Frozen Inside Part 3
Chapter 12: Chapter 12
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Beware, I am drunk. But...writing is happening. Oopsie. Planned plot event contained within.
Castiel has never kissed like this before.
He remembers being kissed when he was ill, lips brushing his forehead and his cheek. Some kind soul caring for him while he lay in the grips of fever. He has felt the kisses of young girls, when he was himself five years old.
Dean kisses like he wants to be inside of him. As if, like the wolf in the old stories, he wants to slide down Castiel's throat, into his belly, and hide there.
Castiel opens his mouth to him, and feels Dean's lips dip between his. Tugging on his own and sliding over them. When Dean's tongue searches out his own, Castiel finds the feeling so surprising, so strange, that he does not think to oppose it. Dean's hands find his, and raise them over his head, laying them out on the stone floor.
Still Castiel does not rebel.
He thinks he would let Dean do anything he likes with him, as long as he will kiss him like that. As long as he will touch all of his skin to his own, so warm and smooth.
Dean removes Castiel's shirt, busy hands stoking over his chest as gently, as purposefully as Dean had once liked warmth back into his frozen skin. Castiel shivers, a warmth settling in him like a strong drink.
When Dean drops his mouth to Castiel's chest, between his collar bones, in the place that would be the space between his breasts - had he possessed them, the warm upper of his belly, the dip in its centre and down. Castiel can only lie on his back, feeling taken over, as if by wildfire, only, a fire that burns wet, and deep and hot - rather than bright and dry. He feels saturated, throbbing, low, and filled with undercurrents.
All his life he thought he was a spring, clear and clean and characterless. When beneath there were subterranean caves of dark rocks, and deep, mineral rich waters.
He doesn't even jump when Dean's crude hand touches him where Castiel has never been touched before. A place he himself only touches in the most commonplace of ways. But under Dean's fingers, the mundane, base instrument of excretion sends such waves of heat and pleasure through him, that Castiel cannot help but arch from the floor, pressing himself into Dean's willing hands.
He had no idea his body was capable of holding this much feeling - this much sensation. He has experienced the rise of physical excitement before, fortunately in private, on his lumpen tick, under his sheets. It was a shameful thing, quickly dealt with. But now...he revels in Dean's touches, that seem to be wherever he most needs them, changing second by second.
He must cry out Dean's name, because the other man murmurs, 'Cas' as if it's something like a curse, and a forbidden rosary prayer, meshed into one in the dark.
Dean's fingers touch under his body, under the twitching, desperate flesh of his member, brushing the ripe swelling of the lower organ, tickling between his legs, and beyond, until Castiel gasps, and bends his knees, slipping away from the touch.
Dean shushes him, one hand petting his thigh.
He removes his hand, lifting it to his mouth long enough to spit on his fingers, before returning it to its former location.
It's such an ugly thing, and Castiel's mind struggles to make sense of it.
Dean looks at him, "So it will hurt less. The mating." He explains.
Castiel wrestles with the idea, trying to find the logic of Dean's words, a difficult task with wet fingers caressing his backside, and Dean's other hand once again pleasuring him.
Several facts clash together in his mind, and Castiel experiences a jolt of realisation.
"You're going to..." His voice cracks, and he forces his traitorous hips to cease their continuous shifting, pushing his aching hardness through Dean's curled fingers. "...enter me?"
Dean nods, fingers moving with more purpose, pushing alarmingly.
Castiel jerks a little way from them, even though it loses him the delightful stroking of Dean's hand.
"Dean...I am not a woman...I don't have..." Castiel blushes. Despite his current undress, his arousal, which is currently drooling an alarming fluid over his stomach, it is the mention of the female body that forces the blood to his cheeks. "...I am not possessed of a woman's virtue." He explains, primly, using words learnt from the old spinster that served as village midwife.
A smile flickers over Dean's mouth, and for a second Castiel is lost in it. Dean is...almost a work of art. He reminds him of the stained glass windows in the catholic churches, before they were broken by his fellows - vivid green eyes, golden skin, like the sun has just come out from behind the clouds, gilding him like a saint.
"I know." Dean tells him. "Sam...he told me. This. This is the men's way."
Castiel had known, the theoretical, dark golem of sodomy. He knew that it was men, lying with men, committing acts of sin, of carnal lust. But he had not contemplated the actual act itself, beyond some half imagined, half dreamt fantasies that had not been over burdened with physical detail. But Dean...has apparently gained the knowledge of this act, from Sam. For a second Castiel feels almost betrayed.
"He told you to...to do this?"
Dean looks at him, as honest as a wolf sitting beside its kill, showing no remorse, nor shame. "I wanted to do right, with you. A..." he struggles for the word. "...mistake, could hurt you."
Dean slides his body lower, until he can kiss Castiel's belly, and Castiel realises that once again he is exposed, submissive to the alpha.
Then Dean's mouth moves lower, and Castiel is partly shocked, partly lost, in the feeling of lips - of the tongue that had embraced his so little time ago...now caressing his intimate flesh, as hot and ardent as if it were merely kissing his lips, with no trace of aversion.
His body goes limp on the floor, then tightens unexpectedly, until he is held in the grip of a spasm that builds, tensing his every muscle, until Castiel feels he might die if it finally grips him - and that he might die if it doesn't.
Finally, with a fresh touch of Dean's smooth, wet mouth, Castiel loses his weak grasp on the world around him, loses everything - his name, his memory, his sight and awareness, save for the feel of Dean touching him.
Dean's fingers, wet and strong, slide under him, wriggling for a second of blunt pressure, before intruding into him. It's a sensation unlike anything else, feeling his body, and a part of him he has never considered before,gripping Dean's finger, so tightly that he's almost afraid Dean will have to remain there indefinitely.
Yet, Dean finds some way of moving inwards, deeper, and Castiel closes his eyes, feeling Dean's lips gently brush his spent organ, lapping curiously at the jism on his stomach. Without the intensity of pleasure that had previously fogged his mind, Castiel feels his shame creeping back - mentally shaping the picture they must make together, Dean with his finger probing his body, licking the remains of Castiel's shattered control from him.
"Cas?"
He opens his eyes to find Dean looking up at him. His perfect mouth is reddened, swollen, Castiel thinks with a twinge of regret, from his efforts on his arousal. The finger inside of him twists, and is joined by another.
"Hurts?" Dean asks, seemingly having no need for the words that would make the rest of the question.
"No." Castiel says, truthfully, for it doesn't hurt, but feels strange, and wrong and strangely compulsive - like when he was a child, and he'd dip his tongue into the raw-tasting grooves of lost milk teeth.
Dean looks at him, as if trying to decipher him. "Doesn't hurt...but...?"
"It feels..." Castiel swallows. "I don't know..." and then he admits something that he hadn't even fully thought to himself yet. "I don't want to like it, but I don't want you to stop."
Dean frowns, confused. "Don't want..." his fingers absently seek within Castiel, and Castiel abruptly grunts, body pushing down on the fingers inside of him, before he can fully decide what it is that he should be doing. It just feels so good, better even than what Dean has just done to him.
He loses the words for 'want' and 'don't stop' and 'please'.
There's only one that he can force from his mouth.
"More."
The third finger squirming into him makes him shout helplessly, it hurts, but it's a good hurt. He doesn't know how, and he doesn't care. Dean's hand is more brutal now, responding to the urgency in the way that Castiel's body moves.
Then, suddenly, it's gone.
It's just all gone, and Castiel is cold, and untouched. The space between his legs still burning a little, feeling wet and open and...
And Dean pulls his legs up, and open, and Castiel lets him.
He isn't even conscious of the sound that uncoils from his throat as Dean joins them together, but Dean hears it, the long, loud sound, so similar to the mating calls he's heard in the forest. He lets his body fall over Castiel's deeply rooted in him, experiencing at last the feeling of being fully mated. Possessing, joining the one who's scent had already claimed him. Claiming Castiel in return.
Clumsy, demanding hands grabs at his back, and Castiel's heart drums as if it's pressed between their slick chests.
"I'm..." Castiel starts, and he could say that he's on edge again, that he's about to fall apart again. That he's not hurt. That he's confused, and knows he will be so, painfully shamed by this later. "I'm yours, aren't I?"
Dean kisses him, deep and wet, satisfied that Castiel - so slow and so very, very human - thinking with his busy mind, rather than with his cunning ears, quick feet, heart and urgent sex - has finally caught up to what Dean's known all along.
Castiel is his.
Having mounted his mate, Dean wastes no time in pursuing his own, long delayed pleasure. Castel buries his face against Dean's neck, whimpering in a way that Dean knows does not come from pain. His blood surges, and he can feel the gathering of his body, the way it starts to move without his intention.
The ear-splitting noise around them makes them both jolt, and Dean barely has time to collect his senses before an arm wraps around his throat, dragging him backwards.
Castiel shouts his name, and Dean clings to him, fighting the hands, many many hands, that are pulling at him. He smells gunpowder, horses, leather and strange food and plants. He fights still harder, knowing that he is outmatched, that there is no time. He lunges for Castiel, and sinks his teeth into his mate's arm.
Castiel cries out, shouts his name again - more hurt this time, more afraid.
Then the stock of a rifle strikes the back of Dean's head.
And everything goes black with the sound of Castiel's voice - pleading with the strange men around him to spare his life.
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Chapter 13: Chapter 13
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:P I stand by my cliff hanger. But here, have an update. For anyone who was confused, yes, it was Dean's life that Castiel was begging for. Places mentioned here are totally made up/stolen accidently from RPGs :P
"Don't hurt him!" Castiel shouts, fighting the hands of the men as they clasp his upper arms, dragging him away from Dean's unconscious body.
One of the men punches him in the stomach, and Castiel crumples to his knees.
"Don't bruise him so - we won't get paid." One of the men warns.
Castiel spits blood onto the floor, he's bitten his tongue.
"He's lucky, he should be hanged." Someone over him growls.
"He might still be, t'isnt for us to say."
