The Second Death - Chapter Four: Revelation Anticipating
Title: Revelation Anticipating, Chapter Four of The Second Death
Word count: 2,200
Author: dracox-serdriel
It took Carol two hours to convince Daryl to keep after the pickup. Luckily, they were headed north, so they didn't have to change course until the men turned east onto the highway. Daryl chewed fiercely at his lip before cursing loudly and following them.
"I thought the last people I tried to save were decent," he grunted. "I was wrong."
"Last time, you were alone," Carol pointed out.
She put her hand on his arm, and he relaxed slightly.
"This won't be anything like last time," she said reassuringly.
"How's that?"
She explained her plan, and he bit clean through his chapped lips, letting it bleed. She gently dabbed at his blood with a makeshift handkerchief as he drove. It made him feel juvenile.
"It's much cuter when you worry about me without bleeding," she commented.
"Yeah, well," he replied. "People ain't always worth it."
"If those men were anything like the wolves or the people you met, they would've killed those people," she said. "You think we'd do any different than they did?"
"Would've left'em on the side of the road for starters," Daryl replied darkly.
"Maybe," she said. "You didn't have to shoot that walker, but you did it to save one of them. Because that's who you are. I'm guessing that they helped those trapped people because that's who they are."
"And almost got dead for their trouble," he replied.
"Almost."
They didn't talk after that. The pickup stopped at one more abandoned refugee camp, then headed north until it started to get dark. Carol assumed they must be sleeping in the truck, because all they did was pull off-road and park.
"We need to circle around them," Carol said. "Maybe they have a camp nearby."
So they wasted an hour in the dark, looking for any signs of human life. There was nothing, but Daryl didn't mind so much because he snagged a few squirrels for dinner.
"Think they spotted us yet?" he grunted when they finally agreed to park and sleep.
"Don't know," she replied. "I'll take first watch."
He didn't argue. He just climbed into the back seat and stretched out as much as he could, wondering if he was making another stupid choice. That was his last thought before he drifted to sleep.
Castiel watched over Dean for most of the night, only teleporting away for a few minutes at a time to visit angelic sites. He felt the presence of the power of heaven, but it was only traces. It had been decades since another angel had visited.
He never stayed away from the hunter for more than five minutes at a time. He attempted to listen to all the angelic frequencies and found nothing, not even the cupids. It wasn't surprising. He wasn't expecting to find anything different from the night previous.
He found himself drawn to watching the hunter sleep, his normally scornful face relaxed and peaceful. It was much easier to tell Dean about the pain, the agony, he absorbed from Sam than about the dozen or so other things that he suddenly felt.
Some of them not so suddenly.
The angel had an enduring love for both Winchesters, the kind that binds brothers-in-arms together, but what he felt for Dean was different. Deeply different. Though he wasn't entirely certain, he believed what he felt was true desire. Sexual desire.
It was a disturbing experience for an angel whose sexual experience was limited to a woman who rescued him when he had amnesia. It had taken him time to allow his body to react to her touch, and even longer to understand that what he was experiencing was passion. Not that he hadn't experienced passion before, just not sexual passion.
Was that what he was feeling for Dean Winchester?
The hunter stirred in his sleep, and Castiel put away the idea. He needed to figure out where they were, but the work required would likely take months. In the meantime, he needed to find a place that could protect Dean's very mortal body. If Dean was right about his disconnect from Heaven sapping his power, Cas would also have to deal with that particular limitation. The last time he had been severed from heaven was during the Apocalypse, and though it took nearly a year, he slowly lost his angelic attributes till had no more power than the average human.
That made everything very, very simple. They had to return home, and they had maybe a year before he lost his angelic abilities.
It was nearly dawn when he heard someone calling for help, accompanied by a cacophony of groans. He shook Dean awake and drew his angel blade.
"Trouble?" Dean asked sleepily.
Cas nodded his head, yes.
The hunter became immediately alert, launching himself out of slumber and grabbing his machete. Cas left the vehicle as Dean struggled to get his boots back on.
Three zombies - or walkers, as Dean claimed everyone called them - were following an older woman. She was lithe, quick, and terrified.
It was immensely satisfying to impale her attackers and watch them fall. She collapsed to the ground, sobbing in relief, and he wiped off and stowed his blade before kneeling beside her.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Thank you, thank you. More... more are coming," she said. "Too many."
"How many's too many?" Dean asked. "Ten? Twenty? A hundred?"
"Ten," the woman replied. "Probably more by now."
"You got somewhere to go?" Dean asked. "Car, house, anything like that?"
"I was separated from my group," she replied.
The groans and gasps of approaching undead indicated far more than ten.
"Come on, we got a ride over here," Dean said.
"Dean," Cas said warningly. "Last time didn't end well."
"Last time?" she repeated with terror in her voice.
"We helped some people out yesterday, and they tried to kill us and take our truck," Dean replied. "You got any plans like that?"
"No, no, I swear," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please, help me. Don't leave me here."
Cas helped her up and led her back to the truck while Dean cut down the three walkers that closed in on them. Then he ran for it, dragging himself into the passenger side as it started it up. Cas drove at a languid pace, but it was enough to lose the walkers.
"I'm Dean," he said. "This is Cas."
"I'm Carol," she replied. "You saved my life."
Castiel found her compelling, but there was something off about her. Was she feigning fear? Tears? Gratitude? He dismissed it outright. This entire world was off to him.
