Supernatural- "The Law of Conservation of Energy" (Ch 9)
Nine
Dean is in the hotel room staring at the vial of grace intensely, having taken it off and put it on the table to examine it while Cas has fucked off to God knows where in order to test out the limitations of his powers now that he’d gotten another boost of archangel juice. Sam notes that the grace inside the vial seems to have smoothed out somehow, changing from an amorphous mist that expanded from wall to wall of the glass container and into something that looks a lot more like a shiny marble settled at the bottom of the vial, rolling around kind of pathetically on its own but still pretty to look at when all is said and done. Dean reaches out to tap it every few minutes, like that will change something, and it kind of does, maybe a little, because Sam thinks the grace kind of gives this pathetic attempt to glow a bit brighter whenever Dean touches it. It’s kind of like watching a dog die of old age in the movies or something, like it can still hear you call its name but it just doesn’t have the energy to get up and come over anymore. The best it can do is maybe perk its ears a little, maybe snuffle mournfully in your direction.
Come to think of it, Dean also kind of looks like one of those kids who knows a favorite pet is dying.
Not that the grace is dying or anything. Sam has already been over this with his brother; the energy doesn’t die, it just kind of changes. Maybe it is just in the process of metamorphosing or something, is what he tells Dean, but Dean just looks at him in horror and disgust for even suggesting that kind of thing, because contrary to popular belief, Dean Winchester has read Kafka and he is apparently thinking that nothing good can come of this. Sam bets his brother is worried that the grace will turn into a giant man-eating bug now.
Sam sighs when Dean reaches out again and taps the glass. The grace flares for a moment, before settling back at the bottom. His brother could stand to pick up a newspaper every once in a while and help with the research. It’s his angel they’re doing it for, after all. Not like the angel cares about Sam or you know, pulling a whole soul out of Hell when he’s at it for his second favorite Winchester. “Dean,” Sam grits out, when he can’t take his brother’s sullen silence anymore. “Just leave it. It’s fine.”
Dean turns his frown on Sam. “Balthazar said I’ve been taking shitty care of it. And look at it, man. It’s kind of like…wilting, or something.”
Sam snorts. “Dude, I’m sure if there was a special way to take care of angel grace, Cas would have said something by now.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Cas gives fuck all about his old grace now that he’s getting a shiny new one,” his brother drawls, and sounds as wildly indignant about that as he does whenever people ask what an LP or a cassette tape is. Don’t even get Sam started on how Dean reacts to the iPod or the iPad or the iPhone. He calls them all the iDouches and won’t touch the things, but doesn’t complain when Sam gets all the research done on them without either of them having to crack a book or spend a day in a musty public library spending a small fortune on Xerox printouts.
Sam looks away from the CNN page he is currently trolling on his iPad. “Okay, well, maybe grace is like a plant or something,” he offers, trying to be helpful in the hopes that his helpfulness will get Dean to return the favor, perhaps in the realm of research, more likely in the realm of going out to get food so that he’ll stop distracting Sam with his morose moping around. “Maybe the container just needs more sunlight or air. You keep it tucked under your shirt all the time. It could be that it’s not getting its D vitamins.”
Dean seems to consider this, then cautiously nudges the vial across the table a little more, into a patch of sunlight leaking through the cheap motel blinds. He silently observes.
“Nothing’s happening,” he observes out loud, two minutes later.
“It’s not going to change in such a short amount of time, Dean. Maybe it needs a few minutes to, you know, gather strength or something.” In Sam’s head, he imagines it slowly photosynthesizing the sunlight and then blooming open again, starting to back into that formless swirl of mist that looks so much like its very own Milky Way.
“Dude, it’s grace,” Dean answers, like that should mean something synonymous with absorbs sunlight instantly like Superman or something. He taps the glass again.
“Okay, well maybe I wasn’t right about the sunlight,” Sam amends, graciously. Not like Dean was throwing out any ideas of his own or anything.
“You hear that?” Dean asks the grace, grinning. “Sammy was wrong about something. You’re my only witness.”
Sam is about to answer with a resounding screw you, Dean, except that before he can, the grace kind of uncoils itself at the sound of Dean’s voice addressing it, and gives a weak attempt to rise up that is much better than all the attempts it had made before.
Dean stares. “Hey, did you see that?”
“Yeah,” Sam answers, because he did.
Dean’s brow furrows. “So…it did need sunlight?”
“I think it was reacting to you talking to it,” Sam corrects. “Maybe? Try again.”
Dean gives him this look like he’s crazy or stupid or both, but after Sam nods encouragingly at him, turns back to the grace and clears his throat. “Uh, so, how’s it going?” he asks.
The grace pulses again, and more tendrils float out from the tight ball it had curled itself up in, returning to a fair facsimile of the form it had been in when they’d gotten it at the beginning of this whole mess, if slightly smaller, slightly less bright. It swirls a little in the container, a mini galaxy of pure creation.
A crooked smile graces Dean’s face at the sight of that. “Will you look at that?” he murmurs, and scoops the grace up the table to hold in front of his face. “So you just like the sound of my voice, huh?”
The grace pulses once in what can only be the affirmative, light silver-white and content. Sam supposes that’s the answer to that.
“So it is like a plant,” Sam muses out loud, which earns him another weird look from Dean. Sam sighs, and gestures vaguely with his hand. “I read an article once about how talking to your plants and playing them music helps nurture them or something,” he admits.
Dean snorts. “Wow, thanks for that, Martha,” he drawls, before turning back to the grace and using the exact advice he’d just made fun of Sam for giving him. “All right then, mini-Cas,” he tells the grace fondly, “let’s go play you some music.”
Mini-Cas seems to like that idea, and starts to swirl a little more in its tube.
“Classical music!” Sam feels the need to shout after his brother, before turning back to the computer.
“Of course I’m playing mini-Cas classic stuff,” Dean snorts, like that isn’t even an option, and Sam has a feeling that his definition of classical music and Dean’s are about as different as their definition of what an okay physical boundary to have with an angel of the Lord is.
Sam sighs. At least the grace had looked happy about it, or whatever.
