Held Against Your Bones [3/3]
*
He was already four hours out of Cicero. Lisa had called him three times, and each time he’d let it go to voicemail and listened in silence.
Beep. “Hey, Dean, I was wondering if you could help pick up some groceries? I just remembered that we’re out of canola oil. Ask someone if you’re having trouble finding the right aisle.”
Beep. “Dean, Ben just called and said you weren’t at the house when he got home from his baseball game. Just get back to me when you can.”
Beep. “Dean Winchester, where in the world are you? You’re in absolutely no shape to just up and leave without a word, and spare me your crap about being okay-I’m not an idiot. You’re an idiot.” Pause. “Oh for god’s sake, Dean.”
Lisa was too kind, worrying over someone who happened to be an old one-night-stand and helped get Ben out of trouble. He’d landed on their doorstep without any warning, and yet she’d given him a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to dream. It was a cheap way of repayment, but the least he could do was avoid bringing his troubles onto their heads. Dean thought, It’s okay, it’ll all be okay, and parked the Impala at the next crossroads, deserted in the middle of nowhere.
He carried no box filled with the sad tangible things that were poor substitutes for memories and even poorer ones for people, no plastic toy soldier or wrinkled photos. He tugged the cord around his neck over his head and held it up and watched the rings gleam dully under the cloudy sky. Then he crouched down and dug with his bare hands and buried them deep in the earth, and waited for no one, no crossroads demon wearing a sly smile and gleaming ruby eyes but lay down upon the ground, curled up with his knees drawn against his chest, and fell asleep listening to the thumping in his ears, in truth that which was his own heartbeat but if he deluded himself enough he could imagine was the steady thrum of Sam’s heart, Sam alive, far down under and echoing through the earth and past the boundaries of Hell.
He turned his head and squinted up at the shadow that fell across him. Cas looked even paler, his trench coat thin and insubstantial, and so too was his body, his face skeleton-bare. The only blotches of color Dean could see clearly were Cas’s eyes, blazing feverishly blue.
“Cas!” Dean sat up sharply. “You made it.”
No, Dean, he heard. He frowned and cocked his head, but kept his gaze on Cas, who reached over Dean’s hip and pressed his hand to the patch of ground boxed in by Dean’s body, over the Horsemen’s rings. Cas’s breathing grew sick and shallow, little huffs of air tickling the hem of Dean’s shirt; he said, “Yes, I did. I can find the start. But the rest of the journey I must give over to you.”
The pit of Dean’s stomach twisted ever slightly, from nerves and the quiet fear. “How long are you gonna be able to stay with me?” he asked.
Cas opened his mouth and Dean heard the echo, I am here and where else would I go, except what his lips shaped were, “Only for a little while.” He gripped Dean by the arm and pulled him up, fingers digging in like pincers; turned and led Dean toward the mouth of a cave, which Dean had not noticed before and which possibly had not even existed then. Cas stopped and closed his eyes, as if to ground himself; he looked like a gust of wind would pulverize him to ashes. Or a snap of the fingers, so it went. “There’s a weakness here,” he said. “I can feel Lucifer’s grace.” He opened his eyes and gazed at Dean, deep grooves under his eyes.
Dean shook off Cas’s grip and stepped back. “All right,” he said, and tried not to stare at Castiel, at his face peeling and lined and falling apart. He wanted to ask, And you, are you all right, though he was not blind and the answer stared and mocked him in the face, but Cas said abruptly, loudly, “Go!” and he went. He glanced over his shoulder only once but Castiel was no longer there.
-
In the cave the shadows coalesced in thickened blotches like squid ink, and grazed his eyelashes, sank through to the backs of his sockets and lazed into puddles and solidified to the consistency of burnt fat, but it was a familiar sensation and he stared into the void and thought, Sam will be there, and walked right in. He would have thought it a breeding place for demons, the way his ears muffled themselves and his eyes stung and his mouth dried out, but he knew better now and had learned that the only places most demons grew were within the hearts of the humanly damned.
He couldn’t sense Cas at all. Any sign of the angel was buried, unperceivable. Dean thought, We’ve come this far, you’re with me, right-right, you are-and forged onward. The numbness seeped into him steadily.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, and didn’t try to keep track. At one point he had to slow to a stop. My hands, he thought, where are my fucking hands? It was easy to fall into his old habits, how simple it was to settle his mind and concentrate-here is my left elbow, here is my kneecap, my jawbone, my right hand. Here are the veins which flow from the heart. Only by keeping himself in mind had he been able to gather up pieces torn apart after each session, painstakingly matching them up again till the next time and the next. Every time he had pulled himself together to become whole again, hooked into the rack, until the very last. Yes, yes, yes. After that he had no need to remember-it was easier that way, to dig in from all angles and feast on the pain with a hunger that was never quite sated.
(When he dreamed he always saved his shoulder for last. It tasted sweet, spun out of air into wafers of clouds, fleeting on the tongue like a candied spider web. The roiling in his gut settled, quieting down.
That was where it always ended.)
He walked; he didn’t know the passage of time but that made no impression on him. The smoke began to dissipate, and now he looked down and saw that he was not stepping on the cave floor. Where the oblivion of darkness met his feet, the grinding outlines of wheels emerged. The spokes were crackling white with lightning, the rims patterned like almond-shaped holes. The spokes flickered once, twice-in the holes he saw the pinpoints of pupils staring up mindlessly-then the lightning died again, and the eyes went out.
He stood stock still. All those eyes.
He dropped down, staring at the ground through which the wheels creaked like gears, a clockwork mechanism that ran effortlessly onward, no oversight necessary over this cage tucked away into some dimension of Hell. “Sam,” he said hoarsely, the words rough and raw. “Sammy! Sam.” So close, so easy.
The wheels rattled Sam Sammy Sam back at him. Dean, no, and there was the faint moan, not Sam’s voice, but he thought, Yes. Fuck, yes.
He felt the jolt flash through him with the next flare, but shook the black spots out of his vision. Do not, Cas snapped, you will not.
He was about to start, Cas, what the fuck, you told me about this, you did and it worked, it’s working-but didn’t say anything, and looked, and looked. Sam stared up at him, a sliver of hazel through the rim of the wheel. There was something terribly awful about looking at Sam in Hell-dazed, like he did not recognize his brother.
“It’s me,” he managed, almost laughed. “Sam, it’s me.”
Sam blinked. All along the wheels each pupil blinked. Sam with a thousand eyes, watching him. Waiting.
He heard it, though barely a whisper. “Out,” Sam said. He sounded half-conscious, numb and barely responsive. “I want out.”
He said, “Please.”
“I’ll get you out. Fuck, Sam, I’m getting you outta here.” He didn’t move, and kept right on looking. I know I’m asleep, he thought. I’m dreaming. I’m really dreaming.
