[and then shall that wicked be revealed] Part II
Title: and then shall that wicked be revealed 2/4
Fandoms: Supernatural/Doctor Who/Bioshock; SUPERWHOSHOCK
Summary: Castiel's gone missing, and finding one wayward angel in all of space and time is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Good thing he left a message behind-now there's only the matter of figuring out what this mysterious "Rapture" is. In which the splicers have the phone box, the Doctor has an angel for a BFF, Castiel uses a Little Sister for a temporary vessel, and everything’s really about family in the end.
"-I'm not sure my voice will even reach you like this, but Doctor-Dean-"
The message runs through with static, the signal shot, audio fading with Castiel's voice cracking on Dean's name, and the Doctor shouts.
Moments later, the signal's back; a close up of Castiel's face, eyes wild with blood collecting at the corners of his mouth and dripping down his brow.
"-ind me. I can't-"
Beside him, Rory is silent, face white as a sheet. There's a strange music coming through, faint, but just barely discernable through the static. Filmy and slow, like an old record player that keeps skipping-skip, skip, skip-and something that sounds like water.
"-on't understand. Find me in rapture. I don't think I can-"
The video skips again, and a shadow looms behind him, something clutched in its hands-raised over Castiel's bloody head.
"-here isn't-"
The figure brings its fist down, and Castiel's eyes roll.
The video cuts out.
Amy clutches her husband's hand, knuckles gone white.
"I think I need to pay the Winchesters a visit."
"Where the hell is he? Where is Castiel?"
Dean's face is creased in anger, hands tight on the beer bottle that never made it to his lips. The house they're in is small and cramped, smelling of old books and petrol. The TARDIS sits in a junkyard, the vibrant blue violently out of place surrounded by faded, sun-bleached cars.
"Where is he? Doctor, where the hell is Castiel!"
"I don't know."
"We'll find him, Dean," Sam whispers. The two of them are tucked close to the door, as far away from the console as they can get, sequestered there like two little lost children. They don’t like her very much. Sam’s warming to her slowly, that curiosity that makes him so fundamentally Sam Winchester starting to itch at the back of his mind, an old childish desire to run his hands all over everything in sight, coating the TARDIS’s interior with his fingerprints. Dean though, Dean hates it the same way he hates planes and poltergeists and young mothers in pain.
He’s been on the TARDIS before, of course, just the once, and he’d hated it then too-clutching Castiel’s coat tight enough to leave marks in the fabric, and surging out the door the second it opened. It appears that Dean Winchester hates any type of flight, not limited to airplanes.
The Doctor hopes he’ll grow out of it.
Then there’s the other puzzle: Castiel’s message, and the meaning behind rapture. River seems to think he’s referring to the Rapture, à la the Book of Revelations, but Dean quickly shoots that down with a pained smile. “First off, which freaking apocalypse? Last year’s? The year before that? And there’s no way in hell that some poor schmuck isn’t dealing with an apocalypse on planet so-and-so off in la-la land. Secondly, Cas has had enough Raptures to last him a lifetime. No more Raptures for that angel.”
Sam rolls his eyes, hiding his face in the thick tome that he managed to un-earth from one of the TARDIS’ libraries. Next to him, River settles her hip against the console, baring her teeth in a feral smile. “Then what exactly do you think it means, darling?”
The Doctor is starting to think that River does not like Dean Winchester. He’s never heard her use that endearment so viciously before. Dean scoffs. “Maybe he’s just off getting laid somewhere. Some nice kinky angel sex. Find me in rapture, oh yeah, baby.”
She glares at him when he winks, and when the others just stare at him, he throws up his hands. “Like I freaking know! I’m not exactly the Cas expert here. Ask him!” He points accusingly, and the Doctor spins around. Nope, no one behind him.
“I think, Dean Winchester, that you’ll find you are the Castiel expert, here,” River sighs, and cocks her gun.
They check Bethlehem, and then they stop by Nazareth, and the Doctor does not allow Dean anywhere near the rabbi, Joshua. They check countless planets that are breaking apart beneath their feet, and in a week they experience more apocalypses than they can keep track of. The Doctor whispers to the TARDIS quietly, pleading with her, because she’s always known where to take him, even when he didn’t. Nothing works, and the TARDIS hums back at him sadly.
It’s Amy who ends up finding it in the middle of a slow, quiet day when they’ve all taken a page out of the Winchesters’ book and surrounded themselves with research, heaps and heaps of history books, religious books, even fictional books. They’re reading quietly, Rory propped up against his wife’s side on a newly installed window seat, staring out into the vast reaches of space. River’s off on some mad lead, thinking some associate of hers might be able to help. Dean and Sam are sitting back to back in the middle of it, Dean taking sporadic swigs from a flask propped against his ankle.
When Amy gasps, everyone looks up. “I’ve got it!” she shrieks.
Oddly enough, she does.
Rapture, a city lost amongst the pages of history. A paradise gone wrong, the books say, greed and malice and monstrosity its greatest treasures. The few books that they find about it speak of creatures no longer quite human, Splicers, human beings whose basic genetic code has been rewritten to the point of mutation.
There are no pictures. 63° 2' N, 29° 55' W, a necropolis beneath the North Atlantic Ocean created in the nineteen forties, a dream city, an impossible city-a twentieth century Atlantis gone to ruins. Andrew Ryan. "’A man has choices,’” Rory reads. “‘I chose the impossible.’”
This is Castiel’s prison, and they may not have a date, but they have a location; from there it’s only a matter of time. Dean slams the book shut and grits his teeth. The console room is quiet, desolate.
They all know what they’re walking into, and the Doctor makes the decision to take the Ponds back home before Amy can kick up a fuss, backed by Sam and Dean, both of whom quietly assure the couple that they don’t want to risk any more people than they have to. “Hush now, Ponds,” the Doctor whispers, walking them to their door.
When he gets back, Sam is arguing with his brother quietly. They both look up when he closes the doors behind him, the TARDIS gone still and silent. “Well now,” he says, with a bravado he doesn’t quite feel. “What are we waiting for?”
It’s worse than he thought it would be.
Their first stop is 1946, when the Olympian is just starting to set the building blocks upon the ocean floor. They watch as the Sinker, Rapture’s foundation, is slowly lowered into the water. The ocean churns around the behemoth steam-liner, as if even the sea itself wants no part in this expedition.
Andrew Ryan is young still, dark curls dripping with sweat from the midday sun. There is an unfamiliar man standing next to him, and though the Doctor squints, he can’t quite make him out.
They leave, and as he ushers the boys back onto the TARDIS, the strange man seems to wave.
They meet Jasmine Jolene in 1956, crying quietly as she dances. When Dean grins at her, wiping her tears, he asks why she’s crying. She gives a little sob, and leaves the stage.
They search 1956, and though they find dozens of things that are already going wrong with the city, they do not find Castiel.
The fighting reaches a climax in 1958, and Julie Langford helps them escape the chaos of the New Year’s party, showing them back through the labyrinth until they catch a glimpse of the TARDIS near Neptune’s Bounty. Sam turns back for her at the last minute, promising a world where her genius would not be stifled by the polluted city. She smiles at him, and when she strokes a hand down his cheek, her fingers leave traces of soil.
“Dear boy,” she tells him, “I could never leave my trees with them. I have something I’m working on, something that will change this world as we know it. Rosa gallica officinalis. One day, everyone will know its name. Worry not, Sam. I have a feeling we’ll see each other again soon.”
They jump back, back to ‘49, when Rapture is still thriving under Ryan’s watchful gaze. Ryan is a proud man, and when they meet him, he welcomes them with open arms. He allows the Doctor to use the labs, access to wherever they wish. He is an intelligent man, not yet driven to madness by his failures. A man with a head full of scintillating futures, a utopia for the world’s best and brightest.
They trek through Rapture a third time, and meet a girl named Jane who wants to be a star.
They do not find Castiel.
"You could be so brilliant," says the Doctor when they first meet, on the docks of the harbor in 1942. Sander is not quite young-old enough to know that those who shine too brightly are best to be avoided. He grins, playful and charismatic, utilizing the last vestiges of boyishness to dimple his smile and round his cheeks, ever so slightly impish.
"My good sir," he purrs, silky-smooth-an entertainers voice. "I will be brilliant. Won't you stick around to see me shine?"
1948, and there are rumors of a discovery. Brigid Tenenbaum, sea slugs, and something called ADAM. Little girls turned into tiny little monsters; and guardians to watch over them.
By 1967 Rapture has gone quiet, splicers left to roam the streets, no Ryan to oversee them. Too quiet. Too late.
It is the year of 1962, and Rapture echoes with the screams of the dying. Bloated corpses litter the floors, and the creatures known as splicers have become truly vicious, choosing to gut you first rather than ask questions. Andrew Ryan is silent, as are Fontaine, Atlas, Langford. Rapture’s best and brightest extinguished, the monsters left to roam free.
This is the year that they find him.
1962 is the worst year that they have experienced, the Splicers mad with power, worse than the ghosts that they find trapped in Rapture’s walls. For the first few days, the Doctor refused to hurt them, refused to touch them-trying to reason with them until finally a bullet to the shoulder put that notion out of his head. When they’d discovered the TARDIS missing-well, that was that. The Doctor still isn’t as violent as he should be. The pistol they’d given him is mostly used to take out a leg or two, leaving the splicer shouting after them as they make their way through the mad city.
And now-well, now the splicers have the phonebox, the Doctor has a gimp shoulder, Sam has started acting like a creeper around the weirdo little girls with the glowing eyes and the freaky-ass monster daddies, and Dean has a headache. Of course, there’s also the matter of being stuck in Fort Frolic with the corpse smell permanently ingrained in their nostrils, and ghosts flickering in and out of existence all around them.
So when Cohen approaches them with talk of angels and actual, legitimate help, Dean can’t help but be wary of the guy.
However, the Doctor is exhausted, and apparently even being a nine-hundred-year-old alien doesn’t stop the effects of blood loss. They’ve been running for days-at this point, everyone is a little bit battle-weary.
