Unique - Act III (ii) - Truant
Act III - Truant
Dean looks at the prone body of his murderer and wishes he were physical enough to kick him. Dean has always prided himself on not being the kind of bastard who kicks a man when he's down, but right now, he'd like to make an exception. Leave it to a normal person to wander in and balls things up so spectacularly.
He glances over at his brother, whose expression is decidedly murderous. “Dude. Let it go. His family is right outside.” Sam can't hear him, of course, but Cas can and he duly relays the message.
“Dean- you realize you're dead, right?” Sam says. “Don't act like I'm being fucking unreasonable here. Goddamn it!” He swings out and punches the wall. It must hurt, but he doesn't show it. He shakes plaster out of his knuckles.
Dean rolls his eyes. “I did kind of get the memo, Sam. You know, what with being a fucking ghost and all.”
Castiel relays this. He doesn't bother copying inflections or tone, just passes on the message word for word. It lends the conversation an even more surreal quality.
“Fuck, Dean. What are we going to do?”
“Worry about it later. Let's get out of here before the wife comes back. Cas- can you bust me out of here? I've been unable to get more than thirty feet or so from this bozo.”
Dean has never yet caught an eye-roll from Cas, but for someone whose expressions tend to be limited to “angry staring,” “puzzled staring,” or the all-time favorite, “general-purpose intense staring,” he could certainly rock the non-eye-roll eye-roll. “Okay, stupid question. Tell Sam we're leaving.”
Castiel, apparently tired of the ventriloquist dummy act, doesn't. Instead, he reaches out and-
- they're in a motel room. “Dude, you moved us to a Best Western?” Dean asks incredulously. He's about to rag on his brother about it some more -regardless of whether or not he can hear- when he notices that Sam has turned vaguely green and is swearing profusely. Sam stumbles over to the bed and sits down in an ungainly motion, like a puppet with its strings cut. He puts his head between his knees and takes shallow breaths.
“Ah. Never mind.” Flying Angel Air was a lot more pleasant dead. Under normal conditions, it was disorienting. But considering how much of the last week Sam had spent bonding with the toilet...yeah, there was probably a reason Cas was quickly climbing up Sam's shitlist.
While Sam courts death-by-smiting by heaping blasphemy after blasphemy on an Angel of the Lord, Dean turns to find Castiel frowning pensively at him.
“So what's next, kemosabe?”
“I don't understand that,” Castiel says, and it's not meant as a question. Anyone else would say, “Stop being an asshole,” and Dean's pretty sure that's exactly what Cas means. But Dean can't seem to break himself of the habit, though undoubtedly one day he'll push it too far and Cas will just drop kick him into the next county.
Sam looks up. “What's he saying?”
“What I mean,” Dean says, “Is where do we go from here? Tessa...” he trailed off. “She said a lot of things. But let's just say the out look wasn't good. Her suggestion was to go into the light and aim to be a needle in heaven's haystack.” He pauses. “Don't tell Sam any of this yet, okay? I'm just talking.”
“That would not work for very long. They would find you. Your soul is....distinct.”
Sam frowns at being conspicuously removed from the conversation, and Dean ignores him. “Yeah. I figured it couldn't be that easy. Shit. I'd have liked to believed it, you know? That we could just...remove ourselves from the board, and tell them all to take their apocalypse and go screw themselves. There's no way out of this, is there? We can't even die like normal people. They'll just keep pulling us back.”
“Cas, man. I need to know. What's he saying?” Sam breaks out the earnest eyes.
“Don't,” Dean says. Castiel glances from one to the other before answering Dean's question.
“The reapers-” Cas pauses, running something past a mental dictionary, “They prefer things to be...neat.”
Dean makes a face. “She was lying, you mean.”
“Not necessarily.” Castiel shifts, and it's a telling gesture for someone usually so still. “But at most, your disappearance would only delay the final battle. It would not stop the war.”
Sam looks up sharply at that. “Don't cut me out of this, Dean,” he says. “I don't know what the hell you're thinking, but stop. We need to find a way to fix this,” he continues, “Not a way to buy time.”
“It can't be fixed, Sam,” Dean says, forgetting for a second that Sam has no way of hearing him. “Not without walking right into the bastards' hands.”
Castiel relays the sentiment. Sam pounds a fist on the table. “So we'll double-cross them first. Don't you dare play martyr on me, you asshole.”
“There's a way. It's dangerous,” Cas says. “And is likely to fail.”
Sam nods sharply. “Fine. What is it?”
