It was the harsh edge of Castiel's tone that made Dean really take notice to the change in the angel's demeanor. He seemed … distracted. Shaken. It was like looking into a goddamn mirror, except for the fact that Cas wasn't supposed to look like that. He was supposed to be the one who had it under control, who was calm and collected and guided him. He was supposed to have to goddamn emotional capacity of a rock. Still, he kept from voicing it, but an apprehensive look made its way into his eyes anyway as he began to check his pockets.
The search led him to realize with a mildly frustrated look that something had happened to the EMF reader he knew had been brought with him, but he was too distracted in searching for the toy Castiel was holding up to care much about that for the moment. He'd deal with it later -- chances were it was up North somewhere by where Merlin had dropped 'em off.
In the pocket he'd shoved the whiskey bottle into, he found the communicator, and could do nothing but stare at it in confusion as he tried to turn it over and figure out how to work it. Hell, he still hadn't stepped up to the plate and joined Sam on the douchebag wagon in getting a blackberry, let alone this hot mess of what was apparently supposed to be some kinda phone. Better question, how the hell did Cas know how to work the damn thing?
He musta had better luck in the group he wound up with. He looked up at Castiel, away from the device.
"What do you mean it's not you? It's Heaven's M.O., all up and down. You needed to talk to me, why didn't you just pop in? I mean, Hell, if you saw the shit I just got done dealin' with, you'd never need Pay Per View again." His attention drifted back to fixing on the weariness and unsettled demeanor that Castiel's face was giving away, but Dean quickly shifted his look back to the communicator to try and figure it out.
Of course, for Dean, figuring it out was coming close to breaking it so far. It was better than continuing to scare at the angel, though. While he wasn't so much worried about getting his eyes burned out, he had a whole lot to worry about when it came to what could make an angel have that look. That broken look.
"I can't 'just pop in', Dean. I can't 'pop' anywhere anymore." Castiel tried to sound patient and long-suffering, as he was certain Dean was used to, but for all his attempts to sound calmer, there was still a slight edge to his voice.
He forced himself to take a deep breath, forced himself again not to let his mind get caught up in the necessity of breathing, and continued.
"I'm from your future, and, to spare you the trouble of breaking that, let me just ask: what was the last thing you remember before coming here?"
Great. It was the fun future version of Castiel. Which was about as fun as the future version of Jo, apparently, and by the looks of them both, Dean didn't do a whole lot of succeeding in the next few months. It made it hard to bring himself to try, on top of all of the tiredness he'd felt before he'd seen where the road was headed. The end of it was more exhaustion. More hopelessness. More death. He ran his free hand over his hair, blowing out a heavy sigh through his lips as he tried to take it all in. It was a lot of information in a short period of time and he wasn't sure he was anywhere near qualified to deal with it. Unfortunately, he didn't seem all that well-equipped with options, either.
"Alastair." The grim expression made it clear that this was all he wanted to mention on the subject, but after the incident with the reapers, and the incident with Anna prior to that, he realized specifying was a cruel necessity. "The hospital. And then talkin' to you, and then getting released. You were talkin' about how Uriel … " Disobedience. An act of disobedience that Castiel punished him for, maybe? If he'd done so wrongfully, maybe … Dean gave him a slow, appraising look.
"That why you can't pop anymore?" And why he looked so damn haggard, but that went without saying. It was the only explanation he could come up with. His lips tightened. Losing Castiel's angel powers was a bad sign. Either Heaven was getting weaker, or they were losing faith in Dean and Sam. Neither ended too well.
Alastair. Castiel had hoped that if Dean was far back enough to think he was still working for Heaven, that it had been before... that. Obviously, it wasn't, and there was only one word that Castiel could think of that adequately conveyed his feelings.
"...Crap."
He sighed. "No, it wasn't because of what happened to Uriel. It went higher than that. Deeper. It..." He shook his head. "Is there any alcohol in this place? This will require a great deal of explanation, and I would rather not recount all of it while completely sober."
Granted, it had taken prodigious quantities of alcohol to dull his emotions before, but that was before he exhausted his Grace. He had the feeling that it would take less, this time.
Oh, no. Oh, hell no, there was no way this was -- But, it was. Dean stared, dumbfounded, unable to process the reality that was undeniably before him. Between the flat expletive, however delicate of a word he chose, to the face that he'd legitimately asked Dean for alcohol, the hunter didn't know what to even do with himself. This was so undeniably not Cas that he felt himself go numb.
It had to be a shapeshifter, right? Some kind of trick the forest was playing on him. His hand tightened on the communicator and he considered going for one of his silver knives. But, as badly as he wanted to believe it was some monster and not the angel he knew, he knew better. The mannerisms, the tone, the flat, dismissive stare and the thinly pulled line that his lips formed. It was all Castiel. No doubt about that. So, he bit the bullet and slowly, fingers still fumbling and numb, reached up to pull the whiskey bottle out of his coat pocket and tried to act as normal as he possibly could given the situation.