So they agree to do Cohen a few favors, even though the Doctor claims to be perfectly fine.
They take out some people for him: scorned lovers, former friends, and a few ghosts that have been giving him trouble. Along the way, they find out a few things of their own.
The first week isn’t actually that bad. Rapture’s not the prettiest city they’ve ever been to-it’s rank with assholes and greedy fucking monsters and the whole place has bullshit to its rafters, but between the Doctor deciding to hack into every security bot and turret and make them his minions, Sam going on and on about architecture, and Dean finding good fucking liquor everywhere he looks, it isn’t that bad. The bots following along behind them are actually kind of cool, the same way that Dean kind of thinks that the TARDIS is one badass fucking lady, even if she makes him airsick as all hell.
The Doctor grins at him, cooing at one of the latest editions. Dean’s pretty sure that if the thing could nuzzle the Doctor without taking off his head, it would.
They camp out in ransacked shops, keeping a steady diet of pep-bars, potato chips, and weird creme-filled cakes. It’s a lot like home, except instead of hotels there are bloodied, damp floors and there isn’t a bacon cheeseburger or a slice of apple pie in sight.
The second week is... less good. In fact, the second week is a downright disaster. Cohen crows at them over the loudspeakers as they take out whatever individual wronged him this time and the Doctor starts to droop enough that his little bot friends flock around him and go ape-shit whenever someone that isn’t Sam or Dean gets close to him. They’re protective as all hell, which actually makes it worse whenever something gets a lucky strike in and takes one down.
Their food supply starts dwindling, even when they start picking places with storage rooms in the back. Eventually it gets so bad that Sam takes them to the frozen back rooms of Fontaine Fisheries, yanks some fish out of the freezers and uses some wood from a nearby table to roast them up. It’s not the best, but it works.
By their third week, they’re running ragged, and Dean’s developed a loathing so severe for this Cohen guy that he’s started telling the guy in detail exactly what he’s gonna do to him when they find him. The Doctor doesn’t like it much, because he’s the only one who has had a hearts-to-heart with the fucker before the dude went crazy, but at this point, Dean doesn’t even give a shit. He doesn’t trust the fucker one goddamned bit.
The diaries pop up all around Rapture, and the Doctor started the habit of listening to them. “It’s only fair that we listen to these poor people. They were sane enough to record them, and these are the last vestiges of who they were. We’re killing them now. We owe them that.”
So they listen to the voices of the dead and dying, and they learn the horrors of Rapture. “The Splicers crave the ADAM more and more. It rewrites the DNA even as it destroys the mind,” Brigid Tenenbaum whispers to them as they make their way through Poseidon Plaza. The skittering of spider splicers in the ceiling follow them as they go, and Sam keeps a gun trained upwards, ever vigilant.
“It’s strange,” the Doctor whispers. “The sea slugs that are crucial to producing ADAM sound like a species a few galaxies over. They’re called Lumbricus Mens Mentis. Latin for ‘thought worm.’”
The Doctor grins a bit, first at Sam, then at Dean.
“They’re actually quite lovely little creatures. Always polite, these worms. They’re capable of modifying the genetic makeup in most creatures-fascinating, really. The Chameleon Arch was originally designed to work the same way, though we had to use a perception filter rather than completely altering the biology. Well, alter completely. Heal and alter, but they’re always polite about it.”
Sam looks intrigued, so Dean takes it upon himself to dispatch the splicer that erupts from the ceiling. Unfortunately, the smile fades and the Doctor flinches, going quiet.
Cohen laughs when they return various body parts of the people he’d asked them to kill. He laughs and laughs and then purrs, “Just one more thing-one more thing you’ll need in order to get where you’re going.”
“It’s a bad idea.” The Doctor is glaring at the pseudo vending machine before them, as if he’d like nothing more than to make it blow up with his brain. It isn’t right, he’d told Sam days ago. Over the years, there have been hundreds of planets that have perfected the art of gene-splicing, and madness like this has never been a side effect. Maybe he’s right, but maybe he isn’t. Dean’s glaring at him, though, brow furrowed and hackles up, standard issue defensive older brother. That’s the same look he’d given Sam in the first grade when Sam had come home with a black eye and refused to tell him who did it. “Listen to the Doc, Sammy, it’s a bad idea. This guy has been jerking us around for weeks and we’re supposed to trust him enough for this? We’ve seen what this stuff does to people, Sam. I can’t let you do this.”
He frowns over at both of them, and the Doctor finally pulls his eyes away from the machine long enough to really look at him. “Look, we don’t-”
Cohen chuckles at them, cutting off what he’d been about to say. “Time’s a-tickin’, little moths.”
Sam draws himself up to his fullest height, and the look he sends his brother is one that he knows Dean is familiar with. The faint pink light the machine gives off casts shadows all over the room. The creepy statues of the little girls don’t really help the atmosphere. “Dean, I have to. Cas is waiting for us, and this-I can do this for him.”
Dean’s face crumples, eyes moist. “-Samm-”
And in for the kill-“He would do it for us, Dean. You know he would.”
He isn’t crying, but if anything, Dean looks even more crushed, and Sam knows that it’s because he know it’s true. Cas would do anything for them. Hell, he has done anything and everything for them. He’s given up his family, he’s fallen, he’s died, he’s forgotten who he is, only to remember again long enough for him to get Lucifer shoved in his head for month. If anyone is worth this, it’s Cas.
The needle slides in, and Sam screams.
Fort Frolic is probably the worst playground that Dean has ever been to, and that includes the crappy, rundown, rusted one in Northern Maine that Sam nearly got sepsis from when he was five. It isn’t just the fact that he knows for damn sure by now that this Cohen guy is just fucking around with them, or that the theme park feels like every other goddamn place in the city. It’s not the corpses or the creepy-ass music or the crazy-ass inhabitants. If anything, it’s because for the first time since arriving in this city, something feels lived in. The lights glow neon above their heads-flickering in a way that has him grabbing for the salt rounds-but still lit up. The tile beneath their feet is cleaner than any other place they’ve been, blood appears only occasionally, and corpses are rare unless they put them there themselves.
The main atrium is flawless, and though some of the shops they’ve peered into seem to be in various stages of decay, it’s obvious that someone cares for the place on a regular basis. Whether that’s Cohen himself or the dozens of other hacks he’s probably convinced to work for him has yet to be seen.
Sam shivers and leans away from the entrance of Eve’s Garden, remembering what they’d found there just minutes ago. Jasmine isn’t quite so pretty now, just a dried out corpse on bloody sheets, a diary tucked just underneath her deathbed. They listen in horror as it tells them about her pregnancy, and from there, there’s only so many ways this could have gone. Dean has a hard time comparing a Ryan who would beat a woman to death over a pregnancy to the bright-eyed young man who’d discussed genetics and chemistry so enthusiastically with the Doctor not even a decade ago-but then again, it feels like Rapture has driven everyone mad.
“You doin’ all right over there, Sammy?”
Sam flashes him the bitch face between heaving breaths, and Dean has to fight the urge to close the distance between them and pat him down until he’s sure there’s not a stray bullet lodged into his lungs. The Doctor is swinging his legs, perched on a crumbled pillar, and the look he shoots Dean is as reassuring as it is creepy. Even after all this, Dean’s not entirely sure that he trusts the Doctor. Hell, he knows that he doesn’t like him yet, but he’s Castiel’s friend-time-traveling genius alien and all that, so Dean’s gonna have to rely on him for a bit. If the Doctor thinks that whatever creepy bullshit that fucked these guys up in the first place hasn’t damaged Sam much, then Dean will believe him. For now. Even if he gets the urge to punch him every damn time that sparks fly from his little brother’s fingertips.
“Fine, Dean. Never better.” He spits out a mouthful of blood, and yeah, okay, that’s not all right. He steps over the corpse of Cohen’s ex-boyfriend and prods at Sam’s chest, frowning as if he can really tell if there’s internal damage by way of sound.
“Did it get you anywhere?” he hisses, poking at the dirty flannel above Sam’s collarbone. The splicers they’d encountered in the place really weren’t that bad, but it’s always possible that it might have gotten Sam while he wasn’t looking, and for a human, one of those hooks to an unprotected patch of skin is potentially fatal. “Doctor, get your ass down her-”
“Dean, I’m fine. Just-the ADAM hurts more than I thought it would. I can still feel the electricity in my teeth. Biting my tongue is really not the worst that could happen to me right now, okay?” Yep, bitch face, right there.
The Doctor finally hops down from his wall and grins at them. “All right, Sam?” he asks, lip twitching.
Sam smiles at him, dimples and all, and claps a big hand onto the Doctor's shoulder, laughing when the Doctor kind of sways under the weight, always graceful. "Yeah, Doctor, I'm okay," he says. Ugh, nerds. Dean should have known better than to introduce his big geek brother to Cas's biggest-geek-in-the-universe BFF.
"Okay, Bert and Ernie, stop flirting and let's get a move on. We've gotta figure out where the hell Cas is in this mess."
Just down the corridor to the left of the entrance of Poseidon Plaza, there’s a door to a place called Cohen’s Collection of Fine Arts. When Sam first points it out, the Winchesters decide to shrug it off and proceed into the Plaza, thinking that the big door with the ice surrounding it has something better behind it. But now that Eve’s Garden is behind them, the Doctor considers the door. At first glance, it seems like any of the other doors in the place. It isn’t terrible fancy, but the Doctor hasn’t trusted Cohen since the moment the man had first approached them and asked them to be his assassins. So he stops in front of the door on the way back to the Lower Atrium, even as the boys continue down the hallway, shouting for him to keep up.
He steps closer to the door, screwdriver pressed to the edges even as the door slides open, revealing crumbling walls and ashen floor. “What are you?” he whispers. “What’s the bad man hiding here?”
“Doctor, what’s taking you?” Dean shouts from ahead.
