Episode 24: Redemption (Part III Continued)

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Two weeks later, and the sun rises and sets, and though the weather remains frigid Dean can sense the sun lasting a little longer, the hint of sap beginning to run back through the trees; all of life waiting to burst forth.

Except for human life, that is. That seems to be in short supply. Not that there ever were a lot of people this far out from the center of Sioux Falls, but these days the silence and sheer emptiness is even more weighted than before, when there was at least the distant drone of a plane overhead, or passing traffic on the road signaled the presence of others. Now all of that has disappeared, as though overnight.

Dean wakes most mornings to Castiel wrapped around him or setting a steaming mug of coffee down on the nightstand and crawling back under the blankets to pull Dean close. But some mornings, light falling across his face disturbs him and he cracks his eyes to see his friend pulling the drapes to one side and gazing out the window. He hasn't asked if Castiel is staring at the Impala or the gravesite.

This morning is one of those mornings, and Castiel is drinking his own coffee, buck-naked as he stands in front of the windowsill and surveys the junkyard below. Sunlight frames him and sets the yellow paintwork aglow, and as usual he has no shame or shyness in his nakedness. Dean runs his eyes up and down him, takes a moment to admire the curve of his back and the swell of his ass, the muscles of his thighs, the way his calf muscles chisel out from his lower legs into the backs of his knees, the hair that downs the skin. And, mine, Dean thinks, with a smug satisfaction he would never admit to.

He can hear sounds of the others downstairs, cautious chatter, Meg's higher-pitched tone, and Mira's following it, Bobby's low growl, the unmistakable sound of Sam asking a question or discussing strategy.

Things he should be doing, Dean thinks. Strategizing. Leading.

But he isn't ready.

He feels listless, aimless, feels as if he has been set down in some uncharted wilderness without a compass. He still shivers in the cold, and the lukewarm water he showers in when Bobby cranks up the generator still feels like burning, so much so that Castiel has to check the temperature for him before he steps under the flow.

He still dreams of Hell, but held secure in Castiel's arms he blinks himself blearily awake now instead of jack-knifing alert with a shriek. It's the usual ritual of post-traumatic stress disorder and it's like before, the initial sheer-horror dreams fading while the more subtle things stay for the long term. And what disturbs Dean the most now aren't the formless nightmares but the lucid dreams he has of holding Michael's sword, and the fire that streaks from the tip of the blade through the hilt, to light up his arm as far as the shoulder. Sometimes when he wakes from what he supposes must be a memory, he holds his hand up to the window, where the moon comes through fat and bright, and he flexes his fingers as though he holds the weapon still. Or maybe he just wants to, wants to find that moment of triumph wherever it is buried in his mind, so that it all doesn't feel like defeat, and failure, and running.

"Do you remember it?" he asks softly, without even really meaning to.

Castiel glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised in a question.

"When I ended the Beast," Dean elaborates. "Sometimes I think that if I could remember more, remember all of it, it might…I don't know. Make a difference."

"Make this seem more like victory," Castiel answers, and he sighs. "I don't remember. I don't remember much of anything really, except for the fact that I went there. I see flashes, but not many details. Perhaps it's because I'm near-human now. The human mind protects itself. Hides things." His expression goes faraway for a moment then, his brow furrowing as if he's trying to find it himself, in his own memory. "It was wondrous," he says, and then his focus snaps back to Dean and he shrugs ruefully. "Well. I'm sure it was."

He takes a mouthful of his coffee, walks back to set his mug on the nightstand. He slides himself back under the covers then, and Dean folds him into a sweat-sticky cocoon of arms and legs, one hand across the knobs of Castiel's spine and his friend's chilled flesh pressing to his own heated skin.

Castiel nuzzles his way along the line of Dean's jaw, and his eyes are soft as he gazes down at Dean. "Sometimes I can't believe you're real," he murmurs, as he leans in.

Dean tilts his head back and bares his throat, and Castiel's kisses are soft, but his cock is hard as he pushes it into Dean's thigh, groaning low into Dean's ear as Dean angles his hips up. It's slow and delicious, makes Dean think how easily he could whisper that he wants his friend moving inside him instead of against him, but even with the memory of Castiel buried deep and coming undone in his arms, there is no real intent. There is just the need to be held and treasured, the feel of Castiel's heart beating against Dean's chest, the angel's lazy thrusts fading away to pliant weight that slumps on Dean. Lips brush, and pull, and worry at each other languidly, opening up for the warm, wet twist and curl of tongues, long unhurried moments, until Castiel pulls away and nips his way down to Dean's shoulder, rests his face there for a minute before rolling over and up.

