Supernatural- "The Law of Conservation of Energy" (Ch 11)

[peroxide_fic]

Eleven

This time around, Cas ends up only needing about eight hours to fully recover from the grace burn or whatever it is he gets after eating all that spicy archangel seasoning. As such, the three of them manage to sneak out of the visitor’s cabin before most of the members of the commune-who apparently hadn’t found anything at the top of the mountain, not even two random dead bodies or the silhouette of wings burned into the dirt- start to wake. Some are already up and about in order to begin preparing their evil vegetarian breakfasts or whatever, but they’re too busy working to keep a particular eye out for Winchesters trying to sneak out of the visitor’s cabin and back out to where they parked the Impala. Dean notes with a certain degree of smugness, that some of the members look like they have no clue what they’re doing here suddenly, like they’re coming down from one hell of an acid trip and have no idea what they’d spent the last night (or months or years) doing. But then again, some of the members look exactly the same as they had the other day, peaceful and unconcerned under the power of Gabriel’s obedience. That knowledge quickly quells any sense of satisfaction Dean might have gleaned from reclaiming Green’s power source.

Free will is a difficult thing, he supposes.

They manage to slip into the Impala during breakfast preparations without anyone noticing or missing them and end up stopping at the first roadside diner Dean sees for a glorious, glorious bacon-and-cheese filled breakfast. They linger for about an hour while Dean eats everything he can get his hands on and Sam breaks out the iDouchepad again to propose several possible leads regarding where he thinks the last shard is. Sam manages to lay out his top two most likely suspects before Cas gets this impatient little look on his face as he picks disinterestedly at the blueberry pancakes, sausage, and hash browns Dean ordered for him even though everyone’s pretty sure the angel no longer needs to eat.

“Something the matter, Cas?” Dean asks when he can’t take the sulking anymore, mostly because it is interfering with his syrupy bacon love affair of the morning.

“Hayyel and Hael’s deaths will be noticed by Heaven soon. Raphael will send more formidable members of his troops to preclude me from getting the final shard of grace if he does not come himself. We should not waste time and go directly to the next piece.”

Dean snorts. “Well sorry, but some of us still have to eat. Especially after the yesterday’s entire menu being fuzzy and green. I think they tried to feed us moss, dude.”

Castiel sighs and pushes his plate of mostly uneaten breakfast goods towards Dean and glares in that mighty-smitey way he used to glare at Dean with back when they were first getting to know each other and Cas was under the impression Dean was an errand boy.

Just to prove he isn’t, he picks up his last piece of bacon and savors it. There is extra slow chewing and vaguely pornographic noises. Enough that Sam makes a face or utter reproach and Cas hunches more forward in his seat while staring at Dean’s bacon like he would like to will it out of existence.

“Very mature, Dean,” Sam says once Dean is done and licking grease and maple syrup off of his fingertips.

Castiel’s response is to wordlessly reach out and tap both of their foreheads.

Before the world drops out around him, Dean is pretty sure the bastard smirks at him.

*****

When Dean opens his eyes again he finds himself at the gates of a military cemetery in Maryland; it’s muggy and overcast and in the distance he can see a funeral in full procession taking place under the shade of an impossibly tall oak tree, complete with a weeping mother and a stoically mourning father at its head. On top of that lovely vision there is also a line of wailing sisters, sniffling brothers, solemn looking marines in their dress uniforms, and a gravelly-voiced preacher doing his best to keep a handle on it all and lead his flock through their grief. All in all, it’s exactly the sort of thing Dean wants to see after however hundreds or thousands of miles of angel transport have already made him sick to his stomach. Right after breakfast. He fights back the reflex to vomit, mostly because it would probably land all over Sam, and a little because it would kind of be an insult to not only the solemnity of the funeral going on a little ways away, but also to the delicious bacon he had just ingested.

“What the hell, Cas?!” Dean hisses under his breath when he can find words again, glaring at the angel as he braces himself on the edge of the open gate and trying to shake the nausea off.

“Now that I am nearing completion, it was much easier to locate the last shard,” he says, like that explains anything. Which it obviously doesn’t. Dean is beginning to wonder if each step forward they take is actually a giant honking step backwards in Cas’s emotional development or something. “It is somewhere here.”

Sam is already looking on curiously though, so clearly Dean is alone in this.

On the other hand, Mini-Cas gives a little stutter of support against his chest, and Dean looks down at it and thinks that maybe not totally alone. That’s kind of nice.

“So…it’s here? Love?” Sam asks after a beat, looking skeptical. “In a cemetery.”

“Yeah, kind of morbid, don’t you think?” Dean agrees as he watches the marines line up and fire their guns up into the overcast morning sky. Despite the pops of the reports, Dean can still hear the poor bastard’s mother sobbing above it all, inconsolable as her remaining children hold her up through the ordeal.

“It is an unconventional location, perhaps, but not entirely unexpected,” Castiel answers in the meantime, gazing in that unperturbed manner of his at the ceremony. “For angels, love is reserved solely for our Father and for our brothers and sisters, our garrisons. It is not so different in a place like this; soldiers serve their country in your human wars, they die for the principles of their homelands and for the other members of their unit. They kill for those things as well. There can be no greater profession of love than the sacrifice of one’s life.”

Dean’s eyes flit sideways to first Sam and then the angel, and he figures that kind of makes sense, but in a weirdly depressing way. “Okay so what, it’s in the ground? It’s in the bodies?” He really hopes it’s not in the bodies.

“I will have to get closer to see,” Castiel admits, and starts to walk through the gates like there isn’t a funeral for a dead marine currently underway. Luckily for their socially retarded angel Dean is here, and he manages to grab at the back of Cas’s coat before he can walk right up the path and interrupt like a douche.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Dean grinds out, yanking the trench until Cas frowns and stops. “Have a little respect, man. There’s a funeral going on. People are in mourning.”

Cas blinks at him. “They have no need to mourn, Dean,” he says matter-of-factly, turning his gaze back on the huddled masses of grief on the grass. It’s like he’s looking at them but not; Dean recognizes the expression on Cas’s face as one where he sees everything but none of the stuff that really matters at the same time. Angel-vision, or something. The last time he’d used it he’d ended up not getting laid in a whore house so that says a lot about how well it works out for Cas. “The marine they are burying has been rewarded for his bravery and sacrifice in Heaven so there is no cause to be sad for his death.”