The interlocked wheels lit up again, stabbing sharp and furious. Dean said, “Cas?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He breathed in deeply and let himself scatter, let go the skin and bone and muscle. How laughably easy, miraculous this was, the power of imagination. In Hell he could do anything he set his mind to, don’t fight it, so said Alastair. He forgot himself wholly and slipped into the cracks, even though it was cold and quite bare and he could go no further, wriggling up against the barrier, smoke to smoke. The warmth burned inside him, finger-light smudges all across, and the one place where Castiel had held on tight.
His hunger twisted, queasy, like something had gone down wrong. Hot dog for lunch today. Yeah, he thought, I want them out of the cage. Sammy, he said.
“I can hear you. I can’t see you.”
Where’s Lucifer and Michael? No fucking way I’m having them around.
“There’s always lightning. They’re always fighting.” Sam added, nonsensically, “I have headaches.” His voice dulled in blank bewilderment, as though he knew only the statement and not the emotion.
What, they just shucked you and Adam off and started going at it? And what’ve they done, Dean thought. What’ve they done to you? Where’s Adam?
“We’re just-collateral, so,” Sam said. “I can’t stay, Dean-“
Dean. Dean-
-o, he heard.
He shivered, though there was no chill to be felt. In Hell there were no cold spells except for the ones that grew within themselves and exploded outward, rings of fear. He said, Sam, how long?
“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Too long. I can’t keep track.” Every word drawn from him seemed to exhaust his scant reservoir of strength. “I’m tired.”
He flinched back, remembering Cas’s words: Time is not the same, and Lucifer’s cage is like none other.
He said, Least you kept your head. You remember what you look like, right? You can’t, I’ll remember for you.
“I.” Open, close. Sam stared up past him like he wasn’t even there, probably expecting him in his body proper, not like this, but he could hear Sam so close by, he could hear the heartbeat. Right there. “I don’t know. Where are you?”
I’m here, bitch.
He waited, humming. Sam said, “I missed you, Dean.”
His reply faltered, a beat missed, and the chill crept into him slow and cruel, icicles to the heart of it. A thousand little things which had been adding up one by one blipped to their final summation; he thought, You motherfucker, you bastard, you. Couldn’t think for a moment.
And he said, simply, deliberately, Couldn’t let my brother stay down here, huh? He slid around the grooves of the wheels, sharp ends gaping wide and piranha-teeth-sharp, and said, Don’t go anywhere. There’s a lot to tell you. (So here’s one. He’s sitting on the porch with a beer in hand, and Lisa comes out and says, That’s the third and last one, yeah? ‘Course, he says, sorry, Lisa. You know one of my friends emptied a liquor store and only got tipsy? Now that was goddamn inhuman. She says, And what, his liver failed him? Lots of things failed him, he tells her. God failed him. He failed a lotta things too, like me.) So here’s one. I had to bury Bobby, you know, and then I went to Lisa’s and she let me stay. And all the stuff I had to deal with-I couldn’t even tell her you were dead, I just said you were gone. I tried, believe me, I tried, but-sorry man, I came for you. Cas told me how.
“Cas?” Slow befuddlement in Sam’s voice. “How did he know?”
I could ask you the same, he snarled. You lying sonuvabitch.
There was no more lightning. Sam’s eyes blinked, very slowly, the endless rows of dreary half-open ellipses peering at him, and when they opened the Devil said with dignified reproach, “Dean, you shouldn’t say that about Mom.”
What did you do? he said, boiling out of smoke with hands clenched tight. “Where’s Sam and Cas?” And: “If I could I’d rip your tongue out.” He could strangle, too, and cut and carve and dig into the very heart of the body, he could but he couldn’t, because it was Sam.
“Oh, Dean.” Cas’s voice was mild and soothing, and not at all like Cas. “I tried, I really did. You wanted your brother, I showed you how to get him back. You wanted the angel here, and so I did it again. You were so blind, and I thought you’d be pleased.”
He snapped his head to the side so quickly. “Cas?” he said disbelievingly. Cas, who stood with hands shoved in pockets and tilting his head and-smiling, fuck, he was smiling and for a moment he couldn’t bear the sight, it was the vacant smile on Cas drugged up all over again, Zachariah’s gift. “That’s not him,” he said.
“Of course not,” Lucifer said. He wore the dream image of Jimmy Novak as casually as Castiel did not, and carefully adjusted the tie, patting down the trench coat. His nose wrinkled. “What tipped you off?”
“I’m the biggest fucking jerk you’ll ever meet,” Dean said. “And Sam knows that better’n you. You’re a brother, but you’re not mine.”
“You would have been so happy,” Lucifer murmured. “You didn’t think any worse of Castiel, did you? He told you what you wanted to hear. He had faith in you. He was helping you save Sam. You believed it all. I saw your suffering when you were awake, even if I only spoke to you in dreams. You felt how it is to lose your brother-with that kind of loss, why couldn’t I help you have him back?”
He gritted his teeth. Sam jumped in, he thought, he jumped and took the devil with him, this is not the devil-but. He looked at Lucifer who was Castiel who was Jimmy Novak, the warped figure like negatives of a photograph ruined. He stood too straight and kept his arms crossed too neatly; his hair was flawlessly even-as though after all the slow deterioration in Dean’s dreams, he’d snapped like a rubber band from one end to another, from entropy to the cleanest, most orderly appearance possible.
“I didn’t believe enough,” Dean said. “You made it too easy. I couldn’t-it was never about Sam, it was about you, wasn’t it? You wanting out? Where’s Sam? Where the fuck is Cas?”
“It’s really as easy as it is.” Lucifer tilted his head to the side, frightening in its pitch-perfect echo of Cas’s habit with wide blue eyes and perplexed face. “Your brother is with me. What a perfect specimen,” he said, almost like he was singing, “so much rage and love in him.” Then he suddenly gave Dean a knowing smile and the straight line of his teeth flashed in the darkness. “And would you believe me if I said my brother is dead?”
For a second Dean felt nothing but terror, but he hissed, “Why the hell would I trust you?” Besides, he thought desperately, Castiel always comes back.
Under his feet the eyes had closed and gone blank. They stood in the darkness, which pressed down on Dean like heavy blankets, thick and smelling cloyingly sweet like chloroform.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Lucifer murmured. “You wouldn’t accept it even when your brother was dead. Castiel is in here somewhere, but I kept him quiet. I didn’t lie, you know. He left a bit of his grace with you, so when I took care of his vessel he made a beeline for you. Would’ve made it too, but I sent an imprint after him and rode him, took his dream body instead. Or perhaps I should say I was created by Lucifer? Simply the virtue of knowing many places at once. He’s been fighting for a long while now. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”
“And I guess Cas is winning,” Dean spat, ignoring Lucifer’s jab. “You sorta looked like a corpse last time I saw you.” He thought of the words thrown at him and striking without impact, don’t listen don’t listen. He’d noticed, but-hadn’t dared to suspect. “You weren’t even strong enough to pull off your own break-out? Had to go through me?”
