Supernatural- "The Law of Conservation of Energy" (Ch 5)
Five
They end up getting Cas back to the motel in one piece without drawing too much unwanted attention from the town’s already distrusting inhabitants by feigning smiles and shrugging helplessly to any overly attentive or suspicious strangers while declaring, ‘alcoholism is in the guy’s genetics’ or ‘our friend’s got a bad case of the narcolepsy, what’re you gonna do?’ in turns.
Once back in the safety of their room, the feigned smiles fade and Dean spends the rest of the night and the rest of his energy thereafter muttering under his breath and stitching the former angel up while Sam sits in a corner of the room doing research on anything that sounds like it might be a shard of archangel grace.
Sam knows that if he doesn’t do it, it probably won’t get done in time (if at all), mostly because Dean is going to be completely useless until Cas wakes up, and then, once Cas does wake up, Dean will continue to be useless, except he’ll also be busy yelling and fussing over Cas about the necessity of being less of a secretive stubborn moron while he makes the former angel eat a sandwich or something. It’s the first part of the necessary post-evil lying-in that usually comes with the massive amounts of blood loss, general disorientation, and Dean’s growled accusations and secret manful tears. Sam secretly calls it chapter one of the Winchester redemptive process: get fucked up and then get nursed back to health by the person who loves you most but who also doesn’t necessarily approve of your life choices up until this point.
Sam knows this part of the routine by heart now at least, mostly because he might have been on the receiving end of the process more than once.
Which also gives Sam a particular kind of firsthand insight on the whole evil-not-evil debate. Enough, at least, that it has part of him waiting for the other shoe to drop, half of him expecting Cas to fall off the don’t-be-evil-anymore wagon and the other half of him really hoping the worst is over on that front. Call it a manifestation of his own self-loathing or something, because his own greatest fear is-and will probably always be- that one day he’ll fall off the wagon in exactly the same way, because his good intentions always seem to end up screwing them over somehow. He hopes things work out-he will always have a part of him that wants to be able to hope- and even more than that, he will pray that he’ll be able to stop looking sideways at Cas for his role in the past year’s events someday. But at the same time, Sam doesn’t particularly expect things to go in their favor, despite the odds.
He’s not like Dean in that respect, he supposes.
For now though, all he can do is sit behind the laptop and narrow his search parameters from the day Gabriel died up until today. Even still, the search parameters for things like “truth” and “wrath” are a little bit vague, and Google keeps slapping him with heaps of useless information and more pornography than he would have expected considering the fact that the characteristics that make up angels seem to be more virtuous than not. People are gross that way, he suspects. He forces himself to keep trucking forward.
He works up until he can’t keep his eyes open on his own anymore, and then, with a single nod at Dean, announces that he’s going to hit the sack because it’s three in the morning.
Dean wordlessly nods back and doesn’t move from his chair beside the door.
*****
Several hours and one really annoying trill of birdsong later, Sam wakes up to find Dean at pretty much the exact same spot he’d left him, except with coffee and a couple of stale-looking Danishes on the table now, most likely gathered from what must have been their motel’s free continental breakfast. Cas is still pretty much out like a light, breathing even, lines of his face relaxed, and Sam decides against saying anything about Dean being the one to do the creepy watching-someone-sleep thing that he’d complained about Cas pulling on him all those years ago. Instead Sam gets up and flips his computer on again, so he can get right to work while they wait for Sleeping Beauty to stir.
Which is why, by the time Cas groans and his eyes flutter open just after lunchtime, Sam thinks he might have found something.
Of course, given that Cas has just woken up, Dean could give two shits about what Sam has found, and Sam really just wants to roll his eyes because sometimes (all the time) being the third wheel to whatever epic strangeness is going on between his brother and Castiel makes him wish his soul wasn’t intact anymore just so he wouldn’t feel like some sort of unwilling peeper into the world that is them.
“Cas?” Dean murmurs, and scrambles from the other bed to the angel’s side.
“Nnngh,” Cas manages back, very articulately. He blinks a few more times, owlishly, and looks down in confusion at his hand, which is probably throbbing right about now.
Dean gets him water, some painkillers, and the extra sandwich Sam had gone out to get two hours ago that is probably not a good idea to eat anymore. Not because it’s gone bad or anything (Sam suspects Arby’s food doesn’t actually go bad so much as it has a half-life), but mostly because all the oil must have coagulated by now to create a clear, stiff sheen of fat over the meat and cheese, thus rendering it impossible to chew.
