Supernatural- "I'm Just a Love Machine" (3/3)
The next morning, at ass o’clock in the am, Dean is woken by the sound of his cell phone telling him it’s ass o’clock in the morning and that Bobby has found something.
Grumbling sleepily to himself, he cracks an eye open and catches Cas with his back to him, staring at the wall at the foot of Dean’s bed. Yeah, that isn’t weird. He saves the lecture on being psychotic for the time being though, and gropes around for his phone, managing to land it on the third smack and pull it to his ear. “Yeah, Bobby?”
“You two idjits didn’t happen to mess with a water kami while you were on that haunted wishing well case I sent you on, did you?”
Dean’s brain has not had coffee or bacon yet, so it’s a little hard for him to process words. “Buh?”
Bobby makes an impatient noise on the other end. “I looked up more specifics about the Impala being a tsukumogami like Cas was talking about, but he’s right; car’s too young, and even if it was old enough to manifest into a fully conscious spirit, it shouldn’t have gotten human form. Hell, you shouldn’t even be able to see or hear it. Most people can’t.”
Dean’s head hurts, so he wordlessly hands the phone over to Sam, who is sitting up in his bed looking at Dean all alert like and full of obvious questions about their situation and what Bobby has found.
“Hey Bobby,” Sam greets, when he gets the phone. Bobby interrupts him, and for a moment there’s a long string of words on the other end that force Sam into silence. Dean is almost tempted to use the interim quietness to go back to sleep, except that Sam decides to talk again since he’s useless.
“Yeah, I don’t think… well, we did blow up the well,” Sam admits after a moment. “Uh… the town had a pretty decent immigrant population, yeah, but do you really think… huh. Really. Like a…an avatar?” Sam pauses then, to look serious and thinky, and Dean supposes that’s progress or something, and sits more fully up in bed so he can rub his eyes and throw a pillow at Cas’s back.
“Dude,” he says, when the pillow hits and prompts the angel to turn away from the wall and blink at him, “that’s creepy. Stop.”
“I was not watching you, Dean,” Castiel protests, making that face where his eyebrows furrow and he looks displeased because he clearly does not understand the rules to this game again.
“Still,” Dean says, obviously very good at giving explanations first thing in the morning, “just don’t stare at things dude. Especially things while I’m in the room sleeping.”
Castiel sighs and slouches over to Dean’s side. “Understood.”
Which, Dean knows, actually means, “Your words are understood but your meaning escapes me, I am an angel of the Lord bwahahaha.”
Meanwhile, Sam is getting that look on his face that means he’s probably too excited to go claim the bathroom first and take his usual hour primping in there, doing god knows what with his hair. “Really,” he murmurs, pausing to look at Dean like he just learned something awesome and can’t wait to share. It’s like Sam’s ten all over again. “Okay, yeah. I mean, I’m pretty sure blowing up the well didn’t endear us to her or anything, but I’m sure, I mean… if we ask, do you think?” Pause. “Well, how do you kill it, then?” Frown. “Oh. Oh really. Hmm.”
Dean looks questioningly at his brother. He does not like the way Sam is reacting to whatever Bobby said in the how do we kill it department.
Cas has his head tilted and is very obviously listening in with his super powers or whatever. “Yes,” he says out loud after a beat, more to Sam than Dean, “that would be very unwise, Sam.”
Dean looks questioningly at Cas. “What would be unwise?”
“Attempting to kill the suijin of the mountain. It is likely the entire town would shrivel and die without her protection.”
Okay, what.
Dean decides it is too early for this and gets up, brushing past Cas to head towards the bathroom. He is going to go have his morning poop, brush his teeth, and take a shower. When he comes out again, the world will make sense like it used to, the nerd triumvirate will have fixed his baby, and they can get back on the road hunting the devil and hoping the planet doesn’t go pop in the meantime.
Maybe there will even be breakfast on the way.
Dean is an optimist like that.
~~~~~
But when Dean exits the bathroom twenty minutes later, feeling relaxed and squeaky clean inside and out, the sight that greets him is not entirely optimistic.
Sam is looking kind of apprehensive, while Cas is just staring at him with plain old creeper eyes that make Dean want to put on pants as soon as physically possible.
“Well?” he asks instead, while he goes to his bag to get clothes. “What’ve we got?”
“Good news and bad news,” Sam offers.
Dean is still kind of hoping today can go as smoothly as his morning poop so he doesn’t hesitate when he says, “Good news.”
“Bobby thinks he might know why the Impala became human.”
Dean isn’t sure if that actually counts as good news, but gamely waits for Sam to continue. Sam takes a breath. “Bobby thinks we pissed off a water kami when we stopped Karen Kawahara’s ghost from killing the people who made wishes in that well. Apparently, the townsfolk kind of had a legitimate beef when we blew it up,” Sam admits, looking vaguely regretful.