"Tastes like ass. Hell, it might be ass, but it's got bite to it." He gave a nod in the direction of the bar and moved to take a seat on the stool, planting the bottle firmly on the counter top in front of the seat beside him and waiting for Castiel to join him before he started the questions. He wanted to start with the hell happened to you? but he couldn't bring himself to ask it. He didn't want to know. After the answer he'd gotten from Jo, he knew that much. He was better off not knowing for now. So, instead, he swallowed the curiosity and horror and moved on to the other feeling of dread and folded his hands in front of him on the bar, jaw set with a kind of stressed tension as he tried to work out the words.
"Don't you tell me it was for nothin'. Tell me it was worth it, Cas. Tell me I did something in all of this." He was afraid to look at Castiel's face, feeling his own heat up with the way he was getting worked up from the sheer toll this was taking on his spirit itself. First Jo, now this … he needed to find Sam. He needed to know he hadn't turned himself back into the monster he'd been in Hell for no reason. That they came out of this ahead somehow.
Castiel moved to the bar, taking the stool beside Dean and reaching for the bottle. Once, he would have mentioned the inadvisability of drinking something found in a dilapidated building, but in the end, alcohol was alcohol.
He opened the bottle and took an experimental swallow, then held the bottle up to stare at it with something that might almost be considered a grimace.
"...This tastes like urine smells." However, it did seem to be suitably alcoholic. He took another, longer drink, and set the bottle back on the bar between them.
"You did a great deal," he said. "Even when I had given up hope, you... surprised me." He stared at the counter in front of him. "No matter what else happened... Believing in you was the right choice." He meant that. Only Dean would make a stupid, suicidal last-ditch effort to reach Sam. Only Dean refused to give up, at the end.
"This is what you need to know, if we ever find a way to send you back: Heaven is not on your side. God's been absent for long enough that... My brothers just want it to be over. They want to fulfil their purpose." Those last words came out sounding harsher than usual, more bitter, as though they had been dragged over broken glass and rusted nails, but he kept going.
"I found out what they intended, and... I was unable to get you to Sam in time. They were using all of us." He gave Dean a sidelong glance. "Lilith was the final seal. Her death was what freed Lucifer. After that..." He couldn't tell Dean the rest. He couldn't tell him that Sam had willingly chosen to become Lucifer's vessel, no matter how good his intentions. If nothing else, he wasn't that cruel. And if they could stop Sam from killing Lilith, then maybe things would change. Maybe he wouldn't have to be this... thing, neither wholly angel nor wholly human.
You can't change destiny.
But if that was true, why were they here?
"After that," he continued, "I wasn't precisely on speaking terms with my old superiors. And without the connection to Heaven..." He shrugged. "My Grace only went so far."
"Yeah, well, they're all outta bitch drinks. Maybe Sammy'll be able to help you out when we hunt --" Hunt was a bad word to use. Hunt was actually a legitimate possibility, now that there were other hunters here, and given what Sam was turning himself into. An unpleasant look drew itself over Dean's expression and it darkened. "When we find him. 'Til then, you make due with what we got." The fact that Castiel could even discern how liquor was supposed to taste had Dean's stomach churning, but he was trying not to focus on it. He was trying to just pretend that it was the alcohol taste that made Castiel cringe, not the fact that it tasted like shit and the seven million different kinds of bacteria that had probably crawled their way in over the past however long this damn town had been deserted for.
While Castiel embellished the story, leaving out as many key details as possible, a fact that didn't go altogether unnoticed by Dean, the hunter remained quiet. Morose. He tried to take it all in. Heaven wasn't supposed to be the bad guys. As juvenile as that sounded, he just couldn't wrap his head around it. They'd screwed him. They'd used him and they'd set him on Lilith and they'd tricked Sammy, too, letting him keep on spiraling down that dark rabbit hole in an attempt to get the bitch's head on a stick. Hell, with the bitch whisperer attaching herself to his hip, who knew if he'd even reel himself in if he knew Lilith was a seal at this point. He'd probably want her dead anyway. The harshness of his tone when he told Dean it was what he'd wish for if he had the chance made Dean's blood run cold.
It was barely his brother anymore, much as he tried to tell himself it was still the same old Sammy he'd left behind. It wasn't. He'd changed, and he'd become something … different. Something unsettling. It had just taken a damn siren to get him to admit it.
In comparison to knowing that his brother split Lilith open and broke the final seal -- freed Lucifer, through the ritual that Dean himself started, the revelation that God was indeed a part of this seemed minuscule in comparison. Unimportant. This fact that should be life changing, should be invigorating and evangelizing, just made Dean sigh and scrub a hand over his face, wanting to be anywhere but in this moment. Willing himself back to the days when it was just him, Sam and their dad. When things were easier and their biggest concern was Azazel.
But, those days were far off now. Things hadn't been that easy in decades.
"So, what you're sayin' is, soon as I get back, I've gotta cut off Heaven. Fight the whole damn thing, stop their plan, and keep Sammy from goin' off the deep end. And I don't even have God on my side? Where the hell is He? If His goddamn army feels like He's far enough gone that they can throw a goddamn party and trash the house while He's out, sounds like we just gotta bring Dad home early so He can tell 'em all to shove it." He was growing from tired to belligerent. How the hell did it become his problem that God had lost control of His children? Where the hell was God when Dean was being tortured for thirty years in the Pit, getting ready to rip open the first seal like it was some fucking Christmas present?