Dean seems to realize this a second later and discards the sandwich on the nightstand. He crouches next to Castiel and watches the angel down his water and his pills like a hawk. When he thinks the Cas has had enough, he eases the glass away and then furrows his brow, clearly preparing for either a speech or an accusation, possibly both. Sam’s been there, done that.
“Well?” Dean grunts, and Sam figures that’s a both if he’s ever heard one.
Castiel looks confused.
Dean scowls. “What the hell was that? You didn’t say you were going to pass out, man.”
“I did not know I was going to pass out,” Cas answers, in all fairness.
Dean’s frown deepens. That obviously hadn’t been the answer he’d been wanting. Though what answer he had wanted Sam has no idea. He never did, in situations like this one.
Cas frowns back because he obviously doesn’t know why Dean is frowning. Sam thinks this is a vicious cycle of UST or something. He clears his throat.
Both sets of eyes are immediately on him. “What?” Dean asks, still sounding incredibly irate. Cas just continues to look confused.
Sam fights the urge to roll his eyes because this is a woefully familiar song and dance, despite everything. Maybe he should be relieved that even after all the stuff that’s changed, some things still remain intact through it all in the end. “I think I found something,” he says instead of dwell on that, and pulls up a link to an online article from a newspaper in Georgia. “Apparently, there’s a courtroom where several murderers have all accidentally confessed to their crimes after taking the stand.”
Dean blinks. “So, what, you think archangel grace is making them feel guilty?”
Sam shrugs. “Truthful, at least.” He scrolls through the article again. “According to this article, everyone who takes the stand feels an inexplicable urge to speak honestly about…well, everything. Particularly things they feel guilty about, or I guess, have regrets over? Apparently one of the witnesses even blurted that she’d once taken ecstasy back in college and thinks it really messed her up, which hadn’t been relevant to the case, though it did ruin her credibility as a witness. Defense might have gotten a rapist off based on that if the guy hadn’t taken the stand after her and confessed to it right off the bat.”
“Is this sort of behavior peculiar in a courtroom?” Castiel asks.
Sam sighs. Dean does too, but it sounds way more indulgent than Sam’s. “Yeah, Cas. That’s weird.” He turns to Sam. “But do you think it’s weird enough to be bits of archangel dust?”
Sam shrugs. “I don’t see anything else as weird so far.”
Dean eyes Castiel dubiously, like he’s not sure the angel will survive a two day drive to Georgia cramped in the backseat of the car. “Cas? Feeling any Gabe tingles in your Spidey sense?”
Castiel doesn’t even bother asking what the heck that means, which, Sam supposes, means the guy is learning. “I will have to be closer to determine whether it is grace affecting these people, but as it is our only lead thus far, I don’t see the harm in investigating further.”
Dean sighs. “I fucking hate Georgia in the summer,” he declares. Sam figures this means they’re heading out just as soon as Cas can stay vertical on his own again.
“Sam,” Dean barks in the meantime, and gestures to the door with his chin as he takes up his perch on the second bed again. “Go get Cas another sandwich, will you?” It is obvious he has put himself on fallen angel watch for the rest of the night.
Sam closes his laptop and sincerely hopes Cas is vertical again real soon.
*****
Georgia is already muggy enough at the beginning of May to let Dean know it’s going to be another one of those miserable summers in the south, the kind that, as a kid, had suffocated him as he’d sat in abandoned houses or motel rooms with crappy (or no) air conditioning, waiting for Dad to show up again while he placated a whining and miserable Sam as best he could by giving him the spot closest to the wall unit or scraping together the rest of their cash to dash out to a vending machine for a cold soda.
Cas is reminding him a lot of that young, miserable Sam right now, as he gets his first ever taste of a swampy southern summer decked out in full humanity. He sweats and glares and generally looks like the most overgrown, miserable puppy in a suit ever. Press passes hang from around all of their necks, a nice-looking camera poised in Sam’s hand as they fake through their credentials and their story about how they’re here to write an article about the miracle chair that everyone’s been so excited about for the past two plus years.