*****
Dean spends the next hour rocking out with mini-Cas and Kansas in the Impala while chattering randomly to the grace about how Sam’s definition of classical is limited, how great the Impala’s interior is, and that amazing piece of peach cobbler he’d had for lunch yesterday afternoon that Sam hadn’t appreciated and Cas hadn’t bothered trying because apparently his need for food is now about on par with Sam’s need for sex, which is to say, a sad and pointless number.
The grace seems to perk up considerably from its earlier droopy state under these ministrations, and Dean, feeling something inexplicably hopeful rise along his chest at the sight of it, determinedly talks on and on and on to it, until it’s expanded to fill about half the vial again.
He would have gone for more, but that’s the exact moment Cas appears in the car next to him, holding a candy bar in one hand and munching on it.
Dean startles a little at the sight of him, and then frowns when he sees the chocolate in the angel’s hand. “Dude, you said you didn’t need to eat at lunch,” he says, all accusatory as he hastily drapes mini-Cas back around his neck and tucks the vial into his shirt.
Castiel just eyes him calmly. “I expended more energy than I had intended to testing the limits of my reach,” he explains, like that makes any sense at all. “Also, I find I like this Skor.”
“You’ll break your teeth on that stuff,” Dean answers automatically, before turning down the radio a little. He thinks he can almost feel mini-Cas coil away from the angel on reflex; maybe it’s the whole archangel grace, beware thing, or maybe it’s something else, but Dean kind of feels the same thing about it. “How’re you feeling?” he asks Cas after a beat in which the only sounds in the cab of the car are the murmuring of the radio and Cas crunching on his English toffee.
“Substantial,” the angel answers, like that means something. “Vast.”
“Those aren’t feelings,” Dean points out, reasonably, though for some reason his jaw feels a little tight as he says it.
Castiel sort of just tilts his head at Dean and takes another bite of his candy bar.
Dean sighs and mutters, “Forget it,” before turning off the radio and heading inside. “Let’s go see what the nerd patrol has dug up.”
A fluttering of wings tells Dean that Cas is way ahead of him.
*****
“Animal heroism,” Sam declares a little while later, after the pizza’s been ordered and they’re waiting for the delivery guy to get there with their dinner.
Dean blinks. “Animal heroism?”
Sam hands the iDouchepad over and points to an article he has on the screen. Dean juggles it a little and frowns as he scrolls around with the dreaded touchpad.
An article about a town with a series of magnificent pet heroes glares back up at him, complete with pictures of said happy animals and their doting owners. “Uh,” Dean manages after a moment, and just looks kind of hopelessly at his brother.
Sam sighs. “Dean, this dog ran into a burning house and dragged his unconscious owner out. A cat attacked a burglar holding her owner at gunpoint and was shot and killed in the process. A police dog took a bullet for the cop he works with.”
Dean shrugs. “Yeah but they’re always talking about shit like this on those Animal Planet specials, aren’t they?”
Sam gives him a look like he’s grown a second head. Dean scowls. “I watched a lot of random cable those first few months at Lisa’s, okay?” he snaps back defensively, which just makes Sam put his hands up in surrender (without even trying to hide his smirk, by the way).
“Right. Well, that stuff does happen normally but what about this?” He taps his douche pad a few more times until the screen stops on the image of a middle-aged woman surrounded by dogs of all shapes and sizes.
Dean wishes Sam would get to the point. “Get to the point, Sam,” he says, out loud.
Sam gives him this long suffering look of why isn’t my brother smart. “This woman had fifteen dogs in her house. All rescues she was keeping because no one else would take them in. Apparently she tripped and hit her head on the edge of her tub and died.”
That’s sad and kind of horrible but Dean is pretty sure it isn’t up their particular alley of horrible. “Uh…kay.”
Sam continues to give useless backstory because he likes context or whatever. “She lived and worked basically all alone, so no one found her body for three weeks, after the neighbors started complaining about the mail and the newspapers piling up. And when they did find her? She was perfectly intact, despite the fact that all fifteen of her animals had been trapped inside with her and basically starving to death. The dogs walked around her body to drink out of the toilet, but none of them tried to eat her.”
Dean’s nose wrinkles, because that must have been super gross for the dogs. “And…”
“Dean,” Sam presses, when Dean obviously doesn’t get it, “None of those dogs tried to eat the body. Even though they were starving to death. That doesn’t strike you as abnormal?”
“Like I said,” Dean persists, “It could happen. Man’s best friend, right?”
“Yeah, maybe if it’s one dog, Dean,” Sam points out, completely rational. “But what are the odds of all fifteen animals coming to a consensus on something like that?”
Dean isn’t anywhere near as nerdy as Sam, but odds are something he does know how to calculate by way of necessity in terms of hustling, and okay, maybe his brainy little brother has a point there. “Yeah, fine,” Dean admits, glancing away from the photo of the starved, sad-eyed animals. “So what do you think we’re looking at here, exactly?”
“Devotion,” Sam declares, at the exact same time Cas does. “It makes sense,” Sam continues, while Cas turns back to observing the Dr. Sexy MD marathon on cable with a look of complete concentration. “And! And, the first recorded case of something like this happening was two days after Gabriel died.”
“It is worth checking out,” Cas says, pausing from his perusal of the TV. Then he pauses and declares, “I do not think Dr. Sexy’s boots are properly sanitized for a hospital setting.”
“The boots are what make him Dr. Sexy,” Dean insists.
Castiel’s answer is to declare that the Winchesters are not allowed to stay in any hospitals that are unsanitary. Also, “If I were Dr. Sexy, I would not wear boots.”
Dean isn’t sure why that last part irritates him so damn much, but when he talks about it with mini-Cas later that night, he takes some comfort in the fact that Cas’s grace doesn’t seem to like it either, which just proves that mini-Cas has great taste.
Sam catches Dean whispering to mini-Cas about these things in the bathroom like a total creep and gives him a look that clearly says he thinks his brother is insane.
The fact that Dean is starting to feel a warm sense of contentment whenever he talks to mini-Cas about things might mean that his brother is not entirely wrong.