“So we should apologize for ganking the ghost?” Dean drawls, not at all convinced.
“More like, because the well’s guardian spirit was kind of… making its temple there?” Sam clarifies.
Dean looks skeptical as he shrugs on a shirt. “Guardian spirit, huh? Fat lot of good it was doing to those poor mooks that ghost was ganking left and right. Townsfolk should have evicted it anyway.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Well, according to Bobby, before Karen’s body got dumped in the well, it had been a source of good luck for people who made wishes in it,” Sam reports. “He thinks that must have been the suijin’s work, but when Karen’s ghost took up residence there, she might have been…perverting the suijin’s attempts to help, which explains why the wishes still came true, just in…the worst ways possible.”
“So we attempted to help, and now this thing is pissed at us and turning cars into people? What kind of guardian spirit can do that?” Dean asks, trying not to sound skeptical.
“Well, we think it might be… one of the bigger suijin? As in, Mizu no Kamisama level stuff here, not kappa or minor ryu.”
That all means nothing to Dean. “That means nothing to me,” he says out loud, in case his face isn’t saying it enough.
Sam gives him this look like he’s a horrible heathen or something. “She’s essentially the Shinto equivalent of the Buddhist water deva Suiten, Dean. Or in this case, something close to it… kind of like, a foreign goddess that had part of herself transported. Bobby thinks it has to do with the migration of certain beliefs across borders and how believers of one religion moving to another land and practicing that religion there kind of gives birth to a version of that deity that isn’t exactly like that deity, and it’s kind of interesting how…”
Sam trails off abruptly when Dean’s face tells him this all still means nothing to him.
Sam gives up with this kind of despondent little sigh, like he misses having intelligent conversation more than anything else during the apocalypse. “She’s is traditionally um, traditionally associated with fertility and childbirth and motherhood,” he sums up, with a wave of his hand. “The one we’re dealing with was probably transplanted by the Japanese immigrants that settled in the town fifty or sixty years ago, and she’s been living in the well, or at least, the mountain’s waters, and granting protection to the people who live there.”
Dean wonders in what dictionary does childbirth, fertility, and motherhood have to do with turning classic cars into giant douchebags.
“She essentially birthed a human form for the Impala,” Sam clarifies. Good, obviously Dean’s faces are still enough after all. “I mean, a lot of the mythology suggests that the manifestations of water deities all stem from the central figure of Ame no Minakanushi, the god of creation. If that’s true, it’s not so weird that she has the power to create a life and a form for the Impala.”
“So she had a kid as… a punishment?” Dean asks, because really, all of this sounds like a ridiculous stretch of the imagination as far as he’s concerned. Who thinks this kind of garbage up, anyway? The universe is a weird place.
“Sam’s argument is looking like the most sensible theory we currently have to work with,” Castiel agrees in the meantime, just to prove Dean right. The angel’s head is tilted determinedly to one side still, eyes right on Dean the whole time. Dean ducks back into the bathroom to put on pants before this conversation continues.
“So by ganking a ghost we pissed off the water?” he asks when he comes out again, thumbing the button of his fly closed. Only in their lives is that possible.
“The well was a sanctified site within the mountain,” Castiel says. “Perhaps the Mizu no Kamisama punishes all that defile her realm, regardless of intent.”
“The historical society website says that the well originally served as a Suitengu Shrine when Japanese immigrants first arrived in town,” Sam adds. “It kind of evolved from that traditional service into the wishing well we saw, but essentially it served the same purpose. People came to the well, offered tribute, and then prayed- or wished- for something and the suijin could choose whether to grant their wish or not. We essentially blew up her temple, Dean.”
“Yeah, to clean it up for her,” Dean points out, not, he thinks, insensibly.
Castiel blinks. “I have fought and killed many of my brothers doing what I believe is right, but that has not changed the fact that heaven wishes to punish me for my actions,” he points out, also, Dean thinks, not unreasonably.
The world is obviously not a fair place. Surprise, surprise.
Dean rubs his temples when he feels the optimism from the morning get flushed out of his system in one fell swoop. “Okay. Great. What’s the bad news?” He’s almost afraid to ask, but there it is.
Sam clears his throat and gestures to the window. “The, uh, the Impala’s gone.”
Dean officially hates today.
~~~~~
“Maybe he went to get food or saw a hot Prius or something,” is Sam’s lame suggestion while Dean is more worried that his spirit-born vehicle has actually gone on some sort of heartbroken angry killing spree. It’s technically a monster or something now, isn’t it? Born by a suijin or whatever to torment the hell out of Dean for blowing up her house.
