a geometrical history of the hairpin turn, for interstitial
Title: a geometrical history of the hairpin turn
Recipient: interstitial
Rating: R
Word Count: 3623
Warnings: Possession, gaslighting, nonconsensual body modification.
Summary: Sam makes and breaks a deal, Cas stars in the Amy Pond Redux, and Dean considers the hairpin turn.
Dean is in Rocky’s again.
Body flush against the freezer door, bleeding heat into stainless steel. Arms flung out wide, palms sticky with sweat, fingers splayed across cold metal, cheek bruising as Michael howls and his fury slams through Dean like a jolt of lightning. Michael’s moving through him in slow, undulating waves, looping through him from head to toe, muting and blurring senses as he goes. His peripheral vision is fucked, fraying at the edge, crackling and fizzling out like he’s living in a simulation.
He blinks hard and sees his eyes stare back from an expanse of endless gray, vacant and glassy.
There’s no one home, Michael whispers.
Dean’s a negligible presence in his own body, rattling around in a house that’s too big, too empty, too unreal. He’s swept off to the side, shoved into a corner. Tossed into the attic, the basement, the storage. The freezer. There’s no telling which side of the door he’s on, not when the only things he sees are the hard lines of steel. Sound comes in pieces, disjointed country music fading in and out of the airwaves, Michael intercut with Dean, Dean overlaid by Michael. And then there’s the bone deep coldness that digs its claws into him like the harpy that’s Michael’s third head.
Dean’s the one being fridged.
Or Dean’s outside, and he’s really Michael, losing his mind. Or he used to be Dean, but now he’s Michael, because identity is really a matter of geography and Dean is the man who walks free. Not that it matters. In the grand scheme of things, they’re identical. Topological defects, Michael says wryly. The world’s awfulness is a degenerate ground state and it doesn’t matter which defect takes the wheel.
Dean doesn’t get to take the wheel. Dean doesn’t get to walk free. He’s locked inside the cooler, locked inside the Ma’lak box, locked inside the coffin he made with his own hands and now he’s being dropped into the ocean. There’s a dull roar in his ears, white noise, the sound of twenty thousand leagues and more rushing past as gravity takes its toll.
He blacks out. He comes to.
He’s on the brink.
Dean, a voice booms, and all sound cuts out.
There’s another face in the reflection. Sam.
Dean is looking in the mirror and his brother is looking back. Another set of twin defects, but Dean will be damned if he lets Sam take his place. You can’t, he says weakly, clinging to the door, twisting out of Sam’s reach every time his brother comes near him. You can’t come in, Sammy. My mind, my rules.
An arm settles around his shoulders. His brother’s solid weight.
It’s all right, Dean, Sam says, and Dean’s terrified that the ground’s going to open and swallow his brother whole.
That’s what happened last time, Dean says. His face is wet and he can’t keep his breaths from coming out in shuddering gasps.
Hey, hey, Sam says, soothingly. We talked about this, remember? I’m here to talk business.
Business?
Michael thinks that Dean’s head is an empty bar flirting with bankruptcy and he’s not off the mark. Dean’s head is a dying strip mall, a fucking ghost town. Analogous to a two dimensional gas, Michael offers. No place for a three dimensional Sam.
Not unless he’s here to do a little braiding.
What braiding, Dean says.
Sam just gives him a funny look.
What business, Sam, Dean says. What the fuck are you braiding-
*
Dean jolts awake, head pounding and stomach roiling, and he knows what braiding means.
You’re awake, Cas says. What about-
What about Michael?
Yeah.
Sam’s working on a deal.
Cas doesn’t like the sound of that. But Dean doesn’t like the sound of Heaven holding his dead parents hostage and that’s still happening, so tough shit.
I know you don’t like it, he says, but I don’t care. You’re making me take back the kid that killed my mom.
As far as Dean’s concerned, Cas is so deep in the red that he doesn’t get a say in Dean’s life anymore.
But Cas hasn’t gotten the memo. He can’t stop talking, and Dean can’t take it. He’s burning up with Michael’s grace, senses strung out and nerves scraped raw, and the inside of Cas’s truck is so cramped that every sound leaps out at him. Cas’s careful inhales and exhales so that he seems human. Dean’s own ragged breaths when he remembers to breathe. There’s barely enough room for the two of them, let alone Sam in the backseat, and now the influx of excuses and recriminations and apologies, so many empty words jostling against each other, vying for space, demanding acknowledgement -
He rolls down his window.
Cas’s voice peters out and the exhaust fumes flood in. It feels like the start of a second possession, an erasure of self. The truck is thermalizing into equilibrium with the westbound 210 and all Dean can think about is the solid wall of eighteen wheelers in the two right lanes, a procession of steel beasts groaning and straining and screeching down the highway, tires slapping roughly against the asphalt.
