Comfort to the Enemy, part 2
See part 1 for disclaimers.
Part 2
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North of Pittsburgh, Dean swings west toward Ohio. The back end of the Mustang has picked up a really fucking annoying shimmy, and just keeping the car centered in its lane is wearing him out. There’s still the Midwest to get across, too. He thinks come nighttime he’ll boost a different car; there’s too much daylight right now for Grand Theft Auto.
Dean shoots a glance to the side. Sam is entirely too comfortable in this car, too; he’s got his seat tipped back to just the right angle so his stupidly long legs can stretch a bit and his eyes are half-closed. How he can relax is beyond Dean ; just breathing in this damned car makes him uneasy. He’s got absolutely zero of that psychic crap, not that he needs it to sense the bad mojo trapped in the Mustang’s bones.
Anger starts to churn in his gut. You’re real used to riding shotgun in this thing, Sam, he thinks. What exactly have you been doing with Ruby when you’re not getting naked with her?
He shoots another glare at Sam and opens his mouth to ask him that very question when his brother snaps bolt upright. “Dean! Look out!”
He jerks his attention back to the road. Something pale tumbles from out of nowhere onto the center line. Dean cranks the wheel sideways, tires screaming. The Mustang careens past the sprawled shape, leaving a curved dark skid on the pavement. It rocks to a halt, smoke spilling from the undercarriage.
Sam’s twisted into a pretzel, trying to see out the rear window. “Where did that come from?”
Dean slams the car into park and the engine hiccups once, twice, before it coughs and dies. He has a bad feeling, shit, yes, he does. He throws open the door and races back to the shape on the road.
Crumpled cloth, tan streaked with rust, lying in a heap in the middle of a Pennsylvania back road. Dean almost doesn’t want to look.
“Goddamn,” he whispers, and puts his hand on the sleeve of a trenchcoat. “Cas?”
He tugs, gently, and the figure rolls, head lolling on the pavement. Blue eyes, pupils blown wide, stare vacantly up at him.
“Cas!” Dean slides one hand beneath a shirt collar considerably less white than the last time he saw the angel, and presses down. A pulse stutters beneath his fingers and he huffs out a relieved gasp. Dean throws a frantic glance back at the car. “Sam! Come help me!”
Sam pulls himself out of the car slowly, rubbing his palms on his jeans. Dean turns back to the angel, taking in the tears in the clothing, and the bloody scrapes beneath. There’s a giant bruise darkening one whole side of Castiel’s face, radiating out from a deep split on his cheekbone. Dean touches a thumb to the seeping blood. “Cas? Why aren’t you healing yourself?”
Sam skates a nervous glance over the angel and then stares at the ground. “What… what should we do?”
“I dunno. I haven’t ever seen him this bad off.” Dean shifts on his heels and squeezes his way up each of Castiel’s legs, then down his arms, feeling for broken bones. The pressure prompts a shudder to rock Castiel’s body, and Dean looks up, startled, in time to catch a flash of life return to his eyes. “Dean,” Castiel croaks.
There’s actual emotion in that one word.
“Yeah,” Dean answers, and then blurts, “You came back.”
Castiel tips his head in the slightest nod. “I felt I must find you. You and your brother are in grave danger.”
“We kinda figured.” The creases in Dean’s forehead deepen as he runs another look over Castiel. “You don’t look so good yourself.”
“I will recover,” he says dismissively. “We should depart.”
“Yeah, okay.” Dean tightens his grip on Castiel’s arm. When the angel doesn’t move, he frowns. “You need a boost?”
“I… I think so.” The angel’s expression is suddenly weary, and Dean jerks his head at his brother.
“Sam, gimme a hand.”
Sam steps closer, his eyes flitting everywhere but the angel’s face. “Okay, ready.”
“You take that side, I’ve got this one, we’ll lift on three.”
Dean slides his right arm beneath Castiel’s shoulders and the angel goes rigid. A piercing blast of sheer noise rips from his throat.
Sam flings himself back and away, clapping both hands over his ears as he shouts in pain. Dean manages, barely, to not drop his charge back onto the roadway. He’s heard Castiel’s true voice before, and though the sound makes his teeth vibrate, he’s not completely unprepared for it. He yanks his hand from beneath the angel and the noise cuts off. Castiel sags down, panting.
Ears ringing, Dean rolls the angel up onto his side. “Dean, what the hell…? What was that?” Sam yelps as Dean pulls at the back of the trenchcoat.
It’s rent down the middle, the edges ragged and trailing threads as if the coat has been ripped violently apart, not cut. The suit jacket under it is the same, and so is the shirt below that, and the layers of all are absolutely drenched in blood. Dean scissors his fingers in the gaping cloth. The glimpse beneath the clothing is enough to show him why Cas is looking so rough.
“Jesus!” he whispers.
Castiel cocks his head toward Dean, and unbelievably, a faint smile ghosts across his lips. “No-archangel.”
