Shine
The weather is turning before they’re a mile out from the lot, the moonlit sky taking on a sickly greenish cast, with thick cloud rolling in from the east.
Rain flurries at the windshield and when he glances off the road and out into the country, Bobby can just about see the treetops dancing wildly. He tells himself the weather just took a turn for the worse, but the sense of foreboding sits in his gut like a lead brick.
Castiel is still and silent, and when Bobby slants his eyes over he can see the younger man is staring into space, unblinking, hugging himself much as he was back at the house.
He can use the distraction, so Bobby puts it out there even though the answer is plain to see. “You okay?” No reply. “Castiel. Cas. Hey.”
He reaches out, pats the other man’s leg, and he flinches himself when Castiel cries out, jumps like a scalded cat and slams himself back against the door, away from Bobby. He’s whitefaced as he clears his throat. “My apologies,” he says breathlessly. “You startled me.”
“Are you okay?” Bobby repeats. “I mean - Gabriel did fix you, right? All the broken parts?”
Castiel studies him for a moment before he huffs out a hollow laugh. “All the broken parts,” he echoes.
Even though it isn’t really an answer, Bobby thinks maybe it’s an answer. “Look. You know that was all a vast fuckin’ snafu, don’t you, boy?” he ventures quietly. “I was expecting Dean to show up and scare him off. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Castiel sags back against the upholstery, newly composed. “That seems to be the story of my life,” he concedes matter-of-factly. “But don’t concern yourself, Bobby. I’ve had worse. More so than you can possibly conceive.”
Bobby is confused for a split second, but then he wonders how he could have forgotten. “You mean in the Pit,” he says.
Castiel’s jaw tightens, and he seems to be considering his reply for a moment. “Not just in the Pit,” he says finally.
It’s brutally succinct, a simple sentence laying out the cold, hard reality of the bible school ass-reaming Bobby remembers Dean bitching about, and the other man’s sudden, unnatural calm has Bobby narrowing his eyes. “You do know what that monster said back there was for effect, don’t you?” he says. “You ever hear the term psych? He said it to mess with you.”
Castiel’s lips turn up slightly at the corners “And yet it was accurate,” he shoots back promptly. “To all intents and purposes.”
It’s too smooth, too automatic, confirms Bobby’s suspicions right off the bat, and he purses his lips. “You need to stop brooding over that crap right now, boy, because that’s exactly what it was. Crap.”
Castiel doesn’t answer, and they fall into a silence that isn’t entirely comfortable for a few minutes, as Bobby squints at the road ahead. “This weather’s for shit,” he grouses eventually, when the weight of the lull gets to be too much. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“It’s Michael,” Castiel replies somberly. “His wrath. We need to seek shelter.”
Bobby swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “Dean told me we weren’t going to burn, but that was before Gabriel,” he says. “What do you think he’ll do?”
“It’s difficult to tell.”
The other man is still infuriatingly poised, serene to the point of indifference even, and Bobby scowls across at him. “That isn’t very reassuring.”
Castiel shrugs. “He’s… displeased. I imagine he’ll either attempt to subdue Lucifer so we can try to use the rings, assuming we retrieve the fourth one, or…” He stops abruptly, lifts his hand, points at the road ahead, barely lit by the feeble glow of the headlights. “Watch out for that-”
The truck bumps over something solid.
“-raccoon.”
Bobby snorts. “Plenty of those left. Or what?”
Castiel sighs out, resigned. “Or destroy Lucifer and begin the end. My brother may be conflicted, but that is still his guiding principle and he may have no choice if he’s placed on the defensive. Lucifer won’t go easily.”
Bobby changes tack. “If Lucifer is in Adam, then he isn’t in Sam,” he observes. “That’s good isn’t it? Means he’s weaker. Means we can get Sam back, maybe. Get the other ring, give Dean a better chance of caging Lucifer again without having to kill him.”
Castiel nods. “Crowley gave Dean a lead, news of Sam, but I don’t know if it led anywhere. He left rather abruptly.” He reaches up, pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s when I checked messages.” He presses his hand over his eyes, makes a barely discernible noise, an inarticulate lament so faint Bobby thinks he might not realize the sound even passed his lips.
“Son,” Bobby tries again. “Are you handling this?”
Castiel puts his hand down on his thigh, the movement slow and precise. “Like he said, I’m tougher than I look,” he says neutrally. “Like I said, I’ve had worse. Much worse.” And after a few seconds, he starts rhythmically tapping his fingers on his leg, and Bobby’s seen that before, seen Dean do it to hide the fact his hands are shaking. “But my head aches,” Castiel concedes. “Do you have pills I can take for that?”
Bobby shoots him a dubious look. “No, I don’t have pills for that,” he says carefully.
Castiel is focusing ahead, at the road. “Crowley told me that the hair of the dog that bit you can often help,” he remarks casually. “I believe he was referring to liquor. Do you have any?”
“No,” Bobby says firmly. “I don’t.” He jabs out through the windshield with a finger. “It’s the weather,” he suggests. “A storm’s coming.”
The other man huffs out derisively. “That’s an understatement if I ever heard one.”
Bobby frowns. “I mean barometric pressure,” he supplies. “Changes in pressure cause changes in oxygen levels. They say blood vessels in your head expand or contract to compensate, and boom. Headache. And when the storm breaks the headache goes. Or something like that. And no, I can’t believe I’m talking about the damn weather at a time like this.”
They settle back into silence and it’s less tense this time, but Castiel keeps tapping, ramps the pace up to frantic before Bobby sees him in his peripheral vision, dropping his eyes down as if he only just realized what he’s doing. He presses his palms together surreptitiously, and slides his hands down into the crease between his thighs.
“You need to stop thinking about it, son,” Bobby reminds him gently. “You let that fester and it’ll-”
“I’m not anyone’s son,” Castiel cuts in tersely. “Not really.” He shakes his head slowly, bites his lip, keeps looking down, and falls mute again. “I’ve existed for tens of thousands of years,” he murmurs distantly, a few miles closer to town. “And I was infinite, without beginning or end, and without limits or boundaries. But now I’m mortal. And - reduced. And I was not shaped for this. And I’m afraid. And no, I’m not handling it.”
Bobby grinds the truck to a halt on the verge, turns and looks at the other man, and maybe it’s the first time he’s ever really looked, and he sees dull, shadowed eyes, pallid skin, and the kid could really use a shave. He nods slowly. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to stick with me if anything happens to…” He stops, self-edits. “If this doesn’t go how we want it to. That clear? I can always use some help around the lot. I can show you the business. And if you take off by yourself, I will hunt you down.” He pauses for another beat. “And I’m sorry. About your brother. About all of it. You got that?”
Castiel glances across at him and smiles weakly. “I got that.”
***
Michael has the advantage of surprise in that his brother clearly wasn’t expecting him to come barreling into Bobby’s in one piece and healthy.
Lucifer is streaking ahead of him, in defense mode, denying him a shot, and even though Michael knows his brother’s primary goal is to escape, he knows that if Lucifer can convert to a dominant position he will. And Lucifer is trying now, weaving and rolling, diving aggressively, trying to force him to overshoot, and he’s damned careful not to even as he accelerates to catch up, because he’s the attacker in this dogfight, his brother is his central point, and there’s no way he’s flying out in front and losing his tactical advantage.
It’s freezing cold at this altitude, and as thrilling as before but in a different way because now it isn’t the novelty and joy of flight after so very many years spent earthbound. Now it’s about tactics, and about testing himself. Now it’s the geometry of pursuit, it’s the physics of managing his energy-to-weight ratio and limiting the disadvantages of drag and gravity so he can conserve his own strength, it’s violent acrobatic maneuvering in order to gain a better angular position in relation to his brother. And under the fundamentals of aerodynamics, and basic fighting strategies, it’s bloodlust, and grim, silent intent, fueled by grief and rage at the sight of his fallen brother, who chose sides and died for it.