At the same time, Dean shakes his head. “Cas, come on, man. This is stupid. There's no point in getting us all killed.” It's the wrong thing to say. The angel turns on him and stalks forward until he and Dean are nearly nose to nose. “You do not get to give up,” he growls. “I have sacrificed everything. I have lost everything. I will not allow it to have been for nothing.”
Dean glares right back and tries to shove the angel away and out of his personal space. Castiel remains unmovable as ever. Dean doesn't even get the pleasure of being able to pass right through him: in the half-world he moves in, the angel is the first tangible thing he has encountered.
Sam gets up. “Hey, Cas. Dean's just being a jackass.” The angel continues to glower at empty space for a moment longer, then turns away.
“You can't even hear me, jerk. How would you know?” Dean says. But he lets out a breath he doesn't need and didn't know he was holding.
“So what's the plan? What do we need to do?” Sam asks.
“We need Dean's body,” the angel says, looking down at the motel brochures. He picks one up and flips through it with unfocused fascination, the same way Dean has seen people staring into fridge when they're stressed and distracted, like the answers to the universe might be hidden in the Best Western Pay-Per-View listings. “But it's still- hidden. The sigils must be undamaged.”
“Good luck with that one,” Dean says. “The guy did his best Lizzie Bordon impression and then dumped the pieces straight into the Gulf Stream.”
“Don't get me wrong, I agree.” Sam says, keeping his tone respectfully curious. He half shrugs, a gesture Dean has often seen him use to mean 'no offense, but...'. He continues, “But what's the plan for his body? I thought you were still...you know, low on mojo.”
Castiel sets the brochure back down. “My intention is not to raise him,” he says, frustrated for no reason that Dean can fathom. Perhaps it's the effort of communicating in words, rather than intense stares. “His body is the only leverage we have.”
Dean blinks at that, and then it sinks in. “Wait, you're going to use me as bait?” Dean demands, and Sam unknowingly echoes him: “Leverage? Are you kidding?”
“We need the help of one of my brothers, and they won't be inclined to give it. What would you suggest? That we 'ask nicely'?” Sarcasm did not come naturally to the angel, but he was making a valiant effort. “Nothing else would guarantee a response as certain as that. No angel can allow permanent harm to come to Michael's vessel. They will come.”
“And what do we do when they say neener-neener and blast the living shit out of us? What's to stop them from just taking what they want?” Dean says. At the same time, Sam crosses his arms and says, “And then they'll double-cross us half a second after they get what they want.”
The angel falls silent for a minute, his eyes straying to the corner of the ceiling. “There are...signs and oaths,” he says at last, “By which, when performed correctly, even angels may be bound. We will use them, and they will be unable to annul the terms.”
“I can't imagine that'll make you popular.”
The angel looks away. “No. To use them is to become anathema.”
There's something in the way that he says it that makes Dean think he is talking about more than not getting knocked off the Christmas card list, but before he can ask, Sam starts grilling Castiel on the how, when, and where. Dean lets it filter past him. He doesn't need the details- Castiel's grand plan is to stick Dean under a box propped up by a board tied to a rope and put up a big sign saying, “Archangel vessel, free! Claim inside.”
“That's only if we succeed, you mean,” Sam says. “Performed correctly- that's the key, isn't it? It's not just a couple lines of Latin and the right mix of kitchen spices.”
“Yes. It is...a complex ritual.” And if that isn't an understatement, Dean thinks, I'll scrap the Impala and buy a friggin' Pinto. Dean has a feeling it will work about just as well as any plan of Sylvester's to catch Tweetie bird.
“Dude. Hello? Gulf Stream? Does that mean anything to anybody?” Dean asks. “And...I'm just talking to myself here, aren't I? Cas, c'mon. It's the goddamn ocean. You can't possibly think-”
Castiel turns his head to look at Dean. It shouldn't be unnerving, someone turning to look at the person they're speaking to, but the preternatural evenness of the movement serves as a reminder that Castiel is something uncanny. Not even robots move that smoothly, Dean thinks. “That I could find a single corpse?” he says, when Dean does not finish his sentence.
Dean shakes free of the thought. “Yes! I mean, no. That's crazy. We're talking thousands and thousands of square miles- or more. Shit, I don't know! It's the ocean. My corpse could be halfway to Timbuktu by now, for all you know.”
“I doubt it,” Cas says, and the absolute certainty in his voice pisses Dean off.
“Oh yeah? And why's that?”
“Timbuktu is a landlocked city.” The delivery is completely even and without the slightest hint of reproach or judgment. Sam makes a sound that suspiciously sounds like a laugh.
