Revolt Chapter 6: Let's Find A Way To Escape
Title: Revolt
Author: safiyabat
Artist: stormbrite
Characters & Pairing(s): Castiel/Sam Winchester, Castiel/Meg
Rating: M
Word Count: 39,134 / 4,875 (chapter)
Warnings: Past non-con (not described, but it exists.) Violence. Consent issues involving possession.
Summary: Castiel is offered revelation, and receives revelation, and they're not even close to being the same thing.
Castiel considered his options. He was unversed in the ways of romance, particularly when it came to wooing two siblings at the same time, but he thought that it might be in poor taste to bring his problem to Meg right away. Dean, on the other hand, was an experienced lover and was Castiel’s friend. Balthazar, too, was an option, but Castiel chose to approach Dean first. Dean was his closest friend, after all.
He found Dean in his tent, sharpening his sword. “What’s up, Cas?” he asked. “Some new crisis roll up on the horizon, or were you just looking to chat?”
Castiel considered. “The former, I think. But the crisis is personal in nature.”
Dean mouthed Castiel’s words to himself as though he needed the extra help to process them. “Okay… I didn’t realize that angels did personal crises.”
“I did just lose my home and my flock today, Dean,” Castiel reminded his friend with a scowl.
“I’m sorry, man. You’re right. I’m being kind of a dick.” Dean checked the edge of the sword and put it down. “What’s going on?”
“Well, my crisis is rather more… intimate than that.”
Dean made a face, as though he’d bitten into rancid meat. “Oh, that is just… like, with you and Meg?” He grabbed a flask and took a deep drink.
“Me and Sam.”
Dean sprayed his drink all over the floor. “Oh my God.”
“My Father is not involved.”
“I think I’m going to be sick. You and Sammy?” Dean clutched at his stomach. “But you and Meg - I mean you’re not exactly subtle.”
“He said the same thing,” Castiel recalled. “You truly are brothers. Yes, Meg and I are very attracted to each other. I am not averse to a relationship with her, nor do I think she is to one with me. But it is Sam who I find more appealing, Dean. It is Sam who I think about more often, Sam who I fantasize about.”
Dean wrestled with his expression until he got it under control. “So, what? You’re just going to drop Meg?”
Castiel sighed. “Demons are not monogamous, nor do they expect their partners to be. She encouraged me to talk with Sam. I will need to discuss expectations with her, or I would. Had I been successful with Sam.”
“So he told you no.” Dean shook his head. “Well I mean if Lucifer was letting angels mess with him back in wherever, I guess I can see that. Or maybe he’s just not into you.”
“He said he wasn’t clean, that everyone he cares for gets hurt because of him and that he was just ‘no good.’ I am uncertain as to how to proceed.” He sighed. “On the one hand, he said no, and I should respect that.”
“Damn straight you should,” Dean growled, getting into Castiel’s face.
“On the other hand, he thinks very poorly of himself. It is worrying, to say the least. I need - someone needs to make him understand that what has happened in the past is not his fault and that he is worthy of affection.” Castiel squinted at Dean. “If this were you, if you were to find yourself in this situation, what course of action would you follow?”
“Well for starters, I don’t think I’ve ever decided to form some kind of bizarre love triangle with half-siblings before. For real, Cas, that’s kind of kinky. Secondly, I had no idea you were into guys.”
“You knew that Sam was interested in men?” The diversion irritated Castiel, but this glimpse into Sam’s past was too fascinating to be passed up.
“Yeah. It bothered the shit out of our - out of Dad. God that’s hard to get used to.” He shook his head. “Caught him making out with Tyson Brady out behind the temple one time. Threw a bucket of cold water over both of ‘em, because that’s what a big brother is for. Oh he was mad, short-sheeted my bed and everything. He likes girls too, but you knew that already.”
“Anyway,” Castiel said, trying to steer the conversation back. “How can I demonstrate his value to him?”
“Cas, you’re talking to a guy whose longest relationship was a month, okay? And that didn’t end well at all. I don’t know. I mean, I know you; I’ve known you for years. He’s known you for a couple of days and most of that has been as a jailor, right? You have to build up to that kind of trust with a guy like Sam. Even when he was a kid, he had to work up to stuff. He was never into the casual hook-up thing.” He shrugged. “Even when it would have made his life a whole lot better.” He drank from his flask again. “This is the part where I tell you that if you hurt my brother I get to kill you, right?”
“I’m more worried about him hurting himself at the moment, but I can assure you that I have no intention of harming your brother or allowing harm to come to him,” Castiel vowed.
Dean sighed. “I’m going to have to put some work into this.” He grimaced. “I kind of pushed him away - I was pissed, I took a lot of it out on him and then -“
“And then my manipulations encouraged you.” Castiel bowed his head.
“Hey, you’re making it right now.” Dean patted him on the shoulder. “I’m going to head over to Jim’s to see if I can calm him down. You go… preen your wings or something.”
Balthazar’s advice was initially crass, followed by shock. “I must say, Cassie, I didn’t think that when you got the stick out of your ass it would be for hellspawn. Good for you, though. They seem delightful. I do hate to agree with the belligerent one though; you need to build up trust with Tall, Dark and Beautiful if you want the chance to climb him like the gorgeous sequoia that he is.
“Also,” Balthazar continued, when his obvious enthusiasm at the thought of Sam in the form of a tree calmed down, “if you’re truly intent in entering into a polyamorous relationship with both siblings, talk with Meg. She seems open to the idea and she’ll have some good insights to Sam’s character.”
The next day was spent in preparation for battle. Meg announced that Abaddon was on her way with reinforcements and would follow their lead so long as Crowley remained off the team. Everyone involved was more than happy to exclude Crowley, although perhaps no one was happier about that than Sam.
Sam asked Jim Murphy and Bobby Singer if he might be allowed access - supervised, of course - to their libraries. Jim insisted that Sam didn’t need supervision in the library, that he was more than welcome to borrow whatever books he might want. Bobby just told him to go to town, whatever that meant, and said nothing about the need for a chaperone. Dean took him aside for a quiet word.