“I didn’t lie to you when I said it’s practical to have a failsafe. The crossroads are close to this plane, and even if you didn’t intend to let me out, the presence of the Horsemen’s rings you brought here in your dream so close to my cage would weaken it as time passes. It’s true your precious Castiel wasn’t giving up, but in such close proximity to my original self-“ Lucifer took a step forward-covered the distance between them, abruptly there where he was not before, cheek to cheek. He said, expelling warmth onto Dean’s neck, “It’s-so-much-easier to wrestle him down again. So I have you to thank for that, Dean Winchester.”
Dean slid his gaze sideways, looking at the familiar face. Steady blue eyes, the barest hint of stubble on the chin, the tendon standing out in the neck. One of the buttons on the trench coat hung carelessly from a loose thread.
He drew his hand back and threw a jab at the stomach, knuckles smashing against the coat buttons. Lucifer stumbled, doubling up, and straightened again-he dodged Dean’s next swing, dancing back in a quick hop-skip. “Resorting to physical violence,” he commented. “What a classic. Shall we tango?”
“You’re gonna let him go,” Dean snarled. “Why shouldn’t I beat you up, you fucker-“
“If you’re willing to sacrifice Castiel-he can’t take on this body anywhere anymore, you know,” Lucifer said conversationally. “Where will he go?”
“I’ll take care of him.” Dean bared his teeth and felt his simmering anger flare up now, a ring of fire from his head to his gut driving him forward. “You can’t hurt me, can you? This is still my dream.”
Lucifer looked pitying. “You really are such a human,” he sighed. “The world’s not your oyster, but you’ve all taken over and will end up destroying it. A beautiful creation you’re leading to ruin. Perhaps you started the dream,” he corrected, “but why do you think you retain all control over it?”
“It’s my goddamn mind!”
Lucifer laughed full-out, and Dean flinched back as though struck. If the Castiel of the future had not been drugged and dissolute, he might have sounded like this, a careful, cultured laugh touched with insincere amusement, void of true emotion. “We’re above you, Dean,” he said, almost kindly. “We’re not bound by human limitations. Castiel came into your dreams without your permission. Zachariah undoubtedly played some tricks on you, and he would have been truly great if only he were not so blindly loyal to our Father. Why wouldn’t I be able to do anything myself? I’ll keep you here and you won’t be able to escape and your dream will never end. Don’t be upset. When the cage weakens enough and I’m free again, I’ll bring your Sam out with me. You’ll have him back, happy? That’s all you ever wanted.”
“Then what the fuck was the point of this in the first place?” Dean gritted out lowly, his stomach churning like curdled milk. “All that time having to play buddy-buddy with you for nothing? What the fuck did my brother jump in for? To let the world go to hell? I want Sammy out, but him and Adam only. You and Michael, you sick fuckers, you can stay here and rot.”
“I’ve already been here for so long,” Lucifer said. The face Dean knew best as Castiel looked strangely mournful, the corners of his eyes drawing down. “My Father has been the cruel one.”
“And you’ve learned nothing good from it,” Dean growled, falling back. He wondered if Lucifer was that dumb-just like a demon, like a human, taking the pain and unleashing it on others, and not even realizing. It was pretty pathetic, actually, knowing others better than he knew himself.
You can’t keep me here, he thought savagely, and his lips lifted into a humorless smile. I know how, and you’re not gonna think of it because you’d never do it, you think you’re too good for that. But me-I already did it and I’d do it again.
First though: Sam was still in the cage with Lucifer, and Castiel with this shoddy echo of the Morning Star. One by one, he thought-fuck you, Alastair, but I guess I learned some useful stuff after all, Dean decided coldly, and let himself go; threw away his body and stripped down, remembering forty years in Hell, ten years the torturer. He had not forgotten the hunger.
He swarmed forward at Lucifer, a hissing mass of smoke-crammed himself straight down the throat, viciously gnawing and tunneling down into the gut, the most painful way, the best kind of screams. Cas! he shouted. Castiel!
“You-“ Lucifer said, his voice strained.
Yeah, me. I got a few tricks up my sleeve too, Dean slurred. He lashed out mindlessly, felt the body fracture and buckle like sheeted metal. This is what it’s like to possess, he thought. The warmth inside him suddenly expanded till it seemed that fire burned in his very touch, charring the innards of the body-the solidity slipped away under his wrath, but he held on and raged through the coldness around him and there, warmer and warmer-
Dean.
There. He came to the boundary that shifted from the alien to the familiar and tore at it. Remembered the hellhounds, the finesse with which they’d carved him out on the rack, and mimicked the angle, slicing deeper. Go, he snapped, if you’re there, Cas, go and get the fuck out!
Dean-
The voice blinked out, weak and exhausted. But Dean still carried the heat with him, a soul torch blazing-and that had to’ve been Cas, he decided, had to be, ignored the niggling whisper, or maybe that was Lucifer all over again-and let the wildfire run.
Just an imprint whatever, he thought, and said, I’ll burn your heart out, you bastard-watch and see, I’ll burn this fucking dream from the inside out.
Doesn’t matter, you’ll still be stuck here-and the rings as well-Lucifer’s words filtered through the inferno like falling droplets, hissing into air upon impact.
Watch and see, Dean said.
He turned in upon himself, fire against fire, and found the core, a jagged shard flashing deadly like black obsidian out of volcanic fury, wrapped himself around it, Castiel’s little bit of grace, and sank down. Carried the old memory with him like lead weight-an ordinary life, Mom and Dad alive, Sam and Jess getting married, him being loved, and the false dream asking him, Why’d you have to keep digging? Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?
At least Lisa won’t be mad if I’m only committing suicide in a dream, he thought inanely. Then: Sammy, just hold on-I’ll be back, I’ll be back for you.
In his mind’s eye he saw his hands holding the knife, bringing it down on himself. Lucifer would never do it. Dean had, and did.
Castiel’s grace shone bright, and cut as sharp as a battlesword.
-
Wake up. You can’t die like this, Dean, Castiel rasped out. God? Please.
His eyelids fluttered against the dirt. He lay facedown on the ground, drenched in sweat that soaked his T-shirt and jacket all the way through, even as the night breeze flowed over him steadily and dried him off. He turned over and looked up. Above him the night sky was blank and fathomless and though he was far away from the lights of any town or city he saw no sign of stars.
