Episode 24: Redemption (Part II Continued)

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The greatest drawback to vessels, Gabriel once said, is that they burn.

And this is what happens - Castiel burns.

All around them is an ocean, and it could be any wild ocean, unplumbed and filled with uncharted mysteries, until it hits substance worth burning - and humans were made for burning.

When this body was born, it was born as James Luka Novak, and later Jimmy Novak invited Castiel's grace into the claustrophobic mortal coil, this thin-skinned, fragile-boned matchbox structure that was marked as Castiel's from the second its embryonic heart first beat. The vessel was both a trap and an opportunity, and Castiel is unsure if there are words in the human language to describe the sensation of wearing Jimmy's body in those first days of walking among men, how intimate it was and yet terrifying as free fall. And so, he feels a sense of grief as fire licks at the edges of his t-shirt and sets the cotton ablaze. The clothing is his shroud now, his mourning veil, in the seconds before it begins to blacken and char. His naked skin lays exposed long enough to begin burning with it, tissues and muscle shriveling away from bone.

Castiel feels the glorious agony of it as though the marrow in his bones has turned to acid, and all the while he is aware of the horizon twisting and turning, of flames buffeting them on every side, blocking out the world around them in a revolving funnel of fire that spins the car round and round, until, abruptly, she lands with a crunch.

Her door swings open and Castiel tumbles out and into a new wasteland of glowing volcanic rock, its mantle oozing thick, molten lava and scored with fissure vents that belch magmatic gases and steam. Ash and the stink of sulfur waft on the wind, and the air is like a dragon's breath, dense with cinders.

For an instant, Castiel marvels at Hell's shifts and fits of structure and reality, at its sheer schizophrenia, at how easily it turns, like a snapping animal; fawning one instant and then striking and puncturing teeth through skin the next. Then comes the boom, resounding in the distance as it did in that other fold of Hell ahead of the lake, and the car shudders and rattles beside him. He turns his head to see a burned husk resting on her rims, her finish immolated to bubbling, ashy-gray base metal. But still the wisps of silvery-blue light that are her grace wander lazily from her wounds and even if she is battered now and ugly, her steel is strong through the center and unbreakable.

Castiel hears Vassago moaning and cursing inside the car, and then his brother erupts from the other side, a shifting shape of bright colors. Only then does Castiel know that he too has been released, and he has been so long growing comfortable in his slow human body, making a home in it, that when all that is left is his grace there is an instant when he is disoriented. But then comes the marvelous sense of liberty, like a banner unfurling on a wind, along to the sound of Gabriel's horn, glowing white hot as a star in the archangel's hand.

Castiel unfurls his wings to the instrument's clarion call, and they beat with a power and fury he hasn't experienced since after Stull, when he was restored so much stronger. He had forgotten their familiar weight and pressure, weakened as they were by Purgatory and his slowly waning strength, but there is no flesh now to pin them down and he feels the widening expanse of himself brushing against Gabriel, brothers matched wingtip to wingtip as Gabriel fills his head.

You remember now, little brother?

I remember. I remember everything…

Memories jostle for Castiel's attention, images of himself swooping down, his garrison behind him, his grace blazing like mercury and his sword cutting a swathe through Hell's foot soldiers as their dying screeches made sweet music and their smoke formed the scent of victory. He exults in his elemental form, and he feels a quickening inside him; the ruthless ferocity of the hunter-warrior he was and now is again for this struggle. But still the scar he is branded with blazes phosphorescent on his chest, a human touch that etches through to the very center of his heart and anchors him to Dean Winchester. And Dean Winchester is what he wants and longs for, his choice; and he draws his grace in, weaves its silken threads together, stitches his form back into the one he has come to appreciate because Dean loves it.

You're boring, Gabriel observes tartly as he shimmers opposite Castiel, but then he rolls and flexes his shoulders, folds his own grace back inside his vessel. "But you're right," he continues. "Bright ones are public enemy number one here. Silent running it is, or we'll have dragons and leviathans on our six." He glances skeptically at the battered car beside him. "It isn't traveling in style, but at least the sigils should help cloak us."

"I'm not leaving her anyway," Castiel retorts as he slides by his brother. "Dean would be pissed at me."

Gabriel scrambles up and over the hood and settles in beside him, releasing one wing again to shove Castiel over in his seat by several inches. Castiel spits out feathers, shoves back, and hears his brother make an amused snort.

In the next second, Castiel has his fingers around Gabriel's throat. "I strongly recommend that you move over," he growls.

Gabriel smirks. "Watch it, kiddo, or I'll break out the duct tape again. Mister Trickster doesn't like pretty boy angels."

Castiel's flare of irritation sparks a brief, heated slap fight until a shot fires from the back seat, an explosion of noise above the distant bass of the boom-boom. Castiel freezes, his fist extended, and the moment tapers from irritation to embarrassment before Gabriel subsides back into the passenger seat. Castiel slants his eyes up to the rearview mirror and watches Vassago holster his gun, his features cast in an expression similar to the one Sam often wears: polite distaste, amusement, derision. A bitchface, as Dean would say.

"We're on the clock, boys," the demon rumbles easily.

Castiel clears his throat, nods towards the horizon. "I assume that's where we're headed?"

At Vassago's nod-wink, he cranks the engine again, takes up the wheel, and eases the Impala forward into the red-hued night. The demon is right, they are on the clock, and as the car speeds up Castiel thinks about why he's here and feels a sharp pang of want and need, laced with a low-level anger. He comforts himself with the thought that he will tell Dean all about it when he sees him, tell Dean how furious he is that Dean tricked him and left him, showed him love only to take it away. He will demonstrate just how furious he is by pinning Dean to the ground and spending several hours in deliciously compromising positions, until Dean gets the message loud and clear.