“Dude, this isn’t for him,” he points out. Then backtracks a little because that’s not exactly what he means. “Well, in a way it is for him, but I mean, it’s so the people who are left behind have a little closure, Cas. You can’t just storm up there in the middle of that and start poking around for grace.” His eyes search Cas’s as he says this, hoping for some sort of understanding.

It doesn’t come right away, but then Cas just looks him over once and must see how adamant Dean is about this, because eventually, he takes a step backwards and nods. They don’t break eye contact though, and it isn’t until Sam gives a sort of half-cough, half-groan noise that they stop.

“Uh, that’s not anyone you know, right Cas?” Sam intones gesturing with his chin towards a young man in a black suit not unlike the ones Raphael’s legions wear when on Earth. The man has his head lowered slightly and approaches the ceremony determinedly but respectfully.

Castiel shakes his head. “That is not an angel or a demon,” he says decisively, after a minute. “I do not know him.”

But apparently the mother of the deceased does, because the minute she lays eyes on him that fainting weeping old woman thing is out the window and she’s springing up and screaming at the dude like she needs to be exorcised. Dean can’t make out the exact words she’s using, but he can see the way the guy-who is apparently also a marine-shrinks in on himself when the woman starts pointing and shouting at him.

“Estranged brother?” Sam posits out loud, squinting at the scene as people try to hold the incensed old woman back.

“I’m guessing a member of his unit?” Dean throws in there, mostly because he has a sinking feeling in his gut that the guy that’s getting buried died so this other dude wouldn’t have to.

Cas is doing his gazing-through-time-and-space thing again, and after a moment, says, “That man was a member of the deceased marine’s unit,” which makes Dean feel like Sherlock Holmes or something, at least up until Castiel adds, “he was also his lover.”

Both Winchesters’ eyebrows climb higher on their foreheads. “I thought that wasn’t allowed,” Sam says.

“It seems to have been a secret until the marine’s death,” Castiel confirms. “They hid it so they would be allowed to protect their country.”

Well. Dean just feels depressed now.

Meanwhile, the marine’s shrieking mother is still spitting and cursing at the poor guilt-ridden guy in the suit, and Castiel, helpful as ever, reports: “She is saying that it is his fault that her son is dead. It is because he drove her son to commit sin that God chose to punish him with death on the battlefield.” Pause. “She is half right.”

Sam and Dean both look at him incredulously. “What now?”

“She is correct to blame the lover for her son’s death, but his dying on the battlefield was not punishment for his actions from Heaven. Her son chose to die in order to protect the person he loved. By dying, he saved his lover’s life.” Castiel frowns now, like he’s been personally insulted or something. “For her to assume that her son was incapable of dying on the battlefield for no other reason than who he chooses to bed is something only humans would think to do. Heaven does not care enough about human wars or human sexual practices to interfere in either.”

During the whole time the angel is speaking, Dean and Sam are sharing slightly more and more concerned looks, one, because Cas sounds kind of like robo-Cas, and two, because Dean is feeling dread pooling in the pit of his stomach instinctively and Sam is probably picking up on it from his brother’s facial expressions. Mini-Cas doesn’t seem to be too thrilled with what’s going down either, but then again, mini-Cas hasn’t been thrilled since it got plucked out of Cas and had to play second string to dead pieces of Gabriel in the angel’s heart.

Then Castiel cements all the bad feelings he possibly can by adding, “The lover is thinking about how to kill himself tonight to atone for his actions. He will probably succeed in killing himself, but not in atoning.”

“Dude that sucks,” are the first words Dean has to say about that, as he watches the poor guy finish getting his lumps from his dead boyfriend’s mom and retreat pathetically back down the path, towards the parking lot and away from the ceremony. The guy passes by the gate the Winchesters are loitering at a few seconds later and pauses to give them a curious look, like he’s considering telling them to beat it, but whatever he’s going to say or do gets swallowed by his own misery and he turns away, shoves his hands into his pockets, and climbs into a beaten-up silver Civic without a backwards glance.

Sam’s expression says he’s so full of sympathy he might explode with it. “There has to be something we can do to help him,” he says out loud, tacking something that is actually helpful onto to Dean’s earlier thought. Dean is inclined to agree.

Castiel’s brow furrows. “The final shard is close at hand,” he reminds them. “We cannot afford to be distracted by other matters.”

Dean feels mini-Cas give a twinge of discontent against his chest and he claps a reassuring hand around it while turning to look at Cas. “Dude, we have to hold off for now anyway; it’s broad daylight.”

“Why is that a concern?” Castiel persists. “If we are asked what we are doing, we can simply say we are searching for the remains of my deceased relative. It is the truth.”

“It’s a concern,” Dean insists, “because it’s nearly freaking Memorial Day and this is a military cemetery in Maryland and I’m pretty sure it’s going to draw attention-and probably pissed off servicemen- if the three of us walk around digging up graves of fallen heroes in broad daylight,” Dean snaps.

Castiel looks confounded. “You want to wait until after dark.”

“Yes,” Dean confirms. “Which is still plenty of time from now, which means Sammy can go do some research, maybe figure out where in this enormous cemetery we’re supposed to be looking in the first place. That’ll give me plenty of time to convince some poor schmuck not to kill himself for no good reason. Everyone wins.”

“Uh, plus, people are staring at us right now, so we should probably leave. At least until the next guard shift change,” Sam chimes in right on time, with a sideways glance at some guys in security uniforms approaching the three of them as they stand like creepers at the gate, staring at the headstones and the funeral still in progress.

“Right. Okay. Walk,” Dean tells Cas pointedly, before spinning the angel around and marching him away from the cemetery. Sam trots after them and they manage to make the light and cross to the other side before the groundskeepers or whatever can get a good look at their devilishly handsome profiles.

Castiel still looks dissatisfied with the turn of events. “I don’t understand why saving one individual life matters so much when the entire balance of Heaven and Earth is at risk and we are so close to saving it,” he points out, and Dean looks up into the angel’s slightly irate, mostly bewildered countenance as they make their way to safety. It’s not exactly encouraging.

