The Sky is No Man's Land: Part VII
God does not change our course, that is for us to do. All we have done is plan one course, and only one course, and there is only one end.
-Jeff Shaara, Gods and Generals
DETROIT, MI
2006-09-06 06:24 AM
The steeple of Westview Presbyterian still stands, a stunted thing scraping against a damp and gray Detroit sky. Nonetheless, the empty maws where some of the stained glass windows had been suggest the flock has moved on. Another has gathered on the church’s cracked steps, humans that cast the poisonous shadows of demonic possession.
More appear on the church’s edges, drawn by the flavor of an angel’s flagging grace on the wind. Castiel waits alone in the empty expanse of cracked asphalt, hands loose by his sides.
♤ ♤ ♤
Sam watches Castiel from a dumpster’s edge in the narrow drive separating the church from its derelict neighbors. He looks smaller than ever, from here. But by the electric charge that’s been growing on the air since they arrived, he’s anything but.
Dean raps his knuckles against his sleeve. “C’mon, boost me up.”
“Yeah,” Sam mutters. He interweaves his fingers into a foothold and gives Dean a lift onto the scaffolding lining one side of the church. The scaffolds were probably erected back when they thought Westview had some hope of preservation in a dying city. Since then, the boards have rotted, and Dean takes in the creak and sway of the structure with a hissed, “Screw this.”
Sam keeps one eye on the street, one eye on Dean, crawling carefully up the rusted metal support struts. “Y’see an opening?”
Dean shuffles around for ten, twenty seconds more before he sticks his head back over the rotting boards and whispers back: “Yeah-there’s a busted window up here. Full of pigeon shit, but…” He shrugs, and disappears. With the faint pop of glass crushing under hand and foot, he crawls his way in.
In the silence, Sam takes an uneasy glance up the alleyway. The air feels thin, here, thin like it had been in Chicago, but in Chicago things had felt alive, the skin of the city shifting restlessly beneath their feet. Detroit is stagnant, soft. Rotting.
Somewhere up above, the clouds give a little, and the first drops of rain begin to fall.
Dean gives two knocks on the boards above; all clear.
He looks back at Cas - standing there with his head tilted towards the obscured light of the rising sun - and grabs hold of the boards to heft himself up.
♤ ♤ ♤
The demons watch Castiel with a black-eyed hunger. He is small, and weak, and those that smell that weakness on him bare their teeth in pleasure, ignorant of the pressure building overhead.
He waits with empty hands. The first to approach does so in casual confidence, eyes flooding black as he steps within Castiel’s influence. He doesn’t flinch. He smiles widely, instead. “Castiel, right?” He assesses the empty street with theatric flair. “Just you? Glad to hear it. The boss wants a meeting. We’ll escort you in.”
“I don’t require an escort,” he answers.
The demon feigns insult. “Well, that’s not my call, little man.”
In a simple motion, Castiel seizes the demon by the jaw. He ignores the fingers scrabbling blindly at his sleeve as he sears its essence into nothing. The host collapses at his feet.
The remaining demons hesitate, watching with the cautious calculation of a scavenger. When they move again, they move as one. With the low thrum of distant thunder, the rain begins to fall in earnest.
♤ ♤ ♤
It’s a bitch, fitting behind pews this short. Sam edges along the rows in an awkward shuffle, knee scraping on the bench while his shoulder jams into every jutting divider. Dean’s lucky he’s the better marksman.
He’s measuring his footsteps carefully, spreading his weight evenly on the aging floors. It’s only the rain, drumming a steady rhythm on the roof and spattering loud on the floors where it’s found a way to stream in, that covers the groans and creaks beneath his feet.
He pauses with his shoulders under the unsteady mop of Nanael’s hair. The angel’s sitting stock upright, gaze fixed on the demons lounging around the pulpit. Sam had counted three from the upper balcony; Marchosias, the other demon from the warehouse, and another one, a male, the face only vaguely familiar. Something off a magazine cover.