"We're on the other side of the lake," Gabriel breaks into Castiel's thoughts, and he's his usual good-natured self, the tension forgotten. "We'll stop at the gift shop on the way out so you can ask geek questions about the quantum physics of Hell and pick out a postcard. And you hit like a limp fish, by the way."



A column of flame occupies the distance, and it belches great swaths of fire with each thud that shakes them. Castiel feels an itching trepidation as they draw closer; a fear that weaves through the steady beat of noise, dances in the inferno that shimmies across the empty plain ahead, and ebbs and flows with the hulking shapes that flutter in the darkness just outside their field of vision. But he grits his teeth and plows them on, ignoring the grind of metal on rock, the bounce and shriek as the car crushes something dead-alive under her rims, and the brimstone stink in the air.

The dashboard dial needles are spinning frantically in their housing, so there is no way to know how fast they're going, and grace forms a pearlescent film over the interior, casting them in half-light. Bluish filaments are bleeding up out of the steering wheel, into Castiel's hands and up his forearms, and he imagines that the Impala is a living creature taking on the sentience of Hell, that she breathes out her exertion with each stutter of her engine and plunge of piston.

He urges the car onward, onward, despite his ever-growing fear as he realizes that the column of flame they're heading for isn't mindless combustion at all. It is aware, and Castiel can make out the twisting muscle of an arm outlined in fire, the shape of a huge, horned head. Burned-out, empty sockets that serve as eyes flicker over them and then beyond, and with each step the boom resonates as its heel connects with ground. What is it…? Castiel fears the answer, but he presses the gas pedal down harder.

A lacework pattern of barbed wire formed from warped bones holds the boundary of the monster's territory and the rest of Hell beneath the Lake of Fire, and as Castiel guides the Impala alongside the barrier it grows dense with the flotsam and jetsam remnants of damned souls. They twist and writhe on the razor-sharp barbs, a moaning, groaning wall of suffering, their faces gray and splotched with blood, and their eyes shining flat-black with hungry curiosity even as tears leak from the corners.

Between them, at irregular intervals, there are things that glow and waft in Hell's zephyr winds, and Gabriel sucks in a rueful breath, murmurs, "I will never get used to that."

Castiel reaches for the handle to roll down the window out of habit, before he realizes there is no glass left - it has been shattered and melted away by fire. He leans out and winces at the sight; the torn chunks of meat that will never rot here, gleaming cartilage poking out from the stumps of wings, feathers clinging in puffs and bloody hanks. The wings of his brothers, some of the remains millennia old, dating from the War of Angels and Lucifer's banishment, and some of them more recent, battalions he fought with, lost in the crusade to free the Righteous Man.

Fetid air drifts from the fence, and burns a stripe of slime down Castiel's throat. He swallows it down, grates out, "I don't see a way through."

Beyond, rising up high above the boneyard of suffering and pain, Castiel can make out the fire monster and its changing face. It sways, breaks down and reforms in the fire, and it seems to wink at Castiel from the distance, before it cranes its neck and peers at the ground so far below it. Castiel tracks its gaze, gasps then, because there is a tiny shadow at the monolith's feet, a shadow that somehow withstands the fire, that darts and runs and waves its hands in supplication or defense, Castiel can't be sure - but the knowledge of who it is streaks through every nerve ending.

"Dean," he chokes through his teeth, and he feels the comforting squeeze of a hand on his shoulder. He spares a glance at his brother, and Gabriel is staring ahead with his jaw clenched and his teeth bared in a wolfish grin, because this is the business of angels and he enjoys his work.

"Soon," Gabriel murmurs, and he lifts his arm, the horn glowing in his hand. He blows through it again, and the shockwave of its sound ripples through the atmosphere. The things impaled on the fence cry out, the tattered souls that retain a semblance of purity shrieking for salvation while others, gone demon with the many years, screech out in agony. And all along the length of the barrier Castiel can see the faint glimmer of latent grace, as though the disarticulated limbs of his brothers are remembering what they once were before they wink out like dying stars.

"Head for the gate," Gabriel says, pointing towards what looks like an immense portcullis in the near distance, and he cocks his head as Castiel brakes the car to a halt in front of the structure. He clasps the horn and his stare is empty, as though he listens on the inside of himself for an answering call. Then the radio dial turns on with a crackle of airwaves, stray frequencies and broken-off voices. Castiel thinks he recognizes some of them before they fade away and another voice replaces them, its enunciation crisp and clear.

"I didn't think you were coming to the party."

Castiel snaps his head around to stare at the radio, and he knows he gasps out the name. "Balthazar? Is that you?"

His question is ignored in favor of, "Gabriel, don't you think that horn is a little outdated in this day and age? We're getting a cell phone tower down here next month."

Gabriel leans forward with his elbows balanced on his knees, intent. "How about opening the gate for us, brother?"

An irritated tsk crackles out of the speaker. "Why should I? I just remodeled. You'll track all kinds of mess in behind you."

Gabriel directs a look of fond exasperation at Castiel, tents his eyebrows. "Time to pucker up and kiss his ass," he mouths.

Annoyance spikes, and Castiel leans in close to his brother. "I don't have time to-"

"I think you better make the time," Gabriel clips back at him. "Since you're the reason he's stuck down here."

The reminder is blunt and painful, backtracks Castiel to Crowley's lair before he opened the portal, and to his paranoia and madness. We have a Judas in our midst, he had said, and it had been him.

"Balthazar," he begins softly, and he pauses to spend a moment composing himself, dips into memories of watching Dean before he interviewed witnesses and victims of attacks, the way he sized up the situation and assessed what mask he must pull on. Castiel hadn't quite understood how the hunter life can toughen and desensitize a human so much they must go to such extremes at pretense just to cull information from others, but he thinks he understands now; understands how the persistent anxiety of thinking about Dean and his welfare might render him intolerant to Balthazar's hurt.

