SPN: Give Thy Thoughts No Tongue [Dean/Claire, implied Dean/Castiel]
Title: “Give Thy Thoughts No Tongue”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R [consensual sex with a minor, angst, mentions of drug use]
Timeline: AU for Episode 5x04, “The End”
Summary: In 2014 Claire Novak becomes the most wanted person on the planet. She is the girl who carries the grace of the last angel on earth. [Dean/Claire, implied Dean/Castiel]
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and the CW. Title from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. A few quotes are taken directly from the episode and thus belong to Ben Edlund.
A/N: I’m listing sex with a minor as a warning b/c I can’t find any information on how old Claire actually is. I’d be more comfortable if she was 18, but if she was, say, 10 in 4x20, that’d make her 16 in 5x04, I think.
GIVE THY THOUGHTS NO TONGUE
She was alone. There was nothing in this body but her. That’s what she told the world, and it was vital that they believed her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried. She had bled all over the floor, trying to claw it - him - out of her, but every time she started to wonder if it was truly gone, something inside her flared up like a signal rocket. It attracted everyone: the demons, the Croats, even what few humans were left scattered throughout the country.
It was not the way she remembered it. Back when it first happened, she was just a child, and it was painful and beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Now it felt like nothing. She was hollow inside, a shell of flesh encasing a divine spark fused with her human soul.
She laughed when Dean Winchester saved her from the Croats. He didn’t do that anymore, not since everybody knew his brother was the devil. He didn’t save people. It must have been a supply run, and there she was, with her dirty blond hair and her torn clothes and the handgun she had nabbed from some careless geezer when crossing Iowa, the handgun that had just run out of bullets.
He looked older. Then again, so did she. She sat up, tasting blood in her mouth from when she’d tripped on her run and fell and kissed the ground, and she looked up at the man that had chased the Croats away, and she burst out laughing. Blood frothed on her lips. She spat off and said:
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. So what now? You’re a big damn hero and I’m supposed to, what, kiss your feet for saving me?”
Winchester frowned, and she could see just how much older he looked. Lines were etched into his face, the kind of lines one tells a broken man by.
“I got something for you to kiss, pretty,” one of Dean’s men drawled.
She flashed him a dirty look and smiled with red-stained teeth. He flinched. She liked it.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” Winchester asked.
Her smile faded. She hated him a little, not because he didn’t remember her (why should he?), but because she would have to go with him now, she would have to be grateful to him and she would have to use him to pull herself together. Someone helped her up on her feet. She lowered her head so that the loose strands of her hair obscured it, if only a little, and muttered glumly:
“Could be. Bet you know a lot of girls.”
Winchester smirked humourlessly at that and turned away. He ordered his little party back to base. She went along. Nobody invited her to come, but nobody protested either.
* * *
She couldn’t remember the name of the kid who’d given her the pills. Cody? Rodney? He had expected something in return, and she’d had a quickie with him in his Dad’s burnt car that had had shattered glass all over the driver’s seat. She had almost expected him to charge her for the condom. His mouth had tasted vaguely of chocolate, but she’d had nothing else to offer, so that night she had broken into his house and raided his kitchen. Cody’s Dad had nearly caught her red-handed. She had a scar on her leg where his bullet had grazed her skin.
Pills didn’t do much work, no more than her imagination did anyway. She popped one or two once in a while just to have a change. Her mother would have been so proud. But mother had never been proud of her, at least not since Daddy had skipped off on a road trip doubling for an angel’s ride.
She twined the bottle in her fingers as she sat by the supply shed in Camp Chitaqua and listened to the cacophony of voices coming at her from each side. There were times when the chaos in her mind peaked and she couldn’t filter all this noise. It had to be silenced. She knew what it meant: she was beginning to develop an addiction, but hey, the world had long since progressed past concerns for drug abuse. Worse things were at large. Besides, her angel liked it, judging by how hot he burned inside her when she was high.
Someone snatched the bottle away from her before she could react.
“These things will kill you, don’t you know?” Winchester’s voice came.
She grinned crookedly at him. “Name a thing that won’t.”
He lowered himself on the ground next to her. The day was warm, sunlight washing over the muddy earth every now and then, and the air smelled of car oil and gunmetal and a bit of sweat, but for once not like blood and vomit.
“What’s the hubbub?” she asked, incuriously.
“Oh, uh… Risa. I may have made a couple of promises without actually intending to keep ‘em.”
“Can I have my pills back?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Why?” she drawled, swaying playfully to rest her forehead against his shoulder. He was wearing the same coarse green jacket he’d had on when he’d found her. “You don’t need another mouth to feed. What do you care if I croak?”