Crickets were chirping, far off in the forest.
Get up!
“I’m,” he moaned, coughed into the ground. “I’m not deaf, got it?” Not dead, either.
The silence was exhausted, heavy with inexpressible relief.
“Cas?”
Yes.
“It’s really you?”
Yes.
He closed his eyes, lips against the dirt. Castiel. “I can’t see you,” he said.
No. No one can.
“Shit,” Dean said; muttered to the open air, “What the fuck’re we gonna do?” He hauled himself up, felt his phone weighing heavily in his pocket, and checked. Two new voicemails from Lisa blinked at him.
He thought, Should call and say I’m not dead after all.
Dean, said Castiel, as if he couldn’t say the name enough times, testing his voice, his freedom and existence. The beauty of speech. Dean.
“I’m here,” Dean said dully. Sam and Lucifer were not. He twisted to the side, and threw up.
*
She’s known as Papa of the earth, in the south Pacific, Cas had said. She from whom lands are born.
“She calls herself Papa?” Dean mumbles.
No. She is called Papa. And not everyone speaks your kind of English, Dean.
Haloa is, according to Cas, another name for the taro plant-like potatoes, Cas explains-so Dean can’t imagine why there’s a café named after a plant, not even a flashy cool one but just starchy tubers, a little café which doubles as a deity’s occasional hangout, tucked away into the basement floor of an old building on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and says as much.
I won’t start with the use of taro as a staple food across continents then, since it’s so boring to you, Cas replies. I suppose you would find more interesting the fact that it’s sometimes called elephant ears for household decoration?
“Cas, don’t tell me you were reading house magazines in your free time. Could do a lot better than learn about furniture polish.”
No, Cas says, then admits, I skimmed a lot of travel brochures. And the old prophets’ tales.
“They always get drunk like Chuck?” Dean asks, and downs the rest of his drink, fizzing in his mouth. He still can’t believe he’s drinking Coke in a café. Still, better than being drunk when trying to find a deity to talk to.
Sometimes. Worse.
Haloa’s bathed in dim light, a soft mixture of muted blue and yellow on earth-brown walls, with scattered tables here and there, brightly painted stools at the counter. He sits at the very end, his back curved over his drink as if to hide its non-alcoholic appearance. It also helps to hide the fact that he’s talking out loud to no one there.
He isn’t sure what he’s looking for. Cas says he was never assigned to the Pacific region, so he’s not all that familiar with her either. I could have learned the necessary information before, he says, over-angel radio, as you say-but now… If Cas had a body he’d be lowering his gaze right now at this, the way he would with an issue he doesn’t want to address.
It’s fine, Dean tells him, though nothing’s really fine, and signals the bartender over. “Another Coke, thanks,” he says.
The bartender looks him up and down coolly. “Sure you don’t want a proper drink?” he asks. He’s got a stocky build, dark hair cropped close to his scalp, and his eyes assess every person who comes into the bar like he’s running them through an X-ray machine. Friendly much, Dean thinks, and suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. “Looks like you need one.”
“Nah, I’m good,” Dean says. “Have some business later to take care of. Just killing time while I can.”
The man shrugs. “As you like, man,” he says, and wanders off to greet a new customer, a slight, coltish girl in a flowery dress who definitely doesn’t look over twenty-one. He clearly recognizes her though, and waves her toward a room in the back. Looks like family to the management.
Dean sits and nurses his Coke. God, he feels like a teenager. Fucking Coke. Then again, all the other alcoholic drinks have fancy umbrellas in them. He would’ve bought them for Sam.
Doesn’t think about the motel in Utah. That wasn’t what it was, he tells himself. It’s just. Been a while since I’ve done that.
There’s something strange about this place, Cas says, the cadence of his words vibrating through Dean’s body.
You think? Dean shivers, looking up at the flower garlands which stretch across the ceiling, fresh and vibrant. You’d think they would die in the dark like this, he thinks, and wonders.
And there’s not even a pool table.
(Looks like hustling’s on tonight, he says. He winks. I get to play winner.
What, so you can buy drinks for all the girls?
Sammy, he replies, you’ve got terrible, terrible priorities. First thing I’m gettin’ is food.)
A wave of vertigo suddenly swims across his eyes, the ceiling seesawing with the ground, and he grips the counter tightly. Cas, he says tightly, if you could stop.
Castiel is utterly wrapped up in his analysis. It feels like it’s breathing, he replies, and-
“You there.” The bartender’s back, wiping his hands on a muddy rag and yet keeping them clean. He tosses the cloth onto the counter, where it leaves a perfect brown skid. “Who you doing business with?”
Dean shrugs. “None of your business,” he says. “Just waiting for someone.”
Cas sighs. You could try not to be so mouthy.
“Wait for your friend somewhere else,” the man says. “We’re closing down.”
Dean stares at him. “It’s only eight o’clock, and you’re closing? Who the hell closes this early?” What the fuck, he’ll take the plunge. “Whatever. You know someone named Papa coming in, let me know.” He gets off the stool, swipes his half-finished Coke off the counter-no sense in wasting the drink-and tugs on his jacket with one hand.
Okay, so he didn’t expect to be choked in the next second.
The bartender says in a conversational tone, “How you know about her? She doesn’t go ‘round advertising herself.” He’s smiling now, but his eyes are flinty pieces of rock. The muscles in his arm stand out like thick cords.
Dean splutters and jabs at his neck, before the tight grip suddenly disappears and he slumps to the floor, gasping. All right, Cas, he says, maybe you had a point. “Someone I know.” He rubs his throat-damn, only a few seconds or so but he swears he can feel the places where fingernails dug into skin, thin curves of red like little arches. “Kali said I should swing by and say hi.”
“Kali, huh?” The man says, and grins, showing all his teeth. The about-face is as abrupt as his strangling fingers were. “She’s not one to send mortals off alive. A-plus for you.” He nods. “Hallway, second door on the right. Guess you’ll be entertaining.”
“Excuse me?” Dean narrows his eyes.
“You’ll be entertaining,” the bartender repeats. “Hop to it, snail boy. Like I said. I’m closing down.”
Snail boy? What the hell, Dean snaps as he marches off. Bastard.
I can testify you don’t have a shell, Cas offers.
Fuck you too.
He doesn’t knock at the door, just opens it and strolls right in. “The bartender told me I could find Papa,” he says, then blinks. “Uh, sorry. You mind telling me where she is?”
The girl who Dean had tagged as a relative to management looks up. She’s curled up in a green-vine-patterned dish chair, flipping through a book, and when she sets it down on the floor Dean sees the pages are filled with photographs of volcanoes.
She slides out of the chair, flowing like water, but doesn’t look at them. Instead, she starts cleaning off the round table in the middle of the room. “Whatcha want from her?” she says briskly, bent over the magazines she tosses onto the dish chair.