Michael soars through icy blackness as Lucifer pitches, and then he banks into a slice turn and bullets down, a pure pursuit curve that puts him on a collision course with his brother. Their flight paths merge, and he rams into Lucifer, throws him off course and is sent spinning wildly himself, striving to regain his offensive position.
Lucifer smashes into him from out of nowhere, and he’s laughing. “You caught me unawares, Michael,” his brother whispers in his ear, from behind, and Lucifer spoons him close, snakes a leg around his, wraps an arm around his neck, rests his chin right there on his shoulder. “I didn’t expect to find you quite so well and energetic…”
Michael whirls. “It’s inconvenient for you,” he accedes dryly, as he flings his brother away, and Lucifer spirals into a bright dot in the distance before flashing back right in front of him.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Lucifer replies, on a sigh, and his eyes go sorrowful as he reaches out a placating hand. “I don’t want to harm you, brother. We can work together. Your grunt is useless now he’s human, and Sam… well, Sam knows everything now. I’m all that’s left to you, and you know the Earth dies screaming whether you destroy me or not. It doesn’t have to end badly for us too. Join me. We can share.”
“You talk too much,” Michael hisses, and he lunges, singleminded, feels his blade make contact, hears the rumble of thunder and feels the pop of static hiss through his nerve endings as he stabs into Lucifer’s grace and then skims past his brother while pure white radiance explodes out of him, bathing Michael in its glow. He pivots around, can see his brother’s eyes spark molten fury now as Lucifer comes at him, feels the burn of Lucifer’s sword as it bisects his own middle, and the air blazes bright again, and this time it’s his own essence that glitters its distress.
He chokes back a cry, disengages, full-thrusts into a zoom climb that’s faster than the speed of light, before he curves in a tight radius and dives into a cloud to hide as he sends a blast of power out ahead, leading his target. And he guessed with microscopic accuracy, sees his brother fly right into where he flung his mojo as he emerges from cobweb mists, and the shockwave buffets Lucifer and sends him tailspinning.
Michael screeches to a halt, hangs there in the sky for a second of unmitigated horror, brother, and then Lucifer slams into him from behind, sends him plummeting with the impact. He can see his brother above him as he tumbles to earth, and he knows how losing altitude can be fatal, knows that being higher is having the advantage, and he rights himself and climbs as Lucifer rockets towards him. And now it’s all about who can turn the fastest without losing speed, who can turn the tightest, who can stay inside the other.
Michael breaks left, across his brother’s trajectory, and Lucifer executes a skillful barrel roll, a ninety degree turn that brings him right back in line with Michael’s course. And then Lucifer is on him and they fence in thin air, parrying, cutting, slashing at each other, taking evasive action and dancing back before advancing again. Thunder claps and electricity illuminates the sky as their blades clash, pinprick sparks erupt each time they make contact with skin, dazzling light strobing wildly when the metal bites deeper, and the silence of the void is broken by gasps and grunts of effort. It’s rapid, aggressive, it’s vicious close-quarters combat, it’s gutter fighting, brutal, it’s razor sharp edges slicing though skin and muscle, fists landing home, it’s bones grinding and cracking, it’s grunts of pain and effort with every blow, the precise application of near-lethal force.
And it’s Lucifer gripping Michael’s face between his hands, and his brother stares at him with brilliant eyes and gleams bloody teeth in a delighted smile. “You aren’t closing this out, Michael,” he mocks. “You’re pulling your punches. You love me and you know I love you, brother. You won’t kill me… you can’t, because you don’t want to. Now watch me lay this world to waste, because I win either way.”
He leans in, ghosts his lips against Michael’s, and then he whirls and disengages in a steep, straight plunge, accelerating so fast Michael loses track of him for a second.
“Don’t be so sure,” he murmurs, before he steels himself and sets off in pursuit.
***
Echoing, crashing noises from outside wake Sam, and he’s staring up at a nicotine-yellowed ceiling stained with watermarks, and all he can think is about is Dean’s eyes, liquid with grief, as his brother gazed down at him, and all he can feel is hollow, numb dread at the fact he’s alive.
He rolls off the bed, stumbles exhaustedly to the window, peers out into a nondescript parking lot. It’s almost pitch black outside, no lights of any kind, and the wind is howling, hail bouncing off the glass as if someone is throwing handfuls of pebbles at the window to attract his attention.
His mouth feels cottony, tastes coppery, and he gags, lurches to the bathroom and drools pink-stained saliva into the sink. He turns on the faucet with a shaking hand, splashes his face with water, sloshes palmfuls into his mouth, swirls it around in there and spits. He presses careful fingers on his face, feels it whole and intact, straightens up and cracks his eyes cautiously, a millimeter at a time, scared of what might see. He gulps as he gazes at skin unmarked and healthy, nose straight, and even the shadows under his eyes are gone.
He’s leaning into the bathroom mirror, examining his front teeth, gripping their pearly white perfection between thumb and forefinger and seeing if they wiggle, when the door to the motel room flies open. He leans back to find himself staring at Bobby and Castiel, jointly wrestling the door closed as horizontal rain streaks into the room.
He twists and steps out into the room, shouts to be heard over the dull roar of the weather outside. “Where’s D-” he starts, and pulls up short as Bobby strides over and throws his arms around him in a silent embrace so tight he can barely breathe. The perks of being alive, he thinks, but he doesn’t know if it makes things any better.
Castiel hovers by the closed door, soaked, gray-faced, and awkward. “It’s good to see you, Sam,” he says quietly. “We feared the worst.”
Sam swallows. “I was - tempted. It was like you said it would be.” He holds Castiel’s gaze over Bobby’s shoulder for a long moment. “I remembered,” he says. “What you said to me outside Nivaeus. I remembered that, when it mattered most. Thank you.”
The other man nods just barely. “You did well, Sam.”
Bobby steps back, and he’s pink-eyed with emotion, and the lines around his eyes are carved deeper with stress. “I’m sorry, son,” he says softly. “About Adam.”
Sam scrubs a hand through his hair. “He showed up?”
Bobby grimaces. “And then some.”
“Jesus, Bobby, I’m so sorry,” Sam babbles out. “He - I had no idea. He was there with me, wherever they took us after Detroit, and I told him to head for your place if we got out. It didn’t even occur to me that he might - that it might be him.”
Bobby shakes his head, sits down heavily on the bed. “I was pretty taken aback myself.” The old man throws a meaningful glance back at Castiel. “Fortunately for me, he was distracted.” He leans down and hauls his duffel out from under the bed, fishes out a bottle. “I need a goddamn drink. And then we need to get out of here.”
Sam tracks from one man to the other. “Distracted by what?” he asks, and he sees a flash of utter horror drain what little color there is in Castiel’s face, leaving his pallor even more obvious. “Is that where Dean went?” Sam guesses. “To the lot? I remember him leaning over me after Meg broke me out of there, I remember telling him-”
“Please tell me Meg isn’t a member of Team Free Will now,” Castiel gravels out wearily. “It’s bad enough that we have Crowley tagging along.” He plants his butt on the bed beside Bobby and holds his hand out for the bottle.
Bobby snorts, raises a hand to grip the scruff of Castiel’s neck, shakes him lightly. “Don’t even think it, boy. You’re on the wagon.” He caps the bottle, tucks it back inside his bag.
Castiel furrows his brow, puzzled. “I don’t see a wagon anywhere.”
Bobby rolls his eyes, turns his attention back to Sam. “Dean said he gave you the Horseman’s ring,” he clips out tersely. “Did he take it with him when he left?”