Winchester shrugged. “My clean-up crew’s on a break and the gravedigger wants to quit ‘cause he doesn’t like the dental plan.” There was a joke buried in there somewhere; she chuckled indulgently. “But really, you wanna die, take your pick. Why does it have to be drugs?”
He was sweet. It had been a long time since anyone cared. She hated him with a little more passion for it, but he was sweet. She inched closer and trailed her fingers along the side of his face. It’d been what, six years?
“This is a fucked-up world,” Dean said. He sounded - she couldn’t place it - disappointed? “Hell, you’re probably not even legal.”
She wanted to ask if that would stop him. Probably not. It shouldn’t. He wasn’t moving away, but he wasn’t moving forward either. Maybe he was trying to figure out what had screwed her up - and drawing a blank. Of course he wouldn’t know. Not until he knew her.
“I was looking for you, you know,” she said slowly, forcing the words out of her.
“Join the club. A lot of people are. I was, you know, what you said. A hero. I was doing that for a long time. Saving people. Hunting things. But things began hunting us back, and last time I checked, they had the upper hand.”
She twisted her lips into a bitter smile. Funny how much they had in common. She coiled her arm around his neck and kissed him abruptly, teeth and tongue and drool, raw as if she’d never kissed before. It lasted perhaps eight seconds before he pulled away. She expected a lecture, but he simply looked at her and asked:
“Who are you?”
“I’m your answer,” she said. “People come looking for you and they spread rumours, don’t they? About me. The girl who carries the grace of the last angel on earth. They think I can help.”
Winchester stared at her, taken aback by the slow revelation that unfurled in his head.
“That’d make you-.”
She giggled, graciously. “Claire Novak. Daughter’s of Castiel’s vessel. Hi, Dean.”
He all but threw her off himself. The push was rough, but she wasn’t accustomed to gentle either way. He gave her a quick looking over, taking in all of her cuts and bruises, all of her angles and curves.
“Is it true?” he asked in a strangled voice. The cracks inside him were beginning to deepen. “Is Cas with you?”
She rolled her eyes. Typical.
“I hate to break it to you,” she said. “Do you need me to? I’m not the answer, Dean. I can’t wake him up.”
She started laughing, and she couldn’t stop. Tears welled up in her eyes. Winchester held out his hand like he wanted to pat her on the shoulder or something, but he ended up walking away. Like people always did. Except the asshole had taken her pills.
* * *
She couldn’t sleep in the cabin with other women. It had been a while since she had to share, but only the lieutenants had the privilege of isolated accommodation. The sound of someone else’s breathing disturbed her. She crept out of the house, careful not to step on the creaking floorboards, and wandered amid the cars until she settled on a Jeep with a broken window. No one locked their cars anymore. She curled up inside it, not feeling safe in the slightest, and for the first time in months, possibly even years, she tried to talk to Castiel. She asked him if he was happy to see Dean again.
She fell asleep, waiting for an answer.
* * *
“Free advice,” Risa told her the next morning, “from me to you. Don’t wait at the food stall. If you do, all you’re gonna get is scraps.”
Claire eyed her suspiciously, waiting for her to make this about Dean. She didn’t come here to make enemies, but everybody knew Risa was mooning after Dean.
“Oh, and don’t yank Winchester’s chain,” Risa went on. “We don’t go out at night unless it’s mission-related. Not even into our own back yard.”
Claire watched the other girls reassemble their weapons on autopilot, and found herself missing the quiet days in Pontiac, those final days before the world came crashing down. Those peaceful seconds before she saw her first Croat.
Risa was all right. She had the hots for Dean, but she had brains too. It was Jane who hated Claire from the get-go. Claire noticed that Dean hadn’t told anyone about her. They still treated her as a survivor they’d picked up on their little trip to Kansas City.
Risa flashed Jane a dirty look, and that was definitely about Dean.
* * *
Dean dragged her out of the car by the ankles. She resisted, swore at him and demanded he give her the pills back. He pried the shard of glass that she’d almost stuck into his eye out of her hand and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“What the friggin’ hell are you doing out here alone in the middle of the night?” he all but yelled. “I thought you were a Croat!”
“I thought that about you,” she told him. She could gut him in five different ways if he ever got any ideas. He snorted derisively when she told him that. “‘M not afraid of anything,” she whispered stubbornly.
Winchester scowled (which was a refreshing change from his usual poker face).
“You going to Jane’s?” Claire asked, going for nonchalant and arriving at jealous. That was stupid.
“What’s it to you?”
She tried a careless shrug, and had better luck there. “She’s a bitch.”
“She’s a hot bitch,” Winchester amended. “Go back to the cabin. Next time I’ll shoot first, warn later.”
That happened to her more often than he thought, but she chose not to pursue the subject.