“That’s not funny, Cas.” He clenches his fists and grinds them against his thighs. “What did the bastard do to you?”
“I said I would hold him off,” is all he replies. He motions with one hand. “Give me that boost?”
Dean closes his eyes and breathes hard through his nose. Finally he nods and shifts back into a crouch. “Sam?”
They hoist with a lot more caution this time. Castiel sways only slightly when he’s upright, and, after the barest pause, steps toward the Mustang, Dean’s arm locked around his waist, a fistful of coat in his other hand. Sam stumbles alongside, then disentangles his arm and hurries ahead to flip the driver’s seat forward.
“Go ‘round the other side an’ get his legs,” Dean grunts, and Sam hustles to comply. “Duck your head, Cas.”
Dean spreads his hand over the back of Castiel’s head to guide him, and the angel bends, Sam reaching for him through the passenger door. He starts to squeeze into the backseat when he arches in agony.
Castiel’s head snaps back and another thunderclap of sound rips the air. Sam howls, lurches back and cracks his head on the roof, and tumbles out of the car. The hair on Dean’s arms stands on end; tears flood his eyes while he grits his teeth and hangs on to the vibrating body in his grasp.
The dome light pops, and then the side windows shatter in a cascade of glass. Castiel staggers backward, legs wobbling, and collapses to the pavement again, Dean following him down with a desperate grip on his coat lapels.
With a crisp splitting sound, the windshield cracks diagonally across its width.
“Cas? Cas!” Dean pats at his cheek, seizes his chin and gives it a shake. The angel’s head flops limply. “Cas, what the hell?”
Sam circles the Mustang at a run and snatches at his brother’s shoulder. “Dean, maybe you should get away from him!”
Dean shakes him off. “Quit it! He’s hurt. Cas!”
The angel’s eyelids drag upward, revealing eyes so dilated only a thin ring of blue shows. “I… seem to have a problem with my wing,” he rasps.
Dean goes still, and even Sam’s gaze flies up and fixes on Castiel’s face. “What kind of problem?” Dean asks, voice deadly quiet.
Castiel seems oddly reluctant to answer. “It will not… fold into the vessel’s back,” he says finally.
Dean nods. “And why is that?” he asks evenly.
The angel’s gaze slips to the side. “Help me up. We must go.”
“Answer me first.”
He must be getting used to Dean’s stubbornness, because he only presses his lips together and then admits, “It is broken.”
“Broken.” Dean eases him into a sitting position with a steady pull on the coat lapels, because he’s a little too freaked to touch anywhere on that blood-soaked back, if he’s gonna be honest here. “Broken-with your clothes torn apart and blood everywhere and screaming in angel.” Castiel hunches forward and doesn’t respond. “Just broken?”
“Dean, look!” Sam gasps, and Dean follows his pointing finger.
Something drops away behind Castiel, a sort of shifting in the air. It’s not shadow, not quite light, more like an absence of solidity. It flutters down, and for an instant darkly gleams against the roadbed, a delicately curved plume that winks out before Dean can reach for it.
His gaze whips back to Castiel’s. “Just broken, Cas?” he snarls.
The angel looks away in the face of the fury blazing out at him. “As I told you before, an archangel is absolute,” he says quietly. “His power and strength are profound.”
“And were used to rip you apart.”
Castiel presses his lips together again, and then his shoulders sag infinitesimally. “Nearly,” he admits, low.
Dean has a really long, foul, and profane litany of curses all lined up, but he bites them back with effort. “Can you fix it?”
“Maybe. In time.” Castiel’s expression is almost pleading. “I am trying to stay out of sight of the other angels.”
“And healing yourself would attract their attention?”
“The energy needed for that amount of repair? Yes.”
Dean grinds his teeth together, then takes a deep breath. “Alrighty then.” He takes Castiel’s arm, motions for Sam to get the other. “We’ll just have to patch you up ourselves and hope for the best.”
At the car door once more, Castiel hangs back. “I… I am not going to fit.”
“You have to. This is our only ride.”
“I think... if you can fold it, I can keep it flat and out of the way.”
Dean’s stomach knots and he has to swallow before he can ask, “How?”
Castiel braces folded arms on the Mustang’s roof and lowers his forehead to them. “Reach up; I’ll try…” His voice goes tight. “There-do you see…?”
“Yeah,” Dean breathes, because there, in front of him, is a broad, ragged-edged silhouette of a wing. It drags crookedly down Castiel’s back, but still… Angel. Wing.
Beside him, Sam makes a small sound of wonder. Dean reaches up, and the silhouette shimmers, light caught in its depths, and his fingers sink into a soft, dry weightiness.
“You need to press up, and inward,” Castiel tells him. “The joints will catch; you will need to force them closed.”
Dean swallows again. “It’ll hurt like a bitch,” he croaks.
“Yes.” The angel’s voice is matter-of-fact. “Do it anyway.”
“Sam.” Dean’s heart feels ready to burst out of his chest. “Hold him still.”