The Doctor glances away from the door to find Sam cocking his head at him, curious, and Dean waving his gun around impatiently. “We should check here,” he hollers back, moving into the room before they can respond, laughing when Dean curses from behind him.
His first impression of Cohen’s Collection is ash and crumbled plaster and the smell of blood. “What the fuck, Doctor,” Dean whispers through gritted teeth when he catches up, while the Doctor inspects the pack of cigarettes laid out on the counter, a thick coating of dust across the top of the box. Sam comes up behind them and glances around at the peeling walls. He shivers.
There’s noise coming from further down the hallway, the familiar shrieking of maddened human beings. “You can’t hide forever, starshine,” one of them yells, and the clack-clack-clack of heels on linoleum echo behind them. Dean frowns at the door and moves into the room proper, mouth opening like he’s about to berate one of them for leaving a trail. Only he flinches when he reaches the opening, going completely stock still in the doorway. His eyes are roaming over the room, and the Doctor, curious, forgets about the splicers momentarily and creeps up behind him, screwdriver held at the ready.
There’s blood coating the floors and light seeping through windows in a way that make him think of the vashta nerada, and a figure at the far side of the room, dangling in the air just before the stairs-bloodied trench coat and dark hair, familiar save for the dead yellow glow in the eyes, the corpse-gray skin, and the mess of viscera that is the abdomen.
The figure stares at them, and there’s a gasp from behind him, and Sam sounds like he’s in pain. The pain hits the Doctor’s hearts at the same time, like a firecracker going off in his chest, and oh no, please, please, not this one-
He takes a deep breath and beside him, Dean lets out a shuddery breath. Whispers, like he doesn’t want a response-“Cas?”
Spring of 1956, and Castiel wakes in a cage. The first thing they do is break his wings.
December, 1956. Castiel has been a prisoner for months now, currently stuffed into a cell in Persephone, and all of his cellmates are screaming. Most from withdrawal, others just for the sake of it. Some are in pain, and there are a few who are afraid. A twelve-year-old girl is in the cell next to him. She spends her days sobbing for her mother and her nights howling for ADAM.
It is 1956, and Castiel surfaces from the cocktail of drugs that Fontaine has pumped into him to the sound of Dean’s voice.
He isn’t in a cell, the Doctor and Sam are both beside him as they prowl between the bars, inspecting the prisoners here and there. Castiel doesn’t know how they managed to get in, but he supposes that with the Doctor, psychic paper could get you pretty far in this place.
The man they’re with is saying something, gesturing the other way, and they start to turn-back the way they came. Castiel tries to shout for them, his lips forming Dean’s name, but no sound comes out. He has not been given water in over a month, because Fontaine wishes to know whether angels can go without nourishment for an extended period of time and still survive. He has been beaten, burnt, and split open by these people, and at the moment they literally have his tongue on ice in another room.
He rattles the bars to his cell, but the sound mixes with the hundreds of other prisoners doing the exact same thing.
Dean fades from view, and next to him, the girl giggles.
1957. Cohen lights him on fire, again and again, because he likes to watch Castiel’s skin turn pink again-the dead cells sloughing off of him until he is just exposed tissues and muscle, gleaming red until the skin grows back.
“It’s poetic, Castiel, dear. Can’t you see how beautiful you are? Perfect.”
Cohen laughs and snaps his fingers before the skin has time to return. “Now let’s see how that body of yours burns without its skin.”
It is the year 1958, and Castiel spends the year cursing Dean for making an angel feel.
The year is 1959, and Castiel has been stuck in Rapture for three years, seven months, and three weeks. He is not sure of the day, nor the minute, and certainly not the second. But he knows enough to know that today is a Steinman day, if just from the lights passing outside the bathysphere. He has three guards today, two with hooks and another with the glowing red fingertips he’s learned to fear since his exposure to Sander Cohen. Houdini splicers are just as mad as the rest, but he’s been given many reasons to fear their fire.
Steinman greets him with a scalpel and a grin, and Castiel’s guards barely have him on the table before the scalpels are in him, twisting deep and puncturing his left lung on the first try. They’ve had enough years together that Steinman knows his body better than a lover would-which patch of skin hides the most responsive organs.
“Today we have a surprise for you, my dear angel. Tell me, Aphrodite, what do you think?”
He brandishes a sea slug, dripping black, and Castiel’s eyes widen, because he finally sees the truth behind ADAM, the real reason that Rapture’s citizens crave it so. Steinman opens him up; a slice here, a breaking of ribs there, and the slug vanishes inside his chest, black ooze mixing with Jimmy Novak’s blood.
Steinman doesn’t even have the time to close him up before he starts screaming.
It is 1960, and Steinman sits across the room from Castiel with Andrew Ryan, observing. Ryan frowns at him, watching as he writhes in his bonds, heavy chains wrapped round and round his wrists, and he’s too weak to do a thing about it. The creature sits, quiet for now, soaking up the warmth of his beating heart.
“It’s supposed to be implanted in the stomach lining, you know,” Steinman says, twisting a scalpel around in the air. “None of the adult subjects have lived-not one. A decade, and you’re the first.”
He smiles up at Castiel, mad with power.
“We didn’t think you’d last this long, of course, but I suppose it has something to do with your... celestial heritage. So we figured-why not go a step further? Why not see if you can survive when the creature has free movement?”
“Surprise, surprise. You did. It eats at your organs until they’re shredded pulpy things, but you always heal.”
Ryan leans close, and smiles coldly, speaking to Castiel for the first time in four years. “Why is that?”
He thinks that it might be 1961 by now, but the weeks feel like millennia. With the creature in his chest, he cannot heal, and with his hands bound, he cannot remove the creature.
It has been far too long since someone has come by to see him, months since he’s been removed from his cell to be someone’s plaything. Months and his wings are just starting to heal, though the worm pumps toxins through his body, keeping his wings weak and his Grace weaker still.
He is bound to this cell, and he wonders if in fifty years, he will still be here when his younger self first drags Dean from hell.
“Ah, so this is where they kept you. Pretty little pigeon, all locked away. Lucky you, little ol’ Jackie spared me. Killed ‘em all, he did, except yours truly.”
Sander Cohen smiles at him and curtsies. Castiel smells fire.
“So, let’s spring you from this trap, little birdie, and you can come play with good ol’ Sander for a while.”
Castiel does not know what year it is. He can feel nothing but the thing in his chest, squirming. The thing that’s made his skin go gray as a corpse and his eyes yellow like rotten lemons.
He does not know what year it is, but Cohen is talking to someone outside of his prison. Cohen’s voice over the loudspeakers, theatrical and purring with satisfaction.
“You say you’re looking for an angel, little moths? We have angels all over Rapture, simply ask the little monsters who wanders its halls.” Cohen, playing with his food, but there’s something in his voice that makes Castiel quake. That voice he had the first time he’d gotten Castiel all to himself, pleased and arrogant and secretive to a fault.
“We’re not looking for just any angel.”
Dean. Dean. Dean’s voice, through his prison doors. The creature inside him twists, gnawing through veins and organs, violently protesting against the vessel it’s stuck inside. Castiel knows how it feels, and his fingers itch to rip it out of his chest. He refrains, though. The punishments for doing so often turn much worse than just keeping it within him.
“I may know a thing or two about a certain angel, my curious little friends. So come into my parlor, and perhaps I can help.”
It has been weeks since he's heard Dean's voice, and Cohen is his only visitor.
"Your friends are awfully fun to play with, little angel. Such good little worker ants they are." He jerks on razor wire, and Castiel's left hand rises, puppet-like. The wire cuts into his flesh, and his arm goes wet with fresh blood. "It's like cleaning house."
"You do have good taste, though," he purrs, nipping playfully at the side of Castiel's neck. "Tell me, which of my little worker ants is really yours? In my experience, friends don't look for you that hard."
Castiel grimaces and drools blood down his chin as Cohen hoists him upwards. The strain makes his broken wings ache, the hooks digging in until it's his Grace that's dribbling down his body to pool on the ash covered floor. "Well," Cohen grins up at him. "It's polite to answer when you're spoken to."
The pain makes him dizzy, and though the slug inside of him is poison, he grits his teeth against the pain. Knowing Dean is here has given him hope he has not felt in years, so he takes all the blood, all the phlegm and broken teeth in his mouth and aims everything at Cohen's smug face. "Perhaps," he whispers, voice hoarse and aching, "You just don't have very good friends."
The pain is worth the look on Cohen's face.
The doors to his prison hiss open, and Castiel watches as Dean rounds the corner and walks into the room-as his eyes adjust to the murky lighting, taking in the morbid plaster sculptures in the center. The family set down to dinner, one of Cohen's older works-the father with his wrists sliced open, the mother with her arms bound behind her, and the daughter with her hands folded demurely in her lap. Only after passing this over does he start noticing the vibrant slashes of red streaked across the monotone landscape. His eyes follow the blood even as Sam and the Doctor burst into the room behind him, Sam clutching tight to a crowbar with a streak of blood across his cheek, and the Doctor holding his sonic screwdriver in front of him like a weapon. Castiel though, right now, Castiel only has eyes for Dean. Dean, whose eyes are tracking the blood to the pools of light on the ground, and then up, to the glow of Castiel's grace in his split open chest, rib cage snapped and cracked apart, revealing the innermost workings of an angel. The worm is in his stomach now, safely concealed there until Cohen comes to seal him back up. The worst though, he thinks, is when Dean notices that Castiel is suspended by nothing, a pariah dangling in mid-air, a ladder before him.
The only thing keeping Castiel up are his wings, pinned to the twin pillars on either side of him. Crucifixion for an angel, spit like a butterfly, Sander Cohen's next great masterpiece: a study in color.
“We’re here to help, Cas,” the Doctor shouts, only his eyes belying just how afraid he really is right now. He knows that Castiel can heal, but even he recognizes the puddles of grace on the ground beneath him, the light from his chest. Behind him, Sam makes a strange sound, and reaches forward. “Cas?”
