In Which I have too many WIPs.
From my Gabriel Big Bang, which is a sequel to La diritta via and therefore a Castiel-and-Dean-and-Gabriel-in-Purgatory fic:
“I knew this story was Sleeping fucking Beauty,” Dean muttered.
It wasn’t a cloud, the dark mass around the base of the tower. It was a forest. Specifically, a forest of thorns.
Briars, or thorn trees, or possibly just these great writhing vines frozen in the weirdest contortions. Some narrow as a finger, others wide around as Dean was, twisted into arches and bridges and buttresses and great clawed hands and minarets over their heads and tangled into grotesque and obscene thickets all around. And the thorns: great fang-like things long as Gabriel’s hand, and vicious little hooks that snagged and broke off in the denim of your jeans then worried against your skin like broken glass. And all frozen: not a movement anywhere, but every now and then a faint, distant rustle or rattle, like the wind among the thorns, or something small scurrying around under the eaves.
And the worrying thing was, once you started paying attention, there was no finding where one plant ended and the next began. Nothing seemed to be rooted in the ground, and the branches twisted and divided and went on for far too long. The whole forest could have been one great tangled entity, breathing slow and rasping in its sleep.
Castiel was twitchy.
Which made sense - it felt like they were walking through a thing, not a place, and it felt very powerful and nothing like anything else Gabriel had come across in Purgatory before. But the tower was very different, they knew that, so maybe that was all he was picking up on. It was something else, and it meant something else, and every now and then they caught glimpses of tawny brown far above: the hawk, balancing on the air, drifting around and around the tower, waiting.
And nothing had attacked them. So far.
Something snagged on his sleeve.
It was a thin branch, forked like a snake’s tongue and black and dull as tar. The thorns on it were hooked like a rose’s, black at the base and bone-white at the tips; and when Gabriel shook his arm impatiently they took a few beats too long to lose their grip.
Ahead of him, Dean shot a sneaky look sideways at Castiel’s face. Then he reached out to tuck a couple of fingers into a belt loop of that hilarious overcoat.
The tense line of Castiel’s shoulders eased a bit into alert-not-alarmed, and it was only a few steps before they were walking so close together they were practically knocking shoulders. Which was really impractical when you had to clamber under low-swooping branches and over others that wound along the ground like oversized snakes. But hey, who needs practicality when you have the epic non-sexual romance of the ages going on.
When Gabriel looked back over his shoulder, the path had closed up behind them. It had only ever been a few gaps in weird angles between branches, but now there were dark fingers of wood that curved in to almost cover the spaces, as if they had always been there.
Still no movement.
Possibly because he was watching.
He turned his eyes smartly back to front, because if that was how it was going to be, if they were going to be playing Weeping Angels, keeping eyes on his guys was definitely the way to go.
“Might wanna pick up the pace,” he called out, low, and hopped over a couple of branches to catch up. One of them clipped his toe as he cleared it, even though he knew he’d left more than enough room to get by.
“What, my ass not fine enough from this angle?” Dean asked, and slapped it helpfully, for a better visual.
“Your ass is as rosy as the sun and as delectable as a fresh Parisian croissant,” Gabriel informed him generously, tucking one hand into the back pocket of Dean’s jeans and laying the other in the curve of Castiel’s spine, “but unless it likes getting horse-whipped with thorns we don’t want to be in here much longer, petal.”
“Why is it,” Castiel wondered aloud, “that the two of you insist on communicating necessary information in the most vulgar way possible.”
Dean knocked his shoulder against Castiel’s. “Bitch, you love it.”
Then he tripped.
Castiel’s hand was tight around his upper arm in a moment, and Gabriel’s ass-groping was at least good enough to keep him from going sprawling, so he didn’t actually break his ankle. Which he would have if he’d gone down, because -
“Okay, I know that wasn’t there a moment ago.”
- a broad tendril was curled almost all the way around his foot, so that there was no way it could have tugged loose on the way down. And there was a definite quiver to it, as if it was almost moving, gearing up for another go.
Dean kicked free, just as Castiel went icy-stiff with recognition.
“Leviathan,” he growled, and - fuck. Might have known they’d come across that mess sooner or later. And of course it was scattered around the entrance, right where they had landed: on their own timescale, their defeat had only just landed them back here. They were still weak, still sluggish and quivering - still dangerous.
No wonder it felt like Purgatory but not. It was older. Leviathan was what Purgatory had been created for.
----
From the so-far-unnamed sequel to Losyngerie, and so an alternate ending to season 7:
“Gabriel.”
Gabriel’s gaze swung back to Sam, wary and so very tired that Sam ached with it.