Sam hangs back, mouth opening and closing in silent protest. When Dean jerks his head insistently, Sam scuffs forward and shoves against the angel’s human body. His hands flutter uncertainly before falling to shoulder and waist and bearing down, hard.
Feathers shift under Dean’s palms. He closes his eyes for a second, then makes himself open them and look closely at the wing’s structure. He can see where the bones are bent, the joints askew, but he can also see how the wing needs to furl so it will sink into Castiel’s back. Before he can change his mind, he slams all his weight forward.
There’s no piercing angel voice this time, but only because Castiel bites through his own arm. There’s a sickening crunch and the wing closes like a folding door. It vanishes from Dean’s sight-his hands seem to be braced in mid-air.
Sam is fighting to hold Castiel still on the side of the car, the angel nearly wrenching free despite Sam’s strength. Dean’s hands are caught a foot or so from the bloodied trenchcoat and then there’s a dull snap and the heels of his hands punch down onto Castiel’s upper back.
Castiel goes completely limp and slides down the fender.
“Catch him!” Dean barks, scrabbling for a better hold, but Sam’s already halted his slide, jamming him against the car with a knee in the back of his waist. Staggering under the slack weight, he heaves the angel over to Dean.
“If you can hold him a sec, I’ll go around and pull him in.”
“Yeah.” Dean slides his hands under Castiel’s arms and braces him. Guy’s not that big, but damn he’s heavy. He leans back and concentrates on not throwing up.
Sam crawls through the backseat and reaches out the open driver’s door. “Shove his feet over here.”
They drag the angel into the car and across the seat, left side - the unbroken side - down. Dean peels off his jacket and bunches it beneath Castiel’s head. The bruise looks particularly nasty; can angels get concussions? In case they can, knocking against the side of Ruby’s piece-of-shit Mustang all the way to South Dakota is just going to make it worse.
By the time he has the jacket tucked in place, Castiel’s alert again, watching the activity with his usual detached interest. A new patch of red is seeping through his left coatsleeve, and Dean draws the arm out straight, shoving all the sleeves up.
“Shit. Sam, are there any towels or spare clothes in this heap?”
“Unless you see something lying around, no.”
“What about the trunk?”
His brother flinches. “No. I know it’s completely empty.”
There’s a weird insistence in Sam’s voice that Dean doesn’t have time to follow up on. He shrugs out of his button-down and slices off one sleeve with the knife, wrapping the makeshift bandage around Castiel’s bitten arm. “Try to keep that still, okay?” He folds what’s left of his shirt into a loose square and slides it down behind his back. “Can you lean back to hold that in place?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll have to do until we can stop for the night, someplace safe.”
“Sanctuary,” Castiel murmurs, easing back into the seat with a side-to-side settling motion.
“Yeah, sure.” Dean doesn’t think such a concept exists, not after last night. But the guy just got ripped in half trying to help him stop Sam from making the biggest freakin’ mistake of his life-he can afford to humor him a little.
They leave Pennsylvania behind. The fresh crack across the windshield makes Dean cross-eyed at first until his eyes get used to ignoring it. His arm tires from trying to keep the steering wheel straight and Sam squirms, unable to slouch against the missing window. Dean twists the rearview mirror until he can see into the backseat.
Castiel is silent, paler than usual, his face slick with sweat. “Check on him, will you?” Dean asks, and Sam contorts himself over the center console to reach back.
“Breathing’s shallow, his pulse is pretty thready, and he’s cold and clammy,” Sam reports. He slithers back into his seat. “I think he’s going into shock. Maybe we should find a hospital.”
“And tell ‘em what, Sam? ‘Our buddy here needs help, he’s had his wings torn off, oh by the way, he’s a freakin’ angel!’ Yeah, that’ll go over real well.”
Sam turns to stare out the open window. “Just trying to help.”
“You’ve helped plenty. Just…” Dean breaks off, shakes his head. “Never mind.”
The wind roaring through the windows fills the silence as he drives.
They stop to fill the tank again in a grey little rust-belt town. Dean buys coffee, pastries, bottles of water, and Sam shuffles around the corner to the restroom. A dog starts up barking and won’t quit.
Dean doesn’t want to admit he’s jittery with Sam out of his sight. He folds the driver’s seat forward and crouches by the open door. “Cas? Think you can manage some water?”
The angel’s eyes creep open, slowly, and just as slowly come into focus. “Dean.”
“That’s me.” He cracks the lid open and offers the bottle. “Drink this, okay?’
Castiel studies it with grave intensity and then, still painfully slowly, shifts his gaze back to Dean. “Nourishment is not necessary to sustain my vessel.”
“It may not be necessary, but it may do some good. C’mon, Cas; you’re havin’ trouble healing. Give your body a little help.”
“All right,” Castiel concedes. Dean helps him sit up and then hands him the bottle. He empties it in two gulps.