Sam thinks past his unease. “He never asked me for it…” He fumbles in his pocket, finds it tucked down in the furthest away corner, gritty with lint. “I still have it, but what the hell is going on, Bobby?”
Bobby takes the pewter ring, ignores the question, pushes up. “Come on, we need to find some shelter before this place is flattened. It’s a fuckin’ miracle they still have power.” As the words leave his mouth, the lights flicker and die. “Hexed us. Dammit.” Sam hears rummaging, and the old man snaps on his flashlight. “Come on,” he orders.
He’s already striding to the door, Castiel trailing behind him, and Sam is dazed by the speed of it all, grabs a hold of the younger man’s arm. “This is going too fast for me. What’s going on here, Cas?” he repeats. “Where is Dean?”
The motel room door swings in with a crash as Bobby twists the knob, and the old man’s eyes are creased half closed against the driving wind and rain as he looks back at Sam. He directs a finger towards the sky, flashing suddenly bright with far-off lightning. “Up there. Lucifer killed Gabriel, and Michael’s pissed off about it. This shitstorm is your brother strutting his stuff, boy, and it’s wiping this place off the map. Now we’re leaving, so get your backside in the truck. There’s a culvert a couple of miles away big enough to park up in, and low enough so it won’t funnel the wind.”
After a confused moment Sam complies speechlessly, nearly gets his legs ripped out from under him by the wind as he staggers the few feet to where the vehicle is parked, up close to the room, and climbs in behind Castiel. He stares out the passenger window as Bobby peels out of the parking lot. The sky is lit up with flashes, and black funnels weave their way wildly across the horizon, too many for him to count, whip-fast, undulating their hips like exotic dancers, and even through the closed windows the moaning wind is loud and terrifying as they tear along the debris-laden road.
“It ends with a bang,” Castiel breathes in his ear, from where he perches between Sam and Bobby. “It ends with my brothers.”
When Sam looks at him his eyes are glittering eerily in the half-lit truck cabin, part awestruck, part terrified, part something that might be exultation, so that Sam wonders if some small part of Castiel might still be programmed to want this. His memory flashes him back to his last proper conversation with his brother, Dean’s utter conviction, I’m going to slay the dragon, Sam. Michael wanted it too, he thinks, and he shivers. “Have there been signs?” he shouts across at Bobby. “A quake in San Francisco? Florida, a hurricane?”
The old man nods, and he’s gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, squinting out while the windshield wipers fail miserably at clearing away leaves and ice crystals the size of golf balls. He hollers out incoherent abuse as he swerves to barely avoid a falling tree.
“And Croatoan too, we think,” Castiel says, leaning close to Sam’s ear again. “In some of the big cities.” The odd cast to his eyes is gone now, he seems defeated, depleted. “We think they must have-”
He stops abruptly, and Sam swivels around to look at him and his eyes are huge, staring out at something right there next to them. When Sam turns back to look, he can see chaotic, swirling air fifty yards away on the left, shimmying its way towards them. “Twister, Bobby, coming up fast,” he raps out urgently. “We’ll never outrun it, you need to make a sharp right and get off the road-”
His words are cut off by the impact as something slams down hard on the truck bed, and the vehicle is wrenched to a halt so suddenly that Castiel plows forward. Sam grabs for him reflexively, heaves him back as he thuds into the windshield, maybe one fraction of a second before he smashes straight through it. The other man flops back against the seat, rubbing at his brow, woozy with the blow, then flinches and ducks to the side as something crashes in through the back window of the cabin, flailing wildly and sending shards of glass shimmering every which way.
“Jesus,” Sam goggles. “Is that a-”
“Cow,” Bobby barks. “We need to get it off the truck, now.”
The old man is already jumping out of the cabin, and Sam follows suit, blinks in the freezing hail as it batters him and buries his face in his shoulder as he drags himself along the body of the truck. Up close he can hear the doomed animal shrieking out its agony above the rumble of the tornado, three hooves cutting through the busy air like clubs, the other leg hanging smashed and useless, and he feels his hair waft as one of its frantic limbs passes within a hair’s breadth of the side of his skull. He jumps back, hears the heavy blat of gunfire silence its death throes, clambers up into the back of the truck and pushes at its dead weight with his feet as Bobby heaves, and it falls away onto the road.
Sam jumps back down onto the asphalt, can hear loud groaning and smashing, crashing noises in the darkness. The wind howls Michael’s rage at him, and wraps jealous fingers around him as he clambers back into the cabin, Castiel recovering his wits sufficiently to pull on his arm as he strains against its force. There’s a brief tug-o-war with Sam as the prize until he manages to get his knee up on the seat and Castiel manhandles him the rest of the way in. They’re moving again almost immediately, Bobby swerving so that a gust slams the passenger door closed, and the truck bouncing more than ever on the rougher surface.
“How much farther?” Sam gasps, as he catches his breath and braces himself against the dashboard with one hand.
“I got no idea now we’re in country,” Bobby grates out. “Dammit. We were almost there.” Sam can feel the truck slowing, laboring. “Ground’s waterlogged,” Bobby snaps. “I was hoping to stay on the road for longer.” He pedals to the metal, staring out ahead, alert, slows it right down to steer around another fallen oak. “There it is. Thank fuckin’ God.” They swerve sharply, skid to a halt, and suddenly it’s quieter, the wind not buffeting the truck quite so powerfully, no hail raking across the roof, and they can see out front.
Sam swallows hard. “Do you think there was a tornado warning?”
Bobby nods at the clock on the dashboard. “I doubt it,” he replies tightly. “It’s four fifteen in the morning. Most people are still in bed.” He’s still gripping the steering wheel, the bones of his knuckles sharp, and there’s a moment of stillness punctuated only by their urgent breathing and the muffled wail of the weather before Bobby snaps on the radio, twirls the dial through crackling white noise, freak weather conditions are pummeling much of the… nadoes and the… heavy rain… vere thundersto… cipitation… storm total accumu… gusting at fifty to sixty… duced visability… power outages-
Bobby snaps it off. “We get the picture,” he says tonelessly. He tugs at his beard. “What the hell happened to you anyway?” he says to Sam then, randomly. “And what has Meg got to do with it?”
Sam shudders, keeps it brief because he doesn’t ever want to revisit it in its full technicolor glory if he can help it. “Your basic strong-arm bad cop tactics, followed by the devil playing good cop.” He chews his lip. “I’ve been wondering when Lucifer got in him… I passed out in there for a while. But I think he was there all along. I think he made his move in Van Nuys.”
Castiel’s brow creases. “It makes sense,” he offers. “Lucifer would have felt Zachariah’s death. And Michael said he couldn’t track our brother.” He scowls. “Because of the sigils I stamped on Adam’s ribs. I should have known. Or suspected, at the very least.” He leans forward, rests his elbows on his thighs and palms his face, and Sam can see that his hands are shaking.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “Cas?”
“I’m fine,” Castiel says flatly. “Just not much use, I fear. Not any more.”
“What you said,” Sam ventures then, cautiously, and he hears his voice go hoarse and strained. “Is this really the beginning of the end?”
The other man is wiping blood away from a cut on his hairline now, examining it on the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know,” he says dully. “Gabriel chose sides. Lucifer killed him. Taking it out on humans like me is one thing, but Lucifer has killed an archangel. It changes things. There’s a pecking order, after all.”
Sam feels his jaw go slack for a moment now he has the chance to give it all due weight. “Lucifer killed Gabriel. Fuck.” He shakes his head. “How did that even happen? You’re going to have to catch me up, because-” He stops as Bobby gestures agitatedly, from the driver’s seat, mouths something that looks like bad fuckin’ idea.
