Comfort to the Enemy, part 3
See part 1 for disclaimers.
Part 3
-----
Their motel room’s all the way at the end of the row, Dean made sure of that. He pulls the Mustang in so the driver’s side faces away from the office window, and tosses Sam the room key. “Pull the curtains shut, wouldya?”
“It is not nightfall,” Castiel says when Dean jams the seat forward and half-climbs into the backseat.
“Nah, but I’m gettin’ tired. Hungry, too. You gotta sit up, Cas, and swing your legs out the door.”
His back pulls stickily away from the Mustang’s upholstery. Dean’s stomach lurches-Jimmy Novak can’t possibly have any blood left in his body. He can only hope angels can refill their vessels damn quick.
Sam edges beside them and hoists, and Castiel is out, swaying on the gravel parking lot. His knees keep buckling, and he can’t seem to figure out the “walk toward the door” part, so Dean ducks, gets his shoulder under an arm, and, ignoring the angel’s sudden tensing, straightens up.
“He’s dripping,” Sam says.
“So scuff over it,” Dean snaps, and shuffles them both through the motel door. Castiel’s feet catch on the threshold, and then Sam’s behind them, hauling the angel upright by the waistband of his pants.
Dean guides him to the table pushed up against the back wall. “I know you’d rather be horizontal,” he tells Castiel as he kicks one chair out, “but this is gonna work better to patch you up.”
“This is fine.” The angel’s voice is preternaturally calm, but the tremors running through him head to foot are a giveaway that things are anything but fine. Dean lowers him to the seat and braces him before he topples.
Sam’s staring down at his own outspread, blood-smeared hands with an expression of quiet horror. “What… what made the archangel do this? I thought it was supposed to protect Chuck from harm. You tried to hurt Chuck?”
“Tried to force his prophecy to change,” Dean answers. “We needed Chuck to tell us where you went with Ruby so we could stop you from killing Lilith. Cas sent me on ahead while he stayed behind as a diversion.”
Sam looks utterly stricken. “I just wanted to stop her! I didn’t know she was the seal.”
“That was the plan all along, Sam.” Dean lifts Castiel’s arms - dangling deadweight at his sides - one after the other to rest on the formica tabletop, and then nudges him forward so his chest rests on the table’s edge. “Ruby’s, the demons’, hell, even Cas’ angel brethren were in on it!” He practically spits the word “brethren”. “We’ve got a bitch of a job ahead of us to try and fix this mess, if we even can. Shit, I was believing the angels were here to help me stop it all, but they were just stringing me along the whole time. Isn’t that right, Cas?”
The angel’s barely upright, but he meets Dean’s glare unflinchingly. “Yes.”
Sam’s strength deserts him along with his last shreds of faith. He drops into the other chair with a thud. “Why?”
Dean takes hold of his shoulders and gives him a little shake, not with anger but in an attempt to keep his little brother from flying apart. “Call it a little heavenly extermination to clear the place out so it can be a private angel clubhouse.” He sighs. He’s so damn tired. “I wish you hadn’t bought into Ruby’s bullshit, Sammy, but you didn’t really stand a chance.” He jerks his head at the angel sagging over the table. “Cas here was following bullshit orders like a good little soldier, but he’s the only one on our side now. Cas?” He waits until the other focuses on him “You hearing anything on Angel Radio? Lucifer raining fire on us yet?”
“He is… occupied, for now. He is under pursuit from the Host, from what I have heard.”
Dean nods, and draws Ruby’s knife. Sam looks up, startled, but Castiel just watches with faint curiosity as Dean nicks the blade into his shirt collar. “We need supplies. Salt, first aid, coffee for that machine over there.” He twists the blade, slicing the tag out of Castiel’s collar and handing it to Sam. “And spare clothes-here’s Cas’ size. There’s a shopping center about a mile after a right onto Black Creek Pike, the kid at the desk said. It should be safe enough if Cas isn’t hearing anything, but be careful. If you see any weird shit, drop everything and get back here.”
Sam turns the scrap of cloth in his hands. “I started the Apocalypse and you want me… to go shopping,” he says slowly.
“You got a problem with that, bitch?” Dean’s picking through his wallet for a credit card, but he pauses and looks up at Sam, uncertainty tightening the corners of his eyes.
For a moment, Sam’s frozen in abject misery, shoulders drooping, hands twisting restlessly; and then his head comes up and he takes a deep breath. “No problem… jerk.”
Relief crashes through Dean - That’s my boy - but he turns back to Castiel so it doesn’t show. “Get a load of gauze and tape, okay?”
“Sutures?”
Dean eases the point of the blade inside the tear in the back of the trenchcoat, and draws it down toward the hem with a sharp ripping sound, so the two halves fall open in the middle. He slices open the suit jacket and then the shirt in the same way. Pushing the layers of clothes aside, he studies the mess that is Castiel’s back. “I think it’s too late to stitch.” Dean skates his fingertips lightly over the deep oozing tears in the angel’s flesh and shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can stitch something this deep anyway; it might fuck up the muscles.”
“Okay.” Sam crosses to the sink in the kitchenette to rinse his hands and splash his face. “What about guns?”
Dean’s still examining Castiel’s back, wincing involuntarily at a thick ragged flap of skin barely attached to his right shoulderblade. “Won’t help against what’s coming for us. Latin, salt, holy water-that’ll have to do.” He tilts his head at Ruby’s knife on the table. “Still have this, too.”
Sam’s still looking a little shellshocked, but he collects the keys and heads out. Dean reaches for Castiel’s cuff. “Let’s get these off you.”
He pulls both coat sleeves down off his left arm, dropping the halved clothing in a leaking heap on the floor. When he moves to the other side and straightens out Castiel’s right arm, the angel stiffens and his eyes go wide. “I’ll be careful.”
“I know.” His voice is barely above a whisper.
