DCBB - Death Comes for Mr. Winchester - CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The complete lack of noise is what woke him this time. When Dean managed to wrench his tired eyes open, it was to be greeted once again by an unnaturally dark room. He flicked his gaze to the alarm clock and it was just a shadowed square shape on the table.
“Fuck.”
He pulled himself up slowly and cautiously. With a quick glance back over his shoulder he confirmed that if Castiel was in the room, he couldn’t see him. Dean flicked on a pair of jeans and a soft black t-shirt before stepping quietly towards the door to the bedroom.
“Cas. If you can hear me… it’s happening again.”
Dean concentrated as hard as he could to try and detect some sort of response from the angel, but there was nothing. No sound. No movement. No touch. He had to have faith that Cas was there beside him.
“Wake the others, if you can hear me, get everyone up and mobilized.”
Stepping as quietly and stealthily as possible, Dean made his way out into the hallway just like last time. However today he didn’t waste time stopping, just move immediately to the spiral staircase and took a deep breath before he began his decent. Same as the previous time, the cabin was washed out in deep shadows and deafening silence. Dean growled under his breath and rolled his shoulders a couple times to loosen up. He jerked his hand out palm up and began to form his tiny sun, the instant feeling of déjà-vu doing nothing but pissing him off at the unoriginality of it all. He tossed the little ball of light up into the air above his head so that he was free to keep his hands clear.
The ex-hunter shifted from foot to foot for a couple moments, hoping he had given Cas enough time to gather everyone together. Not that he could really tell if they were there at all, he was just hoping like hell that they were.
“Okay. Okay. Right. Why put it off for any longer, huh?”
He took a deep breath and opened the door slowly to step out onto the porch. There were shuffles of sound all around the yard and he could make out the zombie-like movements of the reapers inching closer and closer to the cabin. Dean sighed and wiggled his fingers nervously. He needed a weapon if the reapers attacked, but he didn’t want to damage them too much, his new corndog buddy might not appreciate that. Finally he conjured up a heavy metal baseball bat into his hand and gripped the handle tight enough to hear the leather strain. He took that final step off the porch so that his feet hit the hard packed dirt of the yard and his toes dug into the earth.
“Come on, guys. Your big scary daddy misses you and wants you to come home. Promptly, please.”
The reapers all took another step forward and Dean sighed.
“Well, I tried.”
“Indeed you did, sweat pea.”
Dean could feel his lips pull up in a snarl at the voice coming from the shadows in front of him. Crowley, decked out in his typical solid black suit, stepped into the circle of light created by Dean’s miniature sun. The demon was twirling the angel blade in his hand like a baton and looking smugger than was even usual for him. Dean grunted.
“What’s the haps, demon-douche? Are we really doing this again? You’ve never seemed the type to repeat yourself.”
Crowley grinned wide and wolfish and he shrugged a shoulder and twirled the blade.
“True enough. But see … it’s more interesting this time… because you can see me, and they can see me, and they can see you, but you can’t see them. It’s all a bit like a game of Marco Polo, but with slightly more bloodshed and mayhem, don’t you think?”
Dean made sure to appear as nonchalant as possible when he shrugged indifferently.
“Never was big on it. So what’s with the sudden attention, little man? You’d left us alone, we’d left you alone… I figured we had all gotten back to minding our own business. Then you had to kidnap the reapers from the horseman of Death. Which takes some serious balls, might I add. To what? Sit here and have a tea party? Why are you bothering with us?”
The demon clucked his tongue and turned to saunter around Dean in a slow circle.
“Well, to be quite honest with you, it was getting a little boring down below. All that screaming and maiming and torturing. Nothing but work, work, work for days on end. So when a very reliable source informed me that dear old Daddy was tied up indefinitely with a somewhat delicate situation and that the Heavenly Host was being left unsupervised… I figured, why not? Let’s stir up a little fun.”
“So you stole the scythe from the Grim Reaper? That’s a little bit of fun to you?”
Crowley cackled gleefully.
“Of course it is! I knew I had to do something a little over the top to impress my dear Moose and Squirrel! Especially now that our precious little Squirrel has leveled up and gained himself his very own Huey, Dewy and Louie angel squad. No mediocre little scheme for my boys, no, no, no. I hope you approve.”
Dean snorted and twirled the bat in his hand a couple times purely for dramatic effect.
“Not really. So where did you appropriate the angel blade from?”
The demon sighed and twisted his lips into a mocking pout.
“Sad little creature, really. His vessel was a squeaky voiced teenager working at some sort of wiener hut atrocity. I did him a favor really, I think.”
Something deep inside of Dean’s chest screamed and howled in agony. Crowley was mocking the murder of an angel. An angel that would have someday been under Dean’s protection. Dean’s fold. His flock. He growled deep in his throat and with a burst of light and power, his two sets of wings flared to life from his shoulder blades and spread out wide and threatening. Crowley practically howled with glee.
“So I wasn’t imagining it last time! Look at you, Squirrel! A budding little wee godling near bursting at the seams to take up the job, eh?”
Dean snarled and took a step towards the demon.
“Ah, ah, ah … let’s not be hasty, darling. I have you outnumbered and outgunned, remember?”
He wiggled the angel blade in Dean’s direction, but the ex-hunter didn’t even spare it a glance. He took another step forward.
“Stop being a chicken shit and let me see my friends, Crowley.”
The demon tapped the tip of the blade softly against his own chin and glance up into the sky as if deep in thought.
