The Devil's in the Details, Part 3
Bobby was always glad to see the Winchester boys. They were good hunters and good people, two qualities that didn't necessarily go hand in hand. Problem was, they always brought trouble trailing after them every time they showed up on his doorstep.
This time, trouble was six feet tall, skinny with a too-big T-shirt dangling off of him, and a habit at staring intensely at everything. Literally, everything. He was staring out around at all the junked up cars when the door opened, just a few steps behind the boys, and then his head whipped around to look Bobby up and down. Bobby returned the stare. "You wanna tell me who your pal is?"
Sam exhaled shortly, a sigh of long frustration. "It's...kinda a long story." The brothers exchanged glances briefly. "There are a couple of things he needs to look up...we were wondering if we could look through your books," Sam continued
The skinny guy said nothing. Just stared.
"Yeah, well, come on in," Bobby said. As the little group at the door came into the house, he went to get a couple of beers, spiked with holy water, of course. The boys took their bottles without a fuss--they knew the drill--but the skinny guy stared at the beer, then at Bobby, then back at the beer, before taking it and swallowing a mouthful.
The guy remained quiet as the Winchester boys told Bobby one of the silliest stories he had ever heard--and Bobby had been on some pretty bizarre hunts in his lifetime. He sat back in his chair as they finished. "You idjits really expect me to believe this?"
There was a look of mildly constipated frustration on Dean's face. "I know it's ridiculous, but you think we'd've come to you if, you know, if there hadn't been..." He trailed off, gesturing in a futile attempt to convey his thoughts. "All this weird stuff's been happening, and I sure as hell don't know what to make of it. Thought you might have some idea what's going on."
"The more absurd a tale is, the more likely it is to be true," the skinny guy--Castiel--said suddenly. "People usually go for the more believable story when they're lying. So the stranger it is..." He shrugged. "You should know that. You're hunters. Strange stories are your stock in trade."
"Yeah, and sometimes a moron mistakes a goat for a unicorn," Bobby retorted. Still, Trouble here didn't come off like a fool, and there was something distinctly off about him. He was a little too...intense. Bobby narrowed his eyes at the stranger. "Listen, why don't you take a walk while I talk things over with the boys," he asked, testing for a reaction. "Outside. You look like you could use the sunshine."
To his mild surprise, the guy slid his chair out and got up without a word. A few moments later the front door slammed.
There was a brief pause before Bobby turned back to the boys. "Alright, now that he's out of the way, why don't you tell me what really happened."
"We did," Sam said flatly.
"So this guy tries to kill you with some crazy mojo, and now you're trying to help him?"
"Uh. See, uh.." Sam flailed around for an explanation for a few moments before getting out, "Honestly, Bobby, I don't know what else to do with him. We can't get rid of him, we can't kill him--"
"Believe me, I tried," Dean interjected.
"Yeah, he offered to let us take potshots at him during lunch. Now he just follows us around, giving Dean puppy-dog eyes."
"What're you talking about, you're the one he's obsessed with," Dean protested. "All that Antichrist shit, half the time he looks like he's ready to kill you." He let out a frustrated sigh, dragging a hand through his hair. "We figured you might know what he is, Bobby, how to get rid of him, something."
"And there's also the stuff he told us about the yellow-eyed demon."
"Sam! I told you to forget that bullshit!"
"Look, Dean, you can ignore it if you like, but this is the first lead we've gotten on the yellow-eyed demon in a while, and I'm sure as hell following up on it. I mean, what if he's right? All the special kids up against each other in a battle royale, winner gets to start the Apocalypse. With stakes like those, even if there's only the slightest chance of it ever happening, we gotta find a way to stop it, right? We can't just sit back and let it happen!"
"Armageddon isn't going to happen, Sam, it's just the crazy ranting of a lunatic," Dean said wearily.
Bobby brought his hands down on the table sharply just as Sam opened his mouth for a retort, succeeding in shutting the boys up for once. "Alright. You boys know you're always welcome here. Your...friend can sleep on the floor." Truth be told, Bobby didn't know what to do with the so-called angel, but putting on a friendly appearance might give him the time to figure out what this Castiel really was.
