Spnfic: And the Night was filled... 1/4
Title: And the Night was filled with Many Things Calling for his Death
Author: the_poette
Art: dahlia94
Beta: anon-unknown001
Rating/Warnings: PG-13/R for language, violence, potentially disturbing imagery. Some Crazy!Cas
Characters: Dean, Cas, a little bit of Sam.
Genre: Gen, Angst. hurt/(not much)comfort
Word Count: 16,300
Spoilers: Season 6 and 7
Summary: AU of Purgatory written before season 8 aired. It starts with a house in the middle of the conscious black that bares its teeth and eyes. There’s no Benny the vampire with a neat escape hatch. There’s just Dean, who can’t forgive and forget, and Cas, who can’t hold onto his sanity.
Author’s Note: This is my first fic ever in Supernatural, so I’m super stoked I’m submitting it for spnaubigbang. This fic is supposed to leave off at a cliffhanger. It’s going to be part of a much larger series. So I hope you enjoy part I.
Fic Masterpost
There's a moment between heartbeat and breath, where fear has not yet acclimatized. Something friendless and brother-less stares back at him with a horizon filled with eyes and mouths that cut the dark. Whatever passes for night here, is filled with the things calling for his death.
Alone. Only twice before has he endured it, and these moments follow the worst experiences of his life (and death). There's a certainty this will prove no different. But like a disease-a curse-the inescapable need to bleed and survive overrides any former paralysis, and Dean breaks away from the looming tree line like there is any hope of outrunning.
He must seem like a signal flare, a dinner bell wrung, because what follows behind is the beat and maw of every man-eating thing he'd ever put away from the earth. Payback's a bitch, and he owes his life to the fact that they are caught by surprise just as much as he, or that they've decided to play first with their meal.
The pistol always tucked in the back of his jeans rides down the small of his back, as he tramples the black roots of underbrush with his stamping feet. He can't bring it out just to fire a couple of shots that he can't take back. There's no reloading here. No good wasting bullets until one of them starts chomping on his boots. He keeps on running.
He's going to make them work for their meal.
But the ache starts up after what might be more than a mile. The ground is uneven, he expends more energy trying not to trip and die. The terrain is as much his enemy as the creepies coming up behind him. The air gets worse the more he inhales, oil slick film coats the back of his throat, fetid and cloying as it tries to choke him. He wants to gag at each sharp breath, his lungs rejecting every gained step. There must be a knife under his skin, stabbing his side, or a broken rib grinding his insides to mush. Still, he can't, and therefore won't, let up the pace; ignoring the pleas of his body to a level he hasn't practiced since Hell-who knew it'd come in handy now.
Just need to find some place safe.
Dean's eyes dart frantically over the dark shapelessness passing him by, searching for harbor. Some place safe. But who is he kidding, this is Monsterland there's nowhere sa-
He slams against something hard, and crashes to the black viscous ground. Blunt pain digging into his forehead, he massages the bump that must be emerging and, through squinted eyes, stares at the obstruction that hadn't been there before. It's a door, appearing from seemingly nowhere. No door-frame, no house. Just a door sticking upright, stuck in black muck.
He would know that door anywhere.
But it can't be...
He should consider further, but Dean's run out of time. A great many things hiss up from behind and it's either stupidity or desperation that makes his hand wrap around the knob, turn it, and pull it open. He doesn't even think to look back. Instinct screams at him to step on through. So he does-
His foot lands on hardwood floor, a musty air filled with the scent of old books. No throaty clicks or hissing, just the quiet staircase on his right and the living room opening out on his left. Devil's trap on the ceiling, desk cluttered mid-research; every detail exactly as he remembers.
Now still enough to run out of adrenaline, he gags and hacks up the black mucous settled in his lungs. He spits up tar-like slime, sewage-flavor glued to the back of his throat. It falls from his lips like a black slug on the wood floor, and he leaves it there. Once done, he stares in numb shock at what should have been char and ash.
Bobby's house.