"You should get some more sleep while you can," he says as he stands and reaches for his coffee again.

Dean grunts a negative, rising up out of the sheets himself. "I'm tired of sleeping," he responds, and swings his legs off the bed. As his feet make contact with the cold surface, a fist pounds at the door, rattling it on its hinges.

"You lovebirds decent in there?" Bobby asks.

"Uh, no," Dean is quick to point out, but Castiel only raises a single eyebrow, unruffled by the proposition of someone else intruding. As unruffled as the sly bastard was when he had his fingers up Dean's ass the last time Bobby snuck up on them, Dean recalls, and his cock gives a pleased twitch at the memory. "We aren't-"

Too late, Bobby has spent the last thirty seconds deliberating and deciding behind the relative safety of the door, and the knob turns as it opens.

"What the hell, Bobby," Dean protests, pulling a corner of the sheet over himself.

Bobby's face is puffy with sleep and he's wearing the same flannel from yesterday, like they all are doing - recycling clothes to save on water and the labor of doing laundry in freezing South Dakota. They all smell on the ripe side some days, but Dean can't say he minds skipping showers, because it gives him time to forget the heat of burning.

"You haven't got nothing I don't already have, boy," Bobby says, and then stops when he considers Castiel, wearing a coffee mug and nothing else. Dean has to give the old man credit - he recovers with only a second's hesitation before he turns back to Dean.

"Car batteries, boy. We need 'em. I'd ask your brother, but he says he has a headache and Mira packed him away to bed to sleep it off."

Dean leers. "I'll bet she did." Then, "Batteries?" he queries. "Science project?"

"No, I like the way they set off the window treatments in the dining room," Bobby snipes back. "What do you think? We're getting scruffy around here and I got hair clippers that need juice, to say nothing of the radio I'd like to recharge-"

"It's okay, Bobby," Dean assures him, "I won't spill the beans on the cappuccino maker you have hidden away in the bunker."

Bobby holds up a finger. "That's not funny. Meg can smell it from the second floor, and I think she's onto me."

Dean winks and Bobby backs out and shuts the door. Dean looks back to where Castiel has a t-shirt in each hand, sniffing one after the other and frowning as he debates his choice, and sure, Dean could use the spare minutes between now and when Bobby expects them outside to seduce his friend back into bed for a swift blowjob, and maybe more than that. He thinks on it, the burn of Castiel as he pushed in, the thickness, the feeling of being filled, and it makes him shiver.

He had felt safe in that moment, the safest he has ever felt.

He loses himself for a while considering that, while Castiel pulls on a pair of old faded jeans, and sits on the end of the bed to tug his socks on.

When his friend pads out of the room, Dean doesn't stop him.



Meg flicks her cigarette butt at one of the dogs lounging on the porch.

Dean focuses on her for a moment as he lifts his mug to his lips for a gulp of coffee, ponders that he still can't wrap his head around how or why she's still here, not that he has really tried to so far. He wipes his mouth, sets the mug on the back end of a junked Geo Prism that saw better days back when Mulder and Scully were still looking for the truth. "Hey Cas, do you think-"

"Your Kurt Vonnegut reminds me of my Father."

That pulls Dean up, and he half-turns towards the mashed-up Tacoma truckbed where Castiel is sitting, absorbed in a battered paperback from Bobby's library. "How's that?" he asks.

The angel doesn't look up as he goes on. "He says here, be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of." He grimaces. "I believe my Father may have been strongly influenced by this advice."

You're fuckin' adorable, you know that? Dean thinks, but he manages to rein it back to an eye-roll as his attention returns to the ex-demon. "Do you think she's kosher?" he asks, propping open the hood of a Chevy K1500 while he tries to ignore the fact its chrome grille looks like teeth.

Castiel does glance up from the book at that, and he blinks at Dean owlishly. "Excuse me?"

Dean tees it up again. "Meg. You think she's kosher?"

Castiel's expression goes puzzled. "You're asking me if she has been prepared for consumption according to Jewish dietary laws?"

"You're fuckin' adorable, you know that?" It slips out of Dean before he can help it this time, but he twists in mid-air and lands on his feet, going on swiftly. "No, I am not asking you that, moron. I mean, do you think she's for real? Genuine? That we can trust her?"

Castiel tracks Dean's gaze, frowns as he eyes the woman. "She told me about the Hellgate in Colt's cemetery," he throws out there offhandedly, and Dean swivels his head back around under cover of the Chevy's hood and gapes, because it's news to him.

"She told you how to get into Hell to find me?"