“Your car is not evil,” Castiel assures him, without actually reassuring him at all. “Simply impulsive and immature.” Castiel pauses to give Dean a sidelong glance, like he’s insinuating things about how pets take after their owners or something equivalent to that which angels understand. It probably involves goats.
“Well then where the hell is it?” Dean barks, and tells himself the other options he’s currently thinking of are not really options so much as paranoid delusions on his part. Dude can crush TVs with his ass, it’s not like anyone could really hurt the Impala or anything. “You can’t tell me it just ran off because it’s sulking about me liking Cas better, or something.”
Dean winces when he says that out loud, while Cas looks surprisingly pleased. Dean wonders if the fact that he’s insulted that Cas looks so surprised should be more worrisome than the fact that he’d just said that out loud.
Luckily, Sam is there to take all attention away from that pre-coffee, not-well-thought-out statement. “Well, where do impulsive, immature kids go running off to whenever they don’t get their way?” Sam asks, in a tone of voice that kind of suggests he might have an answer to his own question already. Dean hates that. Seriously, what is the point of asking a question when you already know the answer. Just say the answer.
“You’re seriously using child psychology on my car?” Dean demands, mostly because he feels it’s his big-brotherly duty to point out that Sam isn’t always as smart as he thinks he is (even though most of the time he is).
Sam shrugs. “What other leads have we got? I mean, theoretically, he’s got the same mass as the car, so why wouldn’t he be able to move at the same speeds? And Cas last saw him around three am. It’s nearly nine. That’s six hours in any given direction without us knowing where to even start. Do you want to take a wild guess and hope we’re lucky?”
Dean supposes his nerdy brother has a point. “Okay, I’ll bite. Where do kids go when they don’t get their way?”
Sam manages a smug sort of glint in his eye that makes Dean want to put itching powder in his underwear from now until forever. “They run back to mommy, right?”
Dean sighs and throws his hands up in the air because that was the lamest thing ever. “Fine, whatever. Let’s go steal a car. Either way, I’ve got a bone to pick with that Sue-jean.”
“Suijin,” Cas and Sam say, at exactly the same time. Dean rolls his eyes at them for being the biggest nerds in the universe and heads out the door.
~~~~~
As a general rule, the Winchesters avoid trying to re-enter towns they have been forcibly evicted from just a few days prior, but luckily enough (or not), this time they roll into the county driving a totally nondescript silver Civic (Dean had thrown up a little in his mouth when Sam had told him to steal it because apparently they’re the most easily stolen car in the country or something), so no one recognizes them off the bat.
Cas is sitting shotgun because Dean refuses to drive that piece of junk and Sam wants Cas up front to help look for mystical Impala signs or whatever, since apparently angels are suddenly magical tracking devices for all things non-human in Sam’s personal creature dictionary of celestial beings. Like a bloodhound with wings except cuter.
Cas had kind of looked at Sam dubiously when he’d suggested that as well, but after a beat, had just nodded and told the younger Winchester that he’d do his best to help. He is currently doing so by staring really intently at any people they pass on the wayside like he’s rifling through their brains as if they’re a giant stack of angelic Yellow Pages or something. Dean’s best guess is he’s checking their recent memories for images of a strange dude all in black running maybe 70mph on the road. Either that or very convincingly faking magical tsukamgummithingie tracking powers and hoping Sam doesn’t notice that he’s pretending. Dean can’t tell. Cas is sneaky when he wants to be.
Whatever the case may be, they get back to the site where the former well used to be by around mid-afternoon, only to find a small crew of construction workers standing around the crater in the ground looking thoughtfully over the damage. There is no Impala in sight though, and that familiar tune of anxiety starts to build up in Dean’s chest again right about then, torn between feelings of Oh shit did I unleash a sulky, angry, one-ton freakmobile out on the world? and Oh shit where is my baby did some assholes jack her/him/whatever?
Winchester emotions are complicated things.
At the very least they are all universally centered around the timeless theme of Dude, where’s my car? in one way or another, which is the thing he’s going to stick with right now, no matter how bad that movie might have been.
Sam, being slightly more rational about the whole thing, sends Cas out to ask the construction workers questions about the Impala (mostly because he doesn’t want any of the residents recognizing either himself or Dean, which makes Cas their last resort) while he pulls out the town maps he’d printed out back when they’d been on this hunt the first time around (they’d only kept them because Sam insisted on making photocopies of the troll hunt on the backs of them in the interest of being greener or something). Which, Dean supposes, worked out in the end, all things considered.
“Well, it looks like the well is fed from a series of mountain streams that stem from a freshwater spring near the top,” Sam reveals after a moment of studying the squiggly blue lines all over the map. “If the Mizu no Kamisama is going to be anywhere, I’m guessing we’ll find her there, now that the well is gone?”
Dean just shrugs at him, because it’s not like he knows how water spirits think. All he needs to know is how to gank the bitch if it comes to that and go from there.