The right sides of the coats don’t catch on the mangled wing-however Cas has it “folded”, it’s out of the way of human clothes. Dean inches the sleeves down his arm with extreme care anyway, and adds the pieces to the pile on the floor.
The shirt’s open all down the back so he doesn’t bother undoing the buttons, just pulls it off Castiel’s front, hooking the loose tie over the back of the angel’s head as he goes.
“Okay, sit tight-I’ll get a wet towel.”
“Wait!” At the angel’s cry, Dean freezes. Castiel is struggling to rise from the chair. “Help me up.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not a good idea.”
“Yes,” Castiel insists. “I need to.”
He’s obstinate enough to struggle until he ends up on the floor, and Dean’ll just have to pick him up again, so he goes back and hoists him up. “Where you planning on going?”
“Door.”
They shuffle over. He’s straining to reach one hand around his own back now, nearly pulling out of Dean’s grasp as he twists his arm up and back. “Cas?”
“Get me some of the blood.”
Dean stares at him. “You’re crazy.”
“I am not. It is practical.”
“Practical, jeez.” Shaking his head, Dean props Castiel against the doorframe. He swipes his hand down Castiel’s back, gathering a cupped-palm full of gleaming red. Then he holds out the hand to the angel, and Castiel dips two fingers into the blood.
With sure strokes, he paints a sigil onto the door as high as he can reach. He whispers a word that tingles in Dean’s ears, and the sticky red lines jump into sharp relief for an instant before sinking back into the blistered wood.
One hand braced on the doorframe, Castiel leans back to study his handiwork. His knees start to shake. His hand slips down the wall, and then he crumples completely. Dean lunges forward just in time to get an armful of limp, bloody angel.
“Okay, enough! You gonna come sit down now? Shit, Cas.”
There’s a faint smile on his lips as he flops back into the chair. “Sanctuary.”
Dean can’t help but feel a little grudging admiration, though he tries not to let it show. “Sanctuary, my ass. You think a little fingerpaint’s gonna keep us safe?”
“Yes,” the angel says simply, and Dean sighs.
“Okay. Can I wash the rest of it off now? Good. Sit there and don’t move.”
The towel quickly gets saturated. Dean rinses and squeezes it out and starts again and there’s blood freakin’ everywhere. Mostly down his neck and back and sides, but it’s in his hair and streaking his arms and the Holy Tax Accountant pants are soaked where it pooled on the car seat. Dean wrings out the towel again, and then again. He probably should’ve just dumped Cas in the tub and hosed him down with the shower because the floor under his chair is ringed with watery red splatters and there are drips down the chair legs that’ll all have to be mopped up.
“Lean forward,” Dean says, and Castiel does, sinking heavily onto his elbows on the table. As gently as Dean runs the towel over his shoulders, the angel still goes rigid again. “Sorry,” Dean mutters.
With the coating of blood wiped away, deep purple-black bruising is revealed-four oblong smudges ranged across the back of his neck with a fifth below, gouged under his left shoulderblade.
“Holy shit.” Dean measures his own hand against the print and finds it dwarfed by the huge mark. “How is your back not broken?”
“It was. I fixed it.”
Dean goes still, hand resting forgotten on the angel’s upper back. “What else… broke?”
“It is immaterial. I mended the worst of it once the archangel released me.”
“Except this.” The torn place on Castiel’s right shoulderblade is welling up with blood again, a slow red push that spills out from under the ragged edges of skin and muscle and starts a languid slide down his back. Dean grabs a clean washcloth and claps it over the gashes, pressing down in an attempt to stem the flow.
“That one is…” Castiel seems to grope for the right words, arm rising to gesture vaguely. Dean lifts one hand long enough to push Castiel’s arm back down to the table and then resumes pressing the cloth tight. “…is different. It is at a spot where my vessel and I… merge. Angelic and human are blended there, and I cannot yet heal the angelic. Not without alerting my kin to my whereabouts.”
“What about that bloodspell on the door?”
“That is mostly to keep you and your brother cloaked.” Castiel’s voice is starting to slur. “Too much… energy… will cancel out the blank spot.”
“Okay, okay, speaking of energy, shut up now and save yours. Just lemme try and get this bleeding stopped.”
Castiel sinks down to the table again, head cradled on folded arms. Dean keeps up a steady pressure on his back and tries not to think-of Sam, of angry demons and even angrier angels, of that blast of light he’s - somehow - supposed to kill. “I’ll just fuck it up.”
He doesn’t realize he’s spoken aloud until Castiel answers, voice muffled against his arms. “You will not. I have every confidence in you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re delusional! Blood loss’ll do that to you.”
“It is not a hallucination that had I acted sooner, you may have succeeded at the convent. The fault is not yours. I am sorry, Dean.”
An angel is apologizing to him, and if that’s not proof of the Apocalypse, he doesn’t know what is. “Don’t apologize, Cas, not to me.”
“Why not? You…”
“Just don’t!” Dean pushes Castiel’s head back down, pushes the cloth against the seeping wound. “Got enough to think about,” he mutters.
He stands over Castiel with both hands jammed firmly on his back and waits for Sam, waits for the bleeding to stop, waits for the cold knot in his stomach to just fill him up into one frozen block of dread. Cas’ back is rising and falling very slightly beneath his hands with the slow, deliberate breaths he taking, and Dean wonders if that’s good or not. He doesn’t remember seeing him breathe before today.
“I don’t need to, but it might help,” Castiel murmurs.
“You listening in on my thoughts?”
“Like bells ringing, when you are worried. Loud and clear.”
“Oh.”
Dean hears the Mustang long before Sam pulls into the lot, triggering a flash of sheer aggravation that it’s not the Impala. He hates its stupid rattles and the irritating ticking noise it makes when the engine shuts off and most of all he hates the wrongness of its door creaking.
He hates that it’s Ruby’s car, that Sam happily rode around in, outside the door right now instead of his own.
Sam’s loaded down with rustling plastic bags. He dumps most of them onto the nearer bed and brings the last one straight to Dean and empties it onto the table. Gauze, antiseptic, rolled bandages, tape spill across the surface. “What do you want me to do?”