“How about … no?”
When the last word was uttered, the twenty or so reapers closest to them suddenly sprang to life and charged at Dean. He cursed under his breath and spun away reflexively. By pure accident alone, one of his white wings smashed into a reaper and it went flying off in the other direction. As the reapers would close in he would strike at them with either a wing or his handy dandy baseball bat and they would be pushed back. He flapped all four wings as hard as he could manage, spilling power into the force of them, and a great gust of wind sent a dozen reapers tumbling away into the dirt. Dean whooped. Wings. Officially best thing ever.
Crowley was frowning at the display and gripped tightly to the blade in his hand. A reaper snuck up on Dean’s side and was just about to grab hold of an arm, when it was suddenly pushed away with force. Dean strongly suspected Castiel. Somehow his angels were able to see the reapers once again. A quick glance around the yard revealed handfuls of them fighting against invisible foes. He could almost sense Crowley’s displeasure at the turn of the tide. Dean spun on his heel and hollered into the visibly odd battle.
“All mine! Hit the dirt!”
He dropped the bat and immediately reached both hands high into the air. He gripped his fingers into tight fists and pulled down with as much force as he could muster. Lightening cracked across the sky and lit up the yard. Tendrils of it struck the earth around him, bouncing off cars and punching into as many reapers as he could manage to hit, sending them rocketing away, slightly charred. Dean laughed and turned just in time to catch Crowley lunging at him with the angel blade.
Every instinct inside of Dean knew, just knew, that Cas was stepping between them to take the hit himself. So Dean used a powerful swipe of one great, white wing and could feel it connect with something warm and tangible just as he felt the slick metal of the blade pierce straight into his gut. He grunted at the impact and looked down to take in the blade up to the hilt fully entrenched in his belly. Dean took one staggered step back before raising his eyes to meet Crowley’s gaze.
The demon was smirking like the cat that caught the canary. He lifted his free hand to snap his fingers delicately and suddenly the oppressive fake darkness looming over the salvage yard dissipated and the previous silence was filled with the screams of Dean’s name. He glanced to the left and found Castiel sprawled across the ground, still in the heap he must have been in when Dean’s wing knocked him there. The angel’s eyes were wide and rapidly spilling over with tears, his full bottom lip was quivering but it seemed that his voice had temporarily left him.
Dean flicked a quick glance towards the rest of the yard for the rest of his family. Sam was being held against the skeleton of a car by a massive reaper, screaming his lungs out and trying to reach Dean. Bobby was tucked in the crevice between two wrecks protecting Jodi. The older man’s face was void of color and his shocked gaze was locked onto the blade in Dean’s stomach. Jodi had her hand in front of her mouth and tears were already streaming down her dusty cheeks. Her hair was a mess. Dean wanted to grin at her, but he couldn’t force his lips to move.
Balthazar had dropped to his knees in the middle of the battle, mouth hung open in shock and his face frozen in a sort of aghast form of horror. (It was nice to know he cared, really.) Gabriel was ripping the reaper away from Sam, but forcing the younger Winchester to stay with him, eyeing Crowley with a wise level of mistrust. Dean’s observations of the group only took mere seconds, but it was long enough for everyone in the clearing to realize that something was off. That Dean wasn’t reacting in the way one should when a sharp metal instrument was currently plunged into their flesh. (Also the lack of bing bang boom, cue flashy light show and dramatic imprint of wings that usually followed one of these sort of deaths.)
He slowly turned back to face Crowley, who had tilted his head slightly to the side and was eyeing the blade in his hand with a curious sort of novelty. Dean smirked.
“Sorry, Hot-n-Bothered … ‘fraid that’s not going to work out so well for you.”
Castiel huffed a stunned breath of relief and Crowley’s grin kicked up a notch.
“Not to worry, my lovely … I always bring a backup plan.”
The King of Hell’s previously empty hand flicked at his side and Dean only had a second to catch sight of Death’s scythe before the wicked looking hook was plunging into his back, gouging into his spinal column. Dean squeaked in surprise when the white hot pain hit him. He could hear Sammy and Cas screaming but he was concentrating too hard on the scythe sunken deep into his flesh. Crowley was smirking at him and despite the pain and horror of the possibility that this might be a really, really bad thing, Dean could only think about the blade and Death’s need to have it returned to him.
He ground his teeth harshly together, ignored the agony, ignored the battle erupting to life once again around him and reached back to grasp the handle of the scythe. With a swift turn he dislodged the demon’s hand from the weapon and simultaneously the angel blade slid out from his belly with a wet, squelching sound. Crowley was still grinning like a madman when Dean staggered back a couple paces. His wings flickered and disappeared with the sudden drop of power.
“Oh dear, you don’t look so good little godling. Perhaps you weren’t expecting my surprise?”
Dean snarled and yanked the scythe from his back in a swift painful motion. Instantly his legs went out from underneath him and he crashed to his knees on the hard packed dirt. Crowley was still smiling maniacally and opened his mouth to probably spew some more taunting bullshit, when Cas slammed into him and they went rolling on the ground. The demon’s hold on the angel blade loosened and Dean reached out with his power to knock the stolen weapon right out of the King of Hell’s hand. It skittered across the earth until it knocked against Sam’s boot and the younger Winchester stooped to snap it up even as he was running towards Dean.
