Fic: "Hellblazer - Chapter 8" [SPN/Constantine]
TITLE: "Hellblazer" - Chapter 8
AUTHOR: nanoochka
RATING: R for violence, gore, swearing, and UST
PAIRINGS: Dean/Castiel
SPOILERS: None, unless you mean Constantine, in which case… all of it.
WARNINGS: Constantine-AU, pre-slash, violence, blasphemous themes, multiple character deaths (sometimes repeatedly!), borderline crack given the nature of the work.
WORD COUNT: This part 3,238; overall WIP, but prolly more than 30k, since the screenplay is almost 25.
SUMMARY: Castiel Constantine, an irreverent supernatural detective, has literally been to Hell and back. When Constantine teams up with skeptical police detective Dean Winchester to solve the mystery of the death of Sam, Dean’s brother, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles. Caught in a catastrophic series of otherworldly events, the two become inextricably involved and seek to find their own peace at whatever cost.
DISCLAIMER: Because I’m basically doing twice the stealing here, extra disclaimer is required. The characters from Supernatural or Constantine: Hellblazer do not belong to me, and the dialogue/story taken from Constantine is the property of Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis (comic), and Kevin Brodbin and Frank A. Cappello (screenplay). No infringement intended.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have a confession to make: in spite of my (usually) good taste, Constantine is one of my favourite movies. It is, for the most part, horribly clichéd and terribly acted (no one’s looking at you, Rachel and Tilda), but I’ve seen it a bazillion times and still manage to squeal with glee through most of it. I suppose that’s owing mostly to the strength of the comics upon which the movie was based, but the film manages to pack quite the punch, too, especially in the latter half. Anyway, my point is that I love it to bits, and had a conniption fit upon my last viewing when I realized HOW FREAKING PERFECTLY the movie could overlap with the SPN-verse. It’s kind of scary. The Castiel/Constantine jokes have been flying fast and furious in the fandom on account of that damn trenchcoat, but no one, as far as I know, has actually attempted an AU/crossover. This is basically my way of saying, “See? See? TOLD YOU!” But for what it's worth, while I've tried to follow the screenplay as close as possible (as opposed to the movie), I do on occasion follow some scenes from the film where they differ wildly (moreso towards the end).
Hellblazer - Chapter 8 by nanoochka
Of all the reasons Castiel doesn’t talk about his past, he wants to tell Dean that it has a lot less to do with childhood trauma than most people think. There is trauma in spades, yes, but Castiel thinks he turned out pretty well, all things considered. However much assholes like Doctor Phil or Doctor Oz might harp on about letting go of anger or fear, Castiel has no desire-or need-to do so. He owns his damage: the bitterness, the distrust in people, the reluctance to let anyone past the carefully-erected walls that keep him safe. It makes him a better hunter, and being a good hunter keeps him alive. The last thing he needs is to pay due diligence on a therapist’s couch, and he certainly doesn’t need to unpack his man-pain with some detective that didn’t even think Hell existed until twelve hours ago.
He should not be here.
Dean brought them to a bar not far from his apartment. Like most bars of its kind, it’s dingy and dark and frequented by the type of people who would make you think twice about getting into a brawl, but Dean seems to know the owner and at least half of the serving staff. Their waitress’s name is Jo; Dean speaks to her like they’ve been friends half their lives, which for all Castiel knows, they have. He ordered a beer after half-heartedly listening to Jo ramble off their selections on tap, but his mind is somewhere else entirely.
Castiel was ten when he started to realize that there were things out there that couldn’t be explained by science or logic. He remembers the first time he saw a half-breed-before he knew what half-breeds were-looking for all intents and purposes like any other guy tossing a sealed envelope into a mailbox. It was a Saturday: Castiel and his mother were out buying groceries. Upon seeing how the man’s face was distorted and knotted like an ancient tree’s, Castiel screamed and dropped the box of food he was carrying; eggs broke and milk splattered all over the sidewalk when he looked twice and noticed that the man’s feet sprouted roots that dug deep into the ground beneath him. It started happening daily, at school, on the bus, at parks. Castiel was convinced he was losing his mind. So were his parents.