Castiel is dragged back to his feet. Something scratchy and heavy is dropped over his shoulders, a cloak of rough fabric. One of the men wrenches his arms behind his back and clasps them in cold manacles. As Castiel tries to pull away, another set of manacles are closed around his ankles, hobbling him.
"Take him outside, put him on one of the horses."
"No..." Castiel says weakly. "Dean."
"We're taking him back to New Haven." The man pushing him says. "Likely you won't be seeing him again, not till you meet in Hell." He wraps cruel fingers over the bite on Castiel's arm and squeezes, forcing blood out of the wound, along with the clear liquid that is already welling up, attempting to clot the bite closed. "Looks like we got to you just in time, bloody animal like that, mind you, you're no better."
Castiel flinches. He's naked, covered in sweat and spittle and spend, blood running down his arm, a burning pain inside of him.
God, what has he done?
The men force him outside, into the cold and the icy air. There are four horses, and Castiel is hoisted up onto one, both his legs precariously on one side. The rider, a sullen faced older man with colourless eyes, climbs up behind him, and urges the horse into motion, jostling Castiel as he rides off into the forest.
Casting his eyes behind them, Castiel catches a glimpse of Dean being throw into an iron cage on the back of a rough cart. Then the sight is snatches away by trees, and Castiel is forced to put all of his energy into not falling to the frozen ground.
When the men had first rendered Dean unconscious, Castiel's first though had been for the other man's safety, now however, he thinks of himself, and of the fate that awaits him. Who are these men? And how did they find him, if indeed it is him that they were looking for. Where in God's name was New Haven?
Several times in the harrowing journey Castiel finds himself slipping off of the horse, only to be dragged back into place by the uncaring hands of his captor. He's freezing cold, naked under the rough cloak, and the jolting of the horse worsens the soreness in his limbs, shaking his thoughts out over the ground, pounding them to dust under restless hooves. Until at last, the only thought he can hold is 'Dean' - with every jolt of the horse, and every hitch of his heart, beating it's panic in his chest.
At long last the forest gives way to thinner trees, then burnt stubs, and finally, to fields ready for cultivation. The horse throws up turned earth, and it spatters Castiel from head to toe, flicking into his mouth and eyes.
The reach a muddy but serviceable road, fashioned from bare planks pegged to the clay. It is laid out in a straight line, and at last, Castiel catches another glimpse of Dean. The cage, on its rickety platform is like the enclosures used to hold animals for a travelling circus, and Castiel can spy only the faintest glimpse of Dean's back through the bars. He's lying face down, and Castiel prays that he is still alive. The cage is flanked by three riders, and Castiel looks at them fearfully. Who are they?
A great groaning and clanking forces his attention back to the road ahead. Before them, a stockade rises from the mud, and Castiel can smell the faint salt tang of the sea. The gate at the centre of the bristling wall of tree trunks is opening, winched by chains as thick as a man's foreleg. The rider takes them both through the gate, and it slowly closes behind them.
Castiel's heart lurches as the gates close, leaving Dean and his captors on the other side.
The buildings around him are unfinished, partial structures of wood, their outsides mostly shingled in fresh cut planking. The road is a muddy soup, mounds of earth left from foundation digging rise out of the streets like grave mounds. There are people roaming the slop, dressed in the same kind of dark, palin garments that Castiel himself used to wear, what feels like a lifetime ago.
A puritan settlement.
Moments later, they leave behind the growing settlement, and Castiel amends his assumption.
A port.
Before him the street, now paved and cobbled, leads down to the splintery wooden docks, the calm morning sea. There are rows of houses, real houses, built of quarried stone and imported brick. They shame the puritan quarter, and for a moment Castiel feels transported, back to England. To Plymouth.
Then the rough motion of the horse grounds him again, and he closes his eyes to the splendour of the town, wishing instead for his home - the first home he has ever had, a cave with drawings on its mica flecked walls. A cave with a warm bed at its heart, and a warm body there, to lie with.
When the horse is finally brought to a stop, Castiel almost falls, and has only just regained some balance when his is forcibly thrown down into the waiting hands of two liveried footmen. They catch at his cloak, but the fastenings are loose, and he falls out of it onto the wet ground, naked and peppered with mud flecks. He looks up at the horse, and its rider, who leans down and takes a fat bag of coins from one of the footmen.
"Delivered as promised."
"And the other?"
"With my men, on his way to Blackstone."
"They'll be paid there then." The footman says stiffly. He looks down at Castiel. "He's bruised."
"But not seriously harmed. I kept my word." The rider says flatly. "Besides, if he is to be hanged..."
"That will be the master's choice." The other footman, a blond man in pristine uniform cuts in.
The rider grumbles, then spits onto Castiel's upturned face. "Filth." He growls, then jerks his reins and canters away.
The footmen pull Castiel to his feet, one bundles the sodden cloak around him once more. The fair haired man takes out a lace edged kerchief, and carefully wipes the spittle from Castiel's face, a moue of distaste touching his mouth.
"Take him inside." He murmurs, and Castiel finds himself propelled towards a door in a recess to the left and below of a grand set of stone steps. He has only the briefest impression of the manor's impressive facade before the door opens and he is ushered into a stone flagged servant's hallway. His feet whisper on the stone, and the air around him is almost warm, filled with the scents of cookery and laundry.
At the end of the hallway, a figure appears, the steward of the house, balding and old, dressed in expensive velvet.
"He's to be taken upstairs, to the yellow room. Bathed, clothed, and made presentable." He orders, "I have maids deployed already for him. But you shall supervise, should he become wilful, I expect you to restrain him."
He speaks as though Castiel is a dumb animal, a dog to be groomed and leashed and paraded.
"Who am I to be presented to?" Castiel asks sharply.
The steward looks at him as if he is an insect, crawling on its belly in a damp recess of a forgotten hovel. Castiel knows that he looks disgraceful, that he has done something so intensely wrong that it does not bear repeating...but surely that sin is not written on his face? A mark, as with Cain, for the world to see.
The steward moves his luxuriously suited form out of Castiel's reach. "Take him, at once."
The two stewards take him under the arms and half carry, half drag him through the kitchens, and up flights and flights of dark, narrow stairs. Ascending to giddying heights and finally exciting the shadows through a slim door, that is the reverse of a wall panel in the most lavish room Castiel has ever seen.
"The yellow room." Announces the fair haired footman.
It is indeed plastered and painted a pale, butter yellow. The floor carpeted in a lush, deep gold. There are white plaster mouldings about the ceiling, and elegant portraiture on the walls. But it is the bed that has Castiel's attention. A magnificent bed, with four wooden posts and a canopy of silk tapestry, depicting yellow flowers that Castiel remembers from England, pillows filled with down, and silken sheets and draperies of inestimable worth.
But it is not this that his eyes fix upon.
It is the restraints at the headboard that his eyes refuse to leave.
After a few shocked seconds, he struggles, pitching himself away from his captors and scrambling for the door. He can run down those stairs, and what is one steward? A handful of maids? He can fight if he must.
A blow brings him down, the full weight of one of the footmen takes him to the floor, lost for breath. He's dragged to his feet, his cloak snatched away. The dark haired footman strikes him across the face.
"You will behave." He snaps.
"Alistair." The other footman warns.
"He fell." Alistair says, not taking his eyes from Castiel's face. "You saw him Balthazar. Such a clumsy thing."
Balthazar's gaze moves between them, then he holds out a hand. "Come and bathe, and I promise you - he will not strike you again."
Castiel remains rooted to the spot.
"Castiel." The fair haired man says, surprising him. "Yes, we've heard of you...we're friends here. There's no reason to fight us."
Castiel looks at him, then follows the direction of his pointing finger, to the bathtub on the far side of the room. Castiel has never seen a bath before - he has always washed from basins, or in streams and lakes. No one he has ever known has owned a bath - or lived in a home this splendid.
The presence of such luxuries do nothing to ease his fears.
Still, he does not want to be harmed any further, and the bath, a metal tub lined with linen, is filled with steaming water, emitting the fragrance of expensive soap. Meekly he approaches it, and stops short when he finds that there are two maids standing beside it. His nakedness, and the stains and marks on his body, burn with a new kind of shame.
He climbs quickly into the water, hiding himself and hugging his knees.
The two men do not leave, and, as he is presented with a cloth, soap and linen bundle of barley and lavender, he becomes aware that both are watching him. He dislikes the attention, which flusters him as much as it makes him cringe with humiliation. The hot water searing his backside reminds him once more that he has fallen into sin, and he feels so lost, so small that he wishes he could sink into the water and dissolve, like a sliver of soap.
When he is finished with the bath, he stands up, and uneasily allows the maids to wrap him with warmed linens, drying him before they help him into a dark green robe.
A suit of clothes is laid out on the bed, and he is not sure when it was placed there, so quietly was the thing done. The clothes are better than any he has ever seen before, breeches of soft brown stuff, a linen shirt and an embroidered waistcoat.
There are no shoes however.
To his further humiliation, he is dressed by the maids, despite his struggles to fasten his own clothing. It has been so long since he dressed in clothes that were meant for him, and not for someone much larger. Dean's clothes. He misses them, and their tallow and hide scent.
"Quite the exotic savage." Balthazar comments, bundling the wet cloak under one arm. "You dine in one hour. Do try not to make a mess of yourself."
And with that, he is left alone.
The footmen lock the door behind them, and though Castiel tries it, along with the other door, and the windows, he can find no escape. He looks out of the window, trying to see beyond the town, beyond the ramshackle puritan homes. He can just make out the palisade and the road beyond. In the far, far distance he can see a blur, what might be the forest, or another settlement.
He leans his forehead against the glass and sighs, fogging it with his breath.
Where is Dean now? Where is Sam?
He touches the bite on his arm, now cleaned by the bathwater. Why had Dean hurt him? To place on him a reminder of his ownership, he assumed. A scar like a battle tattered ear, to remind him of Dean when they were separated. He touches the puckered wound, finding it once again slick with the agent of his own bodies healing, the copious clear liquid that will form a barrier over his punctured flesh.
An hour has never passed at such length, and at least, Balthazar returns to unlock the room, and lead him through several more luxuriant rooms, until they reach a dining room, containing a table set for two, with platters of fine silver, heaped with roasted meat, exotic fruit, and freshly prepared confections.