His legs give out, his mind going blank with this payload. An ache he'd long mashed down comes rushing to the surface, a buoyed lump of grief so keen and festered through with old loss.
“Bobby...?” Dean's voice breaks rough against the surfaces of empty corridors. The quiet echo back comprises all his disbelief. Despite this, he still looks around expectantly, eager for a disgruntled greeting or cuss. Nothing replies, and Dean feels like a lead fool entertaining ghosts when he ought to know better.
He batters everything disappointed down to a manageable size and climbs stiffly to his feet, looking for any chinks in the illusion (hallucination?). But everything is in place, even the mess. The only discrepancy: the three curtain-less window panes set above the couch. Fresh blood drawn in distorted slants and cross-hatching in the segmented glass, an unrecognizable finger-painting of warding he's never seen before.
Dean studies them before glancing out past the blood and film expecting to see the old junkers of Singer Salvage Yard piled high on the other side. Instead, he finds only what he can remember running blindly through before, the dark growth of Purgatory, chaotic and unknown. He catches insect-like movement scurrying in and out the shapeless black before him. The negative space is thick and watchful, but nothing gives itself away. As one the shadows contract and expand like the ribcage of some monstrous thing panting in rabid starvation. Never holding its breath. Not one moment. The gleam of red eyes blot in and out of focus when he stares too long.
“Definitely not in Kansas anymore,” Dean says just to hear something other than the pounding of his heartbeat in his eardrums. He palms the gun at his back, just for weight and reassurance. He doesn't show his back to the windows, keeping watch on the things keeping watch of him.
Two can play this game, assholes.
“This is your chosen perception.”
Dean whiplashes around, and points his gun to the presence manifested on his right.
“Cas...” He utters it like a curse. His finger trembles against the trigger so badly he lowers it and has to bend over his knees to catch his breath.
“Interesting,” Cas is oblivious to the years he just shaved off Dean's life. The curve of his mouth is gentle as his gaze roams around the room, a look of wonderment in his eyes. “I would have thought the Impala, but this makes sense too.”
He's dressed exactly as Dean last saw him; no dirt on his white scrubs, hair combed down and maybe Meg did it in the hospital while he was under her care. Looking at Cas, sets all the scratches and bumps on Dean's body to complaining, his mood to pissed off.
“Where-the-Hell were you?” Dean grits out with all culminated frustration of having dealt with one Dick just to get rabbit-holed into Dickland.
“Creating this space,” Cas delivers it like a proud architect, like it should be obvious.
With fraying patience, Dean relaxes his hold on the gun, settles himself for a game of words that will probably destroy his patience altogether. “What's Bobby's house doing in Purgatory, Cas?”
“This construct is yours, Dean.” Cas denies with muted amusement. His gaze goes wide, as invasive as one of his soul-probing stares can ever be, like he's taking more in than just the termite infested walls of Bobby's. It travels up and down every re-created object in the old Singer home, and settles somewhere safely outside Dean's personal bubble. “How you've chosen to interpret the sigil.”
“What...?” The bump on Dean's head returns with a vengeance in the face of Cas' explanations.
“I needed time to build it.” Castiel points a finger to the blood lines on the windows.
“So that's keeping all the creepies away?” Dean's trying to keep the incredulity away. What Cas says is starting to make sense. Since ganking Dick, the crazy train seems to be in control, for now.
Cas affirms with an encouraged nod, eager for approval (for trust). Dean goes back to watching the window warily, heart heavy that he can't give it. He chooses another topic, no less important.
“What the hell are they?” Dean thinks back on the red dots lining the ebony horizon, feels his skin crawl with a warning to stay clear of them.
The open expression of Cas' face shuts down. “Old. Hungry,” the gravity of his presence is the same as what Dean woke up to, sobering. “There's no name for them anymore.”
“Can they see us?” Dean's not sure why they haven't muzzled up to the window by now, like some zoo attraction from hell. His fingers prickle for defensive action. His eyes tell him what's separating him from fang and clawed death is dirty glass.