“What, Sam?” he said, like the words were too heavy for him to lace them with sarcasm.
Sam wasn’t quite sure what he’d meant to say, but what came out was, “Remember the night before Elysian Fields?” And, as Gabriel’s forehead furrowed up and his mobile mouth twitched into something sour, “I prayed to you. You hear that?”
Gabriel’s chin jerked upwards, a curt sort of a nod that gave nothing away.
“Because Dean was… he was so fucking broken, even before Castiel vanished, and after that he was just… done, I don’t know, like he thought we’d lost the war already. And I was so scared he’d say yes, you know, just because… like there was nothing left of Dean in there, so why not shoehorn Michael in instead? And -” he broke off, a short laugh that hurt his throat. “And I thought after, praying to you, didn’t really make much sense, you know? All that time you spent trying to make us say yes. But you were the only one I could think of, even if all you could do was patch Castiel up, and I hadn’t prayed in almost a year, and… I don’t know. Guess I was desperate.”
He trailed off into nothing.
Gabriel looked like something carved from marble, distant and smooth and cool and beautiful. Like an angel.
“Is that why you came?” Sam asked quietly.
Gabriel’s eyes cut sideways, a brief flash of gold, then they were gone. “That’s why I looked in on you,” he muttered after a minute, like it didn’t count if he didn’t say it aloud. “I came because of what I saw. What was happening.”
Serious Gabriel was a strange, unfamiliar thing. Sam wasn’t really sure what to do with it.
“Okay,” he said carefully, and then, “Thanks.” He looked down at his hands, hoping for something to do, then looked up again. “Guess prayers do get answered sometimes, then.”
The corner of Gabriel’s mouth twitched, just a bit. “Wouldn’t hold my breath, kid.”
Sam snorted, more to relieve the tension than because it was funny. “You don’t breathe, angel.”
Gabriel gave him an incredulous look. Then he rolled his eyes.
Sam grinned at him, letting the dimples cut in.
“Pfft.” Gabriel flapped one hand, and sprawled onto the bed like all his strings had been cut. “So go on, tell me what happened after that. Locking up Lucy and all.”
Huh. “You don’t know?”
Gabriel snapped up a bright orange cocktail, and defied the laws of physics by sipping daintily at it while lying flat on his back. Which begged the question of how much of the whole oral obsession was just there for handy distractions and show. “Bare bones, broad picture. Been more focussed on recent events, really. Like a whole new story. But someone tore the pages out of the end of the novel I was reading and just handed me the sequel. I was invested in that story, you know.”
Sam chuckled a bit, experimentally, and tipped his chair back so he could stare at the ceiling instead of Gabriel. “That was quite the investment, yeah.”
And he actually did. He told Gabriel everything.
He started out slow - the bare facts of the last couple of weeks of Apocalypse, chasing down the Rings and everything. But saying yes to Lucifer, and the reasons behind that… you couldn’t just lay out the facts for something like that.
And Gabriel was silent, and just… listened.
Which he was probably used to. Being an angel. Being one of the few angels whose names everyone knew, and who therefore got all the personal prayers, all the dark and wretched anguishes of late at night.
Saying yes to Lucifer. And what came after. And the Cage, and Lucifer’s fury and despair, and Michael’s frozen silence. And the memories, slotting in awkwardly around them, of being up on earth without a soul, walking around caring about nothing. Strange memories, and stagnant, because usually what came with memories was how you felt about the thing you were remembering, and with those there was nothing.
Sam had never told anyone this before. Not so much because he had something against talking, like Dean would have. More because… well, everyone who counted had already known. And everyone else in the world would have thought he was insane.
Which he had been. For a while.
Castiel, and his distance, and the way he had drawn further and further away as time went on, as the civil war had got worse and Dean had got more and more sharp with him. And Sam hadn’t even known at the time, hadn’t had the memories to piece it all together, to stop and say “hey, something doesn’t add up here”. Until he had, and that had been all Castiel’s fault, and Sam had broken into pieces.
Castiel as God. Sam’s horrible twisted imaginary version of Lucifer, dancing and cackling in his head.
(He was waiting, even through all this, just waiting for the memories to rise up and consume him, with the hot angelic weight of Gabriel’s presence pressing in against him from that side, twisting the wall between reality and hallucination. But it never came: talking was too much of a relief.)
Castiel’s fall. The Leviathans, and the months after, as everything they’d relied on was taken away from them, leaving them alone. Leaving Sam alone, except for Dean. Learning to rely on Dean again, like he hadn’t been able to for years, for one reason or another. Getting to be brothers again, maybe for the first time as adults. Seeing Dean drink more and more at the same time, seeing Dean falling.
