The Sky is No Man's Land: Part VI
But for the most part God had so much expectations for us and we have not turned out right. We are his chief blunder. I mean, bats are his blunder, and ticks and horseflies and leeches and moles and cottonmouths-- they are all his blunders, but the greatest of those is us.
-E.L. Doctorow, The March
CHICAGO, IL
2006-09-04 08:32 PM
Sam rolls Castiel on his side, balanced awkwardly over him in the too-small backseat. Every bump has the back of his head hitting the roof of the car, and on Illinois backroads, there’s a hell of a lot of bumps.
It’s strange to see him like this, unconscious. For a week, he’s been the shadow in the corner of the motel room - a stiff and silent sentinel, the low hum of his grace one of the only comprehensible things in a world filling up fast with unknowns.
Now he rolls loosely with each lurch of the car.
Sam peels back the bloodied shirt and pulls the compress free. The gauze is already soaked through. “This is bleeding a lot more, now.” Sam cups his hands to either side of the wound, peering through the dark. “No more shine, though.”
Dean keeps his eyes dead ahead. “Can you suture it?”
“Yeah.” He presses fresh gauze down, braces his shoulder against the backseat as the Impala hits another patch of broken road. “Find some decent interstate.”
♤ ♤ ♤
BLUE EARTH, MN
2006-09-05 02:07 AM
The only movement at 2 am in Blue Earth, Minnesota is the town drunks spilling out the bars in unsteady steps. Dean follows County Road 16 three miles out of town to an unmarked gravel road. Pastor Jim Murphy’s house, a two-story clapboard affair, is dark and shuttered; but the door is open to the Stillwater Chapel. Light spills warm across the gravel as Dean kills the engine and stretches his legs out into the heavy weight of the Minnesota summer air.
“Boys,” Jim Murphy says cordially, a thin shadow in the tall arch of the doorway.
“Hey, Pastor. Good to see you.” Dean climbs the steps, claps him on the shoulder.
“Sight for sore eyes, Pastor,” Sam says as he drags Cas free of the backseat. Cas finds his feet with a drunk’s clumsy caution. He’s been building up a fever since the Illinois state line, and he’s a furnace against Sam’s skin as Sam pulls an arm over his shoulders.
Dean offers a brisk introduction. “Jim, this is Castiel, Castiel, Pastor Jim.” Cas gives Jim a narrow-eyed once over, but doesn’t seem to see anything of note. He sways his weight back into Sam. Dean gives an apologetic shrug. “He’s a little out of it.”
Jim takes in Castiel’s sweat shine and the loose gauze with a clinical eye. “We can make him more comfortable up at the house--”
“We thought the church might do him some good,” Dean answers. Jim raises an eyebrow, but presses the door open without comment.
They shamble slowly into the bright of the church’s whitewash walls and oak pews. “There’s blankets, pillows, first aid kits, fresh clothes.” Jim retrieves a Thermos from one of the pews. “Coffee. Might be a bit cold, now.”
“Oh, god bless you, Jim,” Dean exudes, grabbing the Thermos. “Sam?”
“Yeah, in a minute.” Sam settles Cas down in the closest pew. “You have a pen, Jim? Some paper?”
“Of course.” Jim rummages behind the pulpit, comes up with a dog-eared sheet of hymns and a pencil.
With slow, careful strokes, Sam recreates the sigil seared into the back of Castiel’s neck.
“Cas.” He grabs at Castiel’s jaw, gets hazed eyes focused on him, and then the paper. “Hey. This is the sigil, alright? The one he branded you with. Can we break it?”
He studies the sigil with furrowed brow. “I don’t--” he drifts off, shakes his head.
“Might I?” Jim takes the paper, frowns at it. “I’ll bring up what I have,” he says.
“Here.” Dean hands a blanket over to Sam and settles back against the next pew. “We can’t just burn it off?”
Sam sets to arranging the blanket around Cas’s shoulders. “If it’s a seal like Dad’s lockboxes, you’ve gotta break it in the right spot. Might even have to break it a particular way - burning, or a specific kind of knife - to avoid some kind of backlash.”
Cas is listening on some level; he gives a small nod of agreement, shuddering his way through another wash of fevered cold.
“You think Jim’s gonna have a book on angel-branding?”
“Not really, no. But what else have we got?”