“Yeah I’m starting to get that you actually don’t,” Dean grits out darkly. He’s also beginning to get what Crowley had meant earlier when he said they were going to have to wipe the entire angelic hard drive before installing the new OS. There’s clearly some data that’s getting lost in the transfer, because just a few weeks ago, Dean is 100% certain the angel in front of him had very different views on the importance of one individual life.

Let it be known that this is exactly why Dean is against upgrading his stuff. People just shouldn’t mess with classics.

At that, Mini-Cas gives a little trill of agreement that is supposed to be comforting. It is.

But only a little.

*****

Sam supposes the fact that Dean is actually researching something this time around is good. It’s a step up from chatting about this week’s Dr. Sexy episode with Castiel’s former grace, anyway. The younger Winchester pauses in his perusal of the very long list of dead servicemen and women’s names that currently reside at Cheltenham as he tries to figure out which one of the many might have a particular tie to an archangel’s grace. So far he’s decided it’s virtually impossible to tell; people who sign up to die on foreign soil out of love for country (if not always that country’s policies) are kind of hard to rank into more and less worthy of attracting divine attention. Plus it makes Sam feel like an asshole just for the fact that he’s trying.

Dean, in the meantime, is finding out more about their dead marine and his suicidal boyfriend, and Sam is just on the verge of suspicious in terms of the fervor Dean is approaching the whole thing with, how he’s putting all the helpless frustration he might be feeling at Cas’s upgrades into action and using it to fuel this strange personal quest to save one guy they got a glimpse of for all of five minutes earlier in the morning.

It’s pretty much the textbook Winchester-way of sublimating from what Sam knows of it. Mom is dead? Use all that murderous rage and vengeful hatred to wipe out supernatural beings that are hurting other innocent people. Your brother’s in Hell? Continue to travel the country using the evil powers you have that got your brother killed in the first place to keep other people from ending up like your family did. Your personal angel possibly regressing to a heartless killing machine who only has the big picture in mind? Save a gay guy.

It all makes perfect psychoanalytic sense or something, in the microcosm of their lives.

“Dude was a First Sergeant in the marines, Sammy,” Dean reports as if on cue, leaning back triumphantly from the laptop and whistling appreciatively once he successfully digs up the bone he’s been searching for.

“The uh, the dead guy?” Sam asks, politely. If this is the personal mission his brother needs to take on in order to stay sane(ish) or whatever, he’ll play ball. Sam can multitask like that, even as he thinks getting the shard is still number one on the priority list, mostly because he would like for the world to not end and for the doors of purgatory to stay closed. He also wants Dean not to have a complete freak out too, though, so. Here they are.

“No, the survivor. First Sergeant Ross Sweet, thirty one. Formally resigned after a mission in Columbia went south and Corporal Ed Rogers had to jump on a grenade during a firefight with a group of rebels so that Sweet and the rest of their team could get airlifted out. Kid was barely your age, Sammy.”

Sam winces. Dean just shakes his head, eyebrows furrowing in that severe way he does whenever he imagines anyone Sam’s age biting the dust. “That fucking sucks, man,” he mutters to himself absently, and then plays around on the keyboard some more, possibly hitting the keys a little bit harder than absolutely necessary. After a minute or so of this, wherein Sam debates the merits of telling his brother to take it easy for the sake of the laptop, Dean’s eyes light up with triumph. “I got an address,” he declares, and smirking, looks challengingly at Sam. “What about you?”

Sam knows that the sudden upturn in competitive spirit is also an important part of the sublimation process, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. “Dean, this is going to take hours,” he says plainly, which makes Cas go all head-tilty and frowny in the corner, where he’s apparently settled to examine his new wings or whatever. That had been a fun conversation earlier. Sam suspects the actual thought of his angel developing new and strange (if invisible) appendages during this strange transformation is sending Dean back to that whole Kafka thing again, or possibly towards Alien, like he expects a new and hostile being to erupt out of Cas’s chest and eat their faces at any second now.

“We do not have hours,” Castiel says abruptly and stands, making the act somehow look like an epic unfolding of heavenly bodies. It probably is, you know, in the invisible way. Sam notices that Dean keeps his eyes resolutely glued to the laptop screen as he ostensibly gets driving directions from their hotel to First Sergeant Sweet’s house.

“Let’s just handle this first, and then we’ll go back to the cemetery,” Sam suggests, glancing at his watch. It’s late afternoon now, which probably means the cemetery will be closing soon, but it would probably still behoove them to wait until cover of darkness.

Cas has that ruffled bird look on his face that he gets sometimes, but Dean is ignoring everything in Cas’s general corner of the room as he writes down the exits he’ll have to take off the freeway to get to the First Sergeant’s home.

Eventually, the ruffled bird pose settles more into contemplative grumpy bear stance, and right when Dean stands up, Cas declares, “I must return to the cemetery. Waiting will only give Raphael or Crowley the chance to find us.”

Dean finally looks at the angel while Sam ducks over his iPad; it suddenly feels a lot like what Sam always imagined watching your parents fight would be like.

“This will only take a couple of hours, tops,” Dean bites out. “Chill.”

“It is fine if you do not wish to accompany me,” Castiel bites back. “But I cannot chill until our primary objective is taken care of.”

Dean sets his jaw and squares his shoulders in that way Sam knows Dean does when he knows he’s picking a big fight where he expects to be punched a lot but can’t back down from because it’s unmanly or something. “Fine. Do what you gotta do.”

Castiel glowers back for a second, like he’s about to say something scathing and take Dean up on that offer of punching him. To Sam’s (slight) relief, the angel only hesitates for a moment before he ends up disappearing in whoosh of air instead.

Dean deflates like that whoosh of air is officially letting the wind out of his sails. “Well okay then,” he says to himself, and turns to grab the keys to the Impala off his desk.

Sam eyes him carefully. “You sure you don’t want to go after him?” he posits after a breath. “I mean, I can go follow up on Sweet myself.”

Dean shakes his head and kind of looks like someone punched him in the gut anyway. “It’s fine. If Cas thinks he can handle it himself, then let him,” he grumbles, clearly forgetting that that’s the kind of thinking that pretty much got them here in the first place.