So far, they’ve heard testimonies from judges and read statements by witnesses that say it’s some sort of miracle stand, that God is passing judgment down from above and forcing sinners to confess their crimes. Some jurors even claim they’d seen glowing light emanating from the stand as criminals stood to speak the truth of their deeds.
“Well,” a shy bailiff-who somehow manages to dwarf Sam with his sheer size- begins during their official tour of the courthouse, rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully, “First time it happened, we all thought it was a fluke or something. This case had been in trial for ‘bout four years ‘n suddenly went all up when the defendant just blurted out exactly what he’d done. Even told the judge where the bodies could be found, ‘n how he just hadn’t been able to stand the sight of those poor young ladies’ showing off all that flesh and still purporting to be educated college women. It was kinda disturbing, but I think he felt better after he said everything. Laid it all out in the open for God to judge, you know?”
Dean blinks when he feels Sam’s elbow suddenly in his ribcage.
“Er, right. Cathartic, or something,” Dean answers, and forces himself to look the bailiff in the eyes instead of staring at the space behind his massive frame, where Cas is examining the door to the courtroom like his Spidey senses are going crazy. From where it rests in the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket, Dean can feel Cas’s grace give a little tug in tandem with Cas’s crazy door gazing, and Dean supposes that means there’s a piece of Gabriel on that witness stand after all.
The bailiff, as if sensing everyone’s impatience, sheepishly turns to open the door and usher them inside, the courtroom currently empty and silent with most everyone gone for the weekend.
Castiel’s brow furrows while Dean feels a strange electric jolt in his chest once they step inside the room itself. The angel is compelled forward suddenly, pushing past the bailiff and heading in a straight line directly to the stand. Sam is the one who smiles awkwardly at the bailiff on Cas’s behalf and shrugs in a helpless kind of way at the former angel’s antics. Dean shoots a look over his shoulder that demands that Sam distract the bailiff by asking more questions, while Dean makes his way to Cas’s side.
“It must be here,” the angel says, kind of needlessly.
Dean blinks, hand absently going up to brush over the vial of grace that is buzzing tensely under his shirt. “You sure?” he asks anyway, just because.
“Though I cannot feel it myself, my grace is visible through your clothing now,” Castiel answers flatly, and when Dean looks down at his chest he can see it, like someone had actually left a flashlight on inside his button up. “Through the spell, it can recognize it as Gabriel’s grace now that we are close enough to the piece.”
“Well, okay then,” Dean whispers back, feeling kind of relieved that this had gone so easily, all things considered. “Pry it loose and let’s get out of here. Sam’s distracting Bruce Banner over there, which means we need to finish before he decides to get angry and Hulk out.”
Castiel frowns. “I’m…not sure how to get it loose,” he admits after a moment, and reaches out, touching his hand tentatively to the woodwork. Dean feels the grace in his pocket flare a little bit at that, but nothing happens beyond that, except Castiel getting a frustrated look on his face. “It is certain that the shard is here, but I cannot simply take it out.”
Dean is incredulous. “Then what?!” he hisses under his breath. “Don’t tell me we gotta steal the stand, Cas. I’m not stealing the whole fucking witness stand.” Sure, Winchesters are great at stealing things, but not that great. That’s some fucking David Copperfield level shit, and Dean has no lovely assistant in a short skirt to distract the guards with. Just Sam. Who stopped looking cute in skirts by the time he was four.
Castiel looks at him at that moment like he’s the stupidest thing in the world. Dean would be affronted, but Cas somehow manages to do it like Dean is also an enormous and interesting mystery all at the same time, which makes him slightly less affronted, for whatever reason. “Of course we cannot take the stand, Dean,” he murmurs. “It would not fit in the car.”
A beat.
“So, what? We ask it to come out nicely?” Dean drawls, after a moment of the two of them just kind of looking at each other.
Castiel shakes his head. “I do not think it will respond to that. This is the part of grace that is used for revelation, to announce the word of God and the ineffable truth of His will. From what information we have gleaned from the testimonies, and given the fact that this is where the shard chose to settle of all places, I suspect that after the oath is taken, the grace is activated by a person’s words of promise to speak only truth in the eyes of God.”
Dean tries to keep focused on what Cas is saying while Sam is making increasingly more and more deliberate gestures for the two of them to hurry up while he continues to pretend to be interested in The bailiff’s anecdotes about how so many defense attorneys are afraid of this room that whenever they find they’ve been assigned here, they beg their clients to take pleas to save them the embarrassment of an on-stand confession.