Back at the bar, Castiel tells Dean, “When I was a kid, I saw things.” There isn’t a better way to put it, but Dean looks at him so incisively that Castiel knows he can imagine just to what extent that would have fucked up a child-Sam went through the same thing. “You know how the story goes. My parents sent me to a doctor, a shrink, a priest. I was in four different institutions before I was eighteen.” Castiel can’t help but rub his wrist in memory, and he notices right away how Dean’s eyes track the movement, cop instincts honed and sharp. “The last place they put me was run by a church.”
Seeing past Dean’s instinctive cringe at this information, Castiel honestly can’t decide which exists more painfully in memory: the repeated exorcisms, or the shock therapy. He went through it all, and can still feel the hands holding him down as crosses and talismans were pushed into his flesh, inevitably followed by the electrodes when the doctor-priests decided that more extreme measures were necessary. Castiel can still hear the sound of his own screams.
“The revered Father made the brilliant deduction that I was possessed, said I needed to be exorcised.” He meets Dean’s eyes steadily until the other man looks away, face going pale and grey with queasiness. “It was like someone trying to pull teeth that weren’t there.” Removing his hand from his wrists, Castiel lets Dean get a good, hard look at the jagged scar that runs parallel to the vein, disappearing under the cuff of his shirt. “So I took things into my own hands and I found a way out,” he says grimly.
“You attempted suicide,” Dean concludes. As if the words taste bitter in his mouth, he takes a long swallow of beer to wash it away.
The smile Castiel gave him wasn’t a nice one. He’d stolen a pair of his mother’s scissors, the kind she kept knife-sharp and used for cutting hair. The cut had been true. “I never attempt anything,” he corrects.
“But you’re still here,” says Dean. “Alive.”
“Not my doing.”
In the back of the ambulance, Castiel had smiled at Dr. Moseley-then a paramedic-and her frantic attempts to save him as he bled out and out and out and the heart monitor beeped into a dead, defeated flat line. He slipped under in spite of her repeated attempts to resuscitate him. The exact moment he died is still clear to him, because he remembers the interior of the ambulance falling away and transforming into the burning, blood-soaked vision of Hell, Los Angeles ravaged and crumbling as he sped toward the dying red sun. He knows Missouri was probably jolting him over and over with the defib pads the whole time, refusing to give up. Obviously, she succeeded.
Swimming back into the present, Castiel shakes his head to clear the visions and gestures for Jo to come over with another round of beers. To Dean he explains, “Officially I was dead for seven minutes. But believe me, seven minutes in Hell is a lifetime.”
Dean’s hand makes an aborted movement to cover Castiel’s on the table, but at the last minute he thinks better of it and returns it to his own lap, face creased with concern. The gesture warms Castiel, but he can’t tell whether Dean is honestly distraught at what Castiel is telling him, or if he’s just trying to recover some of the face he lost during his breakdown at the apartment. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. They’re here now, aren’t they?
He continues, because Dean needs to hear the end of it. “When I returned, I didn’t just see demons anymore, I could do the one thing they couldn’t-come and go as I please.” Dean will be thinking back to what he saw in the apartment. “Heaven and Hell are right here,” says Castiel. “Behind every wall, every face-the world behind the world. It’s crossing over that’s the real trick. That’s why most demons can only whisper in our ears. But even as whisper can turn your favourite pleasure into your worst nightmare.”
“A mother drowns her baby; a ten-year-old shoots his father with a gun,” Dean murmurs, almost to himself.
Castiel inclines his head in agreement, but that isn’t the end of it by a long shot. “The worst demons are the ones that are allowed to be here-the ones that are half-human so that they blend in. Just like those with the angel’s touch, living alongside us.” He pauses consideringly, and wonders at the fact that it can feel so satisfying to get all of this off his chest, share it with another person. Maybe Doctor fucking Phil is on to something. “The half-breeds,” he says, rolling the words off his tongue like a curse. “They call it ‘The Balance’. I call it hypocritical bullshit.”
“So what do you do about it?” Dean asks.
Castiel shrugs and smiles with genuine pleasure. “When one of them gets a little cocky, peddles their influence or hijacks a soul-I deport their scaly ass right back to hell.” He sips his beer. “I don’t get them all, but maybe enough to ensure my retirement.”