Castiel takes a deep breath and reorients himself. He considers anew what he feels for his wayward brother, a fellow soldier who cared enough to compromise himself when Zachariah's accusations rained down on Castiel. He reminds himself of the moment that put them here on these opposing sides, the slice of his blade, the roar of white-hot light that has haunted him so often during long nights on the road when he lies awake while Dean sleeps beside him. Castiel has regrets, more now than ever before, and he must learn to invite them back in for Balthazar's sake, for Dean's sake, and perhaps for his own sake, to exorcise the ghost of his treachery as well as honor his brother's pain.

"I'm sorry, Balthazar."

The radio clicks on like an inter-dimensional intercom. "Not good enough," comes the stiff reply.

Castiel cracks. The constant booming in the nighttime darkness, the lurking shadow of the monster, the stitching of Dean's handprint that burns hotly over his chest, and his shame combine to shatter him and he slams his fist down on the dashboard, sending a lightning glow of grace rolling and rippling over the skeleton of the car. "Fuck you," he scathes out. "Fuck you, and fuck you again. I'm apologizing and there's nothing more I can do - I can't go back and fix it. And you're here because you're a traitor to the Host. If I hadn't killed you Raphael would have, and you still would have ended up here. So get over your pissy fit, assbutt, and open the gate. Or I'll mow it down."

There is an unconvinced silence after Castiel finishes, and Gabriel pokes him, a gleam in his eyes. "Ever the diplomat," he mocks, before he leans towards the radio. "Balthazar, we have Michael's sword," he reports triumphantly.

Castiel doesn't wait to see if the announcement makes a difference. He hisses a breath through his teeth and jerks the car from park to reverse with a snap of his hand. The Impala skids backwards before he slams on the brakes, and he grips the steering wheel tightly, clenching his jaw. As he fixes his eyes on the closed entranceway ahead, blue-white light floods out of the car's skin and illuminates the moving blockade of souls. He revs the engine, and the car growls obligingly.

Static crackles in on the line followed by Balthazar's voice. "Vigor is always appreciated, but I still don't forgive you. Come in. Though you might regret it later."

There is a sound like a giant wheel turning in a field of gravel before the gate lurches and separates, pulling wide to open a pathway within. Castiel takes a deep breath, drives through the gap at speed, braking sharply as a figure comes bounding from the darkness and stops dead ahead.

Balthazar, and he smacks his palms down on the hood of the car, arms spread wide. "Well you're here now, aren't you?" he declares brightly. "Waiting for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, perhaps? Come on, come on, we don't do carside-to-go in Hell, you know. You've been on earth for too long and you've been spoiled by that terrible American service industry."

Gabriel curses luridly as he pushes open the passenger door, but he takes a moment to look back at Castiel and offer a crooked grin. "Better get it over with."

There are embers all around them, and as he emerges from the car Castiel can see jumping trails of fire that mark her tracks through the gate. He pays them little heed, stands on guard and alert as he regards his brother, because in truth he thinks that it might be a trick and he deserves no less than to be stabbed in return.

Instead, Balthazar opens his arms in frank greeting. "Brother," he acknowledges, and there is a brief press of hands and a familiar warmth in his smile. He gestures in the direction of a massive building at the center of the compound. "Welcome. Mi casa es su casa. Or rather, Crowley's casa. He left it to me in his Will."

The building is an elaborate mish-mash of columns, ornate flying buttresses, ramparts, towers, and minarets, and a grimace crosses Castiel's face before he can help it.

Balthazar claps gleefully. "I know, I know - it looks like the bastard child of the Taj Mahal and Sleeping Beauty's castle. It's so me. And luckily Zachariah agreed and took the beach villa."

They are in the Lake of Fire, where traitor angels languish, and Castiel shouldn't be surprised to hear that his old nemesis is here. But still the news dries his throat, and his response is little more than a whisper. "Zachariah?"

"Oh don't fret, Castiel," Balthazar scoffs. "Zachariah has found his niche. He's far too busy lording it over the northern shore to worry about you. Revenge pales in comparison to a well-developed God complex. But you'd know all about that, from what I've heard on the demonic grapevine." He stops, seems to be giving Castiel a chance to defend himself, but Castiel has nothing to offer and no defense. He looks down at his boots as Balthazar gives a derisive-sounding huff and moves briskly onto Gabriel, his tone becoming urgent.

"You have the sword?"

Gabriel nods, jerks his thumb at Castiel. "The little angel that could is packing it in the trunk."

Balthazar's face falls strangely melancholy in the light of the rising column of fire in the near distance. "Then this is the end, beautiful friend," he breathes. "At last, this is the end." He pauses, runs his hand across his chin reflectively before he nods at Vassago. His handshake with the demon is wary, as though their history extends over less pleasant memories.

"Like old times, seeing all you chaps in one place," Balthazar muses, and then he turns to Castiel, puts a hand at the small of his back and leads him along. "You having the sword is such priceless symmetry, Castiel," he offers, "and I'll show you why."

Castiel allows himself to be guided as his brother continues.

"It's been positively Enochian lately. Everything was perfectly copacetic in the Lake of Fire until a certain hunter turned up on the radar. Came down hand-in-hand with quite a surprise." Balthazar is steering Castiel back to the gate as he speaks, towards an ancient-looking, derelict kiosk that resembles one of the many toll booths Castiel has driven through with the Winchesters. "Judging by Cthulhu's mood swings-"

"Cthulhu?" Castiel gasps it out, the final puzzle piece, and even if the name came up blank when Gabriel spoke it, now Castiel remembers the full horror of what he became, what he did, and what he must do here to set things right again. His thoughts turn panicked, his throat locks, his muscles tense; but underneath his fear, his grace simmers and thrums with a strange joy at the thought of reparation, even if it will doom him.