“Wash your hands and then lay out tape and gauze. Back needs to be bandaged up.”
“It stop bleeding?”
Dean cautiously lifts a corner of the washcloth. “It’s slowed down, at least.”
They work in tandem, Sam layering squares of gauze in stacks, Dean swiping antiseptic into the split skin, Sam tearing strips of tape. Finally the ravaged mess that is Castiel’s back is swathed in clean white cotton. Dean eyes it for a long moment, but no red leaks through. He draws a long, shaky breath.
“Might be on the upswing here. How’re you holding up, Cas?”
He rolls his head sideways and blinks once, very slowly. “I am… holding up, yes.”
He’s shaking, and smudges are darkening beneath his eyes. The cut on his cheekbone is starting to gape wide from the pressure of the rapidly swelling bruise. Dean winces and paws through the first aid supplies until he finds a cold pack. He twists it active and tucks it against Castiel’s cheek, guiding the angel’s hand up to hold it in place.
“Salt the door and window, Sam.” Dean pulls a chair up beside Castiel. “And could you put on a pot of coffee?”
There are a hundred cuts, scrapes, and gouges down the angel’s body. Dean works his way through them, cleaning, disinfecting, bandaging the worst. Sam places a mug in front of him, and a glass of ice water in front of Castiel, and Dean pauses and makes him drink it.
He scrubs out the deep bite on Castiel’s arm, flushing it with hydrogen peroxide before wrapping it in a proper bandage. Sam putters in the background, opening packages of t-shirts and socks and taking toiletries into the bathroom.
“Why don’t you lie down, Sam?” Dean suggests after a while. The scrapes down Castiel’s right side are embedded with bits of bark and snapped-off pine needles and he’s having to pick them all out one by one with tweezers. Sam’s wearing a path between the window and the dining table and the pacing is getting to Dean.
“Can’t.”
“Then come over here and help me get his pants off.”
That stops his nervous pacing like a brick wall. “Dean! You can’t… I don’t… he’s an angel!”
“He’s an angel with a shitload of splinters in his hip. I’ll do the dirty work if you’re squeamish-just hold him up for me.”
Sam’s making an epic pissy-face at him, but at least he’s momentarily forgotten to look like he’s about to twitch out of his skin. He comes over and helps Castiel push back the chair and stand up, and if Sam stares up at the ceiling the whole time with a mortified expression, at least he keeps Castiel from crumpling to the floor while Dean unhooks his waistband. The pants are pretty much in shreds and stiffening up with drying blood to boot. Dean peels them down, mops away more blood from his legs, and then motions at the bed in the corner.
“Better lay him down over there. He looks wiped.”
It’s easier said than done. Castiel can’t quite grasp how to step out of the last of his clothes. They can’t drag him without ripping loose all that careful bandaging on his back. In the end, Sam gets him under the arms, Dean takes his ankles, and they hoist him over and onto the mattress.
Dean rolls him onto his left side and Castiel instantly curls inward. His eyes have gone glassy and despite their care, an ominous red patch has blossomed on the gauze covering his back. Dean swears quietly as he pries off his shoes and strips the ruined pants down his ankles. “Sit tight while I get more gauze.”
He tapes down another layer, fingers smoothing carefully around the stark white outline. He has no idea what he’s going to do if it doesn’t stop bleeding.
Sam sidles in with an extra blanket from the closet-it’s faded and pilled, but it smells clean, like laundry soap. He shakes it out and tosses it over Castiel, and Dean folds one edge up and out of the way.
Some of the splinters are practically broken-off tree branches, piercing the smooth skin stretched over Castiel’s hipbone and impaled deep in the meat of his thigh. Dean slings a chair over and begins teasing out the jagged shards one after another, dropping them into a wastebasket by his knee as he works. The light dims, and Sam pulls the lampshade off one of the pin-up lamps on the wall and angles it toward where Dean’s concentrating.
Castiel never twitches, not even when Dean has to go after several particularly deep slivers with a needle. Sam passes him wads of antiseptic-soaked cotton, and he swipes, and bandages some more, and finds a few more twigs to dig out.
At last he flips the blanket back over and tucks it tightly around Castiel. The angel’s doubled-over in a tense curve on the bed, legs drawn up and back bowed. Dean clicks off the light and crouches by his head.
“Cas?”
Eyelids quiver and then creep up a fraction of an inch.
“I’ve done all I can for you. Try to rest, and… try to heal yourself, okay? You said this was sanctuary.”
“If I… am cautious,” Castiel whispers through dry lips. His eyes tip closed and he does that little settling-in motion down into the mattress.
Dean rises slowly and bends backward to ease the crick in his lower back. His eyes feel like they’ve been sandpapered. Slowly he stoops and snags the wastebasket, shuffling over to the table to sweep the profusion of empty first aid wrappings into it. He should mop up the blood before it dries; yeah, he should, it’ll be easier the sooner he gets to it. Wearily he cants his head at the floor.
It’s clean. Not even a smear remains, and even the chair’s chrome legs gleam. The sad little heap of blood-soaked clothes is gone, too. Dean turns. Sam’s sitting on the end of the other bed, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between them. “You cleaned up for me?”
Sam nods, a jerky up-and-down motion that makes him look gawky and terribly young. “Bought a few rolls of paper towels, ‘cuz it looked like it was gonna get messy.”
“It did.” Dean looks at the huddled lump in the bed and wonders if anything he’s done this day is any good. It doesn’t feel like it-his brother’s been slipping away from him all year and his angel might finally be on his side for real just in time to slip away into, dunno, the ether or something. Bobby is still four states away, still playing catch-up on End Times lore.
“I put everything in that bag there,” Sam says, interrupting his thoughts. “I thought maybe, angel blood, we should burn it? You know, in case something evil tries to use it for something.”
He’s looking at Dean with a desperately hopeful expression, and it hits Dean how scared he is.