“They've lost our scent,” Cas remarks, his focus on the windows direct, not searching or blind like Dean's. “...for now,” he finishes bluntly just so Dean understands this isn't a permanent situation.
At that, Dean doesn't lose sight of the window as he takes a seat at Bobby's desk with an exhaustion that's been barking for attention since he landed here. He might as well take some rest now, no knowing when it's going to get back to running for dear life.
Cas remains standing at the window, eyes as equally observant of the outside. “Others will come,” Cas warns, “Some you'll recognize. Some you won't. Hopefully we'll be passed over.”
Yeah, hopefully.
Dean sets the pistol down on its side, ivory grips clicking on the flat surface of the desk. He rubs the bump on his forehead, trying to ease it down. More questions grip Dean's mind now that he can sit and think them up. He starts with the obvious.
“What is this place, Cas?” He might as well get a lay of the land.
Sitting here fills him to the brim with things he'd rather not have. There's a bullet-hole on the side of the bookshelf near the sliding double doorway that leads to the kitchen. He can see it from Bobby's desk, remembers the hell Bobby raised after Dean decided to clean a gun in his house and didn't check the chamber. One of the curtains above it is a little singed in the bottom, some risky anti-ritual Sam blew up in here. The blood stain that never came out. The streaks on the floor from heavy furniture poltergeisted across the room. The scratches and dents are all there, like a road-map to Dean's life. But it's just a construct, something apparently thought up by Dean (whatever that means).
“A pocket...a rift,” Cas ticks off answers, spitting out clarifications like a dictionary. “A...cage would be a more apt description. Keeps them out, us in.”
“Not comforting, Cas,” Dean moans into his hand at that, hating this place just a little bit more.
“It's not meant for comfort, Dean,” he says it unapologetically. “Though I suppose the presence of a familiar environment, does provide-”
“Cas,” Dean delivers it like a borderline warning, trying to reign in the lashing-out at the last minute. He tries for calm, ends up at sarcastic. “Explain to me, like I'm four-why does this place look like Bobby's?”
“It's a sigil, Dean. I've written the boundaries that mark the space inside as a sanctuary. Your mind can't interpret them, except for the commands on the windows. The rest you've assimilated in terms you understand. A place of safety is...” the smooth delivery halts here. The nervous gesture of his hands running along the edges of his overcoat return “...was Bobby's home, his ultimate fate notwithstanding. Symbolic, considering his role in your life. The Impala would have been my first choice, but this construct is yours. I realize now the space would have been confining. Your vehicle did not accommodate the honeybees at all-”
“Stop!” Dean's hands slam on the wood of Bobby's desk and release a harsh clap. “Just stop for one freaking second...”
Cas flinches at the sound, startled like some wild thing caught in Dean's headlights on a night road, his hands dropping from the furious clutch of the overcoat.
All of a sudden, that dark angry thing rolling around inside of Dean loses its fire. He remembers the Cas of before. Old Cas-the Cas who threatened to drop him back to Hell the first time Dean had shown him insolence. The old Cas who flat-out rebelled. Dried out a liquor store. Fell. Fought. Died. Before he learned to lie, and cover his mistakes with worse ones and hurt the only people who gave a damn. He wishes, not for the first time, for that Cas.
This Cas, dressed in immaculate white, waits like a man on a chopping block for the axe or the pardon. And Dean can't give either. They sit and stand in a stranglehold of moments with the things that might have been, and the things that can't be taken back. Whatever they do they can't break the stalemate, stuck in more ways than one in limbo.
Dean grapples with focus, trying to keep his head on straight. He's the only one who can. Cas remains in that frozen state, locked with only God knows what running through his brain. And Dean's tired when he stares too long. Instead his eyes glance off the gun next to his hand. He might as well see what else he's got to work with. He detaches the magazine, counts the cartridges. She can handle seven rounds, but he sees that she's down by two, which leaves five bullets. If the hole in Bobby's shelf has been lesson enough, there's nothing in the chamber.
Five bullets. Five things to kill. Guess he's gotta choose wisely.
