The Hail Mary 5/6 [PG-13] Sam, Dean, Bobby, Cas - 6.22 coda
Title: The Hail Mary / V. Homeostasis
Author:
datenshiblue
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel, Bobby, guests
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.22
Summary: Coda to "The Man Who Knew Too Much". Long coda to TMWKTM. ^_^;;
Acknowledgments: Eric Kripke, all the cast, crew & writers of Supernatural, and
jupiterjones for beta-ing. All errors are mine.
Notes:
See Part 1 for complete Notes. This is the fifth part of six, being posted on consecutive days. Numbers next to chapter titles are word counts.
The Hail Mary
Previously, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hound to the Hunters, The Harrowing of Heaven, Hypnos and Hubris
The Hail Mary
V. Homeostasis
The room was at the opposite end of the mansion from Crowley's personal 'kitchen' as he'd sometimes liked to call it. In some ways it was almost a mirror image of that room - ground level, similar fired brick walls, metal staircase to the next floor, wide, double-door entrance. This room lacked some of the paraphernalia of the other, though it did have a few stacked crates, a metal folding chair on its side, and some crumpled papers on the floor against the walls.
It should have been dark, since every bulb in the hanging fixtures had exploded recently, leaving sharp, whitish shards on the floor. It wasn't, because the symbol drawn on one wall originally in a mixture of human virgin and Purgatory native's blood was glowing.
What ought to have been dormant, dull, nothing but etched, blackened runes, or possibly a broken and shattered wall had displayed first a thin, radiant thread, like the tiniest of cracks. Now, the entire symbol throbbed dully with a weird, purple light.
Castiel stood in the open double doorway, as far from the symbol, and the portal, as one could manage and still be in the room. Unmoving, he stared at it, feeling the pull against the millions upon millions of souls inside him. The tails of his trench-coat stirred occasionally, in sync with the pulsing glow.
Beneath and surrounding the room, a deep shudder vibrated through the house, the ground, even the air, but right here, around Castiel, movement was held at bay.
It was a battle of will, and power, against all the forces of natural order.
~
"You can't seriously expect me to do nothing but watch," Bobby hissed, trying to steady himself as the ground bucked, the direction of the earth wave heading down the hallway, away from the room and the open door at the far end.
"Look, Bobby, I'm not telling you what to do," Dean growled, checking his gun and then tucking it away in the back of his jeans. "I'm going in because I have to talk to him. Sam's... gonna do what ever it is he thinks he can do to stabilize the portal so the souls can get back through without trashing the planet." Dean made no secret that he was not crystal clear on what Sam had in mind, but he was taking Sam at his word that he had an idea, and prepared to trust that as fully as he'd have trusted Bobby, or trusted himself to follow a hunch.
"Don't fret," Balthazar murmured. "It's not a glory job but someone has to drag out the bodies, don't they?"
The glare Bobby threw towards the resurrected angel was as good as a snarl. In his own mind, though, he conceded that the greatest likelihood was that no would would be around to drag out any of their bodies.
"Fine," he didn't sound at all happy, but there wasn't time to bicker and he didn't have anything better to offer as a plan. "I'll friggin' cover you both!"
"Thanks, Bobby," Sam murmured, his tone as heartfelt as the hug he had demanded when he'd first woken up with his soul back.
Dean just met Bobby's eyes and nodded. All the crap we've been through together.... yadda yadda, see you on the other side...
Squaring his shoulders, he started to head down the corridor, Sam falling into step next to him.
The hallway around them shook harder at first but, as they pushed forward, everything abruptly became as calm and steady as the eye of a hurricane. Only a few yards ahead they could see a familiar trench-coat covered back, the hem moving without any wind. Castiel was now inside the room, still on the far side from the glowing symbol, but several feet forward of the threshold.
Dean took a hard, deep breath and braced himself, but Sam grabbed Dean's left wrist, stopping his advance. "Need something of yours," Sam murmured, the pulse of a muscle in his jaw the only indication of any struggle going on inside him.
Startled, Dean glanced over just as Sam turned Dean's left hand up and shallowly sliced Dean's palm. Another quick slash across Sam's own left hand, and then he pressed the two welling wounds against each other, eyes holding Dean's, asking him not to jerk away.
"What the hell Sammy..." the mutter was sub-audible but there wasn't any time for explanations. As Sam pulled his own hand back, curling fingers into a tight fist to contain as much of the mingled blood as possible, a voice from in front of them called back, the quality of it making gooseflesh form on the listeners with its impression of contained power.