They take his mind off of Michael.
White hot sunlight pours into the cabin, glancing off the plastic trim and stabbing straight into Dean’s eyes. A vicelike band tightens around his temples and a swirl of nausea twists through his stomach. He swallows, and regrets his choice.
Stop thinking about Michael, Cas begs. You don’t have to do this.
Don’t have to be his bitch? But then who’d take care of John and Mary?
Cas, after all, is persona non grata in Heaven.
Jack, Cas says. If we can get his soul back- if we can fix him-
One of the eighteen-wheelers honks, and there’s a loud outburst of cursing.
The window rolls back up.
I need the fresh air, Dean says.
Cas pulls off onto Colorado and into the nearest gas station. Leaves the passenger door open and disappears inside, then comes back with a bottle of Gatorade.
Drink, he orders.
Dean takes a swig. It leaves a metallic taste in his mouth and sits like a gelatinous lump in his stomach, sloshing around every time he shifts in his seat. There’s a watery feeling in the back of his throat, the sense of bile swelling inside of him.
We’re in Pasadena, Cas announces, apropos of nothing. I used to come here all the time.
Mostly for the talks. Particularly the physics ones, even though he knew that the physicists were at best blind men groping at an elephant that only he could see. Non-Abelian braiding statistics, Cas confesses. The paper where they exchange two Majorana fermions at the ends of a wire and the ground state is only changed by a phase.
That’s his favorite talk.
What a coincidence, Dean says. That one’s Michael’s favorite too.
Do you know what it means? Cas asks. Braiding. Do you know what that means?
I’m going back in.
You’re going back in, Cas confirms. And Michael gets to take the wheel.
But he’s not going to burn the world. And he’s not going to let Jack burn the world. And he’s going to keep Mom and Dad safe in their shared heaven.
The status quo. That’s what they’re guaranteed, if Sammy does his job right.
You’re forgetting about the phase, Cas says. The Berry phase. The geometrical record of how you and Michael-
Of how Dean and Michael switch places? Sam asks.
He’s come out of Dean’s head, but Dean is still Dean.
Guess what, Sam says. There’s been a switch of plans. Cas, he wants you in there to negotiate the rest of the contract.
*
Here’s the thing about entering a two dimensional gas: you’re just as likely to get braided as you are to do the braiding.
*
They end up in Summerland. Thirty miles from Ojai, where Rowena promises Jack is hiding.
I had a nice hotel booked in Ojai, Sam says, looking disgusted when he sees the inn in Summerland. Cas, you need to raise your standards.
Cas has them living in a desiccated corpse of what used to be a bed and breakfast. The door sticks, the lamps don’t work, the mini fridge is a biohazard, and the mattress sinks in the middle. There’s an unidentifiable smell wafting up from the carpet and Dean’s pretty sure that he sees blood smeared on the wallpaper.
So it looks like a murder scene, Cas says, unfazed. That’s good.
Plausible deniability in case things get out of hand.
They’re less than five miles away from their new target.
It’s one of Michael’s monsters, Cas says vaguely when pressed. Michael’s sending for him right now.
Dean can feel Michael’s grace working overtime, a dull throbbing that begins at the base of his skull and works its way to the top of his head. The bed sheets are rank and the pillow covers are stained, but he’s too far gone to care. He strips to his boxers and climbs in between the sheets. Leans his head back against the pillow, presses down hard and wills the pressure to stop the pain.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, floating on the edge of sleep, just aware enough of the comings and goings in the room. The rattling AC comes groaning to life, only to sputter out after a few gasps. When he opens his eyes again, there’s a fan whirring over his head, sending shadows spinning across the popcorn ceiling.
Hey, Sam says. Cas is out. I need to talk to you.
About Cas?
Yeah. I don’t know what he agreed to. I think he’s doing his own thing.
So what’s new, Dean says. Do we need to stop him?
That, of course, is as feasible as trapping a hurricane with a butterfly net, but that’s Cas for you. Hurricane Castiel, sweeping through, upending Heaven and Earth and everything that lies in his path.
Dean used to like that about him.
This, he tries to remember.
We can’t do anything, Sam says blackly. The deal with Michael is binding. Made sure of that myself with a crossroads contract.
And if we break it?
Back to square one.
Okay, Dean says, trying to sit up.
He can’t find the energy to move. His limbs are leaden and a wave of dizziness crashes over him when he tries to push himself up. Michael’s using up all of his batteries and then some to do Cas’s bidding, and Dean can only lie here, spent.
Sam heaves him up. Arm wrapped around his torso, palm flat on his back.
