and suddenly the marks on the angel’s chest weren’t there anymore, nor was the gash he’d just cut, or the blood staining the clothes and covering his hands. Suddenly he was just leaning over, and half-straddling, a half-naked guy. He scrambled back and off him.

“No. I told you I was working on freeing myself.” Cas sat up smoothly and tilted his head, knife still protruding from his chest.

“Yeah... no, I could see that,” Dean nodded sarcastically. “The moment I stepped in here I thought ‘oh, look how close to busting out he is! But since I came all this way, might as well’...”

Castiel frowned, somewhere between reproachful and puzzled. “I was healing the sigil,” he said slowly, passing a hand up his chest, “It was keeping me imprisoned inside this body. Another day or two and I would have been done.” He pulled the knife out and offered it, handle first. “Now leave. I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

The wound slowly closed under Dean’s eyes. “What? No way, Cas! You’re coming with us now,” he replied, taking the knife and then gripping the other by the forearm, tugging him so they stood up together. The iron chains hanging from Castiel’s wrists broke to pieces, which rained down to the floor with a crashing, torrential sound; only the manacles directly encircling the skin remained.

“I can’t. They’d notice immediately, and we wouldn’t stand a chance. I won’t take long. I would ask you for your back-up blade though.” He frowned at the walls at large, gaze encompassing all the shiny symbols surrounding them. “I have work to do.”

oooooo

Dean floored the Impala down the dirt road, making Sam dig his heels in the foot-well just to avoid bouncing around like a puppet while he tried to scope a route on the map. “I know they weren’t contemplated when this car was made, Dean, but seatbelts-“

“-are not getting into my baby, and you can shut up now. Found a place yet?”

“If we’re going to use Dharma’s ‘vial’ we need somewhere that’s densely populated. The town’s not exactly ideal, but there’s this mega-mall that serves three counties that’s only about thirty miles out. It’s got three motels. And, huh, ‘the world’s biggest collection of motorized lawn mowers’.”

Dean spared him a look. Sam pulled a bitchface. “Look-“

“Sounds good. And crowded. And… Shit! Where the hell is Castiel?” He slammed a hand on the steering wheel. “It’s been almost an hour! We can’t run around back roads all day! And we can’t pull the vial thingy without him! Screw this, I’m going back!” He pulled a hair-pin turn and sped back the way they’d come, Sam hanging on to the door-frame for dear life and cursing almost as much as Dean.

They’d re-traced their steps about half-way back when they spotted a trench-coated silhouette walking towards them in the heat haze. He kept walking calmly in their direction even as they kept accelerating, and then Dean had to slam on the breaks to avoid running him over.

Castiel blinked owlishly at them through the windshield, looking pretty rough. He hadn’t buttoned back up the shirt, which was being held closed only by the tie, and in the gathering dusk he looked wan and pale. The Winchesters got out of the car and stared from behind the cover of the opened doors. That’s when they saw that he wasn’t even wearing any shoes.

Castiel held their gazes and shook his head. “One day,” he said, sounding even more hoarse than before, “one day I will issue a simple instruction and you will follow it to the letter. I’m looking forward to that day.” He wavered on the spot and then fell to his knees.

The brothers immediately rushed to him. “What happened? Did they come for you?” Sam asked, while Dean was busy running down the list of all the swear words he possessed and getting a shoulder under Cas’s arm to haul him up. The angel still had the manacles on his wrists, they discovered.

He shook his head, letting them help him into the car. “No. I managed to slip out unnoticed. It will go undetected until they physically come and check, an eventuality I cannot predict. We might have days, and we might have hours. Some assistance in concealing would not go amiss.”

“We got that covered,” Dean assured him. “What the hell, Cas? Why were you walking? Did you- are you ok?”

“No,” he answered simply, tone calm and collected. “Something happened to my wings. I can’t- walking was my only option.” He paused, eyes sliding towards the window to his side. “Thank you for coming back for me. I was not looking forward to reaching you that way,” he admitted, giving a sigh and sitting back. He looked and sounded exhausted.

“Can you fix whatever happened to you? Will you get better?” Sam insisted, sharing a horrified look with his brother.

“I won’t know until I inspect the actual damage. And for that I’ll need external help to shied my presence from my b- kin.”

“Working on it,” Dean chirruped, already turning the car towards a paved road and pointing it decidedly towards more populated areas.

oooooo

The mega-mall was, well, big. It was practically the size of a town, only with a lot more people than they had hoped to find at that time in the evening. Apparently between the pubs, the restaurants, the movie arcade and the motels (plus a club somewhere, though it was never clear exactly where), the place never closed.

