Title: The Beauty of Love As It Was Made To Be 26/?
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Dean/Cas, Faith, Furcas, Nidawi
Spoilers/Warnings: some violence involving Faith and Furcas, some torture
Word Count: ~3,900 (this chapter)
Summary: This is a sequel to "Like To Stay in Heaven..." you don't have to read that first to start this, but it would help a lot. That masterpost is
here. You do need to read the prologue which is
here. This starts two months after the end of my version of season 7.
This chapter: Faith gets an unexpected visit that rattles her. They learn useful information concerning Furcas and go in to retrieve the tablet when someone gets injured.
Notes: This story will most likely turn into another monster. I've had this story in mind for a while and haven't had a way to write it out. It will go on for a long time to see Dean and Cas's daughter grow to an adult.
Previous Faith saw the knife flying towards her. She ducked under the moving weapon and kicked a foot back to knock over the angry vampire. She smiled when he fell back, shocked at the young girl’s strength.
Baring his fangs, he jumped up and rushed her. She laughed as she stopped him cold with her hands outstretched in front of her. With a punch of grace, he flew back into the wall ten feet away. Before he could open his eyes, she cut his head off with a slice of her machete.
Her face scrunched in distaste as his blood splattered across her face. She wiped it off with a hand. “Gross.” She then closed her eyes and focused on the sounds within the vamp nest. She could hear her parents cursing and fighting a few rooms over.
She was thirteen now and they frequently took her out on their hunts. She had grown a lot over the last few years. She was just a few inches shorter than Cas and could shoot better than Dean and swordfight better than Cas. By her appearance, most people assumed she was at least eighteen, and after a while, Dean stopped correcting them as that led to questions he couldn’t answer.
Faith was also good at pulling her weight in research. She retained knowledge better than all of them and liked reading, making her their own encyclopedia on most things on the earth. She spent most of her free time trying to find Furcas or figure out what he’s doing. Kevin was staying safe on his own, although Faith dropped by occasionally to make sure he was protected.
So far, they had nothing on Furcas. He shielded himself from Faith years back and he wasn’t easy to find, even for Tracy. They just ended up following his trail of missing people and dead bodies.
With a sigh, Faith turned to go help her parents empty out the nest. She reached the doorway and was roughly pushed back in by a very strong hand. She stumbled back and raised her weapon. She was about to attack when she finally looked at her target and was frozen in place.
The girl was slightly taller than her, her sandy hair was cut short around her jaw, and she had the same large blue eyes and grace behind them. It was her, but she was older.
“What the hell?” She kept her machete up, not trusting her own eyes.
“You can see it. You know who I am?” The older girl squinted and searched her face.
“Yes.” She lowered her weapon and shook her head. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
“Breaking a lot of rules, but I had to.” Her eyes suddenly turned sad. “What you’re doing now, hunting Furcas and the tablet,” Faith nodded, “you have to stop.”
“What do mean stop? We can’t stop.”
She put up a hand. “Just listen. You have to stop this. If you don’t, horrible things will happen.” Her voice shook and her eyes grew red as tears filled them.
“What happened?”
“I can’t…Just stop. Forget about him. Find Kevin, keep him safe, and forget about Furcas. Without a translator, the tablet is pointless. Believe me, you’ll be better if you leave it alone.”
“Did something happen to Kevin?” She stepped closer to her older self as fear went through her. “Tell me.”
“Please,” her face dropped and tears fell from her eyes, “promise me you’ll stop them. Don’t go after him. Don’t let them go, please.”
“What happened?” She suddenly felt like hugging her. Clearly something really bad must’ve happened to make her react this way.
“I’ve already said too much. Listen to me, please.”
Faith was going to talk again when Dean’s voice calling for her carried up the hall. Her older self looked in his direction and had to bit her lip from crying harder. When Cas’s voice joined in, she had to cover her face with a hand. With a sob, she turned to leave.
“Wait!” Faith grabbed her arm. “If you talk to them, they’ll listen. I can tell them, but they’ll believe my story more from you.”
“I can’t.” She tried to pull her arm free. “Let me go.” She sobbed loudly and Faith couldn’t hold her. “Please do what I asked.” She wiped the tears from her face and looked down the hall sadly before flying off back to her time.
Faith was left with a heavy feeling in her gut and a fear in her heart. Dean grabbed her shoulder, making her jump.
“Dammit, answer us when we call.” He sounded panicked. “We thought the worst.” He hugged her for a second. Cas was behind him. They were both covered in blood. “You okay?” He could see the fear in her eyes.
She finally mustered her voice. “I’m fine. I didn’t hear you, sorry.”
Dean didn’t believe that, but he let it go. “Come on, let’s go.”
The three of them cleaned up and started the drive home. Faith was quiet as she thought over everything that happened and how she would explain it to them.