“Yeah, funny,” Dean says. “It doesn't change my point. This is a stupid plan, and more than that, it's an impossible one, thank Christ.”
“I found you in Hell,” Castiel reminds him, as if he could forget. “The ocean does not compare.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out. It only took you, what, 40 years?” Dean says. Unlike the angel, he's got no problem with sarcasm. “At that rate, everyone will be dead anyway and the apocalypse will be over.”
“This will be easier,” Castiel assures him. His gaze drifts towards the far corner of the ceiling. There's a spider's web there, some unlikely survivor of the depredations of the maids.
“Yeah? And why's that?” Dean can't help but to adopt a pose of sarcastic interest as he waits for the answer: resting his chin on a fist, the elbow of that arm supported in one cupped hand.
“Is he asking how you're going to find him?” Sam says suddenly. “Because I was kind of wondering about that, too.” He's been watching Castiel carefully, as if Castiel might secretly be giving away clues.
“I have you,” Castiel says to Dean. He goes thoughtful for a moment, then says. “Souls... resonate to the frequency of their physical bodies. It is the natural order of things- a connection that not even death can entirely sever.”
“You're going to use Dean as a dowsing rod?” Sam says, and Dean almost feels like cheering. The skepticism in Sam's voice reminds Dean why he puts up with him, even when he's nothing but a huge pain in the ass.
“More like a-” Castiel reaches for the word, the particulars of this conversation apparently taxing his mental Human-Angel lexicon to its limits. “Compass,” he settles on at last, as if it were a poor substitute for the word he intended.
“Great.” Dean rubs a hand over his forehead, chasing away a phantom headache. “And what does this entail?”
Castiel steps closer. “This,” he says, and he puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean has a second to wish the angel would finally get the message about personal space and not least 'telling before showing' before his whole body- or spirit- or whatever suddenly feels like he's been hit by a bolt of lightning. Except instead of pain, it's more like...what was the word Cas had used? Resonance. Resonance. He feels like a tuning fork that's been struck, like every atom of his being is about to vibrate away from its neighbors. He's had no more time than to try and find some comparison, some way to process the sensation, when it stops. There's no warning: it just ends, and it leaves Dean strangely bereft, like he's not only lost something, but forgotten about it, too.
“Holy shit.” The curse feels inadequate- too small, too human. But he expects they all would be. Shaken, he steps away from Castiel. “Was that it?” he blurts. Castiel is frowning. “I mean, is it over?”
“No,” Castiel says, and if Dean didn't know better, he'd say he sounded startled. His brow creases. He grabs Dean before Dean can back away, and his concentration is fierce. The strange feeling creeps up on Dean, but feels like an echo of itself. It's over before he has time to do more than to brace himself.
“Cas, what the hell?” Dean says.
“It's gone,” Cas says, and it's the first time Dean has seen him truly flabbergasted. He's blinking like a man watching the sun rise in the west, and seeing pigs alight on power lines.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Dean demands.
“Cas-” Sam starts, “What's going on?”
“It's not there,” Cas repeats, still sounding like he doesn't quite believe it.
“Could someone else have gotten it? Could it be...warded or something?” Sam asks, looking as freaked out as Dean feels. It's not the news: it's how Cas is reacting to it.
Castiel abruptly turns to face Sam. “No,” he says, and the word almost sounds like a curse, harsh and bitter. “Even hidden, it would be sensed. Even destroyed, there would be an echo. But there is nothing. It's just-”
“Gone,” Sam finishes for him.
“This shouldn't be,” Castiel says, and his tone falls in some strange land between befuddlement and outrage. “I don't understand it.”
“You wouldn't,” someone says, snorting in derision, but Castiel doesn't react and doesn't seem to hear it. And neither does Sam. Dean turns around, feeling puzzled. He doesn't see anyone.
“Unless...” Cas begins, but Dean is only distantly paying attention. “Tessa?” he tries. It's a shot in the dark- and it's one that misses. “Guess again,” says the voice, this time right into his ear. The tone is maddeningly familiar, even if the voice isn't.
In the background, he can hear Sam ask, “Unless what?”
That smug, self-satisfied tone , Dean thinks. He's heard it before. Dean whirls around again, trying to figure out where in the hell it's coming from. He doesn't find it: it's gone. The room has gone dead quiet. That's the clue-
Correction: He's gone. The motel room has vanished, to be replaced with a room he recognizes but wishes he didn't. It's the room where he'd woken up tied to the table. It's the room where he died.
