Fic - Shape the Invisible
Title: Shape the Invisible
Book Two: Broken Stairway
Author: Lady Eternal
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Gabriel/Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Word Count: 75,446
Spoilers: none
Warnings: Fractured fairy-tale. Heaven's prison. Astral Travel. Sam’s Powers. Mating Marks. Pre-series/Season 1. Zachariah is a dick in any universe. Bobby Singer = Grumpy Bear. Pining!Castiel.
Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural, certain events would NEVER have happened and there would be unabashed pr0n. I own little more than a tabby that gets destructive when he feels ignored and am only playing with these worlds for my own amusement and the free entertainment of others.
Author’s Notes: Please see the Master Post for complete summary, warnings and acknowledgements.
Feedback is adored, so if you like the fic, please comment! And the more details the better; I love knowing what people like about my work.
Music:
Temple of Love - Sisters of Mercy
Falling Inside the Black - Skillet
Broken - Seether with Amy Lee
Without You - Breaking Benjamin
All Around Me - Flyleaf
~ooooOOOoooo~
July 7, 2005
Dean still wasn’t in the cabin when Sam woke. The cool light of dawn was filtering through the grit-covered windows, and Sam surfaced from sleep with none of the shock that he’d experienced the last time he’d traveled to the Silver City. It was as if the angel that had sent him back had done so more gently than Castiel had, sending Sam tumbling into a REM cycle rather than crashing back through the veil and into wakefulness.
“Abariel,” he murmured, sounding the name out as he shifted to sit up, swinging his legs and setting his feet lightly on the floor. Everything felt lighter this morning, somehow, despite what had felt like a miserable failure the night before. Abariel had told him something important before sending him back; he just needed to sort out exactly what it all meant.
Stomach growling, Sam huffed out a sigh and padded to the common area of the cabin. Sam had never been able to really think properly on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. He also knew that the smell of bacon frying would bring Dean inside no matter how much of a pique he might still be in. Clearly, his brother had decided to sleep in the Impala last night, which Sam knew he did more often than not when he was traveling between hunts. Dean had always found the backseat of the Impala one of the most comfortable places in the world to sleep; even when they’d been children, his brother had never had trouble falling asleep in his corner during family road trips.
Almost absently, Sam grabbed an apple from the bag in the refrigerator along with the rest of the breakfast provisions and took a healthy bite from it as he kicked the door closed. It was nice to have something to munch on while he worked on scrambled eggs, bacon and coffee, and left his mind free to tumble over Abariel’s words rather than being distracted by the gnaw in his stomach. The key was there. It had to be.
Sure enough, the door opened as soon as the bacon began to crisp, and his brother came inside looking rumpled and still half-asleep. His hair was sticking up in spiky disarray despite what looked like a valiant effort to finger-comb it and one cheek was still ruddy from having been pressed against the backseat of the Impala for the past few hours. “Coffee’s ready,” Sam offered by way of greeting, pointing to the old metal percolator on the back burner.
Dean grunted an acknowledgment and grabbed a mug, filling it almost to the brim and drinking deeply before topping it off and moving to sit at the nearby table. “You get any sleep?”
“Some.” Sam turned the bacon and then poured his pre-beaten eggs into the waiting skillet. It was nice to have a task that required him to keep his eyes on his work, rather than meeting Dean’s increasingly assessing gaze. “You?”
“My regular four hours.”
There was a chipper note in his brother’s voice that shouldn’t have been there. It turned Sam’s head in time for him to catch the secret satisfied smile that curled Dean’s lips just before he sealed them over the edge of the mug for another gulp of coffee. It was an expression that made no sense, given Dean’s reaction to the way their conversation with Castiel had ended… unless…
Sam’s eyebrows shot up and he spun away from breakfast, staring at his surprisingly relaxed elder brother. “Dean, you didn’t!”
Dean glanced up from his coffee, his eyes going deceptively wide just before he set the mug down on the table and straightened to meet Sam’s gaze. “I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, Sammy.”
“Castiel!” Sam all but shouted, gesticulating with the spatula. “Last night, after I went to bed. Dean, after all the crap you gave me-”
“If you let breakfast burn to yell at me, I’ll leave your ass here to eat it while I head for the closest Dunkin’ Donuts.” Dean watched the threat strike home, closing Sam’s mouth around his umbrage and turning his little brother back towards the stove. “And no, Sam: I didn’t introduce Cas to the pleasures of the flesh. But I did manage to convince him to help us… I think.”