Sam sidetracks. “So, Meg… uh. Lucifer left me pretty bad off. Meg was there, I tapped her for some help.” He shrugs at Castiel’s grimace of distaste. “She hates Hell.”
He looks across to Bobby. “Remember what she said to Dean at your place, when she was in me? About it being a prison, and she didn’t want to go back there?” He switches his gaze to Castiel, still slumped with his face in his hands. “And I remembered what you said about Carthage, Cas, played on her insecurities. Crowley isn’t the only demon who doesn’t want the happy fun times here in this dimension to end.” He pauses, ponders that for a few seconds. “I bet a whole bunch of them wouldn’t if they knew Lucifer’s game plan was throwing them all back in the Pit.”
Castiel sniffs. “Perhaps we’ll get lucky and they’ll stage a revolution,” he says acidly. “I’m sure Lucifer will meet them halfway if-”
“They’re using you guys as collateral,” Dean cuts in from the back seat, and Sam can feel the swish that heralds his appearance. “What happened to your sigils?” Dean surges forward, pushing Sam aside, clamps his hand to Castiel’s chest, and there’s a snap of power that charges the air.
The other man yelps, grabs at himself, glowers. “Again?”
Dean cuffs the back of Castiel’s head halfheartedly, slumps back into the shadows, his face hidden. “Yes, again,” he retorts. “If he’d been looking for you, you’d be toast. Again. What happened to your sigils? Did you crack a rib in your barfight? You said that guy didn’t hit you there.”
Bobby snaps on the cabin light. “His ribs got busted out at my place just before you showed up,” he says pointedly. “Gabriel must have left the sigils off when he brought him back.”
“At least it meant you were able to find us,” Sam chips in. “And Jesus, Dean, what the hell happened to you?”
In the dim light he can see Dean is soaked, bleary-eyed, face cut and bruised, blood trickling from his nose, and the knuckles of the hand he’s resting on his belly are split to gleaming cartilage as far as Sam can see. When he replies, he sounds weary, drained of energy. “It’s okay, Sam. He’s just - giving as good as he gets, even if he is the stunt double. It’s tiring.”
Sam is up and out the passenger door the minute his brother finishes talking, so fast he feels dizzy, and he plasters his body close up to the truck as he’s buffeted by icy winds shrieking in under the stone arch. He hauls the passenger door open, crowds in next to Dean on the back seat, starts assessing the damage. “Where is he?” he asks, as he flicks his eyes to Bobby. “First aid kit?”
The old man nods. “Duffel, under the seat there.”
“He got away from me. For now.” Dean lifts an arm, slowly, stiffly, like it hurts to move, rests it over his eyes. “Castiel. Are you alright?”
“I’ll live,” Castiel replies, and his mouth is a grim line. “Will you?”
Dean peers out from under his arm, and his mouth quirks wryly. “I’m peachy. Never better.”
“I remade you,” Castiel says, and his tone is raw, and Sam sees his eyes go flinty gray. “I know you inside and out. Don’t lie to me.”
Dean snorts. “You look like you’re gonna shout at me.” He flops his arm back down across the seat, makes a face. “It isn’t kill shots yet, but he’s cut me up some.”
Bobby makes an unidentifiable noise of frustration, and his eyebrows shoot up under his cap. “Now the Hallmark moment is over, what the hell game are you playing out there with him, boy?” the old man snaps out. “You’re leveling this whole town. What about that crap you fed me about us not burning? What the fuck is-”
Dean interrupts with an affronted hiss. He leans forward, past Sam, stares right at Bobby, and his face goes set and steely, and his voice rumbles out low and lethally controlled, and almost reverent. “Understand that this is my nature,” he says coldly. “It’s inherent, innate and intrinsic. What I’m doing is my reason for existing in the here and now. It’s my aim, my goal, and my purpose. And it comforts me, Bobby. Because not everyone in this town is worthy.” He pauses, slants his eyes to the right then, straight at Sam, and they’re glowing incandescent, as alien as Lucifer’s were in the dream, because Sam isn’t looking at Dean, he’s looking at Michael. “This is what I’m supposed to do,” he says. “You ask me to go against my basic instinct. And maybe you ask too much.”
It numbs Sam to the bone, and he blinks furiously in the dim light, hears his breath go fast and harsh, feels himself start to shake with the buzz of adrenaline, panic, sickly fear, feels sweat prickle on his spine, as Bobby grunts out a strangled noise, and Castiel stares at them all with an incongruous look of curiosity mixed with bewilderment.
“What are you saying?” the old man barks, and he’s wide-eyed and breathless with a sort of incredulous horror. “Are you back to preaching your prime fuckin’ directive? Are you ending this? Are you seriously condemning us to a fuckin’ eternity of-”
“The end is the beginning,” Dean says simply, and softer now, melancholy. “Eternity is just another possibility.”
Bobby doesn’t reply, just stares back, and there’s a strained, heavy silence that drags on for long seconds, until Castiel clears his throat.
“Michael,” he reprimands quietly. “Enough.”
It hangs there in the air between them, and they’re all poised for something but Sam doesn’t know what, and the atmosphere is incendiary and vibrant, like one wrong word might set it off.
“I’m sorry,” Dean mutters then. “I don’t know what… it’s - it’s like I’m conditioned to do this. And it’s difficult not to.” He sighs out slowly, leans back into Sam.
“Dammit, Dean, there’s blood everywhere,” Sam snaps, now the moment is over and his brother is back. “Look at your arms. Aren’t you supposed to heal yourself? Is this because of what Pestilence did?” He pulls apart the ripped pieces of Dean’s bloodstained tee, swallows as he sees a vicious, deep diagonal slash running down his brother’s ribs and across to the opposite hip. “Why is this even here?” he demands. “What about your mojo?”
Dean bats his hand away irritably. “Leave it, Sam.” He nods down at something lying on the seat beside him. “It’s from one of those.”
Sam sees the glint of silver, glances back up and across to Castiel.
“Gabriel’s,” Castiel confirms, and he scrubs tiredly at his jaw. “Think of it as the nuclear-powered lightsaber. One of the few things that can damage an archangel. And yes, Lucifer has one.”
“Mine’s bigger,” Dean says on the ghost of a smile, but he’s fisting his hands restlessly, and his eyes dart from Sam to Bobby to Castiel and back again, finally settling on the old man. “Jesus, look at you guys,” he snorts out. “You’d think it was the end of the world or something.”
Sam scowls. “That isn’t funny, Dean.”
“Come on, it’s a little funny.” Dean sucks in breath as Sam prods at the wound across his belly, slaps his questing hand away again. “Jesus, Sam. Be careful.”
“I think this needs stitching.” Sam glances over at Castiel. “Will it heal by itself?”
Castiel shrugs listlessly. “Eventually. But he needs to rest. The blade, it - it will have cut deep.” He widens his eyes meaningfully. “Deeper than we’re able to see.”
Sam feels his brother shudder next to him. “So please tell me we have all the rings,” Dean says again. “Give me an alternative. Because I’m feeling tired. And because soon it will be kill shots. And because…” He trails off, flicks his eyes up to Bobby. “Because I’m a killer,” he breathes. “And it’s so damned tempting.” And it falls quiet again, a pall of silence blanketing all of them.
“We have the rings,” Bobby says finally.
The noise from outside fades away, and the flurry of leaves whirling in front of the windshield slow down until they fall still and slide down the glass. And Dean is suddenly placid, slumping even more pliantly against Sam. “If they don’t work, I will have to stop him, Bobby,” he says flatly. “I won’t have a choice. And now I need to sleep. And you need to start driving.”
“Start driving?” the old man queries faintly.
“To Colt’s cemetery,” Dean murmurs, and when Sam looks down he sees his brother’s eyes are closing. “To the hellgate. That’s where we send that bastard screaming back to the Pit. Or that’s where it ends.”