It was in this fashion that Bobby found himself spending a week in close quarters with the Winchesters and an overpowered lunatic. To his surprise, it went better than he thought. The boys spent most of their time apart--Sam peered through old demonologies, while Dean worked on cars in the yard--which was probably a good thing, since when they did run into each other, they inevitably began to fight. Bobby would swear he had heard the same argument at least four times since they came to stay: Sam wanted to stick around a little longer, while Dean wanted to get back on the road. But all those arguments were really about Castiel. Looking into a connection between the yellow-eyed demon and Azazel meant acknowledging on some level that the so-called angel's story might hold some truth to it, that Sam might someday go crazy and kill them all. And that idea was something that Dean refused to contemplate.
As for the person responsible for this mess, he secreted himself in the attic with some of the oldest, most esoteric texts in the house, only coming out on a few rare occasions to pick out another book. And then, bizarrely, he began doing chores. Two days after the Winchester's arrival, Bobby came downstairs in the morning to find breakfast already set out on the table. The coffee had one hell of a kick, the food was edible, and the dishes would turn up clean if he left them in the sink long enough. Even then, Bobby wasn't quite certain if the guy was responsible until he caught Castiel piling dirty laundry into the washing machine.
"You learn to do that up in Heaven?"
"Don't be ridiculous. Heaven exists on dimensions far beyond this plane of base matter. But I've spent most of the last few years in army camps. You pick up stuff."
"Like making breakfast."
"Yeah, well..." Castiel half-shrugged, bent over as he was. "You humans need so much maintenance. Most of us picked up the basics within a year or two."
Typical conversation for the--whatever the guy was.
A few days after that, Bobby woke up to the sound of heavy footsteps coming up to the second floor. When he went to investigate, he found Castiel with Sam's overlarge body easily slung over his shoulder at the top of the stairs. Noticing Bobby, the guy made a gesture as if to wave away suspicion. "He passed out a short while ago. I think he drank up all of your rum."
Going down a few steps and craning his neck, Bobby could just see the glint of empty bottles on the kitchen table. Nearby, Sam made a snuffling sound. There was a thin line of drool trickling from his mouth, and even in sleep his face had that mildly stupid look common among drunks pasted across it. "What happened?"
"He found what he was looking for," Castiel said, with a touch of grim relish. "I was right."
Bobby felt a chill run through his veins. "About the Apocalypse?"
"No, about the identity of the yellow-eyed demon, so far as I can tell from the books he was looking at. You can check it out, he left a bunch of books open on the living room floor."
Sure enough, there was a whole circle of books just wide enough to accommodate a stretched-out Sam Winchester. Bobby squatted to take a look. There was an old translation of 1st and 2nd Enoch, a well-thumbed commentary on the Torah, a couple of medieval demonologies, collections of myths primarily from the Middle East, and a few more modern (and now highlighted, damn it) texts on the topic of demons. Pages and pages of scribbled notes, broken occasionally by devil traps and similar occult symbols, completed the mess.
"Most of the Watchers were killed during the First Rebellion," came a voice above him, making Bobby nearly jump out of his skin. That was another thing that annoyed him about the so-called angel; the bastard was unnaturally fast and quiet. Castiel flopped down nearby, propping his arms up on his knees. "The strongest and the cruelest were stripped of their Grace and bound in Hell. Except for Lucifer, of course. Still, something of the divine lingers within, corrupted into an obscenity, which is why holy water and similar measures won't hold them." He sighed. "Never did learn how Azazel got out of Hell. Once the shit hits the fan, you don't bother worrying about how it happens, just how to stop it."
There were a couple of minutes of silence as Bobby examined Sam's notes. They were pretty hard to follow--Sam used some sort of personal shorthand for most of them--but after a while he picked up the line of reasoning. Nothing about the Apocalypse, actually, but a lot about a whole variety of powerful demons, analysis of the stories surrounding Azazel, and yellow-eyed creatures in mythology. And, Bobby realized with a sinking feeling, Castiel was right, at least on this one fact. Azazel was the yellow-eyed demon. Which meant...
"We on the verge of the Apocalypse?"