“Dean,” Sam starts, but get cut off by a quelling glare from his brother.

“Don’t say it, Sam,” Dean warns, voice coming from somewhere low enough in his throat that Sam is pretty sure only animals are can use without causing permanent damage. “If we leave now we can be at Sweet’s house in an hour.” That said, he turns and heads to the door, walking like he’s in the wild, wild west again and each step is leading to some sort of showdown on Main Street at high noon.

Sam swallows. “Right.” He tucks his iPad under his arm and scrambles out after his brother.

*****

Dean remembers how much he hates Maryland freeways exactly an hour and ten minutes into their drive, mostly because it is rush hour at the end of the day when everyone is heading home, probably from work on the hill or something, and that inevitably means that Google Maps is a lying whore about how long it takes to get anywhere. Dean can’t even entertain the thought of speeding or weaving through the cars driving so slowly he might die just because there are so many effing government plates on the road around them that he’s afraid to even look at someone the wrong way and get some FBI agent curious enough to start causing them (more) problems. So they clip along at a miserable 45mph on the I-495 N for way longer than he’d planned while Sam fidgets awkwardly in the seat next to him, like he has all these things to say. Dean pointedly ignores his brother and glares at the road ahead. The sun is setting faster than they’re moving and he’s going to be seriously pissed off if Sweet kills himself while he and Sam are stuck in traffic.

It sure would have been nice to have some angel transport, part of him thinks mutinously. But Cas has fucked off back to Cheltenham in search of the final piece that will complete his douche-transformation sequence or something, and Dean kind of hates himself for not being more adamant about screwing this whole stupid plan the minute he saw signs of Gabriel’s grace fucking with Cas’s programming.

It isn’t until Sam says, “Dude, breathe,” to him that he realizes he’s white knuckling the steering wheel and making serial killer faces at the road. It’s a wonder they haven’t gotten pulled over for looking like domestic terrorists or something already.

“Sorry,” Dean mutters, and eases up a little.

“You want to talk about it?” Sam poses cautiously after a breath or two, when they finally get to exit onto the 295 N. It means they’re almost there, and that Dean definitely doesn’t want to talk about it.

“No,” he grinds out.

“I kind of want to talk about it,” Sam offers next. “So it’s fine if you could just listen.”

“Sam.”

“No, Dean. I’m just…curious. Uh…why is this so important all of a sudden? I mean, logically, I can see why Cas is right…”

Dean gives his brother an incredulous look and wonders if he managed to lose his soul again in the last two days or something.

“Not that I necessarily agree,” Sam hastily adds, when he reads Dean’s expression correctly. “I just…this isn’t exactly our sort of business,” he amends.

“Saving people is totally our business.”

“Yeah, Dean. But from monsters, not suicide.”

Dean hunkers down in his seat. “Yeah well, maybe if he kills himself like this he’ll become an angry ghost ten years down or something. I’m just saving us the trouble of having to come back.” It is lame reasoning and he knows it, but he’s just going to go with that for the time being, especially since he has to concentrate now that they’re just about in the suburbs of Baltimore and he’ll need to pay careful attention to all the tiny street names he’ll need to pass in order to find Sweet’s house.

“Okay, I guess that’s one theory,” Sam answers, sounding irritatingly calm about the whole thing. Then adds, “I kind of have a theory too.”

“Well save it for the crying and hugging session afterwards, Sammy, we’re almost there,” Dean says, feeling relieved as he exits the freeway and makes a left off the ramp. From there it’s a quarter mile on ridiculously named street roads through rustic east coast suburbia, several twists and turns on little avenues that Dean swears aren’t big enough to be considered two way streets, and an illegal U-turn or two when Dean confuses Maplewood Drive for Maple Leaf Street before they find themselves in front of a small, single-level brick home at the end of a cul-de-sac with a mailbox out front that, when Sam squints in the now prevalent darkness, actually says “Sweet” across the side of it, all convenient like. There’s a light on that Sam can see through the closed curtains of the house’s bay windows and the beat up silver Civic they’d seen the First Sergeant driving earlier that morning confirms that he’s home. Of course, it doesn’t say anything about whether he’s still alive or not. Or if he’s even still contemplating suicide. For all they know he’s heating up dinner and settling down to watch the conference finals of the NBA playoffs.

“Freaking finally,” Dean declares once he too, observes that Sweet is home. He puts the car in park. They sit in the dark for about five minutes.

Sam looks at him. “So uh, now what?”

Dean blinks. “We keep him from killing himself, obviously.”

Sam is a good brother most of the time, but sometimes his face does stupid things that makes Dean self-conscious. This is kind of one of those moments.

“Seriously?” Sam demands. “Are we just going to knock on his door and ask him about whether or not he actually plans to kill himself tonight? Or are we just going to lurk around the windows and hope his neighbors don’t catch us while we do surveillance on him?”

“I was thinking option two, actually,” Dean shoots back, completely defensively, and he must sound pretty pathetic when he does it because Sam’s features soften a little.

“Dean,” he says, voice gentler now, “Cas will be fine. Stop freaking out.”

Dean balks, because he’d rather have Sam yelling and fighting with logic against him than take that weird, pitying tone he’s using right now. “Yeah, well. He’s off to get the last chunk of Gabriel so he can complete his transformation into Captain Douchebag. Just because I don’t want to be one of the douche-a-teers doesn’t mean I’m freaking out about it, man.”

“Dean.”

“Sam.”

Sam gives him this look that is mostly a threat about how he’s going to talk every inch of this out-in monologue form if he has to- if Dean insists on kicking and screaming and fighting him the entire way. Which Dean will, and it will probably get the cops called on their asses when the neighbors notice all the strange punching and yelling coming from the mysterious black muscle car parked at the end of their street.

Luckily for them both, a shadow in the bay window catches their attention before any of that can happen.

*****

Despite its size and the constant foot traffic about, it doesn’t take long for Castiel to search most of the cemetery, the angel keeping to dark corners and fading in and out of shadows as the sun sets. It is with some frustration that he realizes he cannot yet manipulate the minds of the groundskeepers or any of the other humans he accidentally runs across into not seeing him at all. They ask him if he is here to see a loved one or to pay his respects and he nods solemnly and says, “This is my older brother’s final resting place,” without having to lie about it. They sympathize with him and some of them even tell him the stories of their loved ones, those who died in action, those who died after action, those who were killed or who got sick or who just couldn’t take it anymore after what they had seen, after they had taken lives and seen the lives of friends and brothers lost in front of them.