* * *
Winchester was cleaning his gun when Claire sneaked into his cabin. He looked up, and she addressed him her most innocent smile. Sure, he’d said to go back to the cabin, but he hadn’t specified which one.
“Thought you were busy,” she said, and flopped down on the bed, stretching her legs.
“Change of plans,” Winchester said evasively. “By the way, I gave your pills to Chuck. He’s in charge of supplies, and those are legit meds. Sick people might need them more than you do.”
Claire rolled her eyes.
“Take off that white hat, it looks stupid on you.”
“What do you want, Claire?”
“Many things.” She counted off on her fingers. “My Daddy back, for starters. The world not to end. To stop eating garbage and popping happy pills when I feel sad or scared. And I want this fucking angel out of me!”
Dean rose abruptly, his face stony.
“Why do I keep getting this personal vengeance quest vibe off you?” he asked. “I’m sorry you lost your father, I’m sorry, okay? But it’s not my fault. So take your teenage angst somewhere else. We’ve all lost someone.”
“It damn straight is your fault!” she shouted.
“I didn’t take your father. Castiel did.”
“Castiel,” she spat the name out vehemently, “was under orders. They needed you raised and controlled, and so Castiel had to get a vessel. It’s all your fault, Dean.”
He swung his arm like he was about to hit her, but she clutched his hand and forcibly placed it over her heart. The spark inside her burned hot, more alive than she ever recalled it to be.
“He came to me one day,” she said quietly. “After the devil destroyed Dad’s body. I was in my room, doing homework. Mom was in the kitchen, making pancakes. He asked me to let him in. I think he was just being polite ‘cause I’d already given consent once. He sounded so… lonely.”
Dean must have felt the searing heat under her skin. She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t know why Castiel hadn’t just taken over. It must have had to do with the other angels bailing. There were times when she wished he could fill her up to the brim like he’d done that one time, push her aside into the passenger’s seat.
Dean cupped her cheek and stroked it absent-mindedly, as if unable to decide where to go from here. She could grab his gun and put a bullet in his brain. She had come here wanting to kill Dean Winchester for everything he’d done to her family and the world, but as she felt that heat inside her, that alien longing, everything seemed entirely unimportant.
Dean kissed her. She considered the wariness of his actions offensive. She pulled him on top of herself and kissed back. It was a familiar ground. His hand in her hair, his body against hers, hard and desperate, and she could maybe fall in love with him a little just then because her heart - or the white light around her heart - was ready to burst. She didn’t know how much of it was hers. She felt both of them inside her, and she herself was melting away.
He thrust deeper. She clawed at his back, fingers burning from rubbing against the dusty fabric of his jacket, and she stifled her moans, drowned them in his mouth, because it wasn’t her he wanted to hear anyway. His eyes were shut, and in his mind he was somewhere else, and she was someone else. Many things, perhaps, but not the last broken hope of humanity.
She thought dimly that Jane would most certainly kill her now. For all she knew, Jane could come in any minute and find them like this. The thought made a giggle erupt from her throat unexpectedly, but her face remained frozen beneath the mask of weary gratification. She had her father’s eyes, people told her. With each passing year she became more and more of a tribute to her father’s image, and she knew Dean had been searching her face for those familiar features ever since he recognized her as Jimmy Novak’s daughter.
Afterwards, they lay on the bed, their bodies covered in slowly cooling sweat under the clothes. She rolled to her side, her back turned on him, and curled in on herself, feeling cold and devastated. He didn’t try to cuddle either, which was fine by her. Half-asleep, she felt his fingers sifting through her hair. When he spoke, it took her a moment to realize it was not in her head. He talked because he thought she was out.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I mean, how could I? I turned my back on the three people who’d only ever looked out for me. I thought you were dead. When I heard the rumours, it was too late. I didn’t know where to find you. I let Sam go. I let Bobby die. I lost you.” He released a short, shaky breath. “For all I know, I deserve all this. Not even Michael would have me now. But I’m gonna set things straight. Trust me, Cas. We’ll go down swinging, that I promise you.”
Claire’s eyes felt unpleasantly watery. She squeezed them shut, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the tension in her body, a tell-tale sign of her being wide awake now. She lay perfectly still until she heard Dean’s breathing even, and then she crawled out of the cabin and staggered off towards the Jeep with the broken window.
* * *
The next day Claire learnt that Winchester had gone away early in the morning. He was absent all day. After brief consideration, Claire took it as an opportunity. She and Dean were a done deal. There was no point for her to stay. For a moment, he’d almost had her fooled. She’d hoped he’d be the one to wake Castiel up, to get him out of her, but Dean Winchester was just as powerless as the rest of them.
