Day 59: Cafeteria (noon)
By the time lunch rolled around, things still weren't getting any better. The voices hadn't gone away; instead, Firo was pretty sure they were getting more frequent. Ennis had been silent since last night, but Czes's voice had been an insistent buzz in his ear all morning
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As the day progressed and the two of them were separated from each other, it once again was time to eat. Castiel found it shocking how often humans had to refill their energy reserves. It was, to say the least, extremely inconvenient. Dean had explained to him before how he lost the ability to function without enough hours of sleep, but even as he was now, Castiel had trouble wrapping his head around it. They didn't truly sleep here, it seemed, which the angel preferred. Time was still lost in that in-between period during night and day, however, and they were so often brought into this cafeteria for the express purpose of consuming energy.
No wonder humans were so often unproductive.
More than that, it seemed that the quality of the food hadn't changed from the morning until now. The gruel was still rotten and filled with maggots, judging from a glance at the plates of food that other patients were carrying. Billy had been smart enough to not digest the food, so why were others eating it as if it was completely normal?
Castiel would have blamed Famine, but he realized that he was largely unaffected. His craving for red meat was about the same as it had been since arriving here, rather than that out of control state it had been in when the Horseman had been present.
Another mystery, then. With a sigh, the angel took a seat, glancing across the room for Dean or Sam. There was still no sign of them, and by now it was midday. He realized they could be avoiding him somehow, but he couldn't help but wonder if there was more to it than that.
[For Dean and Sam.]
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He took one look at those maggots and flies swimming around in the sludge and went "screw this". Seriously, just screw it six ways to Sunday. Even he had a line where he said no, and this was pretty much past it. Dean opted for water, which, squinting at it, looked safe enough to pass his test, and went to go look for Castiel.
Was Castiel an honest to God angel? He wasn't sure how much he bought it, but his intel was sound and that meant that whatever Dean thought about the guy before, he probably was gonna need to revise that opinion and take him more seriously than he had only a few days before. Weird ass world. Maybe now that they got angels out of the way he should be expecting something like unicorns or James Doohan. Shaking his head, Dean invited himself to Castiel's table, plunking down with his wussy breakfast of champion's.
"Hey," he said, tipping his chin. “Not hungry?”
It wasn’t like Castiel was in a hurry to stuff himself either. Maybe that was a sign it wasn’t him cracking up or something. Actually, it kinda made Dean relieved to see he wasn’t the only one, like he’d been worried in the back of his mind that he could be expecting to see corpses and stuff like this as his deal ticked on. That was the thing, the hallucinations, and so far they hadn’t cropped up. Dean sipped his water, raising an eyebrow over his glass at the other guy.
Well, he looked like a guy. Did angels even have balls when they weren’t rocking someone’s body?
…Why was he even thinking about angel junk?
Dean shivered. Okay, stop it. Cut it out with the angel junk.
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No, strange as it was, Dean sat down and started speaking to him almost as if things were normal between them. As if he hadn't thought he was someone named Michael Collins the last time they spoke. As if Dean believed the things he'd told him and considered him on his side. Perhaps Castiel was reading too far into it, but they were slowly getting more familiar again. And yet so much had still not been explained.
The question Dean asked was out of place, however. Castiel not eating was supposed to be the norm, but he realized that this Dean had always known him as an angel who ate. They'd gone to that burger place in town and shared other meals together here at the institute. For this Dean, the lack of a plate in front of him was strange, whereas for Castiel it was more normal. What wasn't so normal was the twisting pain in his stomach.
So why had Dean assumed that he would be back to himself today? Castiel recalled the bulletin post he'd made and the information he'd received there from an anonymous source. Apparently that sort of brainwashing had been inflicted upon the patients once before on a wider scale, and in that case it had only lasted a day. Dean may have been present for that time and known that it would be temporary.
In the end, he would rather not dwell on it. If Dean wasn't interested in talking about what had happened yesterday, then Castiel was content to focus on more important matters. "I imagine it would be difficult for anyone to work up an appetite, seeing how the food they're serving has long since expired." It wasn't as if Dean had a bowl of that larva-infested gruel with him, after all.
There was one large issue hanging between them, however, and Castiel was quick to move on and address that. "My condition yesterday led to me speaking about Ruby around your brother," he stated. "I apologize for any trouble that caused. So you were able to confirm what I told you?"
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"Yeah, well, it's done with. Not like I can jump back in time," Dean grumbled. Way he saw it, Castiel was gonna be a gossip whether he thought he was that Michael or he was his...normal self, and come to think of it, Dean wasn't even sure if he could call him "normal" in the first place, so that made things awkward all over again.