Balthazar is staring at Castiel when he comes back to himself, and his eyes are frigid-pale and knowing. "Your soul food binge didn't agree with you, did it?" he reproves coolly. "I seem to recall that you were warned about that."

Castiel can't stay locked on his brother's gaze, tracks his vision down to his boots. "I'm sorry," he whispers.

Balthazar clears his throat. "Anyway, I get the distinct impression Cthulhu is somewhat vexed," he detours, as he beckons Castiel to start moving again and strides ahead. "Things have been far too busy here for my taste. I much prefer the French Rivieria."

Balthazar reaches to the door of the booth and hesitates, muttering to himself. He makes a mark and then changes his mind, rubbing it out with his half-curled first before he begins again and makes a scribble of circles and meandering lines. He tugs open the door and a tangle of brooms and mops topples out, along with several rags that go flying off on the sulfurous wind and a box Balthazar flicks his hand out adroitly to catch. "ShamWows. Always useful. These hold twelve times their weight in liquid, you know."

Castiel is mystified and it must show on his face because his brother rolls his eyes. "Keep up, Cas. The chap that does the commercials was one of Crowley's lot." He tosses the box back inside, closes the door, adds, "I keep forgetting that sigil is only one mark away from the one for the broom closet."

He smears away the mark and scrawls a new one, finishing it off with a flourish and stretching his mouth wide in a genuine grin. When he opens the door this time, his triumph is well deserved, and Castiel's eyes widen as he stares inside the dilapidated structure. Flashes of light from the distant fire illuminate the rinds and arcs of burnished gold and silvered chrome, and Castiel's eyes widen as he takes it all in, thinks back to the stories his garrison would share, about the great War of the Angels and the fall of the Lightbringer. "Is that…?"

"The armor from the Fall," Balthazar confirms, and he claps Castiel on the back. "We weren't going to let a two-bit wide-boy like Crowley use it for scrap metal, oh no dear boy. We scoured every nook and cranny of this ghastly place to find it, and tucked it all away for a rainy day. And since you have the sword, it would seem that now is that day." He reaches in past Castiel and plucks what looks like a breastplate off of the jumbled pile. "Time to suit up," he invites, and thrusts the filigreed item at Vassago, who holds it up against himself.

"How do I look?" the demon asks cheerfully.

The metal is stained with a distracting red patina, and Castiel rubs his finger down it. "It's rusty," he says. "You should clean it off. In Star Trek, a red shirt marks you for death. Dean told me the redshirts never make it."

"You must be new," Balthazar interjects thinly. "Everyone here is marked for death."

As if in emphasis, another boom sounds, and Castiel looks off to the distance, where the reflected inferno is casting the sky as blood-red as the breastplate the demon is presently rubbing with his hand.

"He's always noisy," Balthazar explains, as though he's apologizing for a rude houseguest. "But lately it's been frenetic. Frenzied." He flaps a hand. "Back and forth they go. It's been centuries. Property values have plummeted."

Castiel attempts to retrace the thread of time back to the beginning, but the world and earth seem so far away now, with things like texting, and television, and pie, and property values. "Centuries?" he echoes.

"Tempus fugit since that jackass showed up," Balthazar confirms. "Everything's out of whack because he wasn't put down properly. But now we have the sword, the Righteous Man, and the False Prophet…"

He trails off, his eyes frosty again, and critical as they appraise Castiel, but Castiel holds his gaze this time. "If I am to be bound to the Beast to end this, so be it," he says. "I deserve nothing less for my crimes. Just - see Dean out of here safely. Please." He is utterly sincere, and he doesn't think he imagines that his brother's eyes soften in response.

"I'm sure you've earned the full weight of divine justice, Castiel," Balthazar starts, his tone level. "But there's bound to be a loophole. Perhaps it'll come to us in the field. You always were a pragmatist under battle conditions." He twists an arm up behind himself, arches his back as if in discomfort, and adds wryly, "I can still feel the evidence."

Castiel shifts uneasily, mutters, "I have no excuses."

The response is tart. "Then it's lucky I'm so tolerant."

This is the brother he loved and has mourned, and Castiel manages a smile. "I've missed you, Balthazar. I dreamed of you."

He gets a grimace. "Not a sex dream, I hope. The righteous boyfriend would be peeved."

Castiel shakes his head. "You were trying to help me, but you never really told me anything I didn't already know. I think it was my own guilt."

"I should think so, too," Balthazar retorts, but then his features fall serious. "This is our chance, Castiel," he says quietly. "Our chance to atone, our shot at redemption. If Gabriel and I help the Righteous Man finish what he began, perhaps our grace will be unbound from this place and we can ascend back to the Host. And perhaps Raphael may be more forgiving than-"

"Raphael is no more," Castiel blurts out, and the appalling memory of vaporizing the archangel makes him shiver. "I destroyed him after I absorbed the souls. I obliterated his grace from existence on any plane."

Balthazar simply stares back, his lips compressed thin and his expression locked into what looks like a sort of disgusted fascination, before his eyes glitter ferally. "Well, that certainly didn't filter through the grapevine," he murmurs, and then his mouth curves into a sly, predatory smile. "So some good came of your little coup d'état after all."

The guilt still nags at Castiel, plays over in his head right now. "He was our brother."

"He was a piece of work, just like Zachariah," Balthazar counters savagely. "Don't forget why you were fighting your war, Castiel. Raphael ended you once before and would happily have done so again. And I have no doubt that setting Lucifer and Michael free to visit their revenge on the Winchesters would have been next on his to-do list." He raises an eyebrow, adds, "And in any case, from what I've heard, you have infinitely worse crimes to be guilty for." He falls pointedly silent then, because they both know it's true.