"How the hell can you expect me to fight this?" He finally fixed a hard, unfeeling gaze on Castiel. For all of the firmness and anger present in his eyes, it was filled moreso with pleading. He needed help. He couldn't do it on his own, he didn't even think he could do it all. Not even when it just meant fighting the goddamn demons, and now he was supposed to fight Heaven too? Dean settled for a slow shake of his head, the angst returning to his expression, his face twitching as he tried to force himself to hold it all in. He looked back down at the bar, at his hands on top of it. "Can't do it, Cas. I can't do it. It's too much."
Castiel tried to remain quiet, but when Dean started going on about God...
"I tried," Castiel said. Nearly shouted, in fact, the words too harsh and too loud, but after all he had been through, the mention of his Father was too much. "God. Doesn't. Care."
For a moment, he was silent, his breath too loud in his ears. Then he went on, more quietly, but the words were still coming too fast, forcing their way past his lips in tense, diamond hard syllables. "After Lucifer was freed, I searched for Him. I had died. He brought me back. He saved you, saved Sam, got you away from Lucifer when the final seal was broken. I thought He would help us. I believed in--" The next breath hissed between his teeth, and he realized, belatedly, that his hands had clenched into fists on the bar.
"...He doesn't feel it's His problem," he said, biting off each word.
He reached for the bottle again. One side effect of losing most of his Grace, it would seem, was that he could feel the alcohol working already. It still wasn't enough -- he doubted anything ever would be -- but it dulled the edges of these still-foreign emotions, and for the moment... Like Dean said, he'd make do.
There were other things he needed to say, though. He didn't come here just to talk about his Father and drink himself into a stupor.
Well, perhaps the second one.
"You're not the only one fighting," he said. "You... will have me. And Sam, and Bobby Singer. The burden isn't yours to bear alone."
It was inadequate, he knew, but it was all the comfort he had to offer.
As soon as Cas snapped, Dean found his jaw snapping shut out of sheer surprise. There was absolutely no way this was the same Castiel who had pulled him outta the pit, stayed with him and helped him through trying to protect the seals. That Castiel was even-tempered, pulled together. Doubt was hard for him to manage, even on the strangest of orders, and he didn't feel that he even required full understanding of the why's. That much, Dean knew from Halloween. But, here was Castiel, staring him down like he was a heathen for assuming that God would help them.
It was terrifying, and just the sight of how far the angel had fallen was enough to chill Dean to his very bones. More than that, though, he felt for the angel. Having your father disappoint you in a key way, constantly following his orders and seeking him out only to find he didn't need to be found … Dean slowly felt shock melt into understanding. He could only imagine the 'I told you so' that Anna had shoved in his face for it all.
He sounded almost meek, humbled by the outburst. But not at all encouraged. In fact, he felt the hopelessness settle itself deeper in his stomach. This was where the road ended. He didn't have the means or the strength to fight Heaven at this point. Thy Will would be done, and the whole of Earth would be screwed because Dean couldn't take a little rough-housing from Alastair.
"Fine. Fuck Him. Fuck the big guy, but Sam can't know," he muttered with a kind of finality. "Don't you dare tell Sam that He doesn't give a damn." For all the hope that Sam had in the righteousness of the angels and how disappointed that had already been, he wasn't going to let his brother's faith in the Father be shaken too. He deserved that much. "We tell him about Lilith. We don't tell him a damn thing about God bailin'." If he didn't already know. At this rate, Dean was pretty damn sure he'd wind up bein' the one behind the times.
While that was easy to be determined about, Dean found it hard to find the right words to express his other sentiments. To express that Sam and Bobby and Castiel wouldn't be enough. To express that they couldn't even be sure Castiel would believe him and leave Heaven, go against orders, and fight it with them. Not with the unwavering faith Dean knew he had.
"It's not gonna be that easy," he chided. "Havin' help, that don't make it easier. It makes it a helluva lot harder when you got that many people to keep an eye on. You think you'll come crashin' down from Heaven just on my say so? We got Anna," patron saint of self-hate. She'd fit in real well. Dean shook his head, trying to work it out in his head.
"Gonna need to find lore on it to convince Sam. Lord knows he ain't gonna take you sons of bitches at your word. You might think it's real simple to fix one thing and keep it all from happening, but what the hell do you think I've been doin'? Even if me 'n Sammy don't do it, somebody is gonna blow that bitch open with an angel on their shoulder. What do you want us to do, Cas? Are we supposed to play bodyguards to the demon that sent me to Hell?"
"I never said it would be easy," Castiel told Dean, sounding almost reproachful. "I only said that you're not alone. I'm certain trust isn't easy right now, but..." He sighed. "I have seen you do incredible things, Dean. And Sam..." There was a pause, as he tried to decide just how much he should tell Dean.
"...Shortly before I came here, I saw Sam single-handedly rescue a large number of innocent people from a building where someone had triggered a Croatoan outbreak... And if not for him and Bobby, the infection would have gone nationwide in a matter of days. You're both capable of a great deal. More than either of you know right now."
He could tell Dean about the demon blood, and part of him thinks he should, but... He would talk to Sam first, try to convince him to be honest with Dean, to seek help for his addiction to demon blood. He just didn't know how successful he'd be in that attempt.
