Tuesday: Silence
Hello again! Today's theme is silence. Character introspectives, breaking silence, or no dialogue at all...however you want to interpret it!
Don't forget the rules!
Don't forget the rules!
- Please don’t prompt more than 5 prompts in a row or over 3 prompts per fandom in a row.
- Once someone has answered your prompt, you may prompt again.
- Don't include spoilers in your prompt ( Read more... )
Somewhere around the 468th time Cas chooses the Winchesters over the will of Heaven, he gets cut off.
No one is particularly surprised. It's been a long time coming.
Cas's mojo fades, and he is forced to get from point A to point B by putting one foot in front of the other and dull the pain of cracked ribs with fistfuls of painkillers and too many pulls off the whisky bottle like the rest of them.
That's when they notice it, when he's laid up on Bobby's couch slowly recovering--the way Cas sometimes has to grope for words and often comes up empty-handed, making frustrated gestures until someone fills in the blank. They chalk it up to plain old forgetfulness: more than two thousand years of memories are now crammed into Cas's too human skull. Something's got to give.
Cas's ribs heal. He adjusts. Life goes on. But the gestures become more frequent, accompanied by grunted, rough syllables of Enochian, and more often than not, he frowns and shakes his head when one of them says the simplest thing, like he doesn't understand.
Sam and Bobby pore over books, but it's useless. Cas was always their best source when it came to this sort of thing, and now he barely even bothers to open his mouth, too frustrated and angry to even try anymore.
"What am I going to do with you, man?" Dean says, mostly to himself because it's not like Cas can understand him anyway. But Cas watches Dean's mouth as he speaks like if he just concentrates hard enough, he'll remember how the sounds fit together. Dean throws an arm across Cas's shoulders, trying to find some way to reassure him. "We'll figure something out," he promises. Cas sighs and takes another pull off his beer, sagging into Dean's side.
It's Bobby who comes up with the genius idea of learning Enochian, and of course, Sam thinks it's the greatest thing he's ever heard. And Dean and his three F's in high school Spanish thinks it's a complete waste of time. But then Dean sees the way Cas watches Bobby and Sam as they stumble through reading bits of text, trying to make it make sense. Cas goes still, listening closely, and Dean realizes it's probably the first thing anyone's said in weeks that makes a bit of sense to him, broken and awkward though it may be.
"There's nothing actually useful in here," Sam says as he flips through the books. "Just a couple of exorcisms and summoning spells, but it's something, right?"
Cas is already dragging Dean over to the table and sitting down with them, desperately pointing at things in the book and talking so fast that he runs out of breath, and no one can understand a word of it.
"Take it easy," Bobby tells him, holding his hands up in front of him, and Cas takes a deep breath and nods. "We're gonna have to go a little slower than that."
But by the end of the night, Cas is grinning as Bobby and Sam fumble their way through simple phrases while Dean's head is swimming and every time he opens his mouth, Cas cuts him off and corrects him. And in just a few short days, Bobby and Sam have figured out enough to communicate with Cas in a very basic way that still seems to escape Dean no matter how much he tries. He studies Bobby's notes for hours. Nothing ever quite clicks. But Dean misses Cas, misses talking to him, misses Cas's awkward attempts at jokes and the way he asks so many fucking questions about football when Dean tries to watch the game. So he keeps at it.
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Dean turns to Sam, who is watching them out of the corner of his eye as he reads on the couch. "A little help?"
"He says, 'This is the beginning.'"
And he isn't kidding. Cas takes him through the Enochian alphabet three times, pointing at each symbol, saying its name out loud, and waiting for Dean to repeat it. Sam divides his attention between them and his book, a small smirk on his face as Dean struggles.
Cas points at the first symbol again. "Pa."
"Pa," Dean says.
"Veh."
"Veh."
"Ged."
"Gid."
Cas shakes his head. "Ged."
"Ged," Dean repeats, and he stares down at the symbols Cas is pointing at, trying to commit them to memory. They all look the same to him. And how the hell is he supposed to use this to talk to Cas when he can't even figure out the damn alphabet?
It's only when Cas covers Dean's hand with his own that Dean realizes he's balled his fingers into tight fists in his frustration. He looks up, and Cas is watching him from across the table, just as exhausted as Dean, but offering a small smile of encouragement.
"I'm trying," Dean tells him, and Cas squeezes his hand like maybe he gets it.
Dean takes a deep breath and starts again. "Pa. Veh. Ged. Gal. Or. An?"
"Un," Cas corrects gently.
The next time through, Dean gets them all without hesitation, and it isn't until Cas smiles and squeezes his hand again that Dean realizes he never let go.
Dean finds himself repeating the alphabet to himself like a chant under his breath at odd times, and Cas grins when he catches him.
"Now I know why there's that song," Dean says mostly out of habit. He misses talking to Cas. "It's a hell of a lot easier that way." He smiles and shakes his head. "The things I do for you."
Deans turns his attention back to the plate he's drying, but Cas curls a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him closer. Cas leans their foreheads together, and Dean can't even ask what's going on because he's sure he won't understand the answer. But then Cas presses his lips to Dean's, soft and quick. Dean lets out a startled laugh, but he's wrong. He understands perfectly.
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And I can understand Dean's frustration. It's gotta be hard learn another language especially when you're not as book smart as Sam, Bobby and Cas are.
Still, he does try.
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