At the head of the table is a man.
"Thank you, that will be all." He bids Balthazar.
"Very good." The footman replies, and disappears from the room.
"Do come and sit down." The man tells him, dark eyes flashing at him. "Let me see the famous witch of the deep forest."
Castiel starts. "I am not a witch, sir."
"Disappointing." Says the man, not looking disappointed in the least. "But the people of your village assured me of your credentials...still, come sit, we have matters to discuss."
Castiel pauses. "What has become of my...of the man you took, along with me?"
The man smiles slightly. "Put aside for the moment. But, should you fail to amuse me, I don't fancy his chances. Sit. If you would."
Castiel takes his seat.
"I am the patron of New Haven." The man tells him. "Alexander Crowley, of the city of London, you know it?"
"Of course."
"Well, my search for new business has brought me here, to this...God fearing country. I thought the puritans were insufferable on the king's own soil, but here they are practically a plague." Crowley sighs. "Still, they make for excellent dinner company, if you find just the right subject. They adore their fairytales, their fictions." He smiles. "Do help yourself to the food, the wine in particular, is spiced to my own recipe." The look in his eyes brooks no argument, and Castiel hesitantly reaches for his glass and sips the contents, a red wine with a heady taste of cloves and potent spice.
"Good isn't it." Crowley says. "Anyway...it happens that I had the opportunity to speak with selectman Zachariah, you know him, yes?"
"I do."
"He told me all about the village witch, that slew a babe and its mother, with a nefarious spell. And who escaped a hanging, by the invocation of a rite that brought forth savages from the forest, to set about the village."
"I did no such thing, I..."
"Silence." Crowley orders.
Castiel closes his mouth, afraid.
"You'll ruin my story." Crowley admonishes. "You see, your former people searched for you, but were visited by a snow storm that obscured your tracks, and made it impossible to reach far into the forest. But, soon after, they began the search again."
"And now they have found me." Castiel mutters. The wine is bitter in his mouth, but he drinks a little more anyway, allowing it's temporary sweetness to wash the dryness of fear from his tongue.
"No, I have found you." Crowley corrects him. "Your people, they entered the woods, in small parties...eight men in all. And they found no trace of the witch that had evaded them, or perhaps they did. But...they never returned to tell of their discoveries."
Castiel feels a chill run down his spine.
"They were slain, in the woods." Crowley tells him, as tasting the words as if relishing a chunk of superbly cooked meat. "By a wolf, a wolf that sought them with the intellect, and persistence of an animal possessed of human will. An animal they believe was controlled by the devil suckling demon that eluded death...and eludes them still."
Castiel tries valiantly to still his racing heart. "I am not a witch. I ran from them because I did not wish to die, I have no control over..."
"But, you are a sinner, are you not?" Crowley interrupts. "My men, well, several mercenary gentlemen in my employ, have already reported to me that they found the witch in the forest...lying as a newly made wife, with a half-blood savage."
Castiel actually feels his heart stop, starting again with a vicious thump.
"Here is the deal that I intend to broker to you." Crowley says pleasantly. "I am, very bored here, in this muddy hole of a town, far from the amenities of a good and dirty city...and I think that perhaps you have it in you to amuse me. If you do not, if you refuse...then I will have you executed, either as a witch or a sodomite - hanged all the same. And I will find my amusements elsewhere...perhaps in having your abomination of a lover set in the stocks, and whipped until he expires."
Castiel doesn't realise he's shaking his head until the view before his eyes shifts. "Please don't..."
"Then we're in agreement." Crowley says happily, selecting a fatted portion of meat on the platter in front of him, and spearing it with a silver fork to transfer it to his own plate.
"What do you want me to do?" Castiel murmurs, not knowing exactly what Crowley will want of him. Perhaps a servant, someone to beat and humiliate, or perhaps to break with heavy labour. There's cruelty in his mouth, and Castiel is so very afraid. But he fears Dean's death more than anything else.
"I want..." Crowley slices the bloody meat with a wicked knife, and holds up the fork, letting the sliver of meat drip its rare juices onto the white cloth between them. Castiel opens his mouth at the other man's silent urging, and accepts the bloody morsel. "...for you to finish your meal...and bare yourself to me."
Castiel looks at him, and, like a memory from a bad dream, he recalls the restraints on the bed in the accursed yellow room.
He swallows, and his mouth tastes like blood.
"No." He says weakly, he feels exhausted, somehow unfocused, as if he has been struck by sickness.
"I'm afraid I shall have to take you at your former words." Crowley tells him. "But I promise...you will find me much more skilled, than your savage."
Castiel tries to get up, but slides from his chair, to the floor, dragging the table cloth and several dishes along with him. Crowley doesn't seem to care, instead he stands and rings for his servants, intending to have Castiel transported to the bedroom.
The last thing Castiel is aware of is the scent of the poppy in the wine that is now spilled over his clean shirt.
The scent of the drug that sealed the nightmare around him.
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Chapter 14: Chapter 14
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Congrats Evil Squirrel - you were right on money
Castiel wakes up with the strong taste of the wine still languishing in his mouth. His head aches as if it's been split open with a stone weight, and his eyes barely open.
His whole body hurts.
That shocks him out of his stupor. He moves his limbs a little, feeling the terrible ache in his insides, an ache that reminds him of the words Crowley had spoken to him. He eases upright, finding that he's been curled on his side, balled up tightly and half draped in a sheet that smells sourly of sweat and the taint of another man.
Looking down at himself, Castiel is sickened by the sight of the bruises on his hips and thighs. He stares at them, at the grim indentations of that foul man's body on his own, and feels a tide of black gorge rise in his throat.
In the space of a day he'd given up his purity to Dean, and then had everything else good in him stolen by a craven thug.
He wishes he had been hanged. Hell could not be worse than this - taking the pleasure he had known and turning it into a weapon against him, putting him in a place where even sleep provided no escape from the hurt.
The soft opening of a door surprises him.
Balthazar enters the room, carrying a porcelain basin of warm water and a linen cloth.
"You're awake." He says, "I thought perhaps that you would sleep the day away. It's long past noon."
Castiel just looks at him. He doesn't want to speak to anyone here. They're monsters, and he wishes they were dead. All of them, for bringing him here, and readying him for a man like that.
"You're angry." Balthazar says, setting the basin down. "I expect...all this is quite a shock to you, being away from your man." He dips the cloth and squeezes water from it with practiced fingers. "You'll get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it." Castiel murmurs.
"I don't think you have a choice." Balthazar tells him. "It's how we all got here...me, Alistair...all of us spent our time in here. We're lucky Crowley liked us enough to keep us on."
"To wait on him, and serve his prisoners." Castiel says blankly.
"Others had worse." Balthazar tells him. "The last one was burned, accused of heresy."
Castiel has nothing to say to that.
"I don't want you to end like that, rendering onto the market square...my advice? Take the wine - if it's offered. It's better than being there...and remembering."
Castiel is at once deeply saddened and ashamed, after all, Balthazar has suffered as he is suffering now.
"I'm sorry if I offended..."
"Quite alright." Balthazar tells him. "Now...can you wash yourself?"
"Yes." Castiel says faintly.
"Then I will leave you." Balthazar hands him the wet cloth and leaves the room.
Castiel silently arranges himself and closes his eyes as he attends to the ache between his legs. Carefully wiping away the traces of the act he cannot remember.
When Balthazar returns to take away the basin of soiled water, he presents Castiel with a fresh, lace edged kerchief, and waits while he dries his tears.
It would be comforting, if the only thing Castiel wanted wasn't miles away, lost to him, perhaps forever.
(-*-)
Dean flings himself against the bars of the cage for the final time, slumping to the floor of the cage and breathing heavily. He doesn't know how long he's been here, in the dark, throwing himself at the solid bars and roaring to be let out. His back and sides are bruised, and there are cuts from the jagged metal. He bangs the bars with his hands and shouts into the dark.
No one replies.
The drags himself to the other side of the cage, shakes the bars there, but, still there are no weaknesses.
He's wet, and cold, naked to the freezing air, and covered in mud from the beating he'd taken in the mire outside of this place. He can't change, there isn't enough room for his body to thrash through the process. Even if there was, he doesn't want these men to know what he can do.
He still smells faintly of Castiel, and that is more maddening than his confinement.
What have they done with Castiel, with his mate?
At some point in the night, Dean had felt a sharp pain that he couldn't trace. It seemed to come from everywhere. And he knew, he knew that it was Castiel, hurting somewhere.
He had never wanted Castiel hurt again. When Sam had explained about Castiel's village, about how the people there were looking for Castiel, to hurt him, Dean had set out to cull those that took to the forest. He had thought he had Castiel protected.
Now he knows that he was wrong.
Dean launches himself at the bars again. He will get to Castiel. He will find the people hurting him. And, he will kill them.
When he was taken from Castiel, Dean had known he had almost no time to act before Castiel was out of his reach. He'd done the only thing he could think of, the only thing he could do. It was something his father, and even Sam had said was the worst thing he could ever do.
He only hopes that they were wrong.
(-*-)
Castiel is sitting with his knees drawn up, on a silk couch in the yellow room. He has on a clean shirt, fine linen on his bruised skin.
He feels like someone else. As if the Castiel that was, died in the snow, alone in the forest. And he was born again, taken in by Sam and Dean to carve out a new self. The self that finally felt complete when he accepted Dean as his...the self that died on a brocaded bed while he slept a cursed drugged sleep, lost to his mate, lost to himself.
He looks down at his bare legs, thin and pale on the cushion.
He can't fight, he knows that. He can't resist, because Dean will die, he himself will most likely die. There is no hope of reasoning with Crowley, no hope of rescue. For even when Sam returns to the cave in a few days time, how will he know where to find him? Or Dean for that matter? They were carried a great distance, Castiel on horseback, Dean in that awful cage...was there still a scent trail? Or had the shifting, rain soaked mire erased it?