“Hey, Nan,” Sam whispers low, under the drum of the rain. His fingers work slowly at the cap of a salt canister. “You with me?”
Nanael’s head dips in a nod, a prayer, or both.
When Sam rises past the pew’s height, he moves fast.
He bunches Nanael’s shirt in two fistfuls and jerks him into the aisle, taking a rapid but careful turn to spill salt in an unbroken circle around them. Nanael’s hands are bound in chains, but the sigil’s still visible, raised in red on the flesh of his inner wrist. Sam digs for the knife and lighter in his pocket.
Marchosias’s lieutenant is only one step off the platform when the loud report of Dean’s Glock is plucking neat holes in the fabric of his suit. He stills, and turns his attention to the upper balcony.
Marchosias waves a hand, drops an elbow to the pulpit. The other suit starts stalking up the aisle. Sam pays him no mind, focused on running his lighter’s flame over the blade just long enough to get the temperature he needs.
Somewhere up on the upper tier, there’s a single gunshot - low and muffled, the Colt, not the Glock - but Sam can’t look, not right now. Nanael is saying, “Sam, Sam-“ but Sam just tunes him out. Then Nanael’s saying, “Calabriel-“
Sam places the unknown suit’s face, then, and looks up right before Calabriel - angel Calabriel - steps over the salt line and punches him in the chest. The air spills out of him in an explosive burst, and he’s pretty goddamn sure he hears something crack. The knife clatters against the floor by Nanael’s feet. The angel digs his fingers into the collar of Sam’s shirt and then Sam’s off the ground and hitting a front pew, hard.
♤ ♤ ♤
Dean gets two solid shots off into Glasses before he gets down the steps. It’s just the Glock, but that cold iron’s gotta burn like a bitch. Glasses looks towards Marchosias; Marchosias gives a small jerk of his chin. With a dramatic explosion of black sulfur the demon’s rolling right at him.
Dean lets the putrid smoke wash over him as he rolls onto his back, pulling the Colt out of his belt as he does. The demon reforms two rows above him and sneers beneath his glasses at the relic in Dean’s hands. This is the the suited bastard that had taken Cas’s brother, and he’s clean in the Colt’s sights. Dean doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. This one hits heart, and the demon lights up like the Fourth of July. Dean watches him go with a savage pleasure.
He hopes Yellow Eyes had the same damn look on his face when his dad had done the same.
There’s a heavy sound of flesh-on-flesh below, and Nanael’s shouting; Dean rolls back to his stomach, sighting Marchosias down the Colt’s barrel. He gets one shot off - a miss that just plucks a neat hole in the pulpit, shit - before the bastard is reeling Sam casually in from the splintered mess of a pew, tugging the pocketknife from Sam’s hand to press it against his throat. He puts Sam’s taller frame to full use, dragging him up to block every viable shot Dean’s got.
The grigori adjusts the blade to rest its point on Sam’s carotid artery. “I have many places to choose from. You have none. Throw down the gun.” His voice carries easily through the church’s vaulted ceilings.
“Fuck.” Dean puts another inch, half-inch of pressure on the trigger before he relents and slams the Colt against the wood. “Fuck.”
♤ ♤ ♤
There’s a long moment where Sam’s really hoping Dean’s working up some kind of trickshot to murder this bastard. Then Dean’s standing up, and the Colt’s taking a slow, lazy arc through the humid air to clatter against a pew.
Marchosias buries a fist in Sam’s gut and returns him forcefully to the ground as soon as the Colt hits the floor. By the time Sam can gather enough breath to get himself up he’s staring down the barrel of the Colt.
Dean stares from the upper tier, expression one of flat rage.
“Do not,” Marchosias says simply, but he’s not talking to either of them. He’s watching Calabriel, who stands with a sword in hand.
Calabriel doesn’t look to him, only to Nanael. “He has seen me.”
Nanael gives a wavering smirk. “I didn’t have to see you.”
The angel curls a fist into Nanael’s collar, jerking him close.
“He will not leave here,” Marchosias says.