His friend shrugs. "Well. Not exactly. I knew the gate was there - the prophet spoke of it in the Winchester Gospels. But it hadn't occurred to me to use it. She planted the seed with something she said. Inadvertently, but even so." He looks back to Dean. "She's human, Dean…"

The but is waiting right there for Dean to hook it and reel it in, so he does just that. "But?"

"It's the fact she's still Meg, not the host," Castiel concedes thoughtfully. "She's human, but she came from something demonic, and she's soulless. There's no precedent for her, and-"

"There is," Dean snaps, suddenly belligerent because he's thinking of the precedent right now, with the hollow, sickly feeling he always gets when he remembers. "And Crowley said he would have sold me for a buck to buy soda."

Castiel's face falls as he makes the connection. "I feel regret about your brother, Dean," he says faintly. "And I'm sorry, more sorry than I can ever adequately express. But - Sam wasn't a demon before that happened."

Dean curls his lip up, and he knows his voice is undercut with accusation. "Soulless demon, soulless human. Same fuckin' difference."

There's a long, dragged-out silence then, made unwieldy by history, by good intentions gone wrong, and by mistakes; and all the while guilt shadows Castiel's eyes, along with something else Dean can't put a finger on until his friend lowers his gaze. "I'm falling, Dean," he says. "Hell sapped my grace even further. And when my fall is complete, I will be a soulless human."

Fuck, and regret stabs through Dean. "Cas, I'm sor-"

"No." Castiel's gaze switches to unnervingly intense even for him, and he shakes his head vehemently, his voice cracking a little. "You don't say sorry to me." He scrubs a hand through his hair, takes a few seconds to calm down.

Even if his friend doesn't want him saying the word itself, Dean persists. "When you fall, you'll be a fallen angel, Cas, like you were before Stull. Not a soulless human. Okay?"

Castiel sighs. He doesn't acknowledge Dean's assertion, backtracks the conversation instead. "Anyway. I was going to say that perhaps there is a risk her real nature could just be lying dormant…"

And there it is again, that unspoken doubt, and Dean hisses out between his teeth as he leans into the engine and knocks the green crust away from the battery with the ends of his pliers so he can begin to pry the connections apart. He flicks up a baleful stare. "You're butting me again aren't you?"

After meeting Dean's gaze again and lifting an eyebrow, Castiel repeats, "But for now, she's human. I can't see any trace of the demon behind her face, and it may indeed truly be dead. So…"

Dean leans into his hand for a second, kneads his temple. "If we dump her out in the middle of nowhere, we could be serving a defenseless human being up as monster chow. Dammit."

Castiel smiles at that, and the tension suddenly drains away. "I don't know if she'll ever be defenseless."

Dean hasn't had much to do with Meg since he came back, has avoided her if he's honest. Bobby has told him what precautions they're taking, along with all the other world-in-the-shitter stuff, and Meg hasn't bothered him save for a curt nod and a displeased look if she happens to pass by. As he leans in to pull the battery out like a lego piece and then set it down at the foot of the vehicle, he ponders what his friend said. "We know the tattoo can keep demons out, but do you think it could keep the demon down if it was still inside her?"

Castiel's eyes narrow. "That's an interesting point for debate."

Dean grins despite himself. "Understatement much?" He falls serious again then, as his eyes fall on the beat-up Dodge Tradesman Bobby has been stocking with canned goods, and its companion trailer, laden with tanks of gasoline. He thinks of the old man's plan, of how it could all go horrifically wrong with a cuckoo in the nest. "You know Bobby's talking about us pulling out of here, heading up to this hunter camp in Montana?" He ventures, and at Castiel's nod, he goes on. "It's risky taking Meg along for the ride if there's a chance she could turn. She could bring fuck knows what right to us." He reaches for his mug, takes another mouthful of his coffee, and makes his next point carefully. "I think maybe it's too risky."

Castiel's response is perfectly neutral. "Whatever you decide, I'm with you."

It's on the tip of Dean's tongue to say that he'd be more than happy for his friend to make the decision for him, as he watches Meg light up her second cancer stick. She stamps her boots on the wood to warm her feet, hacks out an impressive coughing fit, and hoiks phlegm into the dirt, and Dean studies her, tries to see a demon instead of a skinny, too-pale young woman who has been where he has, done what he has, survived like he has. "Smoking and drinking," he snipes. "Seems like all she does. As well as look down her nose at us."

Castiel is unfazed by the tangent. "Oh, she'll feel better soon," he confides. " I put saran wrap on the toilet for her."

Dean knows he doubletakes. "What?"

"Saran wrap," Castiel repeats patiently. "You know, clear plastic, it keeps food fresh-"

"Yeah, I know what saran wrap is, I'm just trying to figure out why you think putting saran wrap on the toilet is a good thing."