You can’t be lying down, Sam says. Gotta stay awake.
He presses a gun into Dean’s hands. Folds down Dean’s limp fingers, wraps them around the handle.
I melted down an angel blade into bullets, Sam says. I don’t know what’s coming, but I can’t be here.
Why not?
Terms of the deal, Sam says. Or else Mom and Dad get scattered to the wind.
Dean wants to let go of the gun, but he can’t.
Sam, he says.
Just shoot. Sam can’t look at him. Whatever’s coming for you, just shoot. If you have to.
And watch your back.
*
Here’s the thing about a life spent running in circles - there has to be a winding number. Dean doesn’t know how many times he’s been around the block, but he figures it’s got to be in the double digits.
Jacob Pond says that he’s done this nine times. Nine tails, he says, fanning them out proudly for all and sundry to see. Height of enlightenment for a kitsune.
The kid’s fifteen and he’s here to avenge his mother.
Dean puts him down as a rookie.
Go home, kid, he says. You won’t like what’s in store.
What’s not to like, Jacob says. Michael helped me out once, and I’m here to repay the favor.
Here’s what it looks like on the surface: Dean’s story coming full circle. A boy heartbroken over his mother’s death, facing off a man heartbroken over his mother’s death.
Here’s how the story’s really going to go: Jacob, looping through Jack’s life of cyclical violence. Let me tell you a story, Cas seems to be saying. Here’s a boy whose mother died for him. Here’s a boy whose mother died for him. Here’s a boy whose parent killed for him. Here’s a boy who’s not quite human and doesn’t know right from wrong.
Now guess which boy I’m talking about.
There are two answers and both of them are right. Another set of twin defects.
You’re gonna be braided, Dean thinks.
If you say yes-
Yes, Jacob breathes.
So here’s the thing about the winding numbers. Dean’s done this before. He knows how this is going to go down. He knows a scapegoat when he sees one. He knows there’s only one thing to do.
Dean pulls the trigger.
*
The shot goes wide.
*
There’s this fantasy Dean has of strolling back into Purgatory. Maybe he’s there to visit Benny. Maybe he’s there to find Emma. The details keep changing, except for this: he always comes face to face with Amy.
I’m not sorry, he says to her silent, accusing eyes. You killed four men. You preyed on the homeless and the vulnerable.
But I let your son go.
I let your son go, because that’s what I’d want for Sam if our roles were reversed. I let your son go, even though he tried to kill me. I let your son go, because you saved Sam once and I never paid you back.
All of these sentiments remain true, but Dean can never say it now.
Here’s the best case scenario: I shot your son to spare his soul.
Here’s how things really unfolded: There’s a fox in Dean’s arms.
*
There’s a mutilated fox in Dean’s arms and nine tails on the floor.
Michael’s still inside of you, Cas is saying. He’s talking rapidly, machine gun fast, barking orders to the grace swirling inside of Dean’s veins. Michael’s still inside of Dean, the fraction that Sam called back from the Empty, and now some part of Jacob is too. The part of him that ingested Michael and gained eight tails, and maybe a little more.
Dean’s skin is stretched tight around his bones and it’s reached its breaking point. There’s something sticking out of him. A broken bond, the ghost of Michael seems to say. Our bond. It doesn’t matter. There’s something sticking out of Dean like a piece of broken white bone. Can’t blame his skin, he thinks distantly, it can’t fit around his body anymore, now that it’s holding together a fox, the rotting corpse of an archangel, and whatever’s left of Dean.
Fever sweeps through him, ravages his mind and lays him bare.
Please, he thinks he begs. Please, Cas. Get them out of me. Get me out of me.
Cas surveys him clinically. Watches Dean’s body fall apart on the bed.
*
Summerland is so fucking isolated that you can scream for hours and no one will hear you.
Dean learns this the hard way.
*
The screaming doesn’t stop. Dean’s back in Rocky’s and there’s someone wailing inside the freezer.
Guess this is it, Michael says.
This is what?
The last step needed to complete the adiabatic cycle.
Morals, Michael believes, are somewhat like a superconducting phase. Arbitrarily assigned, but terribly tedious when it comes to maintaining continuity. Largely irrelevant when it comes to evaluating the expectation value of things, but functions decently enough as an internal clock of sorts.
Did you ever read that paper, Dean-o? Michael asks casually. That paper on braiding in 1D wire networks.
Thought you said the human mind was a two dimensional gas, Dean says.
Most of the time, Michael concedes. But desperation is a dimension collapsing trick.