“Hm. And how many times has the other little one escaped you? Castiel? And already faring better in this skirmish than you.” He passes a disinterested eye over Sam, and Dean.
Marchosias doesn’t rise to the challenge. “There are orders.”
“Orders?” Calabriel shoves Nanael back and turns his glance back to Marchosias, lips upturned in a mocking smile. “You presume to give me-“
He’s cut short when the church bleaches static-white with lightning, close enough to set the air humming. The peal of thunder that follows is a concussive blast, shaking plaster and broken glass down from the rafters above, reverberating down to the very foundations.
Calabriel is staring, pale, at the chapel doors. Upstairs, Dean starts to run.
♤ ♤ ♤
The rain falls in earnest now, a deluge. Castiel’s hands slip on what flesh he manages to find purchase on, but so too do the demons’. There isn’t the time to burn out those he grasps before he is torn away; he’s forced to draw Dean’s blade. It is crafted perfectly for these lower demons, borne of mankind and mankind’s sins. He rends flesh and bone, disables or destroys.
Blood soaks heavy on the sleeves of his coat before the static charge on the air reaches its height. He only takes note of it when the demons shrink back, repelled by an instinctual fear.
With a blinding bright lightning sinks its teeth into the pavement at Castiel’s heels, shearing the demons’ ranks in two. Thunder shatters the air, shaking apart the pavement beneath their feet. In the reverberations of the aftermath Sandalphon rises from the crater, a greater and brighter thing than the demons were expecting to face.
Around him, his brothers and sisters descend to the cracked tarmac. It’s not a full complement, only those Sandalphon could summon, but their presence hangs heavy and electric on the air. His garrisonmates brush against his shoulders as they pass - Adnachiel, Dananchiel.
“All this--?” Castiel shouts above the din of rain and rising thunder. The storm has the flavor of an arch’s power.
“I called in a favor,” Sandalphon says with a thin smile, and buries his sword in a demon’s throat to force his way past. With their brothers at their flanks, they drive forward, towards the doors of the church; the demons part in panic before the edges of their swords.
♤ ♤ ♤
With the lightning strike, comes chaos.
Eyes tight with fear, Calabriel seizes a handful of Nanael’s hair and moves to draw the sword across his throat. Nanael grabs at the blade with his bound hands; blood spills dark between his clenched fingers, but the chains arrest the blade’s momentum.
Sam dives for Uriel’s sword, lost in his unexpected trip down the aisle. It’s an awkward weight, longer than anything he’s thrown before, but it’s a risk he has to take. He gives it one testing bounce in his hand and throws. It buries hilt-deep in Calabriel’s shoulder, too high to hit anything vital, but deep enough to draw a burst of grace that leaves the angel barking a sibilant shout of pain.
To his credit, Calabriel doesn’t falter. He lets Nanael’s head go and shoves at the blade with two hands, ignorant of the blood spilling down the back of his well-tailored suit.
Sam twists to meet Marchosias, bearing into him with his shoulder as he drops an elbow hard on his forearm in hopes of knocking the Colt loose. The Grigori buries a knee in deep enough in Sam’s stomach to touch spine and lets him fall, winded, to the floor.
Nanael is straining against Marchosias, leveraging the angel’s weakened left arm to scrabble a blind hand at his back, trying to work Uriel’s sword free.
At the back of the church, the chapel doors open onto the incoherent chaos of the demon battle raging outside.
Calabriel stills. A single voice calls him out, its intonation damning: “Calabriel-”
Before he can even take sight of who’s entered, Calabriel is fleeing. He leaves his sword behind. It falls from Nanael’s bloodied hands, clattering against the floor.
“Pig,” Marchosias mutters, and heaves Sam bodily to his feet.
It’s Castiel alone that emerges from the shadows at the back of the church, the folds of his trenchcoat weighed down with rainwater and the darker stains of blood. His sword flashes bright in his grip as he takes in Nanael - gingerly rescuing Calabriel’s sword from the floor - and Marchosias, who bears the Colt into Sam’s temple. Dean is sprinting up the pews, and grabs at Nanael to pull him back towards the salt circle.