*****
They find themselves in a small town Iowa some time later, right in the midst of what looks like a freaking pet parade or festival of something; there are dogs in little sweaters being toured around and adored, cats on leashes (what the fuck?) and parrots being hand-fed and cooed at like favorite children. At the local park, a pretty young veterinarian lectures to a group of gathered children about proper pet care, there’s stalls selling puppy-shaped cakes, pies, and cookies (again, what the fuck?) and Dean is pretty sure there is a woman sitting on a lawn chair in a grocery parking lot teaching other women how to make arts and crafts with cat hair.
The town mayor is in attendance and very obliging to their questions as she holds a yappy, bony, ugly Chihuahua thing in her arms, and lights up with small town pride when Sam, Dean, and Cas show up within the county lines wearing their favorite guise of tourists just road tripping around America to consummate their love of small town values and blah, blah, blah.
Dean completes the illusion by buying a personal-sized puppy apple pie and munching on it as they stroll through the streets of the friendly little burb; he does have to admit that the size and shape make the pie pretty effing convenient to eat on the move. Even if it is molded to look like a freaking French poodle, which is not cool at all. The least they could do is make pitbull shaped pie or something.
Meanwhile, Mayor Shelby prattles on happily about how her yappy, bony, ugly Chihuahua thing is always super excited to see new faces in town, and introduces them to Dr. Yuan, the pretty young veterinarian giving lectures on responsible pet ownership in the park all day. “For youth awareness,” Mayor Shelby points out, while Dean wipes pie crumbs off his hand and shakes the good Doctor’s hand. “Dr. Yuan is a very big part of our town’s extraordinary record with animals,” the mayor adds, with a not-so-secretive wink at Sam.
“Uh, wow. That’s great,” Sam manages, while Dr. Yuan blushes a little.
“She’s giving me more credit than I deserve,” the vet assures them. “I just moved here a couple of years ago hoping to start up my own practice. I guess I lucked out by picking the one town in the entire country completely devoted to their animals.”
“Was it always like this, then?” Dean asks, while Cas has a staring contest with a wily looking grey parrot sitting on one of the vet tech’s shoulders.
“Oh, no, not exactly,” Dr. Yuan admits. “I mean, everyone took good care of their animals of course, but it wasn’t like…well, like this,” she pauses to gesture to the surrounding festivities like the visual does more for what she means than anything she could possibly say. “It actually wasn’t until a little over two years ago, when Dodger-he was one of my first patients after moving here-saved his owner Bill from a house fire. Bill had an alcohol problem at the time and had accidentally fallen asleep with a lit cigarette on the couch after a bender. The whole house was up by the time he woke up, and Dodger basically had him half-dragged out the door at that point.”
“That’s amazing,” Sam says, all earnest sincerity. Cas continues to have his stare-off with the parrot, which prompts Dean to nudge him and give him a significant look, which the angel only returns with a confused furrowing of his brow. Dean decides to ignore him.
“So ever since Dodger, the town’s been animal crazy, huh?” he asks, and flashes an appreciative grin at the vet. “Sounds like a nice place to settle down, then.”
She laughs a little-no one is immune to the Winchester charm-and shakes her head. “Well, they didn’t go gaga for the idea right away exactly, but after Dodger saved his life, Bill took it as a personal mission to stop drinking and start rescuing strays and educating people about pet ownership. The two of us kind of teamed up, and when more and more amazing animal stories started popping up all over town, I guess people kind of took it as a sign.”
“I’d like to meet this Dodger,” Sam says. “He sounds like a real special dog.”
Dr. Yuan nods. “He was. But I’m afraid Dodger had to be put down after the horrible burns he suffered dragging Bill from the fire. There’s a memorial for him in the cemetery that Bill set up if you want to take a look at it, though. I swear every time I go past it I feel like it’s watching over us, encouraging all the other animals to be as extraordinary as he was.”
Mayor Shelby pipes up then, still holding her ugly bony Chihuahua thing as she wipes at her eyes, clearly touched. “And they have been! Their devotion to us made us realize that maybe we should try to do the same for them and for each other. It’s selfish to just keep taking and taking and taking from someone who loves us and not try to give anything back to them, isn’t it?” she asks the dog in her arms, which just yips and wags its tail a little bit. “Hence, our weekly pet fair!”
Dean almost balks at the thought of this ridiculousness being a weekly event, but before he can he catches Cas’s eye, which looks vaguely thoughtful as he soaks in the mayor’s words. He finally tears himself away from his new parrot buddy. “I think it is very nice that you wish to acknowledge these animals’ devotion to you in such a way,” he says with solemn sincerity. They are the first words he’s uttered since they parked the Impala back in the grocery lot, next to the cat-hair knitting club.
Dr. Yuan chuckles. “Well, given my track record with them, I’d be a monster not to,” she admits.
“Track record?” Sam asks, all polite curiousness, and for a brief moment, something apprehensive flashes in Dr. Yuan’s eyes, like she’s getting a bad taste in her mouth about something and doesn’t want to dwell on it.
“It was… it was a long time ago,” she hedges, breaking eye contact to glance down at the ground to her left. She hugs herself a little too, and Dean has interviewed enough witnesses and loved ones over the years to know exactly when someone is going to a place that isn’t their happy one.
Sam manages to look appropriately sympathetic without losing that wide-eyed, curiosity that makes him completely harmless looking despite his massive size. “Dr. Yuan, did you have an experience kind of like Bill did?” he deduces like a fucking pro without spooking the vet too bad. Dean’s brother is like the Oprah of Hunters or something.
“I had an abusive boyfriend my freshman year in college and my first dog, Pepper, fought him off when he got drunk one night and attacked me with a knife.” She wraps her arms around herself a little tighter and her voice goes a little softer. “Pepper’s ashes are in a jar in my office, and every time I look at them, I think about how I might not be here doing anything if it hadn’t been for her. She’s the reason I decided to become a veterinarian.”
“Wow,” is all Dean can say, mostly because Mayor Shelby is getting even more choked up now, and Dr. Yuan seems right on her heels. Sam has the sad puppy face of his on that means he genuinely sympathizes and everyone can tell him all their secrets because he’s their new best friend forever.
Dean kind of wants to sidestep them all and go get another poodle pie.
Luckily a vet tech scrambles over before things can get awkward, informing Dr. Yuan that the kids are settling down for their pet grooming lecture now and that she should probably go get ready for that.