His little brother opened a door to Heaven’s most serious prison and let Lucifer walk free. Heaven and Earth are going to consider that the ultimate capital crime.
And Sam’s got to be thinking this might be the screw-up that finally and irrevocably turns Dean from guardian to executioner.
So he walks over, crowds down onto the end of the bed beside his brother, and deliberately bumps him with his shoulder. “Thanks, Sammy. Good to know you’ve got my back.”
He shudders, and some of the tense lines on his face smooth out. “I’m sorry, Dean.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too. Sorry I bossed you around instead of explaining shit… too much like Dad.”
“We both are,” Sam murmurs.
Dean shoulder-bumps him again, and then stands up before things get any mushier than they already are. “If I make a food run, will you eat any of what I bring back?”
-----
Dean lets himself back into the motel room as quietly as he can, and nearly drops the bag of food. Sam’s bent over Castiel’s bed, one knee up on the edge of the mattress, straining to pin down the thrashing angel.
“What the hell?” Dean rushes over. “Sam?”
“Look,” Sam’s saying, “I told you he wouldn’t be long!” He flings a frantic look over his shoulder at Dean. “Thank god you’re back! He started freaking out about two minutes after you left! Yelling about you leaving “sanctuary” and trying to jump out of bed.”
“Jeez.” Dean sets down the food and crouches by the bed. “Cas. Cas, c’mon.”
The split over his cheekbone has opened again, leaving smeared hatchmarks of red on the pillow. At the sound of Dean’s voice, Castiel subsides, his eyes rolling up and around until he locates Dean past Sam’s shoulder. He sags back. “Dean. You should not have left.”
“We gotta eat, man. I was careful. And as quick as I could be.”
Sam lets go and backs up, squeezing past his brother. Castiel is still looking at Dean, trying - and failing - to maintain a stern glare. “That symbol is drawn upon the door for a reason. You are in danger.”
“And you’re bleeding again.” Dean takes hold of the angel’s elbows. “Sit up. Easy. Lemme take a look.”
Bright crimson is flooding the bandages. Dean teases the adhesive tape up and peels back the heavy layers of gauze. The skin underneath is still split into raw fissures, but only one place is actively bleeding-the worst spot, just above what’s left of Castiel’s right shoulderblade.
Dean touches a fingertip to the welling tear, and Castiel’s back locks. He hisses something through clenched teeth.
“Hurts, huh?” There’s no taunt in the observation. Dean rubs his knuckles; they’re still aching and swollen from that punch he threw back in the waiting room. “I thought you didn’t feel pain.”
“We do. It is usually… more abstract. A fleeting condition we can ignore because we know how temporary it is.”
Dean gets up for more bandages. “Little harder to ignore without the Instant Healing, I guess.”
“This is true.”
On his way back to the bed, Dean nudges the take-out bag with his foot. “Go ahead and dig in, Sam, it’s gettin’ cold. Turn, Cas. And brace yourself, I’m going to put pressure on this again.”
He wraps his left arm around the front of Castiel’s shoulders for leverage, and pushes hard on his back with a handful of gauze. The angel is motionless for the long minutes Dean bears down on the wound, head slightly bowed, bare feet jammed against the smooth floor.
Finally Dean eases up and peeks beneath the gauze. “Okay, it’s slowed down again. Sit still,” he commands, though Castiel hasn’t moved since he started, and starts taping down bandages again. “No more flapping around, okay? Healing’s never gonna take if you rip it open every few minutes.”
That has Castiel swiveling around, an affronted expression on his face. “I do not…” He breaks off, and Dean barks out a short laugh.
“Got ya there, flyboy. Oh, hey, no-don’t lie down. You’re going to eat something, get a little fuel into that vessel.”
Sam places one of the sandwiches onto a plate for the angel. The very thought of cheeseburgers had made Dean queasy, and yeah - french fries? - are definitely off the menu for the foreseeable future. Grilled chicken with the works seemed a safer bet, and the little café had some biscuits left over, homemade and sweet with honey.
Sam passes the plate and Dean sets it on the nightstand and stabs a finger at it. “Eat.” He waits until Cas tucks the blanket tighter around himself and scoots up to the head of the bed before he settles at the table and unwraps his own meal.
Dean ends up being the only one who really eats dinner. Sam turns his sandwich around and around on its wrapper, taking the occasional mouse-bite when he feels Dean’s gaze heavy on him. On Dean’s other side Castiel deconstructs his sandwich, inspecting each of the components gravely before leaving them fanned across the plate. After a first dubious taste, he does devour the entire share of biscuits, though. Dean passes him the milkshake Sam’s ignoring, and he finishes that, too, and then sits hunched over and shivering in the circle of yellow lamplight until Dean makes him lie down again.
“Anything on Angel Radio?”
He shakes his head, the pillow rustling softly with the motion. “They have not caught him, though they will not cease trying. I suspect Lucifer will go to ground until he can make plans, gather his forces. We are playing a long game here.”
“Wonderful. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Dean clicks off the lamps, leaving the hanging light over the table the only illumination in the motel room. Sam’s given up pretending to eat; he slumps over the picked-at remains of his meal, hands scuffing slowly up and down his blue-jeaned thighs, over and over again.
“Go to bed, Sam.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, try, okay?” Dean’s not above playing dirty if he has to. “’Cuz I can’t rest until I know you’re settled for the night, and I’m wiped, dude. Got a long drive tomorrow, and I gotta watch all our backs, including Angel Boy’s over there. If you lie down, I can get a few hours of shut-eye.”
The guilt trip works. Sam gets up and moves to the bed. After a minute where he just perches on the edge and stares at the floor, he finally scoots up and stretches out. “You want the other half of the bed?”
“In a minute.” Dean moves carefully around the room, gathering trash, checking salt lines. By the time he clicks off the last light, Sam’s got a pillow bunched beneath his head, and if he’s not actually sleeping, at least he’s doing a good impression of it.