***
Chapter 18
Rain flurries at the windshield and when he glances off the road and out into the country, Bobby can just about see the treetops dancing wildly. He tells himself the weather just took a turn for the worse, but the sense of foreboding sits in his gut like a lead brick.
Castiel is still and silent, and when Bobby slants his eyes over he can see the younger man is staring into space, unblinking, hugging himself much as he was back at the house.
He can use the distraction, so Bobby puts it out there even though the answer is plain to see. “You okay?” No reply. “Castiel. Cas. Hey.”
He reaches out, pats the other man’s leg, and he flinches himself when Castiel cries out, jumps like a scalded cat and slams himself back against the door, away from Bobby. He’s whitefaced as he clears his throat. “My apologies,” he says breathlessly. “You startled me.”
“Are you okay?” Bobby repeats. “I mean - Gabriel did fix you, right? All the broken parts?”
Castiel studies him for a moment before he huffs out a hollow laugh. “All the broken parts,” he echoes.
Even though it isn’t really an answer, Bobby thinks maybe it’s an answer. “Look. You know that was all a vast fuckin’ snafu, don’t you, boy?” he ventures quietly. “I was expecting Dean to show up and scare him off. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Castiel sags back against the upholstery, newly composed. “That seems to be the story of my life,” he concedes matter-of-factly. “But don’t concern yourself, Bobby. I’ve had worse. More so than you can possibly conceive.”
Bobby is confused for a split second, but then he wonders how he could have forgotten. “You mean in the Pit,” he says.
Castiel’s jaw tightens, and he seems to be considering his reply for a moment. “Not just in the Pit,” he says finally.
It’s brutally succinct, a simple sentence laying out the cold, hard reality of the bible school ass-reaming Bobby remembers Dean bitching about, and the other man’s sudden, unnatural calm has Bobby narrowing his eyes. “You do know what that monster said back there was for effect, don’t you?” he says. “You ever hear the term psych? He said it to mess with you.”
Castiel’s lips turn up slightly at the corners “And yet it was accurate,” he shoots back promptly. “To all intents and purposes.”
It’s too smooth, too automatic, confirms Bobby’s suspicions right off the bat, and he purses his lips. “You need to stop brooding over that crap right now, boy, because that’s exactly what it was. Crap.”
Castiel doesn’t answer, and they fall into a silence that isn’t entirely comfortable for a few minutes, as Bobby squints at the road ahead. “This weather’s for shit,” he grouses eventually, when the weight of the lull gets to be too much. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“It’s Michael,” Castiel replies somberly. “His wrath. We need to seek shelter.”
Bobby swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “Dean told me we weren’t going to burn, but that was before Gabriel,” he says. “What do you think he’ll do?”
“It’s difficult to tell.”
The other man is still infuriatingly poised, serene to the point of indifference even, and Bobby scowls across at him. “That isn’t very reassuring.”
Castiel shrugs. “He’s… displeased. I imagine he’ll either attempt to subdue Lucifer so we can try to use the rings, assuming we retrieve the fourth one, or…” He stops abruptly, lifts his hand, points at the road ahead, barely lit by the feeble glow of the headlights. “Watch out for that-”
The truck bumps over something solid.
“-raccoon.”
Bobby snorts. “Plenty of those left. Or what?”
Castiel sighs out, resigned. “Or destroy Lucifer and begin the end. My brother may be conflicted, but that is still his guiding principle and he may have no choice if he’s placed on the defensive. Lucifer won’t go easily.”
Bobby changes tack. “If Lucifer is in Adam, then he isn’t in Sam,” he observes. “That’s good isn’t it? Means he’s weaker. Means we can get Sam back, maybe. Get the other ring, give Dean a better chance of caging Lucifer again without having to kill him.”
Castiel nods. “Crowley gave Dean a lead, news of Sam, but I don’t know if it led anywhere. He left rather abruptly.” He reaches up, pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s when I checked messages.” He presses his hand over his eyes, makes a barely discernible noise, an inarticulate lament so faint Bobby thinks he might not realize the sound even passed his lips.
“Son,” Bobby tries again. “Are you handling this?”
Castiel puts his hand down on his thigh, the movement slow and precise. “Like he said, I’m tougher than I look,” he says neutrally. “Like I said, I’ve had worse. Much worse.” And after a few seconds, he starts rhythmically tapping his fingers on his leg, and Bobby’s seen that before, seen Dean do it to hide the fact his hands are shaking. “But my head aches,” Castiel concedes. “Do you have pills I can take for that?”
Bobby shoots him a dubious look. “No, I don’t have pills for that,” he says carefully.
Castiel is focusing ahead, at the road. “Crowley told me that the hair of the dog that bit you can often help,” he remarks casually. “I believe he was referring to liquor. Do you have any?”
“No,” Bobby says firmly. “I don’t.” He jabs out through the windshield with a finger. “It’s the weather,” he suggests. “A storm’s coming.”
The other man huffs out derisively. “That’s an understatement if I ever heard one.”
Bobby frowns. “I mean barometric pressure,” he supplies. “Changes in pressure cause changes in oxygen levels. They say blood vessels in your head expand or contract to compensate, and boom. Headache. And when the storm breaks the headache goes. Or something like that. And no, I can’t believe I’m talking about the damn weather at a time like this.”
They settle back into silence and it’s less tense this time, but Castiel keeps tapping, ramps the pace up to frantic before Bobby sees him in his peripheral vision, dropping his eyes down as if he only just realized what he’s doing. He presses his palms together surreptitiously, and slides his hands down into the crease between his thighs.
“You need to stop thinking about it, son,” Bobby reminds him gently. “You let that fester and it’ll-”
“I’m not anyone’s son,” Castiel cuts in tersely. “Not really.” He shakes his head slowly, bites his lip, keeps looking down, and falls mute again. “I’ve existed for tens of thousands of years,” he murmurs distantly, a few miles closer to town. “And I was infinite, without beginning or end, and without limits or boundaries. But now I’m mortal. And - reduced. And I was not shaped for this. And I’m afraid. And no, I’m not handling it.”
Bobby grinds the truck to a halt on the verge, turns and looks at the other man, and maybe it’s the first time he’s ever really looked, and he sees dull, shadowed eyes, pallid skin, and the kid could really use a shave. He nods slowly. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to stick with me if anything happens to…” He stops, self-edits. “If this doesn’t go how we want it to. That clear? I can always use some help around the lot. I can show you the business. And if you take off by yourself, I will hunt you down.” He pauses for another beat. “And I’m sorry. About your brother. About all of it. You got that?”
Castiel glances across at him and smiles weakly. “I got that.”
***
Michael has the advantage of surprise in that his brother clearly wasn’t expecting him to come barreling into Bobby’s in one piece and healthy.
Lucifer is streaking ahead of him, in defense mode, denying him a shot, and even though Michael knows his brother’s primary goal is to escape, he knows that if Lucifer can convert to a dominant position he will. And Lucifer is trying now, weaving and rolling, diving aggressively, trying to force him to overshoot, and he’s damned careful not to even as he accelerates to catch up, because he’s the attacker in this dogfight, his brother is his central point, and there’s no way he’s flying out in front and losing his tactical advantage.
It’s freezing cold at this altitude, and as thrilling as before but in a different way because now it isn’t the novelty and joy of flight after so very many years spent earthbound. Now it’s about tactics, and about testing himself. Now it’s the geometry of pursuit, it’s the physics of managing his energy-to-weight ratio and limiting the disadvantages of drag and gravity so he can conserve his own strength, it’s violent acrobatic maneuvering in order to gain a better angular position in relation to his brother. And under the fundamentals of aerodynamics, and basic fighting strategies, it’s bloodlust, and grim, silent intent, fueled by grief and rage at the sight of his fallen brother, who chose sides and died for it.