Because here’s the whole story behind the science, Dean-o. You have two Majorana fermions dangling at the ends of the horizontal wire, and you gotta swap them. And the only way to do that is to tug the chain of Majorana fermions downwards and rightwards. Turn some bonds on, switch some of them off. Pull them into an extra vertical wire - that’s you, by the way - thread them in a T-shape and tug left until you have the whole chain backwards.
And then you gotta manually adjust the phase. Because your chain? It’s facing the other way now. Morals - pesky little things just did a complete one-eighty. I call this the hairpin turn.
Not much of a turn if you’re still stuck in my head, Dean says. Isn’t that where you started?
I’ll get out soon enough.
When?
When your pet angel comes and gets the door. He’s busy fusing together a new soul right now. A little of me, a little of Jake. A few slivers of you. Not very ethical, is it?
Michael smiles, slow.
You’re young, Dean. You haven’t seen much. But swapping. That’s just what my old man does. Turns the heroes into villains. Villains into victims. Victims into heroes again. Something like that. Or maybe it’s just heroes and villains. You learn to play every role in the end.
Or maybe that’s just what happens to you angels, Dean says. Having three heads must really fuck with your psyche.
Maybe, Michael agrees. Except your brother’s taken like a duck to water in his new role, no? Regent of Hell, King of the Crossroads. Has a nice ring to it. A hundred and eighty degree shift in perspective, I’d say.
I’m not gonna let you out, Dean says. No matter what you say.
Not even when I’m Jack? Not even when I’m you?
You’re not Jack. You’re not me.
Everyone’s the same in the end, Dean.
I’m not gonna open the door, Dean says at last. I’m never gonna open the door.
*
Dean’s in Rocky’s again and he’s flung himself against the door, a one-man barricade. There’s something sinister on the other side, a new-old monster that weeps and claws at the steel and begs to be born.
All right, Sam says at Dean’s shoulder. That’s enough of that.
He snaps his fingers.
Deal’s off.
*
Dean comes awake in sweat soaked sheets. There’s a white fox curled on his chest, nosing his collarbone as he gasps for breath, and when he sees the bloody stump where its tails used to be, he leans over the bed and vomits.
There’s nothing in his stomach but he retches until he’s throwing up clear water.
Take it easy, Sam says, and then his brother is climbing into the bed, pulling Dean into his arms. Dean lets his head fall back against Sam’s shoulder, feels himself go slack. He blinks. The room swims into view, and then dissolves again.
Hey, Sam says, gently rubbing the inside of Dean’s wrists. Come back to me.
It takes him a while to float back. Sam’s propped him up against his chest, one arm wrapped securely around Dean’s waist.
What’s left of Jacob Pond is curled docilely on his lap.
Oh God, he says, and all that’s left of his voice is a hoarse rasp. Oh God, what are we going to do with the fox?
Sam is silent.
Is his soul gone? Dean asks, throat burning from the exertion. He tastes blood in his mouth. Is this what’s left of the kid?
He still has a shell of his soul, Cas says finally.
Cas is standing next to the window. It’s early morning and the sky’s lightened into a fish-belly white. The same sickly color of Jacob’s fur.
Dean looks away.
Were you trying to replace Jack’s soul? Dean asks.
The reply is curt, instantaneous: Yes.
Is that even possible?
I didn’t take Jacob’s soul, Cas says. Jack still has a shell of his former soul left. A casing. I needed a temporary filling, and I borrowed something from Jacob. A kind of alchemical enlightenment. The history of love, hate, fear, anger. The things that molded him into what he was.
His memories, Dean says, feeling sick. You robbed him of his memories and his humanity. It would have been kinder to kill the boy outright.
He would have done the same to you if he thought it would bring his mother back, Cas says sharply. But now he’ll never be able to harm you again. Not for another hundred years. And he’s still himself. That’s his original form, you know. I just removed - think of it as a kind of Berry phase. A deeply geometrical record of the boy’s history.
Cas is looking at Dean with a bleak, hopeless resignation.
I had to, Dean, he says softly. I’m all that Jack has left, and if I don’t do everything I can to save him-
He doesn’t finish his sentence before exiting the room. The door swings shut behind him without closing completely, and the cold morning air floods the room.
It feels like an icy dagger to the heart.
What about Mom and Dad, Dean asks.
We’ll figure out another way, Sam says. I promise, Dean.
I don’t want this to happen again, Dean says, shivering. God, what we did this time-
They keep doing things wrong. Maybe Michael’s right, and they’ve done a one-eighty rotation in everything they’ve ever stood for. Maybe they’re the three blind men with their hands on the different parts of an elephant, and the elephant stands for the morals they’ve lost sight of a long time ago.
What’s wrong with us, Sam?
Nothing, Sam says. Nothing.
*
There’s a fox living in the bunker.