Castiel scratches at his arm absently, the harder as his skin crawls with prickling irritations. Then his fingers touch the bite there, and he rubs it gently. It's almost comforting, a reminder that he had once lived in the home of someone who truly cared for him. Dean might have been an animal for most of their time together...but he had shown him more mercy, and more understanding than the animal Castiel currently found himself imprisoned by.
Again, his mind wanders to the terrible injury done to him, and he folds in on himself, distraught. He has nothing now, not his faith, not his righteousness, not even his own body.
All that's left to him, is the small reminder of Dean.
Balthazar comes to him again, this time carrying a tray with a crystal goblet of wine on it. He sets it on the small table by Castiel's elbow.
Castiel makes no move to take it.
"Please drink it." Balthazar asks. "Save yourself the misery."
"Why should it be easy for him?" Castiel says blankly. "Besides...perhaps now I stand a chance."
Balthazar sighs. "Don't fight him...you will lose, and he does not forgive anything or anyone."
"And instead I should have this sin forced on me?" Castiel cries.
"You've sinned before." Balthazar points out. "The men who brought you to us, they were filled with stories. The whole house knows how they found you. Is it so bad with him? So much worse than a...savage in the woods?"
Castiel remembers Dean vividly, and he has to blink to force tears back.
"I sinned because I knew him...and I knew myself then. Because he saved my life, and made me love him...and he loved me more than I love God." Castiel stresses. "Can you imagine that? A love that strong...for that love I would do anything. And I gave myself to him, because I love him more than I love my soul."
Balthazar picks up the glass of wine and holds it out. "Then do this, because you love him more than your body...compared to your soul...it's worthless."
Castiel glares at him. "I'd rather be damned for loving...than do the damnable out of fear."
Balthazar colours and sets the glass down, leaving in a rustle of silken shirt and velvet cloth. Castiel looks at the wine. The idea of oblivion has never seemed more inviting, but he cannot do it. Dean deserves his loyalty, and his rebellion. Even if the battle is confined to Castiel's thoughts alone.
(-*-)
The pain is back.
Dean wakes up with a groan, opening his eyes to the darkness and feeling pain radiate from all over his body. He tries to move, but it's as though hands are holding him down. He struggles but they do not loosen.
Somewhere Castiel is in pain.
Dean shouts and curses and screams until one of the men comes and flings a pail of water over him. There are shards of ice in it, and Dean snarls at him, at the icy cold all over his naked skin that does nothing to cool the searing burn in his insides.
When he does not still, another man comes with an iron bar, and strikes him with it. Dean slides into the blackness of unconsciousness, but still he feels the pain, deep and powerful.
Castiel's pain, and Castiel's terror.
(-*-)
He can't help himself. When Crowley comes for him, Castiel fights.
He struggles against the two footmen who drag him to the bed. He scratches and kicks and punches as they remove the shirt from him and try to force him down onto the mattress. He spits and bites and jerks away from them as they wrench his arms up and restrain him. His skin burns, and in places he has scratched himself raw.
Crowley watches with vague amusement from the other side of the room. "Balthazar told me you didn't take the draught, though I didn't quite believe it."
The footmen tie Castiel's flailing feet down and step back. One picks up a thick piece of leather.
"I think we'll forgo the gag." Crowley interjects. The footman puts the leather down and both men leave the room.
Crowley approaches the bed, disposing of his shirt and carefully laying it on the back of a chair.
"I see you've decided to fight me...though what for I don't know. Your life, your lover and your...not inconsiderable physical charms, all belong to me."
Castiel eyes him watchfully. "If I'm to be used, I will not be willing."
"Changed your tune from our last assignation I see."
"I was drugged, and whatever you did to me, I will see you punished for." There's a knife hidden in his words, a cold, hard conviction that Castiel didn't realise he was capable of until that moment. But once there, he cannot shake it.
Crowley undoes his breeches and steps out of them, shedding his underclothes before taking his place on the foot of the bed, one hand touching Castiel's thigh lightly. "I assure you, I did nothing to you."
"Liar," spits Castiel."
"Where would the fun be..." says Crowley, seizing Castiel's thighs and dragging him down the bed so that the other man yelps, his arms pulled tight in their restraints. "In toying with your body, without you inside of it to appreciate my efforts?"
Castiel feels sick.
"How..."
"...did you end up so deliciously marked?" Crowley pets one of the bruises on his hip. "I couldn't help myself, besides, a small trace of my affection helped to preserve the illusion of our time together."
Castiel thinks of the flaking deposit he had washed from between his legs that morning, and shudders. He is appalled and terrified by this man - who seems at once to be cunning or mad.
Perhaps he is both, and that makes him all the more dangerous.
Still, there is something in Castiel that refuses to lie, afraid and vulnerable, whilst Crowley takes from him whatever he wants.
"Listen to me." Castiel says, and the voice in his mouth is not his voice, at least not one he recognises. It's quiet, and strong, and almost arrogantly powerful. "If you lay a hand on me, I will kill you."
Crowley chuckles. "I'll do more than lay a hand on you."
"Then I will tear you apart." Castiel says, and finds that he means it, more than that, he knows it.
Crowley pauses for a second, then back hands him viciously. "You're wasting my time, and...if I remain as bored as I am now, I may just have your lover gutted and put out for the crows.
Castiel opens his mouth to say...something, he doesn't even know anymore, his mouth has left his mind in the dark as to it's motives. But, all that comes out is a strangled yell, as a searing pain stabs him in the arm.
Crowley strikes him again, and then Castiel hears him curse. "You're bleeding on my best linens." He hisses, "still, there was bound to be blood."
Castiel looks down and finds that his arm is bleeding a veritable stream, the wound deep and fresh seeming. It hurts far more than it did when it was first created, and as he watches, Castiel sees cords stand out on his arm, sinew and veins just beneath the skin. It is astonishingly painful, as if hot needles are being threaded under his skin. Castiel's whole body heaves off of the bed, pulling at the restraints, his spine locking with pain.
Crowley slaps him down again, and Castiel...shatters.
There's nothing. Nothing but black around him, darkness pressing at his ears and nose and mouth. He can't feel anything around him. He is suspended in the blackness.
When he comes back to himself, he's lying face down on something hard. He opens his eyes to a scratchy surface, russet coloured and uncomfortable.
So, Crowley had finished with him and left him for the maids to clear away.
The thing he's lying on is wet, and Castiel wrinkles his nose in disgust. It smells foul. He rolls onto his side, and gets to his feet unsteadily.
He brings his hand up to his mouth, a shout stifled behind it.
The russet colour is blood. A lake of blood that is spread over half the floor, and fountains up the wall, pooling on the bed. Something soft touches his chest, and Castiel looks down to see the tattered remains of the restraints tangling from his wrists.
Castiel reaches for the ragged belt, pulling at it.
And that's when he sees his hand.
Both his hands are gloved in blood to the elbows, spattered and smeared with it. Dark crusts of it ring his nail beds. But the most terrible thing, are the inch long, curved claws, that protrude from under the nails themselves.
Castiel looks at them in horror, a howl of fear choking his throat and dying there.
He looks down, and sees that his feet are similarly disfigured.
He turns, searching for a mirror, desperate to see what has happened to him while he was lost to wakefulness.
Castiel turns and sees Crowley, slumped at the foot of the wall, under a large stain that tells of his bulk being launched at the wall itself. His chest is open, his face obliterated, skin carved away in ribbons.
Castiel falls to his knees, trembling, and sobs into his warped fingers.
(-*-)
Dean regains consciousness, and finally the pain is gone.
It has given way to a different sensation, one that actually makes his skin prickle with warmth, his stomach alive with expectation.
It is the deep sense that, where only hours ago, there were two, there are now three.
He is connected not only to Sam, but to another like himself.
To Castiel.
He leans his tired body back against the bars and closes his eyes.
Castiel is safe. Finally.
(-*-)
Once he has dry heaved onto the carpet until his stomach is sore, Castiel staggers to his feet and finds a looking glass in the front of a wardrobe. He inspects himself, his naked body covered in blood, his freakish claws, and his eyes, which have changed in a way that is not immediately clear. But they are different, and it frightens him.
He drags a cloak from the wardrobe and hastily dons it, sliding breeches on underneath and taking a pair of brown leather gloves to hide his hands and bloody arms. He puts on riding boots and raises his hood.
He has to escape, before he is found, and hanged for murder.
Castiel looks between the two locked doors, helpless, but somehow his gaze is dragged to the lead patterned window. He crosses to it and pushes it open. Below is a sheer drop, three floors to the stone flags below. A tree stands perhaps ten feet out of reach, waving mockingly in the breeze.
Castiel simultaneously curses his helplessness,
and jumps.
The impact of the tree surprises him, and he chokes on a terrified shout as he feels his claws dig into the crisp bark. He chances a glance back at the window, innocently gazing at him from so, very, far away.
Climbing down the tree is almost easy, and Castiel soon finds himself fleeing through the grounds, running out of the gates and into the street with nothing to impede his progress. He makes his way, hardly pausing to breathe, down into the town, and on through it, until he is once more in the mud of the puritan quarter.
A great outcry comes from the town, bells and shouts carrying on the wind.
Castiel runs, because he has no other drive - he runs until he reaches the palisade, and this time is barely shocked when his body leaps, and his claws scrabble, taking him over the enormous barricade and dropping him gracefully on the other side.
When he reaches the line of the forest, he collapses in the undergrowth, chest heaving, body running with sweat and his legs shaking with exhaustion. He looks down at the wound on his arm, and touches it lightly.
Dean had done this to him. Infecting him with his devilry as traders passed their diseases on to common whores. He feels fear rising in him. Too much pain has been visited on him, too much has been taken. His purity, his dignity, and now his humanity.
He touches the wound again, and feels...something warm under his breastbone, like a hand pressed to the inside of his ribs.
Dean.
He can feel Dean, somewhere...not close...but not beyond his reach either.
He gets to his feet.
Dean is imprisoned. He knows this. And Dean is his mate - which seems more important to him now than ever, a certainty in his fevered mind.
Dean had tried to protect him.
Now Castiel would save his life.