If this place is just some kind of illusion, maybe there is no use searching Bobby's storage for more ammo. This place, Bobby's real place would've given Purgatory a run for its money. Might as well ask Cas about the rules here, this construct might measure up to the real deal after all.
He stares up from the open parts of his pistol, a question starting on his lips. And then he notices. Something spills from the arm of Cas' overcoat. Already there's a puddle near that white stainless shoe. Blood.
“Hey-!” Dean pushes up from the chair away from the desk. He strides over, looks Cas up and down for any holes that might be making that puddle. He reaches out to grab an arm. Cas shudders away from reach, eyes turned away from Dean. “You're bleeding,” Dean points out, in case the guy hasn't noticed.
“Don't,” There's something determined about the way Cas takes a steadying breath, the way his entire frame stops shuffling, and stands his ground; it makes Dean pause. “I'm bloodletting,” He opens and closes his fist, watching the droplets fall down his left sleeve, unconcerned. “The sigil must be kept open, fresh.” There's an angel blade in his right hand, red edged.
“Where'd you get that?” Dean worries at its sudden appearance.
“Uriel,” Cas might say dispassionately, but from the way he squeezes his fist, Dean can tell how the answer scrapes against the grain of his outward calm, “...after his death. Though I suppose, it was Anna who gave it to me after she killed him.”
“I mean, did you bring that to Purgatory?” Dean's careful to push things too far, but he has to know. “Or did you find it here? Is there other stuff we can use here, Cas?”
“Oh, I've always had it, Dean,” he lifts left his arm to eye-level, relaxes his fingers and cups his hand. The blood wells to the center of his palm. The pull of gravity makes it spill over the edge of his fingers along the fault lines of his skin. He watches enraptured to an uncomfortable degree. There's blood on Cas' hand, and he's looking at it like he's just noticing for the first time.
Mine too, Cas. Dean thinks and means to say, to bridge the stretch of nothing that's now between them; open in the way a wound is open.
“I've needed it, though I wish-” Cas lowers his hand, content to let his mind take him somewhere else, “-I-I haven't thought of Anna for such a long time.” There's genuine pleasure at this rediscovery, something not quite a smile graces his lips. It has all the energy of a smile, so it must count. Unfortunate, how it doesn't last.
“I should've followed her Dean, from the very beginning, you know. When the Earth began to hold her interests far better than Heaven did. And when she ripped out her grace, you could hear the division of it shattering the firmament, and that was the third time I think the Host fell completely silent.”
“She was the first of us to side with you and Sam. I should’ve followed her then-definitely before she went crazy.” The blood continues its gentle puddle on the floor when Dean decides to return to “Bobby's” desk, more exhausted now than he was before. An idea sparks itself awake in Cas' eyes as he stares straight ahead drawn to the red scribbles on the windows. “Maybe that's just the fate of fallen angels. Going mad, before their lights go out. But her fall was different from mine, so that can't be right. No one brought her back, or the others. There were so many...” he stops like he's poked at a cut that goes deeper than first thought.
“No one came back. Just me...” He turns away from the glass panes with grief reflected in his bright mad eyes. It's the second time he has actually stared directly at Dean since they got here. “And I wondered at the miracle,” he laughs, something horrible exhumed from the depths of him that can only be the tattered remains of what he was, “that brought me back time and time again. Now I see...” The red glint of the blood on the window bounces off his haphazard form. “You were right, Dean. It was broken-”
“Cas...” Dean is hammered against that poignant stare, a dangerous mix of clarity and complete insanity warring in their depths.
“-I couldn't see before,” Finally Cas' gaze returns to the windows looking out Purgatory, giving the dark things his fractured stare. “-Now I see everything.”
Dean clutches the pieces of his pistol in his hand, feels the edges of it digging against the grooves of his palm; the magazine outside its metal casing with its five bullets.
“What does that mean, Cas?” Dean fears to know as he watches Cas smile that bittersweet thing that lifts the edge of his lips brokenly. “What does that even mean?”
With Cas' silence, Dean decides he doesn't want to know.