"What are you doing here, Dean? I don't have time to accept your fealty right now."
Separating, the two brothers entered the room, Dean circling around to where he could see Castiel's face.
"I came to talk to you, Cas," Dean said, after licking dry lips. "I'm not going to kneel and bow at your feet because my friend Cas would never ask me to do that."
The new God's eyes were focused on the portal, he did not turn to look at Dean.
"Your God will give you one more chance to do what is correct, but it will have to wait. I am occupied. Do not attempt to hinder me now, or I will be forced to destroy you."
Dean held out his undamaged hand in a sign of pacification - the cut one was fisted, and shoved into a pocket. "I'm not going to hinder you. I just want to talk. Cas, please... you said before I was only trying to get you to give up the souls because I was afraid. I am afraid. Something's not right here, and you know it. Otherwise I'm guessing that symbol on the wall wouldn't be glowing like that... Cas, you did what you said you were going to do, you stopped Raphael. It's over, don't you see that?"
"Nothing is over," Castiel said, still staring at the gateway to Purgatory. "As long as there is a void of authority in Heaven, someone will try to fill it. A... friend... a... brother told me that once. He told me the fighting would never stop. I didn't believe him at that time. Now I understand. Heaven needs a God. Someone must impose order on this chaos."
"It's nice to know you still think of me as your brother," Balthazar said, appearing next to Dean. "Nice that you'd give such weight to my words of advice, but I don't think I ever suggested you become God yourself..."
The room shuddered as Castiel's eyes widened, his gaze finally leaving the portal to fix in shock on the angel standing beside Dean. "...Baltha ..zar... this is impossible...."
"You know it's not, Cas," Dean said urgently. "Who would know better?" He didn't have room or time to feel sick inside as Balthazar's assertion that he'd been killed by Cas was confirmed just by the would-be God's reaction.
Castiel frowned in confusion, shaking his head once. "No... it can't be... He... no..." Megalomania fractured and fought with what had once been the former angel's very being.
As his concentration slipped, the invisible pull of the portal dragged him forward.
"ABEYA!"
Castiel's voice thundered, making Dean wince and duck.
Now in the center of the room, Castiel focused again on the glowing runes. "You will both stop talking and leave, now. If you do not obey, my wrath will be fearsome."
Balthazar flickered, and then returned when Dean didn't move a step.
"Cas," Dean said, and his voice was both determined, and pleading. "I'm not leaving. If you have to smite me, then go ahead."
He was lucky, perhaps, that the would-be God did not have any concentration to spare.
The souls inside Castiel were pulling forward, the portal was sucking at them, and him. But he still had possession of them and all that power. With renewed effort, Castiel put all his will towards slamming the gateway shut for once and for all.
Even so, the new God's perceptions were so much more than mere angellic senses.
"Sam, stop what you are doing. The angel banishing sigil will not work on your God any more than the angel blade did."
And with that, Castiel dismissed the brothers, and even the miraculously revived Balthazar from his thoughts. Once the door was closed, he would deal with all of them.
The throbbing glow edging the Purgatory symbol pulsed, then the lines of light started to thin and disappear slowly as the portal began to shudder closed.
An instant before the light died completely, another low voice in the room began murmuring a chant, from the left side near the wall.
"Purgatorio ostium magnum
Terribilis faucibus creatura
Accipe quod tuum
Close leniter mordent non conteret
Quamquam in dapes
De animae repossessed
Close paulatim nos
Quod vestrum tradite
Súpplices te rogámus!"
The voice was Sam's, and Dean's left hand suddenly burned across the palm where it was thrust into his pocket.
As the original gate closed under the enormous effort of the new God's will, at that exact moment another portal opened, mere feet to the left in the same wall, giving the unmeasurable pressure of that vacuum another outlet.
The runes Sam had drawn in his and Dean's mingled blood were not identical to the original, there were slight changes, in particular, Enochian touches, but the cracks of light spider-webbed out from the symbol, widening quickly.
The pull inside Castiel which had ceased for mere nanoseconds was suddenly renewed, much more intensely, in the direction of the new gate.
"HOW DARE YOU! SAM WINCHESTER, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"He's trying to save you, Cas," Dean yelled, hand reaching instinctively for the would-be God's sleeve. Balthazar's eyes widened and he called a wordless warning.