“I never did catch your companions’ names, Castiel,” Marchosias says.
Dean answers: “Fuck you.” He’s dragging the lighter out of his backpocket.
“By your possession here-“ he taps the Colt against Sam’s skull - “I would guess they are the sons of the late John Winchester. Kind of you to return this to us.”
He waits, watches as Castiel closes the distance between them in the slow, measured steps of holy wrath. When the distance is closed enough Marchosias throws Sam aside, and slams a fist into Castiel’s jaw. Before the angel can retaliate Marchosias is seizing him by the lapels and giving him a bodily hurl. He hits the pulpit with the crack of splintering wood, and lands hard on the stairs.
Marchosias snaps his fingers. Fire blooms at the pulpit’s base before chasing outward in an unnaturally straight line: following the holy oil spilt carefully across the steps of the stage. Castiel stops where he’s rising, turns, even spreads his wings - broken or no - to escape by flight but the flames outrun him, racing greedily down the steps to complete the circle. Castiel pulls up short of the circle’s edge. The edges of his pinion feathers singe on the rising smoke, and he hastily withdraws them. The burning oil’s effects settle in, thick and suffocating.
Sam is rising to his feet. “Cas?” The angel takes a step back from the flame and shakes his head, slowly, hands falling loose by his sides.
He pulls at his jacket, thinking to smother the flame, but Marchosias raises the Colt to settle on his forehead. Again, simply, “Do not.”
Dean grabs at Nanael’s wrist, rolling back his sleeve to bare the sigil there.
“Sam-“ Nanael gives Calabriel’s sword an awkward toss. It hits the floor a few feet short of him.
There’s a two, three second pause as human and grigori gauge each other. At their backs, Dean presses the hot knife against Nanael’s skin.
Sam lunges for the sword. Marchosias slams him down and kicks it away. Sam is rising to hit Marchosias with a full-bodied tackle when Nanael is right there, the broken links of chain that had been binding him clattering on the floor, and he brings his fists down on the back of Marchosias’s head. The demon goes down hard.
Nanael pulls Sam up, but Sam’s searching for the sword - it’s over by the pulpit stairs, lit bright by the holy flames. Dean buries his heel on Marchosias’s wrist, grabbing for the Colt, but Marchosias is gathering his feet, and his iron grip with it; at their backs Castiel presses at the limits of the flames, shouting, “Nanael, take the Winchesters. Go--”
But Nanael isn’t moving.
He watches, shoulders slack, as a woman enters beneath the faded mural of what had once been a cross, bare feet silent amongst the rotted wood and shattered glass of the chapel floor.
There’s a crash as Marchosias throws Dean into a pew. He shoves the Colt into his belt and drags Dean from the wreckage by the wrist, seizes Sam by the collar of his jacket, an errant parent gathering his unruly children.
She drops down the steps of the stage, balances her hands on slim hips and looks between them: the four in the aisle, and Castiel encircled in flame. “Brothers. Oh, sit, please, sit.”
Only the Winchesters do so, forced into kneeling by Marchosias’s crushing grip on their shoulders.
To Castiel, the vessel is a familiar one.
“Israfiel,” Castiel breathes in disbelief. But there’s something strange to her; her grace too bright, hard to pull to focus across the smoke of the flames.
She smiles as she bends gracefully to retrieve the discarded sword from the floor. Beneath her touch, fingers of frost curl up the length of the blade. “It’s good to see you, brother. And Nanael--” She stops, and gives Marchosias a stern look as she steps forward. She takes Nanael’s hands - still bloodied - within her own. The blood clears beneath her touch, leaving unbroken flesh beneath. Nanael’s uncertain step back is arrested by Israfiel’s hand on his shoulder.
Castiel desperately wills Nanael to go, fly, but his wide-eyed attention is wholly on Israfiel - who is now turning to him.