Castiel knows-for the most part- the most basic appropriate noises and expressions of sympathy to make even as he does not feel much of anything when he hears these tales; a year ago he would have understood better he realizes, but for the moment his only desire is to locate the shard and to draw it out and into himself, and when he realizes the strangers with their stories and their broken hearts are not enough to attract a fraction of archangel grace, he wordlessly moves on.

A tinny, distant part of himself thinks that there is perhaps something wrong with that, that before he loved all of his Father’s creations and looked upon them with care and wonder. Then his world had narrowed to a point, to Dean, and as he had fallen, that had been enough. Now he feels distant from all of that, like the memories of events he knows happened, that he experienced himself, are no more than images that flicker across his mind, as if he had watched them instead of lived them. Logically, he supposes that the grace flickering and incomplete inside of him had only watched those events for the most part; the grace inside him now does not have the experiences that the grace he had ripped from himself contains, and the closer he gets to collecting all the shards of this one, the farther away he draws from the knowledge inside his first.

In truth, all this new grace wishes for is to be complete now, now that he is so close. It had not been so bad before, with the first few pieces. They had seemed small then, and he thinks he had been able to remember and to sympathize and to feel because those first few pieces had not been strong enough to overcome the parts of him that knew, that had experienced and fought with Dean and protected Dean and loved Dean. But now that does not seem to be the case; now an archangel’s grace is nearly completed within him and it is bigger than anything he has ever known- bigger and more important- and nothing seems as pressing in the wake of that than completion. The memories and the sensations are present but far away and badly rendered; he supposes those are the remnants of his living grace, the one that he had given Dean solely in the hopes that it could be useful to the human now that it had become useless to him. He remembers that he had hoped, through the agony of falling, that Dean could use that tiny, obsolete grace to protect himself with or to barter for aid with, or even just to light his way if he found himself lost and alone, stumbling in the dark of some unknown place.

In either case, it is a nuisance that can be dealt with later. For now he concentrates on finding the love shard, the final piece to end this war, as he wanders past the base of the large oak tree that the lover of the marine Dean is so desperately trying to save is now buried beneath. He stands at its base for a moment, looks out in all directions, and calls out to the grace-to the love-that is still missing from him, that is capable of making him whole again.

God’s love had been the final jewel laid in the crown of each angel as they had been made, the lynchpin that was meant to tie together all other pieces, that drove truth and wrath and mercy and devotion and faith and obedience like fuel. It is the greatest piece of all angels, of archangels especially, and Castiel cannot understand why he cannot find it here, in this finite, human space. He does not understand why, when he is so close, it does not answer his summons. He knows it is here, can sense its residual pulse of life through the greenness of the grass, the crispness of the air, and the way the flowers given in tribute here all seem to live a little longer than they should despite the heat. Love’s influence stretches all through the confines of these grounds and yet when he stands here, he cannot locate the center from which all these things stem.

The cemetery closes for the night as Castiel continues his search. The night watchmen begin their patrols, leaving the angel who carefully lurks around the hulk of the large tree, avoiding them in the same way the grace shard seems to be avoiding him.

Castiel wonders if perhaps he should have forced Dean to come with him; Dean has been able thus far to loosen and free all the pieces of grace he could not capture on his own. Dean had found him faith and regained him obedience, had unleashed wrath and showed him mercy. Dean had demanded truth and allowed him devotion, had been a part-has always been a part- of how Castiel has grown. He is not here now, and with Dean’s absence, the angel finds that love will not come to him.

But then again, it is likely that even if Dean were here, love would still not come. Castiel is not certain of the level of Dean’s regard for him, whether it would be enough to dislodge the final shard of Gabriel’s grace from this place where countless of humans have died for love. He does not know if, right now, he remembers love for Dean as he had felt it when he had ripped his grace from himself. He recalls in his memories that there had been love then, fierce and determined and resigned all at once. He sighs and rests an absent hand on the trunk of the tree he stands in the shadows of and wonders if this is some kind of punishment from his Father, that he should quest to this point only to discover that everything he has gained so far is exactly what precludes him from the parts of himself that are required to finish this mission.

It is while he contemplates these things- standing alone and frustrated in the dark of a lonely soldier’s cemetery-when Raphael finds him.

*****

The silhouette of a man trying to asphyxiate himself on his own ceiling fan in front of his suburban home’s charming bay windows is what prompts Dean and Sam to their feet and out of the car mid-argument, what has them kicking down the front door and rushing into a stranger’s living room without formally discussing a plan or a course of action. It ends up working out though, because by the time they make it inside, First Sergeant Sweet is slowly choking from the knotted leather belt around his neck. There’s a note at his feet and an overturned stool on the ground and a look in his eye that Dean knows means business. But that look is probably on Dean’s face and on Sam’s face too, because before the guy can blink, Sam is wordlessly grabbing Sweet’s legs and holding him aloft, taking pressure off of his throat while Dean grabs the upturned stool that the Sergeant had used to climb up there in the first place, pulling the demon killing knife from his boot in one smooth motion and sawing through the leather like it’s a personal enemy of his or something.

The tension around Sweet’s throat snaps just like that and Sam has his arms full of gasping, red-faced marine; luckily Sam is somehow still bigger than everyone else in the world and manages to manhandle Sweet back to the ground without falling himself as the former soldier gasps and wheezes in disbelief at his saviors.

“You’re okay,” Sam says, trying to sound soothing as his giant hulk hovers above the other man, “You’re okay, just take it easy.”

“I’m not okay!” Sweet rasps a moment later, hand bracing his aching throat as he glares at Sam. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“Saving your life, buddy,” Dean snipes back, feeling a fresh wave of hot anger course over him at the marine’s belligerent, accusatory tone.

“We’re…friends,” Sam adds, all friendly-like.

Sweet scoffs. “If you were my friends,” he grounds out, voice sounding like he’d swallowed glass, “you’d leave me the hell alone.”

