homeplot pre-play!

[heartless_sob]

Sleep faded into a dream too vivid to be fake.

Everything changed, and though it probably happened within the span of a second, it felt like the longest second of Castiel's life. Senses heightened, others dulled and Castiel's emotions melted, shifted, changed into something else. He knew more, felt more, but it was different.

It was homeCastiel

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[weary_head]

Dean woke up slowly, his dreams falling away from him into the dark, fading even as he tried to hold on. He couldn't remember quite why, but when his eyes blinked open he was smiling.

It didn't last for long.

Above him was a ceiling, not wood, not bamboo, but cheap styrofoam tile, and Dean sat bolt upright in bed. Home, home, he was home, he could feel it in the air all around him, and Dean's heart seized. One wildly outflung arm told him he wasn't alone in his bed, and Dean's heart skittered again, all but bursting when he saw the top of Angua's fair head peeking over the covers.

That made no sense at all, but Dean didn't question it, catapulting out of bed to investigate the bed that should have cradled Sam's lanky body.

He found only Jessica. Alive and dreaming, and if he hadn't been able to all but taste his heart in the back of his throat, Dean would've said he was still dreaming.

He was home, but where was SamWhen stumbling to the bathroom to check there brought him face to face with Castiel, Dean shot him a bewildered

[heartless_sob]

Castiel reached out and gripped Dean's shoulder, a vague sense of want making him push Dean's sleeve back to inspect his arm. There, branded into Dean's skin, was his handprint.

"Sam isn't here," came Castiel's voice, deeper, more monotone than it had been since he'd fallen. This was good, and it wasn't. He believed they had been sent to the island to be safe. Dean had been sent before Hell so that he would not start the apocalypse, and Castiel had been sent after to make sure nothing happened to him. Sam was sent before all of them, so that his powers would never manifest. Jess, so that she would live. It had made sense to him, at the time. Now, very little did.

He looked up at Dean, holding him with an intense gaze. "He may be in trouble. I will have to leave you for a little while, to check the convent he was last at. Wake the others. Get dressed."

He disappeared.

[weary_head]

Dean hardly had time to decide whether he was going to gape at Castiel's wretched message or the giant, honking brand on his shoulder when Castiel up and disappeared.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean shouted into the empty space in front of him, head turning sharply to see if he'd woken the girls. Light spilling in from the window sank his stomach like a stone.

"Oh Jesus." He ran to the window and found only a street lamp, but that didn't mean the moon wasn't out there. Creeping on tiptoe, Dean returned to Angua's bed.

He didn't know if he could do it. If the moon rose and Angua changed, Dean didn't know if he could do it, lock her up like she'd need to be for his safety and hers both. Dean sank down on the bed behind him, squashing Jess' foot in the process.

[off_the_ceiling]

Jess was awake immediately, her sleep never as deep or as restful as it had been before Sam had disappeared. She didn't feel awake, though, because her eyes were open and she was sitting up and looking around, but she didn't recognize anything around her. It wasn't Dean's hut, it wasn't the compound, wasn't anywhere on the island. It wasn't any home she'd ever known, or any place she'd ever been.

"Dean?" she said at the Dean-shaped form on her bed, yanking her foot out from under him. "Dean, what's going on?"

[weary_head]

"I don't know," Dean answered, pushing past the tightness in his throat. He held a hand to his mouth, warning Jess to stay quiet. "We're not on the island, but Sammy's not here, and Cas is an angel." And Angua was a werewolf.

He turned towards Jess in the darkness. "You okay?"

[off_the_ceiling]

"We're not on the island, Sam's still not here, Cas is an angel and you're asking me if I'm okay?" said Jess, her voice quiet but a little hysterical anyway. She stopped herself and took a few deep slow breaths. "Okay, if I can ask myself if I'm dreaming then I'm probably not, which means we're actually here, wherever here is. Where is here?"

[weary_head]

"Motel somewhere," said Dean. He looked around, searching for something he might recognize, but after a while all those rooms began to look the same. Even the ones with glitter disco mirrors.

"Could be anywhere." If Jess had ever wanted to see where Sam had come from, this was as close as it came, and it was pretty damn accurate.

[off_the_ceiling]

"Well, we need to know," said Jess, infused with purpose when he said that. It was a lot better than just freaking out. She started to slip out from under the covers, only belatedly hoping she was decent. "There's got to be something. A phone book. A room service menu. A book of matches."

But if this place was anything like the island, there didn't have to be squat.

Suddenly, contemplating life trapped in a motel room, the island didn't seem so bad.

[weary_head]

Dean got up, hand out to search for a phonebook in the bedside table, but he stilled again at a sound from Angua.

It wasn't gravity that pulled him down to his knees beside the bed. Dean sucked down a long breath, racking his brain and summoning his courage. If this was the home he knew, then that meant there was a silver blade beneath his pillow. He reached for it, heart stuck in his throat as his fingers closed around cold metal.

"Angua," he said, loud an uneven. "Wake up."

[loaded_wolf]

Angua's eyes blinked open, Dean's voice pulling her from sleep. It wasn't immediate, but it was close, when she realized something was off.

It was the bed beneath her. It was the sounds.

The smells.

She could smell things. Really smell things, and it was so familiar and strange at the same time that she sat up, pushing herself to alertness.

"Dean?" She looked at him, gods, she could smell his fear. She looked past him to Jess, and back. And the room...this wasn't their hut. It maybe wasn't even the island at all.

Oh gods, she could feel the wolf, and she wasn't sure whether to be terrified or elated.

"What is this?"

[weary_head]

"It's home," he answered, and the breath stuffed tight and staling in his lungs had yet to find its way out again. "Mine and Jess's."

He watched her close, at once perfectly still and ready to move. "America, Earth."

[off_the_ceiling]

Jess wasn't sure "home" was the right word to use for this unfamiliar place, but it was certainly more their home than Angua's.

"I think that's all we know right now," she said, yanking open a drawer in the bedside table but finding only the obligatory Bible. She chucked it aside onto the bed without a second look.

[loaded_wolf]

"We've disappeared from the island, but we're still together?" Angua breathed, gazing at Dean. It seemed like a miracle, but she could feel the wolf inside her, restless to get out, and wondered if it was at all. There was too much to consider, it was too much at once.

She noticed, then, how still Dean was trying to be, and his hand hidden under one of the pillows. An eyebrow raised in question.

[weary_head]

Dean's cheeks paled rather than flushed in the dim light of the room, but he didn't move, moving nothing but the eyebrow he raised in answer.

He'd say it if he had to, however much they both would hate him for it.

[loaded_wolf]

Angua wasn't stupid. Dean wasn't about to start a pillow fight.

"Are you going to shoot me?" she asked, voice and eyes level.

[weary_head]

Dean's mouth tightened. It was hard enough, staring his own girlfriend down and waiting to see if this place had power over her without making it so goddamn personal. She knew exactly what he had to be afraid of.

"No." And if she wasn't going to tell him, he had to ask. "You in control?"