He tapped his fingers on the table as he thought about how much detail to go into with this off-on-again angel here. This did save him the trouble of having to explain to "Michael" that all the boogeymen he was scared of as a kid were real, but on the other hand, he was leery about getting too buddy-buddy with a guy that he barely knew. A guy who kept giving him these real intense, borderline "fuck me" eyes. Dean was the first to look away, chewing his bottom lip.
"I did. She's pulling the 'I'm scratching your back' card," Dean said. Somehow he didn't think that telling Castiel she was probably his crossroads chaperone was gonna help matters. Obviously angel mojo didn't work too well here, so that'd at least save Dean the time he'd waste trying to stop Castiel from trying to smite Ruby's sorry ass. "Damned if I know how to kill her."
It was more wishful thiking than anything else. 'Course he couldn't really touch her. Terms of the deal. Trying to gun for your own personal chaperone probably counted as trying to wiggle out of the deal and considering the consequences, Dean just didn't think it was worth it. So the thing was really finding out what else Castiel knew and how to stop him from trying to take matters into his own hands.
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Which was a method that Castiel agreed with, of course. He was long-lived enough that he had experienced plenty of instances when things had gone wrong. In the end, the only choice anyone had was to march onward while attempting to mend whatever had been damaged.
Granted, nothing quite matched up to the Apocalypse that was hanging over his head, but here in this institute that felt surprisingly far away. No one here knew, not even Dean himself. The weight of it was still bearing down on the angel, but with no one who understood save for Gabriel...
It meant that all he could really do was focus on the smaller matters, the things that felt tangible because they were directly in front of him. Such as Ruby. "How, exactly, is she scratching your back?" he shot back with a slight frown, his annoyance bleeding through into his expression just slightly. He didn't see what Ruby could do here that Dean could feel indebted to her for.
"You and Sam had a knife that was imbued with the power to kill demons," he continued. In fact, it was from Ruby that they had obtained it, but there was no reason to mention that. For Castiel, that knife reminded him of only one moment, and that was when he'd used it to cut into his arm and banish Zachariah. That single moment had been the most defining one: when he had turned his back on Heaven because Dean Winchester had convinced him that there was something else worth fighting for.
"I doubt it's anywhere near here, though, so you're correct. There's no way to kill her as we are now." Which meant they were going to have to live with her, one way or another.
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"You serious? How come we never heard of a knife like that? And where'd we even get it?" It sounded like a sweet deal. But Dad hadn't heard of it and Bobby hadn't mentioned and demon shankers like that would stick out in the lore, you'd think. Maybe Castiel had just enough juice to bless it or something.
He wasn't surprised to hear it wasn't around here. Winchester luck. Lose the Colt, lose a friggen demon-killing knife. Sounded about right.
At least it sounded like Ruby was safe for now. Dean couldn't even believe he even thought that, glancing around without meaning to as if to make sure his bitch of a chaperone hadn't keeled over on him. Anything happened to her that looked suspicious and he could bet that crossroads demon might want to reconsider the deal. Dean turned his attention back to Castiel. The thing he was learned so far about Castiel was it was hard to tell if he normally looked like that or if he was actually tired.
So Castiel and his no-smiting. Had to be hard on a guy to know you couldn't get it up, angel or human or whatever. Dean felt kinda sorry for Castiel now, a slight frown on his face. So if he couldn't even smite one demon, then what else did that mean?
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When he walked into the cafeteria, he couldn't help but notice that some people were acting...weird about the food. Like, almost disgusted, even. The gruel hadn't exactly improved, but it was pretty much the same as ever. Huh.
He looked around, uncertain whether he should find Dean or Castiel first. Castiel might be more immediate, given his thing last night with the implanted memo-
Oh. Okay. That was one way to do it.
Sam walked over to where both Dean and Castiel were sitting. He hesitated a moment. It felt like he was interrupting something private, even though he knew he wasn't. Since. There was no reason for that. It just kinda had to do a lot with the intense way Castiel looked at his brother. Seriously, it was freaky sometimes.
If it'd been anyone else, Sam would've prefaced with something polite, but by now, he'd gotten that Castiel didn't care and Dean was, well. Dean was his brother. Interrupting him wasn't something he worried about.
He set down his tray and slid in next to Dean, stirring the pink mixture absently before taking a spoonful. "Hey."
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Before he could attempt to fumble for some other response, Sam himself showed up to speak with them. That meant that any discussion of the demon would need to be pushed to the side -- or he would at least have to watch his words much more closely. He had been on unstable enough footing before; after yesterday, he doubted that Sam trusted him much at all.
He had Dean's trust, though, at least to an extent. That was something.
"Hello," he greeted. "I have to apologize to you for my behavior yesterday. I was not in --"
But before he could finish with the words that he had practiced by now, Castiel watched as Sam lifted a spoon of that rotten food to his mouth. His shoulders tensed for reasons he didn't completely understand. "Sam," he said, almost urgently. "What are you doing?"
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