“You think?” Sam echoed. “And just how did you ‘convince’ him, Dean? Because I’ve seen that smile before; it’s your ‘I made time last night and it was awesome’ smile.”
Quirking one eyebrow, Dean got up and topped off his coffee, then poured a mug for Sam and started getting the table set for breakfast. “And exactly what makes you think that’s what it means?” he challenged lightly.
“When I was 15, and you snuck Rhonda Hurley into the house while Mom and Dad were making a run to her father’s old compound?” Sam returned. “Or what about that yoga instructor that distracted you away from that banshee hunt for an entire weekend; what was her name?”
“You can just shut your face anytime now,” Dean retorted, color rising along the back of his neck. “Mr. ‘I rubbed off with an archangel during a blackout party’.”
“God, you’re such a jerk,” Sam groused, moving the bacon into a bowl lined with paper towels to catch the grease and plating eggs for each of them. “I’m just saying, Dean: you have a tell.”
“Maybe,” Dean finally conceded. He grabbed a knife, coring and slicing what was left of Sam’s apple almost without needing to look and popping one of the wedges into his own mouth. “But there: before you can bitch about something else, I’ve had something good for me for breakfast.”
Throwing a face at his brother, Sam nonetheless sat down with him to tuck into breakfast without further comment.
It wasn’t until they’d finished their eggs and were working their way through a second pot of coffee, idly snatching pieces of bacon from the bowl more for the pleasure of the rich flavor than actual lingering hunger, that Dean finally addressed Sam’s accusation. “I’m not saying you’re right about last night, by the way… but I get it now. About you and him, I mean.”
The defensive wall inside Sam’s chest that he hadn’t realized he’d still been hiding behind cracked, and the surprised expression he turned on Dean in response was watery. “Really?” Dean’s eyes skated away from him as his brother nodded, reaching in to pluck one of the last remnants of bacon from the bowl. “So you and Cas… but… I thought last night was the first time you’d ever seen each other.”
“I didn’t really remember the time in the cave,” Dean agreed. “There were bits while I was outta my head from blood loss that felt like… fragments? Or maybe something my subconscious made up, like a dream? But…” He trailed off, covering the loss for words by finishing the last of his coffee. “God, Dad would fit us both out for pigtails if he could hear us now: gossiping about boys like something out of ‘Blossom’.”
“Stop invoking Dad’s artificial definition of masculinity as a deflection tactic,” Sam chided. “You’ve never actually bought into hyper-chauvinist biases against emotional intelligence and we both know it.”
The rebuke startled a laugh out of Dean. “Man, you really did go to college in California, didn’t you?”
“I really did.” Sam’s lips twitched, unable to protest the stereotype. “But the cave… there were things you remembered that you weren’t sure were real… like what?” Dean sobered, quiet for a long moment, and Sam wanted to reach across the table and make his brother look at him. “Dean…”
“He loves me, Sam.” The confession was so quiet, almost ashamed, that Sam couldn’t be sure Dean had really said it until he continued. “He’s been there my whole life… seen me at my worst… not just the times when I was bein’ reckless or when I let my temper get the better of me but… times when I was petty, or mean when I didn’t need to be. Times when I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see me but you because anybody else would’ve used it against me… and he was there, too, the whole time… and he loves me anyway. It’s… kinda huge, that there’s somebody out there that loves me like that.”
Sam let that settle over him for a moment, let Dean get comfortable with having said it out loud. With having given it voice and made it real. “Did something happen in the cave?” he prompted again. “When he saved you?”
“Not like that,” Dean denied brusquely. “Just… he let it slip how he felt about me back then. Just for a minute, ‘cause he was scared he’d gotten there too late to help, that I was too far gone. I thought it was a dream, or a hallucination… but after I got him to come back last night, we talked some more… and I realized that it wasn’t.”
He finally looked up at Sam then, and the determination in his eyes made Sam’s heart skip. Dean had always been his hero, the center of his world. And right now he looked every inch the hero that Sam had been waiting for since Gabriel had vanished from his life. “So we’re gonna bust Gabe out, and then I’m gonna see about setting this Michael guy straight on a few things. Then you and Gabe can live happily ever after, and me and Cas… well, we’ll see.”