Castiel was howling with anger as he pummeled Crowley’s face with his fists, but Dean was sinking slowly backwards and couldn’t follow the fight as well as he would like. Two warm hands were suddenly gripping his shoulders and he raised his eyes to meet Gabriel’s concerned ones. The archangel had such a serious look on his face that Dean almost didn’t recognize him.
“You have the scythe. The reapers have stopped listening to Crowley. Call Death. Call Death right now!”
Warm blood was trickling down his back and there was a dull roar in his ears. He tried to sit up a little straighter, but a whimper of pain burst from him before he could bite it back. Sam was suddenly behind him, crowded in close and allowing Dean to use his massive bulk to lean against. Dean smiled at his little brother and attempted to wiggle his eyebrows playfully, but Sam was too busy sniffling and snotting to pay attention. (Sammy was not an attractive crier.)
“Call Death, Dean! Now!”
The elder Winchester tried to shrug, but just sunk further into his brother’s chest. Sam’s massive hands were pressing against the wound on Dean’s back, but the pain was kind of numbing out. This was probably not a good thing, but oh well.
“Don’t know how, Sammy.”
Gabriel snorted an unpleasant noise, but he had dropped to his knees in front of Dean and was holding the human’s face with gentle hands, so Dean figured he was just concerned. Aw, Gabe likes me. He really, really likes me. Dean flicked his gaze over to the sounds of the ongoing scuffle and realized Balthazar was assisting Cas in trying to give Crowley the beat down of his annoying life. The demon was snarling and spitting and fighting dirty… but he was also alone against two angels and losing. Teach the bastard to not be so overconfident with the big guns he brings to battle. Sometimes the small little backup plan is what saves the fucking day.
Oops, Gabriel was still talking.
“He had to give you some way of calling him! That bastard is always planning ten steps ahead. Think, Dean!”
OH.
“Th-the ring.”
He pulled up his hand weakly, scythe still held tight in his fingers and eyed the ring Death had given him. He wasn’t really sure how he knew what to do, but when he tapped the metal band against the weapon twice a deep hush of noise fell over the scrap yard. The ominous darkness began creeping back over them like a dense of fog. Balthazar made a frustrated noise and when Dean turned his attention back to the angels, he found that Crowley was gone and Cas surging to his feet to rush over.
“Dean!”
Cas skid to a stop on his knees and brought one hand up to cup Dean’s face gingerly. The other hand slid around the human’s waist to help Sam put pressure on the gaping wound of Dean’s back. Tears were tracking through the dust on the angel’s cheeks, but before Cas could say any more a deafening clap of thunder startled them all. Bobby swore from a couple feet away and Dean turned to watch in stunned silence as hundreds upon hundreds of reapers began to flicker into life all around them.
“Dean!”
Oh, now … that’s a familiar voice he hasn’t heard in a long while. Sure enough, Tessa was pushing her way through the swarm of reapers towards them. Dean grinned, but it was weak. He was beginning to feel really fucking tired and sleepy and he was pretty sure he couldn’t feel his legs any more. Damn.
“Hey, Tess. Fancy meeting you here.”
The reaper shook her head sadly at him before crouching down next to Gabriel and laying a gentle hand on Dean’s shoulder.
“Oh, Dean. Look what you’ve done to yourself.”
The elder Winchester just snorted in response and gave an appropriate ‘eh, whatcha gonnna do’ motion with his shoulders and face. She smiled softly at him in return before craning her neck to peer behind her. Sure enough, the reapers were parting like the fucking red sea… and Death himself was slowly meandering towards them tapping his cane along the ground as he moved.
“Well now. This has certainly been an eventful evening, hasn’t it?”
Dean tried to respond, but his final reserve of energy failed him and his head lolled back onto Sam’s tense shoulder. His eyes slipped closed and he fought to open them, but exhaustion had settled over him, heavy as a leaden cape. Death made a ‘tsking’ sound as he shuffled closer.
“Come now. It isn’t the time for a catnap.”
Sammy’s chest rumbled beneath Dean as he finally spoke up.
“Sir, he … Crowley stabbed him in the back with the scythe. He’s… he’s dying.”
The younger Winchester’s voice cracked over the last couple words and Dean would’ve loved to give him a reassuring pat of bro-love, but the world was starting to sort of slip away around him and Cas was repeatedly patting his cheek and begging him to open his eyes.
“Let’s not be so dramatic, shall we?”
The horseman really was kind of an asshole, but Dean sorta of liked him anyway.
Sam sucked in a sharp breath at the same time Dean felt a cold hand slowly remove the scythe from his grasp.
“I am very grateful to you, Dean, for retrieving this for me. I apologize for the unwitting assistance my children provided to that bumbling buffoon’s meddling with your family.”
Those icy fingers were back meddling with Dean’s hand, and he was just about to drift off into the dark nothingness when they clutched at the ring on his finger and a burst of power spread sharply and quickly through his nerves. Dean’s eyes flew open in shock and he gasped as he felt the wounds in his back and belly carefully knit themselves closed.
“I gave my word to you that you would not die during this frivolous escapade, and I do always keep my word, Dean. Death does not give false assurances.”
A hush had fallen over the yard and Dean closed his eyes tightly once more to pull energy from the world around him. He sucked it straight into his body from the ground, the air, the people he loved standing so close beside him. After a moment he felt so light that his body began to lift up without any instruction or assistance on his part. He felt his wings reappear and arch straight up into the sky as he took a deep, calming breath. Dean felt good. He felt great. Amazing even. Powerful enough to raze a mountain range into dust and dance in the ensuing cloud of debris.
