The Devil You Know : Epilogue
See part 1 for disclaimers.
Epilogue
He can’t get up.
Dean gets as far as pushing onto his hands and knees, but he just can’t get any further onto his feet. His chest and ribs and back are one crumpled mass of excruciating pain, and his head’s pounding like it’s building to an explosion. Blood’s running out of his face in a waterfall, staining the dirt beneath him dark red.
He needs to get up.
He needs to reach Sam, sprawled unconscious - please god only unconscious - off to his left, and he needs to reach Cas, knelt in the mud halfway across the field.
Dean rocks back, from knees to shins to toes. Pushes up on shaking arms. Arches his back.
He needs his…
Agony drops him down before he ever makes his feet.
A split second before he face-plants, a steely arm slides around his chest and keeps him from mashing what’s left of his face into the ground.
“Dean. Dean.”
He means to answer, he does, but his mouth’s full of blood and all he can do is gurgle. The world tilts, too-tight hands tipping him over onto his ass, and he nearly pukes his guts out.
“Hold still.”
Hands slip down his face, leaving a stinging warmth in their wake. There’s a hard press into his side, and his chest cavity burns. His protest catches in his throat as he’s yanked forward, his spinning head landing in the crook of a neck.
The hands drag down his back, so hard down his spine that it sizzles with the heat and friction. The shock of it snatches his breath from lungs that can suddenly inflate without crackling pain.
“Open your eyes. Open. Did you damage them?”
Thumbs push at the corners of his eyes; Dean cracks his eyelids and there’s Cas, two freakin’ inches from his face and doing a damn good impression of someone with actual human feelings, someone going quietly frantic with worry and concern.
“Why did you watch?” Castiel probably means to sound stern, but Dean hears only the fond exasperation in his voice. “You could have burned your eyes out.”
“How’s Sammy?”
“Sam’s fine; I’ll wake him in a minute. Stop changing the subject.”
“I’m not. Are you okay? Fucking hell, Cas!”
He bats the angel’s hand away from his face, seizes his shoulders and looks him up and down. The sling’s disappeared from around his neck; the cuts and bruises have been wiped from his face; the back of his left hand is smooth and unmarked. And his wings…
Wings, plural. Both of them, Dean had seen both of them, a little tattered around the edges, but both wings wide and strong and working.
“Holy shit, Cas, you got your wings back!”
Dean surges forward and grabs him, yanking Castiel close and practically crushing him.
And after a second where he kneels there all stiff and surprised and probably confused as hell, Castiel’s arms come up and wrap around Dean’s back and squeeze just as tightly.
Dean fists a handful of his shirt in case he gets any ideas about flapping off to test his wings, and holds on as hard as he can.
Cas doesn’t actually seem inclined to let go any time soon either.
They’re not hugging. They’re not. Hugging is… different. Gentler. More girly. Or something.
This is… Well, whatever it is, they’ve fucking earned it.
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Later, after Sam’s awake and back on his feet, they climb the rest of the way to the summit in search of the cage door.
Sam looks like he can’t make up his mind whether to be sorry he missed the battle, or relieved he didn’t have to see it. He listens, wide-eyed, while Dean recounts the cataclysmic fight in increasingly disjointed spurts of words and waving of hands.
“Cas was awesome, Sam,” Dean finishes. He pokes the angel lightly in the shoulder. “You were awesome.”
Castiel gives a faint, sad smile and doesn’t answer and Dean’s reminded all-too-abruptly that it was his brother he just killed. A major class-A dick of a brother, but kin nonetheless.
He shuts his mouth and waves them toward the stony peak.
Castiel could flit right to the top now that he’s all angeled-up again, but he doesn’t. He scrambles alongside Dean, and they pick their way through the rocks on their own feet.
The section of stony ground Castiel stops at doesn’t look any different than any other patch of barren mountaintop.
He crouches down and sweeps his hand across the ground, fingers pausing on an invisible line in the rock and then tracing it as far in either direction as he can reach. He looks up at the brothers standing over him. “Here,” he says simply.
Dean stares down at the blank ground. “Here,” he repeats, and when Castiel nods, asks, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Lucifer’s cage door opens here, right here, under our feet.”
“A cage door. It will be his when we put him in it.”
Dean crouches down beside the angel and runs his own hand across the ground. He feels rough stone, the prickle of fallen pine needles, a stubby clump of moss growing stubbornly along a cleft in the rock.
No jolt of power, either holy or evil. No prickle of eerie current through his fingertips, no distant heat rising from unfathomable depths. Just chilled damp stone on a mist-covered mountain.
“Okay. So… how? How do we put him in? Just whistle him up and ask him nicely to step inside and have a seat for the duration?”
Castiel trails the tips of his fingers along the invisible line again, as if he’s feeling for a seam. He shakes his head. “It will take time. Strategy. We will need allies-I’m not strong enough to open it on my own.”
“Allies-Cas, you do realize we’re kinda short on those these days, right?”
He tips his face to the sky, his gaze distant. “With Zachariah dead, there may be others who now dare to join me-us,” he amends quickly. He stands up, absently brushing off his hand against his jeans. When he looks at Dean, his eyes are very bright, his expression determined, and, maybe, just a bit hopeful.
“Some of my siblings were… closer, perhaps, than others. I have a brother as well, who is older, more powerful than most of us, who disappeared a long, long time ago. Once I thought him lost, but now, knowing what I do of Zachariah’s deceptions, I have to wonder… I wonder if he can be found, and persuaded to help us.”
“Trying to recruit other angels to our fight sounds fucking risky. Are you trying to get smote right out of the sky?” Dean asks, and Castiel offers a wry half-smile.
“It will be undoubtedly dangerous. But also our best chance.” He stretches his hand down to Dean, and pulls him to his feet. “I have to try.”
Dean glares sternly at him. “Not alone. You’re clear on that, right?”
“Of course, Dean.”
“Okay, then.” He casts a long look around. The mist is getting thicker, dimming the light further as evening approaches, and Dean shivers. “If there’s nothing else we can do here, let’s head down. I hate mountain descents in the dark.”
He flings one arm around Sam’s back and nudges him into motion. “You okay, Sammy?”
“Yeah, I’m… I’m good, Dean. Really. I feel… okay, for once.”
So maybe his brother is finally clean. Dean still has to work out how to find atonement for that poor sacrificed nurse before his brother’s soul is entirely clear, but Cas’ll help him think of something. Angels should have a direct line to seeking forgiveness and redemption, after all.
Zachariah’s death will probably throw his little angelic cabal into disarray, but it won’t take long before a new leader bent on Paradise shakes loose from the pack and they sort themselves out and come gunning for him again. Cas’ little recruitment drive is going to be downright dangerous as well.
And it’s only a matter of time before Lucifer gets a bead on them and comes knocking. Probably bringing hordes of adoring demon zealots with him, all intent on ripping apart anyone who poses a threat to their lord and master.
Dean waves Sam on ahead and swings around. Castiel is picking his way carefully through the rocks behind him, still not taking wing. One boot catches on a split in the stony ground, throwing him off-balance into a boulder.
“You okay, Cas?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Come on, keep up with us.”
Any one of a hundred things is probably going to kill them all before Lucifer’s defeated, but Dean’s got his brother back, and his friend at his side.
And in the end, if all they have is each other, it’ll be enough.
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fin