“A hospital,” Dean offers reluctantly. “Guy he’s wearing will be on some missing persons lists, sure, but it’s hours, maybe days before they ID him. If he’s going septic, a field kit isn’t gonna fix it. I don’t wanna be the one explaining to some random-ass angel we killed his brother.”
“You think they won’t be watching hospitals? We can’t protect him there. We break the seal, he can heal himself.” He looks towards Dean, and asks again: “What else have we got?”
♤ ♤ ♤
Dean breathes out the humid soup Minnesotans call air, looking for the silver-lined gust he’s used to seeing in these fields, but there’s no chance of that tonight. The night air’s hot and thick, and he’s sweating his balls off under Dad’s leather jacket. The idling of the Impala’s engine is comfortable white noise at his back as he grips Castiel’s sword a little tighter under his coat, and wonders how fucking stupid he has to be to think this is a good plan.
Then he thinks of the look on Castiel’s face, taking in the emptiness where Nanael had been.
God damn, let him be right about this one thing.
He wraps his fingers tight around the sword hilt and turns his head up higher, towards the moon. “Alright. Uhm-fuck.” He doesn’t even know how to start this. Cas hadn’t really gotten into specifics on the mechanics of this prayer crap. He doesn’t know if this is a party line or what. “Sandalphon?” He’s talking to a car. And a corn field. He clears his throat and presses a hand flat on the heat of the Impala’s hood. “This is for your ears only. Rest of you bastards, fuck off. But if you can hear me, Sandalphon, then-we need your help. Your brother does. So-please.”
There’s a long silence. And hey, ain’t that a surprise. Prayer’s always had a hell of a lag time in the Winchester family. Couple generations, or so.
The rumble of the engine picks up beneath his hand, and the air vibrates with the static hum of aggravated angel. Dean pulls the sword free of his coat as he turns.
The angel that bears down on him is righteous resolve, and thunder rolls through the thickening sky with the sharp edge of his voice. “Where is he?”
♤ ♤ ♤
Sam stretches his fingers loose, grimacing at the tacky pull of drying blood. His arm is starting to ache from holding it upright. Dean’s taking his dear sweet time. How far did he go, St. Paul?
At the sound of gravel popping under tires he straightens up, gripping Uriel’s sword tighter in his free hand. His wrist is halfway to busted, but the angel doesn’t need to know that. An uneven staccato of three knocks at the door. Jim undoes the latch and pulls the door open.
For all the talk, the man that walks in isn’t what Sam had expected.
He’s dressed sharp: a pristine shirt and silk tie neatly arranged beneath a well-tailored waistcoat. Younger, late 20s at most; clean-shaven, with close-cropped blond hair. Where Cas’s vessel screams burnt-out middle class, this guy screams trust fund. He carries with him that familiar sharp smell of ozone, electric on the air.
Dean files in behind him, with Castiel’s sword in a white-knuckle grip.
Sandalphon looks over the banishing sigil waiting under Sam’s bloodied hand. Sam holds his stare, keeping his fingers a half an inch off the messy paint job, ready to finish it. The angel has the same sharp cogency as Cas, but he’s otherwise unreadable. He hopes they’ve made a sound bet, here.
“Sam Winchester,” Sandalphon greets. His tone is clipped, but calm.
He looks over Castiel, tucked uncomfortably into a pew under a pile of blankets; he steps towards him, but hesitates. His gaze wanders afield, up the length of the pews. “I was under the impression Castiel’s brother might be here.”
“Nanael’s not-“ Sam pauses, awkward. “He’s not here.”
“The demons took him,” Dean says, impatient. “Would’ve taken Cas, too.”
Sandalphon doesn’t say anything. He’s a harder read than Cas; just a subtle tightening of his expression before he’s kneeling beside his brother. Sam tenses, but the hand Sandalphon presses against Castiel’s forehead is gentle. He turns his head carefully, looking over the sigil burned there.
Cas murmurs something. It sounds Enochian. Sandalphon answers in hushed tones.
“Can you break it?”
“Yes.” He rests on his heels, looking towards them. “I think a pocketknife would be suitable.”
Dean pulls his free, offers it. Sandalphon pinches the blade between thumb and forefinger and waits. Red heat blooms in the metal under his fingertips, and spreads. He lets the metal go, turns the knife in his hand and presses the broad side down, burning a small line bisecting the outer perimeter of the sigil.