________________________________________
Beware, I am drunk. But...writing is happening. Oopsie. Planned plot event contained within.
Castiel has never kissed like this before.
He remembers being kissed when he was ill, lips brushing his forehead and his cheek. Some kind soul caring for him while he lay in the grips of fever. He has felt the kisses of young girls, when he was himself five years old.
Dean kisses like he wants to be inside of him. As if, like the wolf in the old stories, he wants to slide down Castiel's throat, into his belly, and hide there.
Castiel opens his mouth to him, and feels Dean's lips dip between his. Tugging on his own and sliding over them. When Dean's tongue searches out his own, Castiel finds the feeling so surprising, so strange, that he does not think to oppose it. Dean's hands find his, and raise them over his head, laying them out on the stone floor.
Still Castiel does not rebel.
He thinks he would let Dean do anything he likes with him, as long as he will kiss him like that. As long as he will touch all of his skin to his own, so warm and smooth.
Dean removes Castiel's shirt, busy hands stoking over his chest as gently, as purposefully as Dean had once liked warmth back into his frozen skin. Castiel shivers, a warmth settling in him like a strong drink.
When Dean drops his mouth to Castiel's chest, between his collar bones, in the place that would be the space between his breasts - had he possessed them, the warm upper of his belly, the dip in its centre and down. Castiel can only lie on his back, feeling taken over, as if by wildfire, only, a fire that burns wet, and deep and hot - rather than bright and dry. He feels saturated, throbbing, low, and filled with undercurrents.
All his life he thought he was a spring, clear and clean and characterless. When beneath there were subterranean caves of dark rocks, and deep, mineral rich waters.
He doesn't even jump when Dean's crude hand touches him where Castiel has never been touched before. A place he himself only touches in the most commonplace of ways. But under Dean's fingers, the mundane, base instrument of excretion sends such waves of heat and pleasure through him, that Castiel cannot help but arch from the floor, pressing himself into Dean's willing hands.
He had no idea his body was capable of holding this much feeling - this much sensation. He has experienced the rise of physical excitement before, fortunately in private, on his lumpen tick, under his sheets. It was a shameful thing, quickly dealt with. But now...he revels in Dean's touches, that seem to be wherever he most needs them, changing second by second.
He must cry out Dean's name, because the other man murmurs, 'Cas' as if it's something like a curse, and a forbidden rosary prayer, meshed into one in the dark.
Dean's fingers touch under his body, under the twitching, desperate flesh of his member, brushing the ripe swelling of the lower organ, tickling between his legs, and beyond, until Castiel gasps, and bends his knees, slipping away from the touch.
Dean shushes him, one hand petting his thigh.
He removes his hand, lifting it to his mouth long enough to spit on his fingers, before returning it to its former location.
It's such an ugly thing, and Castiel's mind struggles to make sense of it.
Dean looks at him, "So it will hurt less. The mating." He explains.
Castiel wrestles with the idea, trying to find the logic of Dean's words, a difficult task with wet fingers caressing his backside, and Dean's other hand once again pleasuring him.
Several facts clash together in his mind, and Castiel experiences a jolt of realisation.
"You're going to..." His voice cracks, and he forces his traitorous hips to cease their continuous shifting, pushing his aching hardness through Dean's curled fingers. "...enter me?"
Dean nods, fingers moving with more purpose, pushing alarmingly.
Castiel jerks a little way from them, even though it loses him the delightful stroking of Dean's hand.
"Dean...I am not a woman...I don't have..." Castiel blushes. Despite his current undress, his arousal, which is currently drooling an alarming fluid over his stomach, it is the mention of the female body that forces the blood to his cheeks. "...I am not possessed of a woman's virtue." He explains, primly, using words learnt from the old spinster that served as village midwife.
A smile flickers over Dean's mouth, and for a second Castiel is lost in it. Dean is...almost a work of art. He reminds him of the stained glass windows in the catholic churches, before they were broken by his fellows - vivid green eyes, golden skin, like the sun has just come out from behind the clouds, gilding him like a saint.
"I know." Dean tells him. "Sam...he told me. This. This is the men's way."
Castiel had known, the theoretical, dark golem of sodomy. He knew that it was men, lying with men, committing acts of sin, of carnal lust. But he had not contemplated the actual act itself, beyond some half imagined, half dreamt fantasies that had not been over burdened with physical detail. But Dean...has apparently gained the knowledge of this act, from Sam. For a second Castiel feels almost betrayed.
"He told you to...to do this?"
Dean looks at him, as honest as a wolf sitting beside its kill, showing no remorse, nor shame. "I wanted to do right, with you. A..." he struggles for the word. "...mistake, could hurt you."
Dean slides his body lower, until he can kiss Castiel's belly, and Castiel realises that once again he is exposed, submissive to the alpha.
Then Dean's mouth moves lower, and Castiel is partly shocked, partly lost, in the feeling of lips - of the tongue that had embraced his so little time ago...now caressing his intimate flesh, as hot and ardent as if it were merely kissing his lips, with no trace of aversion.
His body goes limp on the floor, then tightens unexpectedly, until he is held in the grip of a spasm that builds, tensing his every muscle, until Castiel feels he might die if it finally grips him - and that he might die if it doesn't.
Finally, with a fresh touch of Dean's smooth, wet mouth, Castiel loses his weak grasp on the world around him, loses everything - his name, his memory, his sight and awareness, save for the feel of Dean touching him.
Dean's fingers, wet and strong, slide under him, wriggling for a second of blunt pressure, before intruding into him. It's a sensation unlike anything else, feeling his body, and a part of him he has never considered before,gripping Dean's finger, so tightly that he's almost afraid Dean will have to remain there indefinitely.
Yet, Dean finds some way of moving inwards, deeper, and Castiel closes his eyes, feeling Dean's lips gently brush his spent organ, lapping curiously at the jism on his stomach. Without the intensity of pleasure that had previously fogged his mind, Castiel feels his shame creeping back - mentally shaping the picture they must make together, Dean with his finger probing his body, licking the remains of Castiel's shattered control from him.
"Cas?"
He opens his eyes to find Dean looking up at him. His perfect mouth is reddened, swollen, Castiel thinks with a twinge of regret, from his efforts on his arousal. The finger inside of him twists, and is joined by another.
"Hurts?" Dean asks, seemingly having no need for the words that would make the rest of the question.
"No." Castiel says, truthfully, for it doesn't hurt, but feels strange, and wrong and strangely compulsive - like when he was a child, and he'd dip his tongue into the raw-tasting grooves of lost milk teeth.
Dean looks at him, as if trying to decipher him. "Doesn't hurt...but...?"
"It feels..." Castiel swallows. "I don't know..." and then he admits something that he hadn't even fully thought to himself yet. "I don't want to like it, but I don't want you to stop."
Dean frowns, confused. "Don't want..." his fingers absently seek within Castiel, and Castiel abruptly grunts, body pushing down on the fingers inside of him, before he can fully decide what it is that he should be doing. It just feels so good, better even than what Dean has just done to him.
He loses the words for 'want' and 'don't stop' and 'please'.
There's only one that he can force from his mouth.
"More."
The third finger squirming into him makes him shout helplessly, it hurts, but it's a good hurt. He doesn't know how, and he doesn't care. Dean's hand is more brutal now, responding to the urgency in the way that Castiel's body moves.
Then, suddenly, it's gone.
It's just all gone, and Castiel is cold, and untouched. The space between his legs still burning a little, feeling wet and open and...
And Dean pulls his legs up, and open, and Castiel lets him.
He isn't even conscious of the sound that uncoils from his throat as Dean joins them together, but Dean hears it, the long, loud sound, so similar to the mating calls he's heard in the forest. He lets his body fall over Castiel's deeply rooted in him, experiencing at last the feeling of being fully mated. Possessing, joining the one who's scent had already claimed him. Claiming Castiel in return.
Clumsy, demanding hands grabs at his back, and Castiel's heart drums as if it's pressed between their slick chests.
"I'm..." Castiel starts, and he could say that he's on edge again, that he's about to fall apart again. That he's not hurt. That he's confused, and knows he will be so, painfully shamed by this later. "I'm yours, aren't I?"
Dean kisses him, deep and wet, satisfied that Castiel - so slow and so very, very human - thinking with his busy mind, rather than with his cunning ears, quick feet, heart and urgent sex - has finally caught up to what Dean's known all along.
Castiel is his.
Having mounted his mate, Dean wastes no time in pursuing his own, long delayed pleasure. Castel buries his face against Dean's neck, whimpering in a way that Dean knows does not come from pain. His blood surges, and he can feel the gathering of his body, the way it starts to move without his intention.
The ear-splitting noise around them makes them both jolt, and Dean barely has time to collect his senses before an arm wraps around his throat, dragging him backwards.
Castiel shouts his name, and Dean clings to him, fighting the hands, many many hands, that are pulling at him. He smells gunpowder, horses, leather and strange food and plants. He fights still harder, knowing that he is outmatched, that there is no time. He lunges for Castiel, and sinks his teeth into his mate's arm.
Castiel cries out, shouts his name again - more hurt this time, more afraid.
Then the stock of a rifle strikes the back of Dean's head.
And everything goes black with the sound of Castiel's voice - pleading with the strange men around him to spare his life.
________________________________________
Chapter 13: Chapter 13
________________________________________
:P I stand by my cliff hanger. But here, have an update. For anyone who was confused, yes, it was Dean's life that Castiel was begging for. Places mentioned here are totally made up/stolen accidently from RPGs :P
"Don't hurt him!" Castiel shouts, fighting the hands of the men as they clasp his upper arms, dragging him away from Dean's unconscious body.
One of the men punches him in the stomach, and Castiel crumples to his knees.
"Don't bruise him so - we won't get paid." One of the men warns.
Castiel spits blood onto the floor, he's bitten his tongue.
"He's lucky, he should be hanged." Someone over him growls.
"He might still be, t'isnt for us to say."
Castiel is dragged back to his feet. Something scratchy and heavy is dropped over his shoulders, a cloak of rough fabric. One of the men wrenches his arms behind his back and clasps them in cold manacles. As Castiel tries to pull away, another set of manacles are closed around his ankles, hobbling him.