Dean looks back at Cas, who is still staring at the woodwork. “Okay, so we lure it out by swearing to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God or whatever, and then what? How do we yank this bitch out?”
Cas tilts his head thoughtfully. “Hmmm.”
Dean wants to pull hair. “Can’t you just suck it up, like Anna did with hers?”
Cas looks vaguely bemused. “That grace was her own and was innately drawn to the remnants of it that existed-however faintly-in her mortal form. This is not my grace; I have no sway over it in that manner.”
Dean eyes the stand. “Okay so from what we’ve heard, it activates when people swear to tell the truth in front of everyone and God, right? And some people say they saw it glowing. That’s got to be the intensity level being dialed up somehow, right?”
Cas considers his wording. “In all likelihood,” he agrees, eventually.
Dean thinks some more. “So once we can see it glow, you think you can force it to go into you?” He pauses here, swallowing. “I mean, it’s just energy right? Like those souls you used as batteries. They weren’t yours either, but you forced them into the socket anyway.”
He does not bother to hide the fact that he finds the whole idea of that disgusting and wrong as hell as he says it. He also does not miss the slight wince of Castiel’s shoulders at the reminder of his crimes.
“I suppose, once it is strong enough to guide, I could attempt to…overpower its ties to its current state,” Castiel concedes after a moment.
Then something horrible occurs to Dean. “You won’t explode or anything if you do that, will you? Death said you might explode.”
Castiel is silent for a moment. “Death said it was possible, but less probable if I did not already have my own grace filling that void. I do not, so my chances have improved.”
Dean “Okay so…”
He gets cut off by a massive hand landing on his shoulder. It is not Sam’s.
“Sorry, Mr. Plant, but we’re about to close up now, and I need to get you out of here,” the bailiff tells him, and Dean manages to shove back the instinctive reaction to punch any stranger that touches him without his permission. He forces a personable smile instead.
“Right. Of course. Um, say,” he pauses to look at the man’s nametag, “Gus. Would it be possible to give us like, five minutes alone in here? I need some shots with the photographer, and I really just… uh, soak up the atmosphere better if I can sit in it in silence. By myself.” Pause. Backtrack. “With my partner by myself. We’ve worked together so long it’s like we’re one person.”
“In two separate bodies. My partner is using simile.” Castiel adds, trying to be helpful but somehow making everything so awkward.
The bailiff looks regretful. “No can do, sir. I’m not allowed to let anyone just wander around the courthouse by themselves unless they work here.”
“Yeah, but couldn’t you just…”
Gus the giant bailiff crosses his arms. And massive arms they are indeed. “It’s against the rules,” he says, and suddenly seems way scarier than he had been five minutes ago, when he’d been shyly talking to the press and not doing his job.
Apparently when he’s working, he does his job very well. Dean can appreciate that.
“Right. Okay then. We’re out of here. Thanks so much for your time, Gus,” Sam says hastily, and practically pulls both Dean and Castiel towards the door again.
Castiel looks confused. “But we need to get the…”
“Tonight,” Dean grunts, as Gus follows them out and locks the door tight behind them.
“Made an imprint of the key when he wasn’t looking,” Sam adds once they’re on the courthouse steps again. He gestures down to a piece of soft clay in his hands, obviously pressed into Gus the bailiff’s key while Dean and Cas had been busy examining the stand.
Dean thinks Sam is awesome sometimes.
*****
“Wait, wait, wait, so you already found the shard but you don’t actually know how to get it?” Sam asks incredulously as they drive back towards their motel so they can look up the shadiest locksmith possible to make them a copy of the key to the courtroom.
“We have a theory,” Dean answers him vaguely. “We you know, swear to tell the truth, make the thing glow, and Cas uh… Cas takes the glowy bits.”
Sam runs a hand through his hair. “Witness testimony said it only glowed once in a while,” Sam points out. “Not for all the cases. But obviously everyone is sworn in for the cases, so how do you plan on guaranteeing that this will be one of the glowy situations and not one of the regular situations?” Pause. Frown. He realizes suddenly that this is not their main concern by a long shot. “Dude,” he begins, around a deep breath. “Cas is basically human right now. How can he get the shard if we can’t get it either?”