The charge in the air doubles, static sparking against the sword in Sam’s hand.
Castiel jerks awake and scrambles upright, pressing away from the angel standing over him. His expression falls into confusion. “Sandalphon.”
“It’s good to know you’re alive, Castiel,” he chides.
Castiel looks towards Sam and Dean.
Sandalphon follows the gaze. “I was surprised to hear about your new choice of company.”
“Nanael told you?” Castiel asks, but just as soon sighs. “Of course he told you.”
“24 hours late for reporting in, your last location a massacre, Zachariah threatening disbandment and court martials. Yes, he told me. I want to see that wing. I doubt you set it right. But first--”
Sandalphon pushes aside the blanket to pull at the gauze covering Castiel’s side. He squirms to escape, but stills with a sharp ‘tsk’ from Sandalphon.
The thin red filaments of blood poisoning that had been chasing away from the wound have already started to hastily retreat. But with the seal gone, grace filters blue between the black thread of the stitches. Sandalphon uses the pocket knife to begin plucking the sutures free.
“Hey,” Sam says, affronted.
“You see the grace?” Sandalphon says patiently. “This isn’t an entirely physical wound. Physical methods can’t repair it.”
“Yeah, well -” He huffs, and finishes lamely: “Those took awhile.” He’s still got a crick in his neck to show for it.
“I’ll replace them.”
“Uriel is dead,” Castiel murmurs into the silence. Sandalphon nods. “I killed him,” he adds.
At that, Sandalphon pauses to raise his eyes; something immutable passes between them.
Dean interjects: “Yeah, well, the asshole tried to kill him first.”
Sandalphon smiles thinly as he pulls a bottle free of his back pocket and tips its contents into a clean patch of gauze. It’s a viscous oil, honey-gold and flecked with herbs. “You’ve found some loyal friends, brother. Although I doubt our superiors would approve of teaching hunters banishment sigils.”
That piques Sam’s interest. ‘Hunters’; not ‘humans’.
“Saved his ass with it,” Dean says. Sam winces, but Sandalphon just nods, and gestures towards the sword in Dean’s hand. “Could I borrow that?”
Dean looks to Cas; Cas nods his approval, although he’s looking a little green on the edges.
Sandalphon continues on as he coats the length of the blade in oil: “I was under the impression that hunters discouraged working with the non-human.”
“Yeah, but Cas has a winning personality,” Dean says.
“’Cas’. I was wondering where Dananchiel picked that up. He has half the garrison using it, now.”
Castiel groans.
Sandalphon neatly folds the gauze, places it on the pew, and snaps his fingers alongside the oiled blade. Blue flame chases the length of the sword and holds steady, flickering low.
He bears a steadying hand into Cas’s shoulder.
Dean’s the one to throw his hands up in protest. “Woah, woah, woah, are you gonna--”
Cas digs his fingers into the back of the pew. “This is the cleanest way.”
Cas gives a small nod. Sandalphon bears the sword into the wound.
He takes the branding in stolid silence, but the finger-grooves left in the wood of the pew and the gray seeping into the edges of his face are sign enough that he doesn’t cherish the experience. When it’s finished, Sandalphon smothers the flame in a swath of blanket, and offers the sword back to Sam, hilt-first. He sorts through the first aid kit, reading each label with care, until he comes upon a fresh suture packet. He sets to repairing Sam’s stitches.
Cas speaks in low tones, the rolling vowels and sharp consonants of Enochian; Sandalphon gives a small nod, waits, and Cas rolls slowly on. He holds a steadfast stare with the hymnal in the pew ahead of him.
It’s-personal. A confession.
Sam grabs Dean by the shoulder, dragging him towards the back. Pastor Jim leans against the archway, watching the angels with an expression somewhere between awe and a wry amusement.
“Sorry about the pew, Jim,” Sam says. “We can pay for it.”
“Oh? No, no.”
Dean shrugs. “Hey, you could probably sell it off as a relic. Handprint of a holy tax accountant.”
Jim huffs a polite laugh. “I’m still taking in-“ He gestures towards the angels in the pew. “This.”
“Yeah,” Sam sighs. “So are we.”
“Keep an eye on them? Need some fresh air.” Jim nods along. Dean drags Sam out into the dark.