“I apologize for this.” She motions towards the flames and Marchosias both, who stands silent over the Winchesters. “I wanted a-“ She considers. “Calm discussion.”
“Who are you?” Castiel asks slowly.
She smiles. “Your sister, Castiel.” She bears her thumb into Nanael’s collarbone; he shakes beneath her touch. “I’m not certain what Uriel told you about what we have to offer, but-“
“We already gave our answer,” Castiel interjects.
She stops, raising her gaze to Castiel. Assessing. “What we offer, Castiel, is freedom. You would be a great asset to us. The both of you.”
Nanael answers first, steadfast under the weight of her touch: “No.”
“We serve the Will,” Castiel answers in turn. He nods towards the Winchesters across the flames. “And we serve them.”
He will remember her next motions. The simplicity of them.
Her expression draws into a grave affect as she dips her head in a single nod of acceptance. She smoothes her fingers down the wrinkled shoulder of Nanael’s shirt.
In as simple and fluid a motion, she runs the sword through his throat.
She smiles in the stunned silence, a regretful gesture. “Israfiel gave much the same answer.”
Blood - bright, pulsing - spills in a flood down the front of Nanael’s shirt, between his grasping fingers, as he collapses to his knees.
Castiel lunges against the limits of his prison, ignorant of the edges of his grace searing against the flames. He is screaming his disbelief, his denial, and if he can cross - if he can stem the flood, stop it -
No one listens. Nothing stops. Grace blooms bright between Nanael’s bloodied fingers and the hum of his frequency rises, and crests, and shivers apart into a blinding silence that settles in as a choking weight, too heavy to bear.
Marchosias has turned his face away. The Winchesters stare, pale and silent mortal witnesses to the passage of an immortal thing.
Castiel raises his eyes back to the figure standing tall across the flames. Israfiel’s last vessel stares back at him, but the grace beneath is something large and looming, and slicked with the blood and ash of Hell.
“Lucifer.”
She kneels in the dust to press a hand to Nanael’s face, gently pulling his eyelids closed. She places the sword - lined in frost and blood - by his slack fingers. “It’s good of you to remember me, brother.”
“You’re wearing her.” Shock dulls the observation to a comfortable distance.
“Her vessel,” she corrects. “This is a war, Castiel. We must make use of what we can.” She rises back to her feet, splays her skirt in a small curtsy. “For those we cannot convert, the vessels are more easily persuaded. I wear them as long as I can, but-“ She pauses to press a hand to her throat, where the skin has peeled and blistered. “It’s difficult, fitting into such a tiny thing. Humans wear thin.”
The words wash over him, empty and meaningless. His attention is upon the soot wings scrawled across the floor, the loose curl of the fingers of Nanael’s vessel.
Eternity, severed.
Lucifer brushes a hand across the air. The fire is smothered before Castiel’s feet, the suffocating weight of its hold extinguished. He takes a shuddering breath, and Lucifer is there before him, wearing his sister’s last shape. She touches a soft hand to his face, follows his stare to his dead brother.
“Castiel. It’s better this way - to put them down quickly,” she says. “But you. You’ve shown initiative, little one. I do applaud that.”
Israfiel had been ripped from this vessel, screaming. Wrath curdles, low and burning, at the very core of him.
“I don’t often ask this twice,” Lucifer intones.
Castiel blinks, raising his gaze towards Lucifer. She waits, patient and gentle and bright, but beneath he can see the same poisoned madness that stains all the Fallen.
He drives his sword towards her heart.
Lucifer arrests the movement with a bruising grip on his arm. She wrenches his wrist aside in a smooth, forceful motion, severing tendon and shattering bone. The blade she catches in her free hand. She casts it carelessly aside before forcing Castiel to the ground. She bears a hand against his chest, leans close. His grace recoils beneath her touch.
“That is your answer, then,” she breathes. “So be it.”