"Order does matter with certain seals. You had to break the first seal before any others could be broken. You're where it had to begin. And Lilith is where it has to end. 'The first demon will be the last seal.' If you can kill her before she's ready for you, that should be enough to stop it... Though I suggest you verify that with Chuck, if you can." He pauses, and blinks, as if only just remembering something. "...You haven't met Chuck yet. He's a Prophet of the Lord. And a novelist."
He sighed. "As for me... I'll give you something to tell me. Something that I would trust." It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was what he had.
It hurt something inside his chest to see Dean appearing so defeated -- it had hurt a year ago, as well, but this was much worse. He really was becoming more human. He took another drink, hoping the thing that was hurting would stop, but it didn't seem to help. He had to find something, some tiny scrap of information, something that would give Dean hope.
But then, hope was a luxury he himself no longer had. He wondered, as he offered Dean the bottle again, if his careful attempts to give Dean hope constituted a lie, in that case. He really wasn't certain.
Somehow, while it was in no way surprising, hearing of Sam and Bobby's accomplishments with the croats both reassured and terrified him. Things had gotten bad enough that not only was there a Croatoan outbreak, but they'd had to handle it themselves. And Sam had done it without a second thought to the victims this time. Even if Dean hadn't been there to see it, he knew it was true from the tone of Castiel's voice and rescue wasn't the word for taking care of someone who got infected. The only way you could rescue one of the infect was to shoot the bastards in the face.
Still, Dean found it within himself to give an understanding nod as he worked over the information. It reminded him of how much he'd had to take in as far as new information went when he'd dug himself out of the shallow grave Sam had buried him in after forty years in Hell. Things had changed, irrevocably, and catching up was damn hard. It was a lot to take in. This prophet, the existence of a prophet, and the need for his whole damn mission to be revamped. With a sigh, he reached a hand out toward Cas, curling his fingers in a gesture that demanded the angel hand over the bottle.
"Yeah, well, when you come up with something for me to tell past-you, you lemme know. 'Til then, we've got enough on our plate convincing Sam of this shit without tellin' him everything you just told me." In fact, Dean really didn't want Sam hearing even half of that. The degree to which his own faith had been shaken would be minuscule in comparison to what it would do to his brother, and regardless of how much he'd grown, Dean would always see him as the tinier, less capable brother in need of protection. Protection from monsters, protection from the hard truths, and in some cases, protection from himself.
"On top of that, we got keepin' Jo out of this to focus on, and we've gotta find a way to gank the bitch in the first place. If that knife didn't make Alastair blink, you can sure as hell bet Lilith's not gonna bat a one of her little girl eyelashes if we stick her with it." He looked over slowly, scrutinizing. There was a kind of apprehension, like he didn't really want to ask the question because he was afraid of the answer, in the way the muscles in his jaw twitched as he stared Castiel hard in the eyes. "How'd we manage it in the first place?"
Castiel handed the bottle over willingly enough, listening to the rest of what Dean had to say without comment. When Dean asked how Lilith was killed, though, he shook his head.
"I believe you know already." It had been Sam, of course, using the demon powers Ruby had been training him in. "There may be another way, though: Lilith isn't the one who has the Colt. Her lieutenant does -- a demon by the name of Crowley. It won't work on Lucifer himself, but it might work on her."
Of course, Crowley wouldn't be likely to give it up so early in the game... Especially not when Sam had a way to kill Lilith. Still, it was more information than Dean had possessed before.
At the blatant reference to Sam and his freaky psychic whatever, Dean took and enthusiastic gulp from the bottle. God, it tasted like ass, but that was the farthest thing from his mind for the moment. In fact, the fact that it would probably be unpleasantly forcing its way back out of his esophagus in under an hour was nowhere near the same realm as his heavy thoughts for the time being, as painful as it promised to be when that time came. Instead, he was trying to pretend there was any way he could come to accept the idea of Sam using that shit.
Luckily, at the mention of the Colt and the name of the demon holding it, he didn't have to. In fact, Dean perked straight the fuck up at that, screwing the cap of the bottle back on. Sure, it didn't work on Lucifer, but if it worked on his little bitch, there was no need for it to. There was a light at the end of the tunnel -- a possibility. Something that Dean could hope for that would mean him putting an end to the Apocalypse he'd set in motion before it even started.
"Well, it beats the hell outta lettin' Sam keep on like he's been doing. You think the knife'll work on Crowley?" It hadn't even occurred to him to try and pry that gun from his evil hands in a legitimate way. No, better to kill the bastard, grab it and go. Dean liked having a plan. Even if they needed to get outta this mess first, he liked knowing there was something that would work, even though he could guess that the knife wouldn't do jack where Lilith was concerned now that he'd seen how well it worked on Alastair.
"It might," Castiel said, deep in thought. "But Crowley is very powerful, and very..." he gropes for a word "...cunning. Killing him won't be easy, but you do have one advantage: he may be the one demon who isn't looking forward to the apocalypse. If the direct approach fails, you may be able to negotiate for the Colt, though I doubt it will be as easy as it was when you approached him in my own timeline. Right now, he has a great deal more to lose."
He didn't expect that Dean would take well to the notion of a demon being out to help, no matter what Castiel told him. But at the very least, he could give Dean what information he had.