“Right. Of course,” she says, then turns to the Winchesters and Cas. “You’re welcome to stay and watch if you’d like. Also, Mrs. Marner will probably be showing up soon with the puppies she’s been fostering this last month, if any of you are looking to adopt.”
“Uh, maybe?” Sam responds, which earns a small smile from the vet before she composes herself again and heads back up to her little makeshift demonstration stage.
“I do not think it would be wise to take a puppy with us on the road,” Castiel puts out there, with a frown at Sam. He is apparently the poster boy for responsible pet ownership.
Sam sighs while Mayor Shelby twitters and excuses herself to take a seat for the demonstration, though not before encouraging them all to at least stay and play with the puppies for a little while, on account of it being “good for the soul” or something.
She leaves the three of them standing alongside the path in the park looking thoughtful.
“So?” Sam asks. “Anything?”
Dean fingers the cord with Cas’s grace on it and shrugs. “No reaction from mini-Cas,” he reports.
Castiel closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. After a minute, he opens his eyes again. “It is here somewhere. It is not making its exact location known to me at this moment.”
“Gotta show it some devotion before it’ll drop its pants,” Dean reminds him. Cas looks at him like he has no idea what that means, but that he also doesn’t care enough to ask.
“Well,” Sam offers in the meantime, sounding pensive, “from the sounds of things, it looks like there are two places it can be. One, in Dodger’s memorial at the pet cemetery or two, in that urn in Dr. Yuan’s office.”
“Two places that we know of,” Dean reminds him. “We are living in the land of the super pets or something. I mean, what about that burglar attacking cat? Or the starving dog house?”
“Symptoms,” Castiel buts in. “The timing of Gabriel’s grace being released coincides with the two incidents Sam mentioned. Dr. Yuan indicated that she arrived here at close to the same time that Dodger saved his owner’s life. It must be one of those two incidents that drew the grace here. The other is a result, not the cause.”
“Nerds,” Dean mutters, when Sam just looks on in agreement with Cas, like that’s what he’d been thinking all along. “Okay, fine. My money’s on the grave.”
“I disagree,” Castiel tells him. “I believe Dr. Yuan’s arrival with Pepper’s ashes might have been the cause. Dodger is more likely to have been an effect brought on by her presence here. If this is an archangel’s devotion, then it signifies an attachment to something or someone comparable to an angel’s devotion to our Father. I believe that Dr. Yuan’s devotion to her dog, the fact that she has continued to live her life in accordance with honoring the memory of that animal is more significant than the other case.”
Dean frowns. “Hey, we don’t know the whole Dodger story yet either. Poor guy lived with the town drunk, right? Still gave up his life to save him no matter how shitty it might have gotten like that.”
Castiel considers this. “I suppose this is also a possibility,” he concedes.
Dean eyes Sam. “All right, tie breaker?”
Sam shrugs. “I think it could go either way, really.”
Dean sighs. “Useless, man. What am I paying you for?”
Sam flips him off. “Obviously we have to investigate both either way, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean goes to buy another one of those poodle-shaped pies first, though.
*****
It is while Dean is munching on his third dog-shaped apple pie that a general cry of distress disturbs the peaceful weekend atmosphere; Sam and Dean’s heads instantly snap up at the sound while Castiel tenses beside Dean and steps just a little bit in front of them both. Which looks kind of ridiculous because Cas is the smallest one of all of them. But the gesture is, Sam supposes, appreciated in terms of sentiment.
A general commotion erupts after that first scream, as a rather plump woman in a floral-patterned mumu comes thundering into the park with a box in her hands and tears in her eyes. “Dr. Yuan!” she sobs, and is moving at a pretty impressive clip for a woman her size, “Please help Fancy!”
Dr. Yuan frowns and steps off the stage, leaving a confused puppy in a sudsy bath of water and flea shampoo, pulling off her latex gloves and instantly accepting the box. When she looks into it and sees what she sees, she turns positively green around the gills for a moment, before taking a deep breath and tucking the box under her arm. The vet tech at her side actually turns his head to the left and vomits on the grass.
Dr. Yuan ignores him. “We need to get to my office,” she tells the woman in the mumu in the kind of calm tone you have to force in order to keep yourself from breaking out into hysterics yourself. “I’ll see what I can do for Fancy there.”
The sobbing woman nods, and before a crowd can gather, the vet is off, striding determinedly across the park towards Main Street.
Sam goes up to the retching vet tech with a cup of water before anyone else can ask him what’s going on. The poor young man takes it with a nod of thanks and rinses his mouth out, before wiping his mouth with the back of a shaky hand.
“That bad, huh?” Sam asks after a moment, careful to keep his tone deeply sympathetic but not too grim.
“God, that poor cat was half eaten,” the tech murmurs wretchedly. “Must have been a wild animal attack.”
“Those happen a lot here?” Sam asks, looking back over his shoulder at Dean, who is still eating his pie while the rest of the townsfolk murmur in worry around them.
“No, not really,” the tech answers. “I mean, the worst I’ve seen since I started working here was a couple of porcupine quills in a puppy’s nose. That… there’s no way Fancy is going to make it. Poor Miss Carter, she really loves that cat.”
“You okay?” Sam asks next, because the guy looks like he might start retching all over again just thinking about what he’d seen.
“Yeah. Uh… I better uh, I better finish the presentation,” he manages, and climbs back to his feet. He heads for the stage again, where the puppy in the bath water has started to try and climb out. Sam pads back over to Dean.
“Something the matter?” Dean asks him, around a mouthful of apples and crust.
“Animal attack,” Sam answers, though part of him thinks that coincidences don’t exist in Winchester land, and that their arrival here being timed with the vicious mauling of an innocent cat might be some sort of cosmic sign (of demons) or something.
“Sam?” Dean asks, and is probably thinking the same thing Sam is.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “I think we might have company.”
Their suspicions are only confirmed fifteen minutes later, when a distraught Mrs. Marner arrives to the festivities with only one puppy and a horrible story about how she’d found the remains of the other six scattered across her backyard earlier this morning. The weird part is, Mrs. Marner informs them in between sobs, is that she’s certain all the puppies had been sleeping peacefully inside last night, in their pen where she always leaves them.