She steps towards the Winchesters, gestures; as Castiel moves to rise Marchosias is there to force him back to his knees. Lucifer draws the Colt from Marchosias’s belt. What move the Winchesters could make is arrested as the barrel moves towards them. First one brother, then the other. “Marchosias tells me these two were present at Uriel’s death; withstood the light. I see it’s true. What a rare thing. Not one vessel, but two. And empty, so late in the war.”
She plucks distastefully at the dust and sweat of Dean’s collar, skates her fingers across Sam’s mussed hair - and pauses. Touches a knee briefly to the scuffed floor to study Sam’s face in full.
He stares back, the flush of adrenaline draining slowly from his face.
A small smile tugs at her lips. She rises back to her feet.
“The Father you chose is watching this, Castiel,” Lucifer states. Still, with that cloying sympathy. She raises the gun and says: “He is watching all of this, and He does nothing. That is who you serve.”
There’s a moment of stillness as Lucifer sights Dean’s skull down the Colt’s narrow barrel.
The Colt clicks through an empty chamber.
Dean grins, and grabs at the Colt as Sam lunges up, catching Marchosias beneath the ribs in a low tackle and shoving him free of Castiel.
With very little thought at all, Castiel punches Lucifer in the face. The cartilage and bone of her nose shatters beneath his knuckles. The Colt comes free into Dean’s hands.
Sam hits the floorboard and rolls as Lucifer lunges after Castiel, seizing at his jaw, his shoulders, pulling him into an inescapable embrace. The rafters above groan as her fury pulses on the air, plaster sifting free in long trailing streams.
Dean moves fast and sure: he spills the last two bullets from his jacket pocket into his hand, pulling the Colt’s hammer to half-cock and snapping the cylinder loose. Sam’s hitting the floorboards hard while Dean thumbs the bullets into place with steady hands; but Castiel’s sword is still on the ground, and Sam scrambles for it. Dean has to duck a blow from Marchosias before Sam carves a jagged line down his right thigh, sending blood-red sparks chasing under the fabric of his slacks.
As the demon pushes up and staggers back, fist raised, Dean takes the shot. The bullet hits just to the left of heart. Every one of his ribs is thrown into a hellish silhouette, but it’s not right, not bright enough. The demon staggers, looks on them both with rage, and fear, and then he’s gone, dusting off in a flow of black ichor.
Lucifer pays his exit no mind.
“I am your sister, Castiel,” Lucifer snarls through Israfiel’s tongue, and bears her fingers as claws down into the space between his ribs, into his grace, searing him with her own essence. The corruption of her sinks to his core, and in that moment - a singular moment of infernal cold - he knows the agony of an existence far from God. “I am your arch. You may have turned your face from the Fall but we, we have not forgotten, and we will remind you of it in flesh and blood and fire when we take the Fields of Heaven as our own.”
A single gunshot. Lucifer’s head jerks aside, and she staggers and falls into the dusty pews.
Dean stares steadily down the barrel of the Colt.
Sam is solid hands grabbing a hold of Castiel’s shoulder before he falls. “Did that-“ Sam begins, as Castiel pulls his own weight beneath him. He follows Sam’s stare towards the woman sprawled on the rotting floorboards and answers, “No.”
He stumbles to Nanael, passes a hand briefly over the vessel’s face, and grabs instead for the sword by his side. Calabriel’s.
Dean still has the empty barrel of the Colt trained on Lucifer’s vessel as it rises from the ground, bloodied fingernails bearing hard into the dark oak of the pew. With two rapid backsteps - clumsy, panicked - Castiel seizes Dean by the shoulder, Sam by the back of his neck, and throws his wings open.
They sustain a single beat of flight before the fracture, barely knitted, gives beneath the weight. It’s just enough for Castiel to deliver them to the mayhem of the street outside. Dean and Sam come to a jarring landing on hands and knees; Castiel falls into a loose tumble, the fresh insult to his wing and the dulled shock of Lucifer, Israfiel, Nanael leaving him sprawled, insensate, across the cracked asphalt.
He drags a hand out, to find it crushed beneath the heel of a boot. A demon reaches for his wings - still extended - but reels back to avoid the broad swing of a sword.