“There now. Are we feeling better?”
When the elder Winchester opened his eyes once more to the world, the horseman of Death was standing before him with a somewhat smug tilt of a smile on his lips. Dean returned it with a smirk of his own before he flicked his wrist and conjured a corndog from the fair into his palm. He offered it to the reaper.
“Repayment for the favor.”
Death grinned with delight before snapping the fried treat straight out of Dean’s fingers and promptly beginning to nibble. Dean could only smile as he turned to take in the state of the yard surrounding them. The reapers were slowly beginning to disappear, one by one, without so much as a howdy-do, but Dean supposed there was a backlog of death that had been put on hold for the crisis of the week. Tessa was still standing sentinel beside the horseman with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
“So I’m assuming you’ve re-established your control and are ushering your little soldiers back to where they belong?”
Death tipped his head in response to Dean’s words as he finished up the breaded meat on a stick and flicked the remaining trash into nothingness.
“Indeed. We shall be making plans to keep this from happening again.”
“Do you know what’s going on with God? I haven’t been able to contact him, and Crowley was making allusions to there being something big on the horizon. Some sort of delicate issue that was taking up Chuck’s full concentration.”
The horseman made a thoughtful noise before turning his gaze to the sky.
“I have not heard anything, but I shall let you know if I do. Until then, we must be going. There is much that must be set right now that the little rat has been sent back to pout in his hidey-hole.”
With a tap of his cane, Death and Tessa vanished in a flurry of motion and the oppressive shadows faded from the salvage yard, leaving a bright moonlit sky to wash out everything in muted blues and grays. Dean glanced around for his little sun, but apparently it had been snuffed out like he almost had been. When he swiveled around to the group of people waiting for him, he only had a second to gasp before Castiel was kissing him delicately on the lips. When the angel pulled back his eyes were clear of worry for the first time in days and his mouth had a soft tilt of a smile daring to break through.
“I would greatly appreciate having a boring week every now and then, Dean.”
Dean cackled as he wrapped his arms tightly around Castiel’s neck and hugged him close.
“Nah, babe, come on … where’s the fun in that?”
The angel only snorted and stepped out of Dean’s arms as Sam came up to hug his elder brother as well.
“You feeling okay?”
Dean nodded.
“Peachy. All boo-boos officially gone and the residual pain barely warrants a flinch.”
Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“We still have no idea what’s going on with Chuck, though, and I don’t like it.”
Gabriel stepped forward and snagged one of Sam’s belt loops with his finger.
“Don’t worry, sugarcakes … we’ll figure it out soon enough, and we’ll deal with it like we always do. Like the badasses we are.”
Sam groaned and turned to start walking back towards the cabin, Gabriel dutifully following close on his heels.
“Don’t call me sugarcakes.”
“No problem, honeybear.”
“Not that either.”
“You betcha, prime rib.”
“Gabriel.”
“Yes, my sparkly moose of affection and sexy times?”
“Oh my God! Stop!”
The two finally made it up the porch and into the house, thankfully taking their conversation with them. Bobby grunted in relief before reaching over to hug Dean tightly and pat him a couple times on the back. Dean’s wings trembled with the desire to wrap around the older man and hold him close, but Bobby was already stepping away to gather Jodi to him and stumble tiredly back to their end of the yard. Balthazar had already fucked off to do whatever he needed to do in order to go back to pretending he didn’t give a shit about any of them.
Not to worry… Dean would harass him later. He’d seen the tears threatening to spill over in the snarky bastard’s eyes. There would be no escape for him. (Cue Dean’s maniacal laughter … internally, of course.)
Cas stepped up to him again and Dean smiled. He pulled the angel into a tight embrace and enveloped them both under a canopy of his wings. Cas tucked his face into the curve of Dean’s neck and the tension poured off of his shoulders like a waterfall.
“Sorry if I scared you again, Cas. I guess I do that a lot, huh?”
The angel hummed and kissed at the hinge of Dean’s jaw.
“I have come to accept it as an inevitability. You are very important to the future of the world, Dean, and creatures like Crowley will never ease up on you. It will never be easy for us, and as much as I wish that you could just be the center of my world not the world’s, I cannot be that selfish. You are amazing and beautiful and perfect, and I would not change a thing that has happened to us.”
Dean chewed on his bottom lip for a moment as he ran his hands up and down his angel’s back.
“I love you, Cas, you know. A whole hell of a lot. And I’m sorry that I sometimes do the wrong thing, or say the wrong thing, but I’m still learning all this relationship shit, too. And I’m not perfect. I will never be perfect. I’m always gonna fuck things up and have to beg you to forgive me, but I’ll never give up on us and I’ll never stop believing in you. So just … keeping sticking with me, and I’ll love you for the rest of eternity, okay?”
Castiel grinned against the skin of Dean’s neck.
“I’m pretty sure that won’t be a problem, Dean.”
Dean kissed the angel on the temple before pulling his wings back and storing them away for now.
“Come on, I think I’m going to sleep for about thirty years right now, and then in the morning I’m going to annoy the ever loving shit out of Sam and threaten Gabe with castration. Then we’ll see about finding a way to help Chuck with whatever he needs.”
He took Castiel’s hand and threaded their fingers together as they began to walk towards the cabin. Cas sighed deeply as he wiggled his fingers to rub absently at the ring on Dean’s finger. The one that matched his own.
“I think I like this plan.”