Faith had been strangely quiet for a couple days and Dean and Cas were starting to worry. When they asked about it, she smiled and said she was fine. Dean was watching her practice with her bow and Nidawi when he brought it up again.
“Did something happen in the nest that you want to talk about?”
Faith missed the target at the unexpected question. “No, just killing vamps.” She put another arrow on and hit the target.
“Faith, you might have gotten better at lying but I can still tell when you’re doing it.”
She turned to him, intending to lie, but sighed and lowered her bow. “How?”
“Because I’m your dad. Come here.” He pulled a couple of the targets over and sat on one. “Talk to me.”
Faith put her bow down and sat on the open target. “I don’t know how to explain it, or if you’ll believe me.”
Dean laughed. “What would I not believe?”
She raised her brows. “That my future self came by for a chat?”
Dean’s eyes widened. It wasn’t what he expected, but he could believe it. “Angels can time travel. I’ve met my future self before. I can buy it. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“It all happened so fast and she was so upset.”
“Upset about what?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Do you know how far in the future she was from?”
Faith shook her head. “Not exactly. It wasn’t super far, maybe a little less than ten years. She told me to stop going after Furcas and the tablet. She said to find Kevin and keep him safe and to forget about Furcas.”
Dean furrowed his brows. “Why would she say that? I thought he was after us and you.”
Faith shrugged. “I don’t know. She was crying, practically begging me when you and Pop started calling for me.”
“She was crying?” The thought made Dean sad. He wandered what could’ve happened to make her cry. “Why didn’t she come to us?”
“I tried to get her to stay, but when she heard you, she cried more and flew off. She wouldn’t see you.”
“That’s strange.”
“It just makes me nervous. What’s gonna happen if we go after him now?”
“It’s always dangerous, Faith. We all know the danger in what we do. If we let Furcas go, he’ll kill a lot of people and he won’t stop chasing Kevin until he kills him or captures him.”
“I know. I don’t want to stop. I just don’t know what we should do.”
Dean leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “We keep fighting. We just do what we’ve been doing. Maybe now we’ll be more careful and avoid whatever it is that caused her travel.” He tried to smile reassuringly for her. “Get back to practice.” He stood and let her practice alone.
He found Cas and filled him in. Cas was surprised but agreed with Dean. They needed to find this demon and take back the tablet.
About a month later, Tracy called in with some information. One of the demons that worked closely with Furcas was close to them. It would be a good way to get some inside information. They all went out to find him.
Faith captured him with only a small fight. She brought him back to their dungeon. It was the first time they had brought in something like this, but they felt it was necessary. The demon was shackled in iron with demon binding on top of a devil’s trap.
He cried out as they threw holy water and salt at him. Faith stayed back as more of a threat than a weapon, unless he continued to not cooperate.
“What’s Furcas doing with the angel tablet?” Dean poured more holy water down the demon’s throat when he laughed. The demon screamed and growled out curses. “Tell us, or you get to deal with him.” Dean pointed back to Cas, he knew different methods of torture that seemed to work well with a lot of monsters and demons.
The demon laughed. “Why should I be scared of your wife?” He laughed.
Dean smiled and cut into his face with Ruby’s knife. “You should be. He was an angel. He knows things that can hurt you that you can’t even imagine.”
He tried to laugh again, but they could see the slight fear in his eyes. “But he’s just a human now.”
“Well, if he doesn’t work out, we’ve always got our little girl.” Dean looked at Faith. She was sitting by the wall, glaring at the demon. They hadn’t let her do any actual torturing yet but they might make an exception today.
He swallowed and looked at Dean. “No matter what you do, he’ll kill me. I’m not telling you anything.”
“We’ll see.” Dean put the small toys away and really dug into the demon. Pulling out what he learned in Hell, he had the demon screaming, but not talking. “Cas, you’re up.”
Dean stepped away and Cas moved closer. The demon shook slightly but continued to laugh and insult them. About twenty minutes of Cas breaking bones and cutting into him, had him willing to say a little.
“He was searching for the angel tablet because he knows you have the demon tablet.” He took a few breaths as Cas stepped back.
“Where is he?” Cas had his angel blade in hand, ready to strike.
“Like I’d tell you that.” He cried out as Cas slashed the blade down his arm.
“You’d better.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Cas bared his teeth and dug his fingers into the open cut. The demon grunted in pain and pulled against his shackles. “Where is he?” He grabbed harder when he didn’t answer. “Where?!”
He screamed, “NOT HERE!”
“No shit. Where is he?” Cas curled his fingers, blood pouring over his hand. He pulled his hand away and put the point of the blade against the cut. “Tell us.” He pushed the tip into the wound, slowly pushing in more and more.