“Yeah, back the hell off-“ Dean’s shouting, and Sam is pulling insistently at Castiel’s shoulder. The demon above is lurching forward, hands extended as claws towards the easy prize of a cripple, but a hand is bearing into the flesh of its skull, burning its essence through with a swift rush of a familiar Heavenly frequency.
Adnachiel releases the dead host and looks down, expression turning in surprise, and grief. They’ve felt Nanael’s passing. “Castiel?” He looks up to the church steps, shouting: “Sandalphon! He’s out.”
Sandalphon is a fury, parting the throng of demons in broad strokes to force his way towards the church doors. At Adnachiel’s call he turns on his heel. Three angels rise up to hold his place on the line as he withdraws. Hale wings are enough to cross the space in an instant, but Castiel is recoiling from Sandalphon’s hold. Their grief is a heavy thing. “We have to retreat,” he says. “Lucifer-“
“Yes. Adnachiel-“
“I have it.”
He signals the withdrawal; as one, they pull back, and scatter.
Castiel watches as Lucifer steps across the threshold to stand in the lee of the doorway, bare feet pristine amongst the soot and blood of the battle. She smiles, and tilts her head to watch them go.
♤ ♤ ♤
BLUE EARTH, MN
2006-09-06 08:32 PM
Castiel left almost as soon as their feet hit Minnesota pine needles, a rambling excuse about court martials and a ‘Be healed’ tap from Sandalphon and poof, done, we now return you to your regular programming.
A showdown with the Devil herself and they have nothing to show for it - a touch of two fingers from Sandalphon and every bruise and fracture is gone, just leaving the heavy weight of weariness behind.
Sam and Dean had dragged themselves up Jim’s creaking stairs and crawled into beds that their feet hadn’t dangled off of quite as much when they were kids. They’re too tired to care.
Dean wakes to dusk, and Sam burying a fist in the fabric of his pillow. As he rubs the last clinging haze of sleep out of his eyes he reaches out a hand to shake Sam awake, but just as he draws close Sam eases, drifting back into something calmer.
(Sam dreams of Lucifer, testing the syllables of his name with a warm smile: Sam-u-el.)
Dean takes a slow walk through the quiet hallways of the house before he toes on his boots and takes a step outside.
He settles on the porch steps and slowly pulls the empty Colt from his belt, turning it over in his hands. He opens the chamber and clicks through the black shadows of each empty chamber, and thinks - inexplicably - of Dad, dead in some roadside ditch, car accident of all the stupid shit, and Marchosias sparking from the inside out with the nasty jagged edges of whatever a million years of Hell does to a would-be angel, and of Nanael, spilling light in whorls of incomprehensible grace across a dusty chapel floor. Click. Click. Click.
Everyone plays the game; everyone gets everything and nothing.
He gives the cylinder a last spin and slaps it closed.
There’s still sulfur on his clothes, and a knife tucked into his belt that kills demons, and a sheaf full of notes in Sam’s backpack from a dozen angel interviews between here and Van Nuys, California, and Dean doesn’t know where that all tallies up on God’s see-saw of giveth and taketh away. He’s got an empty gun in his hand, but more direction - just a little more - than when he’d followed a crowd of demons into a park in North Platte, Nebraska.
He’s got a call to an irate Bobby Singer to put in, and then he thinks he might have to head into town to pick up a bottle of whiskey. Sam’ll be up soon, and he’s interested in seeing if he can revive the age-old tradition of walking the railroad tracks that run down by the river. The night is warm and the tracks are long and Pastor Jim’s house is too damn small. Now, the whiskey is going to be Evan Williams, because it’s cheap and Dean’s buying and Sam’s just going to have to shut up and drink it.
He’s got one foot on the porch when the wind scuffs up, just a little, stirring the sluggish air.
“I could ask the weapons master about that.”
Dean turns on his heel, takes in the trenchcoated tax accountant standing on Jim’s gravel drive. He gives Sandalphon - standing stoically by the bumper of Pastor Jim’s pick-up - a wave.