~*~ THE END ~*~
MASTERPOST
The complete lack of noise is what woke him this time. When Dean managed to wrench his tired eyes open, it was to be greeted once again by an unnaturally dark room. He flicked his gaze to the alarm clock and it was just a shadowed square shape on the table.
“Fuck.”
He pulled himself up slowly and cautiously. With a quick glance back over his shoulder he confirmed that if Castiel was in the room, he couldn’t see him. Dean flicked on a pair of jeans and a soft black t-shirt before stepping quietly towards the door to the bedroom.
“Cas. If you can hear me… it’s happening again.”
Dean concentrated as hard as he could to try and detect some sort of response from the angel, but there was nothing. No sound. No movement. No touch. He had to have faith that Cas was there beside him.
“Wake the others, if you can hear me, get everyone up and mobilized.”
Stepping as quietly and stealthily as possible, Dean made his way out into the hallway just like last time. However today he didn’t waste time stopping, just move immediately to the spiral staircase and took a deep breath before he began his decent. Same as the previous time, the cabin was washed out in deep shadows and deafening silence. Dean growled under his breath and rolled his shoulders a couple times to loosen up. He jerked his hand out palm up and began to form his tiny sun, the instant feeling of déjà-vu doing nothing but pissing him off at the unoriginality of it all. He tossed the little ball of light up into the air above his head so that he was free to keep his hands clear.
The ex-hunter shifted from foot to foot for a couple moments, hoping he had given Cas enough time to gather everyone together. Not that he could really tell if they were there at all, he was just hoping like hell that they were.
“Okay. Okay. Right. Why put it off for any longer, huh?”
He took a deep breath and opened the door slowly to step out onto the porch. There were shuffles of sound all around the yard and he could make out the zombie-like movements of the reapers inching closer and closer to the cabin. Dean sighed and wiggled his fingers nervously. He needed a weapon if the reapers attacked, but he didn’t want to damage them too much, his new corndog buddy might not appreciate that. Finally he conjured up a heavy metal baseball bat into his hand and gripped the handle tight enough to hear the leather strain. He took that final step off the porch so that his feet hit the hard packed dirt of the yard and his toes dug into the earth.
“Come on, guys. Your big scary daddy misses you and wants you to come home. Promptly, please.”
The reapers all took another step forward and Dean sighed.
“Well, I tried.”
“Indeed you did, sweat pea.”
Dean could feel his lips pull up in a snarl at the voice coming from the shadows in front of him. Crowley, decked out in his typical solid black suit, stepped into the circle of light created by Dean’s miniature sun. The demon was twirling the angel blade in his hand like a baton and looking smugger than was even usual for him. Dean grunted.
“What’s the haps, demon-douche? Are we really doing this again? You’ve never seemed the type to repeat yourself.”
Crowley grinned wide and wolfish and he shrugged a shoulder and twirled the blade.
“True enough. But see … it’s more interesting this time… because you can see me, and they can see me, and they can see you, but you can’t see them. It’s all a bit like a game of Marco Polo, but with slightly more bloodshed and mayhem, don’t you think?”
Dean made sure to appear as nonchalant as possible when he shrugged indifferently.
“Never was big on it. So what’s with the sudden attention, little man? You’d left us alone, we’d left you alone… I figured we had all gotten back to minding our own business. Then you had to kidnap the reapers from the horseman of Death. Which takes some serious balls, might I add. To what? Sit here and have a tea party? Why are you bothering with us?”
The demon clucked his tongue and turned to saunter around Dean in a slow circle.
“Well, to be quite honest with you, it was getting a little boring down below. All that screaming and maiming and torturing. Nothing but work, work, work for days on end. So when a very reliable source informed me that dear old Daddy was tied up indefinitely with a somewhat delicate situation and that the Heavenly Host was being left unsupervised… I figured, why not? Let’s stir up a little fun.”
“So you stole the scythe from the Grim Reaper? That’s a little bit of fun to you?”
Crowley cackled gleefully.
“Of course it is! I knew I had to do something a little over the top to impress my dear Moose and Squirrel! Especially now that our precious little Squirrel has leveled up and gained himself his very own Huey, Dewy and Louie angel squad. No mediocre little scheme for my boys, no, no, no. I hope you approve.”
Dean snorted and twirled the bat in his hand a couple times purely for dramatic effect.
“Not really. So where did you appropriate the angel blade from?”
The demon sighed and twisted his lips into a mocking pout.
“Sad little creature, really. His vessel was a squeaky voiced teenager working at some sort of wiener hut atrocity. I did him a favor really, I think.”
Something deep inside of Dean’s chest screamed and howled in agony. Crowley was mocking the murder of an angel. An angel that would have someday been under Dean’s protection. Dean’s fold. His flock. He growled deep in his throat and with a burst of light and power, his two sets of wings flared to life from his shoulder blades and spread out wide and threatening. Crowley practically howled with glee.
“So I wasn’t imagining it last time! Look at you, Squirrel! A budding little wee godling near bursting at the seams to take up the job, eh?”
Dean snarled and took a step towards the demon.
“Ah, ah, ah … let’s not be hasty, darling. I have you outnumbered and outgunned, remember?”
He wiggled the angel blade in Dean’s direction, but the ex-hunter didn’t even spare it a glance. He took another step forward.
“Stop being a chicken shit and let me see my friends, Crowley.”
The demon tapped the tip of the blade softly against his own chin and glance up into the sky as if deep in thought.