"Mira said it's a Bosnian folk remedy for people in a bad mood, and that it would perk Meg right up."

Dean stifles a laugh with his hand, and fuck, he needs to laugh. He thinks he'll have to tell Castiel at some point that clear saran wrap over a toilet bowl is an invitation to an ass-kicking Stateside, but for the time being he amuses himself with the thought of Meg squatting and getting a hell of a surprise from down under. In the frigid cold, no less.

"Why are you laughing?" Castiel inquires mildly. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No." Dean waves it off and bites his lower lip to keep from smiling, before getting his head back in the game. He turns to Castiel and hands him the pliers. "Tackle the next one?"

Castiel takes the pliers and looks around the sea of rusting car hoods as though he's surveying an orchard in the interest of picking ripe fruit. Most of the older cars will be worthless for their task, but there's more than a few that might have enough get-up-and-go left in their batteries to feed Bobby's cappuccino machine for one last hurrah. Though Dean wouldn't put it past him to try to take the damn thing with him to Montana. He points to a newer Buick Oldsmobile that he knows for a fact was one of the last cars to hit the salvage yard before they shipped out for Brazil. "That one should still have a few volts. Pretty new too, so it'll take a decent charge once Bobby boots up the generator."

Castiel has other ideas though, his eyes scanning the lot and resting on a totaled Mack tractor-trailer nearby. "That one," he decides. "The battery will be bigger, yes? More powerful?"

Dean snorts. "Heavy-duty. And weighing in at about ninety pounds. Sure you still got the juice to lift that?"

Castiel narrows his eyes and smirks. "I still have the juice, Dean."

Maybe we can get a haircut out of it after all, Dean thinks, as he watches Castiel amble over to the truck. He lifts a hand to run it across his skull, where his hair has grown shaggier than he has worn it in years, and even if he misses the ease of the buzz-cut, a part of him wonders what it might be like to have Castiel twist his fingers there as Dean swallows his dick down, the same way Dean fists handfuls of Castiel's tousled curls when he thrusts his dick in between Castiel's lips. He knows he's leering when he considers lying and telling Bobby there isn't enough battery power in the whole lot to run the clippers.

Cheney is investigating the nearby pile of batteries with a keen nose as Castiel clambers up onto the truck grille, plier handles gripped between his teeth, and bends in over the interior of the engine. Dean sticks out his foot and shoves the mutt away before it can piss all over the goods, before shuffling backwards to plant his butt on a nearby Prism and admire Castiel's ass.

"I have it."

Castiel huffs at the effort as he maneuvers the battery out onto the lip of the hood. He hops down nimbly, reaches up above himself to heft the large block down, and it happens so fast then that Dean can't really follow the sequence of events. As Castiel lifts the battery off the truck body, the dog gets tangled under his feet, yelping with alarm. Unbalanced, Castiel's arms flail out and then it goes to awful slow-motion, with Dean already bolting up and off of the Prism as the battery plummets down through space and onto Castiel's foot with a dull, ground-vibrating thud.

It would be comical; in fact, Dean thinks it would be fuckin' hee-larious but for the dry, brittle crunch of bone as the battery lands, and the breathy scream Castiel lets out, a cry that turns Dean into Antarctica, into a frozen stone, as he drops to his knees on the frozen gravel beside his friend while the dog races back towards the house.

Castiel is making a noise like a growl deep in his throat, as if he's biting back more cries behind the first, as Dean braces to lift and roll the battery off his foot. "Easy," Dean mutters as he surveys the damage. The extremity is at a twisted angle, appears flattened even inside the boot, and Dean can make out the lines of where the battery impacted at the end of its fall, imprinted into the leather in a ghostly shape. He bites his lip. "How does it feel?"

"Broken."

The response is raw, hurt, and it fills Dean with a sensation of helplessness, of fatalistic depression. Castiel is falling, and of course his foot is broken. And there's nothing Dean can do to stop it, this endless loop of returning time that comes to crush them, over and over again, because we always end up here, Dean-.

"No," Dean hisses to the long-ago voice from the future. "No, we don't."

He feels the bite of the cold through the knees of his jeans as he jerks his pigsticker out of his back pocket. If Castiel's foot is broken - and Dean knows in his gut that it is - he has to get the boot off to assess the damage before any swelling makes getting it off too much of an ordeal. He cuts through the tight knot of the lace, the blade reflecting frozen late winter sun into his eyes, and he wonders if this was how it happened for the other them. He glances up when he feels Castiel staring at him, hesitates. "Don't look," he says softly, like he used to decades before, to his kid brother. "Hurts more if you look."