“Hey, Death said that sometimes the shards can stick to humans,” Dean points out. Then furrows his brow. “Maybe we should have asked him how to make that work.”
Sam sighs. “Okay, look.” He starts to dig through his myriad print outs from the research he’d done in the days prior to arriving in Georgia. “On the day Gabriel died…or, the day after, I guess I should say, there was apparently a big murder trial happening in that courtroom, according to records. Like, a big cover up sort of thing involving the mayor and drugs and a couple of dead hookers. There was this incredible paper trail of bribes and corruption and cover-ups associated with it.”
“Classy,” Dean comments, as he turns onto the seedy street that will take them back to their cheap, nondescript motel.
“So we obviously need to figure out why it decided to settle there if we want to get it out, right?” Sam theorizes, sounding downright academic. What caused it to go to a place where so many anti-truths were going on?” He sits back and glances between the articles in either hand. “I mean, the morning after Gabriel died, apparently one of the witnesses, a woman who’d been beaten within an inch of her life and whose family was threatened, suddenly came forward and told the truth. Showed the DA evidence that she’d been hiding and blew it wide open.”
“Point, Sam?” Dean asks, though he looks thoroughly disturbed by the reminder of what people can do all on their own, without the help of Heaven or Hell as an excuse.
“What I’m saying,” Sam continues, patiently, “is do we think the truth shard settled here because there was a complete lack of it before-even though people swore they’d tell it in God’s name-or do we think that it’s because this woman decided to come forward despite what it might mean for her and her family? That she had an abundance of truth in her?”
Dean blinks, but thankfully, Castiel looks downright illuminated. “We must determine whether the shards land in a location because that location has a dearth or a surplus of the qualities embodied by the shard,” Castiel breathes.
“What?” Dean asks, and starts to look impatient as they pull into the motel parking lot.
Sam starts to gather his papers up in order again. “It means if we figure out what causes a shard to go to a place, we can figure out how to get it out again,” the younger Winchester says plainly. “If the shard went to that courtroom because there wasn’t enough truth there in the first place, then we go in there and start spouting lies at it until it gets more drawn to us than it does to the stand.”
“And if it goes because there’d been lots of truth thanks to that witness, we tell it more truth than it can handle until we can grab it,” Dean finally realizes, catching up in one quick leap.
“Precisely,” Castiel acknowledges, with a fondly indulgent smile at seeing Dean’s delight in finally getting all the nerd speak that had been bombarding him the entire drive back.
Sam catches his own reflection in the Impala’s window and realizes that he’s making the exact same sort of face at his brother too, and wonders if the fact that he and Cas are so alike sometimes should scare him or not.
That is the moment, of course, when Dean gets out of the car and asks, perfectly reasonably, “So how the hell are we supposed to figure out which one it is?”
It’s as good a question as any.
*****
Sam figures it out at the locksmith’s place, while waiting for a big-boned dude in a man-mumu to make them their key after taking an extra fifty bucks to immediately forget their faces and what he’d done for them.
Dean knows he always makes fun of his brother for being a nerd, but it’s in a completely proud and confounded way that he does it, appreciative of Sam’s inherent ability to see patterns and put together seemingly useless information to form a complete picture of something without question or doubt. Dean is pretty sure he would have made a damn fine lawyer if he’d gotten the chance. If things had been different.
But they aren’t, and if Sam’s talent is the intellectual kind, then Dean’s is the kind that has an infinite ability to adapt and deal with whatever hand they have. Sam’s the fact expert. Dean’s the reality expert. The two aren’t always the same.
“Okay, so… I found a pattern,” Sam announces while Dean peruses the locksmith’s store, watching Cas as the former angel peruses the small stand of candies by the register, clearly puzzling over why a store that makes copies of keys would attempt to sell sweets manufactured for children at the same time.
Cas immediately looks up from trying to discern what, exactly, a Push Pop is when he hears Sam’s voice. “And?”
“Truth,” Sam says, with a small smile, like his faith in humanity has been at least partially restored by this discovery. “It was drawn to a place that has an abundance of truth to tell. So that woman coming forward was her own choice, not a symptom of the shard. She must have been the thing that initially attracted the truth shard to the stand in the first place and everything after that is a result of it settling there. And it looks like the more truth a person has to reveal, the more the grace reacts to it.”