"Take him outside, put him on one of the horses."
"No..." Castiel says weakly. "Dean."
"We're taking him back to New Haven." The man pushing him says. "Likely you won't be seeing him again, not till you meet in Hell." He wraps cruel fingers over the bite on Castiel's arm and squeezes, forcing blood out of the wound, along with the clear liquid that is already welling up, attempting to clot the bite closed. "Looks like we got to you just in time, bloody animal like that, mind you, you're no better."
Castiel flinches. He's naked, covered in sweat and spittle and spend, blood running down his arm, a burning pain inside of him.
God, what has he done?
The men force him outside, into the cold and the icy air. There are four horses, and Castiel is hoisted up onto one, both his legs precariously on one side. The rider, a sullen faced older man with colourless eyes, climbs up behind him, and urges the horse into motion, jostling Castiel as he rides off into the forest.
Casting his eyes behind them, Castiel catches a glimpse of Dean being throw into an iron cage on the back of a rough cart. Then the sight is snatches away by trees, and Castiel is forced to put all of his energy into not falling to the frozen ground.
When the men had first rendered Dean unconscious, Castiel's first though had been for the other man's safety, now however, he thinks of himself, and of the fate that awaits him. Who are these men? And how did they find him, if indeed it is him that they were looking for. Where in God's name was New Haven?
Several times in the harrowing journey Castiel finds himself slipping off of the horse, only to be dragged back into place by the uncaring hands of his captor. He's freezing cold, naked under the rough cloak, and the jolting of the horse worsens the soreness in his limbs, shaking his thoughts out over the ground, pounding them to dust under restless hooves. Until at last, the only thought he can hold is 'Dean' - with every jolt of the horse, and every hitch of his heart, beating it's panic in his chest.
At long last the forest gives way to thinner trees, then burnt stubs, and finally, to fields ready for cultivation. The horse throws up turned earth, and it spatters Castiel from head to toe, flicking into his mouth and eyes.
The reach a muddy but serviceable road, fashioned from bare planks pegged to the clay. It is laid out in a straight line, and at last, Castiel catches another glimpse of Dean. The cage, on its rickety platform is like the enclosures used to hold animals for a travelling circus, and Castiel can spy only the faintest glimpse of Dean's back through the bars. He's lying face down, and Castiel prays that he is still alive. The cage is flanked by three riders, and Castiel looks at them fearfully. Who are they?
A great groaning and clanking forces his attention back to the road ahead. Before them, a stockade rises from the mud, and Castiel can smell the faint salt tang of the sea. The gate at the centre of the bristling wall of tree trunks is opening, winched by chains as thick as a man's foreleg. The rider takes them both through the gate, and it slowly closes behind them.
Castiel's heart lurches as the gates close, leaving Dean and his captors on the other side.
The buildings around him are unfinished, partial structures of wood, their outsides mostly shingled in fresh cut planking. The road is a muddy soup, mounds of earth left from foundation digging rise out of the streets like grave mounds. There are people roaming the slop, dressed in the same kind of dark, palin garments that Castiel himself used to wear, what feels like a lifetime ago.
A puritan settlement.
Moments later, they leave behind the growing settlement, and Castiel amends his assumption.
A port.
Before him the street, now paved and cobbled, leads down to the splintery wooden docks, the calm morning sea. There are rows of houses, real houses, built of quarried stone and imported brick. They shame the puritan quarter, and for a moment Castiel feels transported, back to England. To Plymouth.
Then the rough motion of the horse grounds him again, and he closes his eyes to the splendour of the town, wishing instead for his home - the first home he has ever had, a cave with drawings on its mica flecked walls. A cave with a warm bed at its heart, and a warm body there, to lie with.
When the horse is finally brought to a stop, Castiel almost falls, and has only just regained some balance when his is forcibly thrown down into the waiting hands of two liveried footmen. They catch at his cloak, but the fastenings are loose, and he falls out of it onto the wet ground, naked and peppered with mud flecks. He looks up at the horse, and its rider, who leans down and takes a fat bag of coins from one of the footmen.
"Delivered as promised."
"And the other?"
"With my men, on his way to Blackstone."
"They'll be paid there then." The footman says stiffly. He looks down at Castiel. "He's bruised."
"But not seriously harmed. I kept my word." The rider says flatly. "Besides, if he is to be hanged..."
"That will be the master's choice." The other footman, a blond man in pristine uniform cuts in.
The rider grumbles, then spits onto Castiel's upturned face. "Filth." He growls, then jerks his reins and canters away.
The footmen pull Castiel to his feet, one bundles the sodden cloak around him once more. The fair haired man takes out a lace edged kerchief, and carefully wipes the spittle from Castiel's face, a moue of distaste touching his mouth.
"Take him inside." He murmurs, and Castiel finds himself propelled towards a door in a recess to the left and below of a grand set of stone steps. He has only the briefest impression of the manor's impressive facade before the door opens and he is ushered into a stone flagged servant's hallway. His feet whisper on the stone, and the air around him is almost warm, filled with the scents of cookery and laundry.
At the end of the hallway, a figure appears, the steward of the house, balding and old, dressed in expensive velvet.
"He's to be taken upstairs, to the yellow room. Bathed, clothed, and made presentable." He orders, "I have maids deployed already for him. But you shall supervise, should he become wilful, I expect you to restrain him."
He speaks as though Castiel is a dumb animal, a dog to be groomed and leashed and paraded.
"Who am I to be presented to?" Castiel asks sharply.
The steward looks at him as if he is an insect, crawling on its belly in a damp recess of a forgotten hovel. Castiel knows that he looks disgraceful, that he has done something so intensely wrong that it does not bear repeating...but surely that sin is not written on his face? A mark, as with Cain, for the world to see.
The steward moves his luxuriously suited form out of Castiel's reach. "Take him, at once."
The two stewards take him under the arms and half carry, half drag him through the kitchens, and up flights and flights of dark, narrow stairs. Ascending to giddying heights and finally exciting the shadows through a slim door, that is the reverse of a wall panel in the most lavish room Castiel has ever seen.
"The yellow room." Announces the fair haired footman.
It is indeed plastered and painted a pale, butter yellow. The floor carpeted in a lush, deep gold. There are white plaster mouldings about the ceiling, and elegant portraiture on the walls. But it is the bed that has Castiel's attention. A magnificent bed, with four wooden posts and a canopy of silk tapestry, depicting yellow flowers that Castiel remembers from England, pillows filled with down, and silken sheets and draperies of inestimable worth.
But it is not this that his eyes fix upon.
It is the restraints at the headboard that his eyes refuse to leave.
After a few shocked seconds, he struggles, pitching himself away from his captors and scrambling for the door. He can run down those stairs, and what is one steward? A handful of maids? He can fight if he must.
A blow brings him down, the full weight of one of the footmen takes him to the floor, lost for breath. He's dragged to his feet, his cloak snatched away. The dark haired footman strikes him across the face.
"You will behave." He snaps.
"Alistair." The other footman warns.
"He fell." Alistair says, not taking his eyes from Castiel's face. "You saw him Balthazar. Such a clumsy thing."
Balthazar's gaze moves between them, then he holds out a hand. "Come and bathe, and I promise you - he will not strike you again."
Castiel remains rooted to the spot.
"Castiel." The fair haired man says, surprising him. "Yes, we've heard of you...we're friends here. There's no reason to fight us."
Castiel looks at him, then follows the direction of his pointing finger, to the bathtub on the far side of the room. Castiel has never seen a bath before - he has always washed from basins, or in streams and lakes. No one he has ever known has owned a bath - or lived in a home this splendid.
The presence of such luxuries do nothing to ease his fears.
Still, he does not want to be harmed any further, and the bath, a metal tub lined with linen, is filled with steaming water, emitting the fragrance of expensive soap. Meekly he approaches it, and stops short when he finds that there are two maids standing beside it. His nakedness, and the stains and marks on his body, burn with a new kind of shame.
He climbs quickly into the water, hiding himself and hugging his knees.
The two men do not leave, and, as he is presented with a cloth, soap and linen bundle of barley and lavender, he becomes aware that both are watching him. He dislikes the attention, which flusters him as much as it makes him cringe with humiliation. The hot water searing his backside reminds him once more that he has fallen into sin, and he feels so lost, so small that he wishes he could sink into the water and dissolve, like a sliver of soap.
When he is finished with the bath, he stands up, and uneasily allows the maids to wrap him with warmed linens, drying him before they help him into a dark green robe.
A suit of clothes is laid out on the bed, and he is not sure when it was placed there, so quietly was the thing done. The clothes are better than any he has ever seen before, breeches of soft brown stuff, a linen shirt and an embroidered waistcoat.
There are no shoes however.
To his further humiliation, he is dressed by the maids, despite his struggles to fasten his own clothing. It has been so long since he dressed in clothes that were meant for him, and not for someone much larger. Dean's clothes. He misses them, and their tallow and hide scent.
"Quite the exotic savage." Balthazar comments, bundling the wet cloak under one arm. "You dine in one hour. Do try not to make a mess of yourself."
And with that, he is left alone.
The footmen lock the door behind them, and though Castiel tries it, along with the other door, and the windows, he can find no escape. He looks out of the window, trying to see beyond the town, beyond the ramshackle puritan homes. He can just make out the palisade and the road beyond. In the far, far distance he can see a blur, what might be the forest, or another settlement.
He leans his forehead against the glass and sighs, fogging it with his breath.
Where is Dean now? Where is Sam?
He touches the bite on his arm, now cleaned by the bathwater. Why had Dean hurt him? To place on him a reminder of his ownership, he assumed. A scar like a battle tattered ear, to remind him of Dean when they were separated. He touches the puckered wound, finding it once again slick with the agent of his own bodies healing, the copious clear liquid that will form a barrier over his punctured flesh.
An hour has never passed at such length, and at least, Balthazar returns to unlock the room, and lead him through several more luxuriant rooms, until they reach a dining room, containing a table set for two, with platters of fine silver, heaped with roasted meat, exotic fruit, and freshly prepared confections.