“We didn’t say we were your friends,” Dean growls in response.

Sweet stares in confusion for a moment, before some sort of light goes on upstairs. “You’re… you’re Ed’s friends?” he breathes slowly.

“Uh, something like that,” Sam answers vaguely. “Do you need water or something?”

Sweet just shakes his head while Dean continues to glare. Sam gives him this not helping look.

“No, no water,” Sweet mutters, and shakily climbs to his feet. “How did you find me?” he asks instead. “Why?”

“To stop you from doing something monumentally stupid, obviously,” Dean answers flatly, no hint of sympathy in his voice now that the soldier is out of harm’s way.

Sweet bristles right back. “What’s stupid about it?” he demands. “Why shouldn’t I kill myself? It’s my fault. Everything was my fault!”

Sam is infinitely more gentle than Dean could ever be as he steps in, hands raised in a placating sort of way. “You can’t believe Ed thinks that, Sergeant,” he says. “You can’t believe he’s the kind of person who would blame you for what happened. It was out of your hands.”

“It wasn’t!” Sweet argues hotly, and Dean winces a little when he looks at him because watching a strange man cry is awkward at best, no matter how angry or indignant he may be at the moment. “I could have ended it,” Sweet insists, voice still hoarse. “I could have kept him from getting rejected by his family, hated by his friends, shunned by his brothers in arms.”

Dean doesn’t look him in the eye anymore, training his gaze at the ground. “Yeah well, it’s a two way street buddy. If it was so bad, he could have stopped it himself. Walked away.”

“It must have been worth it to him if he stayed on,” Sam adds, more gently.

Sweet barks in humorless laughter. “You knew Ed. Too damn loyal to walk away from anything, even if he knew it was bad for him. From us, from the grenade that killed him. Same thing. He wasted his life on me. Isn’t it only fair I do the same for him?”

It’s at that point that Dean kind of hits him. By kind of, he means open-fisted, across the jaw, and without even knowing he’s doing it until after it’s done.

Sam stares at him in incredulous horror. Sam probably thinks you shouldn’t slap the guy who attempted to kill himself across the face so soon after the incident.

Dean doesn’t really care though, because now he’s pissed. “You listen to me, you whiny little assface,” he says, finger pointed right at the bewildered marine’s face. “If someone dies for you, that’s not nothing. It’s not a waste, it’s not something you do for someone else out of pity. It’s not something you decide to do for fun, or because you feel bad for someone, or because it’s easy.”

Sweet opens his mouth, lips curling back in an angry grimace. “You don’t underst…”

Dean hits him again.

“I said listen to me,” Dean growls, low and dangerous, his best impression of Cas at his smiting best. “Dude jumped on a grenade for you. So you could live. That’s not something you do for just anyone. Dying’s a big damn deal. And it’s fucking disrespectful of you to think that killing yourself is the way you pay a guy back after what he gave up for you. You can’t let it mean nothing. Not after all that.”

Both Sam and Sweet are looking at him incredulously now; Sam probably because he didn’t expect words to accompany Dean’s random bursts of violence and Sweet because he probably didn’t expect Dean to stop hitting him. It doesn’t matter.

Dean lowers his voice. “Trust me, man,” he says to Sweet, gentler now, “I know. Someone loves you enough to do all that for you, the last thing you should be doing is the exact opposite of what they were trying to prevent.”

Dean runs a tired hand over his face after that statement, lets his palm rest-overly warm and sweaty- over his eyes. For a moment, the only sound in the room is the in and out of their breathing, Dean’s heavier than the rest as his mind slowly catches up with his mouth, as images of Castiel beating the shit out of him in an alley suddenly come unbidden to his mind, the falling angel’s tired voice screaming, “I did this- all of this- for you and this is how you repay me?!”

It’s late-years too late- and maybe there’s far too little he can do to make up for it now, but at the very least, he thinks he gets it now, without meaning to at all.

He thinks-and call him crazy for making such a huge assumption- but he suddenly gets everything now. What it had meant for him to run away to say yes to Michael back during the apocalypse, what it had meant for Cas to try and shoulder the burden of a war in Heaven alone to let Dean have the peace they’d all thought he’d wanted. What it still means now, when Cas is willing to erase all the parts of himself that make him Cas and shove archangel bits inside of him to try and keep this world intact, even if it means he gets lost along the wayside for Dean again.

Sam must see it when his shoulders tense marginally, must hear his sharp intake of air. “Dean?” he offers a little bit disbelievingly, holding a hand up in front of his face for whatever reason. His voice is laced with concern, with apprehension.

Dean’s first reaction is to say, out loud, “Shit.”

Because Cas has always been willing to die for Dean without a moment’s hesitation. Has always held Dean’s life in higher regard than his own, has always jumped on the proverbial grenade with a smile as long as it gave the Winchesters even the smallest advantage. And if all that’s a sign of some goddamned love, then Dean’s fucking angel has it in spades. Cas loves the shit out of him.

And there’s a cliff at the top of a mountain in Virginia and a vet’s office in a pet-crazy town in Iowa that both say Dean’s answer to those feelings is the last thing he’d ever expected.

Clearly, this is just how they roll.

And so, after what feels like a very long time just concentrating on breathing, Dean finally lowers his hand. Opens his eyes.

And that’s when he notices that Sam’s hand is up in front of his face in order to shield his eyes from the explosion of light that’s suddenly overtaken the entire room, bright and hot, like looking directly in the sun.

It’s coming from the vial around Dean’s neck.

“Dean?” Sam asks, clearly concerned. “Why is it doing that?”

Dean looks down at mini-Cas, awed and slightly disbelieving as he pulls on the black cord until the vial is out from under his shirt and in his hands, making Sam and Sweet both wince and turn away slightly, like they can’t quite take the heat.

Dean stares right at it, feeling like he can’t look away. He doesn’t want to look away. Cas’s grace has somehow gone from a sad, dimly glowing marble sitting at the bottom of the vial to a swirling galaxy of life, a miniature sun pressed from one wall of the container to the other and looking like it might explode beyond its confines at any second. In that moment, it looks even more brilliant-more beautiful- to Dean than it ever had, even when Cas had first ripped it out and Balthazar had presented it to him like it was the most important thing in the universe.