...The room was somewhat fuzzy. That was odd.
"I think I'm starting to become... inebriated," he said, after another moment's thought. "Last time, it took significantly more alcohol than this. Of course, last time, I still had enough Grace to make things like eating and sleeping unnecessary. I don't like sleeping," he continued, somewhat peevishly. "I don't understand how you humans can do this. You're unconscious for hours at a time. And while you're unconscious you hallucinate. And drool. And this is normal for you."
Yes, Castiel was definitely starting to feel the effects of the alcohol.
That same unsettling discomfort washed over him at Castiel's words as he'd felt when the angel had snapped in anger -- the overall rejection that he felt of the reality that this was Castiel. This was the same angel he'd known and come to accept as the hard-ass, uptight son of a bitch that followed orders and, Dean aside, really couldn't give much of a damn what happened to humans on the individual level. The one who didn't understand his references to obscure mullet rock and John Wayne movies.
And now he was seated beside him talking about what happened when you slept and sounding a lot like the ramblings of a buzzed frat boy. His stomach turned over as he realized that Castiel's rambling was all centered around one of the three things it never should have been. Outside of, well, getting hammered and eating, sleeping was the one thing an angel was never gonna be caught dead doing.
Yet somewhere along the way, Cas had done it, and now he was well on his way to drunk talking about it. Dean kept the cringe inward and pulled himself off is barstool, slapping a hand on Castiel's shoulder as he pocketed the bottle again.
"Yeah, well, I saw some cabins out back, maybe we can find you a pillow to drool on so you'll start makin' sense again when you sleep off the damn hangover this place put everybody in." And then he'd hopefully no longer feel it necessary to enumerate the extent of his lacking Grace to Dean who felt the sharp stabs of guilt in his gut with each word. He knew Castiel didn't mean to accuse him, but, well. Dean took all the responsibility on himself, anyway. Indirectly or not, he'd caused it, and now he was the one who got to be disturbed by the consequences.
"Pillows are... nice," Castiel agreed. "I think I may have damaged my head shortly after I came here." He ran his fingers through his hair, his brow furrowing slightly as he encountered the first of two rather pronounced lumps.
"Yes," he concluded. "A pillow would be very good, if one could be found."
Dean was unhappy, and he was unsure of how to remedy it. But then, Dean was often unhappy. Perhaps Castiel himself made Dean unhappy. He was the one who asked Dean for things no one should ever have the right to ask for, things anyone else would refuse to do, if they were even capable of them. And yet Dean did those things, every time. Dean bore up under impossible burdens, and then punished himself for not doing more.
And now Castiel was wrong. Too human. Dean... had needed someone to be strong for him, he remembered. Dean had needed someone to be sure of what was right, but now he was here, with something that barely qualified as an angel.
The search led him to realize with a mildly frustrated look that something had happened to the EMF reader he knew had been brought with him, but he was too distracted in searching for the toy Castiel was holding up to care much about that for the moment. He'd deal with it later -- chances were it was up North somewhere by where Merlin had dropped 'em off.
In the pocket he'd shoved the whiskey bottle into, he found the communicator, and could do nothing but stare at it in confusion as he tried to turn it over and figure out how to work it. Hell, he still hadn't stepped up to the plate and joined Sam on the douchebag wagon in getting a blackberry, let alone this hot mess of what was apparently supposed to be some kinda phone. Better question, how the hell did Cas know how to work the damn thing?
He musta had better luck in the group he wound up with. He looked up at Castiel, away from the device.
"What do you mean it's not you? It's Heaven's M.O., all up and down. You needed to talk to me, why didn't you just pop in? I mean, Hell, if you saw the shit I just got done dealin' with, you'd never need Pay Per View again." His attention drifted back to fixing on the weariness and unsettled demeanor that Castiel's face was giving away, but Dean quickly shifted his look back to the communicator to try and figure it out.
Of course, for Dean, figuring it out was coming close to breaking it so far. It was better than continuing to scare at the angel, though. While he wasn't so much worried about getting his eyes burned out, he had a whole lot to worry about when it came to what could make an angel have that look. That broken look.
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He forced himself to take a deep breath, forced himself again not to let his mind get caught up in the necessity of breathing, and continued.
"I'm from your future, and, to spare you the trouble of breaking that, let me just ask: what was the last thing you remember before coming here?"
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"Alastair." The grim expression made it clear that this was all he wanted to mention on the subject, but after the incident with the reapers, and the incident with Anna prior to that, he realized specifying was a cruel necessity. "The hospital. And then talkin' to you, and then getting released. You were talkin' about how Uriel … " Disobedience. An act of disobedience that Castiel punished him for, maybe? If he'd done so wrongfully, maybe … Dean gave him a slow, appraising look.
"That why you can't pop anymore?" And why he looked so damn haggard, but that went without saying. It was the only explanation he could come up with. His lips tightened. Losing Castiel's angel powers was a bad sign. Either Heaven was getting weaker, or they were losing faith in Dean and Sam. Neither ended too well.
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"...Crap."
He sighed. "No, it wasn't because of what happened to Uriel. It went higher than that. Deeper. It..." He shook his head. "Is there any alcohol in this place? This will require a great deal of explanation, and I would rather not recount all of it while completely sober."