-----
On to Part 4
Part 3
-----
Their motel room’s all the way at the end of the row, Dean made sure of that. He pulls the Mustang in so the driver’s side faces away from the office window, and tosses Sam the room key. “Pull the curtains shut, wouldya?”
“It is not nightfall,” Castiel says when Dean jams the seat forward and half-climbs into the backseat.
“Nah, but I’m gettin’ tired. Hungry, too. You gotta sit up, Cas, and swing your legs out the door.”
His back pulls stickily away from the Mustang’s upholstery. Dean’s stomach lurches-Jimmy Novak can’t possibly have any blood left in his body. He can only hope angels can refill their vessels damn quick.
Sam edges beside them and hoists, and Castiel is out, swaying on the gravel parking lot. His knees keep buckling, and he can’t seem to figure out the “walk toward the door” part, so Dean ducks, gets his shoulder under an arm, and, ignoring the angel’s sudden tensing, straightens up.
“He’s dripping,” Sam says.
“So scuff over it,” Dean snaps, and shuffles them both through the motel door. Castiel’s feet catch on the threshold, and then Sam’s behind them, hauling the angel upright by the waistband of his pants.
Dean guides him to the table pushed up against the back wall. “I know you’d rather be horizontal,” he tells Castiel as he kicks one chair out, “but this is gonna work better to patch you up.”
“This is fine.” The angel’s voice is preternaturally calm, but the tremors running through him head to foot are a giveaway that things are anything but fine. Dean lowers him to the seat and braces him before he topples.
Sam’s staring down at his own outspread, blood-smeared hands with an expression of quiet horror. “What… what made the archangel do this? I thought it was supposed to protect Chuck from harm. You tried to hurt Chuck?”
“Tried to force his prophecy to change,” Dean answers. “We needed Chuck to tell us where you went with Ruby so we could stop you from killing Lilith. Cas sent me on ahead while he stayed behind as a diversion.”
Sam looks utterly stricken. “I just wanted to stop her! I didn’t know she was the seal.”
“That was the plan all along, Sam.” Dean lifts Castiel’s arms - dangling deadweight at his sides - one after the other to rest on the formica tabletop, and then nudges him forward so his chest rests on the table’s edge. “Ruby’s, the demons’, hell, even Cas’ angel brethren were in on it!” He practically spits the word “brethren”. “We’ve got a bitch of a job ahead of us to try and fix this mess, if we even can. Shit, I was believing the angels were here to help me stop it all, but they were just stringing me along the whole time. Isn’t that right, Cas?”
The angel’s barely upright, but he meets Dean’s glare unflinchingly. “Yes.”
Sam’s strength deserts him along with his last shreds of faith. He drops into the other chair with a thud. “Why?”
Dean takes hold of his shoulders and gives him a little shake, not with anger but in an attempt to keep his little brother from flying apart. “Call it a little heavenly extermination to clear the place out so it can be a private angel clubhouse.” He sighs. He’s so damn tired. “I wish you hadn’t bought into Ruby’s bullshit, Sammy, but you didn’t really stand a chance.” He jerks his head at the angel sagging over the table. “Cas here was following bullshit orders like a good little soldier, but he’s the only one on our side now. Cas?” He waits until the other focuses on him “You hearing anything on Angel Radio? Lucifer raining fire on us yet?”
“He is… occupied, for now. He is under pursuit from the Host, from what I have heard.”
Dean nods, and draws Ruby’s knife. Sam looks up, startled, but Castiel just watches with faint curiosity as Dean nicks the blade into his shirt collar. “We need supplies. Salt, first aid, coffee for that machine over there.” He twists the blade, slicing the tag out of Castiel’s collar and handing it to Sam. “And spare clothes-here’s Cas’ size. There’s a shopping center about a mile after a right onto Black Creek Pike, the kid at the desk said. It should be safe enough if Cas isn’t hearing anything, but be careful. If you see any weird shit, drop everything and get back here.”
Sam turns the scrap of cloth in his hands. “I started the Apocalypse and you want me… to go shopping,” he says slowly.
“You got a problem with that, bitch?” Dean’s picking through his wallet for a credit card, but he pauses and looks up at Sam, uncertainty tightening the corners of his eyes.
For a moment, Sam’s frozen in abject misery, shoulders drooping, hands twisting restlessly; and then his head comes up and he takes a deep breath. “No problem… jerk.”
Relief crashes through Dean - That’s my boy - but he turns back to Castiel so it doesn’t show. “Get a load of gauze and tape, okay?”
“Sutures?”
Dean eases the point of the blade inside the tear in the back of the trenchcoat, and draws it down toward the hem with a sharp ripping sound, so the two halves fall open in the middle. He slices open the suit jacket and then the shirt in the same way. Pushing the layers of clothes aside, he studies the mess that is Castiel’s back. “I think it’s too late to stitch.” Dean skates his fingertips lightly over the deep oozing tears in the angel’s flesh and shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can stitch something this deep anyway; it might fuck up the muscles.”
“Okay.” Sam crosses to the sink in the kitchenette to rinse his hands and splash his face. “What about guns?”
Dean’s still examining Castiel’s back, wincing involuntarily at a thick ragged flap of skin barely attached to his right shoulderblade. “Won’t help against what’s coming for us. Latin, salt, holy water-that’ll have to do.” He tilts his head at Ruby’s knife on the table. “Still have this, too.”
Sam’s still looking a little shellshocked, but he collects the keys and heads out. Dean reaches for Castiel’s cuff. “Let’s get these off you.”
He pulls both coat sleeves down off his left arm, dropping the halved clothing in a leaking heap on the floor. When he moves to the other side and straightens out Castiel’s right arm, the angel stiffens and his eyes go wide. “I’ll be careful.”
“I know.” His voice is barely above a whisper.
The right sides of the coats don’t catch on the mangled wing-however Cas has it “folded”, it’s out of the way of human clothes. Dean inches the sleeves down his arm with extreme care anyway, and adds the pieces to the pile on the floor.