At the head of the table is a man.
"Thank you, that will be all." He bids Balthazar.
"Very good." The footman replies, and disappears from the room.
"Do come and sit down." The man tells him, dark eyes flashing at him. "Let me see the famous witch of the deep forest."
Castiel starts. "I am not a witch, sir."
"Disappointing." Says the man, not looking disappointed in the least. "But the people of your village assured me of your credentials...still, come sit, we have matters to discuss."
Castiel pauses. "What has become of my...of the man you took, along with me?"
The man smiles slightly. "Put aside for the moment. But, should you fail to amuse me, I don't fancy his chances. Sit. If you would."
Castiel takes his seat.
"I am the patron of New Haven." The man tells him. "Alexander Crowley, of the city of London, you know it?"
"Of course."
"Well, my search for new business has brought me here, to this...God fearing country. I thought the puritans were insufferable on the king's own soil, but here they are practically a plague." Crowley sighs. "Still, they make for excellent dinner company, if you find just the right subject. They adore their fairytales, their fictions." He smiles. "Do help yourself to the food, the wine in particular, is spiced to my own recipe." The look in his eyes brooks no argument, and Castiel hesitantly reaches for his glass and sips the contents, a red wine with a heady taste of cloves and potent spice.
"Good isn't it." Crowley says. "Anyway...it happens that I had the opportunity to speak with selectman Zachariah, you know him, yes?"
"I do."
"He told me all about the village witch, that slew a babe and its mother, with a nefarious spell. And who escaped a hanging, by the invocation of a rite that brought forth savages from the forest, to set about the village."
"I did no such thing, I..."
"Silence." Crowley orders.
Castiel closes his mouth, afraid.
"You'll ruin my story." Crowley admonishes. "You see, your former people searched for you, but were visited by a snow storm that obscured your tracks, and made it impossible to reach far into the forest. But, soon after, they began the search again."
"And now they have found me." Castiel mutters. The wine is bitter in his mouth, but he drinks a little more anyway, allowing it's temporary sweetness to wash the dryness of fear from his tongue.
"No, I have found you." Crowley corrects him. "Your people, they entered the woods, in small parties...eight men in all. And they found no trace of the witch that had evaded them, or perhaps they did. But...they never returned to tell of their discoveries."
Castiel feels a chill run down his spine.
"They were slain, in the woods." Crowley tells him, as tasting the words as if relishing a chunk of superbly cooked meat. "By a wolf, a wolf that sought them with the intellect, and persistence of an animal possessed of human will. An animal they believe was controlled by the devil suckling demon that eluded death...and eludes them still."
Castiel tries valiantly to still his racing heart. "I am not a witch. I ran from them because I did not wish to die, I have no control over..."
"But, you are a sinner, are you not?" Crowley interrupts. "My men, well, several mercenary gentlemen in my employ, have already reported to me that they found the witch in the forest...lying as a newly made wife, with a half-blood savage."
Castiel actually feels his heart stop, starting again with a vicious thump.
"Here is the deal that I intend to broker to you." Crowley says pleasantly. "I am, very bored here, in this muddy hole of a town, far from the amenities of a good and dirty city...and I think that perhaps you have it in you to amuse me. If you do not, if you refuse...then I will have you executed, either as a witch or a sodomite - hanged all the same. And I will find my amusements elsewhere...perhaps in having your abomination of a lover set in the stocks, and whipped until he expires."
Castiel doesn't realise he's shaking his head until the view before his eyes shifts. "Please don't..."
"Then we're in agreement." Crowley says happily, selecting a fatted portion of meat on the platter in front of him, and spearing it with a silver fork to transfer it to his own plate.
"What do you want me to do?" Castiel murmurs, not knowing exactly what Crowley will want of him. Perhaps a servant, someone to beat and humiliate, or perhaps to break with heavy labour. There's cruelty in his mouth, and Castiel is so very afraid. But he fears Dean's death more than anything else.
"I want..." Crowley slices the bloody meat with a wicked knife, and holds up the fork, letting the sliver of meat drip its rare juices onto the white cloth between them. Castiel opens his mouth at the other man's silent urging, and accepts the bloody morsel. "...for you to finish your meal...and bare yourself to me."
Castiel looks at him, and, like a memory from a bad dream, he recalls the restraints on the bed in the accursed yellow room.
He swallows, and his mouth tastes like blood.
"No." He says weakly, he feels exhausted, somehow unfocused, as if he has been struck by sickness.
"I'm afraid I shall have to take you at your former words." Crowley tells him. "But I promise...you will find me much more skilled, than your savage."
Castiel tries to get up, but slides from his chair, to the floor, dragging the table cloth and several dishes along with him. Crowley doesn't seem to care, instead he stands and rings for his servants, intending to have Castiel transported to the bedroom.
The last thing Castiel is aware of is the scent of the poppy in the wine that is now spilled over his clean shirt.
The scent of the drug that sealed the nightmare around him.
________________________________________
Chapter 14: Chapter 14
________________________________________
Congrats Evil Squirrel - you were right on money
Castiel wakes up with the strong taste of the wine still languishing in his mouth. His head aches as if it's been split open with a stone weight, and his eyes barely open.
His whole body hurts.
That shocks him out of his stupor. He moves his limbs a little, feeling the terrible ache in his insides, an ache that reminds him of the words Crowley had spoken to him. He eases upright, finding that he's been curled on his side, balled up tightly and half draped in a sheet that smells sourly of sweat and the taint of another man.
Looking down at himself, Castiel is sickened by the sight of the bruises on his hips and thighs. He stares at them, at the grim indentations of that foul man's body on his own, and feels a tide of black gorge rise in his throat.
In the space of a day he'd given up his purity to Dean, and then had everything else good in him stolen by a craven thug.
He wishes he had been hanged. Hell could not be worse than this - taking the pleasure he had known and turning it into a weapon against him, putting him in a place where even sleep provided no escape from the hurt.
The soft opening of a door surprises him.
Balthazar enters the room, carrying a porcelain basin of warm water and a linen cloth.
"You're awake." He says, "I thought perhaps that you would sleep the day away. It's long past noon."
Castiel just looks at him. He doesn't want to speak to anyone here. They're monsters, and he wishes they were dead. All of them, for bringing him here, and readying him for a man like that.
"You're angry." Balthazar says, setting the basin down. "I expect...all this is quite a shock to you, being away from your man." He dips the cloth and squeezes water from it with practiced fingers. "You'll get used to it."
"I don't want to get used to it." Castiel murmurs.
"I don't think you have a choice." Balthazar tells him. "It's how we all got here...me, Alistair...all of us spent our time in here. We're lucky Crowley liked us enough to keep us on."
"To wait on him, and serve his prisoners." Castiel says blankly.
"Others had worse." Balthazar tells him. "The last one was burned, accused of heresy."
Castiel has nothing to say to that.
"I don't want you to end like that, rendering onto the market square...my advice? Take the wine - if it's offered. It's better than being there...and remembering."
Castiel is at once deeply saddened and ashamed, after all, Balthazar has suffered as he is suffering now.
"I'm sorry if I offended..."
"Quite alright." Balthazar tells him. "Now...can you wash yourself?"
"Yes." Castiel says faintly.
"Then I will leave you." Balthazar hands him the wet cloth and leaves the room.
Castiel silently arranges himself and closes his eyes as he attends to the ache between his legs. Carefully wiping away the traces of the act he cannot remember.
When Balthazar returns to take away the basin of soiled water, he presents Castiel with a fresh, lace edged kerchief, and waits while he dries his tears.
It would be comforting, if the only thing Castiel wanted wasn't miles away, lost to him, perhaps forever.
(-*-)
Dean flings himself against the bars of the cage for the final time, slumping to the floor of the cage and breathing heavily. He doesn't know how long he's been here, in the dark, throwing himself at the solid bars and roaring to be let out. His back and sides are bruised, and there are cuts from the jagged metal. He bangs the bars with his hands and shouts into the dark.
No one replies.
The drags himself to the other side of the cage, shakes the bars there, but, still there are no weaknesses.
He's wet, and cold, naked to the freezing air, and covered in mud from the beating he'd taken in the mire outside of this place. He can't change, there isn't enough room for his body to thrash through the process. Even if there was, he doesn't want these men to know what he can do.
He still smells faintly of Castiel, and that is more maddening than his confinement.
What have they done with Castiel, with his mate?
At some point in the night, Dean had felt a sharp pain that he couldn't trace. It seemed to come from everywhere. And he knew, he knew that it was Castiel, hurting somewhere.
He had never wanted Castiel hurt again. When Sam had explained about Castiel's village, about how the people there were looking for Castiel, to hurt him, Dean had set out to cull those that took to the forest. He had thought he had Castiel protected.
Now he knows that he was wrong.
Dean launches himself at the bars again. He will get to Castiel. He will find the people hurting him. And, he will kill them.
When he was taken from Castiel, Dean had known he had almost no time to act before Castiel was out of his reach. He'd done the only thing he could think of, the only thing he could do. It was something his father, and even Sam had said was the worst thing he could ever do.
He only hopes that they were wrong.
(-*-)
Castiel is sitting with his knees drawn up, on a silk couch in the yellow room. He has on a clean shirt, fine linen on his bruised skin.
He feels like someone else. As if the Castiel that was, died in the snow, alone in the forest. And he was born again, taken in by Sam and Dean to carve out a new self. The self that finally felt complete when he accepted Dean as his...the self that died on a brocaded bed while he slept a cursed drugged sleep, lost to his mate, lost to himself.
He looks down at his bare legs, thin and pale on the cushion.
He can't fight, he knows that. He can't resist, because Dean will die, he himself will most likely die. There is no hope of reasoning with Crowley, no hope of rescue. For even when Sam returns to the cave in a few days time, how will he know where to find him? Or Dean for that matter? They were carried a great distance, Castiel on horseback, Dean in that awful cage...was there still a scent trail? Or had the shifting, rain soaked mire erased it?