Sam sighs and shoves the maps into Dean’s hands. “Either way, it looks like there’s only one road up there. My guess is if the Impala is in the area, he’s gone up there.”
“Or he’s in Vegas right now, boozing it up and whoring it out while trying to get over this hot piece of ass,” Dean points out, not, he thinks, unreasonably.
Sam makes a face and decides to ignore that comment, which is totally no fun.
Which is fine, because Castiel slides back into the passenger seat then, and at the very least, Dean knows that when his brother is being uncooperative, his angel is always good for some entertainment.
“Well?” Sam asks Cas, as said angel closes the door and very deliberately buckles his seatbelt again, like a good little soldier.
“It seems your initial estimation was correct, Sam. The workers saw a man matching the Impala’s description earlier this morning. He seemed distraught, but not dangerous,” Castiel reports. “They asked if I wished for them to inform local authorities and send them in as backup, but I declined.”
Sam’s eyebrows are about level with his hairline at Cas’s concise, yet detailed account. Mostly because he seems surprised that Cas seemed to have gotten the guys to trust his authority on the matter implicitly.
Dean snorts and knows exactly what the angel did. “Dude, don’t tell me you did it,” he says anyway, just to make sure.
“Did what?” Sam asks, looking between Dean and Cas like he has no idea what language they’re speaking anymore.
“I did,” Castiel says in response to Dean, and reaches into his pocket to pull out his fake FBI badge Dean had made him back in Maine. He flashes it like a pro. Must be all that TV he’s been watching lately. Either that or he’s been practicing in the mirror, which might be the best mental image Dean has had ever.
Dean chortles out loud at the thought, while Sam looks disbelievingly at Cas’s fake ID. “I don’t even want to know,” he decides after a moment, and puts the car in drive.
Castiel wordlessly flips the FBI badge closed and tucks it back into his pocket.
Dean is pretty sure his angel is awesome.
~~~~~
They reach the spring one hour and one very tedious, very windy mountainside drive later. Dean is decidedly motion sick from hanging around in the back, trying to endure Sam’s lame ass driving, and the minute the water is in view and the Civic is parked he’s out the door gulping fresh air and vowing to never drive Japanese ever again, no matter how hilarious Sam had looked with the driver’s seat scooted all the way back against the backseat and his head still somehow bumping against the ceiling of the cab.
“Dean,” Castiel intones as he climbs out of the car beside Sam. The angel nods towards the distance, at the opposite bank of the massive spring that looks more like a lake than anything else to Dean, to perfectly honest. When Dean squints in the indicated direction (and into the afternoon sunlight, which, okay, ow) he can just make out the shape of a person bigger than Sam at the water’s edge, sitting much like Sam had in the cab of the Civic, all hunched up at the shoulders with his knees almost up to his chest.
The black leather just kind of confirms that his car is here and apparently as much of a momma’s boy as Dean is, if the way the Impala is staring out over the placid water and chatting to it like it’s his only friend in the world means anything. The thought has him feeling strangely reluctant to gank the suijin all of a sudden, despite the fact that that bitch hit him below the belt and messed with his car.
“Well?” Sam asks after a beat of looking between his brother and the car. “What’s the plan?”
Dean supposes killing his car’s mom is kind of out of the picture officially now, mostly because that would officially make him the biggest jerk that ever lived. Also, coercing the suijin to turn his car back into a car against its will when it’s not hurting anyone is probably the second worst thing he could do as a human being.
Which okay, sucks, but clearly this is just the spin on his life lately.
Dean eventually sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Maybe Bobby will give them a car that’s slightly less embarrassing than a Honda. Maybe having the Impala be human(ish) will be secretly awesome whenever he gets over his man(ish) crush on Dean and decides to use his freaky strength and speed to help them beat up the devil.
Maybe he can build a surrogate Impala out of the scraps in Bobby’s junkyard.
“Dean?” Sam presses, when Dean doesn’t answer him right away.
Dean squares his jaw. Makes a decision (except not really, because the freaking decision was already made the moment his freaking car became a person). “Right. I’ll go uh, talk to him, I guess,” he says to Sam absently, and starts to jog around the banks towards the car. He tries to think of something nice to say, like, “hey buddy, most people are kind of a mess on their first hunt so don’t worry about fucking up back there. We’re just lucky Cas is strong,” or something to that effect, except maybe with less backhandedness and complimenting the angel the Impala sees as his rival or something. He’ll work on it.
It’s a big lake. He’s got time.
In the meantime, he hears Castiel declare, “I wish to consult with Mizu no Kamisama,” before disappearing without any further clarification, hopefully not in a way that aggravates his scraped up wings even more than they already are or whatever. Dean supposes the angel’s haste makes sense; for all they know, the water spirit knows where God hangs out on Thursday nights or something, and can drop them a bone if they apologize for the whole well incident and ask her nicely.