Castiel did not approach Sam romantically again. He did retain his post as Sam’s “chaperone,” however. The humans, for the most part, seemed to prefer that both Sam and Meg be watched while inside Haven’s walls, and both of them admitted that they felt more comfortable with him around anyway. “We’re not used to living inside walls,” Meg told him as Sam searched through a dusty tome at Bobby’s. “There isn’t any breeze here, and there’s too much shade. It’s uncomfortable to us, never mind the hostile stares from people.”
“You think that people here are hostile to you?” He tilted his head and squinted. “Why?”
She blinked her eyes into blackness. “The tattoos mark us as from the tribes, and it’s not like we’re covering them up. Not like we would if we could. Even Samael - even though his are mostly involuntary, they’re part of him. And some of them he earned. They’re from battles he won for us, or to mark some great accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong, it was a miserable existence, but we still let him know when he did something right.”
Castiel nodded. “You should both be very proud of your bodies.”
She glanced at Sam, but Sam was absorbed in his work. “Come walk with me.”
The angel followed her outside, out of Sam’s hearing. “He told me about last night,” she said, taking his hand. “First of all, I want you to know I’m not jealous.”
“No. You knew I was going to speak to him in that way, and you encouraged it.” He squeezed her hand.
“What can I say? I’ve got a lot of vices. Jealousy isn’t one of them. I think we’ve got a good thing heating up, I don’t mind if you want to have something with him too. And he definitely thinks you’re hot stuff.”
Castiel frowned. “Angels tend to run cooler than humans and much cooler than demons -“
She placed a finger on his lips. “Hush. The point is that I’ve seen him looking at you, and we’ve had a chance to chat.”
He frowned. “When?”
She tapped his forehead. “In here, brain trust. He’s got some stuff to get through. I know that he wants to, but he’s got all that gross icky human stuff that gets in the way.” She shrugged. “I know. It’s a problem. Hopefully we can work around it and if not - well, we’ll still have each other. And he’ll still have us, just not in that way.” She smirked. “Sex isn’t’ the end-all, be-all of the world. It’s great, but it isn’t everything, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he told her.
“Right. Well, we can fix that.” She teleported them to Balthazar’s underground villa, where he wrinkled his nose at them and directed them to a distant cave so he wouldn’t have to hear them.
***
Sex turned out to be a revelation. He’d understood the theory of how it was supposed to work, and no one could spend much time with Dean Winchester without understanding the basics, but he had no way of knowing just how much pleasure could be tied into such a simple mechanical act. On the surface, to be sure, sex should have been repulsive on most levels. For an angel, whose natural form did not involve a corporal state at all, an activity that replied on a meat body and the production and exchange of bodily fluids should have been the farthest thing from pleasant.
On the contrary - Castiel would have gladly fucked the coming battle away, hidden in this little bower with Meg. He loved the taste of her, the scent of her, the feel of her beneath him and on top of him and spooned up against him. He created a washbasin for them afterward - he could have simply removed the sweat and the filth, but he wanted to take the time to wash them.
“Thank you, Meg,” he said. “That was wonderful.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” She gave him a happy, sated smile, a rare gesture from the demon. “It’s funny, you know. I always liked sex. I’ve used it, too, but I’ve always enjoyed it. I’m glad you did too.”
“We’ve always thought of demons as creatures that were incapable of things like this - pleasure for the sake of pleasure, good and pure things.” He kissed her. “You’ve taught me, shown me that we were wrong.” He chuckled. “I suppose that you’ve taught me that I was wrong about a lot of things.”
“Maybe a few.” She shrugged. “Sam’s probably ultimately responsible though. I mean, I would never have come over to this side if it weren’t for him.” She squeezed him around his waist.
“He’s an impressive young man.”
“He was supposed to be our savior. In a way, I guess he’s saved me.” She made a face. “Ugh. I feel almost clean.”
Castiel laughed. “I won’t tell him you said that.”
They made their way back to Jim Murphy’s house, where they found Dean fast asleep in Sam’s room. Dean had managed to get Sam under the covers, which was more than Castiel had managed to do, and had fallen asleep on top of them. It looked uncomfortable; both men were generously sized, and the bed was a small one, but the priest simply smiled when he came upon the couple in the doorway. “They used to sleep like this all the time,” he whispered, leading them away. “Sammy used to get nightmares all of the time, so he’d fight sleep. Only Dean could get him sorted out; John hated that.” His face darkened, but he recovered quickly. “I was just heading off to bed myself. I’ll see you in the morning?”
The next day started out much the same as the first. Abaddon’s tribe would take several days to arrive. They had magic on their side to help them get to the city quickly, but they were still too numerous to simply teleport in. A pale, red-haired young woman did show up at the gates, smiling quietly and demanding entrance.
Castiel recognized her immediately. “Let her in,” he ordered the Hunters manning the gates. “That’s Anael. She used to be my superior.”
The wards had to be altered, which Castiel did quickly, to allow Anael to pass through the magical barrier that kept angels out. He probably should have consulted the other conspirators or at least the Council before admitting an angel, but this was Anael. Anael, who had taught him everything he knew. Anael, who had disappeared one day without a word. “Zachariah told us you were dead!” he said, embracing her and calling out for Balthazar with his Grace.
“You already know why I left, Castiel,” she said with a sad smile. “The same reasons as Balthazar, ultimately. He’s the one who called me here, by the way. I heard you could use an extra set of wings.” Her smile deepened and broadened. “So here I am!”
Balthazar arrived with the other conspirators, Dean already sliding into a more predatory mode as soon as he laid eyes on Anael. Castiel made the introductions, noting with surprise that Anael and Meg seemed to get along with no problems at all. She inspected their wards and noted with some surprise the additions that Sam had made. Sam explained the process behind them to her, and her eyes lit up as she put a proprietary hand on his arm and insisted that they had a great deal to discuss.