“Kali sent me,” Dean says, because he might as well get down to business, and judging from past experiences the gods of the world don’t have too much patience. “There’s a disembodied angel who’s been stuck with me and she said Papa could do a few pointers, do a better job of getting this fixed.”
“Isn’t that a miracle,” the girl says, and turns. “Kali’s actually giving me some credit for once.” She gives Dean a look-over, her gaze lingering on his chest as if she could see the Enochian on his ribs, Castiel’s writing emblazoned in protection over his heart. “Good mood, too, if you’re here and breathing in the first place. A pair of miracles.”
Cas says, So. This is Papa. There’s faint bewilderment and curiosity in his words, and Dean doesn’t blame him. When he looks closer he realizes that it wasn’t so much that the girl was a girl as it is Papa’s a short thin woman-the bones of her face aren’t baby-like at all, sun-dark skin stretched taut over the skull and straight black hair twisted back into a messy braid. Her arms and legs are knobbly, slender, like a foal’s, and her fingers dance in a wild tap against her hip agile as spider legs.
But her eyes-he averts his gaze. Kali had been full of battle fervor and terrible light; Papa’s eyes are-
“You’re a daring one, seeking us out,” Papa says, curving her mouth whimsically. “How are you called?”
Dean clears his throat. That son of a bitch, it still hurts. “Dean Winchester,” he says. “Angel’s Castiel, and he’d say hi, but-“
“He can say hi,” Papa interrupts, and taps the side of her head. “I don’t bite. Skip the formalities, I hate those.”
My greetings to you, Papa, Castiel says carefully, warily, and Dean would too, because the cheery playfulness Papa’s giving off is unnerving as hell. Even the pattern on her flower dress is made up of clumps of bright orange flowers, shaped like birds’ beaks, as if they’re about to chomp down on each other. Her voice is nectar-sweet, and Dean wonders how quickly it can spoil.
“Castiel, Dean, nice to meet you,” she trills. “Heard about you through the grapevine. The whole thing about the fallen one being awful irritating, not the whole stuck together thing. I’d ask your dad about how he made the cage, because the structure’s terribly fascinating, but he’s gone and hidden himself.” She sighs.
She doesn’t know anything about the cage either, Dean thinks, and tries to quell the disappointment rising in his chest. Fuck, was God that damn secretive about it all? On the other hand, maybe the other deities just didn’t care.
Yes, Cas says. It’s a common source of frustration.
“He just gets too worked up about his creations,” Papa says. “If I cared that much-well now.”
Dean steels himself and looks back into her face-sees Papa’s eyes rolling like black pitch, and within that the bleeding fire that splits the seams of the shadowed earth. The pupils gape open, two hollowed-out caverns.
He thinks, You do care. You just aren’t going to show it.
“So why did Kali send you to me anyway?” Papa asks, her face light and merry, and the color of her eyes goes blank slate gray.
“No blood,” Dean says. He shifts his weight from left to right foot, but Papa hasn’t offered him a seat. “At least for Castiel, and no body.”
“I see,” Papa replies. She crosses her arms over her chest. In her slip of a dress, she abruptly looks more like a pensive teenager than like a deity of earth. Then Papa nods and straightens. “A bit galling, I suppose,” she says. “Kali’s limited by blood here. The Kali of her homeland would be able to do this. But I know this kind of molding, and my people are closer to me even if we are fewer.” She hums and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and swings over to lean against the wall. “So, why should I bother?”
“Wait,” Dean says. “You can-“
“I can split you up,” she drawls, shrugging. “I can take you all apart, I can sift your molecules and shake you out like sand if I wished. And I can see how Castiel’s tethered to you, and I can give you two the means to make his own representation. But.” The skin at the corners of her eyes crinkle with amusement. “Why should I care?”
Dean scrutinizes the slopes of her cheeks, the narrow angles of her shoulders. No soul to trade this time, no offer of the body; he has already traveled to Hell and Heaven and suffered and exalted and yet all of it pales to the rocky, solid presence of earth, the Impala rumbling under his touch, a slice of pie disintegrating to crust and sticky fruit crumbs in his mouth.
You don’t have to, says Castiel levelly. No one requires you to care about the affairs of others, only your own. But consider this a favor for a future favor. I choose to bear the cost.
Dean tenses. Wait a minute-
“Unspecified?” Papa asks. She drags her knuckles hard across the wall, the friction ripping them open out to leave a sketched trail of blood behind.
Done.
Whoa, whoa, Cas, Dean snaps. Even if Papa can hear them, the instinct to refrain from speaking aloud kicks in. You can’t just leap into something like that, you don’t know what she-
I choose this, Castiel breaks in. I will not have you bound to any more obligations but the ones you make for yourself.
No, Dean says, and, “No,” under his breath. You’re not letting me have any say in this, are you? We’re in this together, we go down together.
You’ve already given enough-
We both have, Dean snaps. I’m not gonna compare straws with you, got it? We got goddamn crappy ones, who cares if mine’s shorter than yours or the other way ‘round?
Dean, I-
“My,” Papa exclaims softly. Dean brings his head up to see her observing them-him-her face smooth and unsmiling and coldly serious. “You’ve been burned by many a deal, have you?” She turns her face into the wall and slowly sucks in her breath-a sound that should be quiet, natural, but echoes loud in Dean’s ears, like the very room’s breathing with her; and the floor trembles like it’s going to rise up and open into the bottomless maw of some primordial creature, huge and silent and starving. Castiel makes an incomprehensible sound, almost a moan, as if he could reach out for that terrible emptiness, the encompassing awareness across space and time and the unutterable sounds of the earth and sky.
Papa glances back.
Holy shit, Dean thinks, his hands reflexively tightening into fists. Even as he watches, the gaunt features of her face fill out, flesh rippling under her skin like waves straining to break free, constrained only by the sheer will and power of her body as she strides toward them. With each step she lengthens and widens, her arms taut with muscle and her face rounding out like a sun-baked coconut, darkening to the color of rich silt. The orange flowers spread even more brightly across her dress, over her shoulders, growing out from the cloth to twine around her neck and her hair in a garland, a victory crown, a mourning wreath.
When she comes to Dean she’s two heads higher than him, and it’s nothing like standing next to Sam. Fuck, if he were here-but Dean’s got nothing except himself and Cas. He doesn’t draw back but keeps his feet planted on the ground, cocking his head back to look at her straight on. Her eyes are still the same blank gray, the only thing about her that’s lifeless and still. The ground vibrates up through his feet, his legs, his heart-in and out, like it’s breathing in time with the rhythm of his lungs.