Dean pitches the plastic bottle into the footwell. “You want another?”
“Later, perhaps.” He’s still for a moment before his head turns just a fraction and he looks out at the gas station. Off behind the building, the dog is still barking frantically, sounding like it’s half-strangling itself on its own chain.
“It’s freaking out at Sam, isn’t it?” Dean asks quietly.
“Yes.” Castiel brings his gaze back to the man crouched beside him, head bowed.
“Can we fix him?”
“Maybe. In time.” He touches Dean’s sagging shoulder with a grimed and blood-smeared hand. “This part of the story is still being written. Your brother still has choices that will affect the outcome.”
Dean drops his face into his hands and hunches there until he hears Sam’s gigantic boots crunching across the parking lot.
-----
Sam holds his forgotten coffee cup long past the time the liquid inside cools down and grows a thin milk skin across the surface. Only when Dean takes a railroad crossing at 35 and stale coffee slops down Sam’s hand does he curse and sit up straight. Before Dean can build up speed again, he turns and tips the contents of the cup out the window in a thin beige stream. Most of it blows backward and splatters all down the side of Ruby’s car.
Except… it’s not Ruby’s car to care about… not anymore.
Sam’s mouth twists, and to hide his involuntary reaction, he turns and drops the empty cup over the seat to join the rest of the litter on the floor. He catches sight of the silent figure slumped in the back, and then he takes a second look and reaches between the front seats.
“Dean, he’s bleeding.”
Dean’s on autopilot, foot heavy on the accelerator, eyes distant on a faraway horizon. He shakes out of it only reluctantly. “What? I know.”
“No, I mean… he’s really. Bleeding. It’s on the floor.”
Dean swivels, trying to see into the back. The Mustang swerves into the oncoming lane and Sam yelps a warning. Dean cranks the wheel back and stomps the brake, manhandling the car onto the shoulder. He’s out of it before it rolls to a full stop, tires smoking, and he slaps the driver’s seat forward.
Castiel is deathly still; he’s so pale Dean’s afraid the “deathly” part is literal. He presses the clammy throat and locates a faint pulse jumping erratically under his fingers.
The blood has soaked beneath the angel’s human body and is dripping in slow rivulets along the stitched channels in the seat, turning the carpet below a glistening black. Dean’s stomach turns; there’s something obscene and, yeah, unholy, about an angel’s blood spilling in the vehicle of a demon.
“Cas. Hey.”
The angel’s eyelids do that extreme-slow-motion lifting again. It takes another minute for his eyes to focus outward. “Hello, Dean.”
“You gotta do the healing thing, Cas. You’re losing too much blood.”
He twitches his head in a minute shake. “Exposing us to my brethren is unwise.”
“Having the only one who can help us bleed out in the backseat is unwise! Just… repair the blood vessels, could you?”
Castiel goes quiet, turning inward for moment. “You said there would be a safe place to stop for the night?”
“I dunno about safe, exactly, but safer than sleeping in the car out in the open, yeah.”
“If you can find this place, I will attempt to mend the most pressing damage.”
Speaking seems to have worn him out. He subsides, doing that settling-in motion again. Dean sticks his hand over the seat. “Gimme your shirt, Sam.”
He folds it in behind Cas’ back, where it quickly darkens with blood. “Lean all the way back, okay? Keep pressure on it. I’ll find a motel.”
They’re deep in Amish country; Dean blows by five different buggies as they race to the next town large enough for accommodations. Signs by the road are advertising fresh eggs and quilts for sale, alongside billboards for campgrounds and boat rentals.
A long, gentle slope leads into the small town, allowing Dean to see a few motels widely spaced along the roadway. He picks one at random and pulls in.
The kid behind the counter is thin, hiding behind long dark bangs, and apparently going for a record of fewest words spoken. Silently he scoots a check-in form across the countertop to Dean, and just as silently runs his credit card. Dean watches the TV bolted to the back wall while the card processes; the scenes it’s showing are just everyday destruction and violence-various wars, another pirate attack off the coast of Africa, rioting, a clinic bombing, a missing 5-year-old.
If the Apocalypse is happening, it’s still under the radar.
The scrolling words along the bottom of the screen catch Dean’s eye - an investigation into a possible explosion in rural Maryland is continuing - dozens of reports have been received of “brilliant” lights in the sky, but no source has been located and no debris found. Medical Examiners and forensic teams are assembling at an old church.
Dean has to wonder how freaked they’re going to be by the remnants of a real, actual Satan-worshipping ritual.
He scrawls a signature on the credit slip. “What’s a decent place to get a meal around here?” The kid passes over a handful of flyers without comment. “How about a Sears or a Wal-Mart or something like that?”
He can’t figure out a non-verbal response. “Down that way, right onto Black Creek Pike, then about a mile to the shopping center,” the kid mumbles, looking disappointed in himself as he hands over the key.
Dean pockets it and wheels out of the office. The door slaps closed behind him as he goes to collect his co-pilots.