At this, Dean snorts. “Sounds like you’re trying to buy your way into Heaven,” he says, but Castiel settles him with a cold look that kills his tone of derision dead.
“What would you do if you were sentenced to prison where half the inmates were put there by you?”
The image isn’t a serene one, and Dean studies him for a while in silence, face contemplative. Eventually he asks, “Why you? I mean, of all the people who get sent to Hell, why were you able to escape?”
That’s the question, isn’t it? Castiel slumps and drains the last of his beer. “I don’t know,” he admits blithely.
“Does God have a plan for all of us?”
“Not for me.” He knows his bitterness his obvious and cutting, but after over a decade he’s done trying to reason with it.
For a few minutes longer Dean continues to stare him, and Castiel just stares back, unnerved by the detective’s scrutiny but trying not to show it. Then Dean leans closer to him and quietly says, “Sam saw things, too,” confirming Castiel’s earlier suspicions.
The moment is lost when Dean’s cellular begins trilling from its perch on top of the table between them. The cop in him snapped to attention almost immediately, grabbing the phone and flipping it open. He looked at Castiel for a second longer before turning away.
“Detective Winchester here.”
Few people find the L.A. County Morgue an inviting place, but Zachariah has grown used to it. It is a grey, nondescript building located in a bland and borderline inaccessible part of town that tended to discourage visitors. As a result, their night security is light and disinterested in any and all goings-on. Zachariah was able to enter the building by way of the front door. The porter doesn’t even glance up from his telephone conversation as Zachariah slips by, forgettable in his grey suit and trench coat that is only a little cheaper and more rumpled than Castiel’s.
Only after opening and closed half of the drawers, Zachariah finds the one containing Sam Winchester’s frigid body. He lifts away the plastic covering to reveal Sam’s face and frowns in spite of himself. Sam is barely out of adolescence, so tall and well-formed that he should be off enjoying his life somewhere as a well-paid basketball player or the star of his college football team. Not reduced to a case number and a toe tag. Zachariah wonders about the boy’s family, and hopes they never have to see Sam this way, if it isn’t too late already. This is a sterile room of death, a Hell of a different type.
Looking around one last time to make sure that he is still alone, Zachariah reaches out to touch Sam’s forehead, but there is no spark, no whispers from the ether. The same at his chest. Zachariah begins to worry until his fingers find Sam’s wrist, but a sharp tug from the void tells him that this is the right place. He closes his eyes.
When his fingers begin to burn as though having touched a scalding surface, Zachariah jerks his hand back. Eyes fixed upon Sam’s wrist, he sees an odd, circular symbol begin to appear, angry and purple. The sight unsettles him so badly that he stumbles over himself in his haste to slide the drawer closed. Rushing out of the cold room, Zachariah slams right into a security guard making his rounds.
“Hey!” he snaps, recoiling in surprise almost as much as Zachariah. “What are you doing in here?”
Zachariah just keeps running, and the guard doesn’t even bother to follow. Inside the body room, the guard notices that a drawer has been left partially open, and he goes over to investigate. The plastic has been pulled away from the body, and the guard curses softly. He can’t see any evidence of foul play. The symbol has already faded from Sam’s wrist.
The morgue disappears from view as Zachariah pushes himself down the street at a dead run, going as fast as his middle-aged legs can take him. His target is the phone booth on the next corner, and he can’t get there fast enough. Grabbing the receiver, he finds a coin and shoves the change into the phone, frantically punching in the numbers as he chants, “Be there, Castiel… Please…” The phone rings once, twice, three times.
A shiver runs up Zachariah’s ankle, starting off small; by the time it travels through his body, he shakes violently with it. The phone receiver drops from his fingers as his eyes glaze over, settling upon a convenience store just visible from down the street.
Inside the store there is almost no one present save for an old lady browsing through the meagre selection of wine and the guy behind the register, a short, bored-looking morena flipping through an outdated copy of People. Zachariah bursts through the front door with such force that the shopkeeper looks up, expression alarmed like he’s expecting a robbery.
“Sir, where are you-”
Normally Zachariah would smile politely in greeting, but the shiver has turned into a tremor; his hands vibrate as though his whole body has been wired to an electric current, polarized in its need for alcohol. He storms his way across the store as though on a mission from God himself.