Lucifer becoming more real, more like himself, gradually. Less hellfire and torment and rape threats, more childish boredom and the menace of love that wanted to keep everything for itself, while (as Sam had pieced together later) the latent connection between angel and vessel had been strengthened by Sam’s broken mind, while Sam had unconsciously called out to his angel down below, and Lucifer had ever so gradually taken over from the caricature that Sam had made of him.
Letting him in. Locking the real Lucifer in place, inside Sam’s mind. By saying “shut up.”
That made Gabriel chuckle, dry and hurt.
Emmanuel, and his wife (his goddamn wife) whose name Sam couldn’t remember right now, because he’d never met her, and Castiel had never mentioned her again.
Dean neither, come to that.
“Fuck, that stupid kid,” Gabriel breathed, like he was imploring the ceiling to change history.
Sam’s cheeks were wet. He wasn’t sure when that had happened.
Castiel saving Sam. Castiel’s madness. Leaving him there. Making Castiel the abandoned one. Shit. Leaving him there with Meg, of all people.
The prophecy, and the phone call. He’s awake.
Castiel’s dubious sanity, and the way he’d kept Lucifer hanging around because one or both of them was lonely, and the way Lucifer had grinned and hissed and eventually saved them, just a little bit. Until Sam had believed it was really him. Until the devil and the angel who had tried to be God had decided to resurrect Gabriel.
There was silence in the [adjective] hotel room, for maybe ten minutes. Sam wasn’t really sure.
“I did, you know.”
Sam cocked his head against the hard chair back, bemused.
“Patch Castiel up.” Gabriel shrugged, and didn’t look in Sam’s direction at all. “I like him.”
Sam… didn’t really have anything to say to that. But it was good to know.
“So,” Gabriel said after another while, ironic and halfway to bright, “we can all be screwed up together.”
----
From a timestamp for March-Stalkers Mighty, from Castiel's point of view:
Now.
“You gotta open your eyes, Cas,” Dean whispered in his ear, breath huffing distraction down the side of Castiel’s neck.
“My eyes are open,” Castiel grumbled at him, and promptly made a liar of himself as Dean tucked his nose into the crook of Castiel’s neck and laughed, as Dean’s hand on his waist shifted with the horse’s movement and brushed warm against Castiel’s skin, through the loose ties at the side of his tunic. “This horse is too tall,” he complained when he opened his eyes again. He tried to scowl down at the smelly, inelegant beast between his thighs, with its coarse mane and the steady thud-thud-thud of its dish-plate hooves over the soft sod, but it was hard to build up a good scowl with the heat of Dean’s body pressed up warm against his back, nestled snug between his wings.
Dean’s mouth broadened into a grin against Castiel’s shoulder. Castiel knew exactly what that one would look like on his face, but he’d never felt it pressed into his skin before. “My angel, scared of heights?”
“I’m not scared of heights,” Castiel said with dignity, and generously refrained from reminding him what had happened the one time he’d offered to take Dean up into the air. “The horse is too broad. Why am I riding a beast too large and heavy to run when your panegyric on these creatures emphasised their speed and agility in dangerous situations? This behemoth could hardly dodge a stone circle.”
Dean wriggled in closer behind him, and Castiel was promptly distracted by the warm bulge pressed in against the base of his spine. Not quite hard, he thought, but he was still learning how it felt to have another person moving against him like this, and through several layers of clothing it was hard to tell. An enthralling train of thought, and one that held him long enough that he took some time to realise Dean was adjusting his grip on the reins.
“‘Cos it’s impossible to fall off a carthorse. Every kid learns to ride on them. Dude, use your left hand, you’re grabbing these like it’s a sword hilt or something.”
“You told me I could only use one hand,” Castiel retorted, bundling the reins up between his hands. They tugged a bit at the horse’s head, but it plodded amiably on and ignored Castiel entirely. Which was probably for the best.
“Mm,” Dean agreed, and rapped gently on the back of Castiel’s right hand until he let go. His voice was low and lazy with the summer sun and what Castiel thought might be the early rumblings of lust. More than enough to chase a warm shiver over Castiel’s skin. “You’re always gentler with your left. ‘Sides, if you’re fighting you’ll want your sword in this one.
“If I’m fighting,” Castiel pointed out tartly, leaning back into the heat of Dean’s chest, “I’ll be using my own feet and wings so that I can move.”
Dean propped up his chin on Castiel’s shoulder (a glimpse, at the edge of his vision, of eyes gleaming mischief, fixed on Castiel’s face as if there was nothing in the world more worth the study). “What,” he murmured against the softest curve of Castiel’s ear, and yes, definitely a tease this time, “and leave your poor confused horse to get torn up by goblins or whatever?”