Except it's not- not exactly. His killer had destroyed all the evidence, but here it is again, looking just as it had in those moments when he'd first opened his eyes. A construct, then. A copy. He paces around the table, looking for some sign as to what the hell he's doing here- though he'd settling for knowing the 'how' or the 'who'.
Nothing seems out of place. The table is the most obvious difference, but Dean is willing to concede that not being tied to it is an improvement he's not going to question. Dexter's tools are still lined up in the corner. There's still clear plastic covering everything and making Dean feel vaguely claustrophobic. The photos-
The photos. There's more of them, for one thing. They line the walls. Dean would feel bad for not noticing sooner, but the truth is he hadn't paid much attention to them the first time around. He'd had other things on his mind, like the maniac who'd attacked him, drugged him, and kidnapped him. Dean steps closer to get a better look at the one nearest to him.
“Son of a bitch.” He runs along the wall, looking at the rest. They're all the same: they're all of him dead, the cause of death artfully obvious in each. Electrocuted. Shot. Burned. Impaled. Squashed. Mauled. Strangled. Stabbed. Poisoned. Run over. Defenestrated. Choked. Suffocated. Stampeded. Decapitated. Gutted. Hanged. Drowned. Buried alive. In one, he'd even succumbed to the goddamn plague.
He didn't remember them, but he recognized them all the same.
“You know, the last was a personal favorite of mine,” says the voice, casually. “ If you could have seen his face-”
Dean turns around, slowly this time. “You,” he growls, and launches himself at the man standing behind him. Dean picks him up by the lapels and shoves him against one plastic-covered wall. “You did this? What is this, a fucking joke to you?”
“Ahah-ahah-ahah,” says the man, waggling a finger at Dean in a schoolmarm-ish fashion. The man casually grabs one of Dean's fists and removes it from his jacket, then uses his grip on it to push Dean away and down without any apparent effort. He lets go, then straightens his jacket. “Dean-Dean-D-D-Dean,” he says, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I thought we were past this.”
Dean picks himself up off the floor. “Oh, yeah? And why would you think that?”
“Well, for starters, I think you would have learned by now that you've got a -zero- chance of being able to hurt me. Oh. And that I could squash you like a bug-” he pinches his finger and thumb together to illustrate- “if I wanted to.”
“Newsflash, pal. You missed your chance. I'm dead, in case you haven't noticed. This whole threatening-me thing? It's kind of pointless.”
The archangel rolls his eyes. “Well, duuuh. Seriously, did you miss the décor?” He gestures with the index fingers of both hands at the kill room. “Besides, when has death ever stopped me from having my fun? You should know that.”
Dean slides a hand across his face. “Fine, whatever. Can we at least just get this over with, please?”
“Get what over?” The archangel holds his hands out and puts on a face of innocent confusion, but it soon slides into a smirk. “C'mon, Dean. Don't be such a killjoy.”
“I'm not interested in your games, Gabriel. Lecture me or torture me or whatever it is you think you have to do, and let me get on with my sucktastic afterlife.”
“Moi? Torture? Lecture? I'm hurt, really.”
Dean finds himself unable to refrain from taking the bait. “Oh yeah? That's all you seem to do! What the hell do you call the goddamn TVland? Or how about that-” he jerks a thumb at the photographs, “you know, the time you spent god-knows how many Tuesdays forcing my brother to watch me die over and over again? What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”
Gabriel shrugs. “Individually tailored object lessons.”
“And how have those been working out for you? I mean, you sure as hell didn't convince Sam of shit- except of your assholery- and I tell you what, buddy, I am not signing up to be a fuckin' prom dress.”
The archangel makes a little moue of distaste. “Really, prom dress? That's what you're calling it?”
Dean crosses his arms. “What? What's wrong with it?”
“Um, prom dress? Yeah, let's not even go there.”
Dean presses a knuckle into his forehead. “Why the hell am I even getting into this with you? And answer the damn question.”
Gabriel gives a little shrug. “No skin of my nose. And anyway. So what if I'm not batting a thousand there? It's not my fault I've got blockheads to work with.”
“Are you going to explain what the hell I'm doing here, or are you just going to talk me to...undeath?”
“Sheesh, touchy.”
“Yeah, it's been that kind of week. And anyway, while I'm on that subject, what is up with the whole theme you've got going here? I mean: I'm dead. He already killed me. There's not much of an 'object lesson' in that.”
Gabriel makes a face that manages to avoid being a pout by the barest margin. “If you must know, it wasn't originally meant for you, okay?”