Sam grinned at his brother, and Dean grinned back. The smiles of a pair of highly trained, perversely stubborn and unaccountably lucky troublemakers that were about to see just how much Hell they could raise.
From where he watched in the corner, shielded from their eyes, Castiel covered his face in his hands and groaned. We’re all going to die.
* * *
Most of the day was spent poring over what research was available to the brothers through the Whitefish Community Library. Admittedly, there wasn’t much to go on. Most of the strategic information they needed could only come from direct knowledge or observation, and Sam wasn’t willing to risk Gabriel’s safety on attempts to direct his astral projections into a place he didn’t know anything about.
Dean couldn’t really blame him, but the result was a day largely spent piecing together a map of Heaven from what textual sources Sam could find using the library’s Internet, which they could only access for an hour at a time, print everything down, and then analyze while they waited for the computers to be freed up so Sam could go back and try to find something to fill the gaps. Not always easy in a public library to start with, and compounded by the number of people that were trying to find out information about the train bombing in London that had happened overnight.
They had dinner in town, careful to code their conversation as if they were merely discussing angel lore as an academic subject. It wasn’t the first time they’d needed to be discreet in how they phrased things to avoid ‘freaking out the Muggles’, as Dean liked to put it, but it left Sam feeling antsy. Every second they had to delay meant it was that much longer that Gabriel was being subjected to Zachariel’s cruelty, and he wanted nothing more than to get a rescue plan hammered out.
By the time they finally made it back to the cabin, the sun had completely set. Castiel was there when they came through the door, waiting for them. “Hello, Dean.”
Almost on autopilot, Dean crossed the room and set the apple pie they’d bought on the way out of town on the table, navigating in minimal light even better than Sam now did. Without a trace of self-consciousness, he then pivoted and closed on the angel, wrapping him into a hug that it took Castiel a moment to return. “Hey, Cas. Glad you could make it.”
“I’m always nearby,” Castiel assured him, slowly relaxing into the human’s embrace. It was warm, and surprisingly tight, and Dean’s skin smelled clean and earthy beneath the leather and aftershave that clung to him. Without really knowing why, the angel tilted his head slightly, leaned it against Dean’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Dean sighed just a little, his body relaxing fractionally in Castiel’s grip even as his arms tightened that much more, pulling Castiel just that much closer. As if that was the place where Dean thought Castiel belonged.
As if he wanted to never let go again.
There was a palpable stab of sadness in the air, and Castiel lifted his head to see Sam quietly puttering near one of the sleeping areas. His hazel eyes were careful to avoid looking at them no matter which way he turned, and the set of his mouth and shoulders was silently miserable. Castiel gently pulled away from Dean, gesturing at Sam when the question started to form on Dean’s lips, and stepped clear when Dean let him go with a nod.
“Sorry, Sammy,” Dean muttered guiltily, realizing himself how the open display of affection had to be making Sam feel… especially when Dean had been so vehemently against Sam’s relationship with Gabriel when Sam had finally confessed Gabriel’s non-humanity.
“Don’t apologize,” Sam replied with a shake of his head. Much as there was a tiny, resentful voice in the back of his mind that sniped over Dean’s seemingly-hypocritical behavior, the better part of Sam’s mind knew it wasn’t true. The logical part of him knew Dean’s reaction had been rooted in their mutual ignorance of Gabriel’s true nature and his fear for Sam’s safety from Azazel’s machinations. “We’re cool.”
Dean’s eyebrow quirked. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” Sam hoped he sounded as sure of that as he wanted to feel. “And anyway, we’ve got work to do.” He moved to the table and sat even as Dean took his pie into the kitchen and cut himself a large slice. When Castiel stood where he was, almost awkward between them, Sam gestured for the angel to join him. “We’ve been trying to do some strategic research today,” he started, “but the only thing I found that really talked about any kind of layout of the Silver City was the Book of Enoch.”
Castiel nodded. “That’s to be expected. Those writings are not entirely accurate, of course, but Father granted Enoch special access, since He intended to transmute Enoch into an angel.”
“That’s even possible?” Dean asked, returning to the table and settling in just off Castiel’s right elbow.