“Why am I learning to ride a horse,” Castiel complained to the unfeeling sky, and tried not to smile too obviously because it was bad for Dean’s ego.
“Because you keep getting your wings ripped up and I’m not carrying you next time,” Dean declared cheerfully, and slid his hands snug around Castiel’s waist to knot together over his stomach. “Gee up, soldier. I want lunch.”
Dean’s eyes were a powerful weapon, and Castiel had never really had any defence against them.
Then.
“Just poison them, Castiel.”
“No.”
“It would be quicker, and surer. If this spell of yours doesn’t do its job you’ll have risked yourself for nothing. And more angels will end up like Balthazar did.”
There was a dark, ferocious part of Castiel that stirred and hackled its feathers at that, the part that he was very careful to keep hooded and leashed. The dogs were beasts, and vicious, and the ideal of wreaking vicious bloody havoc right back at them until their deadly voices choked in their throats was - was far too tempting.
Balthazar would have done it, if their positions had been reversed. Balthazar would have killed them all, and poisoned the humans’ food too if he could. But Castiel couldn’t, because he couldn’t hate the humans.
Much as he might like to, some days.
“Rachel. If there is the smallest chance that humans feel about their dogs the way you feel about your gyrfalcons, would you do it.”
Rachel had been a woman of few words, even before the deaths of her husband and her son. Few words, and to the point. And often harsh.
“Monsters can’t love, Castiel.”
Castiel looked down at his hands, and at hers, knotting the reed baskets that would contain the powder. A technique he and Balthazar had perfected, once, for scattering the essence of a spell (harmless ones, back then) over large amounts of food. Her fingers looked too short by comparison, too browned. Too practical.
Of course Castiel hadn’t wanted to be the one to creep into the human territory. It was dangerous, he knew that; and he also knew, even if Rachel always swore he forgot, that his continued survival was important to the garrison, maybe to their entire nation, if they were to pull themselves back from the edge of extinction.
It was a plain fact, however, that none of the other angels had any familiarity with the human lands, or with the layout of their town, or how a feed shed might differ in appearance from a farm house. Castiel had a far better chance of finding what he needed to find, doing what he needed to do, and getting out alive, than any other angel they had left.
And that was the problem, the problem that he was trying not to think about. He had memories.
Even the scent and texture of the air in these valleys did strange things to his heart, and stirred up restless old dreams of things he’d kept folded away for many years. Careless things - simple, warm, childhood things. This entire land was haunted, for Castiel, and if he once crossed those walls the ghosts of the past would come flooding thick and poignant. He knew best one quiet oak grove near the Wall - had only ever seen the buildings of the town from a distance - but there was barely a field or a grove in the more isolated parts of the human territory that his own younger feet hadn’t trod. Hadn’t been guided through.
He stamped down on the annoying little flutter in his stomach. It was becoming dismally familiar lately: the irrational terror that it would not only be the land and the air singing their sweet siren song of memory. That the ghost of a boy would rise up with them, gap-toothed and fair with the summer sun sparkling out of his eyes, grinning like nothing could ever go wrong, and would reach out his hand to still Castiel’s heart.
Which was ridiculous. Castiel ought to be able to get in and out without meeting a single human; and if he did meet a human it would surely not be Dean; and if it was Dean... well, it wouldn’t be Dean anymore. Just another human.
Dean wasn’t a boy, by now.
If he was still alive.
But even vague childhood memories were better than nothing. At least he had a fairly clear idea of the structure of human society and agriculture, because Dean had always talked (in depth, incessantly, about everything and everyone he knew), and Castiel had always listened.
“And yet they protect each other with their lives,” he said quietly, and realised when he heard his own voice that the silence had stretched out into minutes and Rachel had stopped expecting him to answer.
There had been a human amongst the hunters, a grown man, who could have been Dean. Castiel had seen his hand, squeezing rough and gentle on the scruff of one dog’s neck, a little rough affectionate shake to the loose skin. His hand, hauling a younger taller man (Sam?) out of Balthazar’s way. His hand, doing Castiel’s brother to death, while the noise of the dogs kept Castiel helpless, too far away.
Castiel hadn’t seen that man’s eyes then. It could have been Dean, or it could have been any other man grown up like him. A brother, a cousin. Or nobody at all - it could be that the resemblance was only due to the ghosts of memory, stalking Castiel as closely as they had since he’d entered these valleys. Making his eyes hunt the seething mass of humanity, even from so far above, looking for something he’d know.
It was when he met Dean’s eyes in the feed shed that he knew him, and knew he couldn’t avoid knowing him.