Having made sure Chuck was elsewhere, Claire picked the supply closet lock and took two bottles of amphetamines, some analgesics, a bottle of brilliant green, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. Afterwards, she sortied into the women’s cabin and stuffed a change of clothes into a duffel bag. She replaced her old, worn-down sneakers with newer ones and considered writing an apology, briefly, but the world seemed to have outgrown those, and Claire followed suit.
A gunshot caught her attention. She ran outside to see what was going on. Dean was back, and the ominous fanfare celebrating his arrival was a bullet to one of his soldiers’ head. The man lay sprawled at the wheels of Dean’s Jeep under the apathetic gazes of the observers in the yard.
“Poor bastard,” Risa sighed, and that was all of Yeager’s eulogy.
Dean went into the HQ without sparing Claire a glance. A few of his lieutenants followed him, including Risa. The others went about doing their business as nonchalantly as before. Claire’s eyes wandered over the dead man. She tried to feel sorry for him because no one else seemed willing to be, but it was hard. She hadn’t known him at all.
She went back in to pick up her stuff. She had planned to leave before Dean’s return, but it was okay with way too: Dean would be too busy to notice it anyway. However, as she passed the HQ, she felt herself drawn in by the voices. The first one was Risa’s.
“So, that's it? That's the Colt?”
“If anything can kill Lucifer, this is it,” Dean answered. Claire frowned. Was that what he meant by setting things straight?
“Great,” Risa snorted. “Have we got anything that can find Lucifer?”
“We don't have to find Lucifer. We know where he is. The demon that we caught last week, he was one of the big guy’s entourage. He knew.”
“So, a demon tells you where Satan’s gonna be, and you just believe it?”
“Oh, trust me, he wasn't lying.” The coldness of Dean’s voice alarmed Claire. The rustling of paper was heard, followed again by Dean’s explanations: “Lucifer is here. Now. I know the block and I know the building.”
“Oh, good,” one of the men scoffed. “It’s right in the middle of a hot zone.”
“Crawling with Croats, yeah. You saying my plan is reckless?”
“What, uh, walk in straight up the driveway, past all the demons and the Croats, and shoot the devil? ‘Reckless’ isn’t my first choice of word.”
“Insane,” Risa supplied.
“We’re loaded and on the road by midnight,” Dean said in a peremptory tone. “If you’re not coming, then I’m going alone.”
Claire jerked away from the door on hearing his footsteps. Her heart was thumping wildly and at this moment it was hers alone. Wrestling with herself, she stalked after him.
“Are you really gonna do this?” she demanded. “You can’t even know this gun will work on him.”
“One way to find out,” Dean said, without looking at her.
“Are you out of your mind? Do you have a death wish or what?”
He stopped walking and cocked his head irritably.
“Three days ago you hated my gut. You wanted me dead. I don’t owe you anything, Claire, you or anyone in this godforsaken camp. There’s no one to do this but me.” He rubbed his nosebridge wearily and then spotted the duffel bag. “Going somewhere?”
She averted her eyes. Winchester mistook her silence for an attempt to invite herself on his road trip, and protested resolutely.
“No. You stay here. If I don’t make it-.”
“Don’t even start! I’m useless. I can’t reach him. Even if I could, what good would that do? Lucifer pretty much blew Castiel up when he wore my father. What do you expect him to do in this body?”
“I don’t know!” Dean snapped. “Cas, you bastard! Why are you even alive if you’re not helping?”
Claire flinched. Strange, childlike resentment on both their parts filled her up. She wanted to yell at Dean, fine, go get yourself killed, get them all killed for all I care, because guess what, I don’t! Instead, she continued staring up at him with dull eyes, mouth tight, and the inside of her body burned with unimaginable pain and anger at her own helplessness, and maybe his too.
Dean recomposed himself and returned her look. His hand shot up, but faltered in mid-motion. He touched her shoulder gently, with barely a second to spare, and walked off to where a convoy of Jeeps was assembling. Claire stood rooted to the spot until the cars began to move and darkness settled back into the empty yard. It was her cue to leave, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
“Hey, new girl,” someone called her. “Come help me out, will you? So long as you’re not sleeping anyway.”
She turned around. Chuck was waving at her to come up. She complied.
“What happened to not going out at night?” she asked, faint traces of mockery in her tone.
“Dean’s rule.” Chuck shrugged. “And he’s not here. I doubt many of us will be able to sleep tonight.”
Claire slowly lowered her bag on the ground. Chuck handed her the inventory sheet and opened the supply closet. He talked while sorting through the goods, something about being a writer and never having suspected that his gospel would turn out this way, but Claire wasn’t listening. Her body felt very heavy. She cast a regretful glance at the wire entanglement. Then she said:
“Chuck. Gather everyone. There’s something I have to tell them.” He eyed her inquiringly, and she added: “It’s about the last angel.”
Doing the right thing sucked, she thought. But the way Dean put it, there was nobody else.