Castiel nods slightly, closes his eyes as he falls back. A muscle in his jaw flexes, and a vein pulses in his neck and forehead as Dean slices through the laces all the way down, and then saws through the leather at the sides. Blood is seeping sluggishly through the sock already and Dean's first instinct is to erupt into a frustrated curse, but he swallows it back. He shrugs his jacket down off of his shoulders, folds it up into a pad of fabric before sliding his fingers underneath the foot to lift it and start easing the remains of the boot off as carefully as he can. "I'm sorry," he says, as Castiel's whole leg locks rigid.

"No, it's…" Castiel bites into his sleeve, makes a choked sound he barely stifles. "Pain, human pain, transmitted through nerves…the quality is different from an injury to my grace. Sharper, more visceral. I'll get used to it."

"But you don't have to," Dean prompts, and he tries to keep his voice light as he maneuvers the makeshift cushion underneath the foot. "If you have enough mojo to lift that battery, I guess you have enough to fix this, huh? Like, right now?"

It takes Castiel a moment before he answers, struggling to keep his voice even. "I'm saving what's left of that particular skill for a rainy day."

Dean laughs, sort of. "Cas, it's raining man. Okay?"

"No. No, just…" Castiel cranes his neck, examines the foot critically. A faint sheen of sweat dots his brow, and his face is ashen. "How bad is it?" he asks thinly. "There's a…buzzing sensation."

Dean swallows. "You can't walk on it. Just a guess, but I'm thinking fractures in the smaller bones. Skin's cut up a bit, but there's no bone poking out." He can hear his voice speed up as he thinks himself through it. "But there could be nerve damage. And circulation is a problem. I mean, if we were living in first-world conditions we could get you to an ER, get the damage checked out, but we're back in the middle ages, Cas. People lose their feet over shit like this. So if you've got any spare mojo stashed in your back pocket, I think you should-"

"No!" Castiel snaps. "I'll tough it out. I have to save what's left. This is nothing. There could be worse up ahead, and you know it."

Dean lets out an explosive exhale. "You're thinking it about it, aren't you?"

Castiel looks at him with pain-clouded eyes, pauses to press his palm over them, and if he's hiding tears there Dean can't see them, he can only smell the acrid adrenaline rising up from their sweat as Castiel dips his head and sighs out a shuddering breath. "I broke my foot then," he continues, in a strained whisper. "You told me. And if it is-"

"Shut up," Dean hisses.

"It could mean that-"

"Did you hear what I said? Shut up, dammit! Nothing is set!"

Dean sits back on his haunches, scrubs a hand through his hair as he looks away, over the pile of batteries to Cheney, where the mutt is sitting and watching them forlornly. "It just means you tripped over a dog and that's it, that's all it means," he insists. "Doesn't add up to shit. Don't talk about 2014, you know why? Because it's 2012, and I say so. The world doesn't end until I fuckin' say it does, okay?"

He looks back, holds Castiel's eyes for a long moment and Castiel closes his own with something like relief and leans back again, while Dean's fingers plant feverish prints over the muscle of his friend's calf as it twitches out distress beneath his hand. "I need to move you, get you to the house," he warns. "If you're set on doing this the hard way, it'll hurt."

Castiel swallows, says, "Okay. Okay."

It comes out in a thin gasp that reminds Dean that Castiel had needed a couple of Bobby's horse pills for the migraine that followed the flash of grace from the Impala. He'd joked about it, teasing his friend for getting taken out by a simple headache. No joking this time, he thinks. "I'll get you something for the pain first," he says, and his tongue feels like a lethargic slug in his mouth. "Fetch Mira out here too. Lucky we got a doctor in the house, huh?"

Castiel grins weakly, and the dog creeps up closer and gives a guilty whine as Dean stands. "Look after him, mutt," Dean orders, and Cheney barks and settles down on the dirt there beside Castiel as Dean heads back to the house.



Dean hollers for Mira as he slams indoors, but he knows Castiel needs something to knock out the sharper edge of his injury before they move him. There's morphine in the medkit, he knows, but - no.

He heads upstairs to Bobby's bathroom, flicks open the medicine cabinet, and starts poking through the crammed-in contents for the Oxycontin he last rooted out of there two weeks before. Yahtzee, and he plucks the bottle from the back of the shelf, twists to make his way back downstairs.

He's already outside the bathroom when it dawns on him that there is no telltale maraca-rattle of pills inside plastic like there was before.

He stops cold, steps back into the bathroom and holds the bottle up to the sunlight streaming in through the window, even though he doesn't actually need to look to confirm what he already knows: there's no more Oxy.