Granted, it had taken prodigious quantities of alcohol to dull his emotions before, but that was before he exhausted his Grace. He had the feeling that it would take less, this time.
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It had to be a shapeshifter, right? Some kind of trick the forest was playing on him. His hand tightened on the communicator and he considered going for one of his silver knives. But, as badly as he wanted to believe it was some monster and not the angel he knew, he knew better. The mannerisms, the tone, the flat, dismissive stare and the thinly pulled line that his lips formed. It was all Castiel. No doubt about that. So, he bit the bullet and slowly, fingers still fumbling and numb, reached up to pull the whiskey bottle out of his coat pocket and tried to act as normal as he possibly could given the situation.
"Tastes like ass. Hell, it might be ass, but it's got bite to it." He gave a nod in the direction of the bar and moved to take a seat on the stool, planting the bottle firmly on the counter top in front of the seat beside him and waiting for Castiel to join him before he started the questions. He wanted to start with the hell happened to you? but he couldn't bring himself to ask it. He didn't want to know. After the answer he'd gotten from Jo, he knew that much. He was better off not knowing for now. So, instead, he swallowed the curiosity and horror and moved on to the other feeling of dread and folded his hands in front of him on the bar, jaw set with a kind of stressed tension as he tried to work out the words.
"Don't you tell me it was for nothin'. Tell me it was worth it, Cas. Tell me I did something in all of this." He was afraid to look at Castiel's face, feeling his own heat up with the way he was getting worked up from the sheer toll this was taking on his spirit itself. First Jo, now this … he needed to find Sam. He needed to know he hadn't turned himself back into the monster he'd been in Hell for no reason. That they came out of this ahead somehow.
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He opened the bottle and took an experimental swallow, then held the bottle up to stare at it with something that might almost be considered a grimace.
"...This tastes like urine smells." However, it did seem to be suitably alcoholic. He took another, longer drink, and set the bottle back on the bar between them.
"You did a great deal," he said. "Even when I had given up hope, you... surprised me." He stared at the counter in front of him. "No matter what else happened... Believing in you was the right choice." He meant that. Only Dean would make a stupid, suicidal last-ditch effort to reach Sam. Only Dean refused to give up, at the end.
"This is what you need to know, if we ever find a way to send you back: Heaven is not on your side. God's been absent for long enough that... My brothers just want it to be over. They want to fulfil their purpose." Those last words came out sounding harsher than usual, more bitter, as though they had been dragged over broken glass and rusted nails, but he kept going.
"I found out what they intended, and... I was unable to get you to Sam in time. They were using all of us." He gave Dean a sidelong glance. "Lilith was the final seal. Her death was what freed Lucifer. After that..." He couldn't tell Dean the rest. He couldn't tell him that Sam had willingly chosen to become Lucifer's vessel, no matter how good his intentions. If nothing else, he wasn't that cruel. And if they could stop Sam from killing Lilith, then maybe things would change. Maybe he wouldn't have to be this... thing, neither wholly angel nor wholly human.
You can't change destiny.
But if that was true, why were they here?
"After that," he continued, "I wasn't precisely on speaking terms with my old superiors. And without the connection to Heaven..." He shrugged. "My Grace only went so far."
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While Castiel embellished the story, leaving out as many key details as possible, a fact that didn't go altogether unnoticed by Dean, the hunter remained quiet. Morose. He tried to take it all in. Heaven wasn't supposed to be the bad guys. As juvenile as that sounded, he just couldn't wrap his head around it. They'd screwed him. They'd used him and they'd set him on Lilith and they'd tricked Sammy, too, letting him keep on spiraling down that dark rabbit hole in an attempt to get the bitch's head on a stick. Hell, with the bitch whisperer attaching herself to his hip, who knew if he'd even reel himself in if he knew Lilith was a seal at this point. He'd probably want her dead anyway. The harshness of his tone when he told Dean it was what he'd wish for if he had the chance made Dean's blood run cold.
It was barely his brother anymore, much as he tried to tell himself it was still the same old Sammy he'd left behind. It wasn't. He'd changed, and he'd become something … different. Something unsettling. It had just taken a damn siren to get him to admit it.
In comparison to knowing that his brother split Lilith open and broke the final seal -- freed Lucifer, through the ritual that Dean himself started, the revelation that God was indeed a part of this seemed minuscule in comparison. Unimportant. This fact that should be life changing, should be invigorating and evangelizing, just made Dean sigh and scrub a hand over his face, wanting to be anywhere but in this moment. Willing himself back to the days when it was just him, Sam and their dad. When things were easier and their biggest concern was Azazel.
But, those days were far off now. Things hadn't been that easy in decades.
"So, what you're sayin' is, soon as I get back, I've gotta cut off Heaven. Fight the whole damn thing, stop their plan, and keep Sammy from goin' off the deep end. And I don't even have God on my side? Where the hell is He? If His goddamn army feels like He's far enough gone that they can throw a goddamn party and trash the house while He's out, sounds like we just gotta bring Dad home early so He can tell 'em all to shove it." He was growing from tired to belligerent. How the hell did it become his problem that God had lost control of His children? Where the hell was God when Dean was being tortured for thirty years in the Pit, getting ready to rip open the first seal like it was some fucking Christmas present?