Dean stares up at him, completely still, and Castiel wonders if after all of this, Dean will turn him away for being foolish enough to think he'd found his Father. Before Castiel can consider this seriously, Dean's face contorts, an intense rage that reminds Castiel of Sam being in danger. “Sam! Help me get him down!” he barks, and immediately moves to the ladder at Castiel's side.
Sam moves to the side of the ladder and steadies Castiel's legs while Dean blindly reaches for the hooks. He can't see Castiel's wings, but Castiel's weak enough that he can't tuck his wings away from the cruel brush of reality. He hasn't been able to for far too long, and when Dean reaches, his hands brush up against feathers-Castiel's wings-free for a human to touch. Dean pauses when he feels them, and glances at him, flinching when his eyes meet Castiel's. Beneath them, Sam is talking to the Doctor calmly.
“Doctor, we need some help in here. Seal the doors, it’ll hold them back for now.”
Dean is still looking at him, gently prying the hooks from his wings one by one. “Cas? Cas? C’mon, answer me, man,” he whispers, voice catching, emotional.
Sam's arms wrap around him more securely as one of his wings are freed, slipping down to slide boneless to Sam's side. Dean starts on the other one, but Sam is staring up at the mess of his chest in horror, fingers digging into Castiel's thigh. “Dean, he doesn’t look good. How are we supposed to close him back up? He can’t-”
"It's gonna be okay, Cas," Dean is saying, whispering against his filthy neck, as his slippery hands work on that last hook. It releases, and Castiel slumps forward, nose pressed into the side of Dean's neck. He breathes deep, and though Dean smells filthy, he smells human. It's the first time in years that Castiel has smelled something other than decay and the sickness of addiction, and Castiel is so thankful that if he had any fluid to spare in his body, he would weep. Sam's arms tighten around him, pulling him down, away from Dean, and Castiel panics, eyes going wide-reaching.
And then he is in Sam's arms, gentle Sam who is so very careful not to touch any of his exposed organs. The Doctor is by his side, frowning down at him, and Castiel would laugh, because the bow tie is gone, shirt ripped, and he just doesn't look like the Doctor like that-he looks like a Winchester.
“Boys, I’m going to need you to move.”
It takes him too long to focus on the Doctor’s face, too long to wrap a hand around Dean’s wrist, and speaking... He coughs, and the sound echoes wetly as his lungs seize against the Doctor’s palms.
“Why are his eyes glowing?” Dean asks, brushing his thumb just beneath Castiel's eyes.
He takes hold of the Doctor’s hand, and drags it down to rest over his stomach, presses down until the Doctor feels the creature moving. He goes limp. Hopefully the Doctor will know what to do.
Sam hasn’t known the Doctor for long, but he’s never seen him angry. Not like this, screaming at the ceiling as he takes readings of Cas’s organs with his screwdriver. “Humans,” he hisses. “You see something beautiful and new and you have to take it apart to prove it isn’t a threat. You lot make me sick.”
He goes quiet and turns to Sam, fury and sorrow burning in his eyes. “Sam, I am so sorry, but he was right. You did need it.”
When he explains, Sam feels sick. Castiel is gray before them, and his eyes are glowing gold, and there’s a creature inside him that does who knows what to a human body. “I’m going to need your help, Sam,” he says. “You’re going to need to stay calm.”
“To do what?” Dean hisses.
“This,” the Doctor whispers, taking hold of the scalpel next to him-and slicing into Castiel’s stomach. Stomach acid isn’t exactly pleasant, and the Doctor’s hands redden the moment it touches him. The Doctor barely flinches, sliding his hand further inside, fisting it around something and yanking it out. It’s smaller than he thought, and Sam knows what it is the minute he sees it. The Doctor whispers something to it, and when he sets it aside, it doesn’t move. He grimaces, pinching the wound together.
“Now, Sam.”
Incinerate isn’t the easiest plasmid to control. Fire wants to spread, so Sam has to tell it not to-that it has to concentrate on a certain spot. Cauterize, don’t blaze. Heal, don’t consume.
Castiel gasps, and his eyes flutter shut.
“Cas? Cas? What did you do to him? What is that thing?”
Sam closes his eyes, and slides an EVE hypo into the crook of his arm. When he opens them, electricity crackles around his fist, and Dean has the Doctor by the shirt collar. “Dean. He helped him. It’s the slug. The ones that make the little girls monsters.”
Dean’s grip loosens, and the Doctor slips free. He turns back to Cas, his spine stiff. The floor is tacky with blood, and Castiel’s chest is still split down the middle. Sam watches in fascination as Castiel’s heart pumps away, his lungs heaving.
“I’m going to need your help again, boys. He’s Castiel. Little old angel fell off the wall, and we need to put him back together again.”
When Castiel opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is the creature’s absence. So long had it sat in his chest that he’d forgotten what it felt like to really feel the world around him. Already the gray of his skin is bleeding pink again, ever so slowly. He wonders what’s become of his eyes-if they too are blue and human once more, or if the gold still remains.
He rolls over, coughing, happy to discover that his chest is sealed up tight again. No creature, hardly any wounds, and his Grace is brighter than its been in years.
“You look like hell, man.” Dean growls, watching Castiel try to get his bearings. They’re camped out in a place called Sinclair’s Spirits, mostly because after their little game of operation, Dean had needed a stiff drink to forget the sight of Castiel’s blood covering all three of them. And the floor. And the walls. The sound his wings had made as they’d come off the nails is still echoing in his head, because even if Dean can’t see them, they have no way of knowing just how long he’d been hanging there. If wings were anything like any human appendage, it must have been agony. Getting away hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park either, with Sam and the Doctor trying to carry Cas out of that horrible place while Dean took out the splicers Cohen had laughingly set after them.
He could go through lifetimes of torture, and he still wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.
Castiel blinks at him vacantly, and there’s a moment there when he thinks this is going to be like when he took Sam’s madness into himself, tortured night after night by a devil that wasn’t even there.
“I... suppose I do,” Cas whispers, blinking slowly around the place; taking in the bottles of spirits that litter the floor and shelves. They’re behind the cash register, which is the only area that isn’t completely soaked with the water coming in steady streams from the ceiling. There’s a record looping from somewhere-how much is that doggy in the window, it croons, and Dean tries not to be completely freaked out by it. By this whole place, really, because he’d come here thinking of the worst job they’d ever worked, and so far it’s completely exceeded his expectations. Scarier than any goddamn poltergeist they’ve come up against, any spirit hellbent on revenge. Worse than werewolves and vampires and evil-ass clowns, because these are people, driven into madness, a whole fucking city of them, like the worst zombie apocalypse the world could deliver.
The Doctor and Sam are checking the flooded basement, so for now it’s up to him to check the bandages they’d wrapped around Cas to make sure he stays together long enough to heal.
“It’s demon blood,” Cas says, grimacing at the glass of whiskey Dean’s got in his hand.
“Come again?”
Cas looks right at him, blue eyes somehow vibrant in the scant light. The water echoes loudly in the small room, and Dean is cold and wet, and cannot fucking deal with demons right now. “The creatures-ADAM, it’s all demon blood. I don’t quite know how, but the creatures are saturated with it. The ADAM, the powers. They broke my wings, cut them to pieces and watched them grow back wrong. If I tried to leave, they would give me drugs. But nothing, nothing was as truly painful as that creature was.”
“So that slug, you’re telling me that they put demon blood into some thing that they found on the goddamn ocean floor, and they stuck them in children-they did that?” He sets his drink down, because the glass is cracking under his fingers.
“To produce more ADAM, yes.”
“Those sick motherfucking bastards.”
The worm is an alien, fed with demon blood and incubated in the stomachs of children.
ADAM is nothing but a warped version of what Azazel did to Sammy and his other “children,” but with an entire city of ravenous, rabid human beings.
The Doctor closes his eyes and Sam carefully doesn’t look at any of them, sparks darting between his fingers.
Dean wants to burn the place down.
“My my, pretty little moths, still all aflutter. Have you realized, yet?”
“Realized what, you dickwad?”
“He wants to meet you so very badly. But... we’ll let you puzzle it out a little bit longer, shall we?”
They decide to try their luck in Hephaestus, because it’s Andrew Ryan’s old hideout, and surely, if the TARDIS is anywhere, it’s there. They hobble along, all of them clustered protectively around Castiel as his skin slowly goes pink again, as the yellow glow fades from his eyes, as the scars on his chest ease back into unblemished skin. The splicers still make a beeline for him when they see him, like they can smell the ADAM on him, but Castiel assures them all that he feels no side effects-that for the first time in years, his Grace feels untarnished.
Predictably, things go wrong when they reach the bathysphere-inhuman cackles and sudden dust in the air. Sam turns, the Doctor flinching ahead of him, and has one last look at Dean and Castiel’s horrified faces before the bathysphere door snaps shut, and the rocks obscure his view.
“Dean!”
He pounds on the door until the pod starts moving, propelling away from the wreckage that his brother might be buried in. The Doctor lays a hand on his shoulder and Sam slumps to the floor.
The cave-in isn’t expected and it certainly isn’t accidental. Dean guts one of the splicers that tries to charge Cas, knife full-on buried to the hilt, enough that he can feel its blood slick his clenched fist. There’s too much dust in the air, and he can’t tell if the bathysphere got out safely, or if Sam and the Doctor are at the bottom of the ocean right now, their brains bursting out their ears from the pressure.
“Sam! Sam! Goddammit!”
He shouts and shouts, but the only good that does is to bring more splicers their way, giving him something to take his anger out on.
They have a circle of corpses around them before he gives up, Cas’s hand on his shoulder. The hand turns him around, and it’s still weird to see Cas with glowing yellow eyes and gray skin-a punch to the gut that has his instincts screaming at him to gut the demon before it gets to you first.
“Dean,” Cas says, hand gentle as it caresses his shoulder. “This isn’t the way. If either of them had passed, I would know. We’ll find them.”
He slams a fist into the rock blocking their path and scowls down at the red on his shaking hands.
“I know we will,” he says, because he’s always found Sam, and whenever he couldn’t, Cas could.