Just a coincidence, he thinks.

He lets the bottle slip from his fingers and into the wastebasket and turns back to the medicine cabinet. He knows there is Percocet in there, along with a half-full container of benzos, his own drug of choice for sleeping through the nightmares after Stull, though he hasn't ever wanted to think why Bobby might have needed them. He shuffles through the cabinet again as he searches them out, clicks his tongue against his teeth as he finds the bottle and snatches it up between his thumb and forefinger.

Empty.

There is a numb second or two, followed by a familiar itch climbing up his spine and along the back of his neck, the feeling of betrayal that he remembers from bitter experience. It feels the way it did when his brother punched him in the face in some faraway motel before he left with Ruby to raise the devil, the way it did when he suddenly knew, knew, that Castiel had been lying to him for more than a year.

In the span of those seconds, all his Hell wounds are forgotten and faded in the face of a surge of anger, and he regresses, tumbling into the recesses of his memory through images that cut even deeper: the scent of brimstone heavy in the air, Alistair's face twisted like a knotted rag above him, the rack where he was once a helpless prisoner and then became the skilled apprentice. With effort, he brings this blind lightning-crack of fury back into line, and he hopes the fact he even can means he's growing, progressing, becoming a better person. Whatever the fuck that actually means.

He turns back to the medicine cabinet for the third time, and he kids himself he feels calmer.

But he isn't sure if he can maintain his composure when he finds the Percocet bottle, because he knows even as his fingers graze the surface that the damn thing is empty. "Fool me once," he mutters to himself, and he bends to fish out the first empty from the trashcan before spinning on his heel.



The dog is still watching dutifully over Castiel when Dean gets back to the spot where he left his friend. Castiel lifts himself up on his elbows with some effort, and Dean can tell by the way his throat moves that he's suppressing another groan. He looks part-ill, part thankful, and relieved to see Dean.

It's everything Dean can do to keep from socking him in the face.

He crunches over the gravel and leans down without ceremony to grip Castiel under one arm and haul him up, broken foot and all. Castiel has pride enough to smother a shriek before he begins cursing in Enochian as he twists in Dean's arms. Dean lets him go, throwing his weight back onto his feet, and Castiel does yelp then, before crumpling unceremoniously back down on his ass. When he manages to get proper words out, his voice is rough with pain.

"Dean, what's wrong with you? It hurts to stand on it, you can't just lift me like that-"

Dean kicks viciously at the gravel underfoot, sending a shower of stones pinging off the stacked wall of salvaged batteries. "Honestly didn't think you'd feel it with so much fuckin' junk in your system," he snaps.

Castiel goggles up at him, presses a hand up to his head. "What are you talking about?"

Dean thrusts his hands into his back pockets, brings them out fisting the empty prescription bottles. He throws them at Castiel, and his friend doesn't even make a token effort to protect himself as they glance off his chest and jaw on their way to the ground.

Cheney whines uneasily and slinks off again, seeking shelter in the shadow of a nearby Toyota pickup.

Castiel winces as he shifts position on the ground, with his broken foot stuck out and leaving bloody streaks everywhere, and his other leg bent to gain traction as he reaches and snags a bottle. He holds it up to the light and then looks at Dean, his astonishment slowly fading into understanding. "Wait…you think - you think I-"

"No, I think the dog ate them, Cas."

And just like that, Castiel is gone.

It has been so long since the angel just disappeared into thin air with a subtle ruffle of wings that for once all Dean can do is stand in the middle of the junkyard, both flabbergasted and hollow of thought. Cold air buffets him as he stares down at the gravel where Castiel was lying seconds ago, and all that's left of his friend is a shredded boot and Dean's own jacket, splotched and streaked with blood.

Dean shivers and hugs himself tight to shut out the wind, but it doesn't help. He turns and tramps back up to the porch, where he can smell the stench of Camels, unfiltered. Meg is seated on an old lawn chair pushed into the space between the siding and the porch swing. Its gaudy nylon fabric is threading out at the seat so her denim-clad ass droops through, and the aluminum arm rests are scratched to shit and discolored where she stubs her cigarettes out and then lets them smolder on the lumber where they fall.

"You know, communication is key in any relationship," she remarks, and she takes a gulp from a bottle of Johnny Walker she has propped against her thigh. A long cylinder of ash is building from the tip of her cigarette, and she lets it, while a skinny plume of smoke whirls out in the chill breeze.

"I agree," Dean snaps back at her. "Got something to say about it?"

She laughs, says, "Talk to momma Meg," and pats the porch swing beside her.