-----
On to Part 3
Part 2
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North of Pittsburgh, Dean swings west toward Ohio. The back end of the Mustang has picked up a really fucking annoying shimmy, and just keeping the car centered in its lane is wearing him out. There’s still the Midwest to get across, too. He thinks come nighttime he’ll boost a different car; there’s too much daylight right now for Grand Theft Auto.
Dean shoots a glance to the side. Sam is entirely too comfortable in this car, too; he’s got his seat tipped back to just the right angle so his stupidly long legs can stretch a bit and his eyes are half-closed. How he can relax is beyond Dean ; just breathing in this damned car makes him uneasy. He’s got absolutely zero of that psychic crap, not that he needs it to sense the bad mojo trapped in the Mustang’s bones.
Anger starts to churn in his gut. You’re real used to riding shotgun in this thing, Sam, he thinks. What exactly have you been doing with Ruby when you’re not getting naked with her?
He shoots another glare at Sam and opens his mouth to ask him that very question when his brother snaps bolt upright. “Dean! Look out!”
He jerks his attention back to the road. Something pale tumbles from out of nowhere onto the center line. Dean cranks the wheel sideways, tires screaming. The Mustang careens past the sprawled shape, leaving a curved dark skid on the pavement. It rocks to a halt, smoke spilling from the undercarriage.
Sam’s twisted into a pretzel, trying to see out the rear window. “Where did that come from?”
Dean slams the car into park and the engine hiccups once, twice, before it coughs and dies. He has a bad feeling, shit, yes, he does. He throws open the door and races back to the shape on the road.
Crumpled cloth, tan streaked with rust, lying in a heap in the middle of a Pennsylvania back road. Dean almost doesn’t want to look.
“Goddamn,” he whispers, and puts his hand on the sleeve of a trenchcoat. “Cas?”
He tugs, gently, and the figure rolls, head lolling on the pavement. Blue eyes, pupils blown wide, stare vacantly up at him.
“Cas!” Dean slides one hand beneath a shirt collar considerably less white than the last time he saw the angel, and presses down. A pulse stutters beneath his fingers and he huffs out a relieved gasp. Dean throws a frantic glance back at the car. “Sam! Come help me!”
Sam pulls himself out of the car slowly, rubbing his palms on his jeans. Dean turns back to the angel, taking in the tears in the clothing, and the bloody scrapes beneath. There’s a giant bruise darkening one whole side of Castiel’s face, radiating out from a deep split on his cheekbone. Dean touches a thumb to the seeping blood. “Cas? Why aren’t you healing yourself?”
Sam skates a nervous glance over the angel and then stares at the ground. “What… what should we do?”
“I dunno. I haven’t ever seen him this bad off.” Dean shifts on his heels and squeezes his way up each of Castiel’s legs, then down his arms, feeling for broken bones. The pressure prompts a shudder to rock Castiel’s body, and Dean looks up, startled, in time to catch a flash of life return to his eyes. “Dean,” Castiel croaks.
There’s actual emotion in that one word.
“Yeah,” Dean answers, and then blurts, “You came back.”
Castiel tips his head in the slightest nod. “I felt I must find you. You and your brother are in grave danger.”
“We kinda figured.” The creases in Dean’s forehead deepen as he runs another look over Castiel. “You don’t look so good yourself.”
“I will recover,” he says dismissively. “We should depart.”
“Yeah, okay.” Dean tightens his grip on Castiel’s arm. When the angel doesn’t move, he frowns. “You need a boost?”
“I… I think so.” The angel’s expression is suddenly weary, and Dean jerks his head at his brother.
“Sam, gimme a hand.”
Sam steps closer, his eyes flitting everywhere but the angel’s face. “Okay, ready.”
“You take that side, I’ve got this one, we’ll lift on three.”
Dean slides his right arm beneath Castiel’s shoulders and the angel goes rigid. A piercing blast of sheer noise rips from his throat.
Sam flings himself back and away, clapping both hands over his ears as he shouts in pain. Dean manages, barely, to not drop his charge back onto the roadway. He’s heard Castiel’s true voice before, and though the sound makes his teeth vibrate, he’s not completely unprepared for it. He yanks his hand from beneath the angel and the noise cuts off. Castiel sags down, panting.
Ears ringing, Dean rolls the angel up onto his side. “Dean, what the hell…? What was that?” Sam yelps as Dean pulls at the back of the trenchcoat.
It’s rent down the middle, the edges ragged and trailing threads as if the coat has been ripped violently apart, not cut. The suit jacket under it is the same, and so is the shirt below that, and the layers of all are absolutely drenched in blood. Dean scissors his fingers in the gaping cloth. The glimpse beneath the clothing is enough to show him why Cas is looking so rough.
“Jesus!” he whispers.
Castiel cocks his head toward Dean, and unbelievably, a faint smile ghosts across his lips. “No-archangel.”