They had checked into the only strip motel there so they could keep an easier escape route and settled for the night. Dean had offered to get a fold-out bed for Castiel, but the angel had insisted that he didn’t need it and that he wasn’t going to sleep, despite looking increasingly like death warmed over. True to his word, he kept watch all night while the humans got some much needed rest.

He’d also seemed by turns impressed and amused by the signal-scrambling vial, or as much as he ever seemed anything. Dean for his part was disappointed that, once uncorked, the vial hadn’t poured smoke like dry ice, but only a faint wisp of vapor.

They hadn’t exchanged much information. Castiel said that he was ‘aware of what had transpired’, whatever that meant, and he didn’t want to elaborate on what had happened to him. Which, to tell the truth, was fine by Dean. Unfortunately he was also infuriatingly tight-lipped on how to help Sam.

“All Zach-the-dick had to offer was to kill Sam, rip out the original parts of his soul and stick them in heaven’s equivalent of a garden shed! There has to be something else we can do- there just has to!”

Castiel had simply informed them that angelic ‘purification’ was not a pleasant death. Or quick. But that it was true that it would save Sam from eternal damnation. Which they had pretty much already guessed by themselves, thank you very much.

The angel had also explained that Sam’s case was unique in history, and therefore no one could know for certain that there weren’t alternatives, which didn’t exactly encourage either of them, though both pretended it did to reassure the other.

Morning, with its additional people crowding the shops all around them and helping to hide them better, found the brothers hanging around the Impala at the far end of the parking lot, with a ten-year old TV set and six light-bulbs hidden on the back-seat.

“I wonder what they look like. D’you think we’d go blind if we took a peek? Or is he just shy? Maybe for angels it’s a prudish thing,” Dean rambled on, trying to coax a smile out of Sam, but his brother was sullen and clearly nursing a headache. He kept rubbing a hand over his forehead, nodding to indicate that he was listening, but not adding much beyond the occasional grunt.

Dean was starting to get bored. “How much longer do you think this is going to take?”

He had scarcely finished uttering the words when a flash of light illuminated the whole place like lightning in a clear sky, followed closely by a wave of sound that Dean recognized as the angel’s true voice. It tore through the motel, smashing all the windows of all the rooms, and across the parking lot, making windshield after windshield explode. Everywhere car alarms started up, and people started screaming, running out of their rooms.

Sam and Dean exchanged a horrified look and sprinted back to their room, where everything was still and nothing seemed to be happening anymore. Dean launched himself against the door, shoulder first, and broke it open with the momentum.

Inside it was total chaos. All the furniture was upturned, including the beds that were standing on their heads against the wall, and many of the fittings were smashed beyond repair. And there were feathers, bloodied feathers everywhere. It was like a macabre snow globe that had just been set back down after having been shaken with the utmost force. In the middle of it all, Castiel was sitting on his haunches, hugging himself tightly and shaking visibly. Two red stripes of congealed blood glistened on his back, through and over the trench coat.

Dean immediately went for him, but just before he could touch his shoulder the angel looked at him and snarled “Don’t touch me!” with such violence that Dean recoiled in shock. A feather slowly glided in front of his face, and he grabbed it out of reflex. It had looked blindingly white in the air, but clutched between his fingers it shimmered a myriad of deep colors, from dark red to forest green through navy blue. It was beautiful and supernatural and suddenly it hit him that it was Castiel’s.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“Dean, Cas! Hurry up, we gotta leave!” Sam yelled, bursting back into the room after having brought the car up to the door. A burning smell snapped Dean out of his fugue; the electrical wiring was starting to ignite.

“Cas! Can you walk?” Sam continued, gathering their duffels. The angel looked up and nodded quickly, jerkily, lips pursed tightly and jaw clenched. He raised a hand and pointed to the ceiling. After a moment the fire alarm started blaring. Dean helped getting their stuff together; there wasn’t much lying around, only a couple of books and assorted weapons they had hidden for protection, and inside two minutes there was nothing that could tie them back to the place. The fire would take care of the rest.

Castiel staggered to his feet, arms still firmly wrapped around himself, and limped to the car, more or less falling onto the back-seat in a tightly coiled ball. All the side windows were spider-cracked and not transparent anymore. The brothers finished smashing out the front ones before jumping in themselves and making their escape.

The car tore out of the parking lot, unnoticed in the confusion of people running around and panicking. A couple of minutes later Dean chanced a look in the rear mirror, noticing with relief that no one seemed to be pursuing them. Castiel was sitting, hunched away from the back-rest and crowded to the side by the-

“Uh oh! We forgot to put the TV back in,” Dean said, finding it funny.

“Probably for the best,” Sam replied tightly. “They would have noticed it. It’s the only thing that didn’t break.”

ooooo
Part one| Part two| Part three | Part four
Part five