“How can you be certain?” Castiel cross-examines, understandably.
Sam, delighting in the fact that he gets to back up his theories with evidence, grabs a handful of articles and presents them to the angel. “The day she took the stand, there was an initial burst of light during her testimony that witnesses thought was a power surge. So if it happened during and not before, then it must have been attracted to the strength of the truth in her.”
Sam pauses to go through another folder of papers. “But from then on, it kind of operates in a way that induces people to tell the truth based on how much they seem to be hiding.”
Castiel cocks his head to the side. “How so?” he asks.
“Remember the glowing that the witnesses had been talking about seeing on some occasions in the courtroom?” Sam prompts, while Dean listens with one ear and continues to keep an eye out for the locksmith or any cops or trouble in general. “Apparently it only happened in a handful of really big cases. One involving murder and drug and gun trafficking for an organized crime family. The second time it happened was during a case involving the kidnapping and repeated rape of a minor who was related by blood to the defendant. The third time it happened, it was during a case for a serial killer who had murdered several boys under the age of sixteen who reminded her of her dead son. But for the other cases, like a couple of DUIs, a robbery, indecent exposure, grand theft auto… no one reported seeing any sort of glowing.”
Castiel doesn’t seem to understand, which saves Dean the trouble of having to ask.
“The more a person had to hide, the bigger the lies they’d told up to that point, the more stuff they ended up revealing on the stand when the shard was influencing them,” Sam explains. “And the more truths they had to reveal, the more the stand acted up in a visible way.”
Dean blinks. “So, this grace likes eating bigger, better truths or something?”
Sam nods. “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly, but in a nutshell. Apparently the more you’ve tried to hide before taking the stand, the more strongly the grace will manifest itself as you reveal those truths. I’m guessing maybe you can draw it out that way, until you’re uh, more attractive to it than where it is now?”
Dean snorts and turns to Cas. “Well, Cas? If that’s the case, looks like getting it to go all glowy is on you.”
Cas winces slightly before going back to look at the Push Pops. Dean almost feels like a dick, but luckily the seedy locksmith returns just in time to distract him from the feelings.
*****
Breaking in to the courtroom late that night turns out to be relatively easy, though upon their first visit to this place during the day, Castiel had initially thought that it would be the type of establishment that is always heavily guarded. Dean grins at him as he closes the door behind them and simply says, “Not every day someone tries to break in to a courtroom,” and pockets the key they had gotten earlier in the evening.
Sam is currently tailing the lone night watchman with instructions to text Dean should he decide to head this way, and apparently Bobby can do interesting things with computers and security systems and cameras given the appropriate amount of time to prepare them.
Which leaves Castiel and Dean to draw out and trap the truth shard before they are discovered.
“Okay. Five minutes, Cas,” Dean murmurs as they approach the stand in the dark. “If uh, if anything starts to feel weird or explodey, abort, you got it?”
Castiel doesn’t bother explaining to Dean that there is no in between state from whole to exploded and thus there can be no time for warning someone or aborting that sort of thing. But he knows that if he says something obtuse like that to the human he will just get a scowl and some muttered insults in reply, so instead of responding, he strides to the witness stand, knowing that the more quickly they obtain the first piece, the more easily the others will come to them.
Once in front of the stand, he doesn’t pause before laying a hand along the wood and declaring, “I am Castiel. As I stand before you, I intend to speak nothing but the truth in your presence.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “This I swear in the name of God.”
A moment of silence follows, in which Dean winces, like he’s expecting some sort of celestial bomb to go off. Nothing happens.
“Wow, Cas, don’t hesitate or anything,” Dean mutters under his breath, sighing in relief even as his eyes surreptitiously look over at the fallen angel. He is obviously still waiting for some sort of ridiculous side effect to manifest. Possibly a regression into betrayal and lies.
“Hesitation is what has brought me here in the first place,” Castiel answers him suddenly, without preamble. “If I had not hesitated to ask for your help during a year of watching you live in that woman’s home, perhaps I would not have had to murder so many of my brethren. If I had made myself known to you, if I had dragged you away from your peace, perhaps we would have arrived here sooner, and I would not have had to endure such agony in trying to protect you from this, in trying to let you lead the restful life you have always wished for. Perhaps you would still trust me then, if I had not cared so much for your happiness.”