The shirt’s open all down the back so he doesn’t bother undoing the buttons, just pulls it off Castiel’s front, hooking the loose tie over the back of the angel’s head as he goes.
“Okay, sit tight-I’ll get a wet towel.”
“Wait!” At the angel’s cry, Dean freezes. Castiel is struggling to rise from the chair. “Help me up.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not a good idea.”
“Yes,” Castiel insists. “I need to.”
He’s obstinate enough to struggle until he ends up on the floor, and Dean’ll just have to pick him up again, so he goes back and hoists him up. “Where you planning on going?”
“Door.”
They shuffle over. He’s straining to reach one hand around his own back now, nearly pulling out of Dean’s grasp as he twists his arm up and back. “Cas?”
“Get me some of the blood.”
Dean stares at him. “You’re crazy.”
“I am not. It is practical.”
“Practical, jeez.” Shaking his head, Dean props Castiel against the doorframe. He swipes his hand down Castiel’s back, gathering a cupped-palm full of gleaming red. Then he holds out the hand to the angel, and Castiel dips two fingers into the blood.
With sure strokes, he paints a sigil onto the door as high as he can reach. He whispers a word that tingles in Dean’s ears, and the sticky red lines jump into sharp relief for an instant before sinking back into the blistered wood.
One hand braced on the doorframe, Castiel leans back to study his handiwork. His knees start to shake. His hand slips down the wall, and then he crumples completely. Dean lunges forward just in time to get an armful of limp, bloody angel.
“Okay, enough! You gonna come sit down now? Shit, Cas.”
There’s a faint smile on his lips as he flops back into the chair. “Sanctuary.”
Dean can’t help but feel a little grudging admiration, though he tries not to let it show. “Sanctuary, my ass. You think a little fingerpaint’s gonna keep us safe?”
“Yes,” the angel says simply, and Dean sighs.
“Okay. Can I wash the rest of it off now? Good. Sit there and don’t move.”
The towel quickly gets saturated. Dean rinses and squeezes it out and starts again and there’s blood freakin’ everywhere. Mostly down his neck and back and sides, but it’s in his hair and streaking his arms and the Holy Tax Accountant pants are soaked where it pooled on the car seat. Dean wrings out the towel again, and then again. He probably should’ve just dumped Cas in the tub and hosed him down with the shower because the floor under his chair is ringed with watery red splatters and there are drips down the chair legs that’ll all have to be mopped up.
“Lean forward,” Dean says, and Castiel does, sinking heavily onto his elbows on the table. As gently as Dean runs the towel over his shoulders, the angel still goes rigid again. “Sorry,” Dean mutters.
With the coating of blood wiped away, deep purple-black bruising is revealed-four oblong smudges ranged across the back of his neck with a fifth below, gouged under his left shoulderblade.
“Holy shit.” Dean measures his own hand against the print and finds it dwarfed by the huge mark. “How is your back not broken?”
“It was. I fixed it.”
Dean goes still, hand resting forgotten on the angel’s upper back. “What else… broke?”
“It is immaterial. I mended the worst of it once the archangel released me.”
“Except this.” The torn place on Castiel’s right shoulderblade is welling up with blood again, a slow red push that spills out from under the ragged edges of skin and muscle and starts a languid slide down his back. Dean grabs a clean washcloth and claps it over the gashes, pressing down in an attempt to stem the flow.
“That one is…” Castiel seems to grope for the right words, arm rising to gesture vaguely. Dean lifts one hand long enough to push Castiel’s arm back down to the table and then resumes pressing the cloth tight. “…is different. It is at a spot where my vessel and I… merge. Angelic and human are blended there, and I cannot yet heal the angelic. Not without alerting my kin to my whereabouts.”
“What about that bloodspell on the door?”
“That is mostly to keep you and your brother cloaked.” Castiel’s voice is starting to slur. “Too much… energy… will cancel out the blank spot.”
“Okay, okay, speaking of energy, shut up now and save yours. Just lemme try and get this bleeding stopped.”
Castiel sinks down to the table again, head cradled on folded arms. Dean keeps up a steady pressure on his back and tries not to think-of Sam, of angry demons and even angrier angels, of that blast of light he’s - somehow - supposed to kill. “I’ll just fuck it up.”
He doesn’t realize he’s spoken aloud until Castiel answers, voice muffled against his arms. “You will not. I have every confidence in you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re delusional! Blood loss’ll do that to you.”
“It is not a hallucination that had I acted sooner, you may have succeeded at the convent. The fault is not yours. I am sorry, Dean.”
An angel is apologizing to him, and if that’s not proof of the Apocalypse, he doesn’t know what is. “Don’t apologize, Cas, not to me.”
“Why not? You…”
“Just don’t!” Dean pushes Castiel’s head back down, pushes the cloth against the seeping wound. “Got enough to think about,” he mutters.
He stands over Castiel with both hands jammed firmly on his back and waits for Sam, waits for the bleeding to stop, waits for the cold knot in his stomach to just fill him up into one frozen block of dread. Cas’ back is rising and falling very slightly beneath his hands with the slow, deliberate breaths he taking, and Dean wonders if that’s good or not. He doesn’t remember seeing him breathe before today.
“I don’t need to, but it might help,” Castiel murmurs.
“You listening in on my thoughts?”
“Like bells ringing, when you are worried. Loud and clear.”
“Oh.”
Dean hears the Mustang long before Sam pulls into the lot, triggering a flash of sheer aggravation that it’s not the Impala. He hates its stupid rattles and the irritating ticking noise it makes when the engine shuts off and most of all he hates the wrongness of its door creaking.
He hates that it’s Ruby’s car, that Sam happily rode around in, outside the door right now instead of his own.
Sam’s loaded down with rustling plastic bags. He dumps most of them onto the nearer bed and brings the last one straight to Dean and empties it onto the table. Gauze, antiseptic, rolled bandages, tape spill across the surface. “What do you want me to do?”