"Listen, Carol, we can drop you wherever," Dean said. "But we came out here looking for my brother and a friend of ours, so if you've got an ambush or attack dogs waiting for us, save us the trouble, huh?"
"I swear," she said. "I swear, it's nothing like that. I just need to get back my friend. He's driving a station wagon. I swear."
"Dean," Cas said warningly.
The hunter backed off.
"We'll find your friend," the angel said to Carol. "Do you know which way?"
"We were supposed to meet at a picnic area a few miles up this road," she said.
"You said he was driving what exactly?"
"A station wagon," she replied. "It's green... I think. Or dark green. It's hard to tell with all the muck."
"That one?" Cas asked, pointing ahead.
She had to lean forward between the seats to get a good look, but then she replied, "Yes, that's it. That's the one."
"Doesn't seem like he's back yet," Dean said. "You gonna be okay if we leave you here?"
"Yes, you've done more than anyone else would," she replied. "I would offer you something, but I dropped my bag when they started chasing me."
"All that we ask is that you do not attempt to steal our only means of transport," Cas said flatly.
Dean stopped just behind the car, but before Carol could move to leave, a tall, shaggy-haired man appeared in front of them with a loaded crossbow pointed straight for them.
Dean asked Carol, "This your friend?"
"You gonna let her go!" the shaggy man said. "Let her go, and I won't put a bolt in your eye!"
"Daryl, wait!" Carol pleaded. "It's okay. They're okay!"
"Why don't you come out here?" Daryl asked.
It wasn't a request.
Dean rolled his eyes, but he unbuckled his seatbelt and got out. Cas followed. How could they help anyone here if everyone was a predator?
"You all right?" Daryl asked Carol quietly.
"Daryl, this is Cas and Dean," Carol said. "They saved me."
"How's that?" Daryl asked.
"And they don't have anywhere to go," she added.
"When did either of us say that?" Cas asked.
"We didn't," Dean replied. "And I'm guessing we didn't rescue Carol here, either, did we?"
The angel hated when humans excluded him from the conversation, but at this moment, he knew he had missed something. Carol straightened up and wiped her tears away, and everything about her changed.
"They're good, Daryl," she said.
"We'll see," he said. "How many walkers have you killed?"
"Dean killed three this morning," Cas said. "I had not thought to count them as they fell, so - "
"Too many to count," Dean interrupted.
"How many people have you killed?" Daryl asked, his bow trained on Dean.
"Me? Shit, I dunno," he replied honestly. "But nobody who didn't deserve it. Killers. Cas here has smited a few himself."
"Only when ordered."
"You a soldier or something?" Daryl asked.
"I was," the angel replied.
"Good, then shut up and answer my last question. Why?"
"Because we wanna live," Dean said. "Because before all this shit happened, we used to help people, even when it meant putting our asses on the line."
"And for free will," Cas added. "Team Free Will. That's what we fight for."
Dean left out the monsters and the demons because he had a sneaking suspicion that the man in front of him didn't believe in that kind of thing, even though he lived in a world where the dead walked around eating people.
"So, can we go?" Dean asked. "Now that we've answered your questions."
Daryl lowered the crossbow, but he didn't unload it.
"You got someplace to go?" he asked.
"What's it to you?" Dean shot back.
"Because we do," Carol replied. "We could always use good people. It can be hard to tell."
"So, first you lie to us about being in danger, now you want us to go home with you?" Dean asked skeptically. "Why should we believe you?"
Daryl threw something at Cas, who caught it out of habit. It was a large wallet filled with nothing but pictures.
"Photos," Daryl grunted. "We got walls and houses and electricity. We're low on food, and we lost a lot of good people recently."
Cas handed over the banded wallet, which were like amateur shots of the Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot, too blurry to make out if anything in it was real. He tossed them back to Daryl, who caught it with one hand.
"Pirates?" Dean asked flippantly.
"Raiders," Carol replied. "Called themselves the wolves. They destroy camps."
"Or they did, till they tried to take us out," Daryl replied, lifting his crossbow. "Look, I'd just as soon as leave you two assholes out here, but Carol thinks you're worth something. We ain't gonna beg or drag you there. We're gonna get in our car and pull out. Either you follow us or you don't. Up to you."
Carol gave them a sad smile before she went to the driver's side of the station wagon. Daryl backed away toward the passenger side as the engine revved up, his crossbow trained on Dean, and it reminded Dean about the arrow that saved his ass the day before.
"I got one question for you," Dean said. "You see us yesterday at all?"
"Think that arrow came from nowhere?" Daryl shot back.
With that, he ducked back into the station wagon, and it drove off.
"Damnit," Dean said. "Come on Cas, we gotta follow."
Castiel didn't ask why - or what Daryl meant about 'that arrow' - until after the truck caught up with them. When he inquired after it, Dean shook his head.
"That guy took out one of those things," he replied. "It was all over me, and I couldn't get it with my machete. I was so damn close to being in the car. Then, boom! Right through the skull."
"You said nothing about it."
"I hadn't thought about it," Dean said. "I mean, I knew it didn't come from nowhere, but as soon as it hit, I got in the car. After those douchebags double-crossed us. I dunno, it didn't seem important."
"And now we're following two strangers," Cas said. "At least one purposely misled us."
"Yeah."
"That woman lied convincingly," he said. "Perhaps they've lied again."
"Maybe, but I don't think so."
There was a long silence where Cas thought on that.
"Do you have a reason for trusting them?"
"Not everyone here can be douchebags," Dean replied.