“I can see why Kali let you go,” Papa says. Her voice is throaty, rich and low. “You have real nerve, and she’ll always acknowledge another demon-slayer.”
Takes one to kill one, Dean thinks.
Papa places her hands on his shoulders, immovable as rock walls. “Perhaps I’ll call on you,” she says. “Perhaps not. But if you ever free your brother, Dean Winchester, I expect to learn about the cage and how, and count it signed and sealed.” She presses down on him, like he’s going to sink down and down and-
-and he fucking well is. Dean, get out, Cas prods urgently, I don’t know what she’s doing, but-“How the hell is getting buried alive a favor?” Dean shouts up, and pulls at Papa’s arms but it’s like shoving at mountains-
-thinks frantically, Getting stuck in the ghost’s grave, now this, fuck, Sam’s still there, was gonna get Ben a jersey, and Cas, you can’t do this to him, not Cas, not me.
“This is how it works,” Papa replies to Cas. “Think of your own image for once, angel. There are no vessels for you but your own make. Our business is finished.” Now she’s the one looking into Dean’s eyes, limpid silver-blue, a reflective pool like the lake in Montana where Sam divebombed Dean and they went cliff-jumping after school, except the wind’s whipping the water up now, cloudy dark and raging, and Papa bends down and presses her lips against Dean’s forehead, streaked with crumbly loam-
A whirling cold blasts through Dean like a hurricane. Castiel says, Oh-
The sudden silence lodges in his mind, the chill sluicing over his left shoulder insidiously quick till Dean thinks he might pass out from the maddening quiet and the icy fingers tightening around his heart, digging jagged nails into his ribs-he jerks his head upward, snarls, “Where the fuck’d you take him? We had a deal-”
“Shhh,” says Papa chidingly. She raises a hand to her mouth, the tip flaring in a bright pinprick before expanding to fill Dean’s vision, a brilliant star blazing hotly over his face-then her palm upon his mouth, his sight whiting out-
“See you on the other side,” Papa tells him.
And he thuds down, hard, mud in his mouth, Cas gasping loud and clear against his ear. “Dean,” he says, garbled words like cracked eggs, “I don’t remember-I can’t keep this”-whole, I’ve forgotten Jimmy’s body-
“Dude,” Dean tells him, and nearly gags, spits the mud out, but wherever he is, the sides close in on them gently, alien in its spongy feel. Thinks of Papa shoving him down into the ground, the earthen walls of Haloa, a womb in itself. “You fucking put me back together. Gotta count that.”
He can’t see a thing, even when he strains his eyes, but he can still hear Cas breathing fast, shell-shocked and bewildered, as if in the little time he’s gone without a body he’s already lost himself to the idea of a voice and only that, buried under Lucifer and tethered to Dean and nothing else.
“That was you-not me”-I’m not taking you-
“Fuck, c’mon!” He squeezes his eyes shut; remembers the light painted on the back of his eyelids, Cas clapping him on the shoulder, cocking his head, wrinkling his brow. “You gotta remember the face. And your hands. I have your goddamn handprint on my shoulder, you know that! And-“
Paring the legs down to thin strips of muscle, slivers of marrow, knee caps were kinda weird though, he says, and there’s the cartilage too, right? Metacarpals in the feet, count them.
Alastair’s lessons run through his mind, one by one, and he throws away the dark cruelty, the black smoke and the horror and numbness of the pit; gives to Castiel only the intimate knowledge of the body known in a way that angels never dreamed of, and Castiel pieces them together, the lips and ears and eyes. “I thought I knew the body,” he says, “I knew the soul and I understood it-“
“You only felt it, you never dissected it,” Dean tells him, and goes on. Your hips in line with your pelvis, stomach a gentle roll, cock between your legs-he bulls on past that, thinks and tries not to think, and Cas had known him even back then, reading lines off his soul-gotta take them one at a time, he says. The way he took them apart. His mouth dries from the words. He’d sung them like a nursery rhyme, and now-
Dean says, “And the chest, the heart and lungs and ribs,” crescendo here in a syncopated beat, wonders, Is the banishing sigil gonna be there?-
-and Cas replies, “I remember the ribs, I wrote on yours-“
-Dean says, “The eye sockets, jawline”-but breaks the rhythm now, adds, “You always had a bit of stubble, guess Jimmy missed a bit while shaving-“
-Cas says, “Yes. When I saw you in Hell, even back then-“ He breaks off; then says, “You looked terrible,” but the tone of his voice is more wondering than condemning.
“Bastard,” Dean says, and snorts. “Could say the same for you-“ He reaches out blindly, waves his hand about, and slaps into skin, holding tight. He feels a vein, beating like a bird’s wings, the thin bones of the wrist. “We’ll have to hit up a place for food, okay?” he says.
Cas mumbles something, then says, “My grace-“
He feels along the wrist to the elbow, then upward. Puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder. “It’s there?” he snaps. “You’ve got it, right, it’s-“
And senses the slow shuffling tremors, scritch-scratch, then his stomach heaves up and-“Fuck,” he groans, cheek slamming down, and that’s an instant bruise.
Rain pitter-patters on his skin, a steady quiet clatter upon the ground. “Cas? Cas!”
“… It’s done,” he hears Cas say. “We’re out.” Hands upon his temples, turning his head to the side. He blinks and looks up. The face is thinner, the mouth wider, but there’s a disjointed air in the tilt of the head and a unsettling look in the eyes.
Cas still picked his eyes to be deep blue.
“Holy crap,” he says. “Dude. Like I said, you look terrible.” But he grins though he tries to turn it into a smirk, and the muscles in his face stretch till they hurt. He just stares upward, his gaze tracing the nose and jaw and hairline. Fuck, it’s good to see a real familiar face. Sam, he thinks, we did it. We could do it. We could still do it.
Cas frowns, a stilted motion in its uncertainty. “True,” he says. “It’s-chilly.”
“Wait-aw, damnit,” Dean sits up so quickly he has to grab onto Cas’s arm for a moment, slippery wet and cool to the touch. “You gotta be freezing.” His gaze drops to Cas’s neck, then his bony shoulders-the image Castiel gave himself, how he wants to be seen. Looks further.
Cas only rubs his bare forearms unconsciously. Of course, Dean thinks, should’t’ve expected Papa to be that awesome. He shakes off his jacket and throws it at Cas. “On,” he snaps. “’Less you wanna catch a cold.”
“Dean, you’re only wearing a shirt-“
“And you’re wearing nothing, have some goddamn sense for once.”
There’s no overhang to catch the rain, which drizzles over them in a steady hum. Dean shakes himself, stands up; recognizes the narrow, dark alleyway, because he’d tried to park the Impala here but decided not to. Haloa’s somewhere down in the building over. Papa’s somewhere down there.