"Let them go, Cas!" Sam cried, one hand bloody from drawing the new portal, the other clutching the side of his head. "Let them go home! You brought me home, or tried to... you remember that? Let the souls go back to where they belong now! You've done what you had to do... please!"
"Come on, Cas!" Bobby yelled from the doorway. He had a shotgun in his hand but it was lax and aimed at the floor. "You're one of the good guys... don't become this..."
"Castiel!" Balthazar called, "This isn't you... listen to these ridiculous humans..."
"Cas, you saved me from the pit, and I'd do anything to try and save you... just.. Cas, just trust us! Trust me!."
Dean's hand touched Castiel's arm.
At the contact, there was a concussion wave that exploded out from Castiel, knocking Dean flying and against the opposite wall. Balthazar vanished and Bobby was knocked back down the wildly buckling corridor.
There was an indescribable roar from the center of the room for only an instant before those present were physically deafened into silence. Castiel's arms flung back, his eyes and mouth opened wide, and blinding soul energy poured out of him, striking the new portal and blasting through it, on and on seemingly forever...
When Dean came to, the room was quiet and still.
Head (and hand) throbbing, he crawled towards the middle of the room where he'd last seen Castiel. The floor was dented down in a bit of a crater but there was no sign of the former angel, and almost, new God.
"Bobby?" Dean called, his own voice muffled and distant to still deafened eardrums. "...SAMMY!"
Tottering to his feet, Dean stumbled towards the other side of the room where he'd last seen Sam, beside the new Purgatory gate. Now, that gate was nothing but a fused, glassy mass of melted brick and stone, without a spark of life.
Curled on the floor a few feet away, Dean found his brother's still body.
Heart in his throat, Dean pressed fingers to the side of Sam's neck. He held his breath until he felt the steady beat of a pulse.
At the touch, Sam moaned and then stirred, eyes opening to look around blearily, but urgently, stopping when he saw Dean beside him.
With effort, Sam shifted to a sitting position.
"Cas?"
Dean glanced to the empty crater and shrugged.
"Bobby?"
A faint groan was heard out in the hallway.
"I think... uhn... I might finally... be getting too old for this shit..."
~
(concluded in VI. The Hereafter )
♠ season 6 codas
~
Author:
datenshiblue
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel, Bobby, guests
Spoilers: up to & incl. 6.22
Summary: Coda to "The Man Who Knew Too Much". Long coda to TMWKTM. ^_^;;
Acknowledgments: Eric Kripke, all the cast, crew & writers of Supernatural, and
jupiterjones for beta-ing. All errors are mine.
Notes:
See Part 1 for complete Notes. This is the fifth part of six, being posted on consecutive days. Numbers next to chapter titles are word counts.
The Hail Mary
- THEN...
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1431)
- Hound to the Hunters (3409)
- The Harrowing of Heaven (1573)
- Hypnos and Hubris (2343)
- Homeostasis (2076)
- The Hereafter (1308)
Previously, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hound to the Hunters, The Harrowing of Heaven, Hypnos and Hubris
The Hail Mary
V. Homeostasis
The room was at the opposite end of the mansion from Crowley's personal 'kitchen' as he'd sometimes liked to call it. In some ways it was almost a mirror image of that room - ground level, similar fired brick walls, metal staircase to the next floor, wide, double-door entrance. This room lacked some of the paraphernalia of the other, though it did have a few stacked crates, a metal folding chair on its side, and some crumpled papers on the floor against the walls.
It should have been dark, since every bulb in the hanging fixtures had exploded recently, leaving sharp, whitish shards on the floor. It wasn't, because the symbol drawn on one wall originally in a mixture of human virgin and Purgatory native's blood was glowing.
What ought to have been dormant, dull, nothing but etched, blackened runes, or possibly a broken and shattered wall had displayed first a thin, radiant thread, like the tiniest of cracks. Now, the entire symbol throbbed dully with a weird, purple light.
Castiel stood in the open double doorway, as far from the symbol, and the portal, as one could manage and still be in the room. Unmoving, he stared at it, feeling the pull against the millions upon millions of souls inside him. The tails of his trench-coat stirred occasionally, in sync with the pulsing glow.
Beneath and surrounding the room, a deep shudder vibrated through the house, the ground, even the air, but right here, around Castiel, movement was held at bay.
It was a battle of will, and power, against all the forces of natural order.
~
"You can't seriously expect me to do nothing but watch," Bobby hissed, trying to steady himself as the ground bucked, the direction of the earth wave heading down the hallway, away from the room and the open door at the far end.