Most of the time, Dean pretends it doesn’t exist.
Recipient: interstitial
Rating: R
Word Count: 3623
Warnings: Possession, gaslighting, nonconsensual body modification.
Summary: Sam makes and breaks a deal, Cas stars in the Amy Pond Redux, and Dean considers the hairpin turn.
Dean is in Rocky’s again.
Body flush against the freezer door, bleeding heat into stainless steel. Arms flung out wide, palms sticky with sweat, fingers splayed across cold metal, cheek bruising as Michael howls and his fury slams through Dean like a jolt of lightning. Michael’s moving through him in slow, undulating waves, looping through him from head to toe, muting and blurring senses as he goes. His peripheral vision is fucked, fraying at the edge, crackling and fizzling out like he’s living in a simulation.
He blinks hard and sees his eyes stare back from an expanse of endless gray, vacant and glassy.
There’s no one home, Michael whispers.
Dean’s a negligible presence in his own body, rattling around in a house that’s too big, too empty, too unreal. He’s swept off to the side, shoved into a corner. Tossed into the attic, the basement, the storage. The freezer. There’s no telling which side of the door he’s on, not when the only things he sees are the hard lines of steel. Sound comes in pieces, disjointed country music fading in and out of the airwaves, Michael intercut with Dean, Dean overlaid by Michael. And then there’s the bone deep coldness that digs its claws into him like the harpy that’s Michael’s third head.
Dean’s the one being fridged.
Or Dean’s outside, and he’s really Michael, losing his mind. Or he used to be Dean, but now he’s Michael, because identity is really a matter of geography and Dean is the man who walks free. Not that it matters. In the grand scheme of things, they’re identical. Topological defects, Michael says wryly. The world’s awfulness is a degenerate ground state and it doesn’t matter which defect takes the wheel.
Dean doesn’t get to take the wheel. Dean doesn’t get to walk free. He’s locked inside the cooler, locked inside the Ma’lak box, locked inside the coffin he made with his own hands and now he’s being dropped into the ocean. There’s a dull roar in his ears, white noise, the sound of twenty thousand leagues and more rushing past as gravity takes its toll.
He blacks out. He comes to.
He’s on the brink.
Dean, a voice booms, and all sound cuts out.
There’s another face in the reflection. Sam.
Dean is looking in the mirror and his brother is looking back. Another set of twin defects, but Dean will be damned if he lets Sam take his place. You can’t, he says weakly, clinging to the door, twisting out of Sam’s reach every time his brother comes near him. You can’t come in, Sammy. My mind, my rules.
An arm settles around his shoulders. His brother’s solid weight.
It’s all right, Dean, Sam says, and Dean’s terrified that the ground’s going to open and swallow his brother whole.
That’s what happened last time, Dean says. His face is wet and he can’t keep his breaths from coming out in shuddering gasps.
Hey, hey, Sam says, soothingly. We talked about this, remember? I’m here to talk business.
Business?
Michael thinks that Dean’s head is an empty bar flirting with bankruptcy and he’s not off the mark. Dean’s head is a dying strip mall, a fucking ghost town. Analogous to a two dimensional gas, Michael offers. No place for a three dimensional Sam.
Not unless he’s here to do a little braiding.
What braiding, Dean says.
Sam just gives him a funny look.
What business, Sam, Dean says. What the fuck are you braiding-
*
Dean jolts awake, head pounding and stomach roiling, and he knows what braiding means.
You’re awake, Cas says. What about-
What about Michael?
Yeah.
Sam’s working on a deal.
Cas doesn’t like the sound of that. But Dean doesn’t like the sound of Heaven holding his dead parents hostage and that’s still happening, so tough shit.
I know you don’t like it, he says, but I don’t care. You’re making me take back the kid that killed my mom.
As far as Dean’s concerned, Cas is so deep in the red that he doesn’t get a say in Dean’s life anymore.
But Cas hasn’t gotten the memo. He can’t stop talking, and Dean can’t take it. He’s burning up with Michael’s grace, senses strung out and nerves scraped raw, and the inside of Cas’s truck is so cramped that every sound leaps out at him. Cas’s careful inhales and exhales so that he seems human. Dean’s own ragged breaths when he remembers to breathe. There’s barely enough room for the two of them, let alone Sam in the backseat, and now the influx of excuses and recriminations and apologies, so many empty words jostling against each other, vying for space, demanding acknowledgement -
He rolls down his window.
Cas’s voice peters out and the exhaust fumes flood in. It feels like the start of a second possession, an erasure of self. The truck is thermalizing into equilibrium with the westbound 210 and all Dean can think about is the solid wall of eighteen wheelers in the two right lanes, a procession of steel beasts groaning and straining and screeching down the highway, tires slapping roughly against the asphalt.