He slumps back down against the wall, unevenly laid bricks rasping against his shirt. Takes a deep breath, his heart leaping around twitchy and tired, and it’s just him. Just him inside. He sighs and hears the quiet settle in his mind.
“Dean.”
He blinks rapidly, closes his eyes and knocks his head back. “Yeah? What are you gonna do now?” He glances over at Cas, hidden under the jacket. What he would do now, Dean thinks. His mouth slackens; the weariness sweeps down onto him like a gale of wind, the inexorable descent. Doesn’t need to stick around anymore, I guess, he tells himself. There’s always God somewhere out there.
Castiel stares at Dean. “I don’t know.” He rotates his head around, like he’s trying out his neck. “Where should we go?”
Raindrops go dancing tango on the asphalt. Dean doesn’t answer for a long while. He bends his head down between his knees and stares at the ground, his eyes prickling, and can’t see straight. He comes back up and rubs at the corner of his eyes. “We, uh,” he says. “Where-me and you, we’ll figure something out.”
Cas keeps looking at him. His hair sticks out like it was just electrocuted. “Dean. Why are you crying?”
Dean wants to tell him it’s a fucking stupid question because it’s fucking raining, and is Cas blind or what, except his mouth’s not working and the words don’t come. But Castiel says nothing else. He reaches out and wipes Dean’s face, and his hand passes over gently, quietly, like a benediction.
*
According to Lisa, she’d nearly screamed when she opened the door the next morning. Dean had fallen asleep in the Impala, parked outside her house, so either way he wouldn’t have known.
“I didn’t want to think what might’ve happened,” she told him. “A car accident, or a hunt, or,“ she waved her hand ambiguously. “Your stuff was all gone, the car and your clothes and your guns-“
Dean sneezed. “Don’t worry,” he said. The chilly night had not been kind to him. “I just. I needed to clear my head. It’s, uh, all clear now.” He grinned weakly at her, though it faded quickly.
“You’re a fool, Dean Winchester,” Lisa said without spite, and then told him to shut up and eat his soup.
Sorry, Cas, he said. I think I destroyed your dream body. You can’t make another one?
It’s not easy, Castiel replied. I don’t think I have the power. But it’s not your fault.
Sorry, Dean said.
Don’t. It’s not your fault.
Dean stirred his soup, watching chunks of tomato and chicken surface and sink in the mini-whirlpool he was creating. Fuck, he said. Lucifer. He moved his fingers along the spoon handle. Pinky, ring, middle, pointer, thumb. That’s good to remember, he thought. He wasn’t dreaming, he wasn’t in Hell, but sometimes he forgot and concentrated on his body so hard that he missed the world going on around him.
It was. Cas paused. Not comfortable, he added.
Yeah, Dean said; chewed, and felt the thick, homemade broth almost clotting in his throat. Fuck, he said again. The Horsemen’s rings were heavy against his collarbone, still dotted with dirt. The skin under his fingernails was scrubbed clean, no sign of his digging to bury the rings and take them again. You. And Sam’s still down there. I made a cock-up of everything. The worst-he didn’t know. If Sam had been there, if he had heard Dean, if he knew-I promised, he thought. I promised you I’d come to Lisa’s, and I did, but now I’m promising myself I’ll get you out, and I will. I fucking will.
No. If that were the case, you would have continued to delude yourself into freeing a fake Sam while Lucifer could bide his time to break free, Castiel pointed out.
“Goddamnit, that doesn’t help!” Dean snapped, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Dean?”
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, just talking to myself.”
He heard Lisa’s soft laugh. She leaned against the door post and smiled, a little sad. “So long as it isn’t a regular habit,” she said, before passing on, and didn’t see the look on Dean’s face. So what are you gonna do now? he asked. Where are you gonna go?
Cas said, slowly, I-don’t think I can go anywhere. My grace is with you, and I must stay with it to keep myself alive and together.
You’re really not shitting me, are you, Dean said wearily, and couldn’t find it in himself to even be surprised.
That next week was a blur. He mowed the lawn too many times, maneuvering the machine awkwardly around the corners of the yard and nearly clipping Lisa’s flower bed twice, while he debated with Castiel. If we find God my Father could help, Castiel argued, to which Dean inevitably said, Bullshit, why the fuck would he lift a finger when he hasn’t before? It was easy to snap at Cas and for Cas to snap back, leaving the chilly silences to sink like stones. It’s not fair to Lisa or Ben for me to stay here for so long, Dean said, to which Castiel said, Then if we could go and find-No God, Dean interrupted, I’ll see if there’s anything on working this out. This is just-dude, privacy! And sometimes Castiel said, darkly snippy, What would you rather have? Peace or freedom? I don’t know what you want me to do anymore.
Dean didn’t know either. The only thing I want, he said, is to get my brother out. And to not be alone, he added silently.
Castiel was quiet for a while. Then he said, Yes. On that we agree. I did not mean for you to think of me as your adversary. And the pressure that had been pounding in Dean’s temples eased, and faded. No, he thought, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t think that. Damn, I wouldn’t think that anymore. You’re better than that.
He asked, And what do you want, Cas?
To make reparations.
On the last night, Lisa shooed Ben up the stairs after dinner and asked Dean to stay at the table. “I know that you’ve never told me much about what happened,” she said frankly. “You’ve been here for more than two weeks, and I trust that you’ll tell me if anything would come here, right?”
Dean stared at her. “Don’t think so,” he said. Cas added, Yes. I already told you the cage should hold.
Lisa, bulling through life knowing what she needed and what she did not. Dean sort of envied her for it.
“Okay,” she said. She propped her elbows on the table, hands clasped under her chin. Her brow was drawn down, solemn and pensive. “In that case, I want you to give me a quick run-through of whatever’s out there, so I can deal with it and protect Ben.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Dean said. He pushed back his chair. “You can’t just go hunting like that!”
“I’m not going hunting,” Lisa said evenly. “I want to be prepared. I didn’t want to press you before, since…” She looked at him, dark eyes bright in her tanned face. “You’re more talkative now,” she said. “I don’t know what happened last week to make you change, but I’m glad. I’m not so scared anymore.”
“Scared of me?” Dean said jokingly, but it fell flat.
Lisa looked distressed. “Oh, Dean,” she said. “Not that. I was scared for you.”
Dean shifted in his seat. “Uh,” he said awkwardly, then: “Thanks.” He added, “I’ll get the journal and go over it with you. And-one more thing.”
Lisa’s eyes asked the question in lieu of words.
“I’m doing a friend a favor,” he said. “Was thinking of making a trip to Illinois, if that’s all right?”
“You don’t need to ask my permission,” Lisa said. She leaned back and crossed her arms, but the corners of her lips quirked up. “It’s good enough to know. Go do what you have to.”