"Look, Bobby, I'm not telling you what to do," Dean growled, checking his gun and then tucking it away in the back of his jeans. "I'm going in because I have to talk to him. Sam's... gonna do what ever it is he thinks he can do to stabilize the portal so the souls can get back through without trashing the planet." Dean made no secret that he was not crystal clear on what Sam had in mind, but he was taking Sam at his word that he had an idea, and prepared to trust that as fully as he'd have trusted Bobby, or trusted himself to follow a hunch.
"Don't fret," Balthazar murmured. "It's not a glory job but someone has to drag out the bodies, don't they?"
The glare Bobby threw towards the resurrected angel was as good as a snarl. In his own mind, though, he conceded that the greatest likelihood was that no would would be around to drag out any of their bodies.
"Fine," he didn't sound at all happy, but there wasn't time to bicker and he didn't have anything better to offer as a plan. "I'll friggin' cover you both!"
"Thanks, Bobby," Sam murmured, his tone as heartfelt as the hug he had demanded when he'd first woken up with his soul back.
Dean just met Bobby's eyes and nodded. All the crap we've been through together.... yadda yadda, see you on the other side...
Squaring his shoulders, he started to head down the corridor, Sam falling into step next to him.
The hallway around them shook harder at first but, as they pushed forward, everything abruptly became as calm and steady as the eye of a hurricane. Only a few yards ahead they could see a familiar trench-coat covered back, the hem moving without any wind. Castiel was now inside the room, still on the far side from the glowing symbol, but several feet forward of the threshold.
Dean took a hard, deep breath and braced himself, but Sam grabbed Dean's left wrist, stopping his advance. "Need something of yours," Sam murmured, the pulse of a muscle in his jaw the only indication of any struggle going on inside him.
Startled, Dean glanced over just as Sam turned Dean's left hand up and shallowly sliced Dean's palm. Another quick slash across Sam's own left hand, and then he pressed the two welling wounds against each other, eyes holding Dean's, asking him not to jerk away.
"What the hell Sammy..." the mutter was sub-audible but there wasn't any time for explanations. As Sam pulled his own hand back, curling fingers into a tight fist to contain as much of the mingled blood as possible, a voice from in front of them called back, the quality of it making gooseflesh form on the listeners with its impression of contained power.
"What are you doing here, Dean? I don't have time to accept your fealty right now."
Separating, the two brothers entered the room, Dean circling around to where he could see Castiel's face.
"I came to talk to you, Cas," Dean said, after licking dry lips. "I'm not going to kneel and bow at your feet because my friend Cas would never ask me to do that."
The new God's eyes were focused on the portal, he did not turn to look at Dean.
"Your God will give you one more chance to do what is correct, but it will have to wait. I am occupied. Do not attempt to hinder me now, or I will be forced to destroy you."
Dean held out his undamaged hand in a sign of pacification - the cut one was fisted, and shoved into a pocket. "I'm not going to hinder you. I just want to talk. Cas, please... you said before I was only trying to get you to give up the souls because I was afraid. I am afraid. Something's not right here, and you know it. Otherwise I'm guessing that symbol on the wall wouldn't be glowing like that... Cas, you did what you said you were going to do, you stopped Raphael. It's over, don't you see that?"
"Nothing is over," Castiel said, still staring at the gateway to Purgatory. "As long as there is a void of authority in Heaven, someone will try to fill it. A... friend... a... brother told me that once. He told me the fighting would never stop. I didn't believe him at that time. Now I understand. Heaven needs a God. Someone must impose order on this chaos."
"It's nice to know you still think of me as your brother," Balthazar said, appearing next to Dean. "Nice that you'd give such weight to my words of advice, but I don't think I ever suggested you become God yourself..."
The room shuddered as Castiel's eyes widened, his gaze finally leaving the portal to fix in shock on the angel standing beside Dean. "...Baltha ..zar... this is impossible...."
"You know it's not, Cas," Dean said urgently. "Who would know better?" He didn't have room or time to feel sick inside as Balthazar's assertion that he'd been killed by Cas was confirmed just by the would-be God's reaction.
Castiel frowned in confusion, shaking his head once. "No... it can't be... He... no..." Megalomania fractured and fought with what had once been the former angel's very being.
As his concentration slipped, the invisible pull of the portal dragged him forward.
"ABEYA!"
Castiel's voice thundered, making Dean wince and duck.