Dean blinks. Grits his teeth. “Okay then. I guess it’s working,” he murmurs, eyes hard on Castiel as he takes in the former angel’s words. They just stare at one another like that for a moment longer, before Dean squirms and takes a steadying deep breath. He gestures vaguely with his hand. “Well? Keep on going, man. I’ll let you know when there’s so much truth it glows.” He can’t help but glare as he says it.
Castiel frowns back and feels his hand clench the railing of the witness stand hard enough to ache as a flood of long buried or ignored sensations suddenly course up and over him, flowing over the edges of the tiny container he had kept his feelings trapped inside of all this time. He lets them swell and come forth, because he knows he must in order to draw out the shard, because he knows this grace is God’s truth and cannot be stopped. Part of him dreads what he may say next. Part of him anticipates being freed by the words he had forced himself to swallow in the name of peace.
Dean steels himself physically, squaring his shoulders, setting his jaw, turning his eyes hard on Castiel’s without really looking at him at all. As if he is preparing for a beating that he does not deserve, but that he must endure.
It is strangely irritating to Castiel.
“Sometimes I wish to blame you for all of this, Dean,” he finds himself beginning, softly. “Rationally, I understand that what has happened to me is not entirely your fault, but part of me truly believes that some of it must be, as well. I don’t understand why I put you above all else. I don’t understand why your life, for the short time that I have known you, should be so much more important to me than those of my brothers, than those who I have known and loved since time was newborn. I watched over you this last year, to try and discern why you matter so much. But I never could, and I could not ask you because I had promised Sam that I would watch over you, and you had promised Sam that you would live a normal life. I did not think you would wish to see me because my continued presence in your life would be innately abnormal and thus breaking your promise to your brother. You never called for me in that year either, and when I considered why, I realized that you never seemed particularly happy to see me even before then, unless it served a purpose necessary to you. If I appeared to you in Lisa Braedan’s home, I thought that you would be angry, because it was not on your terms. You are very determined to have everything on your terms and no one else’s. You have never been one to compromise, least of all with those closest to you.”
Dean’s eyes go from hard to wounded, but the set of his jaw remains resolute. “Keep it up. I can take this all day, man,” he forces out, around a smile that holds none of the sentiments that Castiel knows are traditionally responsible for bringing smiles into existence. That, and something about the set of his shoulders leads Castiel to believe that Dean is lying. Dean is the only human on the planet capable of lying when an archangel’s truth-God’s own truth- sits buried, not a foot from where he stands. Dean Winchester is the most infuriating human being in the history of all mankind.
Castiel’s knuckles begin to turn white as he tightens his hold on the railing, as he opens his mouth to continue. “Despite everything, I still hold you dear. In that year, in a civil war against my brothers, I watched you in moments unknown to you and used the images of you at peace to bolster me when I stood beside Crowley, when I removed the limbs of a young werewolf one by one when she was still human, when I allowed a demon to force feed the blood of vampires to families he had captured because he required more beasts to experiment on. I was covered in filth those months, like a demon myself, and the only reason I could think of for doing it all was you. By then I had been drenched in the blood of war, I had-have-forgotten what it is like to care for humanity in the face of defeating Raphael. In those moments, I would think that all the humans in the world could burn for all I care about them, so long as victory means keeping Lucifer and Michael in the cage and you and Sam alive. Even now, that is the only reason I find myself fighting, that I find myself capitulating to your uncompromising and infuriating will, though I am unsure whether or not we can succeed by taking this path.”
“Cas,” Dean begins, but Castiel cuts him off, too much momentum surrounding the tumble of his words to stop now. He is so immersed in his task he does not notice the sudden brightness in the room either, or the blood on his hands from digging his fingernails into the wood so tightly.
“I would die for you, Dean. I have died for you, more than once. I will do it again, most likely. Never for a moment have I thought that you would do the same for me. Sometime I believe Zachariah was correct. You have corrupted me.”
Dean winces. “Cas! Seriously, I think it’s…”
“Crowley thought that turning children into vampires would make it easier to interrogate them. He thought perhaps their youth and inexperience as a whole would help him manipulate them into releasing information. I did not stop him from trying. This I did because those children meant nothing to me as much as you.”