Dean stares at her for a minute. Her dark hair hasn't been washed in days and it hangs stringy around the frame of a gaunt, pale face, and Dean thinks that despite her newfound humanity she exudes something, an unnatural tension. He can't shake the feeling that she's just a simmering nuclear bomb waiting to explode and take them all out in the process, even if he fed her that morning's cup of holy water himself just an hour or so earlier.

"I think I'm capable of fucking up my own relationships, thank you very much," he responds tersely.

She shrugs. "You could always use a little help in that department. Looks like a nasty one this time. Clarence didn't even stop to say goodbye. Where do you suppose he flew off to?"

"I'm sure he didn't go far," Dean huffs, paused with his hand on the knob of the door.

"You sure, this time?" Meg teases. "Maybe he finally decided he had enough of being blamed for things he didn't do, or of all those manly heroics you're so obsessed with."

"Because you've been so successful in your personal life," Dean mocks in turn. "Hey, who were you planning on calling when we got back from the Island of Doctor Moreau, before you shacked up with us? Boyfriends? Girlfriends? Sisterhood of the traveling pants?" He raises his eyebrows as she watches him, puts a hand to his ear as though he's hard of hearing. "I'm waiting. Come on, more cowbell."

Meg's lips pucker like she just sampled a lemon. The ash falls from her cigarette and layers a gentle burn across her fingers. She regards it with annoyance, as she lifts what's left of the butt to her lips to inhale smoke that wreathes out between her lips before answering.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about me, Dean," she drawls with an eyeroll. "See, I really don't think I'm cut out for this kind of clean living. Besides, your brother's sweetie-pie keeps giving me the evil eye, and Bobby treats me like I personally killed his wife or something. So I'm thinking to mosey on out of here any day now."

"Well don't let the door hit your ass on the way," Dean retorts.

She pulls back her lips from small, sharp teeth. "I won't. But I'm thinking two along the road is better than one, and seeing as how you just broke up with your honeybunny maybe I'll see if Clarence wants to keep me company when-"

"You stop that thought right there," Dean jumps in, with a burst of rage similar to the one he just sent blasting out at his honeybunny. "He isn't hitching his cart to a fuckin' demon."

Meg's eyes go slitty and mean. "Now isn't that sweet. Thinking I was part of the human club, just to find out it's restricted." Her voice goes hard. "I never had a chance with you, did I? Nope, you already made up your mind before I set foot in this house."

After a derisive snort, Dean tells her, "My mind was made up back when you were still bottom feeding in Hell, and now you're not doing much better. Maybe if you stopped feeling sorry for yourself you could do something useful, be a part of the group. You know, sitting on a porch drinking your sorrows away won't undo anything Alistair did to you. I know it better than anyone. You got a golden chance to become something better, and you're just drowning it in Margaritaville."

She sets the back of her palm against her forehead in a theatrical demonstration of hurt. "And this is why I turn to smoking, and drinking, and snorting hillbilly heroin in the bathroom - why thank you, Dr. Phil, I was unaware of my emotional damage and thought I was pill-popping for, I don't know, more mundane reasons. Like that you suck, for instance."

Dean's mouth opens and closes, and he has to regroup as he looks at her again. "It was you?" he manages finally. "You've been eating the meds like they're Pez?"

"Aw, what's the matter Deano?" she answers. "You didn't think it was Clarence, did you?"

There is something Dean can sense in the syrup of her voice, a slow curl of molasses that suggests she knew exactly what she was doing and how those empty pill bottles might be misconstrued, and yes, she hoped he did think it was Clarence, very much indeed. Dean's brain is a starburst of emotion and thought then, as he filters through it all. Why do such a thing, why put empty pill bottles back when any ordinary person who used them up would throw them away? Why do it on purpose, to create a schism between two people?

He hears himself saying it aloud, his voice harsh with disbelief. "You did it on purpose."

She grins, wide and predatory. "Well, just like your boyfriend once said, I have only your welfare at heart, Dean," she replies. "Surely you know this by now?"

The reference back to R'lyeh only mystifies Dean more. "But he helped you," he protests, and she shrugs.

"This isn't about him." She forms the shape of a gun with her hand, purses her lips to make a wet, whooshing sound. "And you're damn lucky it isn't the super-soaker with the jet pack."

As she stares up at him, unrepentant, Dean is still grasping after a larger picture at work, attempting to pin down conspiracy theories tied to her demon nature, but on that sneered-out reference his brain burns rubber as it screeches to a halt and he realizes the truth: there is no grand scheme behind it. She did it just because. Just because she could. Because she still is a moral void even without her power, and in the absence of her ability to torture and kill, she has nothing else to keep her amused and occupied but petty spite. It makes Dean shiver because it makes him think of the dream-vision he had of his soulless brother curling his mouth up into a thoughtful smile as he was turned.