Which leaves Sam alone by his girly Honda with nothing to do.
“Right. I’ll just be here then,” Dean hears his brother mutter to himself, and promptly pulls out his iDouche, probably to play that stupid game with the pissed off birds and the derpy looking pig thing.
~~~~~
Castiel, upon arriving at the shores of the spring, had been instantly bombarded with the sing-song tones of Mizu no Kamisama’s voice all around him, infusing the moisture in the air and the water that makes up the blood of his vessel in such a way as to be impossible to ignore. Her voice is pleasant and insistent all at once, summoning him to her side so that she might speak to him. Castiel hesitates for a second, willing to leave Dean and Sam’s side only upon getting the suijin’s promise that neither Winchester will be harmed. With her word as bond, Castiel closes his eyes and feels her guidance aiding the flight of his injured wings until he reappears in a cave hidden deep within these mountains, at the very source of the spring and all her power. He is equal parts wary of the spirit’s intentions and intrigued by the pure serenity he feels in her realm, soft and quiet and peaceful when the rest of the world is so clearly embroiled in the chaos of his Father’s war.
“It has been a very long time since one of your kind has sought council with any of us,” a tinkling, thoughtful voice chimes in once Castiel’s feet touch the ground again, breaking the surface tension of his thoughts with a quiet splash.
He blinks and turns at the sound, only to come face to face with the mountain spring’s suijin, this partial incarnation of Ame no Minakanushi that is at once, just like the old Shinto gods Castiel remembers scurrying around on the surface of the planet in its youth and somehow, very different as well, changed by her experiences on this continent, with its varied peoples and warring beliefs. He bows his head in respectful greeting to Mizu no Kamisama as she stands before him, maidenly and calm as the waters that will eventually wear this entire mountain away one day, down into nothing.
“You’ve come to ask me questions,” she says simply as she watches him, her magnificent, flowing robes catching the errant rays of sunlight leaking into the cave through the cracks in the rock above them. “But unlike your brothers, you come in peace.”
Castiel’s eyes meet hers finally and he takes a slow, thoughtful step forward. “My intentions for the moment are peace,” he says, honestly. “I do not know that they still will be when my questions are answered.”
She is nonplussed by his words, perhaps even impressed by his candor. “Then ask, angel. I will answer as I see fit, but know I have no purpose in deceiving you.”
He nods again. “I wish to know what your intentions towards the Winchesters are,” he says flatly. “You have enchanted their vehicle, knowing as you must, the role they are supposed to play in the apocalypse. On behalf of what side do you act? Or is this an isolated incident, punishment for their defilement of your shrine?”
Mizu no Kamisama looks amused. “None of the above,” she says simply. “Your war is your own, Castiel; my kind knows that there is a time and a place for everything, that there is a natural rhythm to life and death. We do not seek to interfere in any way, simply to exist until such a time as there is no more existence to be had.”
Castiel’s brow furrows in confusion. “If not interference with the apocalypse and not punishment for your shrine, then what purpose did you have for breathing life into your tsukumogami?” he asks, truly uncertain of himself now.
Mizu no Kamisama’s eyes glow softly. “Reward,” she says. “This gift of life was only meant as a reward, Castiel.” She turns then, looking down at the pools of pure mountain water trickling through the rocks, flowing out from under the ground to give life to the mountainside, to the people and the creatures who reside upon it. “I am the spirit that protects this place. I was torn as a seed from the true form of Benzaiten when our people traversed the ocean to come to this land of many gods. I was planted here with the migration of my people and grew here and made my home here, amongst the humans who left their land but would not leave their beliefs behind as well. I protect those who invoke me, those who hold the sanctity of my waters dear and put faith in their prayers to me. It is not exactly as the old ways are in this place, but it is close, close enough that I have some power within these mountains.”
She stops to stoop down, to run her fingertips through the cold, clean water pooled at their feet. “And then the body of that woman corrupted these waters. When that man killed her and threw her desecrated remains into my shrine, it polluted my water with power that was not my own, with a different power that fed off of mine. It made me weak, made me dirty and incapable of gathering my wrath to purify her ghost from this land on my own. She fed on me as a growth, angel, and for some years this was so. I despaired that I would never be clean again, that this place where I had made home, away from the seed of my ancestors, would consume me and corrupt me. But before I lost myself in that madness, they arrived; they salted and purified the bones, laid that woman to rest and released her hold on me.”
She turns luminous eyes back up on the angel, the cascade of her hair obscuring part of her pale, lovely face. “They freed me, Castiel. I wish no harm upon them or anything they hold dear.”