“Wash your hands and then lay out tape and gauze. Back needs to be bandaged up.”
“It stop bleeding?”
Dean cautiously lifts a corner of the washcloth. “It’s slowed down, at least.”
They work in tandem, Sam layering squares of gauze in stacks, Dean swiping antiseptic into the split skin, Sam tearing strips of tape. Finally the ravaged mess that is Castiel’s back is swathed in clean white cotton. Dean eyes it for a long moment, but no red leaks through. He draws a long, shaky breath.
“Might be on the upswing here. How’re you holding up, Cas?”
He rolls his head sideways and blinks once, very slowly. “I am… holding up, yes.”
He’s shaking, and smudges are darkening beneath his eyes. The cut on his cheekbone is starting to gape wide from the pressure of the rapidly swelling bruise. Dean winces and paws through the first aid supplies until he finds a cold pack. He twists it active and tucks it against Castiel’s cheek, guiding the angel’s hand up to hold it in place.
“Salt the door and window, Sam.” Dean pulls a chair up beside Castiel. “And could you put on a pot of coffee?”
There are a hundred cuts, scrapes, and gouges down the angel’s body. Dean works his way through them, cleaning, disinfecting, bandaging the worst. Sam places a mug in front of him, and a glass of ice water in front of Castiel, and Dean pauses and makes him drink it.
He scrubs out the deep bite on Castiel’s arm, flushing it with hydrogen peroxide before wrapping it in a proper bandage. Sam putters in the background, opening packages of t-shirts and socks and taking toiletries into the bathroom.
“Why don’t you lie down, Sam?” Dean suggests after a while. The scrapes down Castiel’s right side are embedded with bits of bark and snapped-off pine needles and he’s having to pick them all out one by one with tweezers. Sam’s wearing a path between the window and the dining table and the pacing is getting to Dean.
“Can’t.”
“Then come over here and help me get his pants off.”
That stops his nervous pacing like a brick wall. “Dean! You can’t… I don’t… he’s an angel!”
“He’s an angel with a shitload of splinters in his hip. I’ll do the dirty work if you’re squeamish-just hold him up for me.”
Sam’s making an epic pissy-face at him, but at least he’s momentarily forgotten to look like he’s about to twitch out of his skin. He comes over and helps Castiel push back the chair and stand up, and if Sam stares up at the ceiling the whole time with a mortified expression, at least he keeps Castiel from crumpling to the floor while Dean unhooks his waistband. The pants are pretty much in shreds and stiffening up with drying blood to boot. Dean peels them down, mops away more blood from his legs, and then motions at the bed in the corner.
“Better lay him down over there. He looks wiped.”
It’s easier said than done. Castiel can’t quite grasp how to step out of the last of his clothes. They can’t drag him without ripping loose all that careful bandaging on his back. In the end, Sam gets him under the arms, Dean takes his ankles, and they hoist him over and onto the mattress.
Dean rolls him onto his left side and Castiel instantly curls inward. His eyes have gone glassy and despite their care, an ominous red patch has blossomed on the gauze covering his back. Dean swears quietly as he pries off his shoes and strips the ruined pants down his ankles. “Sit tight while I get more gauze.”
He tapes down another layer, fingers smoothing carefully around the stark white outline. He has no idea what he’s going to do if it doesn’t stop bleeding.
Sam sidles in with an extra blanket from the closet-it’s faded and pilled, but it smells clean, like laundry soap. He shakes it out and tosses it over Castiel, and Dean folds one edge up and out of the way.
Some of the splinters are practically broken-off tree branches, piercing the smooth skin stretched over Castiel’s hipbone and impaled deep in the meat of his thigh. Dean slings a chair over and begins teasing out the jagged shards one after another, dropping them into a wastebasket by his knee as he works. The light dims, and Sam pulls the lampshade off one of the pin-up lamps on the wall and angles it toward where Dean’s concentrating.
Castiel never twitches, not even when Dean has to go after several particularly deep slivers with a needle. Sam passes him wads of antiseptic-soaked cotton, and he swipes, and bandages some more, and finds a few more twigs to dig out.
At last he flips the blanket back over and tucks it tightly around Castiel. The angel’s doubled-over in a tense curve on the bed, legs drawn up and back bowed. Dean clicks off the light and crouches by his head.
“Cas?”
Eyelids quiver and then creep up a fraction of an inch.
“I’ve done all I can for you. Try to rest, and… try to heal yourself, okay? You said this was sanctuary.”
“If I… am cautious,” Castiel whispers through dry lips. His eyes tip closed and he does that little settling-in motion down into the mattress.
Dean rises slowly and bends backward to ease the crick in his lower back. His eyes feel like they’ve been sandpapered. Slowly he stoops and snags the wastebasket, shuffling over to the table to sweep the profusion of empty first aid wrappings into it. He should mop up the blood before it dries; yeah, he should, it’ll be easier the sooner he gets to it. Wearily he cants his head at the floor.
It’s clean. Not even a smear remains, and even the chair’s chrome legs gleam. The sad little heap of blood-soaked clothes is gone, too. Dean turns. Sam’s sitting on the end of the other bed, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between them. “You cleaned up for me?”
Sam nods, a jerky up-and-down motion that makes him look gawky and terribly young. “Bought a few rolls of paper towels, ‘cuz it looked like it was gonna get messy.”
“It did.” Dean looks at the huddled lump in the bed and wonders if anything he’s done this day is any good. It doesn’t feel like it-his brother’s been slipping away from him all year and his angel might finally be on his side for real just in time to slip away into, dunno, the ether or something. Bobby is still four states away, still playing catch-up on End Times lore.
“I put everything in that bag there,” Sam says, interrupting his thoughts. “I thought maybe, angel blood, we should burn it? You know, in case something evil tries to use it for something.”
He’s looking at Dean with a desperately hopeful expression, and it hits Dean how scared he is.