"Mm. More like the verge of the verge. There's still a few big hoops to jump through first, but Azazel's already got his pawns lined up . Bastard's smart as fuck. He wouldn'ta put his plan into action until he was absolutely ready. Give it a couple of years and..." Castiel made a small exploding sound.
"How do we stop him? Without killing the special kids," Bobby added as the "angel" opened his mouth.
Castiel gave him a sulky look. "I wasn't going to suggest that," he said irritatedly. "Killing the kids might give us some time, but it won't solve the root of the problem. Besides, I'm--disconnected from this world. Couldn't pick out their location if my life depended on it. Azazel is the key. Kill him before he opens a Devil's Gate, and no more Apocalypse. "
"I don't suppose you have some fancy-shmancy angel power to put him down?" Bobby asked without much hope.
"Nah. I'm just a foot soldier. Grigori are way above my paygrade."
A foot soldier supposedly close to the Messiah, by his own account. Bobby was pretty certain that Castiel was lying about something, but he wasn't quite sure what. Before, it was easier to just dismiss the guy's stories entirely, but after this identification of Yellow-eyes with Azazel...not so much. Bobby flipped through the notes again, just to make sure. After a moment he asked, "What kinda dumbass locks up his strongest enemy instead of taking him down, anyway?"
"Well, with Lucifer, even Michael was pushed to his limits, binding him in place. As for the Watchers...I think it was a fate-worse-than-death thing. Or because most of the higher echelons are smug, self-righteous bastards willing to let the world burn if it turns out well for them, the fuckers. Probably both. I was far too low in the ranks when I was one of the loyal to get any explanation beyond 'Have faith.' And once I left the ranks of the loyal, well, like I said, the Apocalypse takes a higher priority to everything else."
"And God?"
Castiel leveled a penetrating look at him. "God exists."
Bobby stared right back at him, undaunted. "So where is He? Sitting back on His ass, watching the world burn?"
After a moment, the so-called angel looked away. "...We don't know."
"You don't know?!"
"God exists," Castiel said severely with the rock-hard certainty of a fanatic. "The prophecies aren't being sent by any angel and certainly by no demon, but someone must be sending them, therefore God must exist." He tilted his head. "Are you acquainted with Deism?"
"Yeah, yeah, God is a clockmaker." Bobby sighed. It was two in the morning, and he was not in the mood for a theological discussion. The Apocalypse was nigh. Right now, he felt old and tired. Bobby sat back on the floor and stretched his legs out with a groan, disturbing some of the notes. "The boys're probably leaving in the morning. Well, whenever Sam recovers from his hangover." Castiel nodded, a brief duck of his head. "You going with them?"
"I'm not wanted," the other man said matter-of-factly, a strain of bitterness twisting through his voice. "I don't force my company on other people, not unless it's necessary. I was thinking of staying here, if you'll have me. You've got one hell of a library here. There's still a couple of things I wanna check out."
"...And if I kick you out?"
Castiel gave a half-shrug. "Dunno. Probably go to the Vatican or some place similar. It's not like I've got anything urgent now."
"Armageddon don't count as urgent?"
"What do you expect me to do?" There was a distinct note of annoyance in Castiel's voice. "My plan involved Winchesters, but neither of 'em are interested in playing along. I suppose I could hunt Azazel down and get myself torn to shreds, but I don't think that would be very productive."
"And you're more interested in finding a way home than you are in stopping the Apocalypse here."
Castiel's fists clenched and unclenched convulsively. "I miss my Dean," he said after a moment.
Bobby considered the man. He didn't really want the guy around, but... "You waltz in here knowing the answers to questions John Winchester spent years just learning how to ask. You go through the oldest books in the house, books I've owned for decades and barely understand a word in 'em, and you--you make corrections in the margins." Castiel raised his head to nod cautiously. "You can stay here long as you like, but in return you're gonna find a way to kill Yellow-eyes that doesn't involve a gun we don't have anymore. We're not sitting back on our asses waiting for the Apocalypse. I don't care if you need to build the damn Colt from scratch--you're finding a way to kill that sonuvabitch. Do we have a deal?"