“I see,” Castiel realizes. “You wished to thank them. But what could have prompted you to thank them in this manner?”
She allows a small, secretive smile. “Many wishes are made when tribute is paid to my waters,” she says. “When they destroyed the well, they freed me from the bonds of that ghost. I took this as tribute, and bade them stand under the rain of my water so that I could hear them, their innermost thoughts and desires.” She turns slightly helpless then, and shakes her head. “The humans, their wishes required too much power, a control of the universe beyond my grasp and the grasp of these waters and these mountains. But,” she pauses here, to smile softly to herself, almost fondly. “I heard the wish of the tiny tsukumogami, the spirit of their car that was so beloved of them that it had been given the seed of life.”
Castiel is beginning to see. “You granted the Impala’s wish.”
She nods. “His voice was so lovely,” she says, sounding fond, slightly wistful. “He only wished that the one named Dean would be safe and happy and loved, that he would be allowed to take care of both Dean and Sam at least half as well as Dean cared for him. His spirit was full of this longing, to impart the same love and the same undying devotion upon his human that his human had seen fit to bestow upon him time and time again. That,” she murmurs, “is a wish that I knew I could grant, even as small as I am within this vast country. And so I gave birth to the Impala that he may do all the things he wished, so that the man he served might hear his voice and know that he is loved.”
Castiel huffs in relief. “I see. Then all I can do is thank you.”
She grins back, a little bit mischievously. “If I had known,” she assures him, “that he is already so loved, I would have chosen, perhaps, a different way in which to manifest that little one’s wishes.”
Castiel shuffles slightly, suddenly uncomfortable under the implications of the mother goddess. “I should return to them with this news.”
“I will grant my little one’s wishes again, Castiel,” she says before he can take flight. “Know that a mother only wishes for her children to be happy. Know that it is done with the best of intentions, and that we have acknowledged that your love has and will once again change the face of this story, as my waters shape the mountains around us.”
Castiel frowns, unsure of her meaning or the tone she is taking with him. “I don’t understand what that means.”
She shakes her head. “Go then. You will learn as you go. You always have. In the meantime, I will do as I always have as well. Please do not interfere.”
He feels the vapor in the air swirl around him them, lift him up and balm the ache of his injured wings.
He lets Mizu no Kamisama carry him back to the lake and to the Winchesters, her chiming laughter following him down the gently sloping mountainside.
~~~~~
Meanwhile, Dean is kind of standing ten or fifteen awkward feet behind the Impala, waiting for the guy to finish whatever meaningful conversation he’s having with the puddle that is apparently his mother. When he shifts his weight slightly a twig snaps underfoot though, making him wince even as it makes the Impala turn to look at him, a mixture of pleasure and surprise on the guy’s face when he sees Dean.
It’s like having a puppy that’s always happy to see you, even if you’re kind of a dick to it sometimes.
Dean offers a lame kind of wave as the Impala stands up and smiles at him. “Dean!” he greets, chipper as ever. “Hi!”
“Uh, hi,” Dean answers, and tells himself to stop being a pussy as he closes the distance between them, so that they can at least have a face-to-face conversation that doesn’t involve one of them having to shout. “You uh, you were gone when we got up for breakfast this morning,” he starts after a brief pause wherein his former car is looking over his face like it is one of the greatest treasures in the world. Dean coughs. “We-that is all of us-were worried, man. You can’t just take off and not tell anyone like that.”
The Impala looks instantly repentant. “Yeah, mom was just saying that I was being irresponsible. I guess I just didn’t think it through because I was feeling kind of lonely at the time.”
“Think what through, exactly?” Dean asks, and isn’t sure if he likes his car using vague terms like it with regards to whatever he’d been not thinking through. Maybe he’s picking up a love of specific words from Cas or something.
“Everything,” the Impala admits, sheepish. “I mean, after I talked to Castiel, I guess I had some time to think by myself, and then I got kind of sad, and a little bit angry, but mostly with myself, because I mean, I’ve been so stupid this whole time.”
Dean balks a little, because that’s kind of harsh, all things considered. “Dude you’ve been human for less than week. It uh, it takes some getting used to. Or so I hear. We’ll… you know, we’ll work on it. Give it some time.” He thinks maybe the Impala and Cas can start a club or something. The world’s most awkward and not fun (but hilarious) club.
The Impala just smiles. “You’re always so nice to me, Dean,” he says, and reaches out to take Dean’s hands in his own. Which is kind of weird, but Dean allows it, mostly because pulling back suddenly might earn him a pair of broken hands, which won’t do anyone any good in the fight against Lucifer. “That’s what I really love about you, you know?” the car continues, apparently unaware of Dean’s discomfort. “You always care about other people first.”