Castiel felt a pang as he watched them go. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t jealousy.
“Don’t sweat it,” Dean advised him. “They’re just going off to get their geek on. I don’t know what it’s been like for the past few years, but Sammy didn’t get the chance very often when he lived with us.”
Meg shook her head. “Not like that,” she admitted. “It was different.”
Balthazar and Castiel exchanged glances. At least they were trying.
Later, Anael pronounced herself impressed with Sam’s degree of knowledge. “He told me that he’s been ‘encouraged’ to study this type of magic, among other things, since he was given to Azazel. His knowledge would make him dangerous if he weren’t so attached.” She gave a quick little grin. “I can see what Lucifer intended to do with him, and why Zachariah and company wanted him destroyed if he wasn’t under Lucifer’s control.”
That night, Uriel appeared at the gates, tall and dark and majestic. Hunters, guards and townsmen lined the walls, staring at this newcomer whose presence seemed to dwarf the city. “My name is Uriel,” he declared, and he did not shout but his voice carried to every house in Haven. “I am a specialist. Ask the traitor, Castiel, what kind of specialist I am.”
Thousands of eyes - on the walls, on the ground behind the walls - turned to Castiel. Sam and Meg glanced once at Uriel and then nodded. So Uriel was part of the conspiracy too. The angel’s stomach turned. Uriel had been one of his subordinates. He’d answered directly to Castiel, but apparently he’d had another master. “Uriel destroys cities,” Castiel acknowledged, allowing his voice to carry. He didn’t bother with the broadcasting, though; that was in poor taste. “The Wastelands were once verdant pastures and cool forests, punctuated by vibrant cities and towns. They are as they are now thanks to Uriel’s efforts.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. Uriel waited for a moment, and then raised one hand. The humans fell silent. “You have one day to expel the stain that is known as Samael, or Sam Winchester, from your walls, and you will be allowed to live as you have for thousands of years.”
Castiel rolled his eyes. “I never realized you were such a showboat, brother. Are these techniques you have learned from your newest mentor, Lucifer?”
A great collective gasp went up from the crowd. Uriel allowed his jaw to fall open, as though he was astonished somehow. “You would dare accuse me of fraternizing with the Morningstar!”
“Not us,” Balthazar drawled. Meg and Sam popped up beside him and Castiel. “They’re the ones who were there.”
The enemy dropped the pretense. “Well? And what of it? Our orders come from God!”
“No,” Anael pointed out, shaking her head slightly. “They don’t. And you know it. Our Father hasn’t issued an order directly since He told us to love serve and protect His newest creatures, a task at which you’ve always been exceptionally bad. Sam Winchester stays where he is.”
Uriel sneered. “I’ll return in twenty-four hours and see if you feel the same way.”
“Sam, can you kill him or something?” Dean asked, eyes narrowed.
“Sam, not yet,” Castiel interrupted, putting a hand on Sam’s bare arm. “Killing him now might spark a hefty retaliation, and reinforcements haven’t arrived yet. We can’t handle the entire weight of the Host yet.” If at all, he added, but silently.
Uriel flew away.
Sam, too, disappeared, teleporting away rather than try to fight his way through the staring crowd. Castiel didn’t think that they were likely to be hostile but he also didn’t think that he was the best judge of that sort of thing, all things considered. He soon learned that he ought to leave people reading to humans when someone threw a piece of fruit at Meg. “Demon!” shouted someone in a patched tunic.
“This is your fault!” yelled a woman with a baby in her arms.
“I’m out like last year’s crops,” Meg told them. “I’ll be in your cave, Fashion Victim.”
“No worries,” Balthazar assented with a wave, and Meg disappeared.
“Damn it, Sam,” Dean sighed, as the crowd dissolved into angry muttering. “Listen up, people!” he bellowed.
People stopped where they were. They didn’t come back, but they stopped trying to leave.
Castiel boosted Dean’s voice with his Grace and Dean continued. “Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s not sounding to me like Sammy’s the bad guy here.” People muttered, so Castiel increased his friend’s volume. “We’ve got an angel who admits that the very existence of the Wastelands is down to him. He wants to give Sammy, who Missouri Mosley and Pamela Barnes will both tell you is a very powerful psychic, over to friggin’ Lucifer. And he’s been seen hanging around Lucifer’s campfire! He didn’t bother to try denying that, did he?”
A few people shook their heads, looking at their shoes.
“So I’m not seeing where Sammy’s at fault for any of this,” he continued. “Yeah, he was with the demons, but only because John Winchester sold him there. He’s a good kid trying to find his footing in the world, okay? And Meg - well, she’s showing us that even a demon can try to do the right thing, sometimes.” He made a face. “I need a drink after saying that. But she’s with us, and she’s trying to fight the bad guys same as we are. She’s not the one that wants to tear down this city; Uriel is. She’s not the one that wants to hand a powerful weapon over to the Prince of Freaking Darkness; the angels are. And they want to use you, and you, and you and you and you, to do it.”
Angry shouting of a different type came back. “No!” yelled a man in a plaid tunic.
“Are you going to let them turn you into tools in their hands?” Dean roared?
“No!” the crowd cried back, one unified voice.
“Are you going to let them tell you who can stay in Haven and who can’t?”
“No!”
“Are you going to let them tell you what the rules are?”
“No!”
Dean grinned, a slow and sexy expression that had won him many partners. “Are you going to stand up for yourselves, and use your free will?”
“Yes!” they chanted. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Alright! For now, go back to your homes,” Dean counseled. “Enjoy your night. Tell your husbands and your wives and children that you love them. These rogue angels, we don’t know how many there are or how high up this conspiracy goes. But it’s going to be a fight. Not a fight for Sammy or for the Winchesters or anything like that, but a fight for humanity. A fight for free will. A fight for you and me. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
People returned to their homes in a much better mood. Castiel turned to Dean. “Where do you think Sam would have gone?”