September 23 - October 2, 2011
Or read at AO3
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R [consensual sex with a minor, angst, mentions of drug use]
Timeline: AU for Episode 5x04, “The End”
Summary: In 2014 Claire Novak becomes the most wanted person on the planet. She is the girl who carries the grace of the last angel on earth. [Dean/Claire, implied Dean/Castiel]
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and the CW. Title from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. A few quotes are taken directly from the episode and thus belong to Ben Edlund.
A/N: I’m listing sex with a minor as a warning b/c I can’t find any information on how old Claire actually is. I’d be more comfortable if she was 18, but if she was, say, 10 in 4x20, that’d make her 16 in 5x04, I think.
GIVE THY THOUGHTS NO TONGUE
She was alone. There was nothing in this body but her. That’s what she told the world, and it was vital that they believed her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried. She had bled all over the floor, trying to claw it - him - out of her, but every time she started to wonder if it was truly gone, something inside her flared up like a signal rocket. It attracted everyone: the demons, the Croats, even what few humans were left scattered throughout the country.
It was not the way she remembered it. Back when it first happened, she was just a child, and it was painful and beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Now it felt like nothing. She was hollow inside, a shell of flesh encasing a divine spark fused with her human soul.
She laughed when Dean Winchester saved her from the Croats. He didn’t do that anymore, not since everybody knew his brother was the devil. He didn’t save people. It must have been a supply run, and there she was, with her dirty blond hair and her torn clothes and the handgun she had nabbed from some careless geezer when crossing Iowa, the handgun that had just run out of bullets.
He looked older. Then again, so did she. She sat up, tasting blood in her mouth from when she’d tripped on her run and fell and kissed the ground, and she looked up at the man that had chased the Croats away, and she burst out laughing. Blood frothed on her lips. She spat off and said:
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. So what now? You’re a big damn hero and I’m supposed to, what, kiss your feet for saving me?”
Winchester frowned, and she could see just how much older he looked. Lines were etched into his face, the kind of lines one tells a broken man by.
“I got something for you to kiss, pretty,” one of Dean’s men drawled.
She flashed him a dirty look and smiled with red-stained teeth. He flinched. She liked it.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” Winchester asked.
Her smile faded. She hated him a little, not because he didn’t remember her (why should he?), but because she would have to go with him now, she would have to be grateful to him and she would have to use him to pull herself together. Someone helped her up on her feet. She lowered her head so that the loose strands of her hair obscured it, if only a little, and muttered glumly:
“Could be. Bet you know a lot of girls.”
Winchester smirked humourlessly at that and turned away. He ordered his little party back to base. She went along. Nobody invited her to come, but nobody protested either.
* * *
She couldn’t remember the name of the kid who’d given her the pills. Cody? Rodney? He had expected something in return, and she’d had a quickie with him in his Dad’s burnt car that had had shattered glass all over the driver’s seat. She had almost expected him to charge her for the condom. His mouth had tasted vaguely of chocolate, but she’d had nothing else to offer, so that night she had broken into his house and raided his kitchen. Cody’s Dad had nearly caught her red-handed. She had a scar on her leg where his bullet had grazed her skin.
Pills didn’t do much work, no more than her imagination did anyway. She popped one or two once in a while just to have a change. Her mother would have been so proud. But mother had never been proud of her, at least not since Daddy had skipped off on a road trip doubling for an angel’s ride.
She twined the bottle in her fingers as she sat by the supply shed in Camp Chitaqua and listened to the cacophony of voices coming at her from each side. There were times when the chaos in her mind peaked and she couldn’t filter all this noise. It had to be silenced. She knew what it meant: she was beginning to develop an addiction, but hey, the world had long since progressed past concerns for drug abuse. Worse things were at large. Besides, her angel liked it, judging by how hot he burned inside her when she was high.
Someone snatched the bottle away from her before she could react.
“These things will kill you, don’t you know?” Winchester’s voice came.
She grinned crookedly at him. “Name a thing that won’t.”
He lowered himself on the ground next to her. The day was warm, sunlight washing over the muddy earth every now and then, and the air smelled of car oil and gunmetal and a bit of sweat, but for once not like blood and vomit.
“What’s the hubbub?” she asked, incuriously.
“Oh, uh… Risa. I may have made a couple of promises without actually intending to keep ‘em.”
“Can I have my pills back?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Why?” she drawled, swaying playfully to rest her forehead against his shoulder. He was wearing the same coarse green jacket he’d had on when he’d found her. “You don’t need another mouth to feed. What do you care if I croak?”
Winchester shrugged. “My clean-up crew’s on a break and the gravedigger wants to quit ‘cause he doesn’t like the dental plan.” There was a joke buried in there somewhere; she chuckled indulgently. “But really, you wanna die, take your pick. Why does it have to be drugs?”