Dean’s eyes widen in horror, and before Castiel can open his mouth again, Dean has a hand on his shoulder and is shaking him, and the moment there is contact between them, Castiel feels the familiar flare of his own grace from where it is kept beside Dean’s heart. It stuns him a little, a warm, familiar flutter full of warning and fear.
“My turn,” Dean growls, voice low but somehow screaming all at once, “And of course I didn’t call for you after you disappeared, you asshole. You disappeared. You didn’t even say goodbye. So I don’t see how it’s my freaking fault that you were too scared to drop in and visit when you’d up and left without a backwards glance in the first place. You’d gotten your douche wings back, so I figured you were upstairs doing your douchy business, and holy shit was I right, because everything you’re saying to me right now? Every awful, disgusting, idiotic thing you just said? It just tells me you didn’t learn a goddamned thing about anyone or anything all that time we worked together. Maybe you forgot it all after you got your heavenly recharge, I don’t know. But I hate that you let two years of fighting together become nothing in a second. I hate that you could do all that shit you’re talking about and somehow still have the balls to blame me for everything that goes wrong in your life when you obviously didn’t man up and come talk to me when you had problems. I hate that you and Sam were both around and didn’t bother to tell me, because it makes me think that there’s something wrong with me if neither of you could just show up and say hi, soulless or humanity-less or whatever.”
Castiel stares, the hand on his shoulder squeezing hard enough to bruise, the grace hidden in Dean’s shirt glowing bright, and the witness stand starting to go very close to nuclear.
“Dean…” he breathes, and remembers himself finally, what his purpose is here. He shakes his head, the fog of cobwebs somehow clearing with Dean’s hand on him and his own grace close enough to touch.
“Shut up,” Dean snaps hotly. “If you get to finish sharing, so do I. And I just wanna say, man, I meant it when I said you’re family, and you matter, but right now? Right now I can barely stand to look at you.” He looks Cas right in the eye, genuinely questioning. “What happened to you, Cas?”
Castiel’s eyes narrow as Dean’s free hand comes up to grasp his other shoulder so that he can shake the former angel, rage welling up deep inside Castiel’s stomach at the thought of a mere mortal like Dean Wincester getting to pass judgment and forgiveness upon him. He finds himself reaching out in return, fisting two great handfuls of Dean’s button down in his hands. It frees the hidden cord of Castiel’s grace from where it is tucked against his chest, causing it to bounce upward and arc into the glowing light of the witness stand.
“You happened to me, Dean,” Castiel says.
And then, before Dean can respond, before a punch can be thrown or more insults composed, there is an explosion of blinding light, as the shard of archangel grace that has been buried in the wood of the stand for years is pulled from the grain in a white hot burst of energy.
Castiel barely manages to shove Dean out of the way as the shard buries itself deep into his chest, burning not unlike the tip of Rachel’s blade as it had punctured him in their first battle. It sears into him, his skin, and erupts under the fragile human flesh of his vessel enough that he turns first pink, and then red, his vision whiting out around the edges as a scream is forced from his throat.
“Cas!” he hears Dean dimly in the background, scrambling up from the floor where he’d been thrust and helplessly standing by, reaching out, hand burning against Castiel’s too-hot skin. “Cas, goddammit don’t you fucking explode again! You don’t get to do that again!” he orders, like he has the power to change that fate if only he wills it enough.
The sound of it is distant and tinny in the white hot rush of immense energy blowing through Castiel’s ears, but in it is something familiar as well, the warm, soothing balm of his own grace, tied to Dean, kept safe against Dean’s rapidly beating heart and bolstered by Dean’s own fervent belief.
And then everything stops.
Castiel manages to stagger into Dean’s arms before he stumbles and begins to fade into unconsciousness. As he falls, so does the glow of God’s truth in the room, going dim and normal in the moonlight once again, so that all that is left in the quiet dark is the sound of he and Dean panting tiredly together in an abandoned courtroom.
Blearily, he looks up at Dean’s face one more time-it is pale and has lines around the edges of it that make it look drawn and full of equal parts anger and worry- and as Castiel’s eyes flutter closed against his will, he thinks that the sudden pain in his chest must mean their first piece of grace has truly come forth.
Between the two of them, at least they now have truth, if nothing else.
The pain of it is very nearly overwhelming.
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