Now in the center of the room, Castiel focused again on the glowing runes. "You will both stop talking and leave, now. If you do not obey, my wrath will be fearsome."
Balthazar flickered, and then returned when Dean didn't move a step.
"Cas," Dean said, and his voice was both determined, and pleading. "I'm not leaving. If you have to smite me, then go ahead."
He was lucky, perhaps, that the would-be God did not have any concentration to spare.
The souls inside Castiel were pulling forward, the portal was sucking at them, and him. But he still had possession of them and all that power. With renewed effort, Castiel put all his will towards slamming the gateway shut for once and for all.
Even so, the new God's perceptions were so much more than mere angellic senses.
"Sam, stop what you are doing. The angel banishing sigil will not work on your God any more than the angel blade did."
And with that, Castiel dismissed the brothers, and even the miraculously revived Balthazar from his thoughts. Once the door was closed, he would deal with all of them.
The throbbing glow edging the Purgatory symbol pulsed, then the lines of light started to thin and disappear slowly as the portal began to shudder closed.
An instant before the light died completely, another low voice in the room began murmuring a chant, from the left side near the wall.
"Purgatorio ostium magnum
Terribilis faucibus creatura
Accipe quod tuum
Close leniter mordent non conteret
Quamquam in dapes
De animae repossessed
Close paulatim nos
Quod vestrum tradite
Súpplices te rogámus!"
The voice was Sam's, and Dean's left hand suddenly burned across the palm where it was thrust into his pocket.
As the original gate closed under the enormous effort of the new God's will, at that exact moment another portal opened, mere feet to the left in the same wall, giving the unmeasurable pressure of that vacuum another outlet.
The runes Sam had drawn in his and Dean's mingled blood were not identical to the original, there were slight changes, in particular, Enochian touches, but the cracks of light spider-webbed out from the symbol, widening quickly.
The pull inside Castiel which had ceased for mere nanoseconds was suddenly renewed, much more intensely, in the direction of the new gate.
"HOW DARE YOU! SAM WINCHESTER, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"He's trying to save you, Cas," Dean yelled, hand reaching instinctively for the would-be God's sleeve. Balthazar's eyes widened and he called a wordless warning.
"Let them go, Cas!" Sam cried, one hand bloody from drawing the new portal, the other clutching the side of his head. "Let them go home! You brought me home, or tried to... you remember that? Let the souls go back to where they belong now! You've done what you had to do... please!"
"Come on, Cas!" Bobby yelled from the doorway. He had a shotgun in his hand but it was lax and aimed at the floor. "You're one of the good guys... don't become this..."
"Castiel!" Balthazar called, "This isn't you... listen to these ridiculous humans..."
"Cas, you saved me from the pit, and I'd do anything to try and save you... just.. Cas, just trust us! Trust me!."
Dean's hand touched Castiel's arm.
At the contact, there was a concussion wave that exploded out from Castiel, knocking Dean flying and against the opposite wall. Balthazar vanished and Bobby was knocked back down the wildly buckling corridor.
There was an indescribable roar from the center of the room for only an instant before those present were physically deafened into silence. Castiel's arms flung back, his eyes and mouth opened wide, and blinding soul energy poured out of him, striking the new portal and blasting through it, on and on seemingly forever...
When Dean came to, the room was quiet and still.
Head (and hand) throbbing, he crawled towards the middle of the room where he'd last seen Castiel. The floor was dented down in a bit of a crater but there was no sign of the former angel, and almost, new God.
"Bobby?" Dean called, his own voice muffled and distant to still deafened eardrums. "...SAMMY!"
Tottering to his feet, Dean stumbled towards the other side of the room where he'd last seen Sam, beside the new Purgatory gate. Now, that gate was nothing but a fused, glassy mass of melted brick and stone, without a spark of life.
Curled on the floor a few feet away, Dean found his brother's still body.
Heart in his throat, Dean pressed fingers to the side of Sam's neck. He held his breath until he felt the steady beat of a pulse.
At the touch, Sam moaned and then stirred, eyes opening to look around blearily, but urgently, stopping when he saw Dean beside him.
With effort, Sam shifted to a sitting position.
"Cas?"
Dean glanced to the empty crater and shrugged.
"Bobby?"
A faint groan was heard out in the hallway.
"I think... uhn... I might finally... be getting too old for this shit..."
~
(concluded in VI. The Hereafter )
♠ season 6 codas
~