They take his mind off of Michael.
White hot sunlight pours into the cabin, glancing off the plastic trim and stabbing straight into Dean’s eyes. A vicelike band tightens around his temples and a swirl of nausea twists through his stomach. He swallows, and regrets his choice.
Stop thinking about Michael, Cas begs. You don’t have to do this.
Don’t have to be his bitch? But then who’d take care of John and Mary?
Cas, after all, is persona non grata in Heaven.
Jack, Cas says. If we can get his soul back- if we can fix him-
One of the eighteen-wheelers honks, and there’s a loud outburst of cursing.
The window rolls back up.
I need the fresh air, Dean says.
Cas pulls off onto Colorado and into the nearest gas station. Leaves the passenger door open and disappears inside, then comes back with a bottle of Gatorade.
Drink, he orders.
Dean takes a swig. It leaves a metallic taste in his mouth and sits like a gelatinous lump in his stomach, sloshing around every time he shifts in his seat. There’s a watery feeling in the back of his throat, the sense of bile swelling inside of him.
We’re in Pasadena, Cas announces, apropos of nothing. I used to come here all the time.
Mostly for the talks. Particularly the physics ones, even though he knew that the physicists were at best blind men groping at an elephant that only he could see. Non-Abelian braiding statistics, Cas confesses. The paper where they exchange two Majorana fermions at the ends of a wire and the ground state is only changed by a phase.
That’s his favorite talk.
What a coincidence, Dean says. That one’s Michael’s favorite too.
Do you know what it means? Cas asks. Braiding. Do you know what that means?
I’m going back in.
You’re going back in, Cas confirms. And Michael gets to take the wheel.
But he’s not going to burn the world. And he’s not going to let Jack burn the world. And he’s going to keep Mom and Dad safe in their shared heaven.
The status quo. That’s what they’re guaranteed, if Sammy does his job right.
You’re forgetting about the phase, Cas says. The Berry phase. The geometrical record of how you and Michael-
Of how Dean and Michael switch places? Sam asks.
He’s come out of Dean’s head, but Dean is still Dean.
Guess what, Sam says. There’s been a switch of plans. Cas, he wants you in there to negotiate the rest of the contract.
*
Here’s the thing about entering a two dimensional gas: you’re just as likely to get braided as you are to do the braiding.
*
They end up in Summerland. Thirty miles from Ojai, where Rowena promises Jack is hiding.
I had a nice hotel booked in Ojai, Sam says, looking disgusted when he sees the inn in Summerland. Cas, you need to raise your standards.
Cas has them living in a desiccated corpse of what used to be a bed and breakfast. The door sticks, the lamps don’t work, the mini fridge is a biohazard, and the mattress sinks in the middle. There’s an unidentifiable smell wafting up from the carpet and Dean’s pretty sure that he sees blood smeared on the wallpaper.
So it looks like a murder scene, Cas says, unfazed. That’s good.
Plausible deniability in case things get out of hand.
They’re less than five miles away from their new target.
It’s one of Michael’s monsters, Cas says vaguely when pressed. Michael’s sending for him right now.
Dean can feel Michael’s grace working overtime, a dull throbbing that begins at the base of his skull and works its way to the top of his head. The bed sheets are rank and the pillow covers are stained, but he’s too far gone to care. He strips to his boxers and climbs in between the sheets. Leans his head back against the pillow, presses down hard and wills the pressure to stop the pain.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, floating on the edge of sleep, just aware enough of the comings and goings in the room. The rattling AC comes groaning to life, only to sputter out after a few gasps. When he opens his eyes again, there’s a fan whirring over his head, sending shadows spinning across the popcorn ceiling.
Hey, Sam says. Cas is out. I need to talk to you.
About Cas?
Yeah. I don’t know what he agreed to. I think he’s doing his own thing.
So what’s new, Dean says. Do we need to stop him?
That, of course, is as feasible as trapping a hurricane with a butterfly net, but that’s Cas for you. Hurricane Castiel, sweeping through, upending Heaven and Earth and everything that lies in his path.
Dean used to like that about him.
This, he tries to remember.
We can’t do anything, Sam says blackly. The deal with Michael is binding. Made sure of that myself with a crossroads contract.
And if we break it?
Back to square one.
Okay, Dean says, trying to sit up.
He can’t find the energy to move. His limbs are leaden and a wave of dizziness crashes over him when he tries to push himself up. Michael’s using up all of his batteries and then some to do Cas’s bidding, and Dean can only lie here, spent.
Sam heaves him up. Arm wrapped around his torso, palm flat on his back.
