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.
"Yeah, well," the fact that it wasn't healing was making Dean's stomach curl up in knots and want to eject itself from his body as forcefully as possible, but he was taking it in stride. For Castiel's sake, if nothing else. "You can sleep that off, too." Except, wasn't there some thing about how you weren't supposed to sleep after a concussion? Eh. Whatever. He'd be all right, Dean decided, giving it a shrug and heading for the door of the pub to hold it open for Castiel.
When he apologized, Dean hesitated, fixing him with an intense look. The apology was about as frustrating as it was disappointing and reassuring all at once. Castiel knew where Dean was now, better than anyone, probably, after that heart-to-heart they'd had in the hospital, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. There wasn't anything anyone could do about it. He was defeated. But, Cas drawing attention back to that when he was trying to dismiss it made his jaw tense in a way that said he understood, but he sure as hell didn't want to keep going back to it.
"Yeah, I'm sure there's a lotto people feelin' sorry after what happened. I'm workin' on it, all right?" It did a good enough job of not addressing the situation while still expressing his understanding, as far as Dean was concerned. "Now, quit apologizing, you're givin' me the heebie jeebies with all this chick flick crap, let's just find a place to bunk, all right?"
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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When he apologized, Dean hesitated, fixing him with an intense look. The apology was about as frustrating as it was disappointing and reassuring all at once. Castiel knew where Dean was now, better than anyone, probably, after that heart-to-heart they'd had in the hospital, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. There wasn't anything anyone could do about it. He was defeated. But, Cas drawing attention back to that when he was trying to dismiss it made his jaw tense in a way that said he understood, but he sure as hell didn't want to keep going back to it.
"Yeah, I'm sure there's a lotto people feelin' sorry after what happened. I'm workin' on it, all right?" It did a good enough job of not addressing the situation while still expressing his understanding, as far as Dean was concerned. "Now, quit apologizing, you're givin' me the heebie jeebies with all this chick flick crap, let's just find a place to bunk, all right?"
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