His little brother opened a door to Heaven’s most serious prison and let Lucifer walk free. Heaven and Earth are going to consider that the ultimate capital crime.
And Sam’s got to be thinking this might be the screw-up that finally and irrevocably turns Dean from guardian to executioner.
So he walks over, crowds down onto the end of the bed beside his brother, and deliberately bumps him with his shoulder. “Thanks, Sammy. Good to know you’ve got my back.”
He shudders, and some of the tense lines on his face smooth out. “I’m sorry, Dean.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too. Sorry I bossed you around instead of explaining shit… too much like Dad.”
“We both are,” Sam murmurs.
Dean shoulder-bumps him again, and then stands up before things get any mushier than they already are. “If I make a food run, will you eat any of what I bring back?”
-----
Dean lets himself back into the motel room as quietly as he can, and nearly drops the bag of food. Sam’s bent over Castiel’s bed, one knee up on the edge of the mattress, straining to pin down the thrashing angel.
“What the hell?” Dean rushes over. “Sam?”
“Look,” Sam’s saying, “I told you he wouldn’t be long!” He flings a frantic look over his shoulder at Dean. “Thank god you’re back! He started freaking out about two minutes after you left! Yelling about you leaving “sanctuary” and trying to jump out of bed.”
“Jeez.” Dean sets down the food and crouches by the bed. “Cas. Cas, c’mon.”
The split over his cheekbone has opened again, leaving smeared hatchmarks of red on the pillow. At the sound of Dean’s voice, Castiel subsides, his eyes rolling up and around until he locates Dean past Sam’s shoulder. He sags back. “Dean. You should not have left.”
“We gotta eat, man. I was careful. And as quick as I could be.”
Sam lets go and backs up, squeezing past his brother. Castiel is still looking at Dean, trying - and failing - to maintain a stern glare. “That symbol is drawn upon the door for a reason. You are in danger.”
“And you’re bleeding again.” Dean takes hold of the angel’s elbows. “Sit up. Easy. Lemme take a look.”
Bright crimson is flooding the bandages. Dean teases the adhesive tape up and peels back the heavy layers of gauze. The skin underneath is still split into raw fissures, but only one place is actively bleeding-the worst spot, just above what’s left of Castiel’s right shoulderblade.
Dean touches a fingertip to the welling tear, and Castiel’s back locks. He hisses something through clenched teeth.
“Hurts, huh?” There’s no taunt in the observation. Dean rubs his knuckles; they’re still aching and swollen from that punch he threw back in the waiting room. “I thought you didn’t feel pain.”
“We do. It is usually… more abstract. A fleeting condition we can ignore because we know how temporary it is.”
Dean gets up for more bandages. “Little harder to ignore without the Instant Healing, I guess.”
“This is true.”
On his way back to the bed, Dean nudges the take-out bag with his foot. “Go ahead and dig in, Sam, it’s gettin’ cold. Turn, Cas. And brace yourself, I’m going to put pressure on this again.”
He wraps his left arm around the front of Castiel’s shoulders for leverage, and pushes hard on his back with a handful of gauze. The angel is motionless for the long minutes Dean bears down on the wound, head slightly bowed, bare feet jammed against the smooth floor.
Finally Dean eases up and peeks beneath the gauze. “Okay, it’s slowed down again. Sit still,” he commands, though Castiel hasn’t moved since he started, and starts taping down bandages again. “No more flapping around, okay? Healing’s never gonna take if you rip it open every few minutes.”
That has Castiel swiveling around, an affronted expression on his face. “I do not…” He breaks off, and Dean barks out a short laugh.
“Got ya there, flyboy. Oh, hey, no-don’t lie down. You’re going to eat something, get a little fuel into that vessel.”
Sam places one of the sandwiches onto a plate for the angel. The very thought of cheeseburgers had made Dean queasy, and yeah - french fries? - are definitely off the menu for the foreseeable future. Grilled chicken with the works seemed a safer bet, and the little café had some biscuits left over, homemade and sweet with honey.
Sam passes the plate and Dean sets it on the nightstand and stabs a finger at it. “Eat.” He waits until Cas tucks the blanket tighter around himself and scoots up to the head of the bed before he settles at the table and unwraps his own meal.
Dean ends up being the only one who really eats dinner. Sam turns his sandwich around and around on its wrapper, taking the occasional mouse-bite when he feels Dean’s gaze heavy on him. On Dean’s other side Castiel deconstructs his sandwich, inspecting each of the components gravely before leaving them fanned across the plate. After a first dubious taste, he does devour the entire share of biscuits, though. Dean passes him the milkshake Sam’s ignoring, and he finishes that, too, and then sits hunched over and shivering in the circle of yellow lamplight until Dean makes him lie down again.
“Anything on Angel Radio?”
He shakes his head, the pillow rustling softly with the motion. “They have not caught him, though they will not cease trying. I suspect Lucifer will go to ground until he can make plans, gather his forces. We are playing a long game here.”
“Wonderful. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Dean clicks off the lamps, leaving the hanging light over the table the only illumination in the motel room. Sam’s given up pretending to eat; he slumps over the picked-at remains of his meal, hands scuffing slowly up and down his blue-jeaned thighs, over and over again.
“Go to bed, Sam.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, try, okay?” Dean’s not above playing dirty if he has to. “’Cuz I can’t rest until I know you’re settled for the night, and I’m wiped, dude. Got a long drive tomorrow, and I gotta watch all our backs, including Angel Boy’s over there. If you lie down, I can get a few hours of shut-eye.”
The guilt trip works. Sam gets up and moves to the bed. After a minute where he just perches on the edge and stares at the floor, he finally scoots up and stretches out. “You want the other half of the bed?”
“In a minute.” Dean moves carefully around the room, gathering trash, checking salt lines. By the time he clicks off the last light, Sam’s got a pillow bunched beneath his head, and if he’s not actually sleeping, at least he’s doing a good impression of it.
-----
On to Part 4