Castiel gestures towards the Colt. “The gun. Perhaps more bullets could be manufactured.”
“You think?”
Castiel shrugs. It’s a new trick of his, but he’s getting pretty good at it. Dean breaks a weary smile and drops a hand on his shoulder. Cas gives him a good static zap at the connection; he winces back, shaking out a numb hand. “Hey, you’re not court-martialled.”
Castiel nods. “I am not.”
“What about the other guy?”
Cas tenses up. “Calabriel was found guilty. The sword was damning evidence in itself, but--” He pauses, relaxes briefly as he gives Dean a testing stare. “Zachariah had amassed a large amount of evidence against him, it seems.”
Dean gives an innocent shrug. “Sam might’ve mentioned something about something, but hey, don’t look at me. I can’t even keep your damn names straight. Sandals, right?” He gives their stoic eavesdropper a wave. The angel’s impressive poker face cracks, just a little, for a sideways glance somewhere between confusion and mild displeasure.
Cas’s jaw jumps up in the subtle gesture Dean’s taken for embarrassment, which just cements the nickname pretty much permanently. Sandals it is.
Cas pulls on one of those doe-eyed expressions, and starts in on some pre-planned speech. “I came to thank-“
Dean stops him there. “Hey, look, whatever.” He pauses briefly to relish the confused look on Cas’s face, then rolls on: “Look. I know you’ve got a war. But you guys exist on a millennia-scale, and we’re on more of a week-to-week thing, so what do you say you put that off a few days and come with us? There’s this chili dog down in Ohio that you’ve just gotta try. It’s messy as hell, you’ll hate it.” And yeah, maybe that was a little pre-planned, too, but-whatever.
There’s a long, awkward pause, in which an umpteen-million-year-old being takes a slow look towards his older brother.
Sandalphon stares the both of them down, stern. “That wing requires rest, and recuperation. You’re not to involve him in anything that will interfere with that.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dean holds up a hand, thumb folded over pinky. “Scout’s honor.”
“I’ll take that as an oath,” Sandalphon answers solemnly.
Castiel nods. “I’ll be back in two days’ time.”
Sandalphon places a hand on Cas’s shoulder. “You’ll be back when you wish to be.” He pauses, and rolls an eye Heavenward. “Or as long as I can convince the Council to give, Father help me.” He gives the Winchesters a last look; this one measured, and almost curious. Dean gets the feeling that he’s looking for whatever Castiel sees, there. His eyebrows twitch together in a way that makes Dean think he doesn’t quite get it, but he concludes, “I’m at your call,” and with a restless shift of air, he’s gone.
Hell, Dean doesn’t quite get it, either.
But he does jab a finger at Castiel’s face and say, “I’m gonna find a food you like.” He grabs Cas by the collar of his ridiculous trenchcoat and drags him down the porch, digging the Impala’s keys out of his pocket as he goes. “How do you feel about whiskey?”
“Uhm-“
“Don’t worry, you’ll love it. C’mon.” He plants a hand between the angel’s shoulderblades and shoves him towards shotgun. There’s a hum in his bones and a fair amount of static on the radio, but hell. That’s what the tapes are there for anyway.
“Did I play Zeppelin yet?” Dean asks as he drops behind the wheel.
“47 times,” Castiel answers as he dutifully retrieves the shoebox from beneath the seat. The tapes have been neatly arranged and rewound since an Angel of the Lord took over for Sam’s shameful mix tape neglect.
Dean ignores him. “You seem like a Zeppelin guy. Let’s do Zeppelin.” He fishes the tape out blind, throws it in the deck.
The angel in shotgun, well, he doesn’t complain, ‘cause he knows what’s good for him.
[Finis]
If the war goes on - and it will, it will - what else can we do but go on?
It is the same question forever, what else can we do?
If they fight, we will fight with them.
And what does it matter after all who wins?
Was that ever really the question?
Will God ask that question in the end?
-Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
Part VI | Part VII | Master Fic Post