He raised his arms out to his sides. “Your guess is as good as mine, buddy. I guess start with Jim Murphy’s place and go from there?”
They did start with the priest’s residence. Sam was not there, although there were signs that he’d been there recently. Castiel flew them to the cave, but he wasn’t there either. Meg frowned. “I can’t think of any place here that he’d be keen to visit again,” she confessed. “Not outside the city. I didn’t have a chance to poke around too much inside his memories when I was possessing him because I was fighting too hard just to stay in control. Was there anyplace in town that held any special significance when he was young? Any place he liked to hide out when he used to run off?”
Dean sighed and ran his hands through his hair, tugging on it. “I don’t know. He never ran off to the same place twice; that would have made it too easy, right?” He shook his head. “Um. We need someplace secluded because he doesn’t know that the townspeople aren’t trying to kill him anymore.”
Castiel considered. “Where could he go to bathe?”
Dean stared at him. “You think he went to go have a wash? What, you think he had an attack of the vapors too?”
The angel shook his head. “No. He is plagued, as I mentioned, by ideas of being unclean. It presses on his mind like a weight. Is there a secluded place where he might go to try to wash himself?”
Dean considered. “There used to be a bath house over near the river,” he remembered. “A new one was built in the ‘new quarter’ about fifty years ago and the old one was abandoned. It’s not exactly structurally sound, but I suppose it’s someplace he would know about.”
“Take me there, Dean.”
“Yeah, sure thing, Cas.” Dean led Castiel out into the streets, through winding and twisting roads into the oldest part of Haven. This was the part of the city where you could see the kernel of the village that had once been, back when humans had barely started to build structures out of anything with more substance than skins and thought that sticking around in one place for a season or two might be a good idea. The streets here were barely wide enough for a single cart, and pushed right up to the edge of the river’s flood path.
The ruins of the old bathhouse lurked on the edge of this ancient part of the city. Castiel couldn’t understand why no one had bothered to re-use the site, but some of the structure still stood gloomily over the old boilers and pumps that allowed the old facility to operate.
Castiel created a torch for Dean, and the pair edged inside. The first two rooms were empty, or at least were void of oversized half-demons with soft hair and hazel eyes. The pair found evidence of animal infestations, and of some prior human habitation, but no Sam. Castiel paused. The place had been large when it had been in use; roof collapses had only created more places to hide. Sam could not be found by angels, even Castiel, but there had to be another way. He extended his senses.
“Water,” Castiel identified. “Running water, this way.” He took off down a long hallway.
Dean made a face. “Water. Of course. You couldn’t have been a divine dowsing rod when that village had that drought two years back?” He followed along anyway, feet moving silently across the smashed tiles.
They found him in a windowless room near the back of the facility. It would have been a nice room, once upon a time. The walls had been tiled with elaborate mosaics, geometric images that evoked nothing but admiration for the precision of their layout. The bath itself had been a work of genius, providing continuously running water to prevent accumulation of grime. No water had run in the place for many decades, but Sam had gotten the ancient apparatus running again and apparently used the magic left to him by Azazel to heat the water to an almost scalding level. Castiel could feel the heat radiating off the bath in waves.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Sam’s voice came from behind gritted teeth.
Dean held up his torch and hissed at what he saw. Sam’s tender flesh was red. The water had colored it in the places where his scrubbing had not done so. “Sammy,” he said, and sat down on the ground beside the tub. “Sammy.” His voice was more of a low, mournful groan than any kind of word; Castiel understood his intention more from his years of familiarity than from any other cause.
“I’m fine, Dean.” Sam clearly understood his brother too.
“You are not fine.” Castiel reached out and lifted the larger man out of the tub. “If you break the tattoos you risk losing their effectiveness.”
“So what?” Sam didn’t fight as the angel lifted him out of the tub, but hung his head in such a way that his hair hung into his face like a curtain. “I’m going out there tomorrow.”
Castiel grabbed one of Sam’s arms even as Dean grabbed the other. “The hell you are!” the brother snarled. “You’re going to stay right here inside these city walls and you’re going to help us fight those sons of bitches.”
“Dean, if we just give them what they want they’ve got no reason to come for you,” Sam insisted, grabbing onto his brother’s sleeves. “I can’t risk you getting hurt because I got scared. We’ll just let them take me out - we’ll make them take me out - before they can hand me over. It’s okay.”
Castiel shook him a little. “It is not okay,” he growled into Sam’s ear. “There is no part of this that is okay. Nothing is worth losing you, Sam. Nothing.”
“We’re talking about thousands of people, Castiel!” Sam yelled. “Thousands! Not just people, either! We’re talking about Meg, we’re talking about you! We’re talking about Dean!”
“I don’t care!” he shouted back. “Sam, they’re not going to go away once they have you! They’re going to go to war with Lucifer for no reason other than to get my Father’s attention. That will result in Haven’s being wiped from the map anyway. I can’t stop them alone. I need you with me. With us.”
Dean had grabbed Sam’s clothing and the rough towel his brother had brought from the priest’s residence. He dried his brother off with as much tenderness as he could, not that Sam seemed to feel what must have been painful touches given the state of his skin, and wrapped his leather kilt around his narrow hips. “Come on, Sammy,” he urged. “People are worried about you back at Jim’s. Or are you worried about the people?”
“Your brother has quite the gift for oratory,” Castiel told Sam. He reached out and brushed a wet hair away from Sam’s cheek, expending a small amount of Grace to heal his burns and abrasions. “It seems that the town is suddenly very receptive to the presence of you and Meg in their midst.”
Sam looked doubtful, and Dean immediately switched tack. “Or we can go to Balthazar’s cave. Would you like that, Sammy? He likes you, and it’s safer than anyplace right now.” Sam nodded, and Dean met Castiel’s eyes. The angel didn’t need words to understand what was intended. He wrapped an arm around Sam’s waist, touched two fingers to Dean’s forehead, and flew them all to Balthazar’s cave.