Chapter 2 Blood is...
/lj-cut>
Author: the_poette
Art: dahlia94
Beta: anon-unknown001
Rating/Warnings: PG-13/R for language, violence, potentially disturbing imagery. Some Crazy!Cas
Characters: Dean, Cas, a little bit of Sam.
Genre: Gen, Angst. hurt/(not much)comfort
Word Count: 16,300
Spoilers: Season 6 and 7
Summary: AU of Purgatory written before season 8 aired. It starts with a house in the middle of the conscious black that bares its teeth and eyes. There’s no Benny the vampire with a neat escape hatch. There’s just Dean, who can’t forgive and forget, and Cas, who can’t hold onto his sanity.
Author’s Note: This is my first fic ever in Supernatural, so I’m super stoked I’m submitting it for spnaubigbang. This fic is supposed to leave off at a cliffhanger. It’s going to be part of a much larger series. So I hope you enjoy part I.
Fic Masterpost
There's a moment between heartbeat and breath, where fear has not yet acclimatized. Something friendless and brother-less stares back at him with a horizon filled with eyes and mouths that cut the dark. Whatever passes for night here, is filled with the things calling for his death.
Alone. Only twice before has he endured it, and these moments follow the worst experiences of his life (and death). There's a certainty this will prove no different. But like a disease-a curse-the inescapable need to bleed and survive overrides any former paralysis, and Dean breaks away from the looming tree line like there is any hope of outrunning.
He must seem like a signal flare, a dinner bell wrung, because what follows behind is the beat and maw of every man-eating thing he'd ever put away from the earth. Payback's a bitch, and he owes his life to the fact that they are caught by surprise just as much as he, or that they've decided to play first with their meal.
The pistol always tucked in the back of his jeans rides down the small of his back, as he tramples the black roots of underbrush with his stamping feet. He can't bring it out just to fire a couple of shots that he can't take back. There's no reloading here. No good wasting bullets until one of them starts chomping on his boots. He keeps on running.
He's going to make them work for their meal.
But the ache starts up after what might be more than a mile. The ground is uneven, he expends more energy trying not to trip and die. The terrain is as much his enemy as the creepies coming up behind him. The air gets worse the more he inhales, oil slick film coats the back of his throat, fetid and cloying as it tries to choke him. He wants to gag at each sharp breath, his lungs rejecting every gained step. There must be a knife under his skin, stabbing his side, or a broken rib grinding his insides to mush. Still, he can't, and therefore won't, let up the pace; ignoring the pleas of his body to a level he hasn't practiced since Hell-who knew it'd come in handy now.
Just need to find some place safe.
Dean's eyes dart frantically over the dark shapelessness passing him by, searching for harbor. Some place safe. But who is he kidding, this is Monsterland there's nowhere sa-
He slams against something hard, and crashes to the black viscous ground. Blunt pain digging into his forehead, he massages the bump that must be emerging and, through squinted eyes, stares at the obstruction that hadn't been there before. It's a door, appearing from seemingly nowhere. No door-frame, no house. Just a door sticking upright, stuck in black muck.
He would know that door anywhere.
But it can't be...
He should consider further, but Dean's run out of time. A great many things hiss up from behind and it's either stupidity or desperation that makes his hand wrap around the knob, turn it, and pull it open. He doesn't even think to look back. Instinct screams at him to step on through. So he does-
His foot lands on hardwood floor, a musty air filled with the scent of old books. No throaty clicks or hissing, just the quiet staircase on his right and the living room opening out on his left. Devil's trap on the ceiling, desk cluttered mid-research; every detail exactly as he remembers.
Now still enough to run out of adrenaline, he gags and hacks up the black mucous settled in his lungs. He spits up tar-like slime, sewage-flavor glued to the back of his throat. It falls from his lips like a black slug on the wood floor, and he leaves it there. Once done, he stares in numb shock at what should have been char and ash.
Bobby's house.
His legs give out, his mind going blank with this payload. An ache he'd long mashed down comes rushing to the surface, a buoyed lump of grief so keen and festered through with old loss.