The sky lighting up scarlet overhead is a welcome diversion that breaks the moment, and as Balthazar turns his attention back to strapping on his armor, Castiel follows the flash back to its source and recalls the inferno that erupted from the Beast in the vaults of R'lyeh. "So Cthulhu still burns," he murmurs.

Huffing, Balthazar replies, "He fizzled out like a damp squib just after he arrived. But without Crowley here doing his Rudy Giuliani impression, the ship got loose. There were a lot of demons wandering here and there across the countryside, renegade angels that made bad deals and met bad ends. Or, you know - some that just had shitty friends." He flicks his eyes in Castiel's direction at that, and smirks. "Anyway - keggers, rioting, looting. It was like south London in the eighties. Until Cthulhu gatecrashed the party and it turned out he was partial to snacking on our heathen compatriots." He blanches. "Wandering souls, demons with more muscle than brains, Uriel-"

"Uriel?" Castiel gapes, and Balthazar nods.

"Come to think of it, that's when Cthulhu's mood took a turn for the worst," he muses thoughtfully. "But then, Uriel was a grumpy bugger at the best of times. I can imagine he gave our beastly friend a nasty case of indigestion." He flaps a hand. "Anyway, Cthulhu burned off all those extra calories by ripping paths through into Purgatory and wrecking this place from top to bottom. He's torn through every circle, all the way down to the lowest deep."

The lowest deep, the barren, windswept plateau Castiel himself has flown across, and the news of his erstwhile colleague's fate recedes to the back of his mind in the second it takes him to register what Balthazar is implying. He feels a grim and icy chill that would be welcome in the scorching heat if it weren't for his fear for Dean, down here and vulnerable to Michael's persuasion; and for Sam, up in the world and as susceptible to manipulation in his grief as he was before if Lucifer reaches him. "The Cage," he says hoarsely. "Is it still secure?"

It's Gabriel who answers. "That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question." He blows out, and his tone goes somber. "We don't know for sure. We haven't sensed a disturbance in the force, but this place - it messes with you, catches you out."

Castiel knows, sensed the way the place twisted his perceptions, disoriented him and clouded his memories, and he shivers. But he makes himself think it through, apply logic, and consider it rationally. "It's still sealed," he decides, with as much resolve as he can muster, and he forces himself into a state of composure. "Michael is nothing if not diligent in his duties." He motions his head at the distant fury. "If our brother was loose, he would be battling the Beast like he's supposed to."

Balthazar quirks his mouth as he considers it. "You may be right. Michael always was a jobsworth. Anyway…to answer your earlier question, there's all this naked flame down here, as you know, and our friend's diet was richer than he's used to. And, and…" He seems to be fumbling for words, until Vassago chips in.

"One of his farts caught fire and he went up like a torch." The demon smiles a content smile. "It was really pretty, actually."

A singularly horrifying image flashes through Castiel's mind, and, "Sam passes toxic gases in the car," slips out of him before he can stop it. His brothers cast flat looks at him and he shrugs sheepishly. "I hope that never happens to him."

There is a second, maybe two, of thoughtful silence before Vassago throws his head back and brays out laughter, and one by one they join in, Gabriel bending over, his hands on his thighs as he guffaws, Balthazar's face creased up and his shoulders shaking with mirth.

Turning back to watch the landscape beyond the old toll booth, Castiel doesn't join in their merriment. Instead, he maps out the movements of the fiery monolith on the landscape. He assesses and measures, calculates distances and trajectories, counts the steady boom-boom-boom, finally searches for Dean in the rubble at the creature's feet.

He strains to see, and from time to time he spots a distant shadow scurrying across the ground and fading into darkness. He strains to hear, and picks out what he thinks are distant gunshots on the wind, or perhaps it's the sound of crunching bone between a monster's teeth, or the snapping of tendon and sinew as a beloved one is damaged beyond repair. Castiel hates to think of it, and he clenches his fists as the sounds of metal chiming against metal drift into his awareness. He does not care about armor or battle plans, wants nothing more than to run across the burning plains non-stop, until he has Dean in his sights and can grab him by the scruff, monster be damned, and take him back up to the light, like he did before.

Castiel reaches up under his t-shirt for Dean's handprint, and his fingers fall into the grooves like a sword into its sheath. His skin jumps with the nerve endings that tangle there and send a series of sensations tripping over each other: pleasure, surprise, jolting electricity. He closes his eyes and opens up to the feeling while his brothers' voices grow faint. He concentrates, sending all of himself into the search for Dean, and what reaches back to touch him is wordless, mute. What reaches back is a jittery, wide-eyed animal racing from stone to stone and shadow to shadow beneath a blast of heat that scorches and blisters him, and Castiel's heart begins to pound in his ears, blood racing through him as he tastes terror, senses the desperation in the frantic dash. Run! Dean, run! he thinks. I am here, but run! and-

-Dean reels out from between the feet of the monolith, but this is not a monolith at all because monoliths are not living, and this beast is aware and alive. As Dean cranes his head to look, the flames extend ever upwards into the sky; beneath his feet, bubbling lava broils his skin and sends smoky, stinking fumes wafting up into the air to choke him.

The Beast is a morass of moving things that make the whole, with faces caught and drowning in its skin, features melting and running into one another over and over, lipless, fanged mouths screaming. It has blazing tentacles of fire that streak lines through the sky where they whip out to find Dean and chase him down, and he is running again, always running and running, dodging and wheeling, zigging and zagging from stunted tree to scarred boulder, until there is no breath, only this choking stench of burning horror that follows him endlessly.

He is dimly aware that he can't run forever, but the truth of it is there are hardly any thoughts at all, only the struggle for survival. He is gutted, his heart and soul overwhelmed by primal fear, and he is empty of thought and strategy. He is pure instinct, like an automatic weapon designed to blindly fire shot after shot, and all that is left is run-run-run. But still, he raises up his head in the shadow of a massive rock, narrows eyes as black as old motor oil, and sniffs the air as though he can scent Castiel on the wind. His tongue flicks out, one reptilian lick of his lips, and he frowns-

-"Castiel?"