This isn't that, isn't anywhere near that, but Dean makes the decision in a split second, points down the path, towards the gate. "Ten seconds," he rasps out. "Shotgun."

"I'm sorry?" Meg says, as though she didn't hear him right. She leans forward in the chair, a hand up behind her ear to mimic Dean's gesture. "More cowbell, Deano."

But Dean is moving already, into the house and through the kitchen to the dining room, where he knows the Remington Bobby uses for deer hunting is on the top of the old wooden buffet. He leaps up, knocks the old shotgun into his hand, and pulls open the drawer to root out a box of shells. Some of them slip from his fingers and go rattling away from him, but all he needs are the two, as he slides back the action and jams the first one in.

He sees Meg's shadow from the screen door, where what little warm air that exists inside the house is swiftly funneling out into the heartless South Dakota landscape. She scratches at the screen, and tobacco smoke drifts in.

"Dean? Chillax, it was just a prank. You don't really mean-"

"Five," he announces, as he swings the shotgun muzzle in her direction until the sight falls over her silhouette. He doesn't know if it has in fact been five seconds, but he's certain he doesn't care as he takes the first steps back to the porch.

By the time he kicks open the screen door Meg is already backing down the steps, two spots of high color lighting up her cheekbones. "I can't believe I ever thought we had something in common, that we were brothers in arms," she blusters. "Back on the island, when your brother and your boyfriend were-"

"Start walking, or I will kick you in the pants," Dean clips out. "I got nothing in common with you. Nothing."

"Oh, you keep telling yourself that," she says, "and maybe one day you'll even believe it." She throws back her head and laughs then, transforms into the Meg he knows, her eyes flashing with life. "Maybe I'll scratch right through my tattoo once I hit the road, see if I can't recover my old vigor," she spits. "Maybe you're doing me a favor after all that. Because when I was bad, I was wicked." She finishes off with a wink. "Just like you."

She pirouettes, starts mincing away from him, swinging her hips at him. And there is a moment when Dean battles with himself, thinks that he should sink one between her shoulders for all the crap she has pulled.

She's human.

He keeps the gun trained on her retreating backside.

She's human, he tells himself again.

He can just about hear the stream of invective she's hurling back at him as she marches on, cigarette still in one hand and her bottle in the other. She whirls back around, takes a swig like a car refueling, yells at him some more.

"…dipshit…motherfucker…low-down, cocksucking asshole…"

She's human, and Dean lets the shotgun drop long enough to yell back, "Yeah, well, at least you got the cocksucking part right."

There's the sound of a tap at the screen door and Dean startles, turning with the shotgun trained on the floor, and he feels his cheeks heat to what he's full sure is hot pink.

Mira is standing behind the screen in a pair of rumpled sweat pants and one of Sam's old shirts. Her face is raw of eyeliner and piercings and the hard angles of her face have been softened by sleep, or maybe by love in its bloom, or maybe by Sam keeping her up all night with his big moose snores.

Dean hopes it's moose snores, because he so damn well doesn't want to think about his brother doing it.

Which brings him full circle to the last words that left his mouth, and Mira's stare as she tracks her eyes from Dean's face to the shotgun and back again, this time to his lips. Dean could swear her expression goes contemplative for just a second, before she breathes, "God, this family."

She looks past Dean then, to Meg as she approaches the gate. "She'll revert," she announces matter-of-factly. "It's what she is." She turns and starts padding back through the kitchen, "I would have ended her," floating back over her shoulder, before Dean remembers that he needs her help, and why.

Assuming Castiel even comes back.

Fuck.

He sighs, rubs his fingers hard across his brow and thinks about tearing his hair out, shooting random things, or maybe blowing up a car; or maybe all three at once, so he might feel better.



Dean doesn't find Castiel in the house.

He pokes his head into the bedrooms and even the attic before he heads back down the steps. Bobby gets in from checking the back perimeter of his property and asks where his batteries are on the way to milk the cow, but Dean waves him off before he stomps down to the iron bunker in the basement, in the hopes that perhaps Castiel is sulking on the old military cot in the corner.

Nothing, and Dean stands dejected in the dim glow of his flashlight, staring at the empty shadows thinking, come out now, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I'm a fuckin' idiot, come on Cas, please. But he knows damn well that there isn't a single thing he's gotten in life from begging for it, not on Alistair's table and not anywhere else, so he keeps his silence and after a moment he trudges back up the steps and realizes there's one last place he hasn't yet checked.



Episode 24: Redemption (Part III Continued)