Dean stops eating his poodle pie.
*****
“You think something is maybe following us?” Sam asks Dean a little while later, after they’ve checked in to a little bed and breakfast in the edge of town that seems to smell perpetually of fresh baked goods and laundry detergent.
Dean shrugs, because things have followed them their whole lives. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t stop for a little bit and appreciate the fact that they are renting a room that actually has clean sheets and a small basket of homemade cookies in the corner, wrapped in cheerful colored cellophane with a little card that’s got paw print trim around the edges. It even reads “Welcome!” on it in curvy, elegant print. Dean grabs a cookie and unwraps it, jamming a third of it into his mouth and thoroughly delighting in the fact that these were clearly made-at the latest-this morning. “Maybe,” he answers his brother after a beat, around a mouthful of awesome, “I don’t know. It’s not the shard doing anything weird is it?” he asks, turning to Cas just to make sure. He finishes off his cookie in the meantime.
Cas seems kind of affronted by the notion that it could be. “There is no part of an angel that seeks to harm pointlessly,” Castiel tells him, flatly. “It is far more likely that we are being followed.” He frowns. “This is a great inconvenience, as we have not found the shard of devotion yet.”
Dean shrugs. “Fine, whatever. We can multitask, we’ve done it before. To tell you the truth, this is exactly what we need.”
Sam gives him this incredulous look.
Dean shrugs. “What? I’m kind of in the mood to kill something. Feels like these past few weeks have been a little too much uh… other stuff and not enough hunting,” he says, using other stuff in lieu of hugs and feelings, mostly because he never wants to say hugs and feelings out loud together in a sentence where there are people-namely Sam-within earshot. He claps his hands together in a vaguely anticipatory manner. “All right. I’ll swing around to the outskirts of town, maybe pay Dodger’s grave a visit, and see if I can’t find any evidence to tell us what’s out there killing puppies while I’m at it. Sam can hit the books. Cas, you swing by the vet’s after hours, and check if your grace bit isn’t in there. We’ll be able handle this all in one night, if we do it right.”
Sam and Cas share a skeptical look at that, which makes Dean think that must mean Sam’s forgiven Cas for the whole whoops, forgot your soul thing now, because they only ever do that when they’re in agreement on something on a molecular level. And right now, they are clearly in perfect nerd boy harmony.
“If it is not just a coincidental hunt-which is unlikely- and we are in fact being followed-which is far more likely-I believe it would be unwise to split up.”
“Yeah, well if we are being followed it’s either by Crowley and his goons or Raphael and his goons or both, and if either of those douches gets hold of the grace piece before we do the world is screwed, so obviously my plan is the superior one here.”
“No one else offered a plan for yours to be superior to,” Sam reminds him, like a dick. “Cas was just explaining how yours was weak.”
Dean crosses his arms. “Look, the faster we do this the better, right? So let’s handle it and get the hell out of Dodge.”
“And if demons capture you?” Castiel asks.
Dean shrugs. “I’ll pray.” Pause. Frown. “You can hear me still, right?” he asks, suddenly realizing that maybe half a grace can’t hear prayers. Or maybe grace that isn’t Cas’s can’t hear him, or something. His hand goes up around the vial hanging from his neck again and what he gets is a reassuring pulse against his skin there. On the other hand, Castiel himself stares at Dean for a while. Eventually the angel nods, almost imperceptibly. “I will hear you, Dean,” he says.
Dean drops his hand in relief. “Well, all right then. This plan is officially on,” he declares, standing up straight again and heading out the door. “But first, food.”
“Dude, “Sam complains at his back, “you just had three pieces of pie and a cookie!”
“Pregaming, Sammy! It’s called priming the pump,” Dean calls over his shoulder with a wave. “It’s good for the system.”
Under the cotton of his t-shirt, Dean thinks mini-Cas feels like he’s laughing.
*****
When the Impala rolls back through the town’s main thoroughfare a few minutes later, Dean can’t help but rubberneck a little as they pass the veterinary office on Central Avenue; it’s so crowded that there’s been spill out from the small waiting room onto the sidewalk outside the doors. Kids are crying, people are generally looking haggard and distressed, and one woman has her knees up against her chest and is actually rocking to herself like a crazy person. Dean shares a look with Sam as he parks the car on a side street and the three of them get out, the goal of the lone restaurant down the street momentarily forgotten.
“What’s going on?” Sam manages to ask when an exhausted looking vet tech pokes his head outside to call on a family waiting for news about their pet rabbits.
“Wolves, maybe,” the tech mutters, waving the family in ahead of him. “Or coyotes? I don’t know, man. Usually if it’s wild animals they’ll drag the bodies away, eat most of it, you know? Sometimes all of it. This just looks like…maiming.”
“Seem weird to you?” Dean asks, without preamble. The tech looks surprised at the question, but after a moment lowers his voice.
“Yeah, man. I mean, how would a coyote get into someone’s house? Or into cages? They can’t walk through doors.”
“Yeah, weird,” Dean echoes. “You sure it’s animals? Maybe someone in town isn’t as happy about the animal craze as the rest of you guys.”
“Has to be,” the tech tells him. “There are claw marks and bite marks people just can’t make on their own. Though…”
“Though?”
He shakes his head. “Smells a little bit like rotten eggs. No animals I know of smell like that less they live near a hot spring or something. And the closest one I know of is two states over.”
Dean feels his jaw go tight at the news. Shit.
Sam jumps in. “Maybe it’s uh, habitat destruction,” he reassures the tech. “Loss of food sources will make wolves travel further than they usually do to find food, right?”
The tech nods. “Yeah man, you’re probably right. Look, I better go…”
“Don’t let us keep you,” Sam says obligingly, and the tech disappears back into the office without another word.
“Demons,” he sighs. “Great.”
“Not just demons,” Dean growls, feeling a sudden and resounding loss in appetite. “Hell hounds.”
Sam nods in perfect understanding. “Crowley?”
“Probably,” Dean grunts, through gritted teeth.
That decided, they walk right past the restaurant and back to the car again.