You can’t be lying down, Sam says. Gotta stay awake.
He presses a gun into Dean’s hands. Folds down Dean’s limp fingers, wraps them around the handle.
I melted down an angel blade into bullets, Sam says. I don’t know what’s coming, but I can’t be here.
Why not?
Terms of the deal, Sam says. Or else Mom and Dad get scattered to the wind.
Dean wants to let go of the gun, but he can’t.
Sam, he says.
Just shoot. Sam can’t look at him. Whatever’s coming for you, just shoot. If you have to.
And watch your back.
*
Here’s the thing about a life spent running in circles - there has to be a winding number. Dean doesn’t know how many times he’s been around the block, but he figures it’s got to be in the double digits.
Jacob Pond says that he’s done this nine times. Nine tails, he says, fanning them out proudly for all and sundry to see. Height of enlightenment for a kitsune.
The kid’s fifteen and he’s here to avenge his mother.
Dean puts him down as a rookie.
Go home, kid, he says. You won’t like what’s in store.
What’s not to like, Jacob says. Michael helped me out once, and I’m here to repay the favor.
Here’s what it looks like on the surface: Dean’s story coming full circle. A boy heartbroken over his mother’s death, facing off a man heartbroken over his mother’s death.
Here’s how the story’s really going to go: Jacob, looping through Jack’s life of cyclical violence. Let me tell you a story, Cas seems to be saying. Here’s a boy whose mother died for him. Here’s a boy whose mother died for him. Here’s a boy whose parent killed for him. Here’s a boy who’s not quite human and doesn’t know right from wrong.
Now guess which boy I’m talking about.
There are two answers and both of them are right. Another set of twin defects.
You’re gonna be braided, Dean thinks.
If you say yes-
Yes, Jacob breathes.
So here’s the thing about the winding numbers. Dean’s done this before. He knows how this is going to go down. He knows a scapegoat when he sees one. He knows there’s only one thing to do.
Dean pulls the trigger.
*
The shot goes wide.
*
There’s this fantasy Dean has of strolling back into Purgatory. Maybe he’s there to visit Benny. Maybe he’s there to find Emma. The details keep changing, except for this: he always comes face to face with Amy.
I’m not sorry, he says to her silent, accusing eyes. You killed four men. You preyed on the homeless and the vulnerable.
But I let your son go.
I let your son go, because that’s what I’d want for Sam if our roles were reversed. I let your son go, even though he tried to kill me. I let your son go, because you saved Sam once and I never paid you back.
All of these sentiments remain true, but Dean can never say it now.
Here’s the best case scenario: I shot your son to spare his soul.
Here’s how things really unfolded: There’s a fox in Dean’s arms.
*
There’s a mutilated fox in Dean’s arms and nine tails on the floor.
Michael’s still inside of you, Cas is saying. He’s talking rapidly, machine gun fast, barking orders to the grace swirling inside of Dean’s veins. Michael’s still inside of Dean, the fraction that Sam called back from the Empty, and now some part of Jacob is too. The part of him that ingested Michael and gained eight tails, and maybe a little more.
Dean’s skin is stretched tight around his bones and it’s reached its breaking point. There’s something sticking out of him. A broken bond, the ghost of Michael seems to say. Our bond. It doesn’t matter. There’s something sticking out of Dean like a piece of broken white bone. Can’t blame his skin, he thinks distantly, it can’t fit around his body anymore, now that it’s holding together a fox, the rotting corpse of an archangel, and whatever’s left of Dean.
Fever sweeps through him, ravages his mind and lays him bare.
Please, he thinks he begs. Please, Cas. Get them out of me. Get me out of me.
Cas surveys him clinically. Watches Dean’s body fall apart on the bed.
*
Summerland is so fucking isolated that you can scream for hours and no one will hear you.
Dean learns this the hard way.
*
The screaming doesn’t stop. Dean’s back in Rocky’s and there’s someone wailing inside the freezer.
Guess this is it, Michael says.
This is what?
The last step needed to complete the adiabatic cycle.
Morals, Michael believes, are somewhat like a superconducting phase. Arbitrarily assigned, but terribly tedious when it comes to maintaining continuity. Largely irrelevant when it comes to evaluating the expectation value of things, but functions decently enough as an internal clock of sorts.
Did you ever read that paper, Dean-o? Michael asks casually. That paper on braiding in 1D wire networks.
Thought you said the human mind was a two dimensional gas, Dean says.
Most of the time, Michael concedes. But desperation is a dimension collapsing trick.
Because here’s the whole story behind the science, Dean-o. You have two Majorana fermions dangling at the ends of the horizontal wire, and you gotta swap them. And the only way to do that is to tug the chain of Majorana fermions downwards and rightwards. Turn some bonds on, switch some of them off. Pull them into an extra vertical wire - that’s you, by the way - thread them in a T-shape and tug left until you have the whole chain backwards.