"How the hell can you expect me to fight this?" He finally fixed a hard, unfeeling gaze on Castiel. For all of the firmness and anger present in his eyes, it was filled moreso with pleading. He needed help. He couldn't do it on his own, he didn't even think he could do it all. Not even when it just meant fighting the goddamn demons, and now he was supposed to fight Heaven too? Dean settled for a slow shake of his head, the angst returning to his expression, his face twitching as he tried to force himself to hold it all in. He looked back down at the bar, at his hands on top of it. "Can't do it, Cas. I can't do it. It's too much."
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"I tried," Castiel said. Nearly shouted, in fact, the words too harsh and too loud, but after all he had been through, the mention of his Father was too much. "God. Doesn't. Care."
For a moment, he was silent, his breath too loud in his ears. Then he went on, more quietly, but the words were still coming too fast, forcing their way past his lips in tense, diamond hard syllables. "After Lucifer was freed, I searched for Him. I had died. He brought me back. He saved you, saved Sam, got you away from Lucifer when the final seal was broken. I thought He would help us. I believed in--" The next breath hissed between his teeth, and he realized, belatedly, that his hands had clenched into fists on the bar.
"...He doesn't feel it's His problem," he said, biting off each word.
He reached for the bottle again. One side effect of losing most of his Grace, it would seem, was that he could feel the alcohol working already. It still wasn't enough -- he doubted anything ever would be -- but it dulled the edges of these still-foreign emotions, and for the moment... Like Dean said, he'd make do.
There were other things he needed to say, though. He didn't come here just to talk about his Father and drink himself into a stupor.
Well, perhaps the second one.
"You're not the only one fighting," he said. "You... will have me. And Sam, and Bobby Singer. The burden isn't yours to bear alone."
It was inadequate, he knew, but it was all the comfort he had to offer.
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It was terrifying, and just the sight of how far the angel had fallen was enough to chill Dean to his very bones. More than that, though, he felt for the angel. Having your father disappoint you in a key way, constantly following his orders and seeking him out only to find he didn't need to be found … Dean slowly felt shock melt into understanding. He could only imagine the 'I told you so' that Anna had shoved in his face for it all.
He sounded almost meek, humbled by the outburst. But not at all encouraged. In fact, he felt the hopelessness settle itself deeper in his stomach. This was where the road ended. He didn't have the means or the strength to fight Heaven at this point. Thy Will would be done, and the whole of Earth would be screwed because Dean couldn't take a little rough-housing from Alastair.
"Fine. Fuck Him. Fuck the big guy, but Sam can't know," he muttered with a kind of finality. "Don't you dare tell Sam that He doesn't give a damn." For all the hope that Sam had in the righteousness of the angels and how disappointed that had already been, he wasn't going to let his brother's faith in the Father be shaken too. He deserved that much. "We tell him about Lilith. We don't tell him a damn thing about God bailin'." If he didn't already know. At this rate, Dean was pretty damn sure he'd wind up bein' the one behind the times.
While that was easy to be determined about, Dean found it hard to find the right words to express his other sentiments. To express that Sam and Bobby and Castiel wouldn't be enough. To express that they couldn't even be sure Castiel would believe him and leave Heaven, go against orders, and fight it with them. Not with the unwavering faith Dean knew he had.
"It's not gonna be that easy," he chided. "Havin' help, that don't make it easier. It makes it a helluva lot harder when you got that many people to keep an eye on. You think you'll come crashin' down from Heaven just on my say so? We got Anna," patron saint of self-hate. She'd fit in real well. Dean shook his head, trying to work it out in his head.
"Gonna need to find lore on it to convince Sam. Lord knows he ain't gonna take you sons of bitches at your word. You might think it's real simple to fix one thing and keep it all from happening, but what the hell do you think I've been doin'? Even if me 'n Sammy don't do it, somebody is gonna blow that bitch open with an angel on their shoulder. What do you want us to do, Cas? Are we supposed to play bodyguards to the demon that sent me to Hell?"
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"...Shortly before I came here, I saw Sam single-handedly rescue a large number of innocent people from a building where someone had triggered a Croatoan outbreak... And if not for him and Bobby, the infection would have gone nationwide in a matter of days. You're both capable of a great deal. More than either of you know right now."
He could tell Dean about the demon blood, and part of him thinks he should, but... He would talk to Sam first, try to convince him to be honest with Dean, to seek help for his addiction to demon blood. He just didn't know how successful he'd be in that attempt.
"Order does matter with certain seals. You had to break the first seal before any others could be broken. You're where it had to begin. And Lilith is where it has to end. 'The first demon will be the last seal.' If you can kill her before she's ready for you, that should be enough to stop it... Though I suggest you verify that with Chuck, if you can." He pauses, and blinks, as if only just remembering something. "...You haven't met Chuck yet. He's a Prophet of the Lord. And a novelist."
He sighed. "As for me... I'll give you something to tell me. Something that I would trust." It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was what he had.
It hurt something inside his chest to see Dean appearing so defeated -- it had hurt a year ago, as well, but this was much worse. He really was becoming more human. He took another drink, hoping the thing that was hurting would stop, but it didn't seem to help. He had to find something, some tiny scrap of information, something that would give Dean hope.