*****
Some hours after sunset Dean finds himself at the local pet cemetery, looking from headstone to headstone for Dodger’s memorial while keeping an eye out for any (admittedly) invisible Hell hounds. Sam is with Cas because Dean knows Sam is safer with Cas, and because Dean had basically thrown a fit until his brother had agreed to accompany the angel. “You know, in case he is right about the ashes,” Dean had said, in his most convincing tones, “he’ll be all woozy after he gets the grace piece and someone will have to be there to make sure Crowley or Raphael isn’t planning to jump him while he’s recoiling, man. I’m counting on you, Sam.”
Sam had looked at him like he’d known Dean was full of shit, but had conceded eventually, and so Dean is here, walking the cemetery alone despite the fact that Hell hounds are on the loose and probably want to eat his face again.
Well, not alone, alone, he supposes. He holds min-Cas up kind of like a maglite. “Got anything for me, man?” he asks it, and it glows a little brighter. “You’re the dowsing rod or whatever, right?”
Another flash at the words, and when Dean turns right, the glow gets more intense. He turns left again, and it fades. “Huh, useful,” he informs the grace, and feels a thrilled hum against his palm when he says so.
Clearly he is now kicking ass at this whole nurturing thing. Or something.
Dodger’s memorial turns out to be a ten foot monstrosity sticking up over the general airspace of the cemetery; a life-sized statue of a handsome looking German Shepherd surrounded by stone-carvings of flame with a burning house in the backdrop. He’s pretty sure the monument has its own light source on top of that too.
Whistling to himself, Dean comes to a stop at the base of the statue and looks it up and down speculatively. Mini-Cas kind of gives a vague flutter when they stop moving, prompting Dean to eye it again. “So is that a sign that I’m on the right track, or are you just in love with the sound of my voice?”
The grace gives another warm pulse that doesn’t help Dean out either way, and with a sigh, he pulls out his phone to call Sam in the hopes of finding out if they’ve got anything on their end yet and whether or not he should deface this town memorial in search of buried grace. Part of him hopes Cas ended up being right and it’s embedded in a bunch of dead dog ashes, because this thing is way too big to take down without drawing a ton of attention to himself.
The phone manages to ring once before Dean gets jumped.
*****
Castiel feels a small thrill of triumph as he and Sam appear in the dark of Dr. Yuan’s office and he feels his grace react immediately to the proximity of the shard. Of course devotion should be here, in a place where one creature’s sacrifice for the sake of her human’s had been enough to warrant a lifetime of gratitude, a lifetime of devoting one’s purpose toward the sake of that which had saved her.
“Cas?” Sam whispers, when he sees the look on the angel’s face, and Castiel simply nods once, before he is crossing towards the office’s small fireplace and the mantle on which the ashes of Dr. Yuan’s dog sits.
“How do we uh, how do we devote it into coming out?” Sam asks after a beat.
“It should not be a problem,” Castiel answers him as he runs his hand over the sides of the urn, contemplating. Surely his devotion is unquestionable. If Pepper died once for Dr. Yuan, then Castiel has died twice for humanity, for his Father’s favored children, for Dean. He will probably die again for all those things as well, because there is no other point in such an eternal creature disappearing from the fabric of the universe unless it is for those things.
He can feel the pulse of the shard under his palm after a moment, as if it is intrigued by the picture of devotion he presents, though not yet convinced. He closes his eyes and opens himself to its radiance. Mostly, he thinks of Dean.
And that is when chaos erupts in the office.
A throb of warning, tinny and weak to even his ears twinges at the back of his mind and suddenly his eyes fly open, just in time to see Dean appear from nowhere on the other side of the room, looking disoriented and bleeding from the temple.
He is surrounded by Hell hounds.
“Hello, Castiel,” a familiar voice breathes from beside him, and the angel spins in time to see Crowley plop down into Dr. Yuan’s chair, fingers steepled and grin infuriatingly superior as his eyes rake over the angel’s body in a more than suggestive manner. “How are those archangel steroids working out for you? You look bigger. Stronger. Can’t say I recognize you exactly, but that’s just what happens when you upgrade, I suppose.” Crowley tilts his head slightly, to examine Castiel’s backside then, just because.
“Crowley,” Castiel bites out, while Sam shouts “Dean!” and makes a move towards his brother on instinct. Castiel’s hand shoots out and he pulls the younger Winchester back automatically, keeping him from tromping right into the circle of Hell hounds currently imprisoning his brother.
“Tough lot to find when you don’t exactly know what you’re looking for, but we tracked you down eventually. Humans have such a…unique scent,” the demon declares from the chair, picking up random animal-themed knickknacks from the desk and shaking them absently. “Ones that’ve been to the pit especially.”
“What do you want?” Castiel asks, though the question is needless. He most likely wants Castiel dead. Dean and Sam as well.
Crowley just leers at the angel before picking at the undersides of his nails with Dr. Yuan’s letter opener. “Nothing about what I want has changed, Castiel,” he says pleasantly. “Only the conditions under which I get it. You see, your big brother and I have a deal on the table right now. He gets the remaining shards of old Gabriel’s grace, powers up, and uses it to squash you and your little rebel forces up in the clouds. I help him with that, with you in particular, and he helps me open the door to purgatory. We split the winnings 40-60. Not exactly the percentage I was looking for when I went to him, but after my last buyer bailed on me like he did, I had to take what I could get.”
Castiel eyes him suspiciously. He has worked with the demon for long enough now to know that there is a secondary agenda in the works at the moment, and that is the only reason why Dean is currently still alive. “You are unhappy with your current arrangement,” the angel states plainly, even as he feels his sword slipping down from his sleeve, into the palm of his hand.
Crowley smiles. “Ah see, that’s the kind of repertoire you develop with a person when you’ve worked together for as long as you and I have, Castiel. You’re exactly right. I would like to make a deal. Insurance, mostly, because to be perfectly honest, I can’t trust that old Raph will go through with his end of the bargain once all the pieces are in play. I’m beginning to learn that angels aren’t at all trustworthy like that.” He pauses to sigh. “My fault really. Too many bloody movies where you lot are the good guys, I suppose.”