“How about … no?”
When the last word was uttered, the twenty or so reapers closest to them suddenly sprang to life and charged at Dean. He cursed under his breath and spun away reflexively. By pure accident alone, one of his white wings smashed into a reaper and it went flying off in the other direction. As the reapers would close in he would strike at them with either a wing or his handy dandy baseball bat and they would be pushed back. He flapped all four wings as hard as he could manage, spilling power into the force of them, and a great gust of wind sent a dozen reapers tumbling away into the dirt. Dean whooped. Wings. Officially best thing ever.
Crowley was frowning at the display and gripped tightly to the blade in his hand. A reaper snuck up on Dean’s side and was just about to grab hold of an arm, when it was suddenly pushed away with force. Dean strongly suspected Castiel. Somehow his angels were able to see the reapers once again. A quick glance around the yard revealed handfuls of them fighting against invisible foes. He could almost sense Crowley’s displeasure at the turn of the tide. Dean spun on his heel and hollered into the visibly odd battle.
“All mine! Hit the dirt!”
He dropped the bat and immediately reached both hands high into the air. He gripped his fingers into tight fists and pulled down with as much force as he could muster. Lightening cracked across the sky and lit up the yard. Tendrils of it struck the earth around him, bouncing off cars and punching into as many reapers as he could manage to hit, sending them rocketing away, slightly charred. Dean laughed and turned just in time to catch Crowley lunging at him with the angel blade.
Every instinct inside of Dean knew, just knew, that Cas was stepping between them to take the hit himself. So Dean used a powerful swipe of one great, white wing and could feel it connect with something warm and tangible just as he felt the slick metal of the blade pierce straight into his gut. He grunted at the impact and looked down to take in the blade up to the hilt fully entrenched in his belly. Dean took one staggered step back before raising his eyes to meet Crowley’s gaze.
The demon was smirking like the cat that caught the canary. He lifted his free hand to snap his fingers delicately and suddenly the oppressive fake darkness looming over the salvage yard dissipated and the previous silence was filled with the screams of Dean’s name. He glanced to the left and found Castiel sprawled across the ground, still in the heap he must have been in when Dean’s wing knocked him there. The angel’s eyes were wide and rapidly spilling over with tears, his full bottom lip was quivering but it seemed that his voice had temporarily left him.
Dean flicked a quick glance towards the rest of the yard for the rest of his family. Sam was being held against the skeleton of a car by a massive reaper, screaming his lungs out and trying to reach Dean. Bobby was tucked in the crevice between two wrecks protecting Jodi. The older man’s face was void of color and his shocked gaze was locked onto the blade in Dean’s stomach. Jodi had her hand in front of her mouth and tears were already streaming down her dusty cheeks. Her hair was a mess. Dean wanted to grin at her, but he couldn’t force his lips to move.
Balthazar had dropped to his knees in the middle of the battle, mouth hung open in shock and his face frozen in a sort of aghast form of horror. (It was nice to know he cared, really.) Gabriel was ripping the reaper away from Sam, but forcing the younger Winchester to stay with him, eyeing Crowley with a wise level of mistrust. Dean’s observations of the group only took mere seconds, but it was long enough for everyone in the clearing to realize that something was off. That Dean wasn’t reacting in the way one should when a sharp metal instrument was currently plunged into their flesh. (Also the lack of bing bang boom, cue flashy light show and dramatic imprint of wings that usually followed one of these sort of deaths.)
He slowly turned back to face Crowley, who had tilted his head slightly to the side and was eyeing the blade in his hand with a curious sort of novelty. Dean smirked.
“Sorry, Hot-n-Bothered … ‘fraid that’s not going to work out so well for you.”
Castiel huffed a stunned breath of relief and Crowley’s grin kicked up a notch.
“Not to worry, my lovely … I always bring a backup plan.”
The King of Hell’s previously empty hand flicked at his side and Dean only had a second to catch sight of Death’s scythe before the wicked looking hook was plunging into his back, gouging into his spinal column. Dean squeaked in surprise when the white hot pain hit him. He could hear Sammy and Cas screaming but he was concentrating too hard on the scythe sunken deep into his flesh. Crowley was smirking at him and despite the pain and horror of the possibility that this might be a really, really bad thing, Dean could only think about the blade and Death’s need to have it returned to him.
He ground his teeth harshly together, ignored the agony, ignored the battle erupting to life once again around him and reached back to grasp the handle of the scythe. With a swift turn he dislodged the demon’s hand from the weapon and simultaneously the angel blade slid out from his belly with a wet, squelching sound. Crowley was still grinning like a madman when Dean staggered back a couple paces. His wings flickered and disappeared with the sudden drop of power.
“Oh dear, you don’t look so good little godling. Perhaps you weren’t expecting my surprise?”
Dean snarled and yanked the scythe from his back in a swift painful motion. Instantly his legs went out from underneath him and he crashed to his knees on the hard packed dirt. Crowley was still smiling maniacally and opened his mouth to probably spew some more taunting bullshit, when Cas slammed into him and they went rolling on the ground. The demon’s hold on the angel blade loosened and Dean reached out with his power to knock the stolen weapon right out of the King of Hell’s hand. It skittered across the earth until it knocked against Sam’s boot and the younger Winchester stooped to snap it up even as he was running towards Dean.