Part III
Fandoms: Supernatural/Doctor Who/Bioshock; SUPERWHOSHOCK
Summary: Castiel's gone missing, and finding one wayward angel in all of space and time is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Good thing he left a message behind-now there's only the matter of figuring out what this mysterious "Rapture" is. In which the splicers have the phone box, the Doctor has an angel for a BFF, Castiel uses a Little Sister for a temporary vessel, and everything’s really about family in the end.
"-I'm not sure my voice will even reach you like this, but Doctor-Dean-"
The message runs through with static, the signal shot, audio fading with Castiel's voice cracking on Dean's name, and the Doctor shouts.
Moments later, the signal's back; a close up of Castiel's face, eyes wild with blood collecting at the corners of his mouth and dripping down his brow.
"-ind me. I can't-"
Beside him, Rory is silent, face white as a sheet. There's a strange music coming through, faint, but just barely discernable through the static. Filmy and slow, like an old record player that keeps skipping-skip, skip, skip-and something that sounds like water.
"-on't understand. Find me in rapture. I don't think I can-"
The video skips again, and a shadow looms behind him, something clutched in its hands-raised over Castiel's bloody head.
"-here isn't-"
The figure brings its fist down, and Castiel's eyes roll.
The video cuts out.
Amy clutches her husband's hand, knuckles gone white.
"I think I need to pay the Winchesters a visit."
"Where the hell is he? Where is Castiel?"
Dean's face is creased in anger, hands tight on the beer bottle that never made it to his lips. The house they're in is small and cramped, smelling of old books and petrol. The TARDIS sits in a junkyard, the vibrant blue violently out of place surrounded by faded, sun-bleached cars.
"Where is he? Doctor, where the hell is Castiel!"
"I don't know."
"We'll find him, Dean," Sam whispers. The two of them are tucked close to the door, as far away from the console as they can get, sequestered there like two little lost children. They don’t like her very much. Sam’s warming to her slowly, that curiosity that makes him so fundamentally Sam Winchester starting to itch at the back of his mind, an old childish desire to run his hands all over everything in sight, coating the TARDIS’s interior with his fingerprints. Dean though, Dean hates it the same way he hates planes and poltergeists and young mothers in pain.
He’s been on the TARDIS before, of course, just the once, and he’d hated it then too-clutching Castiel’s coat tight enough to leave marks in the fabric, and surging out the door the second it opened. It appears that Dean Winchester hates any type of flight, not limited to airplanes.
The Doctor hopes he’ll grow out of it.
Then there’s the other puzzle: Castiel’s message, and the meaning behind rapture. River seems to think he’s referring to the Rapture, à la the Book of Revelations, but Dean quickly shoots that down with a pained smile. “First off, which freaking apocalypse? Last year’s? The year before that? And there’s no way in hell that some poor schmuck isn’t dealing with an apocalypse on planet so-and-so off in la-la land. Secondly, Cas has had enough Raptures to last him a lifetime. No more Raptures for that angel.”
Sam rolls his eyes, hiding his face in the thick tome that he managed to un-earth from one of the TARDIS’ libraries. Next to him, River settles her hip against the console, baring her teeth in a feral smile. “Then what exactly do you think it means, darling?”
The Doctor is starting to think that River does not like Dean Winchester. He’s never heard her use that endearment so viciously before. Dean scoffs. “Maybe he’s just off getting laid somewhere. Some nice kinky angel sex. Find me in rapture, oh yeah, baby.”
She glares at him when he winks, and when the others just stare at him, he throws up his hands. “Like I freaking know! I’m not exactly the Cas expert here. Ask him!” He points accusingly, and the Doctor spins around. Nope, no one behind him.
“I think, Dean Winchester, that you’ll find you are the Castiel expert, here,” River sighs, and cocks her gun.
They check Bethlehem, and then they stop by Nazareth, and the Doctor does not allow Dean anywhere near the rabbi, Joshua. They check countless planets that are breaking apart beneath their feet, and in a week they experience more apocalypses than they can keep track of. The Doctor whispers to the TARDIS quietly, pleading with her, because she’s always known where to take him, even when he didn’t. Nothing works, and the TARDIS hums back at him sadly.
It’s Amy who ends up finding it in the middle of a slow, quiet day when they’ve all taken a page out of the Winchesters’ book and surrounded themselves with research, heaps and heaps of history books, religious books, even fictional books. They’re reading quietly, Rory propped up against his wife’s side on a newly installed window seat, staring out into the vast reaches of space. River’s off on some mad lead, thinking some associate of hers might be able to help. Dean and Sam are sitting back to back in the middle of it, Dean taking sporadic swigs from a flask propped against his ankle.
When Amy gasps, everyone looks up. “I’ve got it!” she shrieks.
Oddly enough, she does.
Rapture, a city lost amongst the pages of history. A paradise gone wrong, the books say, greed and malice and monstrosity its greatest treasures. The few books that they find about it speak of creatures no longer quite human, Splicers, human beings whose basic genetic code has been rewritten to the point of mutation.
There are no pictures. 63° 2' N, 29° 55' W, a necropolis beneath the North Atlantic Ocean created in the nineteen forties, a dream city, an impossible city-a twentieth century Atlantis gone to ruins. Andrew Ryan. "’A man has choices,’” Rory reads. “‘I chose the impossible.’”
This is Castiel’s prison, and they may not have a date, but they have a location; from there it’s only a matter of time. Dean slams the book shut and grits his teeth. The console room is quiet, desolate.
They all know what they’re walking into, and the Doctor makes the decision to take the Ponds back home before Amy can kick up a fuss, backed by Sam and Dean, both of whom quietly assure the couple that they don’t want to risk any more people than they have to. “Hush now, Ponds,” the Doctor whispers, walking them to their door.
When he gets back, Sam is arguing with his brother quietly. They both look up when he closes the doors behind him, the TARDIS gone still and silent. “Well now,” he says, with a bravado he doesn’t quite feel. “What are we waiting for?”
It’s worse than he thought it would be.
Their first stop is 1946, when the Olympian is just starting to set the building blocks upon the ocean floor. They watch as the Sinker, Rapture’s foundation, is slowly lowered into the water. The ocean churns around the behemoth steam-liner, as if even the sea itself wants no part in this expedition.
Andrew Ryan is young still, dark curls dripping with sweat from the midday sun. There is an unfamiliar man standing next to him, and though the Doctor squints, he can’t quite make him out.
They leave, and as he ushers the boys back onto the TARDIS, the strange man seems to wave.
They meet Jasmine Jolene in 1956, crying quietly as she dances. When Dean grins at her, wiping her tears, he asks why she’s crying. She gives a little sob, and leaves the stage.
They search 1956, and though they find dozens of things that are already going wrong with the city, they do not find Castiel.
The fighting reaches a climax in 1958, and Julie Langford helps them escape the chaos of the New Year’s party, showing them back through the labyrinth until they catch a glimpse of the TARDIS near Neptune’s Bounty. Sam turns back for her at the last minute, promising a world where her genius would not be stifled by the polluted city. She smiles at him, and when she strokes a hand down his cheek, her fingers leave traces of soil.
“Dear boy,” she tells him, “I could never leave my trees with them. I have something I’m working on, something that will change this world as we know it. Rosa gallica officinalis. One day, everyone will know its name. Worry not, Sam. I have a feeling we’ll see each other again soon.”
They jump back, back to ‘49, when Rapture is still thriving under Ryan’s watchful gaze. Ryan is a proud man, and when they meet him, he welcomes them with open arms. He allows the Doctor to use the labs, access to wherever they wish. He is an intelligent man, not yet driven to madness by his failures. A man with a head full of scintillating futures, a utopia for the world’s best and brightest.
They trek through Rapture a third time, and meet a girl named Jane who wants to be a star.
They do not find Castiel.
"You could be so brilliant," says the Doctor when they first meet, on the docks of the harbor in 1942. Sander is not quite young-old enough to know that those who shine too brightly are best to be avoided. He grins, playful and charismatic, utilizing the last vestiges of boyishness to dimple his smile and round his cheeks, ever so slightly impish.
"My good sir," he purrs, silky-smooth-an entertainers voice. "I will be brilliant. Won't you stick around to see me shine?"
1948, and there are rumors of a discovery. Brigid Tenenbaum, sea slugs, and something called ADAM. Little girls turned into tiny little monsters; and guardians to watch over them.
By 1967 Rapture has gone quiet, splicers left to roam the streets, no Ryan to oversee them. Too quiet. Too late.
It is the year of 1962, and Rapture echoes with the screams of the dying. Bloated corpses litter the floors, and the creatures known as splicers have become truly vicious, choosing to gut you first rather than ask questions. Andrew Ryan is silent, as are Fontaine, Atlas, Langford. Rapture’s best and brightest extinguished, the monsters left to roam free.
This is the year that they find him.
1962 is the worst year that they have experienced, the Splicers mad with power, worse than the ghosts that they find trapped in Rapture’s walls. For the first few days, the Doctor refused to hurt them, refused to touch them-trying to reason with them until finally a bullet to the shoulder put that notion out of his head. When they’d discovered the TARDIS missing-well, that was that. The Doctor still isn’t as violent as he should be. The pistol they’d given him is mostly used to take out a leg or two, leaving the splicer shouting after them as they make their way through the mad city.
And now-well, now the splicers have the phonebox, the Doctor has a gimp shoulder, Sam has started acting like a creeper around the weirdo little girls with the glowing eyes and the freaky-ass monster daddies, and Dean has a headache. Of course, there’s also the matter of being stuck in Fort Frolic with the corpse smell permanently ingrained in their nostrils, and ghosts flickering in and out of existence all around them.
So when Cohen approaches them with talk of angels and actual, legitimate help, Dean can’t help but be wary of the guy.
However, the Doctor is exhausted, and apparently even being a nine-hundred-year-old alien doesn’t stop the effects of blood loss. They’ve been running for days-at this point, everyone is a little bit battle-weary.