The so-called angel cocked his head, examining Bobby with a canny eye. "We have a deal."
Go to the previous chapter.
This time, trouble was six feet tall, skinny with a too-big T-shirt dangling off of him, and a habit at staring intensely at everything. Literally, everything. He was staring out around at all the junked up cars when the door opened, just a few steps behind the boys, and then his head whipped around to look Bobby up and down. Bobby returned the stare. "You wanna tell me who your pal is?"
Sam exhaled shortly, a sigh of long frustration. "It's...kinda a long story." The brothers exchanged glances briefly. "There are a couple of things he needs to look up...we were wondering if we could look through your books," Sam continued
The skinny guy said nothing. Just stared.
"Yeah, well, come on in," Bobby said. As the little group at the door came into the house, he went to get a couple of beers, spiked with holy water, of course. The boys took their bottles without a fuss--they knew the drill--but the skinny guy stared at the beer, then at Bobby, then back at the beer, before taking it and swallowing a mouthful.
The guy remained quiet as the Winchester boys told Bobby one of the silliest stories he had ever heard--and Bobby had been on some pretty bizarre hunts in his lifetime. He sat back in his chair as they finished. "You idjits really expect me to believe this?"
There was a look of mildly constipated frustration on Dean's face. "I know it's ridiculous, but you think we'd've come to you if, you know, if there hadn't been..." He trailed off, gesturing in a futile attempt to convey his thoughts. "All this weird stuff's been happening, and I sure as hell don't know what to make of it. Thought you might have some idea what's going on."
"The more absurd a tale is, the more likely it is to be true," the skinny guy--Castiel--said suddenly. "People usually go for the more believable story when they're lying. So the stranger it is..." He shrugged. "You should know that. You're hunters. Strange stories are your stock in trade."
"Yeah, and sometimes a moron mistakes a goat for a unicorn," Bobby retorted. Still, Trouble here didn't come off like a fool, and there was something distinctly off about him. He was a little too...intense. Bobby narrowed his eyes at the stranger. "Listen, why don't you take a walk while I talk things over with the boys," he asked, testing for a reaction. "Outside. You look like you could use the sunshine."
To his mild surprise, the guy slid his chair out and got up without a word. A few moments later the front door slammed.
There was a brief pause before Bobby turned back to the boys. "Alright, now that he's out of the way, why don't you tell me what really happened."
"We did," Sam said flatly.
"So this guy tries to kill you with some crazy mojo, and now you're trying to help him?"
"Uh. See, uh.." Sam flailed around for an explanation for a few moments before getting out, "Honestly, Bobby, I don't know what else to do with him. We can't get rid of him, we can't kill him--"
"Believe me, I tried," Dean interjected.
"Yeah, he offered to let us take potshots at him during lunch. Now he just follows us around, giving Dean puppy-dog eyes."
"What're you talking about, you're the one he's obsessed with," Dean protested. "All that Antichrist shit, half the time he looks like he's ready to kill you." He let out a frustrated sigh, dragging a hand through his hair. "We figured you might know what he is, Bobby, how to get rid of him, something."
"And there's also the stuff he told us about the yellow-eyed demon."
"Sam! I told you to forget that bullshit!"
"Look, Dean, you can ignore it if you like, but this is the first lead we've gotten on the yellow-eyed demon in a while, and I'm sure as hell following up on it. I mean, what if he's right? All the special kids up against each other in a battle royale, winner gets to start the Apocalypse. With stakes like those, even if there's only the slightest chance of it ever happening, we gotta find a way to stop it, right? We can't just sit back and let it happen!"
"Armageddon isn't going to happen, Sam, it's just the crazy ranting of a lunatic," Dean said wearily.
Bobby brought his hands down on the table sharply just as Sam opened his mouth for a retort, succeeding in shutting the boys up for once. "Alright. You boys know you're always welcome here. Your...friend can sleep on the floor." Truth be told, Bobby didn't know what to do with the so-called angel, but putting on a friendly appearance might give him the time to figure out what this Castiel really was.