Dean actually feels kind of affronted. “What, you're recycling now?”
“Hey, it was apt, okay?” Gabriel flicks a phantom speck of dust off his coat.
“Apt- wait. You're not targeting the guy, are you?” Dean looks around the room again in frank disbelief.
“Lucky for you,” the archangel says, in way of defense. He snaps. “I was able to rescue a few things from the briny deep.” In the corner, a neatly stacked pyramid of small, garbage-wrapped packages appears.
“Great, just what I needed. And anyway, what the hell are you doing going after that guy- Dexter?”
The archangel gives him a singularly sardonic look. “It's right up my alley. He's a self-important dick. Who murders people, I might add, just in case you missed that part.”
“You murder people.”
“I'm an angel. It's called smiting- it doesn't count. They all deserved it.”
“That's what he says,” Dean feels compelled to point out. He'd say death has left him refreshingly free of self-preservation, but he's never really been able to resist needling things he really shouldn't. Death hasn't changed that much.
The angel makes a face that Dean interprets as meaning he concedes the point. “Yeah, maybe. He's only human, though. He thinks, I can know. Besides, you should hear his internal monologue. You'd probably shoot him just to make him shut up. He's more than earned a little quality time with me.”
“Speaking of that- you just happened to be hanging out in Miami, watching that guy? I mean, shouldn't you be a little busy to be messing with serial killers?”
“You mean the whole apocalypse you and your brother started? I'm out of it- I told you that. I'm just trying to enjoy myself before the fireworks start. But you know, if you want to get on that subject, I might ask you the same question. Vampires, Dean, really? And it was such an obvious trap, too.”
“Oh, suck it. It's the job-" Dean says, and then something about what the angel just said strikes him as wrong. "Wait. How the hell do you know about the vampires?” He gives Gabriel a hard, incredulous look. "What are you, stalking us now?"
"Who me? Don't flatter yourself, Dean-o." Gabriel shrugs and waves one hand in a vague gesture. “Word gets around. You guys aren't exactly subtle," he says, arching an eyebrow at Dean. "Hey- it's not important. But you were right about one thing.” He makes a little shooting gesture with his thumb and forefinger. “I am a little busy for this. You know how it is. Orgies to plan, parties to crash. So I'm going to do you a favor, and you'll do me a little one. Quid pro quo. We'll call it even from the last time.” That's one hell of a deflection, Dean thinks, but he lets it go.
“What favor?” Dean eyes the archangel suspiciously and tries to brace himself.
Gabriel smiles. “I am going to fix you.” He points a finger directly at Dean. “You're little death problem? Is going to go away. And in return...”
“What?”
“Let's just say it involves a certain serial killer, and I'm sure you'll figure it out. You've got style.”
Dean stares, then walks closer, looking the angel directly in the eye. “Why are you really helping me?”
The archangel shrugs. “It's just as I said. But...” he pauses, then leans down conspiratorially. “Can you keep a secret?”
Dean makes a face, then shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”
The angel leans closer. “Too bad.” Then he stands back up.
“What- that's it?”
“Yup. What, you thought we were going to have a heart-to-heart? Please. Give me a hand here, and then I don't want to see you again until you're ready to get it all over with.” He holds a hand up, his fingers posed to snap. “Oh, and Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Get your brother out of Miami before Lucifer shows up. I like this city.” The archangel snaps his fingers theatrically.
Dean sits up in the backseat of the Impala. “Jesus,” he grouses. “He just had to get the last word in.” He clambers out of the car. The leather is scorching hot from sitting in the sun. Once out of the car, Dean stretches, then pats himself down. He's wearing the clothes he was wearing before- well, just before.
“Christ, what a day.” He fumbles in a pocket and finds his cell phone. He pulls up the contact list and calls Sam. As the phone rings, he opens the front door and slides in the car.
Sam picks up the phone. “Dean!”
“Sam- Wait. Why the hell did you leave the Impala in a police parking lot with the goddamn keys in the ignition?”
“Uh- is that really important right now?”
Dean glowers at the steering column. “Uh, yeah. But I guess I can kick your ass about it later.”
“So...you're alive?” Sam sounds cautiously optimistic. It's ridiculous how much of a non-event this has become.
“Yeah.”
“How? What the hell happened? You disappeared-” Okay, so not a non-event, Dean silently amends.
“I'll come by the motel. It's a long story and I'll tell it on the way out of town. But there's something I gotta do first.”
* * *
End Act III
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ETA: Link up. Sorry!