Michael soars through icy blackness as Lucifer pitches, and then he banks into a slice turn and bullets down, a pure pursuit curve that puts him on a collision course with his brother. Their flight paths merge, and he rams into Lucifer, throws him off course and is sent spinning wildly himself, striving to regain his offensive position.
Lucifer smashes into him from out of nowhere, and he’s laughing. “You caught me unawares, Michael,” his brother whispers in his ear, from behind, and Lucifer spoons him close, snakes a leg around his, wraps an arm around his neck, rests his chin right there on his shoulder. “I didn’t expect to find you quite so well and energetic…”
Michael whirls. “It’s inconvenient for you,” he accedes dryly, as he flings his brother away, and Lucifer spirals into a bright dot in the distance before flashing back right in front of him.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Lucifer replies, on a sigh, and his eyes go sorrowful as he reaches out a placating hand. “I don’t want to harm you, brother. We can work together. Your grunt is useless now he’s human, and Sam… well, Sam knows everything now. I’m all that’s left to you, and you know the Earth dies screaming whether you destroy me or not. It doesn’t have to end badly for us too. Join me. We can share.”
“You talk too much,” Michael hisses, and he lunges, singleminded, feels his blade make contact, hears the rumble of thunder and feels the pop of static hiss through his nerve endings as he stabs into Lucifer’s grace and then skims past his brother while pure white radiance explodes out of him, bathing Michael in its glow. He pivots around, can see his brother’s eyes spark molten fury now as Lucifer comes at him, feels the burn of Lucifer’s sword as it bisects his own middle, and the air blazes bright again, and this time it’s his own essence that glitters its distress.
He chokes back a cry, disengages, full-thrusts into a zoom climb that’s faster than the speed of light, before he curves in a tight radius and dives into a cloud to hide as he sends a blast of power out ahead, leading his target. And he guessed with microscopic accuracy, sees his brother fly right into where he flung his mojo as he emerges from cobweb mists, and the shockwave buffets Lucifer and sends him tailspinning.
Michael screeches to a halt, hangs there in the sky for a second of unmitigated horror, brother, and then Lucifer slams into him from behind, sends him plummeting with the impact. He can see his brother above him as he tumbles to earth, and he knows how losing altitude can be fatal, knows that being higher is having the advantage, and he rights himself and climbs as Lucifer rockets towards him. And now it’s all about who can turn the fastest without losing speed, who can turn the tightest, who can stay inside the other.
Michael breaks left, across his brother’s trajectory, and Lucifer executes a skillful barrel roll, a ninety degree turn that brings him right back in line with Michael’s course. And then Lucifer is on him and they fence in thin air, parrying, cutting, slashing at each other, taking evasive action and dancing back before advancing again. Thunder claps and electricity illuminates the sky as their blades clash, pinprick sparks erupt each time they make contact with skin, dazzling light strobing wildly when the metal bites deeper, and the silence of the void is broken by gasps and grunts of effort. It’s rapid, aggressive, it’s vicious close-quarters combat, it’s gutter fighting, brutal, it’s razor sharp edges slicing though skin and muscle, fists landing home, it’s bones grinding and cracking, it’s grunts of pain and effort with every blow, the precise application of near-lethal force.
And it’s Lucifer gripping Michael’s face between his hands, and his brother stares at him with brilliant eyes and gleams bloody teeth in a delighted smile. “You aren’t closing this out, Michael,” he mocks. “You’re pulling your punches. You love me and you know I love you, brother. You won’t kill me… you can’t, because you don’t want to. Now watch me lay this world to waste, because I win either way.”
He leans in, ghosts his lips against Michael’s, and then he whirls and disengages in a steep, straight plunge, accelerating so fast Michael loses track of him for a second.
“Don’t be so sure,” he murmurs, before he steels himself and sets off in pursuit.
***
Echoing, crashing noises from outside wake Sam, and he’s staring up at a nicotine-yellowed ceiling stained with watermarks, and all he can think is about is Dean’s eyes, liquid with grief, as his brother gazed down at him, and all he can feel is hollow, numb dread at the fact he’s alive.
He rolls off the bed, stumbles exhaustedly to the window, peers out into a nondescript parking lot. It’s almost pitch black outside, no lights of any kind, and the wind is howling, hail bouncing off the glass as if someone is throwing handfuls of pebbles at the window to attract his attention.
His mouth feels cottony, tastes coppery, and he gags, lurches to the bathroom and drools pink-stained saliva into the sink. He turns on the faucet with a shaking hand, splashes his face with water, sloshes palmfuls into his mouth, swirls it around in there and spits. He presses careful fingers on his face, feels it whole and intact, straightens up and cracks his eyes cautiously, a millimeter at a time, scared of what might see. He gulps as he gazes at skin unmarked and healthy, nose straight, and even the shadows under his eyes are gone.
He’s leaning into the bathroom mirror, examining his front teeth, gripping their pearly white perfection between thumb and forefinger and seeing if they wiggle, when the door to the motel room flies open. He leans back to find himself staring at Bobby and Castiel, jointly wrestling the door closed as horizontal rain streaks into the room.
He twists and steps out into the room, shouts to be heard over the dull roar of the weather outside. “Where’s D-” he starts, and pulls up short as Bobby strides over and throws his arms around him in a silent embrace so tight he can barely breathe. The perks of being alive, he thinks, but he doesn’t know if it makes things any better.
Castiel hovers by the closed door, soaked, gray-faced, and awkward. “It’s good to see you, Sam,” he says quietly. “We feared the worst.”
Sam swallows. “I was - tempted. It was like you said it would be.” He holds Castiel’s gaze over Bobby’s shoulder for a long moment. “I remembered,” he says. “What you said to me outside Nivaeus. I remembered that, when it mattered most. Thank you.”
The other man nods just barely. “You did well, Sam.”
Bobby steps back, and he’s pink-eyed with emotion, and the lines around his eyes are carved deeper with stress. “I’m sorry, son,” he says softly. “About Adam.”
Sam scrubs a hand through his hair. “He showed up?”
Bobby grimaces. “And then some.”
“Jesus, Bobby, I’m so sorry,” Sam babbles out. “He - I had no idea. He was there with me, wherever they took us after Detroit, and I told him to head for your place if we got out. It didn’t even occur to me that he might - that it might be him.”
Bobby shakes his head, sits down heavily on the bed. “I was pretty taken aback myself.” The old man throws a meaningful glance back at Castiel. “Fortunately for me, he was distracted.” He leans down and hauls his duffel out from under the bed, fishes out a bottle. “I need a goddamn drink. And then we need to get out of here.”
Sam tracks from one man to the other. “Distracted by what?” he asks, and he sees a flash of utter horror drain what little color there is in Castiel’s face, leaving his pallor even more obvious. “Is that where Dean went?” Sam guesses. “To the lot? I remember him leaning over me after Meg broke me out of there, I remember telling him-”
“Please tell me Meg isn’t a member of Team Free Will now,” Castiel gravels out wearily. “It’s bad enough that we have Crowley tagging along.” He plants his butt on the bed beside Bobby and holds his hand out for the bottle.
Bobby snorts, raises a hand to grip the scruff of Castiel’s neck, shakes him lightly. “Don’t even think it, boy. You’re on the wagon.” He caps the bottle, tucks it back inside his bag.
Castiel furrows his brow, puzzled. “I don’t see a wagon anywhere.”
Bobby rolls his eyes, turns his attention back to Sam. “Dean said he gave you the Horseman’s ring,” he clips out tersely. “Did he take it with him when he left?”