Dean thinks that the suijin hit the nail on the head if she’d wanted to punish him for fucking up her well, because listening to people talk about how great he is with no hint of irony whatsoever might be the one thing that makes Dean more squeamish than anything except for maybe thoughts of Sam having hot monkey sex with Ruby or that one time he’d had to dig through fresh werewolf poop to find a piece of leprechaun gold (it’s a long, complicated story he never, ever wants to talk or think about again).
Meanwhile the Impala suddenly looks strangely shy and abruptly releases Dean’s hands from his own before turning back to face the water. He takes a deep breath and sounds oddly resigned, like those kids in those cheap straight to DVD teen movies who have to say goodbye to each other at the end of summer camp. “I learned a lot from you, Dean,” he says while they’re standing like that and Dean has no idea what to do.
“Uh, you might want to take back what you learned then,” Dean begins after a beat, only half-jokingly. “Sammy always says I’m a bad influence. And he’s the smart one, so I guess he’d know.”
“You’re not,” the Impala insists, eyes still trained determinedly on the still waters of the spring. The sun is starting to get lower in the sky as late afternoon shifts to early evening and Dean thinks he can see a fine mist rolling in from the mountaintop as the temperature cools quickly in the high elevation. It’s kind of ominous, but kind of pretty at the same time. Reminds him of angels.
“I really learned a lot about human love these past few days,” the Impala sighs in the meantime, his expression weirdly unreadable. “I think I get it now. I’m glad you and Castiel could be the ones to teach me.”
Dean feels a wave of inexplicable embarrassment when he hears that, because saying you learned about human love from Dean Winchester and a possibly autistic angel of the Lord is kind of like saying you got your musical taste from High School Musical, which is to say, you got the slightly dysfunctional, incredibly immature, vaguely idiotic end of the spectrum.
“Uh, don’t worry man,” he manages, with a sideways glance at his former car, “we’ll get you some movies to watch or something. Fix that right up.”
The Impala chuckles a bit, turning those big, sappy eyes back on Dean. “Don’t you see, Dean?” he asks, “Until I saw you two together I was just being selfish. I wanted you all to myself. I kept thinking if I was good enough, if I showed you that my love for you was the strongest, then I’d be the only one you needed to make you happy. You guys taught me that wasn’t the case.” He pauses then, to sigh a little wistfully.
Dean wishes he was back in that werewolf poo for leprechaun gold situation because this is thoroughly mortifying. “Uh, really?” is all he can manage, around the embarrassed knot in his throat.
The Impala nods. “Castiel showed me that loving someone isn’t a competition. That it’s about doing whatever it takes to keep the person you love safe and happy, even if it isn’t what’s easiest or best for you. If you really care about a person, all you should want is to be useful to them, right?” The car looks rueful. “I get that now. And I can see how much you two really love each other now because of that.”
The Impala smiles at him. “After watching you together, it’s not the kind of relationship I can compete with at the level I’m at now, I guess.”
Dean swallows and is pretty sure he’s blushing at the sudden machinegun onslaught of chick flick moments the Impala is throwing at him willy-nilly. Which makes zero sense, because his whole relationship with Cas had just been a hoax Sam had concocted to get the car to back off. It should not make Dean feel self-conscious or fluttery at all when the Impala talks about them like that, like this love is a real, living, thriving thing between Dean and the angel. They aren’t like that at all. Not really.
It’s not like Cas is ripping himself apart fighting his family and heaven and destiny for Dean out of love. It isn’t just Dean Cas has already died for once.
Except, you know, it is.
The thought prompts Dean to feel what are the beginnings of a vague, probing sot of awareness very slowly start to click into place in the back of his mind, whether he wants it to or not. The wheels are turning in there now, re-examining, filing away, over-thinking. Wherever it’s leading him, Dean is pretty sure it has the potential to hit him and feel a lot like getting slammed through a wall by an irate werewolf. Except, you know, from the inside out.
Right now, it just feels sort of hard to breathe all of a sudden.
Luckily (or not), the Impala doesn’t seem to notice, standing thoughtfully at the edge of Mizu no Kamisama’s sacred spring as the fog rolls in around their ankles, catching and reflecting the last few rays of the sun as it begins to fall behind the distant mountaintops. It casts a golden, ethereal sort of glow over everything around them, like they’re standing in a dream.
“I want you to know I love you like that too, Dean,” the Impala says after a moment of Dean trying to find words(and air) again, the car’s voice going soft and contemplative with his declaration. “I want to be as useful to you as I can, and I know now, after talking to you and to Castiel and to mom, that I can’t be while I’m stuck like this.”
Dean balks. “Wait, what’s that supposed to mean?”
The Impala’s eyes are gentle around the edges, hopelessly fond. It’s a look Dean’s seen before, mirrored on Cas’s face sometimes, when the angel thinks no one is looking. “Dean,” he says, “it was nice finally getting to talk to you. Even if I won’t be able to anymore, just know I’m still listening, okay? So…please don’t stop talking to me.”