And then you gotta manually adjust the phase. Because your chain? It’s facing the other way now. Morals - pesky little things just did a complete one-eighty. I call this the hairpin turn.
Not much of a turn if you’re still stuck in my head, Dean says. Isn’t that where you started?
I’ll get out soon enough.
When?
When your pet angel comes and gets the door. He’s busy fusing together a new soul right now. A little of me, a little of Jake. A few slivers of you. Not very ethical, is it?
Michael smiles, slow.
You’re young, Dean. You haven’t seen much. But swapping. That’s just what my old man does. Turns the heroes into villains. Villains into victims. Victims into heroes again. Something like that. Or maybe it’s just heroes and villains. You learn to play every role in the end.
Or maybe that’s just what happens to you angels, Dean says. Having three heads must really fuck with your psyche.
Maybe, Michael agrees. Except your brother’s taken like a duck to water in his new role, no? Regent of Hell, King of the Crossroads. Has a nice ring to it. A hundred and eighty degree shift in perspective, I’d say.
I’m not gonna let you out, Dean says. No matter what you say.
Not even when I’m Jack? Not even when I’m you?
You’re not Jack. You’re not me.
Everyone’s the same in the end, Dean.
I’m not gonna open the door, Dean says at last. I’m never gonna open the door.
*
Dean’s in Rocky’s again and he’s flung himself against the door, a one-man barricade. There’s something sinister on the other side, a new-old monster that weeps and claws at the steel and begs to be born.
All right, Sam says at Dean’s shoulder. That’s enough of that.
He snaps his fingers.
Deal’s off.
*
Dean comes awake in sweat soaked sheets. There’s a white fox curled on his chest, nosing his collarbone as he gasps for breath, and when he sees the bloody stump where its tails used to be, he leans over the bed and vomits.
There’s nothing in his stomach but he retches until he’s throwing up clear water.
Take it easy, Sam says, and then his brother is climbing into the bed, pulling Dean into his arms. Dean lets his head fall back against Sam’s shoulder, feels himself go slack. He blinks. The room swims into view, and then dissolves again.
Hey, Sam says, gently rubbing the inside of Dean’s wrists. Come back to me.
It takes him a while to float back. Sam’s propped him up against his chest, one arm wrapped securely around Dean’s waist.
What’s left of Jacob Pond is curled docilely on his lap.
Oh God, he says, and all that’s left of his voice is a hoarse rasp. Oh God, what are we going to do with the fox?
Sam is silent.
Is his soul gone? Dean asks, throat burning from the exertion. He tastes blood in his mouth. Is this what’s left of the kid?
He still has a shell of his soul, Cas says finally.
Cas is standing next to the window. It’s early morning and the sky’s lightened into a fish-belly white. The same sickly color of Jacob’s fur.
Dean looks away.
Were you trying to replace Jack’s soul? Dean asks.
The reply is curt, instantaneous: Yes.
Is that even possible?
I didn’t take Jacob’s soul, Cas says. Jack still has a shell of his former soul left. A casing. I needed a temporary filling, and I borrowed something from Jacob. A kind of alchemical enlightenment. The history of love, hate, fear, anger. The things that molded him into what he was.
His memories, Dean says, feeling sick. You robbed him of his memories and his humanity. It would have been kinder to kill the boy outright.
He would have done the same to you if he thought it would bring his mother back, Cas says sharply. But now he’ll never be able to harm you again. Not for another hundred years. And he’s still himself. That’s his original form, you know. I just removed - think of it as a kind of Berry phase. A deeply geometrical record of the boy’s history.
Cas is looking at Dean with a bleak, hopeless resignation.
I had to, Dean, he says softly. I’m all that Jack has left, and if I don’t do everything I can to save him-
He doesn’t finish his sentence before exiting the room. The door swings shut behind him without closing completely, and the cold morning air floods the room.
It feels like an icy dagger to the heart.
What about Mom and Dad, Dean asks.
We’ll figure out another way, Sam says. I promise, Dean.
I don’t want this to happen again, Dean says, shivering. God, what we did this time-
They keep doing things wrong. Maybe Michael’s right, and they’ve done a one-eighty rotation in everything they’ve ever stood for. Maybe they’re the three blind men with their hands on the different parts of an elephant, and the elephant stands for the morals they’ve lost sight of a long time ago.
What’s wrong with us, Sam?
Nothing, Sam says. Nothing.
*
There’s a fox living in the bunker.
Most of the time, Dean pretends it doesn’t exist.