It was in this fashion that Bobby found himself spending a week in close quarters with the Winchesters and an overpowered lunatic. To his surprise, it went better than he thought. The boys spent most of their time apart--Sam peered through old demonologies, while Dean worked on cars in the yard--which was probably a good thing, since when they did run into each other, they inevitably began to fight. Bobby would swear he had heard the same argument at least four times since they came to stay: Sam wanted to stick around a little longer, while Dean wanted to get back on the road. But all those arguments were really about Castiel. Looking into a connection between the yellow-eyed demon and Azazel meant acknowledging on some level that the so-called angel's story might hold some truth to it, that Sam might someday go crazy and kill them all. And that idea was something that Dean refused to contemplate.
As for the person responsible for this mess, he secreted himself in the attic with some of the oldest, most esoteric texts in the house, only coming out on a few rare occasions to pick out another book. And then, bizarrely, he began doing chores. Two days after the Winchester's arrival, Bobby came downstairs in the morning to find breakfast already set out on the table. The coffee had one hell of a kick, the food was edible, and the dishes would turn up clean if he left them in the sink long enough. Even then, Bobby wasn't quite certain if the guy was responsible until he caught Castiel piling dirty laundry into the washing machine.
"You learn to do that up in Heaven?"
"Don't be ridiculous. Heaven exists on dimensions far beyond this plane of base matter. But I've spent most of the last few years in army camps. You pick up stuff."
"Like making breakfast."
"Yeah, well..." Castiel half-shrugged, bent over as he was. "You humans need so much maintenance. Most of us picked up the basics within a year or two."
Typical conversation for the--whatever the guy was.
A few days after that, Bobby woke up to the sound of heavy footsteps coming up to the second floor. When he went to investigate, he found Castiel with Sam's overlarge body easily slung over his shoulder at the top of the stairs. Noticing Bobby, the guy made a gesture as if to wave away suspicion. "He passed out a short while ago. I think he drank up all of your rum."
Going down a few steps and craning his neck, Bobby could just see the glint of empty bottles on the kitchen table. Nearby, Sam made a snuffling sound. There was a thin line of drool trickling from his mouth, and even in sleep his face had that mildly stupid look common among drunks pasted across it. "What happened?"
"He found what he was looking for," Castiel said, with a touch of grim relish. "I was right."
Bobby felt a chill run through his veins. "About the Apocalypse?"
"No, about the identity of the yellow-eyed demon, so far as I can tell from the books he was looking at. You can check it out, he left a bunch of books open on the living room floor."
Sure enough, there was a whole circle of books just wide enough to accommodate a stretched-out Sam Winchester. Bobby squatted to take a look. There was an old translation of 1st and 2nd Enoch, a well-thumbed commentary on the Torah, a couple of medieval demonologies, collections of myths primarily from the Middle East, and a few more modern (and now highlighted, damn it) texts on the topic of demons. Pages and pages of scribbled notes, broken occasionally by devil traps and similar occult symbols, completed the mess.
"Most of the Watchers were killed during the First Rebellion," came a voice above him, making Bobby nearly jump out of his skin. That was another thing that annoyed him about the so-called angel; the bastard was unnaturally fast and quiet. Castiel flopped down nearby, propping his arms up on his knees. "The strongest and the cruelest were stripped of their Grace and bound in Hell. Except for Lucifer, of course. Still, something of the divine lingers within, corrupted into an obscenity, which is why holy water and similar measures won't hold them." He sighed. "Never did learn how Azazel got out of Hell. Once the shit hits the fan, you don't bother worrying about how it happens, just how to stop it."
There were a couple of minutes of silence as Bobby examined Sam's notes. They were pretty hard to follow--Sam used some sort of personal shorthand for most of them--but after a while he picked up the line of reasoning. Nothing about the Apocalypse, actually, but a lot about a whole variety of powerful demons, analysis of the stories surrounding Azazel, and yellow-eyed creatures in mythology. And, Bobby realized with a sinking feeling, Castiel was right, at least on this one fact. Azazel was the yellow-eyed demon. Which meant...
"We on the verge of the Apocalypse?"