“Bobby...?” Dean's voice breaks rough against the surfaces of empty corridors. The quiet echo back comprises all his disbelief. Despite this, he still looks around expectantly, eager for a disgruntled greeting or cuss. Nothing replies, and Dean feels like a lead fool entertaining ghosts when he ought to know better.
He batters everything disappointed down to a manageable size and climbs stiffly to his feet, looking for any chinks in the illusion (hallucination?). But everything is in place, even the mess. The only discrepancy: the three curtain-less window panes set above the couch. Fresh blood drawn in distorted slants and cross-hatching in the segmented glass, an unrecognizable finger-painting of warding he's never seen before.
Dean studies them before glancing out past the blood and film expecting to see the old junkers of Singer Salvage Yard piled high on the other side. Instead, he finds only what he can remember running blindly through before, the dark growth of Purgatory, chaotic and unknown. He catches insect-like movement scurrying in and out the shapeless black before him. The negative space is thick and watchful, but nothing gives itself away. As one the shadows contract and expand like the ribcage of some monstrous thing panting in rabid starvation. Never holding its breath. Not one moment. The gleam of red eyes blot in and out of focus when he stares too long.
“Definitely not in Kansas anymore,” Dean says just to hear something other than the pounding of his heartbeat in his eardrums. He palms the gun at his back, just for weight and reassurance. He doesn't show his back to the windows, keeping watch on the things keeping watch of him.
Two can play this game, assholes.
“This is your chosen perception.”
Dean whiplashes around, and points his gun to the presence manifested on his right.
“Cas...” He utters it like a curse. His finger trembles against the trigger so badly he lowers it and has to bend over his knees to catch his breath.
“Interesting,” Cas is oblivious to the years he just shaved off Dean's life. The curve of his mouth is gentle as his gaze roams around the room, a look of wonderment in his eyes. “I would have thought the Impala, but this makes sense too.”
He's dressed exactly as Dean last saw him; no dirt on his white scrubs, hair combed down and maybe Meg did it in the hospital while he was under her care. Looking at Cas, sets all the scratches and bumps on Dean's body to complaining, his mood to pissed off.
“Where-the-Hell were you?” Dean grits out with all culminated frustration of having dealt with one Dick just to get rabbit-holed into Dickland.
“Creating this space,” Cas delivers it like a proud architect, like it should be obvious.
With fraying patience, Dean relaxes his hold on the gun, settles himself for a game of words that will probably destroy his patience altogether. “What's Bobby's house doing in Purgatory, Cas?”
“This construct is yours, Dean.” Cas denies with muted amusement. His gaze goes wide, as invasive as one of his soul-probing stares can ever be, like he's taking more in than just the termite infested walls of Bobby's. It travels up and down every re-created object in the old Singer home, and settles somewhere safely outside Dean's personal bubble. “How you've chosen to interpret the sigil.”
“What...?” The bump on Dean's head returns with a vengeance in the face of Cas' explanations.
“I needed time to build it.” Castiel points a finger to the blood lines on the windows.
“So that's keeping all the creepies away?” Dean's trying to keep the incredulity away. What Cas says is starting to make sense. Since ganking Dick, the crazy train seems to be in control, for now.
Cas affirms with an encouraged nod, eager for approval (for trust). Dean goes back to watching the window warily, heart heavy that he can't give it. He chooses another topic, no less important.
“What the hell are they?” Dean thinks back on the red dots lining the ebony horizon, feels his skin crawl with a warning to stay clear of them.
The open expression of Cas' face shuts down. “Old. Hungry,” the gravity of his presence is the same as what Dean woke up to, sobering. “There's no name for them anymore.”
“Can they see us?” Dean's not sure why they haven't muzzled up to the window by now, like some zoo attraction from hell. His fingers prickle for defensive action. His eyes tell him what's separating him from fang and clawed death is dirty glass.
“They've lost our scent,” Cas remarks, his focus on the windows direct, not searching or blind like Dean's. “...for now,” he finishes bluntly just so Dean understands this isn't a permanent situation.