Castiel was howling with anger as he pummeled Crowley’s face with his fists, but Dean was sinking slowly backwards and couldn’t follow the fight as well as he would like. Two warm hands were suddenly gripping his shoulders and he raised his eyes to meet Gabriel’s concerned ones. The archangel had such a serious look on his face that Dean almost didn’t recognize him.
“You have the scythe. The reapers have stopped listening to Crowley. Call Death. Call Death right now!”
Warm blood was trickling down his back and there was a dull roar in his ears. He tried to sit up a little straighter, but a whimper of pain burst from him before he could bite it back. Sam was suddenly behind him, crowded in close and allowing Dean to use his massive bulk to lean against. Dean smiled at his little brother and attempted to wiggle his eyebrows playfully, but Sam was too busy sniffling and snotting to pay attention. (Sammy was not an attractive crier.)
“Call Death, Dean! Now!”
The elder Winchester tried to shrug, but just sunk further into his brother’s chest. Sam’s massive hands were pressing against the wound on Dean’s back, but the pain was kind of numbing out. This was probably not a good thing, but oh well.
“Don’t know how, Sammy.”
Gabriel snorted an unpleasant noise, but he had dropped to his knees in front of Dean and was holding the human’s face with gentle hands, so Dean figured he was just concerned. Aw, Gabe likes me. He really, really likes me. Dean flicked his gaze over to the sounds of the ongoing scuffle and realized Balthazar was assisting Cas in trying to give Crowley the beat down of his annoying life. The demon was snarling and spitting and fighting dirty… but he was also alone against two angels and losing. Teach the bastard to not be so overconfident with the big guns he brings to battle. Sometimes the small little backup plan is what saves the fucking day.
Oops, Gabriel was still talking.
“He had to give you some way of calling him! That bastard is always planning ten steps ahead. Think, Dean!”
OH.
“Th-the ring.”
He pulled up his hand weakly, scythe still held tight in his fingers and eyed the ring Death had given him. He wasn’t really sure how he knew what to do, but when he tapped the metal band against the weapon twice a deep hush of noise fell over the scrap yard. The ominous darkness began creeping back over them like a dense of fog. Balthazar made a frustrated noise and when Dean turned his attention back to the angels, he found that Crowley was gone and Cas surging to his feet to rush over.
“Dean!”
Cas skid to a stop on his knees and brought one hand up to cup Dean’s face gingerly. The other hand slid around the human’s waist to help Sam put pressure on the gaping wound of Dean’s back. Tears were tracking through the dust on the angel’s cheeks, but before Cas could say any more a deafening clap of thunder startled them all. Bobby swore from a couple feet away and Dean turned to watch in stunned silence as hundreds upon hundreds of reapers began to flicker into life all around them.
“Dean!”
Oh, now … that’s a familiar voice he hasn’t heard in a long while. Sure enough, Tessa was pushing her way through the swarm of reapers towards them. Dean grinned, but it was weak. He was beginning to feel really fucking tired and sleepy and he was pretty sure he couldn’t feel his legs any more. Damn.
“Hey, Tess. Fancy meeting you here.”
The reaper shook her head sadly at him before crouching down next to Gabriel and laying a gentle hand on Dean’s shoulder.
“Oh, Dean. Look what you’ve done to yourself.”
The elder Winchester just snorted in response and gave an appropriate ‘eh, whatcha gonnna do’ motion with his shoulders and face. She smiled softly at him in return before craning her neck to peer behind her. Sure enough, the reapers were parting like the fucking red sea… and Death himself was slowly meandering towards them tapping his cane along the ground as he moved.
“Well now. This has certainly been an eventful evening, hasn’t it?”
Dean tried to respond, but his final reserve of energy failed him and his head lolled back onto Sam’s tense shoulder. His eyes slipped closed and he fought to open them, but exhaustion had settled over him, heavy as a leaden cape. Death made a ‘tsking’ sound as he shuffled closer.
“Come now. It isn’t the time for a catnap.”
Sammy’s chest rumbled beneath Dean as he finally spoke up.
“Sir, he … Crowley stabbed him in the back with the scythe. He’s… he’s dying.”
The younger Winchester’s voice cracked over the last couple words and Dean would’ve loved to give him a reassuring pat of bro-love, but the world was starting to sort of slip away around him and Cas was repeatedly patting his cheek and begging him to open his eyes.
“Let’s not be so dramatic, shall we?”
The horseman really was kind of an asshole, but Dean sorta of liked him anyway.
Sam sucked in a sharp breath at the same time Dean felt a cold hand slowly remove the scythe from his grasp.
“I am very grateful to you, Dean, for retrieving this for me. I apologize for the unwitting assistance my children provided to that bumbling buffoon’s meddling with your family.”
Those icy fingers were back meddling with Dean’s hand, and he was just about to drift off into the dark nothingness when they clutched at the ring on his finger and a burst of power spread sharply and quickly through his nerves. Dean’s eyes flew open in shock and he gasped as he felt the wounds in his back and belly carefully knit themselves closed.
“I gave my word to you that you would not die during this frivolous escapade, and I do always keep my word, Dean. Death does not give false assurances.”
A hush had fallen over the yard and Dean closed his eyes tightly once more to pull energy from the world around him. He sucked it straight into his body from the ground, the air, the people he loved standing so close beside him. After a moment he felt so light that his body began to lift up without any instruction or assistance on his part. He felt his wings reappear and arch straight up into the sky as he took a deep, calming breath. Dean felt good. He felt great. Amazing even. Powerful enough to raze a mountain range into dust and dance in the ensuing cloud of debris.