Castiel draws in a whooping gasp and stumbles the way a man might when he dreams he is falling through space, but Gabriel's hand is on his shoulder, keeping him steady. His brother's face is drawn and concerned and he taps his wingtip against Castiel's shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.

"Hey there, bucking bronco - you tuned out for a minute."

Castiel shakes it off, scrubs the palm he had pressed to his scar on his jeans, because he needs to wipe away that image of something that is Dean but isn't. A few minutes must have passed while he was caught in his trance, because his brothers are clad in tarnished metal, and Gabriel is holding a fauld, offering it to Castiel.

"Your fight, bro. Your armor."

Before Castiel can reply, Balthazar is there by his side, gripping his wrist and stretching out the length of his arm so Vassago can clap plates upon him. Gabriel crowds in too, nimble fingers connecting rerebraces to vambraces, and vambraces to the gauntlets that go over Castiel's hands. Castiel is a reluctant puppet, but when he tries to shake Balthazar off or refuse Gabriel's help, he gets a slap at the back of his head for his trouble.

And then it is time for the sword, and Gabriel holds it in his hands reverently for a long moment before he shakes his head. "You were one of his favorites, you know that?" he says, as he presses the hilt into Castiel's hand, and he smiles, a flash of white in the darkness. "Go get him, tiger. Make it right." He turns to Balthazar then. "And if you make it topside before I do, tell Kali I will find her."

Balthazar leers. "If I make it topside before you, I'll be keeping Kali so busy she won't even remember who you are."



Gabriel grins whitely, twists away and bends to hoist a shield up from the ground. Vassago smashes his sword to his own shield, and the clang rings like a bell, a spire of light bouncing from the metal. Abruptly, Castiel finds their motivation infectious and he thinks, yes, this is it, now is the time.

He turns toward the Impala with a new energy, and yanks open the door. It comes off in his hand, and he stares at it where it dangles in his grasp.

"Well, that's anticlimactic," Balthazar points out.

"You might want to get that to a mechanic," Gabriel offers helpfully.

"Do we even need it?" is Vassago's contribution, and he unfurls his wings pointedly.

Castiel tongues the inside of his mouth before he casts the door to the ground and imagines what Dean would say. Shut up, followed by a puerile insult pertaining to having sex with oneself. He tracks his eyes over the wreck, her metal glowing vivid, as if she is a pale silver ghost, and he can remember Dean's pride in her as they worked together to rebuild her. Two hundred seventy-five horses, he thinks randomly, and it brings with it a recollection of Eloni Nam'ulu telling them of a white horse, and a rider faithful and true.

"We may not need her, but I'm taking her," he snaps decisively. "She has brought me this far, and it may help Dean to see her when I reach him."

He folds himself laboriously into the driver's seat, his armor clinking and clanking with every small movement. He turns the key, gives the car gas until she purrs, and then skids around into the direction of the monster towering ahead. "Today is a good day to die," he says to his brothers. "I'll race you."

They blink into fractured light and are gone so fast all that remains is the settling of dust as they take flight.



His brothers are on the wing.

They are shapes and shadows in flight; they are warriors, and so is Castiel, and their armor is woven through with grace and the stars, smithed by prayer so old even God would be troubled to remember it.

Castiel floors the pedal again, forsaking his wings for the metal and the churn of the Impala's engine as they head for the mountain of fire that bisects the horizon ahead. His brothers are faster; Castiel can hear their sonic boom as they break the sound barrier, see the arc of a lightning flash as they spark into being again. Their shockwave rolls past him, the car stuttering with its vibration before she picks up speed again. This time there is no cruise control, no steady feeding of gas for even velocity; she is alive, shimmering with grace and greedy as she swallows up the miles. Fire erupts from her exhaust, the tail of it flickering crazily in the rearview and side mirrors, and there is something intoxicating about it, something exhilarating in the way the wind howls through the empty space where the car door should be. "Yes," Castiel hears himself growl out through gritted teeth, and at his bidding the Impala goes even faster, her motion so smooth now Castiel imagines for a moment that she has taken wing herself, and is hovering over a thin slice of air above the broken rocky terrain.

Up ahead, Gabriel, Balthazar and Vassago are a V-formation of bright silver specks before the rising hulk of the monster, and it stretches out fiery tentacles like welcoming arms to pull them into its embrace. It grows as Castiel races closer, jumping in size in fits and starts, like a skipping film reel, like stop-motion photography. It arches and flexes its many-knuckled spine with fluid agility, each knob of bone a miniature Vesuvius erupting sparks and ashes, and in its flesh Castiel can see the faces he saw in his vision of Dean, endlessly manifesting and dying in shapeless agony.

This close, the sound of the Beast's steps can't be drowned out or ignored, and Castiel knows that Dean is somewhere down there, at ground zero. He hits the brake and turns the wheel so that the Impala spirals in a widening pattern, describing circles that leave both fire and traces of white-hot grace in its wake. Falling out of the seat in an ungainly clank of metal as the car screams to a stop, Castiel swallows a mouthful of the yellow sulfur flakes that drift down from the sky like snowfall, and blinks up at the Goliath that lumbers above him, breathing fire at its attackers as they dive and roll.

Balthazar swoops down, his mouth a grim line but his eyes shining with a vicious pleasure, his blade strobing luminous as it smashes into the enraged monster's neck. Castiel sees Gabriel wheeling in around the Beast's other side to slash efficiently at it with his own sword, and a tentacle whips out, smashing into him and sending him tumbling, light rays slanting out where he takes the hit. But Gabriel is fast, lifting his weapon again as he banks, rocketing back into the fray and slicing the tentacle through. The Beast howls, tilting back its head and unhinging its jaw to bellow even louder, and Castiel doesn't want to think about what such a thing might eat that it has a need to unhinge its jaw.