-
At noon the next day he pulled out of the driveway, the car all burnished black in the sunlight, shiny chrome gleaming like quicksilver. He waved to Lisa and Ben, standing in the doorway of the house, then said, “All right, Cas, I’ll take you to Pontiac,” and pointed the Impala toward the open road as he’d always done.
He rolled the window halfway down, and did not look to his side.
*
In Palo Alto there is a particular cemetery with a particular grave. Dean’s only visited it once before, but he takes the Impala there like he knows the way by heart, turns and crazy intersections and all.
“I don’t understand why you can’t tell me where we’re going,” Cas says. He sits stiffly, his right leg partly drawn up so he can wedge his foot into the nook between the closed door and the floor of the car, and rests his right elbow on his knee, rests his chin on the upturned palm of his hand. When Dean hits bumpy asphalt, Castiel’s head jerks up and down in time with the car’s motion.
“It’ll be easier when we get there,” Dean tells him, and tries hard to keep his eyes on the road. At every red light, he looks over at Castiel; there’s a resemblance to Jimmy Novak. but with just enough off about it that it’s not the same-his hair’s a lighter tint of brown, his eyes closer together, his legs longer. Claire might do a double-take, Dean thinks, but she would never mistake him for her father. The left pinky is a little crooked-“because I nearly forgot,” Cas says, and almost looks embarrassed. He wears Dean’s borrowed flannel shirt worse than he did Jimmy’s trench coat and keeps rolling up the sleeves, halfway to his left elbow, halfway past his right one.
Cas runs his hand over the door handle, the seat cushion; fingers the soft texture of the clothes he’s wearing. “All right,” he says. “I can be patient.”
The Impala crawls to a stop at the gate, and Dean gets out without saying anything, shoves his hands into his pockets and waits for Cas. Then he walks straight in, his gait measured with the bitter knowledge of memory, and makes a right turn once. Should be here too, Sammy, he thinks. In his mind a thousand eyes blink at him, willing, waiting. You’ll get to come back sometime.
Even after half a decade, and wind and rain, the name hasn’t faded much yet.
“Jessica Moore,” Cas says. “She was-important.” He says it like a question.
“Didn’t know anything about hunting,” Dean replies. He crouches down and reaches out to trace the letters. “Wasn’t a vessel, angel or demon or monster or anything. Just a student at Stanford.” He looks up at Castiel, squinting against the sun’s rays. The light gleams around Cas’s head, and Dean almost quips, as he once did to the shade of Lucifer, And there’s your halo, angel recovery program beginning. Half-smiles, tiredly, but doesn’t.
“I see,” Cas says, but confusion still threads through his words.
“Your briefings from Heaven really sucked, you know that?” Dean stops his hand over the twinned O. “Never popped up, huh? Bunch of blabber about hunting, and me as the righteous man, and Sam with the demon blood, and playing matchmaker for my mom and dad, and. What’d you learn? Old yellow-eyed putting a girl on the ceiling? And not even her name.”
He rubs at his forehead. The flowers have wilted away, and someone left a stuffed Smurf whose color has faded with time. “Don’t know what would’ve happened,” he says. “If it’d work out, or what. But she loved Sam. She really did.”
He falls quiet. Then adds: “Sam loved her, too.”
Cas doesn’t try to say anything, no pale-hearted condolences for what has already passed into the vanishing years. Dean feels a brief, flitting touch on his shoulder, and turns his face up. Castiel’s only looking at him, eyes in shadow. “Yes,” he says. “I see.”
The shade they cast upon the gravestone creeps and changes in angle and shape with the passing minutes.
Dean straightens up. “That’s all,” he says. “So…” He keeps his gaze fixed on the horizon, doesn’t look at Cas. “Got your grace together,” he says. “What are you gonna do now?”
Cas raises his arm and curls his fingers against Dean’s collarbone, knuckles brushing bare skin; turns his hand, the rings of the Four Horsemen resting in the creases of his palm. “Death is still out there,” he replies. “Someone needs to return these to him. And Australia is nice, this time of year.”
“Fuck, that’s far,” Dean says, and bites down hard on his lip, his eyes flicking away. “God in Australia now?”
“Perhaps,” Castiel says. “At the very least, someone who could help us.”
And what’s that, Dean is about to ask, but doesn’t. Cas can move on his own now, do his own thing, go back to Heaven or hang out in Florida or what the fuck ever, and who is Dean to deny him. “Sweet,” he says instead. “You should, uh, drop by more often.”
Castiel only frowns, and steps forward. “You’re not happy,” he says.
Dean forces the ends of his mouth up, lop-sided. “Nah,” he tells Cas. “But I’m okay though. Don’t sweat it.”
“Dean,” he says softly, and now, shit, looks like Cas forgot about personal space again, his breath sliding over the bridge of Dean’s nose. “I’ll see what I can do about Sam.” And he brings his hands up, thumbs pressing into the skin at the corners of Dean’s eyes. Says, “I think there is still a way.”
“You think?” Dean mumbles, and tries not to blink. The heat twists down over, pooling behind his eyes and sliding to his cheeks, then his mouth. He has no headache, but there’s a pounding all the same.
He sucks in a sharp breath and looks off to the side, at the patch of blue sky framed between Cas’s chin and shoulder.
“Don’t be afraid, Dean,” Castiel says. “This isn’t a goodbye.”
“Then-“ Dean starts-
And ends, “Fuck it, now you’re just being a showoff,” to empty air.
He snorts, rolls his shoulders, scrubs his face and the burning tips of his ears. “Yeah,” he says to himself. “Yeah.” Looks down, and runs his hand over the top of Jess’s gravestone one last time. “Man, you and Sam,” Dean says, and quirks his mouth, and shakes his head. “You two. Totally in the same league.”
He turns, and walks away. The Impala’s waiting for him, at the foot of the hill.
-fin-
*
Notes:
+ Kalikamata, Castiel says. His voice is subdued. Kalaratri. Hail, adi Mahavidya. - translates to “black earth-mother,” “black night,” and “primordial/primary Mahavidya [a group of ten aspects of the female divine]” respectively. [source: David Kinsley's Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas]
+ I don’t have the same faith in you that Sam does. - from 5x18 (“Point of No Return”).
+ Colorado State University is located in Fort Collins, CO; Haley Collins, from 1x02 (“Wendigo”).
+ and here’s the question, who gripped you tight and raised you from- & … Cas murmurs, You don’t think you deserve to be saved. - from 4x01 (“Lazarus Rising”).
+ Why’d you have to keep digging? Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone? - from 2x20 (“What Is and What Should Never Be”).
+ What would you rather have? Peace or freedom? - from 5x22 (“Swan Song”).
part 1 | part 2 | part 3