Maybe it is.

“I gotta go, Sam,” Dean says after an awed moment of just looking at that part of Cas, finally managing to tear his eyes away to turn to his brother instead, feeling a stutter in his chest that is not unlike getting the wind knocked out of him, only not in a bad way. “Can you handle this?” He gestures to a gaping Sweet, almost as an afterthought.

“What? Dean, what’s going on?!” Sam demands again, and takes a step towards him, looking at the mutant vial of grace pulsing against his brother’s chest like a heartbeat and obviously worried that it’s going to explode at any second now and eat them all in the blast.

Dean wants to tell him not to be scared of it, that it’s just Cas, and Cas has never been scary, not even at his angelic dickish-ness worst. “I gotta stop Cas,” is what Dean says out loud instead, like that explains anything (it doesn’t), and on Sam’s extreme bitchface that says it doesn’t, adds- without thought or preamble or hesitation (which, in retrospect, he will later realize says more about how he feels than anything)-“ I love him.”

And he doesn’t want Cas to go on like he has been since they started this stupid quest. Despite all the things Dean’s never known he wanted with regards to the angel, that, at the very least, is something he has always known.

He’s never wanted Cas to change.

So he’d better be willing to do whatever it takes to stop it. Even if it means falling on one of Heaven’s goddamned grenades himself.

Sam’s extreme bitchface goes to extreme what, how did we get here, is this a joke, am I being pranked face when he hears Dean’s unprompted declaration, which Dean would normally be more concerned about seeing upon confessing his big gay love for an angel to his brother, except right now, mini-Cas is basically warming a pretty bitching sunburn against his chest and Dean thinks that’s a sign that the little dude is raring to go, maybe almost as much as he is.

But then Sam surprises him-and funny how Sam can always still do that, even after so many years living out of each other’s pockets- when he blinks and nods and crosses his arms in the same way he used to when he was a little shithead at age seventeen and had been waiting for Dean’s puny Neanderthal brain to catch up to wherever his freaky genius logic had gotten them to ages ago on the research front. “Yeah okay. That…makes sense,” he says, like it’s no big thing, like he’s just put together a giant 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle together (that took Dean years to do) in that freakishly huge frontal lobe of his after all of five minutes. Then he gets all squinty-eyed-and Dean knows then that Sam will always be his freaky genius little shithead brother no matter how enormous and manly he gets- as he says, “So… I guess the power of love is all you really needed in the end, huh?” while pointing to the vial containing a suped-up mini-Cas.

“Never say that again,” Dean answers him flatly- because he forgot to add that his freaky genius little shithead brother is also a giant mangirl-and then he’s spinning around and running out of Sweet’s busted down door, leaving Sam behind to deal with and a very confused former marine on the living room floor of a small one story house in an unassuming Baltimore suburb.

Dean drives 20 mph above the speed limit towards Cheltenham.

*****

When Raphael appears at the foot of the fresh grave of Edward Rogers, he is holding a bloody, unconscious Balthazar by the throat in one hand and his archangel sword in the other. A part of Castiel, small and muddled, flares in distress at the sight of his brother in such pain, pain that he had never sought, that should only be Castiel’s. But the majority of him simply gives a moment’s pause to regard the gaping mess of grace and fire that Balthazar makes now, subjugated as he is by Raphael. This could very well mean his forces are destroyed, that even if he does complete this quest, he will have no soldiers which to command into battle.

“Castiel,” Raphael greets, voice somehow no less large despite the change in size and gender of his vessel. As he speaks, flashes of lighting streak across the sky in accompaniment and thunder rolls in the distance. When Castiel looks up he can see hundreds of dark rain clouds gathering from nowhere at the archangel’s presence, filling the air with the scent of ozone and a promise of a frightful storm. A chill wind sweeps through the quiet cemetery as the first fat drops of rain begin to fall.

Castiel does not feel any of it.

Raphael smirks and throws Balthazar’s limp vessel at Castiel’s feet. “There is your replacement general, abomination,” the older angel informs Castiel distastefully. “See now what your blasphemous quest to rise above your station has wrought upon those who have loved you most. The blood of all our brothers who have fallen in this war is on your hands; it is your battles they needlessly fight, your strange ideals and disobedient whims that they die for. If only they could see you now, an affront to God.”

Castiel’s eyes narrow at his brother, at the sleek, beautiful, dangerous vessel he wears and at the sword glistening in his hand under flashes of impossibly close lightning. He is not as strong as Raphael now, even with the majority of Gabriel’s grace at his command; Gabriel might have been much more vast an angel than Raphael, but Raphael is still an archangel. He is still whole.

The only way to survive this battle is to complete his grace. Raphael was never a match for a fully functional Gabriel.

And so Castiel calls out again, stretching the broken, incomplete edges of his grace outward, crying for completion, desperately hoping the shard will answer him, even as thunder roars and Raphael strikes, sword held high and proud and unyielding in his hand.

Castiel manages to block with his own and the force of the two blades colliding sends a shock wave through the cemetery, shaking earth and crumbling stones, uprooting plants and sending flower petals scattering to the winds.

Castiel is forced to retreat backwards to avoid a subsequent strike, again desperately calling to the final shard, begging that it make itself known to its master. He thinks of his Father and saving the world, thinks of Balthazar and Rachel and the countless others who fought at his side and gave their lives. There is love in there-the highest love of the angels in Heaven- and surely the shard of grace containing Gabriel’s love must answer to that.

But it does not.

Raphael is the only one to answer Castiel; he smiles triumphantly when he hears those pleas, when he hears the resounding emptiness that ensues. “Your love for humanity is a dying candle, Castiel,” he realizes, when he searches the other angel’s grace more carefully. “The changes you have wrought upon yourself have perverted you. Do you find it ironic that the shards you so painstakingly gathered are now working against you to keep you from claiming the final piece? Do you see now that our Father’s plans are ineffable?” Raphael’s dark eyes are alight with righteous fire as the lightning dances in the air around them, as he faces Castiel with his sword held high, in full belief of his inevitable victory. “This world will burn, Castiel,” he says, reaching out to touch his hand against the gnarled trunk of the tree they are fighting under. There is a flash of light when his hand comes in contact with the wood, a thrumming that Castiel recognizes in a heartbeat, that fills him with satisfaction at its presence but that continues to willfully disobey him.