“Father is all-powerful, Dean,” Castiel replied a little stiffly, as if resenting the implication. “There is nothing that is beyond His Will. When Enoch accepted the destiny Father wanted to bestow, he was brought into Heaven and became the archangel Metatron: the scribe of God and the keeper of His Word.”
“Metatron?” Dean echoed. “Sounds more Hasbro than Heavenly.”
Castiel’s face knitted in confusion. “I don’t understand that reference.”
“Can we focus, please?” Sam snapped impatiently. An apology hovered on his tongue as Dean shot him a glare, but Sam swallowed it back. He wasn’t really in the mood to listen to Dean flirting just now, and he could smooth any ruffled feathers once they had a plan hammered out. “Okay, so… based on what I was reading, there are four main gates, called the Watchtowers: one for each cardinal direction. Is that pretty much accurate?”
“Yes.”
Between one blink and another, four mugs that had been in the cupboard were suddenly on the table, equidistant in a perfect square. Something like smoke slowly swirled into life around them, each a mere impression of color in the shadows.
Dean leaned forward with a fascinated smile curling across his mouth. “That is so cool.”
“It’s merely an illusion,” Castiel replied before gesturing to the mug wreathed in red mist directly across from himself. “That represents the Southern Gate, which belongs to Michael. It would be effectively useless to try our luck there. The angel that he stationed there as keeper of the gate, Temaniel, might be persuaded to be sympathetic, but Midael is the captain of the celestial armies and commander of the Southern garrison, and he would report anything unusual to Michael at once.
“It would be likewise foolish to attempt the Northern Gate,” he continued, gesturing at the mug surrounded by yellow mist that sat only a few inches from his hands. “That was my garrison before I was assigned as Dean’s guardian.”
“Why’s it a no-go then?” Dean asked sharply. “You had to’ve had some pals back there that might be convinced to look the other way.”
“No,” Castiel refuted. “Uriel is the archangel that commands that garrison, but because of its location and purpose, the archangels Phanuel, Mael and Aharnishiel also use that gate when they leave or return to Heaven. Caila, the keeper of the gate, would not risk their wrath even to help a former comrade… especially because Phanuel has declared firmly in support of Gabriel’s punishment, since he is the archangel of penance.”
Sam frowned, pushing away the stir of panic in his chest. Even getting to Gabriel at all was sounding more difficult by the minute… but getting back out again was likely going to be even harder. “So we’re left with the East and the West,” he murmured, trying to work the problem instead of giving his fear its head.
“The West was... Gabriel’s Watchtower.”
Gently spoken though they were, the words still drove knives through Sam’s heart even as his eyes snapped to the mug Castiel had placed in front of him, the blue smoke curling and twisting almost playfully. Tears blurred his eyes before he could stop them, and Sam desperately wished that he could’ve brought Abraxas along. Even after more than a year without him, he still missed Gabriel so much that it hurt to breathe if he touched the empty place where the archangel had been inside his heart.
Dean had placed a hand on Castiel’s wrist, signalling him to give Sam a moment; when he heard Sam’s breath even out, he took over asking the questions. “With Gabe out of play, who’s in charge up there?”
“Gamaliel: Gabriel’s chief lieutenant.” Castiel let his gaze wander to Dean’s fingers, and he slowly shifted his hand until Dean’s grip was laced into his own. “He was with Gabriel during the judgment of the Grigori, and later at the destruction of Sodom. I’m reasonably certain that both he and Abariel, a Virtue sworn to his service, would be willing to help us, as would Bhavaniel and Chaniel, the keepers of the gate and the Winds of Change.”
“But they’re gonna be watching that whole garrison pretty close, ain’t they?” Dean guessed, hearing the hesitation in Castiel’s voice.
Sam found his voice then, pushing past the lump in his throat. “Abariel helped me,” he said, drawing an expression of genuine surprise from Castiel. “I went back last night, hoping I could find a minute alone with Gabriel… Abariel stopped me. Told me that he’d been keeping other angels from sensing me, but that he couldn’t keep it up for long.”
“That explains why neither Gabriel nor I sensed you the first time you were there.” Castiel’s tone was wondering, almost calculating. “But he’s right: it would be difficult for him to disguise your presence in the Silver City for very long, and if he were caught doing so, he would likely be imprisoned as well.” His blue eyes focused on Sam. “You do understand how serious this is? This plan to somehow free Gabriel from his punishment? It’s never even been attempted before: not once in all eternity.”