So they agree to do Cohen a few favors, even though the Doctor claims to be perfectly fine.
They take out some people for him: scorned lovers, former friends, and a few ghosts that have been giving him trouble. Along the way, they find out a few things of their own.
The first week isn’t actually that bad. Rapture’s not the prettiest city they’ve ever been to-it’s rank with assholes and greedy fucking monsters and the whole place has bullshit to its rafters, but between the Doctor deciding to hack into every security bot and turret and make them his minions, Sam going on and on about architecture, and Dean finding good fucking liquor everywhere he looks, it isn’t that bad. The bots following along behind them are actually kind of cool, the same way that Dean kind of thinks that the TARDIS is one badass fucking lady, even if she makes him airsick as all hell.
The Doctor grins at him, cooing at one of the latest editions. Dean’s pretty sure that if the thing could nuzzle the Doctor without taking off his head, it would.
They camp out in ransacked shops, keeping a steady diet of pep-bars, potato chips, and weird creme-filled cakes. It’s a lot like home, except instead of hotels there are bloodied, damp floors and there isn’t a bacon cheeseburger or a slice of apple pie in sight.
The second week is... less good. In fact, the second week is a downright disaster. Cohen crows at them over the loudspeakers as they take out whatever individual wronged him this time and the Doctor starts to droop enough that his little bot friends flock around him and go ape-shit whenever someone that isn’t Sam or Dean gets close to him. They’re protective as all hell, which actually makes it worse whenever something gets a lucky strike in and takes one down.
Their food supply starts dwindling, even when they start picking places with storage rooms in the back. Eventually it gets so bad that Sam takes them to the frozen back rooms of Fontaine Fisheries, yanks some fish out of the freezers and uses some wood from a nearby table to roast them up. It’s not the best, but it works.
By their third week, they’re running ragged, and Dean’s developed a loathing so severe for this Cohen guy that he’s started telling the guy in detail exactly what he’s gonna do to him when they find him. The Doctor doesn’t like it much, because he’s the only one who has had a hearts-to-heart with the fucker before the dude went crazy, but at this point, Dean doesn’t even give a shit. He doesn’t trust the fucker one goddamned bit.
The diaries pop up all around Rapture, and the Doctor started the habit of listening to them. “It’s only fair that we listen to these poor people. They were sane enough to record them, and these are the last vestiges of who they were. We’re killing them now. We owe them that.”
So they listen to the voices of the dead and dying, and they learn the horrors of Rapture. “The Splicers crave the ADAM more and more. It rewrites the DNA even as it destroys the mind,” Brigid Tenenbaum whispers to them as they make their way through Poseidon Plaza. The skittering of spider splicers in the ceiling follow them as they go, and Sam keeps a gun trained upwards, ever vigilant.
“It’s strange,” the Doctor whispers. “The sea slugs that are crucial to producing ADAM sound like a species a few galaxies over. They’re called Lumbricus Mens Mentis. Latin for ‘thought worm.’”
The Doctor grins a bit, first at Sam, then at Dean.
“They’re actually quite lovely little creatures. Always polite, these worms. They’re capable of modifying the genetic makeup in most creatures-fascinating, really. The Chameleon Arch was originally designed to work the same way, though we had to use a perception filter rather than completely altering the biology. Well, alter completely. Heal and alter, but they’re always polite about it.”
Sam looks intrigued, so Dean takes it upon himself to dispatch the splicer that erupts from the ceiling. Unfortunately, the smile fades and the Doctor flinches, going quiet.
Cohen laughs when they return various body parts of the people he’d asked them to kill. He laughs and laughs and then purrs, “Just one more thing-one more thing you’ll need in order to get where you’re going.”
“It’s a bad idea.” The Doctor is glaring at the pseudo vending machine before them, as if he’d like nothing more than to make it blow up with his brain. It isn’t right, he’d told Sam days ago. Over the years, there have been hundreds of planets that have perfected the art of gene-splicing, and madness like this has never been a side effect. Maybe he’s right, but maybe he isn’t. Dean’s glaring at him, though, brow furrowed and hackles up, standard issue defensive older brother. That’s the same look he’d given Sam in the first grade when Sam had come home with a black eye and refused to tell him who did it. “Listen to the Doc, Sammy, it’s a bad idea. This guy has been jerking us around for weeks and we’re supposed to trust him enough for this? We’ve seen what this stuff does to people, Sam. I can’t let you do this.”
He frowns over at both of them, and the Doctor finally pulls his eyes away from the machine long enough to really look at him. “Look, we don’t-”
Cohen chuckles at them, cutting off what he’d been about to say. “Time’s a-tickin’, little moths.”
Sam draws himself up to his fullest height, and the look he sends his brother is one that he knows Dean is familiar with. The faint pink light the machine gives off casts shadows all over the room. The creepy statues of the little girls don’t really help the atmosphere. “Dean, I have to. Cas is waiting for us, and this-I can do this for him.”
Dean’s face crumples, eyes moist. “-Samm-”
And in for the kill-“He would do it for us, Dean. You know he would.”
He isn’t crying, but if anything, Dean looks even more crushed, and Sam knows that it’s because he know it’s true. Cas would do anything for them. Hell, he has done anything and everything for them. He’s given up his family, he’s fallen, he’s died, he’s forgotten who he is, only to remember again long enough for him to get Lucifer shoved in his head for month. If anyone is worth this, it’s Cas.
The needle slides in, and Sam screams.
Fort Frolic is probably the worst playground that Dean has ever been to, and that includes the crappy, rundown, rusted one in Northern Maine that Sam nearly got sepsis from when he was five. It isn’t just the fact that he knows for damn sure by now that this Cohen guy is just fucking around with them, or that the theme park feels like every other goddamn place in the city. It’s not the corpses or the creepy-ass music or the crazy-ass inhabitants. If anything, it’s because for the first time since arriving in this city, something feels lived in. The lights glow neon above their heads-flickering in a way that has him grabbing for the salt rounds-but still lit up. The tile beneath their feet is cleaner than any other place they’ve been, blood appears only occasionally, and corpses are rare unless they put them there themselves.
The main atrium is flawless, and though some of the shops they’ve peered into seem to be in various stages of decay, it’s obvious that someone cares for the place on a regular basis. Whether that’s Cohen himself or the dozens of other hacks he’s probably convinced to work for him has yet to be seen.
Sam shivers and leans away from the entrance of Eve’s Garden, remembering what they’d found there just minutes ago. Jasmine isn’t quite so pretty now, just a dried out corpse on bloody sheets, a diary tucked just underneath her deathbed. They listen in horror as it tells them about her pregnancy, and from there, there’s only so many ways this could have gone. Dean has a hard time comparing a Ryan who would beat a woman to death over a pregnancy to the bright-eyed young man who’d discussed genetics and chemistry so enthusiastically with the Doctor not even a decade ago-but then again, it feels like Rapture has driven everyone mad.
“You doin’ all right over there, Sammy?”
Sam flashes him the bitch face between heaving breaths, and Dean has to fight the urge to close the distance between them and pat him down until he’s sure there’s not a stray bullet lodged into his lungs. The Doctor is swinging his legs, perched on a crumbled pillar, and the look he shoots Dean is as reassuring as it is creepy. Even after all this, Dean’s not entirely sure that he trusts the Doctor. Hell, he knows that he doesn’t like him yet, but he’s Castiel’s friend-time-traveling genius alien and all that, so Dean’s gonna have to rely on him for a bit. If the Doctor thinks that whatever creepy bullshit that fucked these guys up in the first place hasn’t damaged Sam much, then Dean will believe him. For now. Even if he gets the urge to punch him every damn time that sparks fly from his little brother’s fingertips.
“Fine, Dean. Never better.” He spits out a mouthful of blood, and yeah, okay, that’s not all right. He steps over the corpse of Cohen’s ex-boyfriend and prods at Sam’s chest, frowning as if he can really tell if there’s internal damage by way of sound.
“Did it get you anywhere?” he hisses, poking at the dirty flannel above Sam’s collarbone. The splicers they’d encountered in the place really weren’t that bad, but it’s always possible that it might have gotten Sam while he wasn’t looking, and for a human, one of those hooks to an unprotected patch of skin is potentially fatal. “Doctor, get your ass down her-”
“Dean, I’m fine. Just-the ADAM hurts more than I thought it would. I can still feel the electricity in my teeth. Biting my tongue is really not the worst that could happen to me right now, okay?” Yep, bitch face, right there.
The Doctor finally hops down from his wall and grins at them. “All right, Sam?” he asks, lip twitching.
Sam smiles at him, dimples and all, and claps a big hand onto the Doctor's shoulder, laughing when the Doctor kind of sways under the weight, always graceful. "Yeah, Doctor, I'm okay," he says. Ugh, nerds. Dean should have known better than to introduce his big geek brother to Cas's biggest-geek-in-the-universe BFF.
"Okay, Bert and Ernie, stop flirting and let's get a move on. We've gotta figure out where the hell Cas is in this mess."
Just down the corridor to the left of the entrance of Poseidon Plaza, there’s a door to a place called Cohen’s Collection of Fine Arts. When Sam first points it out, the Winchesters decide to shrug it off and proceed into the Plaza, thinking that the big door with the ice surrounding it has something better behind it. But now that Eve’s Garden is behind them, the Doctor considers the door. At first glance, it seems like any of the other doors in the place. It isn’t terrible fancy, but the Doctor hasn’t trusted Cohen since the moment the man had first approached them and asked them to be his assassins. So he stops in front of the door on the way back to the Lower Atrium, even as the boys continue down the hallway, shouting for him to keep up.
He steps closer to the door, screwdriver pressed to the edges even as the door slides open, revealing crumbling walls and ashen floor. “What are you?” he whispers. “What’s the bad man hiding here?”
“Doctor, what’s taking you?” Dean shouts from ahead.
The Doctor glances away from the door to find Sam cocking his head at him, curious, and Dean waving his gun around impatiently. “We should check here,” he hollers back, moving into the room before they can respond, laughing when Dean curses from behind him.