The severed tentacle falls like a column of ash from the end of a cigarette, if the cigarette were the size of a Greyhound bus, and Castiel is thrown up from the surface as it touches down. Vassago lands beside it, runs forward to plunge his sword into it, and the action is as effective as sticking a pin into stone - the blade shatters, and metal shards go flying as though it were made of no more than glass. Catching Castiel's stare, Vassago shrugs and rolls his eyes, and in the next instant a tentacle snaps from above, like a fiery lasso, and snatches him up. His eyes grow round and he shouts, pounds his fist into the sizzling flesh that imprisons him, and then he is gone, up and up and up.

Castiel cannot stand to watch, and nor can he wait even if he thirsts to join the fray. He can feel the pull of Dean from somewhere hidden in these shadows and these rocks, can sense Dean's frantic, primal thoughts lost in the demon black, lost in the sulfur and brimstone. He forces himself to ignore the crunch of the Beast chewing on brittle bones above him, reaches to his chest again, and the breastplate grows hot, as if the shape of Dean's hand is being cauterized into the metal itself. Dean, he calls, and he sends the thought out with the force of an arrow, sharpened and cutting through the interference of the fight, the creature's snarls, his brothers' battle cries and the clang of their armor.

Like before, Castiel finds he is tuning into a jumble of thoughts, terrified perceptions and impressions of now, mixed with a shuffle of random images and memories from the past. Castiel tastes Dean's ragged breathing, feels how he tires, and aches, and craves comfort, rest and safety; how he longs for his lover, his brother, an old man he cares for as his own father, his home on wheels, a ramshackle house in South Dakota. And, over there, Castiel realizes, honing in on the cascade of troubled sensation, his eyes scoping the terrain until he locates what he seeks.

Dean is taking shelter behind a rock, crouching on hard-packed desert earth where nothing grows and never will. He is illuminated by the monster's fire, swathed in red and yellow where he squats, and his soul gives shape to all those things that Castiel has so missed and dreamed of, the shape and solidness of Dean. He is bare-chested, and Castiel's keen vision can make out mottled purple-black bruises underlying a patchwork of scratches and cuts, and the cruel scars he died with. Dean's soul bleeds out from every wound in a faint white light, the way Castiel's own grace seeped out of him when Rachel sliced into it with her blade, but he is studying Castiel with pitch-black, bottomless eyes that are void of emotion. Castiel reaches out again, finds traces of fright and suspicion, distrust, for this Dean isn't seeing a friend, lover or savior when he looks at Castiel; he is seeing a threat, an assailant, an assassin, danger.

Castiel tightens his grip on his sword as he steps closer, but the blade does not increase his sense of faltering security, because he knows he will not use it if he comes under attack. How have you survived this long? he marvels, for in his hurry to get here he didn't stop to consider what toll Dean's second damnation would take. But it has warped into centuries, according to his brothers; centuries of running without rest and without hope. Castiel thinks that perhaps he can give that hope back, and he drops the sword into the dust, exciting a puff of sulfur, and casts his shield away as though it were detritus, before approaching Dean without thought or strategy, holding his hands out palm-up.

"Dean…" he calls softly.

Dean cocks his head sharply and stares at Castiel, unblinking. His tongue flicks out, once, twice, tasting the air like a reptile would, and his shoulders tighten, the contraction of muscle extending down through his frame almost imperceptibly. It's fight or flight, Castiel knows the signs, has seen Dean tense up like this too many times to count, and he realizes he will have to bring Dean back by force.

He allows himself a second of regret and sadness before he explodes into motion, but perhaps Dean can remember the signs too because he is already shooting bolt upright and pivoting into a run, and run from Castiel he does. Fear and centuries of the chase have made him fast and clever, and he darts away, weaving agilely between rocks and trees.



Castiel cries out, "Dean," as he beats his wings and takes to the air, eyes scanning the terrain below him, catching fleeting glimpses of pale skin flashing in the darkness. He slaps his hand to the burning scar heating up his breastplate like nuclear fission, hollers at the top of his lungs, "Stop, Dean! I command you to stop!"

He doesn't think it will work, but Dean jerks back as though he is being pulled by an invisible chain. As Castiel eases himself down to the surface again and furls his wings, Dean's eyes oscillate from black to green, and then black again, because he is in there; buried deep but there.

"Dean," Castiel whispers to him. "Can you see that it's me, Dean? Your friend, Cas. Can you see that I'm here to grip you tight and raise you from Perdition?"

Dean's brow furrows with something that might be recognition, and a hand drifts up to touch its fingers to his lips. And then he slumps, his face crumpling and his mouth choking out a soundless syllable Castiel knows because he has seen Dean form its shape so many times.

Castiel breathes a sigh of relief, thinks, we can fix this, we can do it , and he stumbles forward to take hold of Dean as his friend's arms reach out in welcome, and-

-The crack of the limb that smashes down in between them is like thunder, for it seems the Beast has been waiting for a lapse in concentration and it strikes cobra-swift. Castiel doesn't have time to cry out a warning before the tentacle separates them, setting the land alight as it churns through the soil and snaps itself around Dean's waist, sizzling through the remains of his soul. Weak light shines from the rupture, a slither of fire that opens up Dean's hip and illuminates that delicious uptilt of bone that Castiel has worshiped night after night, tonguing along the point and making love to the flesh with his lips, and then the monster pulls back on the tentacle as if it is fishing line and Dean no more than chum dangling from a hook.

Castiel screams, "No," and thrusts himself forward into flight.