Back to Chapter Five -- On to Chapter Seven
Author: safiyabat
Artist: stormbrite
Characters & Pairing(s): Castiel/Sam Winchester, Castiel/Meg
Rating: M
Word Count: 39,134 / 4,875 (chapter)
Warnings: Past non-con (not described, but it exists.) Violence. Consent issues involving possession.
Summary: Castiel is offered revelation, and receives revelation, and they're not even close to being the same thing.
Castiel considered his options. He was unversed in the ways of romance, particularly when it came to wooing two siblings at the same time, but he thought that it might be in poor taste to bring his problem to Meg right away. Dean, on the other hand, was an experienced lover and was Castiel’s friend. Balthazar, too, was an option, but Castiel chose to approach Dean first. Dean was his closest friend, after all.
He found Dean in his tent, sharpening his sword. “What’s up, Cas?” he asked. “Some new crisis roll up on the horizon, or were you just looking to chat?”
Castiel considered. “The former, I think. But the crisis is personal in nature.”
Dean mouthed Castiel’s words to himself as though he needed the extra help to process them. “Okay… I didn’t realize that angels did personal crises.”
“I did just lose my home and my flock today, Dean,” Castiel reminded his friend with a scowl.
“I’m sorry, man. You’re right. I’m being kind of a dick.” Dean checked the edge of the sword and put it down. “What’s going on?”
“Well, my crisis is rather more… intimate than that.”
Dean made a face, as though he’d bitten into rancid meat. “Oh, that is just… like, with you and Meg?” He grabbed a flask and took a deep drink.
“Me and Sam.”
Dean sprayed his drink all over the floor. “Oh my God.”
“My Father is not involved.”
“I think I’m going to be sick. You and Sammy?” Dean clutched at his stomach. “But you and Meg - I mean you’re not exactly subtle.”
“He said the same thing,” Castiel recalled. “You truly are brothers. Yes, Meg and I are very attracted to each other. I am not averse to a relationship with her, nor do I think she is to one with me. But it is Sam who I find more appealing, Dean. It is Sam who I think about more often, Sam who I fantasize about.”
Dean wrestled with his expression until he got it under control. “So, what? You’re just going to drop Meg?”
Castiel sighed. “Demons are not monogamous, nor do they expect their partners to be. She encouraged me to talk with Sam. I will need to discuss expectations with her, or I would. Had I been successful with Sam.”
“So he told you no.” Dean shook his head. “Well I mean if Lucifer was letting angels mess with him back in wherever, I guess I can see that. Or maybe he’s just not into you.”
“He said he wasn’t clean, that everyone he cares for gets hurt because of him and that he was just ‘no good.’ I am uncertain as to how to proceed.” He sighed. “On the one hand, he said no, and I should respect that.”
“Damn straight you should,” Dean growled, getting into Castiel’s face.
“On the other hand, he thinks very poorly of himself. It is worrying, to say the least. I need - someone needs to make him understand that what has happened in the past is not his fault and that he is worthy of affection.” Castiel squinted at Dean. “If this were you, if you were to find yourself in this situation, what course of action would you follow?”
“Well for starters, I don’t think I’ve ever decided to form some kind of bizarre love triangle with half-siblings before. For real, Cas, that’s kind of kinky. Secondly, I had no idea you were into guys.”
“You knew that Sam was interested in men?” The diversion irritated Castiel, but this glimpse into Sam’s past was too fascinating to be passed up.
“Yeah. It bothered the shit out of our - out of Dad. God that’s hard to get used to.” He shook his head. “Caught him making out with Tyson Brady out behind the temple one time. Threw a bucket of cold water over both of ‘em, because that’s what a big brother is for. Oh he was mad, short-sheeted my bed and everything. He likes girls too, but you knew that already.”
“Anyway,” Castiel said, trying to steer the conversation back. “How can I demonstrate his value to him?”
“Cas, you’re talking to a guy whose longest relationship was a month, okay? And that didn’t end well at all. I don’t know. I mean, I know you; I’ve known you for years. He’s known you for a couple of days and most of that has been as a jailor, right? You have to build up to that kind of trust with a guy like Sam. Even when he was a kid, he had to work up to stuff. He was never into the casual hook-up thing.” He shrugged. “Even when it would have made his life a whole lot better.” He drank from his flask again. “This is the part where I tell you that if you hurt my brother I get to kill you, right?”
“I’m more worried about him hurting himself at the moment, but I can assure you that I have no intention of harming your brother or allowing harm to come to him,” Castiel vowed.
Dean sighed. “I’m going to have to put some work into this.” He grimaced. “I kind of pushed him away - I was pissed, I took a lot of it out on him and then -“
“And then my manipulations encouraged you.” Castiel bowed his head.
“Hey, you’re making it right now.” Dean patted him on the shoulder. “I’m going to head over to Jim’s to see if I can calm him down. You go… preen your wings or something.”
Balthazar’s advice was initially crass, followed by shock. “I must say, Cassie, I didn’t think that when you got the stick out of your ass it would be for hellspawn. Good for you, though. They seem delightful. I do hate to agree with the belligerent one though; you need to build up trust with Tall, Dark and Beautiful if you want the chance to climb him like the gorgeous sequoia that he is.
“Also,” Balthazar continued, when his obvious enthusiasm at the thought of Sam in the form of a tree calmed down, “if you’re truly intent in entering into a polyamorous relationship with both siblings, talk with Meg. She seems open to the idea and she’ll have some good insights to Sam’s character.”
The next day was spent in preparation for battle. Meg announced that Abaddon was on her way with reinforcements and would follow their lead so long as Crowley remained off the team. Everyone involved was more than happy to exclude Crowley, although perhaps no one was happier about that than Sam.
Sam asked Jim Murphy and Bobby Singer if he might be allowed access - supervised, of course - to their libraries. Jim insisted that Sam didn’t need supervision in the library, that he was more than welcome to borrow whatever books he might want. Bobby just told him to go to town, whatever that meant, and said nothing about the need for a chaperone. Dean took him aside for a quiet word.