His first impression of Cohen’s Collection is ash and crumbled plaster and the smell of blood. “What the fuck, Doctor,” Dean whispers through gritted teeth when he catches up, while the Doctor inspects the pack of cigarettes laid out on the counter, a thick coating of dust across the top of the box. Sam comes up behind them and glances around at the peeling walls. He shivers.
There’s noise coming from further down the hallway, the familiar shrieking of maddened human beings. “You can’t hide forever, starshine,” one of them yells, and the clack-clack-clack of heels on linoleum echo behind them. Dean frowns at the door and moves into the room proper, mouth opening like he’s about to berate one of them for leaving a trail. Only he flinches when he reaches the opening, going completely stock still in the doorway. His eyes are roaming over the room, and the Doctor, curious, forgets about the splicers momentarily and creeps up behind him, screwdriver held at the ready.
There’s blood coating the floors and light seeping through windows in a way that make him think of the vashta nerada, and a figure at the far side of the room, dangling in the air just before the stairs-bloodied trench coat and dark hair, familiar save for the dead yellow glow in the eyes, the corpse-gray skin, and the mess of viscera that is the abdomen.
The figure stares at them, and there’s a gasp from behind him, and Sam sounds like he’s in pain. The pain hits the Doctor’s hearts at the same time, like a firecracker going off in his chest, and oh no, please, please, not this one-
He takes a deep breath and beside him, Dean lets out a shuddery breath. Whispers, like he doesn’t want a response-“Cas?”
Spring of 1956, and Castiel wakes in a cage. The first thing they do is break his wings.
December, 1956. Castiel has been a prisoner for months now, currently stuffed into a cell in Persephone, and all of his cellmates are screaming. Most from withdrawal, others just for the sake of it. Some are in pain, and there are a few who are afraid. A twelve-year-old girl is in the cell next to him. She spends her days sobbing for her mother and her nights howling for ADAM.
It is 1956, and Castiel surfaces from the cocktail of drugs that Fontaine has pumped into him to the sound of Dean’s voice.
He isn’t in a cell, the Doctor and Sam are both beside him as they prowl between the bars, inspecting the prisoners here and there. Castiel doesn’t know how they managed to get in, but he supposes that with the Doctor, psychic paper could get you pretty far in this place.
The man they’re with is saying something, gesturing the other way, and they start to turn-back the way they came. Castiel tries to shout for them, his lips forming Dean’s name, but no sound comes out. He has not been given water in over a month, because Fontaine wishes to know whether angels can go without nourishment for an extended period of time and still survive. He has been beaten, burnt, and split open by these people, and at the moment they literally have his tongue on ice in another room.
He rattles the bars to his cell, but the sound mixes with the hundreds of other prisoners doing the exact same thing.
Dean fades from view, and next to him, the girl giggles.
1957. Cohen lights him on fire, again and again, because he likes to watch Castiel’s skin turn pink again-the dead cells sloughing off of him until he is just exposed tissues and muscle, gleaming red until the skin grows back.
“It’s poetic, Castiel, dear. Can’t you see how beautiful you are? Perfect.”
Cohen laughs and snaps his fingers before the skin has time to return. “Now let’s see how that body of yours burns without its skin.”
It is the year 1958, and Castiel spends the year cursing Dean for making an angel feel.
The year is 1959, and Castiel has been stuck in Rapture for three years, seven months, and three weeks. He is not sure of the day, nor the minute, and certainly not the second. But he knows enough to know that today is a Steinman day, if just from the lights passing outside the bathysphere. He has three guards today, two with hooks and another with the glowing red fingertips he’s learned to fear since his exposure to Sander Cohen. Houdini splicers are just as mad as the rest, but he’s been given many reasons to fear their fire.
Steinman greets him with a scalpel and a grin, and Castiel’s guards barely have him on the table before the scalpels are in him, twisting deep and puncturing his left lung on the first try. They’ve had enough years together that Steinman knows his body better than a lover would-which patch of skin hides the most responsive organs.
“Today we have a surprise for you, my dear angel. Tell me, Aphrodite, what do you think?”
He brandishes a sea slug, dripping black, and Castiel’s eyes widen, because he finally sees the truth behind ADAM, the real reason that Rapture’s citizens crave it so. Steinman opens him up; a slice here, a breaking of ribs there, and the slug vanishes inside his chest, black ooze mixing with Jimmy Novak’s blood.
Steinman doesn’t even have the time to close him up before he starts screaming.
It is 1960, and Steinman sits across the room from Castiel with Andrew Ryan, observing. Ryan frowns at him, watching as he writhes in his bonds, heavy chains wrapped round and round his wrists, and he’s too weak to do a thing about it. The creature sits, quiet for now, soaking up the warmth of his beating heart.
“It’s supposed to be implanted in the stomach lining, you know,” Steinman says, twisting a scalpel around in the air. “None of the adult subjects have lived-not one. A decade, and you’re the first.”
He smiles up at Castiel, mad with power.
“We didn’t think you’d last this long, of course, but I suppose it has something to do with your... celestial heritage. So we figured-why not go a step further? Why not see if you can survive when the creature has free movement?”
“Surprise, surprise. You did. It eats at your organs until they’re shredded pulpy things, but you always heal.”
Ryan leans close, and smiles coldly, speaking to Castiel for the first time in four years. “Why is that?”
He thinks that it might be 1961 by now, but the weeks feel like millennia. With the creature in his chest, he cannot heal, and with his hands bound, he cannot remove the creature.
It has been far too long since someone has come by to see him, months since he’s been removed from his cell to be someone’s plaything. Months and his wings are just starting to heal, though the worm pumps toxins through his body, keeping his wings weak and his Grace weaker still.
He is bound to this cell, and he wonders if in fifty years, he will still be here when his younger self first drags Dean from hell.
“Ah, so this is where they kept you. Pretty little pigeon, all locked away. Lucky you, little ol’ Jackie spared me. Killed ‘em all, he did, except yours truly.”
Sander Cohen smiles at him and curtsies. Castiel smells fire.
“So, let’s spring you from this trap, little birdie, and you can come play with good ol’ Sander for a while.”
Castiel does not know what year it is. He can feel nothing but the thing in his chest, squirming. The thing that’s made his skin go gray as a corpse and his eyes yellow like rotten lemons.
He does not know what year it is, but Cohen is talking to someone outside of his prison. Cohen’s voice over the loudspeakers, theatrical and purring with satisfaction.
“You say you’re looking for an angel, little moths? We have angels all over Rapture, simply ask the little monsters who wanders its halls.” Cohen, playing with his food, but there’s something in his voice that makes Castiel quake. That voice he had the first time he’d gotten Castiel all to himself, pleased and arrogant and secretive to a fault.
“We’re not looking for just any angel.”
Dean. Dean. Dean’s voice, through his prison doors. The creature inside him twists, gnawing through veins and organs, violently protesting against the vessel it’s stuck inside. Castiel knows how it feels, and his fingers itch to rip it out of his chest. He refrains, though. The punishments for doing so often turn much worse than just keeping it within him.
“I may know a thing or two about a certain angel, my curious little friends. So come into my parlor, and perhaps I can help.”
It has been weeks since he's heard Dean's voice, and Cohen is his only visitor.
"Your friends are awfully fun to play with, little angel. Such good little worker ants they are." He jerks on razor wire, and Castiel's left hand rises, puppet-like. The wire cuts into his flesh, and his arm goes wet with fresh blood. "It's like cleaning house."
"You do have good taste, though," he purrs, nipping playfully at the side of Castiel's neck. "Tell me, which of my little worker ants is really yours? In my experience, friends don't look for you that hard."
Castiel grimaces and drools blood down his chin as Cohen hoists him upwards. The strain makes his broken wings ache, the hooks digging in until it's his Grace that's dribbling down his body to pool on the ash covered floor. "Well," Cohen grins up at him. "It's polite to answer when you're spoken to."
The pain makes him dizzy, and though the slug inside of him is poison, he grits his teeth against the pain. Knowing Dean is here has given him hope he has not felt in years, so he takes all the blood, all the phlegm and broken teeth in his mouth and aims everything at Cohen's smug face. "Perhaps," he whispers, voice hoarse and aching, "You just don't have very good friends."
The pain is worth the look on Cohen's face.
The doors to his prison hiss open, and Castiel watches as Dean rounds the corner and walks into the room-as his eyes adjust to the murky lighting, taking in the morbid plaster sculptures in the center. The family set down to dinner, one of Cohen's older works-the father with his wrists sliced open, the mother with her arms bound behind her, and the daughter with her hands folded demurely in her lap. Only after passing this over does he start noticing the vibrant slashes of red streaked across the monotone landscape. His eyes follow the blood even as Sam and the Doctor burst into the room behind him, Sam clutching tight to a crowbar with a streak of blood across his cheek, and the Doctor holding his sonic screwdriver in front of him like a weapon. Castiel though, right now, Castiel only has eyes for Dean. Dean, whose eyes are tracking the blood to the pools of light on the ground, and then up, to the glow of Castiel's grace in his split open chest, rib cage snapped and cracked apart, revealing the innermost workings of an angel. The worm is in his stomach now, safely concealed there until Cohen comes to seal him back up. The worst though, he thinks, is when Dean notices that Castiel is suspended by nothing, a pariah dangling in mid-air, a ladder before him.
The only thing keeping Castiel up are his wings, pinned to the twin pillars on either side of him. Crucifixion for an angel, spit like a butterfly, Sander Cohen's next great masterpiece: a study in color.
“We’re here to help, Cas,” the Doctor shouts, only his eyes belying just how afraid he really is right now. He knows that Castiel can heal, but even he recognizes the puddles of grace on the ground beneath him, the light from his chest. Behind him, Sam makes a strange sound, and reaches forward. “Cas?”