At that, Dean doesn't lose sight of the window as he takes a seat at Bobby's desk with an exhaustion that's been barking for attention since he landed here. He might as well take some rest now, no knowing when it's going to get back to running for dear life.
Cas remains standing at the window, eyes as equally observant of the outside. “Others will come,” Cas warns, “Some you'll recognize. Some you won't. Hopefully we'll be passed over.”
Yeah, hopefully.
Dean sets the pistol down on its side, ivory grips clicking on the flat surface of the desk. He rubs the bump on his forehead, trying to ease it down. More questions grip Dean's mind now that he can sit and think them up. He starts with the obvious.
“What is this place, Cas?” He might as well get a lay of the land.
Sitting here fills him to the brim with things he'd rather not have. There's a bullet-hole on the side of the bookshelf near the sliding double doorway that leads to the kitchen. He can see it from Bobby's desk, remembers the hell Bobby raised after Dean decided to clean a gun in his house and didn't check the chamber. One of the curtains above it is a little singed in the bottom, some risky anti-ritual Sam blew up in here. The blood stain that never came out. The streaks on the floor from heavy furniture poltergeisted across the room. The scratches and dents are all there, like a road-map to Dean's life. But it's just a construct, something apparently thought up by Dean (whatever that means).
“A pocket...a rift,” Cas ticks off answers, spitting out clarifications like a dictionary. “A...cage would be a more apt description. Keeps them out, us in.”
“Not comforting, Cas,” Dean moans into his hand at that, hating this place just a little bit more.
“It's not meant for comfort, Dean,” he says it unapologetically. “Though I suppose the presence of a familiar environment, does provide-”
“Cas,” Dean delivers it like a borderline warning, trying to reign in the lashing-out at the last minute. He tries for calm, ends up at sarcastic. “Explain to me, like I'm four-why does this place look like Bobby's?”
“It's a sigil, Dean. I've written the boundaries that mark the space inside as a sanctuary. Your mind can't interpret them, except for the commands on the windows. The rest you've assimilated in terms you understand. A place of safety is...” the smooth delivery halts here. The nervous gesture of his hands running along the edges of his overcoat return “...was Bobby's home, his ultimate fate notwithstanding. Symbolic, considering his role in your life. The Impala would have been my first choice, but this construct is yours. I realize now the space would have been confining. Your vehicle did not accommodate the honeybees at all-”
“Stop!” Dean's hands slam on the wood of Bobby's desk and release a harsh clap. “Just stop for one freaking second...”
Cas flinches at the sound, startled like some wild thing caught in Dean's headlights on a night road, his hands dropping from the furious clutch of the overcoat.
All of a sudden, that dark angry thing rolling around inside of Dean loses its fire. He remembers the Cas of before. Old Cas-the Cas who threatened to drop him back to Hell the first time Dean had shown him insolence. The old Cas who flat-out rebelled. Dried out a liquor store. Fell. Fought. Died. Before he learned to lie, and cover his mistakes with worse ones and hurt the only people who gave a damn. He wishes, not for the first time, for that Cas.
This Cas, dressed in immaculate white, waits like a man on a chopping block for the axe or the pardon. And Dean can't give either. They sit and stand in a stranglehold of moments with the things that might have been, and the things that can't be taken back. Whatever they do they can't break the stalemate, stuck in more ways than one in limbo.
Dean grapples with focus, trying to keep his head on straight. He's the only one who can. Cas remains in that frozen state, locked with only God knows what running through his brain. And Dean's tired when he stares too long. Instead his eyes glance off the gun next to his hand. He might as well see what else he's got to work with. He detaches the magazine, counts the cartridges. She can handle seven rounds, but he sees that she's down by two, which leaves five bullets. If the hole in Bobby's shelf has been lesson enough, there's nothing in the chamber.
Five bullets. Five things to kill. Guess he's gotta choose wisely.