“That’s not funny, Cas.” He clenches his fists and grinds them against his thighs. “What did the bastard do to you?”
“I said I would hold him off,” is all he replies. He motions with one hand. “Give me that boost?”
Dean closes his eyes and breathes hard through his nose. Finally he nods and shifts back into a crouch. “Sam?”
They hoist with a lot more caution this time. Castiel sways only slightly when he’s upright, and, after the barest pause, steps toward the Mustang, Dean’s arm locked around his waist, a fistful of coat in his other hand. Sam stumbles alongside, then disentangles his arm and hurries ahead to flip the driver’s seat forward.
“Go ‘round the other side an’ get his legs,” Dean grunts, and Sam hustles to comply. “Duck your head, Cas.”
Dean spreads his hand over the back of Castiel’s head to guide him, and the angel bends, Sam reaching for him through the passenger door. He starts to squeeze into the backseat when he arches in agony.
Castiel’s head snaps back and another thunderclap of sound rips the air. Sam howls, lurches back and cracks his head on the roof, and tumbles out of the car. The hair on Dean’s arms stands on end; tears flood his eyes while he grits his teeth and hangs on to the vibrating body in his grasp.
The dome light pops, and then the side windows shatter in a cascade of glass. Castiel staggers backward, legs wobbling, and collapses to the pavement again, Dean following him down with a desperate grip on his coat lapels.
With a crisp splitting sound, the windshield cracks diagonally across its width.
“Cas? Cas!” Dean pats at his cheek, seizes his chin and gives it a shake. The angel’s head flops limply. “Cas, what the hell?”
Sam circles the Mustang at a run and snatches at his brother’s shoulder. “Dean, maybe you should get away from him!”
Dean shakes him off. “Quit it! He’s hurt. Cas!”
The angel’s eyelids drag upward, revealing eyes so dilated only a thin ring of blue shows. “I… seem to have a problem with my wing,” he rasps.
Dean goes still, and even Sam’s gaze flies up and fixes on Castiel’s face. “What kind of problem?” Dean asks, voice deadly quiet.
Castiel seems oddly reluctant to answer. “It will not… fold into the vessel’s back,” he says finally.
Dean nods. “And why is that?” he asks evenly.
The angel’s gaze slips to the side. “Help me up. We must go.”
“Answer me first.”
He must be getting used to Dean’s stubbornness, because he only presses his lips together and then admits, “It is broken.”
“Broken.” Dean eases him into a sitting position with a steady pull on the coat lapels, because he’s a little too freaked to touch anywhere on that blood-soaked back, if he’s gonna be honest here. “Broken-with your clothes torn apart and blood everywhere and screaming in angel.” Castiel hunches forward and doesn’t respond. “Just broken?”
“Dean, look!” Sam gasps, and Dean follows his pointing finger.
Something drops away behind Castiel, a sort of shifting in the air. It’s not shadow, not quite light, more like an absence of solidity. It flutters down, and for an instant darkly gleams against the roadbed, a delicately curved plume that winks out before Dean can reach for it.
His gaze whips back to Castiel’s. “Just broken, Cas?” he snarls.
The angel looks away in the face of the fury blazing out at him. “As I told you before, an archangel is absolute,” he says quietly. “His power and strength are profound.”
“And were used to rip you apart.”
Castiel presses his lips together again, and then his shoulders sag infinitesimally. “Nearly,” he admits, low.
Dean has a really long, foul, and profane litany of curses all lined up, but he bites them back with effort. “Can you fix it?”
“Maybe. In time.” Castiel’s expression is almost pleading. “I am trying to stay out of sight of the other angels.”
“And healing yourself would attract their attention?”
“The energy needed for that amount of repair? Yes.”
Dean grinds his teeth together, then takes a deep breath. “Alrighty then.” He takes Castiel’s arm, motions for Sam to get the other. “We’ll just have to patch you up ourselves and hope for the best.”
At the car door once more, Castiel hangs back. “I… I am not going to fit.”
“You have to. This is our only ride.”
“I think... if you can fold it, I can keep it flat and out of the way.”
Dean’s stomach knots and he has to swallow before he can ask, “How?”
Castiel braces folded arms on the Mustang’s roof and lowers his forehead to them. “Reach up; I’ll try…” His voice goes tight. “There-do you see…?”
“Yeah,” Dean breathes, because there, in front of him, is a broad, ragged-edged silhouette of a wing. It drags crookedly down Castiel’s back, but still… Angel. Wing.
Beside him, Sam makes a small sound of wonder. Dean reaches up, and the silhouette shimmers, light caught in its depths, and his fingers sink into a soft, dry weightiness.
“You need to press up, and inward,” Castiel tells him. “The joints will catch; you will need to force them closed.”
Dean swallows again. “It’ll hurt like a bitch,” he croaks.
“Yes.” The angel’s voice is matter-of-fact. “Do it anyway.”
“Sam.” Dean’s heart feels ready to burst out of his chest. “Hold him still.”