Castiel did not approach Sam romantically again. He did retain his post as Sam’s “chaperone,” however. The humans, for the most part, seemed to prefer that both Sam and Meg be watched while inside Haven’s walls, and both of them admitted that they felt more comfortable with him around anyway. “We’re not used to living inside walls,” Meg told him as Sam searched through a dusty tome at Bobby’s. “There isn’t any breeze here, and there’s too much shade. It’s uncomfortable to us, never mind the hostile stares from people.”
“You think that people here are hostile to you?” He tilted his head and squinted. “Why?”
She blinked her eyes into blackness. “The tattoos mark us as from the tribes, and it’s not like we’re covering them up. Not like we would if we could. Even Samael - even though his are mostly involuntary, they’re part of him. And some of them he earned. They’re from battles he won for us, or to mark some great accomplishments. Don’t get me wrong, it was a miserable existence, but we still let him know when he did something right.”
Castiel nodded. “You should both be very proud of your bodies.”
She glanced at Sam, but Sam was absorbed in his work. “Come walk with me.”
The angel followed her outside, out of Sam’s hearing. “He told me about last night,” she said, taking his hand. “First of all, I want you to know I’m not jealous.”
“No. You knew I was going to speak to him in that way, and you encouraged it.” He squeezed her hand.
“What can I say? I’ve got a lot of vices. Jealousy isn’t one of them. I think we’ve got a good thing heating up, I don’t mind if you want to have something with him too. And he definitely thinks you’re hot stuff.”
Castiel frowned. “Angels tend to run cooler than humans and much cooler than demons -“
She placed a finger on his lips. “Hush. The point is that I’ve seen him looking at you, and we’ve had a chance to chat.”
He frowned. “When?”
She tapped his forehead. “In here, brain trust. He’s got some stuff to get through. I know that he wants to, but he’s got all that gross icky human stuff that gets in the way.” She shrugged. “I know. It’s a problem. Hopefully we can work around it and if not - well, we’ll still have each other. And he’ll still have us, just not in that way.” She smirked. “Sex isn’t’ the end-all, be-all of the world. It’s great, but it isn’t everything, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he told her.
“Right. Well, we can fix that.” She teleported them to Balthazar’s underground villa, where he wrinkled his nose at them and directed them to a distant cave so he wouldn’t have to hear them.
***
Sex turned out to be a revelation. He’d understood the theory of how it was supposed to work, and no one could spend much time with Dean Winchester without understanding the basics, but he had no way of knowing just how much pleasure could be tied into such a simple mechanical act. On the surface, to be sure, sex should have been repulsive on most levels. For an angel, whose natural form did not involve a corporal state at all, an activity that replied on a meat body and the production and exchange of bodily fluids should have been the farthest thing from pleasant.
On the contrary - Castiel would have gladly fucked the coming battle away, hidden in this little bower with Meg. He loved the taste of her, the scent of her, the feel of her beneath him and on top of him and spooned up against him. He created a washbasin for them afterward - he could have simply removed the sweat and the filth, but he wanted to take the time to wash them.
“Thank you, Meg,” he said. “That was wonderful.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” She gave him a happy, sated smile, a rare gesture from the demon. “It’s funny, you know. I always liked sex. I’ve used it, too, but I’ve always enjoyed it. I’m glad you did too.”
“We’ve always thought of demons as creatures that were incapable of things like this - pleasure for the sake of pleasure, good and pure things.” He kissed her. “You’ve taught me, shown me that we were wrong.” He chuckled. “I suppose that you’ve taught me that I was wrong about a lot of things.”
“Maybe a few.” She shrugged. “Sam’s probably ultimately responsible though. I mean, I would never have come over to this side if it weren’t for him.” She squeezed him around his waist.
“He’s an impressive young man.”
“He was supposed to be our savior. In a way, I guess he’s saved me.” She made a face. “Ugh. I feel almost clean.”
Castiel laughed. “I won’t tell him you said that.”
They made their way back to Jim Murphy’s house, where they found Dean fast asleep in Sam’s room. Dean had managed to get Sam under the covers, which was more than Castiel had managed to do, and had fallen asleep on top of them. It looked uncomfortable; both men were generously sized, and the bed was a small one, but the priest simply smiled when he came upon the couple in the doorway. “They used to sleep like this all the time,” he whispered, leading them away. “Sammy used to get nightmares all of the time, so he’d fight sleep. Only Dean could get him sorted out; John hated that.” His face darkened, but he recovered quickly. “I was just heading off to bed myself. I’ll see you in the morning?”
The next day started out much the same as the first. Abaddon’s tribe would take several days to arrive. They had magic on their side to help them get to the city quickly, but they were still too numerous to simply teleport in. A pale, red-haired young woman did show up at the gates, smiling quietly and demanding entrance.
Castiel recognized her immediately. “Let her in,” he ordered the Hunters manning the gates. “That’s Anael. She used to be my superior.”
The wards had to be altered, which Castiel did quickly, to allow Anael to pass through the magical barrier that kept angels out. He probably should have consulted the other conspirators or at least the Council before admitting an angel, but this was Anael. Anael, who had taught him everything he knew. Anael, who had disappeared one day without a word. “Zachariah told us you were dead!” he said, embracing her and calling out for Balthazar with his Grace.
“You already know why I left, Castiel,” she said with a sad smile. “The same reasons as Balthazar, ultimately. He’s the one who called me here, by the way. I heard you could use an extra set of wings.” Her smile deepened and broadened. “So here I am!”
Balthazar arrived with the other conspirators, Dean already sliding into a more predatory mode as soon as he laid eyes on Anael. Castiel made the introductions, noting with surprise that Anael and Meg seemed to get along with no problems at all. She inspected their wards and noted with some surprise the additions that Sam had made. Sam explained the process behind them to her, and her eyes lit up as she put a proprietary hand on his arm and insisted that they had a great deal to discuss.