"Mm. More like the verge of the verge. There's still a few big hoops to jump through first, but Azazel's already got his pawns lined up . Bastard's smart as fuck. He wouldn'ta put his plan into action until he was absolutely ready. Give it a couple of years and..." Castiel made a small exploding sound.
"How do we stop him? Without killing the special kids," Bobby added as the "angel" opened his mouth.
Castiel gave him a sulky look. "I wasn't going to suggest that," he said irritatedly. "Killing the kids might give us some time, but it won't solve the root of the problem. Besides, I'm--disconnected from this world. Couldn't pick out their location if my life depended on it. Azazel is the key. Kill him before he opens a Devil's Gate, and no more Apocalypse. "
"I don't suppose you have some fancy-shmancy angel power to put him down?" Bobby asked without much hope.
"Nah. I'm just a foot soldier. Grigori are way above my paygrade."
A foot soldier supposedly close to the Messiah, by his own account. Bobby was pretty certain that Castiel was lying about something, but he wasn't quite sure what. Before, it was easier to just dismiss the guy's stories entirely, but after this identification of Yellow-eyes with Azazel...not so much. Bobby flipped through the notes again, just to make sure. After a moment he asked, "What kinda dumbass locks up his strongest enemy instead of taking him down, anyway?"
"Well, with Lucifer, even Michael was pushed to his limits, binding him in place. As for the Watchers...I think it was a fate-worse-than-death thing. Or because most of the higher echelons are smug, self-righteous bastards willing to let the world burn if it turns out well for them, the fuckers. Probably both. I was far too low in the ranks when I was one of the loyal to get any explanation beyond 'Have faith.' And once I left the ranks of the loyal, well, like I said, the Apocalypse takes a higher priority to everything else."
"And God?"
Castiel leveled a penetrating look at him. "God exists."
Bobby stared right back at him, undaunted. "So where is He? Sitting back on His ass, watching the world burn?"
After a moment, the so-called angel looked away. "...We don't know."
"You don't know?!"
"God exists," Castiel said severely with the rock-hard certainty of a fanatic. "The prophecies aren't being sent by any angel and certainly by no demon, but someone must be sending them, therefore God must exist." He tilted his head. "Are you acquainted with Deism?"
"Yeah, yeah, God is a clockmaker." Bobby sighed. It was two in the morning, and he was not in the mood for a theological discussion. The Apocalypse was nigh. Right now, he felt old and tired. Bobby sat back on the floor and stretched his legs out with a groan, disturbing some of the notes. "The boys're probably leaving in the morning. Well, whenever Sam recovers from his hangover." Castiel nodded, a brief duck of his head. "You going with them?"
"I'm not wanted," the other man said matter-of-factly, a strain of bitterness twisting through his voice. "I don't force my company on other people, not unless it's necessary. I was thinking of staying here, if you'll have me. You've got one hell of a library here. There's still a couple of things I wanna check out."
"...And if I kick you out?"
Castiel gave a half-shrug. "Dunno. Probably go to the Vatican or some place similar. It's not like I've got anything urgent now."
"Armageddon don't count as urgent?"
"What do you expect me to do?" There was a distinct note of annoyance in Castiel's voice. "My plan involved Winchesters, but neither of 'em are interested in playing along. I suppose I could hunt Azazel down and get myself torn to shreds, but I don't think that would be very productive."
"And you're more interested in finding a way home than you are in stopping the Apocalypse here."
Castiel's fists clenched and unclenched convulsively. "I miss my Dean," he said after a moment.
Bobby considered the man. He didn't really want the guy around, but... "You waltz in here knowing the answers to questions John Winchester spent years just learning how to ask. You go through the oldest books in the house, books I've owned for decades and barely understand a word in 'em, and you--you make corrections in the margins." Castiel raised his head to nod cautiously. "You can stay here long as you like, but in return you're gonna find a way to kill Yellow-eyes that doesn't involve a gun we don't have anymore. We're not sitting back on our asses waiting for the Apocalypse. I don't care if you need to build the damn Colt from scratch--you're finding a way to kill that sonuvabitch. Do we have a deal?"
The so-called angel cocked his head, examining Bobby with a canny eye. "We have a deal."
Go to the previous chapter.