The demon screamed loudly and tried to pull away. Cas pressed until he hit the bone. He glared at the demon. He pulled the blade free sharply.
“Dean, hold his arm.”
He shook as Dean grabbed him and held him still. He screamed for Cas to stop when he raised his blade high above his head.
“WAIT! I’LL TALK!” Cas nodded to Dean and he let go. The demon sighed and looked down. “He moves around a lot but he had kind of a base in Tennessee. In Lexington. He’s there more than anywhere else.”
Cas believed it but looked back to Faith to see if she could tell if he was lying. She nodded. He looked back at the demon. “What does he want with Faith, except to kill her?”
“Come on, how would I know?”
“Dean.” Cas raised his arm again.
“I DON’T KNOW! Please,” his eyes were wide in fear, “I don’t know. I would guess just to kill her. Maybe use her against you?”
That seemed logical enough. Cas nodded and looked at Dean.
“Please just kill me now.”
Normally they would exorcise him, but he knew about the bunker and they didn’t want him to tell anyone about it. Cas took the knife from Dean and slashed the demon’s throat. They burned his body and used the new information to search for anything strange going on nearby.
Faith volunteered to fly around and look but they wouldn’t let her. They did find some demonic omens and decided to check it out the following day. Dean and Cas talked about it more later that night in their room.
“Do you think we should go in without Faith first?” Cas was worried about her being taken there.
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t like that idea. We can’t force her to stay here. Especially now that she’s more worried about going after Furcas. Having her there to back us up would probably make me feel better too.”
“I’m just worried. We don’t know what he really wants from us, except to kill us and running straight to his basecamp doesn’t seem like the best idea.”
Dean shook his head. “I know. We need to figure out what he’s doing and get the angel tablet away from him if possible.”
“How are we supposed to do that without Faith?” She would be the best one to be able to get by Furcas and not be seen.
“I don’t know. We may not have a choice.”
They didn’t have a choice. Faith had refused to stay at the bunker, and keeping her in her room didn’t work anymore. They were smart enough to go in with some kind of plan. Dean and Cas were causing a distraction by the main doors while Faith searched the building for the angel tablet.
The only setback to the plan was the fact that Furcas wasn’t stupid and he had angel binding covering the building. Faith was limited greatly with her powers, but luckily she had been taught to be more than an angel.
Going in they weren’t sure if Furcas was there or not, but it didn’t take long for Faith to find out. She was searching one of the side rooms when she was pulled back roughly with a tug on her long ponytail.
She cried out and hit the wall hard. Furcas stood a couple feet away and laughed.
“Not so tough with all the warding up, huh?” He moved forward to punch the teen, but she ducked and did a somersault out from under him. His fist hit the wall with a crunch.
She jumped to her feet and took out her angel blade. She slashed at him as he turned to face her. The blade grazed his arm. She smiled as he growled in anger and jumped at her.
He knocked the blade from her hand and punched her a couple times. It hurt more than normal in her weakened state. She did finally manage to lift a foot and kick his knee in the wrong direction.
As he fell to the ground in pain, she circled him, picking up her blade and focusing hard on using what power she did have.
Furcas turned back to the nephilim and found her wobbling on her feet. “What was the plan here exactly? Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you were here? You think your dads will get out of here alive?”
Faith had to breathe hard to stay focused. “We honestly didn’t know you would be here. I’m glad though. Now I can just kill you and save a lot of future trouble.”
Furcas laughed as Faith charged him. He knocked the girl over easily and kicked her in the stomach. The blade caught his foot and he knocked it away. He crouched and picked Faith up and held her against the wall.
“Thank you for bringing me the one weapon that can kill you.” He smiled and called the blade to his hand.
“Wait!” Faith put a hand up as Furcas raised her blade. “Before you kill me, you should know something.”
“What?” He rolled his eyes.
“Don’t ever let an angel get behind you, and never assume your binding is all correctly drawn.” She smiled as Furcas looked confused.
The nephilim under his hands disappeared. It had only been an illusion. He yelled in anger and turned to another Faith behind him with her blade in hand. She started moving it down when a couple gunshots rang out, making her flinch.
White-hot pain shot through Faith’s back as the bullets hit her. It hurt more than she expected. She looked back at the demon who shot her and threw her blade. It landed in the demon’s throat and he fell in death.
While turned, Furcas grabbed her again. Faith fought back as much as she could. She felt extremely tired. She kicked and hit him with her elbow in a nonstop assault. It actually felt like she was fighting for her life now.
Her vision was getting fuzzy when a gold light roused her. Nidawi flew through the doorway and signaled Faith to get out. She landed one more hard kick to Furcas, assisted with a knock to the head by the fairy, and was able to get away.
Another illusion she had made to continue her search ran up with the tablet. Faith grabbed it and let the image fade. She was almost too weak to stand. Nidawi nudged her, trying to get her to move and reminding her of the other demons. When she didn’t respond, Nidawi flew off to find Dean.