And then the mist seems to swell, rolling in off the water in a giant, hungry cloud. It surrounds the Impala like, well, like a mother’s embrace, Dean supposes, and before Dean can reach out and pull the Impala back, to tell him no, it’s fine, that he should live because it’s his goddamned right to, Castiel is at Dean’s side from out of nowhere, gently pulling him back from the water’s edge.
“Dean,” the angel says, voice rumbling quietly in Dean’s ear, “This is his wish.”
Dean automatically balks at how black and white Cas makes it sound, because it’s not fair, because as much as he’d wanted his baby back, no one should be willing to give up their life for him, not Cas, not the Impala, not anyone. “But Cas…”
Cas’s grip is unyielding on his arm however, holding him still as the fog slowly starts to swallow the Impala, holding him until all Dean can see when he squints into the miasma is the silhouette of a man waving at him. He’s still smiling that ridiculous, hopeful smile of his, somehow cheerful in the face of everything. “See you later, Dean,” the Impala’s voice whispers through the air, and when Dean blinks again, the form is gone, disappeared into the mist.
“Dammit, Cas!” Dean seethes, turning to the angel in fury. “Why’d you just let him go like that? He shouldn’t have given up living just because it’s a little inconvenient for me.”
Castiel is calm as he regards Dean in all his helpless anger. “This wasn’t about you, Dean,” Castiel says simply, which Dean thinks is a crock of shit, because it very obviously was. Cas seems to read his mind though-always seems to read his mind at the least convenient times-and the angel’s expression softens marginally in that familiar, gentle way of his that makes Dean want to look away or shout or hide under something.
Castiel doesn’t let him. “It was about his love for you. The tsukumogami learned love from you, and from you realized that what he wanted, more than anything, was to be of use to you. This is his wish, Dean. This is his exercise in free will and you have no right to take that from him after everything you have shown him.” Something about the way Cas says that last part-with that rock solid sureness that brooks no argument- makes Dean’s jaw snap shut, makes him swallow the myriad protests that had formed instinctively on the tip of his tongue.
Castiel finally releases Dean then, though he can still feel the angel’s hand resting as a light pressure on his left shoulder. “You are the person responsible for teaching that creature what human love is truly capable of, Dean. He knows now, as we all know, that sometimes, love means sacrifice. This was his choice. You must respect that. You must not take it from him.”
Dean averts his eyes from the angel’s as he says that, takes a step back so that Cas’s hand falls off of his shoulder. “Givin’ me too much credit there, man. There’s no way I taught him all that in just a couple of measly days. I just yelled a lot,” he grumbles, though feels like most of the fight is draining out of him when Cas looks at him like that, with all that conviction and all that fierce earnestness and those eyes that are just plain impossible to argue against.
Castiel huffs a small, vaguely amused sigh at Dean’s tone as the fog slowly starts to roll away, leaving not only a beautiful view of the spring and the forest and the mountaintops, but a beautiful view of a familiar, sleek black body, parked right at the water’s edge as well. “Trust me, Dean,” the angel murmurs, voice low and firm as the two of them pause to regard the almost otherworldly shine of the Impala’s hood in the autumn twilight, “I know very well that this is not the first time you have managed to do such a thing.”
Dean feels himself flush hot and pink at the angel’s solemn words and their just as solemn implications. It’s the final piece of that puzzle he’d been unwittingly working through earlier, and just like that-with just his gaze locked on Cas’s- he feels it all slide into place and complete the picture, as easy as shifting gears in the Impala.
And when he finally gets it, he kind of wonders how it had taken him so long to get there in the first place. Even more, he wonder why Cas hasn’t freaking said anything until now.
He thinks in the back of his mind that this is something-something important- about Cas and him that he’s going to have to file away for later, that he’s going to keep saved up and hoarded away inside him until everything is said and done, until they’ve killed the devil and saved the world.
Until they have the time to see where it goes properly one day, to open this thing up like a gift where Dean can show Cas that sometimes real love does mean making sacrifices, but also that sometimes, it doesn’t have to either.
Besides, everyone needs something like that to look forward to, right?
That decided, Dean allows himself a tiny smile before he takes a deep breath and backs away from Cas to pad up to the Impala. She-he, whatever- is beautiful like this, he decides, will probably be beautiful to him in any form now, after learning what he has about his car and his car’s soul these past few days. “Welcome back, baby,” he murmurs, after a beat of just drinking in the familiar sight of it.
He isn’t embarrassed at all when he pauses to press a kiss to the Impala’s gleaming hood before opening the door and climbing in.
He doesn’t have to turn around to know that Cas has been right behind him the whole time.
END
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