He was sweet. It had been a long time since anyone cared. She hated him with a little more passion for it, but he was sweet. She inched closer and trailed her fingers along the side of his face. It’d been what, six years?
“This is a fucked-up world,” Dean said. He sounded - she couldn’t place it - disappointed? “Hell, you’re probably not even legal.”
She wanted to ask if that would stop him. Probably not. It shouldn’t. He wasn’t moving away, but he wasn’t moving forward either. Maybe he was trying to figure out what had screwed her up - and drawing a blank. Of course he wouldn’t know. Not until he knew her.
“I was looking for you, you know,” she said slowly, forcing the words out of her.
“Join the club. A lot of people are. I was, you know, what you said. A hero. I was doing that for a long time. Saving people. Hunting things. But things began hunting us back, and last time I checked, they had the upper hand.”
She twisted her lips into a bitter smile. Funny how much they had in common. She coiled her arm around his neck and kissed him abruptly, teeth and tongue and drool, raw as if she’d never kissed before. It lasted perhaps eight seconds before he pulled away. She expected a lecture, but he simply looked at her and asked:
“Who are you?”
“I’m your answer,” she said. “People come looking for you and they spread rumours, don’t they? About me. The girl who carries the grace of the last angel on earth. They think I can help.”
Winchester stared at her, taken aback by the slow revelation that unfurled in his head.
“That’d make you-.”
She giggled, graciously. “Claire Novak. Daughter’s of Castiel’s vessel. Hi, Dean.”
He all but threw her off himself. The push was rough, but she wasn’t accustomed to gentle either way. He gave her a quick looking over, taking in all of her cuts and bruises, all of her angles and curves.
“Is it true?” he asked in a strangled voice. The cracks inside him were beginning to deepen. “Is Cas with you?”
She rolled her eyes. Typical.
“I hate to break it to you,” she said. “Do you need me to? I’m not the answer, Dean. I can’t wake him up.”
She started laughing, and she couldn’t stop. Tears welled up in her eyes. Winchester held out his hand like he wanted to pat her on the shoulder or something, but he ended up walking away. Like people always did. Except the asshole had taken her pills.
* * *
She couldn’t sleep in the cabin with other women. It had been a while since she had to share, but only the lieutenants had the privilege of isolated accommodation. The sound of someone else’s breathing disturbed her. She crept out of the house, careful not to step on the creaking floorboards, and wandered amid the cars until she settled on a Jeep with a broken window. No one locked their cars anymore. She curled up inside it, not feeling safe in the slightest, and for the first time in months, possibly even years, she tried to talk to Castiel. She asked him if he was happy to see Dean again.
She fell asleep, waiting for an answer.
* * *
“Free advice,” Risa told her the next morning, “from me to you. Don’t wait at the food stall. If you do, all you’re gonna get is scraps.”
Claire eyed her suspiciously, waiting for her to make this about Dean. She didn’t come here to make enemies, but everybody knew Risa was mooning after Dean.
“Oh, and don’t yank Winchester’s chain,” Risa went on. “We don’t go out at night unless it’s mission-related. Not even into our own back yard.”
Claire watched the other girls reassemble their weapons on autopilot, and found herself missing the quiet days in Pontiac, those final days before the world came crashing down. Those peaceful seconds before she saw her first Croat.
Risa was all right. She had the hots for Dean, but she had brains too. It was Jane who hated Claire from the get-go. Claire noticed that Dean hadn’t told anyone about her. They still treated her as a survivor they’d picked up on their little trip to Kansas City.
Risa flashed Jane a dirty look, and that was definitely about Dean.
* * *
Dean dragged her out of the car by the ankles. She resisted, swore at him and demanded he give her the pills back. He pried the shard of glass that she’d almost stuck into his eye out of her hand and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“What the friggin’ hell are you doing out here alone in the middle of the night?” he all but yelled. “I thought you were a Croat!”
“I thought that about you,” she told him. She could gut him in five different ways if he ever got any ideas. He snorted derisively when she told him that. “‘M not afraid of anything,” she whispered stubbornly.
Winchester scowled (which was a refreshing change from his usual poker face).
“You going to Jane’s?” Claire asked, going for nonchalant and arriving at jealous. That was stupid.
“What’s it to you?”
She tried a careless shrug, and had better luck there. “She’s a bitch.”
“She’s a hot bitch,” Winchester amended. “Go back to the cabin. Next time I’ll shoot first, warn later.”
That happened to her more often than he thought, but she chose not to pursue the subject.
* * *
Winchester was cleaning his gun when Claire sneaked into his cabin. He looked up, and she addressed him her most innocent smile. Sure, he’d said to go back to the cabin, but he hadn’t specified which one.