Sam thinks past his unease. “He never asked me for it…” He fumbles in his pocket, finds it tucked down in the furthest away corner, gritty with lint. “I still have it, but what the hell is going on, Bobby?”
Bobby takes the pewter ring, ignores the question, pushes up. “Come on, we need to find some shelter before this place is flattened. It’s a fuckin’ miracle they still have power.” As the words leave his mouth, the lights flicker and die. “Hexed us. Dammit.” Sam hears rummaging, and the old man snaps on his flashlight. “Come on,” he orders.
He’s already striding to the door, Castiel trailing behind him, and Sam is dazed by the speed of it all, grabs a hold of the younger man’s arm. “This is going too fast for me. What’s going on here, Cas?” he repeats. “Where is Dean?”
The motel room door swings in with a crash as Bobby twists the knob, and the old man’s eyes are creased half closed against the driving wind and rain as he looks back at Sam. He directs a finger towards the sky, flashing suddenly bright with far-off lightning. “Up there. Lucifer killed Gabriel, and Michael’s pissed off about it. This shitstorm is your brother strutting his stuff, boy, and it’s wiping this place off the map. Now we’re leaving, so get your backside in the truck. There’s a culvert a couple of miles away big enough to park up in, and low enough so it won’t funnel the wind.”
After a confused moment Sam complies speechlessly, nearly gets his legs ripped out from under him by the wind as he staggers the few feet to where the vehicle is parked, up close to the room, and climbs in behind Castiel. He stares out the passenger window as Bobby peels out of the parking lot. The sky is lit up with flashes, and black funnels weave their way wildly across the horizon, too many for him to count, whip-fast, undulating their hips like exotic dancers, and even through the closed windows the moaning wind is loud and terrifying as they tear along the debris-laden road.
“It ends with a bang,” Castiel breathes in his ear, from where he perches between Sam and Bobby. “It ends with my brothers.”
When Sam looks at him his eyes are glittering eerily in the half-lit truck cabin, part awestruck, part terrified, part something that might be exultation, so that Sam wonders if some small part of Castiel might still be programmed to want this. His memory flashes him back to his last proper conversation with his brother, Dean’s utter conviction, I’m going to slay the dragon, Sam. Michael wanted it too, he thinks, and he shivers. “Have there been signs?” he shouts across at Bobby. “A quake in San Francisco? Florida, a hurricane?”
The old man nods, and he’s gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, squinting out while the windshield wipers fail miserably at clearing away leaves and ice crystals the size of golf balls. He hollers out incoherent abuse as he swerves to barely avoid a falling tree.
“And Croatoan too, we think,” Castiel says, leaning close to Sam’s ear again. “In some of the big cities.” The odd cast to his eyes is gone now, he seems defeated, depleted. “We think they must have-”
He stops abruptly, and Sam swivels around to look at him and his eyes are huge, staring out at something right there next to them. When Sam turns back to look, he can see chaotic, swirling air fifty yards away on the left, shimmying its way towards them. “Twister, Bobby, coming up fast,” he raps out urgently. “We’ll never outrun it, you need to make a sharp right and get off the road-”
His words are cut off by the impact as something slams down hard on the truck bed, and the vehicle is wrenched to a halt so suddenly that Castiel plows forward. Sam grabs for him reflexively, heaves him back as he thuds into the windshield, maybe one fraction of a second before he smashes straight through it. The other man flops back against the seat, rubbing at his brow, woozy with the blow, then flinches and ducks to the side as something crashes in through the back window of the cabin, flailing wildly and sending shards of glass shimmering every which way.
“Jesus,” Sam goggles. “Is that a-”
“Cow,” Bobby barks. “We need to get it off the truck, now.”
The old man is already jumping out of the cabin, and Sam follows suit, blinks in the freezing hail as it batters him and buries his face in his shoulder as he drags himself along the body of the truck. Up close he can hear the doomed animal shrieking out its agony above the rumble of the tornado, three hooves cutting through the busy air like clubs, the other leg hanging smashed and useless, and he feels his hair waft as one of its frantic limbs passes within a hair’s breadth of the side of his skull. He jumps back, hears the heavy blat of gunfire silence its death throes, clambers up into the back of the truck and pushes at its dead weight with his feet as Bobby heaves, and it falls away onto the road.
Sam jumps back down onto the asphalt, can hear loud groaning and smashing, crashing noises in the darkness. The wind howls Michael’s rage at him, and wraps jealous fingers around him as he clambers back into the cabin, Castiel recovering his wits sufficiently to pull on his arm as he strains against its force. There’s a brief tug-o-war with Sam as the prize until he manages to get his knee up on the seat and Castiel manhandles him the rest of the way in. They’re moving again almost immediately, Bobby swerving so that a gust slams the passenger door closed, and the truck bouncing more than ever on the rougher surface.
“How much farther?” Sam gasps, as he catches his breath and braces himself against the dashboard with one hand.
“I got no idea now we’re in country,” Bobby grates out. “Dammit. We were almost there.” Sam can feel the truck slowing, laboring. “Ground’s waterlogged,” Bobby snaps. “I was hoping to stay on the road for longer.” He pedals to the metal, staring out ahead, alert, slows it right down to steer around another fallen oak. “There it is. Thank fuckin’ God.” They swerve sharply, skid to a halt, and suddenly it’s quieter, the wind not buffeting the truck quite so powerfully, no hail raking across the roof, and they can see out front.
Sam swallows hard. “Do you think there was a tornado warning?”
Bobby nods at the clock on the dashboard. “I doubt it,” he replies tightly. “It’s four fifteen in the morning. Most people are still in bed.” He’s still gripping the steering wheel, the bones of his knuckles sharp, and there’s a moment of stillness punctuated only by their urgent breathing and the muffled wail of the weather before Bobby snaps on the radio, twirls the dial through crackling white noise, freak weather conditions are pummeling much of the… nadoes and the… heavy rain… vere thundersto… cipitation… storm total accumu… gusting at fifty to sixty… duced visability… power outages-
Bobby snaps it off. “We get the picture,” he says tonelessly. He tugs at his beard. “What the hell happened to you anyway?” he says to Sam then, randomly. “And what has Meg got to do with it?”
Sam shudders, keeps it brief because he doesn’t ever want to revisit it in its full technicolor glory if he can help it. “Your basic strong-arm bad cop tactics, followed by the devil playing good cop.” He chews his lip. “I’ve been wondering when Lucifer got in him… I passed out in there for a while. But I think he was there all along. I think he made his move in Van Nuys.”
Castiel’s brow creases. “It makes sense,” he offers. “Lucifer would have felt Zachariah’s death. And Michael said he couldn’t track our brother.” He scowls. “Because of the sigils I stamped on Adam’s ribs. I should have known. Or suspected, at the very least.” He leans forward, rests his elbows on his thighs and palms his face, and Sam can see that his hands are shaking.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “Cas?”
“I’m fine,” Castiel says flatly. “Just not much use, I fear. Not any more.”
“What you said,” Sam ventures then, cautiously, and he hears his voice go hoarse and strained. “Is this really the beginning of the end?”
The other man is wiping blood away from a cut on his hairline now, examining it on the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know,” he says dully. “Gabriel chose sides. Lucifer killed him. Taking it out on humans like me is one thing, but Lucifer has killed an archangel. It changes things. There’s a pecking order, after all.”
Sam feels his jaw go slack for a moment now he has the chance to give it all due weight. “Lucifer killed Gabriel. Fuck.” He shakes his head. “How did that even happen? You’re going to have to catch me up, because-” He stops as Bobby gestures agitatedly, from the driver’s seat, mouths something that looks like bad fuckin’ idea.
Sam sidetracks. “So, Meg… uh. Lucifer left me pretty bad off. Meg was there, I tapped her for some help.” He shrugs at Castiel’s grimace of distaste. “She hates Hell.”