Dean stares up at him, completely still, and Castiel wonders if after all of this, Dean will turn him away for being foolish enough to think he'd found his Father. Before Castiel can consider this seriously, Dean's face contorts, an intense rage that reminds Castiel of Sam being in danger. “Sam! Help me get him down!” he barks, and immediately moves to the ladder at Castiel's side.
Sam moves to the side of the ladder and steadies Castiel's legs while Dean blindly reaches for the hooks. He can't see Castiel's wings, but Castiel's weak enough that he can't tuck his wings away from the cruel brush of reality. He hasn't been able to for far too long, and when Dean reaches, his hands brush up against feathers-Castiel's wings-free for a human to touch. Dean pauses when he feels them, and glances at him, flinching when his eyes meet Castiel's. Beneath them, Sam is talking to the Doctor calmly.
“Doctor, we need some help in here. Seal the doors, it’ll hold them back for now.”
Dean is still looking at him, gently prying the hooks from his wings one by one. “Cas? Cas? C’mon, answer me, man,” he whispers, voice catching, emotional.
Sam's arms wrap around him more securely as one of his wings are freed, slipping down to slide boneless to Sam's side. Dean starts on the other one, but Sam is staring up at the mess of his chest in horror, fingers digging into Castiel's thigh. “Dean, he doesn’t look good. How are we supposed to close him back up? He can’t-”
"It's gonna be okay, Cas," Dean is saying, whispering against his filthy neck, as his slippery hands work on that last hook. It releases, and Castiel slumps forward, nose pressed into the side of Dean's neck. He breathes deep, and though Dean smells filthy, he smells human. It's the first time in years that Castiel has smelled something other than decay and the sickness of addiction, and Castiel is so thankful that if he had any fluid to spare in his body, he would weep. Sam's arms tighten around him, pulling him down, away from Dean, and Castiel panics, eyes going wide-reaching.
And then he is in Sam's arms, gentle Sam who is so very careful not to touch any of his exposed organs. The Doctor is by his side, frowning down at him, and Castiel would laugh, because the bow tie is gone, shirt ripped, and he just doesn't look like the Doctor like that-he looks like a Winchester.
“Boys, I’m going to need you to move.”
It takes him too long to focus on the Doctor’s face, too long to wrap a hand around Dean’s wrist, and speaking... He coughs, and the sound echoes wetly as his lungs seize against the Doctor’s palms.
“Why are his eyes glowing?” Dean asks, brushing his thumb just beneath Castiel's eyes.
He takes hold of the Doctor’s hand, and drags it down to rest over his stomach, presses down until the Doctor feels the creature moving. He goes limp. Hopefully the Doctor will know what to do.
Sam hasn’t known the Doctor for long, but he’s never seen him angry. Not like this, screaming at the ceiling as he takes readings of Cas’s organs with his screwdriver. “Humans,” he hisses. “You see something beautiful and new and you have to take it apart to prove it isn’t a threat. You lot make me sick.”
He goes quiet and turns to Sam, fury and sorrow burning in his eyes. “Sam, I am so sorry, but he was right. You did need it.”
When he explains, Sam feels sick. Castiel is gray before them, and his eyes are glowing gold, and there’s a creature inside him that does who knows what to a human body. “I’m going to need your help, Sam,” he says. “You’re going to need to stay calm.”
“To do what?” Dean hisses.
“This,” the Doctor whispers, taking hold of the scalpel next to him-and slicing into Castiel’s stomach. Stomach acid isn’t exactly pleasant, and the Doctor’s hands redden the moment it touches him. The Doctor barely flinches, sliding his hand further inside, fisting it around something and yanking it out. It’s smaller than he thought, and Sam knows what it is the minute he sees it. The Doctor whispers something to it, and when he sets it aside, it doesn’t move. He grimaces, pinching the wound together.
“Now, Sam.”
Incinerate isn’t the easiest plasmid to control. Fire wants to spread, so Sam has to tell it not to-that it has to concentrate on a certain spot. Cauterize, don’t blaze. Heal, don’t consume.
Castiel gasps, and his eyes flutter shut.
“Cas? Cas? What did you do to him? What is that thing?”
Sam closes his eyes, and slides an EVE hypo into the crook of his arm. When he opens them, electricity crackles around his fist, and Dean has the Doctor by the shirt collar. “Dean. He helped him. It’s the slug. The ones that make the little girls monsters.”
Dean’s grip loosens, and the Doctor slips free. He turns back to Cas, his spine stiff. The floor is tacky with blood, and Castiel’s chest is still split down the middle. Sam watches in fascination as Castiel’s heart pumps away, his lungs heaving.
“I’m going to need your help again, boys. He’s Castiel. Little old angel fell off the wall, and we need to put him back together again.”
When Castiel opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is the creature’s absence. So long had it sat in his chest that he’d forgotten what it felt like to really feel the world around him. Already the gray of his skin is bleeding pink again, ever so slowly. He wonders what’s become of his eyes-if they too are blue and human once more, or if the gold still remains.
He rolls over, coughing, happy to discover that his chest is sealed up tight again. No creature, hardly any wounds, and his Grace is brighter than its been in years.
“You look like hell, man.” Dean growls, watching Castiel try to get his bearings. They’re camped out in a place called Sinclair’s Spirits, mostly because after their little game of operation, Dean had needed a stiff drink to forget the sight of Castiel’s blood covering all three of them. And the floor. And the walls. The sound his wings had made as they’d come off the nails is still echoing in his head, because even if Dean can’t see them, they have no way of knowing just how long he’d been hanging there. If wings were anything like any human appendage, it must have been agony. Getting away hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park either, with Sam and the Doctor trying to carry Cas out of that horrible place while Dean took out the splicers Cohen had laughingly set after them.
He could go through lifetimes of torture, and he still wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.
Castiel blinks at him vacantly, and there’s a moment there when he thinks this is going to be like when he took Sam’s madness into himself, tortured night after night by a devil that wasn’t even there.
“I... suppose I do,” Cas whispers, blinking slowly around the place; taking in the bottles of spirits that litter the floor and shelves. They’re behind the cash register, which is the only area that isn’t completely soaked with the water coming in steady streams from the ceiling. There’s a record looping from somewhere-how much is that doggy in the window, it croons, and Dean tries not to be completely freaked out by it. By this whole place, really, because he’d come here thinking of the worst job they’d ever worked, and so far it’s completely exceeded his expectations. Scarier than any goddamn poltergeist they’ve come up against, any spirit hellbent on revenge. Worse than werewolves and vampires and evil-ass clowns, because these are people, driven into madness, a whole fucking city of them, like the worst zombie apocalypse the world could deliver.
The Doctor and Sam are checking the flooded basement, so for now it’s up to him to check the bandages they’d wrapped around Cas to make sure he stays together long enough to heal.
“It’s demon blood,” Cas says, grimacing at the glass of whiskey Dean’s got in his hand.
“Come again?”
Cas looks right at him, blue eyes somehow vibrant in the scant light. The water echoes loudly in the small room, and Dean is cold and wet, and cannot fucking deal with demons right now. “The creatures-ADAM, it’s all demon blood. I don’t quite know how, but the creatures are saturated with it. The ADAM, the powers. They broke my wings, cut them to pieces and watched them grow back wrong. If I tried to leave, they would give me drugs. But nothing, nothing was as truly painful as that creature was.”
“So that slug, you’re telling me that they put demon blood into some thing that they found on the goddamn ocean floor, and they stuck them in children-they did that?” He sets his drink down, because the glass is cracking under his fingers.
“To produce more ADAM, yes.”
“Those sick motherfucking bastards.”
The worm is an alien, fed with demon blood and incubated in the stomachs of children.
ADAM is nothing but a warped version of what Azazel did to Sammy and his other “children,” but with an entire city of ravenous, rabid human beings.
The Doctor closes his eyes and Sam carefully doesn’t look at any of them, sparks darting between his fingers.
Dean wants to burn the place down.
“My my, pretty little moths, still all aflutter. Have you realized, yet?”
“Realized what, you dickwad?”
“He wants to meet you so very badly. But... we’ll let you puzzle it out a little bit longer, shall we?”
They decide to try their luck in Hephaestus, because it’s Andrew Ryan’s old hideout, and surely, if the TARDIS is anywhere, it’s there. They hobble along, all of them clustered protectively around Castiel as his skin slowly goes pink again, as the yellow glow fades from his eyes, as the scars on his chest ease back into unblemished skin. The splicers still make a beeline for him when they see him, like they can smell the ADAM on him, but Castiel assures them all that he feels no side effects-that for the first time in years, his Grace feels untarnished.
Predictably, things go wrong when they reach the bathysphere-inhuman cackles and sudden dust in the air. Sam turns, the Doctor flinching ahead of him, and has one last look at Dean and Castiel’s horrified faces before the bathysphere door snaps shut, and the rocks obscure his view.
“Dean!”
He pounds on the door until the pod starts moving, propelling away from the wreckage that his brother might be buried in. The Doctor lays a hand on his shoulder and Sam slumps to the floor.
The cave-in isn’t expected and it certainly isn’t accidental. Dean guts one of the splicers that tries to charge Cas, knife full-on buried to the hilt, enough that he can feel its blood slick his clenched fist. There’s too much dust in the air, and he can’t tell if the bathysphere got out safely, or if Sam and the Doctor are at the bottom of the ocean right now, their brains bursting out their ears from the pressure.
“Sam! Sam! Goddammit!”
He shouts and shouts, but the only good that does is to bring more splicers their way, giving him something to take his anger out on.
They have a circle of corpses around them before he gives up, Cas’s hand on his shoulder. The hand turns him around, and it’s still weird to see Cas with glowing yellow eyes and gray skin-a punch to the gut that has his instincts screaming at him to gut the demon before it gets to you first.
“Dean,” Cas says, hand gentle as it caresses his shoulder. “This isn’t the way. If either of them had passed, I would know. We’ll find them.”
He slams a fist into the rock blocking their path and scowls down at the red on his shaking hands.
“I know we will,” he says, because he’s always found Sam, and whenever he couldn’t, Cas could.
Part III