Castiel scratches at his arm absently, the harder as his skin crawls with prickling irritations. Then his fingers touch the bite there, and he rubs it gently. It's almost comforting, a reminder that he had once lived in the home of someone who truly cared for him. Dean might have been an animal for most of their time together...but he had shown him more mercy, and more understanding than the animal Castiel currently found himself imprisoned by.
Again, his mind wanders to the terrible injury done to him, and he folds in on himself, distraught. He has nothing now, not his faith, not his righteousness, not even his own body.
All that's left to him, is the small reminder of Dean.
Balthazar comes to him again, this time carrying a tray with a crystal goblet of wine on it. He sets it on the small table by Castiel's elbow.
Castiel makes no move to take it.
"Please drink it." Balthazar asks. "Save yourself the misery."
"Why should it be easy for him?" Castiel says blankly. "Besides...perhaps now I stand a chance."
Balthazar sighs. "Don't fight him...you will lose, and he does not forgive anything or anyone."
"And instead I should have this sin forced on me?" Castiel cries.
"You've sinned before." Balthazar points out. "The men who brought you to us, they were filled with stories. The whole house knows how they found you. Is it so bad with him? So much worse than a...savage in the woods?"
Castiel remembers Dean vividly, and he has to blink to force tears back.
"I sinned because I knew him...and I knew myself then. Because he saved my life, and made me love him...and he loved me more than I love God." Castiel stresses. "Can you imagine that? A love that strong...for that love I would do anything. And I gave myself to him, because I love him more than I love my soul."
Balthazar picks up the glass of wine and holds it out. "Then do this, because you love him more than your body...compared to your soul...it's worthless."
Castiel glares at him. "I'd rather be damned for loving...than do the damnable out of fear."
Balthazar colours and sets the glass down, leaving in a rustle of silken shirt and velvet cloth. Castiel looks at the wine. The idea of oblivion has never seemed more inviting, but he cannot do it. Dean deserves his loyalty, and his rebellion. Even if the battle is confined to Castiel's thoughts alone.
(-*-)
The pain is back.
Dean wakes up with a groan, opening his eyes to the darkness and feeling pain radiate from all over his body. He tries to move, but it's as though hands are holding him down. He struggles but they do not loosen.
Somewhere Castiel is in pain.
Dean shouts and curses and screams until one of the men comes and flings a pail of water over him. There are shards of ice in it, and Dean snarls at him, at the icy cold all over his naked skin that does nothing to cool the searing burn in his insides.
When he does not still, another man comes with an iron bar, and strikes him with it. Dean slides into the blackness of unconsciousness, but still he feels the pain, deep and powerful.
Castiel's pain, and Castiel's terror.
(-*-)
He can't help himself. When Crowley comes for him, Castiel fights.
He struggles against the two footmen who drag him to the bed. He scratches and kicks and punches as they remove the shirt from him and try to force him down onto the mattress. He spits and bites and jerks away from them as they wrench his arms up and restrain him. His skin burns, and in places he has scratched himself raw.
Crowley watches with vague amusement from the other side of the room. "Balthazar told me you didn't take the draught, though I didn't quite believe it."
The footmen tie Castiel's flailing feet down and step back. One picks up a thick piece of leather.
"I think we'll forgo the gag." Crowley interjects. The footman puts the leather down and both men leave the room.
Crowley approaches the bed, disposing of his shirt and carefully laying it on the back of a chair.
"I see you've decided to fight me...though what for I don't know. Your life, your lover and your...not inconsiderable physical charms, all belong to me."
Castiel eyes him watchfully. "If I'm to be used, I will not be willing."
"Changed your tune from our last assignation I see."
"I was drugged, and whatever you did to me, I will see you punished for." There's a knife hidden in his words, a cold, hard conviction that Castiel didn't realise he was capable of until that moment. But once there, he cannot shake it.
Crowley undoes his breeches and steps out of them, shedding his underclothes before taking his place on the foot of the bed, one hand touching Castiel's thigh lightly. "I assure you, I did nothing to you."
"Liar," spits Castiel."
"Where would the fun be..." says Crowley, seizing Castiel's thighs and dragging him down the bed so that the other man yelps, his arms pulled tight in their restraints. "In toying with your body, without you inside of it to appreciate my efforts?"
Castiel feels sick.
"How..."
"...did you end up so deliciously marked?" Crowley pets one of the bruises on his hip. "I couldn't help myself, besides, a small trace of my affection helped to preserve the illusion of our time together."
Castiel thinks of the flaking deposit he had washed from between his legs that morning, and shudders. He is appalled and terrified by this man - who seems at once to be cunning or mad.
Perhaps he is both, and that makes him all the more dangerous.
Still, there is something in Castiel that refuses to lie, afraid and vulnerable, whilst Crowley takes from him whatever he wants.
"Listen to me." Castiel says, and the voice in his mouth is not his voice, at least not one he recognises. It's quiet, and strong, and almost arrogantly powerful. "If you lay a hand on me, I will kill you."
Crowley chuckles. "I'll do more than lay a hand on you."
"Then I will tear you apart." Castiel says, and finds that he means it, more than that, he knows it.
Crowley pauses for a second, then back hands him viciously. "You're wasting my time, and...if I remain as bored as I am now, I may just have your lover gutted and put out for the crows.
Castiel opens his mouth to say...something, he doesn't even know anymore, his mouth has left his mind in the dark as to it's motives. But, all that comes out is a strangled yell, as a searing pain stabs him in the arm.
Crowley strikes him again, and then Castiel hears him curse. "You're bleeding on my best linens." He hisses, "still, there was bound to be blood."
Castiel looks down and finds that his arm is bleeding a veritable stream, the wound deep and fresh seeming. It hurts far more than it did when it was first created, and as he watches, Castiel sees cords stand out on his arm, sinew and veins just beneath the skin. It is astonishingly painful, as if hot needles are being threaded under his skin. Castiel's whole body heaves off of the bed, pulling at the restraints, his spine locking with pain.
Crowley slaps him down again, and Castiel...shatters.
There's nothing. Nothing but black around him, darkness pressing at his ears and nose and mouth. He can't feel anything around him. He is suspended in the blackness.
When he comes back to himself, he's lying face down on something hard. He opens his eyes to a scratchy surface, russet coloured and uncomfortable.
So, Crowley had finished with him and left him for the maids to clear away.
The thing he's lying on is wet, and Castiel wrinkles his nose in disgust. It smells foul. He rolls onto his side, and gets to his feet unsteadily.
He brings his hand up to his mouth, a shout stifled behind it.
The russet colour is blood. A lake of blood that is spread over half the floor, and fountains up the wall, pooling on the bed. Something soft touches his chest, and Castiel looks down to see the tattered remains of the restraints tangling from his wrists.
Castiel reaches for the ragged belt, pulling at it.
And that's when he sees his hand.
Both his hands are gloved in blood to the elbows, spattered and smeared with it. Dark crusts of it ring his nail beds. But the most terrible thing, are the inch long, curved claws, that protrude from under the nails themselves.
Castiel looks at them in horror, a howl of fear choking his throat and dying there.
He looks down, and sees that his feet are similarly disfigured.
He turns, searching for a mirror, desperate to see what has happened to him while he was lost to wakefulness.
Castiel turns and sees Crowley, slumped at the foot of the wall, under a large stain that tells of his bulk being launched at the wall itself. His chest is open, his face obliterated, skin carved away in ribbons.
Castiel falls to his knees, trembling, and sobs into his warped fingers.
(-*-)
Dean regains consciousness, and finally the pain is gone.
It has given way to a different sensation, one that actually makes his skin prickle with warmth, his stomach alive with expectation.
It is the deep sense that, where only hours ago, there were two, there are now three.
He is connected not only to Sam, but to another like himself.
To Castiel.
He leans his tired body back against the bars and closes his eyes.
Castiel is safe. Finally.
(-*-)
Once he has dry heaved onto the carpet until his stomach is sore, Castiel staggers to his feet and finds a looking glass in the front of a wardrobe. He inspects himself, his naked body covered in blood, his freakish claws, and his eyes, which have changed in a way that is not immediately clear. But they are different, and it frightens him.
He drags a cloak from the wardrobe and hastily dons it, sliding breeches on underneath and taking a pair of brown leather gloves to hide his hands and bloody arms. He puts on riding boots and raises his hood.
He has to escape, before he is found, and hanged for murder.
Castiel looks between the two locked doors, helpless, but somehow his gaze is dragged to the lead patterned window. He crosses to it and pushes it open. Below is a sheer drop, three floors to the stone flags below. A tree stands perhaps ten feet out of reach, waving mockingly in the breeze.
Castiel simultaneously curses his helplessness,
and jumps.
The impact of the tree surprises him, and he chokes on a terrified shout as he feels his claws dig into the crisp bark. He chances a glance back at the window, innocently gazing at him from so, very, far away.
Climbing down the tree is almost easy, and Castiel soon finds himself fleeing through the grounds, running out of the gates and into the street with nothing to impede his progress. He makes his way, hardly pausing to breathe, down into the town, and on through it, until he is once more in the mud of the puritan quarter.
A great outcry comes from the town, bells and shouts carrying on the wind.
Castiel runs, because he has no other drive - he runs until he reaches the palisade, and this time is barely shocked when his body leaps, and his claws scrabble, taking him over the enormous barricade and dropping him gracefully on the other side.
When he reaches the line of the forest, he collapses in the undergrowth, chest heaving, body running with sweat and his legs shaking with exhaustion. He looks down at the wound on his arm, and touches it lightly.
Dean had done this to him. Infecting him with his devilry as traders passed their diseases on to common whores. He feels fear rising in him. Too much pain has been visited on him, too much has been taken. His purity, his dignity, and now his humanity.
He touches the wound again, and feels...something warm under his breastbone, like a hand pressed to the inside of his ribs.
Dean.
He can feel Dean, somewhere...not close...but not beyond his reach either.
He gets to his feet.
Dean is imprisoned. He knows this. And Dean is his mate - which seems more important to him now than ever, a certainty in his fevered mind.
Dean had tried to protect him.
Now Castiel would save his life.