Dean threw more holy water as another demon came at him. He and Cas had taken out a lot of them already and he was starting to get concerned about Faith. His fear grew when he saw the fairy flying to him, alone.
He didn’t get a chance to ask before Nidawi flew him and a confused Cas up to the second floor where Faith was dazed against the wall, the tablet in hand.
“Faith!” Dean ran over and grabbed her shoulders. Her eyes were glazed over and blood was dripping from her nose and mouth. When he saw the tablet, he grabbed Cas and looked at the fairy. “Take us back, now!”
Nidawi was able to fly the three of them back. They landed outside the bunker door. Dean quickly opened the door as Cas kept Faith upright. Cas walked her in once the door was open and they quickly took her to the library and sat her on the couch.
“It’s okay.” Faith put her free hand up. The grace freely flowing through her helped her feel much better. The wounds on her face and stomach were already healed. She wiped the blood from her lips.
“What happened?” Dean sat on the arm of the couch and looked her over more.
“I ran into Furcas and we had a nice fight. I’m okay. We got this.” She held out the tablet. “That’s all that mattered, right?”
“No, that’s not all that mattered.” Cas took the tablet and frowned at his daughter. “Your safety matters too. If it was too much with the binding, we should’ve done something else.”
“I’m fine. I just wish I had done more than cut him with that blade.” She pushed off the couch and felt her head swim unpleasantly. “I just need to sleep.”
She took a couple steps when Dean called her name.
“Faith, you’re bleeding.” Dean could see fresh blood soaking through the back of her shirt.
She looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, one of them shot me a couple times.” Pain shot through her back. “It hurts.” She hissed in pain. “It hurts a lot.”
“Come here.” Dean guided her back to the couch and had her get on her stomach. “I’m gonna look at it.” He lifted her shirt up to her shoulders. Two distinct bullet holes were bleeding between her shoulder blades.
Cas looked at the wounds over Dean’s shoulder. He didn’t understand why they weren’t healing. All her other wounds had. “Faith, did he use a special gun?”
“No,” she groaned in pain, “it was just a regular handgun.”
Dean looked at Cas. “I thought only the angel blade could hurt her.” Cas shrugged helplessly. “Go get some supplies so we can get the bullets out.”
Cas went off to find their medical supplies. He returned with their kit. Faith was starting to shake from the pain and tears fell down her cheeks. He handed the box to Dean and comforted Faith with a hand through her hair.
“This will hurt.” Dean got the bandages ready and poured some alcohol on the wounds. Faith cried out and buried her face in the couch. “I’m sorry, honey.”
It was easy enough to get the first bullet out. It looked ordinary enough to Dean but he was going to look it over more later. The second one was in deeper and Faith was screaming in pain when he tried to get it.
“Cas, go get the pain pills.” Dean stopped when Cas left.
“Dad, it hurts so bad.” She was crying hard and shaking. “Can’t you just get it later?”
“No, trust me. It will hurt a lot more if I don’t get it out now. Just hold on a little longer.”
Cas returned with the pills and opened it. “How much should we give her?”
Dean shook his head. “Probably the whole thing.”
Cas gave her a good portion of the pills and a glass of water. He sat close to her as Dean started in again, making her scream in pain and grab the couch.
After a few more minutes, Dean finally got the bullet out and could let Faith heal. He cleaned up the blood and bandaged her back. He slipped her shirt back down and stood from the couch.
Faith could feel the pills starting to take affect and wiped the tears from her face. Cas and Dean were watching her in concern. She tried to smile. “I think I’ll just sleep here for a while. Thanks, Dad.”
“Okay, feel better. Hopefully, we’ll never have to do that again.” Dean picked up the glass he had dropped the bullets into and walked off to look them over.
Cas turned to follow him when Faith spoke up again. “Pop, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” He moved closer to the couch.
“Can you bring me a new shirt?”
Cas laughed. “Yes, I will. Anything else?”
“Don’t judge me.” Cas tilted his head in confusion. “Could you get Tiger too?”
Cas smiled. “Of course.” He walked back to her room. He searched through her shirts and chose one of her old ones that wouldn’t be a huge loss if she kept bleeding. It took him a moment to find the tiger. Faith had stopped playing with the stuffed animal years ago but kept it out of sentiment. He brushed some of the dust of it and carried it out on top of the shirt.
“Here you go, sweetie.” He handed her the tiger and put her shirt on the floor near the couch, where she could reach it.
“Thanks.” She was getting more relaxed from the pills and the exhaustion of the day pulled her into sleep. She pulled her tiger close as her vision went black.
Cas ran a hand through her hair again and prayed that this really was the last time she was injured like this.
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