His velocity has him erupting from a tornado of dust and sulfur, but by the time he reaches the spot where Dean was standing, Dean is soaring up much as Vassago did. Castiel follows, and this is the moment where everything moves so fast his consciousness lags behind his instinct. His thoughts flatline while the rest of him calls on resources that have been gradually lost to him in the World as his power wanes, but are somehow restored to him in this moment of desperation; how to rearrange atoms and break apart molecules, to collapse time and truncate it, to call on the elements and fashion weapons from nothing but his grace. And suddenly he is weightless, and time and motion become fluid and transparent as he travels at hyperspeed to take back the one he loves.

He sees Gabriel on his right, a hash mark of burns cutting through his armor and sinking into his grace beneath, but he is still up and fighting, dancing gracefully from shadow to fire and driving in his sword when the monster turns to swat at Balthazar, who beckons and teases it with a come-hither flick of his hand. Balthazar's face is covered in soot, like war paint, but he grins with a flash of white teeth and Castiel can hear his thoughts like a prayer in the ancient tongue, go-run-conquer-win-victory-will-be ours-brother!

Dean is there ahead of Castiel now, writhing and tearing at the coils of fire that wind themselves about him, his mouth open in a cry Castiel cannot hear through the roar of the Beast. Castiel makes a desperate plunge for the tentacle, feels its fire burn through his gauntlet and scythe through skin and bone, into his grace. A glow escapes his armor and sears into the Beast's flesh, and despite his pain and horror Castiel gasps as he sees the fire dampen, sees the tentacle split, and suppurate, and shrivel as his light plays across its surface. And, loophole, he marvels, and in that second he remembers that he isn't only a half-man, a hunter, a warrior, a falling angel - he is the False Prophet. I can help destroy you, he thinks, and he tightens his fingers, digs them in while the creature bucks, sends his grace streaming out of his wounds to irrigate the growing split until the limb atrophies, and then Dean is slipping, falling, fading into the half-light below.

Castiel feels Dean's impact on the sand in his own heart, cries out his distress, and then Dean is there in his head, a faint, exhausted whisper, let me go…no more running.

But Castiel is rage and fury, he is avenging angel, and he can feel his grace swelling exponentially, his armor stretching to accommodate it, gold, silver and bronze expanding at the atomic level because he wills it so. They will win this battle and win it together, and he focuses, forces his energy into the Beast's flesh for as long as he can while he fixes his eyes on Dean's crumpled figure and roars out words so fiercely he sees them bend the air, "Don't you give up, soldier…don't you dare."



The effect is immediate. Dean reacts to the order like the veteran he is, struggling to push himself up, his fatigue clear in every lethargic movement. But it's too slow, too fatigued, too disoriented, and Castiel knows the despair of seeing another one of the Beast's tentacles snake out to trap Dean again. Dean twists in its grip, scrabbling at the earth for purchase as he tries to stop the monster's pull, and when he raises his fist from the sand and the sulfur he has the hilt of Michael's sword in his grip.

The Beast lifts Dean up into the sky like before, and Castiel does not pause to strategize before he changes course and follows, spinning and rising up so fast the trajectory makes him nauseous. He is tiring, he knows, this final last gasp of grace finally reaching the end of its out-breath, but he calls for more, more, as the massive bulk of the Beast rushes past him, its screaming souls, demons, and monsters nothing more than a blur now.

Dean looms into Castiel's field of vision, staring at the sword in his hand with his brow furrowed, before he is swung away again so fast that Castiel blinks. Dean pinwheels around again, below him now, and Castiel dives to reach for him only to feel a hand at his back, jerking him roughly out of the path of the Beast's claws as it slaps at the air in an effort to swat him like a troublesome fly. Vassago, and he has lost most of his jaw but his eyes still shine with something like amusement before he flings Castiel back into the air and lends him his momentum, pushing strength into him.

Castiel feels his grace swell like a battery charged; he vaults upward faster than ever, so fast he fears he might burn out of existence altogether.

And then, he is there.



The great head of the Beast is all fire and smoke, and its eyes are crimson embers peering through lashes of fire. It is yawning its mouth wide open, showing teeth like gravestones, broken and jagged, and layered as a shark's. It is pulling Dean closer and closer to its gaping maw, and Castiel knows that if it swallows him Dean will spend centuries burning inside its belly until he is nothing but screaming, charred skin on its surface, along with all the other forsaken souls and monsters the Beast has ingested.

Castiel knows that he will follow his lover into this inferno.

He steels himself, prepares to launch himself into the conflagration, but he finds he isn't alone; his brothers are cutting through the air at either side of him, their faces grim as they dive in to heave him back. Castiel thrashes violently in their grasp, cries out Dean's name like he did when Sam held him back from this same moment so long before, but their hold on him is strong.

"Let me go, let-"

"Light the sword, Righteous Man!"

Balthazar drowns out Castiel's protest, his voice a blast of sound, but Dean stares at the flat plane of silver he holds, shaking his head violently. And somewhere beyond the frantic urging of his brothers as they begin pulling Castiel away, Castiel can sense the chaos of Dean's thoughts, his denial, all bathed in flashes of his soul as his heart and his pain slip out of him in this moment of weakness. There is denial of the Beast and his fate; denial of the life that has been a fight when he wants peace; denial of a God who fashioned his fingers to hold a gun, a knife, or a sword, instead of a pen, a tool, or a beloved's hand.

Dean breathes out an exhausted sigh that floods from his mouth in a curl of evaporating steam, the fire of the Beast burning the moisture from the air as fast as Dean exhales it. Castiel sees him mouth the words, Righteous Man, sees the disbelief and lack of self-worth in his tired eyes, and Castiel will not have that.

He slaps his palm to his chest across the scar, forces the thought across the space that divides them.

You don't have to be the Righteous Man, Dean. You can be your own man. It will be enough…

It is enough.

Dean's eyes burn to white and the sword erupts into flame.



Episode 24: Redemption (part II continued)