Castiel felt a pang as he watched them go. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t jealousy.
“Don’t sweat it,” Dean advised him. “They’re just going off to get their geek on. I don’t know what it’s been like for the past few years, but Sammy didn’t get the chance very often when he lived with us.”
Meg shook her head. “Not like that,” she admitted. “It was different.”
Balthazar and Castiel exchanged glances. At least they were trying.
Later, Anael pronounced herself impressed with Sam’s degree of knowledge. “He told me that he’s been ‘encouraged’ to study this type of magic, among other things, since he was given to Azazel. His knowledge would make him dangerous if he weren’t so attached.” She gave a quick little grin. “I can see what Lucifer intended to do with him, and why Zachariah and company wanted him destroyed if he wasn’t under Lucifer’s control.”
That night, Uriel appeared at the gates, tall and dark and majestic. Hunters, guards and townsmen lined the walls, staring at this newcomer whose presence seemed to dwarf the city. “My name is Uriel,” he declared, and he did not shout but his voice carried to every house in Haven. “I am a specialist. Ask the traitor, Castiel, what kind of specialist I am.”
Thousands of eyes - on the walls, on the ground behind the walls - turned to Castiel. Sam and Meg glanced once at Uriel and then nodded. So Uriel was part of the conspiracy too. The angel’s stomach turned. Uriel had been one of his subordinates. He’d answered directly to Castiel, but apparently he’d had another master. “Uriel destroys cities,” Castiel acknowledged, allowing his voice to carry. He didn’t bother with the broadcasting, though; that was in poor taste. “The Wastelands were once verdant pastures and cool forests, punctuated by vibrant cities and towns. They are as they are now thanks to Uriel’s efforts.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. Uriel waited for a moment, and then raised one hand. The humans fell silent. “You have one day to expel the stain that is known as Samael, or Sam Winchester, from your walls, and you will be allowed to live as you have for thousands of years.”
Castiel rolled his eyes. “I never realized you were such a showboat, brother. Are these techniques you have learned from your newest mentor, Lucifer?”
A great collective gasp went up from the crowd. Uriel allowed his jaw to fall open, as though he was astonished somehow. “You would dare accuse me of fraternizing with the Morningstar!”
“Not us,” Balthazar drawled. Meg and Sam popped up beside him and Castiel. “They’re the ones who were there.”
The enemy dropped the pretense. “Well? And what of it? Our orders come from God!”
“No,” Anael pointed out, shaking her head slightly. “They don’t. And you know it. Our Father hasn’t issued an order directly since He told us to love serve and protect His newest creatures, a task at which you’ve always been exceptionally bad. Sam Winchester stays where he is.”
Uriel sneered. “I’ll return in twenty-four hours and see if you feel the same way.”
“Sam, can you kill him or something?” Dean asked, eyes narrowed.
“Sam, not yet,” Castiel interrupted, putting a hand on Sam’s bare arm. “Killing him now might spark a hefty retaliation, and reinforcements haven’t arrived yet. We can’t handle the entire weight of the Host yet.” If at all, he added, but silently.
Uriel flew away.
Sam, too, disappeared, teleporting away rather than try to fight his way through the staring crowd. Castiel didn’t think that they were likely to be hostile but he also didn’t think that he was the best judge of that sort of thing, all things considered. He soon learned that he ought to leave people reading to humans when someone threw a piece of fruit at Meg. “Demon!” shouted someone in a patched tunic.
“This is your fault!” yelled a woman with a baby in her arms.
“I’m out like last year’s crops,” Meg told them. “I’ll be in your cave, Fashion Victim.”
“No worries,” Balthazar assented with a wave, and Meg disappeared.
“Damn it, Sam,” Dean sighed, as the crowd dissolved into angry muttering. “Listen up, people!” he bellowed.
People stopped where they were. They didn’t come back, but they stopped trying to leave.
Castiel boosted Dean’s voice with his Grace and Dean continued. “Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s not sounding to me like Sammy’s the bad guy here.” People muttered, so Castiel increased his friend’s volume. “We’ve got an angel who admits that the very existence of the Wastelands is down to him. He wants to give Sammy, who Missouri Mosley and Pamela Barnes will both tell you is a very powerful psychic, over to friggin’ Lucifer. And he’s been seen hanging around Lucifer’s campfire! He didn’t bother to try denying that, did he?”
A few people shook their heads, looking at their shoes.
“So I’m not seeing where Sammy’s at fault for any of this,” he continued. “Yeah, he was with the demons, but only because John Winchester sold him there. He’s a good kid trying to find his footing in the world, okay? And Meg - well, she’s showing us that even a demon can try to do the right thing, sometimes.” He made a face. “I need a drink after saying that. But she’s with us, and she’s trying to fight the bad guys same as we are. She’s not the one that wants to tear down this city; Uriel is. She’s not the one that wants to hand a powerful weapon over to the Prince of Freaking Darkness; the angels are. And they want to use you, and you, and you and you and you, to do it.”
Angry shouting of a different type came back. “No!” yelled a man in a plaid tunic.
“Are you going to let them turn you into tools in their hands?” Dean roared?
“No!” the crowd cried back, one unified voice.
“Are you going to let them tell you who can stay in Haven and who can’t?”
“No!”
“Are you going to let them tell you what the rules are?”
“No!”
Dean grinned, a slow and sexy expression that had won him many partners. “Are you going to stand up for yourselves, and use your free will?”
“Yes!” they chanted. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Alright! For now, go back to your homes,” Dean counseled. “Enjoy your night. Tell your husbands and your wives and children that you love them. These rogue angels, we don’t know how many there are or how high up this conspiracy goes. But it’s going to be a fight. Not a fight for Sammy or for the Winchesters or anything like that, but a fight for humanity. A fight for free will. A fight for you and me. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
People returned to their homes in a much better mood. Castiel turned to Dean. “Where do you think Sam would have gone?”