“Thought you were busy,” she said, and flopped down on the bed, stretching her legs.
“Change of plans,” Winchester said evasively. “By the way, I gave your pills to Chuck. He’s in charge of supplies, and those are legit meds. Sick people might need them more than you do.”
Claire rolled her eyes.
“Take off that white hat, it looks stupid on you.”
“What do you want, Claire?”
“Many things.” She counted off on her fingers. “My Daddy back, for starters. The world not to end. To stop eating garbage and popping happy pills when I feel sad or scared. And I want this fucking angel out of me!”
Dean rose abruptly, his face stony.
“Why do I keep getting this personal vengeance quest vibe off you?” he asked. “I’m sorry you lost your father, I’m sorry, okay? But it’s not my fault. So take your teenage angst somewhere else. We’ve all lost someone.”
“It damn straight is your fault!” she shouted.
“I didn’t take your father. Castiel did.”
“Castiel,” she spat the name out vehemently, “was under orders. They needed you raised and controlled, and so Castiel had to get a vessel. It’s all your fault, Dean.”
He swung his arm like he was about to hit her, but she clutched his hand and forcibly placed it over her heart. The spark inside her burned hot, more alive than she ever recalled it to be.
“He came to me one day,” she said quietly. “After the devil destroyed Dad’s body. I was in my room, doing homework. Mom was in the kitchen, making pancakes. He asked me to let him in. I think he was just being polite ‘cause I’d already given consent once. He sounded so… lonely.”
Dean must have felt the searing heat under her skin. She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t know why Castiel hadn’t just taken over. It must have had to do with the other angels bailing. There were times when she wished he could fill her up to the brim like he’d done that one time, push her aside into the passenger’s seat.
Dean cupped her cheek and stroked it absent-mindedly, as if unable to decide where to go from here. She could grab his gun and put a bullet in his brain. She had come here wanting to kill Dean Winchester for everything he’d done to her family and the world, but as she felt that heat inside her, that alien longing, everything seemed entirely unimportant.
Dean kissed her. She considered the wariness of his actions offensive. She pulled him on top of herself and kissed back. It was a familiar ground. His hand in her hair, his body against hers, hard and desperate, and she could maybe fall in love with him a little just then because her heart - or the white light around her heart - was ready to burst. She didn’t know how much of it was hers. She felt both of them inside her, and she herself was melting away.
He thrust deeper. She clawed at his back, fingers burning from rubbing against the dusty fabric of his jacket, and she stifled her moans, drowned them in his mouth, because it wasn’t her he wanted to hear anyway. His eyes were shut, and in his mind he was somewhere else, and she was someone else. Many things, perhaps, but not the last broken hope of humanity.
She thought dimly that Jane would most certainly kill her now. For all she knew, Jane could come in any minute and find them like this. The thought made a giggle erupt from her throat unexpectedly, but her face remained frozen beneath the mask of weary gratification. She had her father’s eyes, people told her. With each passing year she became more and more of a tribute to her father’s image, and she knew Dean had been searching her face for those familiar features ever since he recognized her as Jimmy Novak’s daughter.
Afterwards, they lay on the bed, their bodies covered in slowly cooling sweat under the clothes. She rolled to her side, her back turned on him, and curled in on herself, feeling cold and devastated. He didn’t try to cuddle either, which was fine by her. Half-asleep, she felt his fingers sifting through her hair. When he spoke, it took her a moment to realize it was not in her head. He talked because he thought she was out.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I mean, how could I? I turned my back on the three people who’d only ever looked out for me. I thought you were dead. When I heard the rumours, it was too late. I didn’t know where to find you. I let Sam go. I let Bobby die. I lost you.” He released a short, shaky breath. “For all I know, I deserve all this. Not even Michael would have me now. But I’m gonna set things straight. Trust me, Cas. We’ll go down swinging, that I promise you.”
Claire’s eyes felt unpleasantly watery. She squeezed them shut, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the tension in her body, a tell-tale sign of her being wide awake now. She lay perfectly still until she heard Dean’s breathing even, and then she crawled out of the cabin and staggered off towards the Jeep with the broken window.
* * *
The next day Claire learnt that Winchester had gone away early in the morning. He was absent all day. After brief consideration, Claire took it as an opportunity. She and Dean were a done deal. There was no point for her to stay. For a moment, he’d almost had her fooled. She’d hoped he’d be the one to wake Castiel up, to get him out of her, but Dean Winchester was just as powerless as the rest of them.
Having made sure Chuck was elsewhere, Claire picked the supply closet lock and took two bottles of amphetamines, some analgesics, a bottle of brilliant green, a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. Afterwards, she sortied into the women’s cabin and stuffed a change of clothes into a duffel bag. She replaced her old, worn-down sneakers with newer ones and considered writing an apology, briefly, but the world seemed to have outgrown those, and Claire followed suit.