Sam hangs back, mouth opening and closing in silent protest. When Dean jerks his head insistently, Sam scuffs forward and shoves against the angel’s human body. His hands flutter uncertainly before falling to shoulder and waist and bearing down, hard.
Feathers shift under Dean’s palms. He closes his eyes for a second, then makes himself open them and look closely at the wing’s structure. He can see where the bones are bent, the joints askew, but he can also see how the wing needs to furl so it will sink into Castiel’s back. Before he can change his mind, he slams all his weight forward.
There’s no piercing angel voice this time, but only because Castiel bites through his own arm. There’s a sickening crunch and the wing closes like a folding door. It vanishes from Dean’s sight-his hands seem to be braced in mid-air.
Sam is fighting to hold Castiel still on the side of the car, the angel nearly wrenching free despite Sam’s strength. Dean’s hands are caught a foot or so from the bloodied trenchcoat and then there’s a dull snap and the heels of his hands punch down onto Castiel’s upper back.
Castiel goes completely limp and slides down the fender.
“Catch him!” Dean barks, scrabbling for a better hold, but Sam’s already halted his slide, jamming him against the car with a knee in the back of his waist. Staggering under the slack weight, he heaves the angel over to Dean.
“If you can hold him a sec, I’ll go around and pull him in.”
“Yeah.” Dean slides his hands under Castiel’s arms and braces him. Guy’s not that big, but damn he’s heavy. He leans back and concentrates on not throwing up.
Sam crawls through the backseat and reaches out the open driver’s door. “Shove his feet over here.”
They drag the angel into the car and across the seat, left side - the unbroken side - down. Dean peels off his jacket and bunches it beneath Castiel’s head. The bruise looks particularly nasty; can angels get concussions? In case they can, knocking against the side of Ruby’s piece-of-shit Mustang all the way to South Dakota is just going to make it worse.
By the time he has the jacket tucked in place, Castiel’s alert again, watching the activity with his usual detached interest. A new patch of red is seeping through his left coatsleeve, and Dean draws the arm out straight, shoving all the sleeves up.
“Shit. Sam, are there any towels or spare clothes in this heap?”
“Unless you see something lying around, no.”
“What about the trunk?”
His brother flinches. “No. I know it’s completely empty.”
There’s a weird insistence in Sam’s voice that Dean doesn’t have time to follow up on. He shrugs out of his button-down and slices off one sleeve with the knife, wrapping the makeshift bandage around Castiel’s bitten arm. “Try to keep that still, okay?” He folds what’s left of his shirt into a loose square and slides it down behind his back. “Can you lean back to hold that in place?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll have to do until we can stop for the night, someplace safe.”
“Sanctuary,” Castiel murmurs, easing back into the seat with a side-to-side settling motion.
“Yeah, sure.” Dean doesn’t think such a concept exists, not after last night. But the guy just got ripped in half trying to help him stop Sam from making the biggest freakin’ mistake of his life-he can afford to humor him a little.
They leave Pennsylvania behind. The fresh crack across the windshield makes Dean cross-eyed at first until his eyes get used to ignoring it. His arm tires from trying to keep the steering wheel straight and Sam squirms, unable to slouch against the missing window. Dean twists the rearview mirror until he can see into the backseat.
Castiel is silent, paler than usual, his face slick with sweat. “Check on him, will you?” Dean asks, and Sam contorts himself over the center console to reach back.
“Breathing’s shallow, his pulse is pretty thready, and he’s cold and clammy,” Sam reports. He slithers back into his seat. “I think he’s going into shock. Maybe we should find a hospital.”
“And tell ‘em what, Sam? ‘Our buddy here needs help, he’s had his wings torn off, oh by the way, he’s a freakin’ angel!’ Yeah, that’ll go over real well.”
Sam turns to stare out the open window. “Just trying to help.”
“You’ve helped plenty. Just…” Dean breaks off, shakes his head. “Never mind.”
The wind roaring through the windows fills the silence as he drives.
They stop to fill the tank again in a grey little rust-belt town. Dean buys coffee, pastries, bottles of water, and Sam shuffles around the corner to the restroom. A dog starts up barking and won’t quit.
Dean doesn’t want to admit he’s jittery with Sam out of his sight. He folds the driver’s seat forward and crouches by the open door. “Cas? Think you can manage some water?”
The angel’s eyes creep open, slowly, and just as slowly come into focus. “Dean.”
“That’s me.” He cracks the lid open and offers the bottle. “Drink this, okay?’
Castiel studies it with grave intensity and then, still painfully slowly, shifts his gaze back to Dean. “Nourishment is not necessary to sustain my vessel.”
“It may not be necessary, but it may do some good. C’mon, Cas; you’re havin’ trouble healing. Give your body a little help.”
“All right,” Castiel concedes. Dean helps him sit up and then hands him the bottle. He empties it in two gulps.
Dean pitches the plastic bottle into the footwell. “You want another?”