But then, hope was a luxury he himself no longer had. He wondered, as he offered Dean the bottle again, if his careful attempts to give Dean hope constituted a lie, in that case. He really wasn't certain.
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Still, Dean found it within himself to give an understanding nod as he worked over the information. It reminded him of how much he'd had to take in as far as new information went when he'd dug himself out of the shallow grave Sam had buried him in after forty years in Hell. Things had changed, irrevocably, and catching up was damn hard. It was a lot to take in. This prophet, the existence of a prophet, and the need for his whole damn mission to be revamped. With a sigh, he reached a hand out toward Cas, curling his fingers in a gesture that demanded the angel hand over the bottle.
"Yeah, well, when you come up with something for me to tell past-you, you lemme know. 'Til then, we've got enough on our plate convincing Sam of this shit without tellin' him everything you just told me." In fact, Dean really didn't want Sam hearing even half of that. The degree to which his own faith had been shaken would be minuscule in comparison to what it would do to his brother, and regardless of how much he'd grown, Dean would always see him as the tinier, less capable brother in need of protection. Protection from monsters, protection from the hard truths, and in some cases, protection from himself.
"On top of that, we got keepin' Jo out of this to focus on, and we've gotta find a way to gank the bitch in the first place. If that knife didn't make Alastair blink, you can sure as hell bet Lilith's not gonna bat a one of her little girl eyelashes if we stick her with it." He looked over slowly, scrutinizing. There was a kind of apprehension, like he didn't really want to ask the question because he was afraid of the answer, in the way the muscles in his jaw twitched as he stared Castiel hard in the eyes. "How'd we manage it in the first place?"
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"I believe you know already." It had been Sam, of course, using the demon powers Ruby had been training him in. "There may be another way, though: Lilith isn't the one who has the Colt. Her lieutenant does -- a demon by the name of Crowley. It won't work on Lucifer himself, but it might work on her."
Of course, Crowley wouldn't be likely to give it up so early in the game... Especially not when Sam had a way to kill Lilith. Still, it was more information than Dean had possessed before.
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Luckily, at the mention of the Colt and the name of the demon holding it, he didn't have to. In fact, Dean perked straight the fuck up at that, screwing the cap of the bottle back on. Sure, it didn't work on Lucifer, but if it worked on his little bitch, there was no need for it to. There was a light at the end of the tunnel -- a possibility. Something that Dean could hope for that would mean him putting an end to the Apocalypse he'd set in motion before it even started.
"Well, it beats the hell outta lettin' Sam keep on like he's been doing. You think the knife'll work on Crowley?" It hadn't even occurred to him to try and pry that gun from his evil hands in a legitimate way. No, better to kill the bastard, grab it and go. Dean liked having a plan. Even if they needed to get outta this mess first, he liked knowing there was something that would work, even though he could guess that the knife wouldn't do jack where Lilith was concerned now that he'd seen how well it worked on Alastair.
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He didn't expect that Dean would take well to the notion of a demon being out to help, no matter what Castiel told him. But at the very least, he could give Dean what information he had.
...The room was somewhat fuzzy. That was odd.
"I think I'm starting to become... inebriated," he said, after another moment's thought. "Last time, it took significantly more alcohol than this. Of course, last time, I still had enough Grace to make things like eating and sleeping unnecessary. I don't like sleeping," he continued, somewhat peevishly. "I don't understand how you humans can do this. You're unconscious for hours at a time. And while you're unconscious you hallucinate. And drool. And this is normal for you."
Yes, Castiel was definitely starting to feel the effects of the alcohol.
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And now he was seated beside him talking about what happened when you slept and sounding a lot like the ramblings of a buzzed frat boy. His stomach turned over as he realized that Castiel's rambling was all centered around one of the three things it never should have been. Outside of, well, getting hammered and eating, sleeping was the one thing an angel was never gonna be caught dead doing.
Yet somewhere along the way, Cas had done it, and now he was well on his way to drunk talking about it. Dean kept the cringe inward and pulled himself off is barstool, slapping a hand on Castiel's shoulder as he pocketed the bottle again.
"Yeah, well, I saw some cabins out back, maybe we can find you a pillow to drool on so you'll start makin' sense again when you sleep off the damn hangover this place put everybody in." And then he'd hopefully no longer feel it necessary to enumerate the extent of his lacking Grace to Dean who felt the sharp stabs of guilt in his gut with each word. He knew Castiel didn't mean to accuse him, but, well. Dean took all the responsibility on himself, anyway. Indirectly or not, he'd caused it, and now he was the one who got to be disturbed by the consequences.
And boy, was he ever disturbed.
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"Yes," he concluded. "A pillow would be very good, if one could be found."
Dean was unhappy, and he was unsure of how to remedy it. But then, Dean was often unhappy. Perhaps Castiel himself made Dean unhappy. He was the one who asked Dean for things no one should ever have the right to ask for, things anyone else would refuse to do, if they were even capable of them. And yet Dean did those things, every time. Dean bore up under impossible burdens, and then punished himself for not doing more.
And now Castiel was wrong. Too human. Dean... had needed someone to be strong for him, he remembered. Dean had needed someone to be sure of what was right, but now he was here, with something that barely qualified as an angel.
"...I'm sorry."
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