The shard of love has embedded itself deep into the heart of this old tree, this monument that feeds off of the humans that lie here and that visit here, humans who died to protect what they held dear and the mourning tears of the ones that they left behind, as they returned to the earth at the tree’s gnarled roots.

And here it is again, reacting to the pulse of Raphael’s grace, in his unshakeable love for the traditions and orders of his brothers, his fervent hope that humanity might end so that the angels can return to peace in Heaven after completing the last of their absent Father’s wishes.

The shard does not shine for Castiel; his love is not strong enough to tempt it.

And Raphael knows. He smiles, stretching his vessel’s pretty lips into an ugly sneer as he steps forward, as he backhands Castiel across the face and sends him flying backwards, shattering Edward Rogers’ headstone on impact. He grunts, feels his incomplete grace writhe in agony under Raphael’s magnificence, under the invisible torments of his divine beauty as it sears against the unfinished edges of his own essence.

“Was it worth it, Castiel?” Raphael asks, as Castiel gasps on the floor, struggling to rise. “To strive so hard only to learn that our place is absolute, that our Father created us so that we would already stand at the best we could ever be? Have you learned your lesson?” Raphael pauses at Balthazar’s prone body, lifting the unconscious angel up again by the back of the head, holding him up so Castiel can see the injuries that mar his brother’s wings, his grace, his vessel. “Was humanity worth this defilement? Their love, their puny, selfish love, is not enough to power you, brother. They give you nothing in return for all you have sacrificed.”

He wordlessly tosses Balthazar aside again, ripping a pained grunt from the injured angel as he stalks towards Castiel. “Dean Winchester cannot provide you with even a fraction of what you have lost, Castiel. There is no love on this mud heap that is comparable to that of Heaven. Surrender. Pledge your loyalty to me.” He reaches out with a compassionate hand, touching it to his brother’s cheek. “Come home and you will find that I can be merciful.”

Castiel staggers to his feet again, wipes blood from his mouth as he stumbles backwards over the wreckage of Edward Rogers’ grave in an attempt to get away from the warmth of Raphael’s touch, the promise of Heaven’s embrace.

“And if I refuse?”

A hard edge glints in the thick-lashed eyes of Raphael’s pretty vessel. “Then,” he says calmly, and slams his palm against Castiel’s forehead as if he is a demon to be exorcised, as if he is one of Lucifer’s abominations, “you will die, brother.” Light pulses from the place where their skin meets, searing hot and agonizing.

Castiel screams.

*****

Dean pulls up to the gates of Cheltenham in the middle of one heck of a summer rainstorm, the Impala’s breaks screeching protest as he goes from sixty to zero in no time flat, the sound somehow still audible despite the rolling, angry thunder that rings too close to home in Dean’s ears. He remembers a storm like this once, many years and a falling Cas ago, when the two of them had squatted in an abandoned house together during the apocalypse and called down the wrath of an archangel without fear of the repercussions.

Raphael is here.

An archangel is here. Dean knows that should be terrifying. But all he feels is that Cas is in trouble, that he should hurry the fuck up and find the angel before he’s gone again, maybe this time forever.

Castiel should not have to die for his love, not again.

“You won’t,” he feels himself saying to mini-Cas reassuringly, the grace pulsing warm and familiar against his chest. “No more dying, dude, you hear me? I’m not watching it happen again.”

Mini-Cas thrums with a healthy dose of trepidation and hope. Which is fair, because you know, they’re taking on an archangel.

Setting his jaw, Dean ignores the rain, the thunder, and the lightning, ignores the way that the entire city seems to be in the midst of a blackout and he can barely see his own hand in front of his face for all the water pouring out of the sky in sheets. He grabs the angel killing sword he’s kept in the Impala’s trunk ever since Van Nuys and dashes for the gates, blinking rain water from his eyes as he picks the lock and swings into the cemetery, hand up to shield himself from the debris being blown around by the screaming winds.

Mini-Cas beats a rhythm of concern against his breast that he tempers with reassurance. A hurricane in the middle of a creepy cemetery? No problem. Everything’s going to be okay. Cas is going to be Cas, is going to stay Cas, stay alive, and they’re all going to make it and the world is going to stay in one goddamned piece. They survived age old prophecies of the apocalypse, defied Heaven, and freaking beat the devil. No second rate archangel is going to mess with that. They didn’t get all the way here after everything that happened the last three years just to putter out in a lame showing against Heaven and Hell’s C-team hitters.

The determined vibes he’s sending must be like grace vitamins or something, because if anything, mini-Cas gets brighter, so white against the edges that it seems to banish the dark rage of the storm from the area immediately around Dean, determinedly lighting his path for him and keeping the cold and wet and flying debris at bay as best it can.

He and Cas have always managed to fall into an easy sort of teamwork that way.

From there, with mini-Cas lighting the way and keeping him upright in the wind, it doesn’t take long for Dean to find Raphael and Cas, even in the swirling chaos of the storm.

Dean is pretty sure the only creatures on the planet who could fight in a graveyard in the dead of night during the summer’s worst thunderstorm and still have the place lit up like Superbowl stadium on gameday are the freaking angels.

And the only one that can make the blood in his veins run cold like this is Castiel.

Castiel, who is being forced to his knees by his big brother, Raphael’s hand slapped against his forehead and leaking light as he makes Castiel scream for it. Dean feels the breath forced from his lungs as he takes in the sight of Raphael grimly torturing Cas to death like that, making the grace bleed out of him through his eyes and ears and mouth as he stands above him-his own goddamned brother- calmly watching him die.

“Cas!” Dean shouts, voice lost in the gale force winds swirling around them. He can barely hear himself, despite how determinedly mini-Cas pushes against the walls of the vial. “CAS!!!”

Somehow Cas hears him anyway. He always does; he always does.

And Cas, despite everything, turns in Raphael’s grasp to look right at him.

Dean looks back, and the moment their eyes lock-of course it’s that wordless, determined moment; for the two of them how could it not be?-something searing hot and helplessly bright explodes out of the back of the tree like a shot.

Dean is forced to watch-helpless- as it slams right into Cas.

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