“Later, perhaps.” He’s still for a moment before his head turns just a fraction and he looks out at the gas station. Off behind the building, the dog is still barking frantically, sounding like it’s half-strangling itself on its own chain.
“It’s freaking out at Sam, isn’t it?” Dean asks quietly.
“Yes.” Castiel brings his gaze back to the man crouched beside him, head bowed.
“Can we fix him?”
“Maybe. In time.” He touches Dean’s sagging shoulder with a grimed and blood-smeared hand. “This part of the story is still being written. Your brother still has choices that will affect the outcome.”
Dean drops his face into his hands and hunches there until he hears Sam’s gigantic boots crunching across the parking lot.
-----
Sam holds his forgotten coffee cup long past the time the liquid inside cools down and grows a thin milk skin across the surface. Only when Dean takes a railroad crossing at 35 and stale coffee slops down Sam’s hand does he curse and sit up straight. Before Dean can build up speed again, he turns and tips the contents of the cup out the window in a thin beige stream. Most of it blows backward and splatters all down the side of Ruby’s car.
Except… it’s not Ruby’s car to care about… not anymore.
Sam’s mouth twists, and to hide his involuntary reaction, he turns and drops the empty cup over the seat to join the rest of the litter on the floor. He catches sight of the silent figure slumped in the back, and then he takes a second look and reaches between the front seats.
“Dean, he’s bleeding.”
Dean’s on autopilot, foot heavy on the accelerator, eyes distant on a faraway horizon. He shakes out of it only reluctantly. “What? I know.”
“No, I mean… he’s really. Bleeding. It’s on the floor.”
Dean swivels, trying to see into the back. The Mustang swerves into the oncoming lane and Sam yelps a warning. Dean cranks the wheel back and stomps the brake, manhandling the car onto the shoulder. He’s out of it before it rolls to a full stop, tires smoking, and he slaps the driver’s seat forward.
Castiel is deathly still; he’s so pale Dean’s afraid the “deathly” part is literal. He presses the clammy throat and locates a faint pulse jumping erratically under his fingers.
The blood has soaked beneath the angel’s human body and is dripping in slow rivulets along the stitched channels in the seat, turning the carpet below a glistening black. Dean’s stomach turns; there’s something obscene and, yeah, unholy, about an angel’s blood spilling in the vehicle of a demon.
“Cas. Hey.”
The angel’s eyelids do that extreme-slow-motion lifting again. It takes another minute for his eyes to focus outward. “Hello, Dean.”
“You gotta do the healing thing, Cas. You’re losing too much blood.”
He twitches his head in a minute shake. “Exposing us to my brethren is unwise.”
“Having the only one who can help us bleed out in the backseat is unwise! Just… repair the blood vessels, could you?”
Castiel goes quiet, turning inward for moment. “You said there would be a safe place to stop for the night?”
“I dunno about safe, exactly, but safer than sleeping in the car out in the open, yeah.”
“If you can find this place, I will attempt to mend the most pressing damage.”
Speaking seems to have worn him out. He subsides, doing that settling-in motion again. Dean sticks his hand over the seat. “Gimme your shirt, Sam.”
He folds it in behind Cas’ back, where it quickly darkens with blood. “Lean all the way back, okay? Keep pressure on it. I’ll find a motel.”
They’re deep in Amish country; Dean blows by five different buggies as they race to the next town large enough for accommodations. Signs by the road are advertising fresh eggs and quilts for sale, alongside billboards for campgrounds and boat rentals.
A long, gentle slope leads into the small town, allowing Dean to see a few motels widely spaced along the roadway. He picks one at random and pulls in.
The kid behind the counter is thin, hiding behind long dark bangs, and apparently going for a record of fewest words spoken. Silently he scoots a check-in form across the countertop to Dean, and just as silently runs his credit card. Dean watches the TV bolted to the back wall while the card processes; the scenes it’s showing are just everyday destruction and violence-various wars, another pirate attack off the coast of Africa, rioting, a clinic bombing, a missing 5-year-old.
If the Apocalypse is happening, it’s still under the radar.
The scrolling words along the bottom of the screen catch Dean’s eye - an investigation into a possible explosion in rural Maryland is continuing - dozens of reports have been received of “brilliant” lights in the sky, but no source has been located and no debris found. Medical Examiners and forensic teams are assembling at an old church.
Dean has to wonder how freaked they’re going to be by the remnants of a real, actual Satan-worshipping ritual.
He scrawls a signature on the credit slip. “What’s a decent place to get a meal around here?” The kid passes over a handful of flyers without comment. “How about a Sears or a Wal-Mart or something like that?”
He can’t figure out a non-verbal response. “Down that way, right onto Black Creek Pike, then about a mile to the shopping center,” the kid mumbles, looking disappointed in himself as he hands over the key.
Dean pockets it and wheels out of the office. The door slaps closed behind him as he goes to collect his co-pilots.
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On to Part 3