“Not among the Host, maybe,” Dean countered. “But Prometheus was supposed to be chained up for all eternity ‘cause he pissed Zeus off, and he got let loose, didn’t he?”
“It was Zeus’ son that released him from his punishment,” Castiel reminded his charge. Dean’s grip was strong in his own, and even this simple touch was enough to prove Gabriel’s challenge correct. Letting go was harder than it sounded, at least when it came to these two, apparently. “But that’s another matter entirely; the Olympians have always conducted their affairs very… strangely… and certainly not in the same manner that Heaven is ordered.”
“So that leaves us the Eastern Gate,” Sam continued, hoping to head off a tangent that could be saved for a much later date… presuming any of them survived what they were trying to plan. “Raphael’s, right? The archangel of healing?”
Castiel nodded. “Although he is far less gentle among his brother angels than he has ever been in his dealings with humans, Raphael might be convinced to allow our passage through the gate to go unreported. And Hadriel, the keeper of the gate, is more sympathetic to matters of the heart than the garrison commander, Gazardiel.”
“That’s our way in, then.” Dean grinned at Castiel, quick and victorious. “You can fly us to the East Gate, we talk our way in, and then Sammy uses the way he and Gabe are pining for each other to track him down.”
“But then how do we actually let him out?” Sam asked, his tone deflating Dean’s bravado just a little. “Or get back out again without a legion of angels finding out about the jailbreak before we make it back home?”
“I’m afraid that even getting the two of you to the gate will be far more difficult than simply ‘flying’ you there,” Castiel added. He squeezed Dean’s hand when the human’s expression grew snippy, using his left hand to take up Dean’s fork and offer him a mouthful of pie by way of apology.
The way Dean’s eyes flicked up to his and held them a moment before those lips wrapped around the fork and drew the pie into his mouth made everything inside Castiel flip over with the sudden fierceness of want. Sam delicately clearing his throat did nothing to bank the flashfire in his veins, but it gave him enough to break the spell of that sultry human gaze and refocus on the task at hand. “Even the Gates of Heaven are not technically in this realm. They’re in liminal spaces, designed to allow for passage between the two realms. There are paths to the gates in this world, but they’re hard to find and well-guarded.”
“So where do we find the path to the Eastern Gate?” Dean pressed. He saw Castiel hesitate again and both eyebrows went up in expectation. “Cas, come on…”
“Deep in the Eynali mountains,” Castiel told them. As he spoke, the mists surrounding the mugs swirled and came together, coalescing and building into an image of red soil and grey mountains. “Four days’ journey from a village in the Nishaz Pass so isolated that it has no name, at the end of a track so narrow and winding that it is better suited to goats than men.”
“So we just gotta climb a mountain?” Dean shrugged, leaning back in his chair. He still hadn’t released Castiel’s hand, the angel’s grip surprisingly natural in his own. “Doesn’t sound too bad.”
Sam’s eyes had narrowed. “That’s just where it’s hidden. What’s guarding it, Cas?”
Despite not needing to, Castiel took a breath before answering. The more information he gave them, the more determined they became. They were resolved; he knew that. But if he gave them this, there would be no turning back.
Both humans waited, torn between giving him space to commit himself and pushing for the answers their natures demanded. Castiel found himself seeking Dean’s face, finding a steady certainty in the candlelight soul of this beautiful descendent of Edom.
For all his eternal, eidetic memory, he could not pinpoint the moment when the visage of Dean Winchester had become the thing from which Castiel drew the most comfort.
“The Gate lies in the place West of Nod and East of Eden,” he told them. “To even reach those lands, one must travel to a place deep within that hidden pass called the Monastery of Shadows, and be granted passage by the one whose stronghold it has been for millennia.”
“And who’s that?” Dean asked, caught by the intensity of Castiel’s gaze. The gravity in his voice.
Castiel’s eyes never left his. “The first grandchild of God. The one who bears the Father’s Mark, that no descendent of Edom may harm without incurring His Wrath sevenfold.”
Behind them, Sam choked. Dean’s eyes went wide. “Are y-... you’re saying that in order to even get to the gate, first we gotta somehow talk our way past Caine?!”
“Yes.”
Chapter Five