He raised his arms out to his sides. “Your guess is as good as mine, buddy. I guess start with Jim Murphy’s place and go from there?”
They did start with the priest’s residence. Sam was not there, although there were signs that he’d been there recently. Castiel flew them to the cave, but he wasn’t there either. Meg frowned. “I can’t think of any place here that he’d be keen to visit again,” she confessed. “Not outside the city. I didn’t have a chance to poke around too much inside his memories when I was possessing him because I was fighting too hard just to stay in control. Was there anyplace in town that held any special significance when he was young? Any place he liked to hide out when he used to run off?”
Dean sighed and ran his hands through his hair, tugging on it. “I don’t know. He never ran off to the same place twice; that would have made it too easy, right?” He shook his head. “Um. We need someplace secluded because he doesn’t know that the townspeople aren’t trying to kill him anymore.”
Castiel considered. “Where could he go to bathe?”
Dean stared at him. “You think he went to go have a wash? What, you think he had an attack of the vapors too?”
The angel shook his head. “No. He is plagued, as I mentioned, by ideas of being unclean. It presses on his mind like a weight. Is there a secluded place where he might go to try to wash himself?”
Dean considered. “There used to be a bath house over near the river,” he remembered. “A new one was built in the ‘new quarter’ about fifty years ago and the old one was abandoned. It’s not exactly structurally sound, but I suppose it’s someplace he would know about.”
“Take me there, Dean.”
“Yeah, sure thing, Cas.” Dean led Castiel out into the streets, through winding and twisting roads into the oldest part of Haven. This was the part of the city where you could see the kernel of the village that had once been, back when humans had barely started to build structures out of anything with more substance than skins and thought that sticking around in one place for a season or two might be a good idea. The streets here were barely wide enough for a single cart, and pushed right up to the edge of the river’s flood path.
The ruins of the old bathhouse lurked on the edge of this ancient part of the city. Castiel couldn’t understand why no one had bothered to re-use the site, but some of the structure still stood gloomily over the old boilers and pumps that allowed the old facility to operate.
Castiel created a torch for Dean, and the pair edged inside. The first two rooms were empty, or at least were void of oversized half-demons with soft hair and hazel eyes. The pair found evidence of animal infestations, and of some prior human habitation, but no Sam. Castiel paused. The place had been large when it had been in use; roof collapses had only created more places to hide. Sam could not be found by angels, even Castiel, but there had to be another way. He extended his senses.
“Water,” Castiel identified. “Running water, this way.” He took off down a long hallway.
Dean made a face. “Water. Of course. You couldn’t have been a divine dowsing rod when that village had that drought two years back?” He followed along anyway, feet moving silently across the smashed tiles.
They found him in a windowless room near the back of the facility. It would have been a nice room, once upon a time. The walls had been tiled with elaborate mosaics, geometric images that evoked nothing but admiration for the precision of their layout. The bath itself had been a work of genius, providing continuously running water to prevent accumulation of grime. No water had run in the place for many decades, but Sam had gotten the ancient apparatus running again and apparently used the magic left to him by Azazel to heat the water to an almost scalding level. Castiel could feel the heat radiating off the bath in waves.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Sam’s voice came from behind gritted teeth.
Dean held up his torch and hissed at what he saw. Sam’s tender flesh was red. The water had colored it in the places where his scrubbing had not done so. “Sammy,” he said, and sat down on the ground beside the tub. “Sammy.” His voice was more of a low, mournful groan than any kind of word; Castiel understood his intention more from his years of familiarity than from any other cause.
“I’m fine, Dean.” Sam clearly understood his brother too.
“You are not fine.” Castiel reached out and lifted the larger man out of the tub. “If you break the tattoos you risk losing their effectiveness.”
“So what?” Sam didn’t fight as the angel lifted him out of the tub, but hung his head in such a way that his hair hung into his face like a curtain. “I’m going out there tomorrow.”
Castiel grabbed one of Sam’s arms even as Dean grabbed the other. “The hell you are!” the brother snarled. “You’re going to stay right here inside these city walls and you’re going to help us fight those sons of bitches.”
“Dean, if we just give them what they want they’ve got no reason to come for you,” Sam insisted, grabbing onto his brother’s sleeves. “I can’t risk you getting hurt because I got scared. We’ll just let them take me out - we’ll make them take me out - before they can hand me over. It’s okay.”
Castiel shook him a little. “It is not okay,” he growled into Sam’s ear. “There is no part of this that is okay. Nothing is worth losing you, Sam. Nothing.”
“We’re talking about thousands of people, Castiel!” Sam yelled. “Thousands! Not just people, either! We’re talking about Meg, we’re talking about you! We’re talking about Dean!”
“I don’t care!” he shouted back. “Sam, they’re not going to go away once they have you! They’re going to go to war with Lucifer for no reason other than to get my Father’s attention. That will result in Haven’s being wiped from the map anyway. I can’t stop them alone. I need you with me. With us.”
Dean had grabbed Sam’s clothing and the rough towel his brother had brought from the priest’s residence. He dried his brother off with as much tenderness as he could, not that Sam seemed to feel what must have been painful touches given the state of his skin, and wrapped his leather kilt around his narrow hips. “Come on, Sammy,” he urged. “People are worried about you back at Jim’s. Or are you worried about the people?”
“Your brother has quite the gift for oratory,” Castiel told Sam. He reached out and brushed a wet hair away from Sam’s cheek, expending a small amount of Grace to heal his burns and abrasions. “It seems that the town is suddenly very receptive to the presence of you and Meg in their midst.”
Sam looked doubtful, and Dean immediately switched tack. “Or we can go to Balthazar’s cave. Would you like that, Sammy? He likes you, and it’s safer than anyplace right now.” Sam nodded, and Dean met Castiel’s eyes. The angel didn’t need words to understand what was intended. He wrapped an arm around Sam’s waist, touched two fingers to Dean’s forehead, and flew them all to Balthazar’s cave.
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