He looks across to Bobby. “Remember what she said to Dean at your place, when she was in me? About it being a prison, and she didn’t want to go back there?” He switches his gaze to Castiel, still slumped with his face in his hands. “And I remembered what you said about Carthage, Cas, played on her insecurities. Crowley isn’t the only demon who doesn’t want the happy fun times here in this dimension to end.” He pauses, ponders that for a few seconds. “I bet a whole bunch of them wouldn’t if they knew Lucifer’s game plan was throwing them all back in the Pit.”
Castiel sniffs. “Perhaps we’ll get lucky and they’ll stage a revolution,” he says acidly. “I’m sure Lucifer will meet them halfway if-”
“They’re using you guys as collateral,” Dean cuts in from the back seat, and Sam can feel the swish that heralds his appearance. “What happened to your sigils?” Dean surges forward, pushing Sam aside, clamps his hand to Castiel’s chest, and there’s a snap of power that charges the air.
The other man yelps, grabs at himself, glowers. “Again?”
Dean cuffs the back of Castiel’s head halfheartedly, slumps back into the shadows, his face hidden. “Yes, again,” he retorts. “If he’d been looking for you, you’d be toast. Again. What happened to your sigils? Did you crack a rib in your barfight? You said that guy didn’t hit you there.”
Bobby snaps on the cabin light. “His ribs got busted out at my place just before you showed up,” he says pointedly. “Gabriel must have left the sigils off when he brought him back.”
“At least it meant you were able to find us,” Sam chips in. “And Jesus, Dean, what the hell happened to you?”
In the dim light he can see Dean is soaked, bleary-eyed, face cut and bruised, blood trickling from his nose, and the knuckles of the hand he’s resting on his belly are split to gleaming cartilage as far as Sam can see. When he replies, he sounds weary, drained of energy. “It’s okay, Sam. He’s just - giving as good as he gets, even if he is the stunt double. It’s tiring.”
Sam is up and out the passenger door the minute his brother finishes talking, so fast he feels dizzy, and he plasters his body close up to the truck as he’s buffeted by icy winds shrieking in under the stone arch. He hauls the passenger door open, crowds in next to Dean on the back seat, starts assessing the damage. “Where is he?” he asks, as he flicks his eyes to Bobby. “First aid kit?”
The old man nods. “Duffel, under the seat there.”
“He got away from me. For now.” Dean lifts an arm, slowly, stiffly, like it hurts to move, rests it over his eyes. “Castiel. Are you alright?”
“I’ll live,” Castiel replies, and his mouth is a grim line. “Will you?”
Dean peers out from under his arm, and his mouth quirks wryly. “I’m peachy. Never better.”
“I remade you,” Castiel says, and his tone is raw, and Sam sees his eyes go flinty gray. “I know you inside and out. Don’t lie to me.”
Dean snorts. “You look like you’re gonna shout at me.” He flops his arm back down across the seat, makes a face. “It isn’t kill shots yet, but he’s cut me up some.”
Bobby makes an unidentifiable noise of frustration, and his eyebrows shoot up under his cap. “Now the Hallmark moment is over, what the hell game are you playing out there with him, boy?” the old man snaps out. “You’re leveling this whole town. What about that crap you fed me about us not burning? What the fuck is-”
Dean interrupts with an affronted hiss. He leans forward, past Sam, stares right at Bobby, and his face goes set and steely, and his voice rumbles out low and lethally controlled, and almost reverent. “Understand that this is my nature,” he says coldly. “It’s inherent, innate and intrinsic. What I’m doing is my reason for existing in the here and now. It’s my aim, my goal, and my purpose. And it comforts me, Bobby. Because not everyone in this town is worthy.” He pauses, slants his eyes to the right then, straight at Sam, and they’re glowing incandescent, as alien as Lucifer’s were in the dream, because Sam isn’t looking at Dean, he’s looking at Michael. “This is what I’m supposed to do,” he says. “You ask me to go against my basic instinct. And maybe you ask too much.”
It numbs Sam to the bone, and he blinks furiously in the dim light, hears his breath go fast and harsh, feels himself start to shake with the buzz of adrenaline, panic, sickly fear, feels sweat prickle on his spine, as Bobby grunts out a strangled noise, and Castiel stares at them all with an incongruous look of curiosity mixed with bewilderment.
“What are you saying?” the old man barks, and he’s wide-eyed and breathless with a sort of incredulous horror. “Are you back to preaching your prime fuckin’ directive? Are you ending this? Are you seriously condemning us to a fuckin’ eternity of-”
“The end is the beginning,” Dean says simply, and softer now, melancholy. “Eternity is just another possibility.”
Bobby doesn’t reply, just stares back, and there’s a strained, heavy silence that drags on for long seconds, until Castiel clears his throat.
“Michael,” he reprimands quietly. “Enough.”
It hangs there in the air between them, and they’re all poised for something but Sam doesn’t know what, and the atmosphere is incendiary and vibrant, like one wrong word might set it off.
“I’m sorry,” Dean mutters then. “I don’t know what… it’s - it’s like I’m conditioned to do this. And it’s difficult not to.” He sighs out slowly, leans back into Sam.
“Dammit, Dean, there’s blood everywhere,” Sam snaps, now the moment is over and his brother is back. “Look at your arms. Aren’t you supposed to heal yourself? Is this because of what Pestilence did?” He pulls apart the ripped pieces of Dean’s bloodstained tee, swallows as he sees a vicious, deep diagonal slash running down his brother’s ribs and across to the opposite hip. “Why is this even here?” he demands. “What about your mojo?”
Dean bats his hand away irritably. “Leave it, Sam.” He nods down at something lying on the seat beside him. “It’s from one of those.”
Sam sees the glint of silver, glances back up and across to Castiel.
“Gabriel’s,” Castiel confirms, and he scrubs tiredly at his jaw. “Think of it as the nuclear-powered lightsaber. One of the few things that can damage an archangel. And yes, Lucifer has one.”
“Mine’s bigger,” Dean says on the ghost of a smile, but he’s fisting his hands restlessly, and his eyes dart from Sam to Bobby to Castiel and back again, finally settling on the old man. “Jesus, look at you guys,” he snorts out. “You’d think it was the end of the world or something.”
Sam scowls. “That isn’t funny, Dean.”
“Come on, it’s a little funny.” Dean sucks in breath as Sam prods at the wound across his belly, slaps his questing hand away again. “Jesus, Sam. Be careful.”
“I think this needs stitching.” Sam glances over at Castiel. “Will it heal by itself?”
Castiel shrugs listlessly. “Eventually. But he needs to rest. The blade, it - it will have cut deep.” He widens his eyes meaningfully. “Deeper than we’re able to see.”
Sam feels his brother shudder next to him. “So please tell me we have all the rings,” Dean says again. “Give me an alternative. Because I’m feeling tired. And because soon it will be kill shots. And because…” He trails off, flicks his eyes up to Bobby. “Because I’m a killer,” he breathes. “And it’s so damned tempting.” And it falls quiet again, a pall of silence blanketing all of them.
“We have the rings,” Bobby says finally.
The noise from outside fades away, and the flurry of leaves whirling in front of the windshield slow down until they fall still and slide down the glass. And Dean is suddenly placid, slumping even more pliantly against Sam. “If they don’t work, I will have to stop him, Bobby,” he says flatly. “I won’t have a choice. And now I need to sleep. And you need to start driving.”
“Start driving?” the old man queries faintly.
“To Colt’s cemetery,” Dean murmurs, and when Sam looks down he sees his brother’s eyes are closing. “To the hellgate. That’s where we send that bastard screaming back to the Pit. Or that’s where it ends.”
***
Chapter 18