A gunshot caught her attention. She ran outside to see what was going on. Dean was back, and the ominous fanfare celebrating his arrival was a bullet to one of his soldiers’ head. The man lay sprawled at the wheels of Dean’s Jeep under the apathetic gazes of the observers in the yard.
“Poor bastard,” Risa sighed, and that was all of Yeager’s eulogy.
Dean went into the HQ without sparing Claire a glance. A few of his lieutenants followed him, including Risa. The others went about doing their business as nonchalantly as before. Claire’s eyes wandered over the dead man. She tried to feel sorry for him because no one else seemed willing to be, but it was hard. She hadn’t known him at all.
She went back in to pick up her stuff. She had planned to leave before Dean’s return, but it was okay with way too: Dean would be too busy to notice it anyway. However, as she passed the HQ, she felt herself drawn in by the voices. The first one was Risa’s.
“So, that's it? That's the Colt?”
“If anything can kill Lucifer, this is it,” Dean answered. Claire frowned. Was that what he meant by setting things straight?
“Great,” Risa snorted. “Have we got anything that can find Lucifer?”
“We don't have to find Lucifer. We know where he is. The demon that we caught last week, he was one of the big guy’s entourage. He knew.”
“So, a demon tells you where Satan’s gonna be, and you just believe it?”
“Oh, trust me, he wasn't lying.” The coldness of Dean’s voice alarmed Claire. The rustling of paper was heard, followed again by Dean’s explanations: “Lucifer is here. Now. I know the block and I know the building.”
“Oh, good,” one of the men scoffed. “It’s right in the middle of a hot zone.”
“Crawling with Croats, yeah. You saying my plan is reckless?”
“What, uh, walk in straight up the driveway, past all the demons and the Croats, and shoot the devil? ‘Reckless’ isn’t my first choice of word.”
“Insane,” Risa supplied.
“We’re loaded and on the road by midnight,” Dean said in a peremptory tone. “If you’re not coming, then I’m going alone.”
Claire jerked away from the door on hearing his footsteps. Her heart was thumping wildly and at this moment it was hers alone. Wrestling with herself, she stalked after him.
“Are you really gonna do this?” she demanded. “You can’t even know this gun will work on him.”
“One way to find out,” Dean said, without looking at her.
“Are you out of your mind? Do you have a death wish or what?”
He stopped walking and cocked his head irritably.
“Three days ago you hated my gut. You wanted me dead. I don’t owe you anything, Claire, you or anyone in this godforsaken camp. There’s no one to do this but me.” He rubbed his nosebridge wearily and then spotted the duffel bag. “Going somewhere?”
She averted her eyes. Winchester mistook her silence for an attempt to invite herself on his road trip, and protested resolutely.
“No. You stay here. If I don’t make it-.”
“Don’t even start! I’m useless. I can’t reach him. Even if I could, what good would that do? Lucifer pretty much blew Castiel up when he wore my father. What do you expect him to do in this body?”
“I don’t know!” Dean snapped. “Cas, you bastard! Why are you even alive if you’re not helping?”
Claire flinched. Strange, childlike resentment on both their parts filled her up. She wanted to yell at Dean, fine, go get yourself killed, get them all killed for all I care, because guess what, I don’t! Instead, she continued staring up at him with dull eyes, mouth tight, and the inside of her body burned with unimaginable pain and anger at her own helplessness, and maybe his too.
Dean recomposed himself and returned her look. His hand shot up, but faltered in mid-motion. He touched her shoulder gently, with barely a second to spare, and walked off to where a convoy of Jeeps was assembling. Claire stood rooted to the spot until the cars began to move and darkness settled back into the empty yard. It was her cue to leave, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
“Hey, new girl,” someone called her. “Come help me out, will you? So long as you’re not sleeping anyway.”
She turned around. Chuck was waving at her to come up. She complied.
“What happened to not going out at night?” she asked, faint traces of mockery in her tone.
“Dean’s rule.” Chuck shrugged. “And he’s not here. I doubt many of us will be able to sleep tonight.”
Claire slowly lowered her bag on the ground. Chuck handed her the inventory sheet and opened the supply closet. He talked while sorting through the goods, something about being a writer and never having suspected that his gospel would turn out this way, but Claire wasn’t listening. Her body felt very heavy. She cast a regretful glance at the wire entanglement. Then she said:
“Chuck. Gather everyone. There’s something I have to tell them.” He eyed her inquiringly, and she added: “It’s about the last angel.”
Doing the right thing sucked, she thought. But the way Dean put it, there was nobody else.
September 23 - October 2, 2011
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