Castiel’s eyes flicker towards Dean, who is glaring at the invisible Hell hounds at his feet for all he’s worth. Castiel knows that he could attempt to rescue Dean, but the likelihood of his being able to keep all of the hounds at bay long enough to get Dean to safety is unlikely. He is not yet at full power and as such, not in possession of all his abilities yet. He will not gamble with Dean’s life in that. “What are your terms?” he asks the demon, after a beat.
Crowley looks downright cheerful. “The deal is this. You give me your old grace. Which honestly, isn’t such a big deal, considering that you won’t need it after you reformat the whole drive to install the latest OS. In exchange, I let you take on the shard you’ve found and I don’t let Growley and the boys rip Dean apart limb from limb.”
“Don’t do it, Cas,” Dean protests from the corner, fear evident in his voice but sheer stubbornness forcing him to make these demands on Castiel even as he stands in no position to. “He kills me, you just bring me back again, okay?”
Crowley looks at Dean like he is a dear but mentally deficient pet. “He could do that, I suppose. But I have since remodeled Hell. Complete makeover, with little personal accents. It’s not the same as he remembers, you see, Dean. And if I throw you into the pit, I will put you in the deepest, darkest corner of it, and it might take another forty years for Castiel to find you again. Maybe longer. And in all that time I have with you, I will break out the vintage torture again, just in honor of your big return. How many years do you think it will take to break you this time, I wonder? And when he does find you, how much of a demon will you have already become?”
Dean squares his jaw and ignores Crowley, turning stern eyes on Castiel. “You will not deal with him again, Cas!” he says, without any consideration as to how outlandish his stipulations are.
Castiel feels his eyes narrow. “Dean,” he says, “We will give him my grace. It is obsolete and of no use to us at this point in time.”
“No!” Dean persists, and clutches at the vial in his hands with stubborn resolution. “Fuck that.”
Castiel glares. “I no longer need it.”
Dean’s eyes flare, bright and angry. “Well I’m saying maybe you do!”
“Oh isn’t this precious?” Crowley murmurs as he watches, hand on his face. “Clock’s ticking boys. I call Raphael down in thirty seconds unless we have an agreement.”
“What do you want with grace anyway?” Sam demands.
Crowley eyes him. “Given that Dean is obviously the pretty one, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. My image of you is ruined, Sam.” He tsks sadly.
“Energy,” Castiel bites out in response to Sam’s question. “It’s as you said, Sam. Grace and souls are all energy. An angel’s grace at his disposal will give him considerable-if temporary- power.”
“Then why didn’t he just take it when he had Dean?” Sam asks next. It is a valid question.
“I am still alive,” Castiel answers. “My grace is tied to this existence, and as such, I am its master unless I renounce it completely. It is the opposite of Gabriel’s grace. Because Gabriel is dead, the ties binding his grace to him have been severed and as such, it is free flowing energy that can be used by anyone who has the knowledge to harness it. Crowley cannot use my grace as long as I am alive and it still belongs to me. However, if I willingly relinquish ownership of it, those ties binding it to me will be severed as if I am dead. He may use it then.”
Sam, curious as ever, or perhaps just stalling Crowley long enough in the hopes of coming up with a plan to save his brother, pushes on. “Use it for what? If he gets the purgatory souls, why will one angel’s grace matter after all that?”
Castiel keeps a careful eye on the circling Hell hounds as he answers, mostly in the hopes that one of them will slip, will move too close to one of the others or look away for a moment. They do not. “If Raphael succeeds in opening the door to purgatory it is unlikely he will allow Crowley to live, let alone share the spoils with him. Crowley plans to use my grace as either a means to battle him or to stun him long enough to escape from him.”
“Now there is the smart one I’ve been looking for,” Crowley declares, smiling admiringly at the angel. “Anyone ever tell you how sexy that is, Cas?” He looks at his watch again. “Ten seconds, by the way… nine…”
Castiel turns back to the demon. “The deal is already done,” he says, ignoring Dean’s obstinate look of betrayal from the corner of his eyes. “The grace is yours.”
Crowley beams. “Wonderful,” he says, and from one breath to the next, is on the other side of the room, reaching out to pluck the grace from Dean’s hands.
Infuriatingly, Dean slaps the demon’s hands away. “Fuck that,” he bites out, and clutches the vial tightly against his chest. “You aren’t taking it.”
Within the vial, Castiel can see his grace flare with joy even as he feels his own irritation at Dean’s liberties threaten to overtake him.
“Dean,” Castiel grits out. “It is imprudent to fight so determinedly for a piece of energy that is no longer of use to any of us.”
“And besides,” Crowley adds, reaching out to backhand Dean viciously across the face. “A deal’s a deal.”
Dean recoils, stumbling into a wall, and Castiel takes a step forward in anger, only to be held at bay by one of the Hell hounds turning on him and snarling threateningly.
“I said fuck that,” Dean persists in the meantime, drawing the back of his hand across his bleeding mouth. “No deal, asshat. Cas can’t give you something that he already gave to someone else.”
Crowley blinks. “Come again?”
Dean stands upright again, dangling the grace in Crowley’s face. “He already gave it to me. It’s not his to deal anymore.” He turns to lock eyes with Cas then, nothing but belligerence in his expression. “And even if it was, I still wouldn’t let you have it.”
“Dean,” Castiel growls. “My grace is insignificant at this point in time. It is not worth going to hell again over.”
“Bullshit,” Dean bites out. “It’s not insignificant to me.” He holds up the vial for everyone to see. It seems impossibly bright in the darkness of the room suddenly, more filled with life than it had been since Castiel had ripped it apart from himself. “Cas, no part of you doesn’t matter, you dumbass,” Dean presses. “All of you, every bit of you is part of how we’ve gotten as far as we have, isn’t it?” he shakes the cord clutched in his fist, “All that we went through, the fact that we managed to fight together to stop the fuckin’ apocalypse makes this is part of my family now. So you don’t go giving it away to demons, even when they ask nicely. You don’t throw family away, Cas.”
Castiel stares, something flaring in his chest with a fierce familiarity that is not unlike how he had felt standing in Chuck’s kitchen the day Lucifer had been freed, waiting for the end to come. Dean had gone to Hell for Sam once and what it means when he says would do it again for Castiel.