They settle with slow and careful motions onto the hood of the car, favoring the worst of every bump and bruise with strange contortions. Sam tugs at the gauze on his hand, arranging it neatly over the incision. “Remind me to stitch that up,” Dean says.
“It’s alright.”
There’s a pause as Dean shifts against the windshield, digging something free from his back pocket. A lighter flickers to life in the dark. “There’s always fire--”
“Jesus, no.” Sam slaps the lighter’s lid closed. “Get away from me.”
Humid Midwest air hangs heavy on them for a few minutes. There’s not much light pollution out here, but the air is thick enough and they’re both exhausted enough to leave the stars hazed.
“How was he?” Sam asks. “When you called him.”
“Oh, pissed. We swapped stories about pain-in-the-ass little brothers, and how we’ve gotta save your clumsy asses all the damn time.”
“Screw you.” His tone’s amiable.
Quiet ticks by in the low drone of the peepers down by the river’s edge.
Dean rolls his head back, watches the obscured silhouettes through the stained glass windows. “The hell are they talking about in there.”
“Pain-in-the-ass humans, and how they’ve gotta save our clumsy asses all the damn time.”
Dean gives the lazy snort of the amused half-asleep.
Twenty, thirty minutes of dozing passes before the phone in Sam’s pocket wakes him with a tinny chirp.
Sam pulls the phone out of his pocket clumsily, flicking through the screen. Then he sits abruptly forward. “Dean-“ He turns the cell phone screen his way. Dean squints against the glare.
SENDER: ⏏⏏⏏⏏⏏⏏
MESSAGE: 42.365109 -83.033781
♤ ♤ ♤
Castiel stares at the screen. “Where do the coordinates go?”
The chapel feels smaller, with Sandalphon gone; even with the sigil broken, Cas feels like less of what he was before.
Sam turns the states map towards him, drops a finger against the right latitude. “Roughly? Detroit, Michigan.”
“It’s an 11 hour drive,” Dean says. “I can probably cut that down to eight, nine, but we’re gonna lose time getting around Chicago.”
“You think Nanael sent this?” Sam asks.
Dean shrugs. “If he did, great, we’ll catch them by surprise. Even if he didn’t, he’s probably still there. They want Cas; the kid is the only leverage they’ve got.”
Castiel cuts them both short with a sharp: “Enough.” He pauses. “I’ve brought you far enough.”
“No. Hell, no,” Dean answers. “Look, I owe that kid something-“
“You owe him nothing. You entered that city on my request--” Dean opens his mouth to argue, but Castiel is speaking above him: “Enough.”
There’s a long, thin silence between them, crystallizing the desperation in the echo of Castiel’s demand.
Dean’s the one to break the silence in slow, measured words. “You know, you-- You’re the first sign that there’s there might be an end to this. The first proof that there’s something fighting on our side. I mean, you’re short, geeky, questionable fashion, but something.”
Clapping a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, Dean curls the fabric of the trenchcoat into a fist. “You’re one of the good guys, right?” The angel just stares at him, uncertain. Dean pushes away from him and moves out the church doors.
He has to dig through the trunk for awhile before he comes up with the box: a small oak affair, smudged with some half-burnt sage. As he steps back into the light of the church he smears the ash off to clear up the runes engraved in the top, carefully aligned on the edges to form a modified Key of Solomon. Popping the latch, he pulls up the lid and removes the gun within. It’s got the body of an 1836 Texas Paterson, but this particular Colt had been forged a year earlier. Despite being a few months overdue for an oiling, the hammer still pulls smoothly, trigger snapping easily through an empty chamber. There’s a pentagram carved into the handle. Non timebo mala engraved along the long, narrow barrel.
He hands the Colt to Cas, runs a finger over the four remaining bullets set into the foam. They’re numbered in a careful script: 10, 11, 12, 13. “Our dad used this. Killed the son of a bitch that burned our mom with it. We’ve only got four bullets left, but--”
Castiel turns the gun over in his hands, expression drawn in a pensive frown.
“Killing Yellow Eyes was about all we needed that gun for. Your bro saved my life, so, hey. Worth a bullet or two to save him.”
“We’ll get him back, Cas,” Sam says quietly.
“You, me, an’ Sam,” Dean agrees. He rolls the bullets into his palm and clenches his fist around the cold metal. “God help whoever stands in our way.”
Part V | Part VI | Part VII