“There now. Are we feeling better?”
When the elder Winchester opened his eyes once more to the world, the horseman of Death was standing before him with a somewhat smug tilt of a smile on his lips. Dean returned it with a smirk of his own before he flicked his wrist and conjured a corndog from the fair into his palm. He offered it to the reaper.
“Repayment for the favor.”
Death grinned with delight before snapping the fried treat straight out of Dean’s fingers and promptly beginning to nibble. Dean could only smile as he turned to take in the state of the yard surrounding them. The reapers were slowly beginning to disappear, one by one, without so much as a howdy-do, but Dean supposed there was a backlog of death that had been put on hold for the crisis of the week. Tessa was still standing sentinel beside the horseman with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
“So I’m assuming you’ve re-established your control and are ushering your little soldiers back to where they belong?”
Death tipped his head in response to Dean’s words as he finished up the breaded meat on a stick and flicked the remaining trash into nothingness.
“Indeed. We shall be making plans to keep this from happening again.”
“Do you know what’s going on with God? I haven’t been able to contact him, and Crowley was making allusions to there being something big on the horizon. Some sort of delicate issue that was taking up Chuck’s full concentration.”
The horseman made a thoughtful noise before turning his gaze to the sky.
“I have not heard anything, but I shall let you know if I do. Until then, we must be going. There is much that must be set right now that the little rat has been sent back to pout in his hidey-hole.”
With a tap of his cane, Death and Tessa vanished in a flurry of motion and the oppressive shadows faded from the salvage yard, leaving a bright moonlit sky to wash out everything in muted blues and grays. Dean glanced around for his little sun, but apparently it had been snuffed out like he almost had been. When he swiveled around to the group of people waiting for him, he only had a second to gasp before Castiel was kissing him delicately on the lips. When the angel pulled back his eyes were clear of worry for the first time in days and his mouth had a soft tilt of a smile daring to break through.
“I would greatly appreciate having a boring week every now and then, Dean.”
Dean cackled as he wrapped his arms tightly around Castiel’s neck and hugged him close.
“Nah, babe, come on … where’s the fun in that?”
The angel only snorted and stepped out of Dean’s arms as Sam came up to hug his elder brother as well.
“You feeling okay?”
Dean nodded.
“Peachy. All boo-boos officially gone and the residual pain barely warrants a flinch.”
Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“We still have no idea what’s going on with Chuck, though, and I don’t like it.”
Gabriel stepped forward and snagged one of Sam’s belt loops with his finger.
“Don’t worry, sugarcakes … we’ll figure it out soon enough, and we’ll deal with it like we always do. Like the badasses we are.”
Sam groaned and turned to start walking back towards the cabin, Gabriel dutifully following close on his heels.
“Don’t call me sugarcakes.”
“No problem, honeybear.”
“Not that either.”
“You betcha, prime rib.”
“Gabriel.”
“Yes, my sparkly moose of affection and sexy times?”
“Oh my God! Stop!”
The two finally made it up the porch and into the house, thankfully taking their conversation with them. Bobby grunted in relief before reaching over to hug Dean tightly and pat him a couple times on the back. Dean’s wings trembled with the desire to wrap around the older man and hold him close, but Bobby was already stepping away to gather Jodi to him and stumble tiredly back to their end of the yard. Balthazar had already fucked off to do whatever he needed to do in order to go back to pretending he didn’t give a shit about any of them.
Not to worry… Dean would harass him later. He’d seen the tears threatening to spill over in the snarky bastard’s eyes. There would be no escape for him. (Cue Dean’s maniacal laughter … internally, of course.)
Cas stepped up to him again and Dean smiled. He pulled the angel into a tight embrace and enveloped them both under a canopy of his wings. Cas tucked his face into the curve of Dean’s neck and the tension poured off of his shoulders like a waterfall.
“Sorry if I scared you again, Cas. I guess I do that a lot, huh?”
The angel hummed and kissed at the hinge of Dean’s jaw.
“I have come to accept it as an inevitability. You are very important to the future of the world, Dean, and creatures like Crowley will never ease up on you. It will never be easy for us, and as much as I wish that you could just be the center of my world not the world’s, I cannot be that selfish. You are amazing and beautiful and perfect, and I would not change a thing that has happened to us.”
Dean chewed on his bottom lip for a moment as he ran his hands up and down his angel’s back.
“I love you, Cas, you know. A whole hell of a lot. And I’m sorry that I sometimes do the wrong thing, or say the wrong thing, but I’m still learning all this relationship shit, too. And I’m not perfect. I will never be perfect. I’m always gonna fuck things up and have to beg you to forgive me, but I’ll never give up on us and I’ll never stop believing in you. So just … keeping sticking with me, and I’ll love you for the rest of eternity, okay?”
Castiel grinned against the skin of Dean’s neck.
“I’m pretty sure that won’t be a problem, Dean.”
Dean kissed the angel on the temple before pulling his wings back and storing them away for now.
“Come on, I think I’m going to sleep for about thirty years right now, and then in the morning I’m going to annoy the ever loving shit out of Sam and threaten Gabe with castration. Then we’ll see about finding a way to help Chuck with whatever he needs.”
He took Castiel’s hand and threaded their fingers together as they began to walk towards the cabin. Cas sighed deeply as he wiggled his fingers to rub absently at the ring on Dean’s finger. The one that matched his own.
“I think I like this plan.”
~*~ THE END ~*~
MASTERPOST