“Yes,” he finds himself answering, wide-eyed and wondering even as Crowley glares and prepares to snap his fingers, to call his dogs forward to kill the human. “I understand, Dean.”
And then the room explodes in a brilliant flash of white.
*****
When the shard breaks free in a magnificent display of ground shaking and lights exploding overhead, it sends everyone scrambling for purchase, demons and demon dogs included. In fact the Hell hounds yelp and recoil and Crowley seems to be smoking a little, and it is in the midst of that chaos that Dean sees Castiel light up like a Christmas tree for a moment, before swaying forward awkwardly, but thankfully maintaining his balance. It does not escape Dean’s notice that the angel sword is out and clutched tightly in Cas’s hands, and if there were ever a moment to use a diversion to his advantage, Dean supposes this is it.
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and charges to the other side of the room, hoping very much that this means no being ripped apart by Hell hounds.
One kind of latches onto his pant leg last minute and Dean curses because maybe this means he’s a goner anyway, except that before the thing can crawl its way up to his meatier parts, there’s a yelp and a scream and something that sounds a lot like a sizzle and a pop.
Cas pulls Dean behind him, and when Dean looks closely, he thinks he can see smoke rising from the tip of Cas’s sword-Cas’s archangel sword- that means the dog that just ruined Dean’s last pair of good jeans just bit the dust in retribution. Great.
Or it would be, if Dean didn’t think mini-Cas was looking a little green around the gills again, somehow impossibly small and cold against his chest, probably feeling about as overwhelmed by an archangel being erected in front of it as Dean is.
“Cas,” he starts, but Cas doesn’t look at him, just keeps his eyes on Crowley and his pack of demon puppies while carefully keeping both Winchesters behind him.
Crowley, looking a little stunned-singed around the edges is the best word for it- takes an unwitting step backwards, just as Cas gets this gleam in his eye that says this demon is toast.
“Right then. Pleasure doing business with you all,” Crowley manages, even with Cas bearing down on him with all the righteous fury of one of Heaven’s top seven.
The only thing that saves Crowley from getting a face full of pumped up angel grace is the snarling of one of the hounds, as it appears to jump up in a last-ditch effort to protect its master by latching onto Castiel’s sword arm.
“Good boy, Growley,” Crowley says quickly, if somewhat sadly. The demon’s eyes narrow at Castiel, flashing black. “You’ll regret this, Castiel. I can guarantee you that.”
And then the demon is gone, leaving Cas with an incredibly devoted dog from Hell gnawing viciously on his arm.
“Cas?!” Dean demands, about to step the hell in with the demon killing knife except that Sam is holding him back.
“I am fine,” Castiel intones calmly, like there isn’t four-legged demon spawn currently trying to take his limbs off. He reaches out with his free hand and placing in the air where Dean supposes the hound’s head is and for a moment, his palm glows.
The growling, gnawing noises instantly turned to pained yelps and an explosion of black smoke.
Castiel shrugs his arm with a grunt, and Dean can only assume that the hound has been angelically exorcised just like a normal demon.
“Did we get the piece?” Sam breathes, almost unnecessarily. He looks kind of bewildered by the sudden swing in events though-and understandably so- so Dean will allow it. “How did we get it?”
“Apparently your brother and I are more devoted to one another than anything else in this room,” Castiel answers vaguely, earning Dean a look from Sam that has his little brother’s eyebrows somewhere up around the ozone layer.
“Oh really?” Sam asks.
“Shut it,” Dean grinds out, because he’s still mostly irritated at Cas for being so ready to jump into deals with demons-that demon in particular- again.
In fact, he’s just about to lay into Cas for that little bit of brilliant strategizing, except that the angel stumbles a little right at that moment, just slightly forward, and Dean had forgotten that grace shards apparently have a recoil harder than a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.
So instead of yelling, Dean ends up kind of…hovering. And hoping his angel isn’t going to explode or anything sometime soon. “Cas?” he offers, cautiously.
“I am fine,” Cas repeats again, shaking his head slightly. “I am feeling…much stronger.”
“Too strong?” Dean cuts in.
“This grace-even incomplete-has now surpassed my own, even at its strongest,” Castiel reports, sounding a little breathy and exhilarated. It is not unlike the future!Cas, who had been tripping balls for about 80% of the time Dean had interacted with him, so this sign is not encouraging. “I will grow accustomed to it shortly,” the angel adds, like that’s what Dean is concerned about here.
“Yeah, okay,” Dean mutters, feeling completely unconvinced and mostly helpless in the face of whatever the hell is going on inside of Cas right now. Mini-Cas choruses in mournful agreement, pulsing just once under Dean’s hand and catching Castiel’s fever-bright eyes with its light. Castiel watches the grace for a bit, and Dean wonders if he really is tripping balls or something, except via the electrical surge of being plugged into an archangel outlet instead of from any pills or powders.
“What?” Sam asks, when they just kind of end up standing there for a moment. “Is something the matter?” he adds, in a tone that actually means hey maybe we should get out of here.
“It just seems so… tiny,” Castiel admits, still watching his old grace. “I did not realize how small it truly was.” He pauses to look at Dean again. “I still do not think it is something worth going to Hell over, Dean.”
“Fine,” Dean grunts back, protectively tucking the vial back under his shirt again. “but it matters to me.”
Castiel nods once. “Then do as you please. But know that I will not let you go to Hell again if it is my power to stop it,” the angel says, eyes locked on the older Winchester’s in a stubborn, uncompromising sort of way that simply confirms that Cas is part of the family now, blood or no blood.
Dean looks back at him and hopes he is conveying exactly how much he’s absolutely not backing down from this either.
In the meantime, Sam fidgets. “Great. Good to hear, guys. I’m pretty sure the flashes of light and explosions coming from the vet’s office are going to bring the police here um, any second now. So…” he waves vaguely at Cas, in a way that means maybe he should angel-express them the hell out of here before they get arrested for exploding buildings.
Castiel finally tears his gaze from Dean’s. “Of course.”
Before anyone can say anything else, Dean feels fingertips being pressed to his forehead and the sensation of the bottom dropping out of his stomach which means they’re across town and back in their room at the bed and breakfast again.
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