If this place is just some kind of illusion, maybe there is no use searching Bobby's storage for more ammo. This place, Bobby's real place would've given Purgatory a run for its money. Might as well ask Cas about the rules here, this construct might measure up to the real deal after all.
He stares up from the open parts of his pistol, a question starting on his lips. And then he notices. Something spills from the arm of Cas' overcoat. Already there's a puddle near that white stainless shoe. Blood.
“Hey-!” Dean pushes up from the chair away from the desk. He strides over, looks Cas up and down for any holes that might be making that puddle. He reaches out to grab an arm. Cas shudders away from reach, eyes turned away from Dean. “You're bleeding,” Dean points out, in case the guy hasn't noticed.
“Don't,” There's something determined about the way Cas takes a steadying breath, the way his entire frame stops shuffling, and stands his ground; it makes Dean pause. “I'm bloodletting,” He opens and closes his fist, watching the droplets fall down his left sleeve, unconcerned. “The sigil must be kept open, fresh.” There's an angel blade in his right hand, red edged.
“Where'd you get that?” Dean worries at its sudden appearance.
“Uriel,” Cas might say dispassionately, but from the way he squeezes his fist, Dean can tell how the answer scrapes against the grain of his outward calm, “...after his death. Though I suppose, it was Anna who gave it to me after she killed him.”
“I mean, did you bring that to Purgatory?” Dean's careful to push things too far, but he has to know. “Or did you find it here? Is there other stuff we can use here, Cas?”
“Oh, I've always had it, Dean,” he lifts left his arm to eye-level, relaxes his fingers and cups his hand. The blood wells to the center of his palm. The pull of gravity makes it spill over the edge of his fingers along the fault lines of his skin. He watches enraptured to an uncomfortable degree. There's blood on Cas' hand, and he's looking at it like he's just noticing for the first time.
Mine too, Cas. Dean thinks and means to say, to bridge the stretch of nothing that's now between them; open in the way a wound is open.
“I've needed it, though I wish-” Cas lowers his hand, content to let his mind take him somewhere else, “-I-I haven't thought of Anna for such a long time.” There's genuine pleasure at this rediscovery, something not quite a smile graces his lips. It has all the energy of a smile, so it must count. Unfortunate, how it doesn't last.
“I should've followed her Dean, from the very beginning, you know. When the Earth began to hold her interests far better than Heaven did. And when she ripped out her grace, you could hear the division of it shattering the firmament, and that was the third time I think the Host fell completely silent.”
“She was the first of us to side with you and Sam. I should’ve followed her then-definitely before she went crazy.” The blood continues its gentle puddle on the floor when Dean decides to return to “Bobby's” desk, more exhausted now than he was before. An idea sparks itself awake in Cas' eyes as he stares straight ahead drawn to the red scribbles on the windows. “Maybe that's just the fate of fallen angels. Going mad, before their lights go out. But her fall was different from mine, so that can't be right. No one brought her back, or the others. There were so many...” he stops like he's poked at a cut that goes deeper than first thought.
“No one came back. Just me...” He turns away from the glass panes with grief reflected in his bright mad eyes. It's the second time he has actually stared directly at Dean since they got here. “And I wondered at the miracle,” he laughs, something horrible exhumed from the depths of him that can only be the tattered remains of what he was, “that brought me back time and time again. Now I see...” The red glint of the blood on the window bounces off his haphazard form. “You were right, Dean. It was broken-”
“Cas...” Dean is hammered against that poignant stare, a dangerous mix of clarity and complete insanity warring in their depths.
“-I couldn't see before,” Finally Cas' gaze returns to the windows looking out Purgatory, giving the dark things his fractured stare. “-Now I see everything.”
Dean clutches the pieces of his pistol in his hand, feels the edges of it digging against the grooves of his palm; the magazine outside its metal casing with its five bullets.
“What does that mean, Cas?” Dean fears to know as he watches Cas smile that bittersweet thing that lifts the edge of his lips brokenly. “What does that even mean?”
With Cas' silence, Dean decides he doesn't want to know.
Chapter 2 Blood is...
/lj-cut>