It’s everywhere. Bottles and cans line the shelves towards the back of the store and Zachariah begins grabbing at anything his chubby fingers can reach-gin, vodka, whiskey, he uncaps bottle after bottle and swallows it all down. Or at least, he tries to. Much to Zachariah’s growing horror, the vessels are full of liquid but none of it will pour down his throat where he so desperately wants it. He opens everything in sight but it is as though an impenetrable film has been placed across the mouth of each can and bottle. The woman in the wine section looks on in horror as Zachariah begins smashing open glass bottles in the hopes that something will pour into his hands; he would gladly lap it off the linoleum at this point. Still, there is nothing for it. He grabs the bottle of wine out of the woman’s hands and bashes the neck against the metal shelf, but no liquid pours forth. The woman screams and backs away.
In the midst of all this chaos there is one customer who continues about his shopping as though unconcerned by Zachariah’s mania. Crowley. He glances up once with a smirk before resuming his perusal of the rack of Playboy magazines.
Meanwhile, Zachariah feels his throat beginning to constrict and whither like a man beset by drought. Staggering over to the cashier’s desk, he crashes to his knees and tries to gurgle for help around his slowly diminishing strength. The shopkeeper looks on in terror, hand halfway to the phone and a frantic call to 911. Like the bottles of alcohol lying shattered and taunting around him, exploding outwards like the points of a star, nothing can emerge from Zachariah’s throat no matter how hard he tries. He wants to scream Constantine’s name but can’t get his lungs to draw enough air. Desperate, he grabs a box cutter from a rack upon the cash desk, and plunges it into the palm of his own hand with every ounce of strength left to him. He does it again and again.
With a startled noise, the shopkeeper runs around to the other side of the desk and clutches the lapels of Zachariah’s coat like he means to shake him out of his frenzy and back to life. Zachariah continues to choke around nothing and cuts into his hand with increasingly aborted movements. The moment he gurgles his last breath, Crowley throws a few bills onto the counter and starts towards the back door. Alcohol dribbles from between Zachariah’s lips, every last drop he thought he was unable to drink slowly drowning him to death.
Lowering Zachariah gently to the floor, the shopkeeper lifts his head to meet Crowley’s eyes. In an instant, a pair of massive, grey-tipped wings explode from the shopkeeper’s back, beating against the air of death in the store and arcing over Zachariah’s body as though trying to protect an already-dead man from additional harm. Crowley, his own face gone twisted and green as the human visage is replaced by that of a demon, grins and flips that coin between his fingers. He winks at the other half-breed as though they are anything but bitter enemies, and exits the store, whistling to himself.
Henricksen leaves the morgue security guard in the hands of a uniformed officer who will take a written statement, and crosses the street back to the convenience store where Dean is waiting just inside. Arms folded, Dean surveys the shambles of the store as though expecting the answers to jump out at him from amidst the detritus of broken glass and spilled alcohol.
“The Security Guard spotted him near a body in the morgue across the street, chased him out,” Henricksen explains when he’s within earshot, gesturing towards Zachariah’s body. “So he comes over here, makes a run at the entire liquor section, and pow-drowned himself in alcohol in under a minute. Could’ve been a member of my fraternity.” He crosses the threshold and sees Castiel crouched near the body, and throws an angry look at Dean. “Hey, what the hell is he doing here?” he demands.
Dean’s hand shoots out to catch his arm before he can storm over to Castiel. He sakes his head once, signalling for Henricksen to back off. “He’s okay,” Dean says quietly, and Victor falls silent despite the obvious confusion written across his face.
Castiel is all too happy to ignore them both, his sights settled squarely upon the drowned body of his friend upon the floor. The dead man’s skin looks damp and bloated as if he floated for weeks in the sea, though his clothing remains dry except for where it absorbed the alcohol he-unknowingly-spilled. Grimacing, Castiel leans down towards Zachariah’s remains and inhales sharply, reluctantly acknowledging that this is as hard for him to take in as it is to accept his own fault in his friend’s death. He reaches into Zachariah’s coat pocket, already knowing what he’ll find there, but his face crumples all the same when he withdraws the protective amulet he forced Zachariah to remove no more than two days ago. This isn’t just slightly because of him-he as good as signed Zach’s death warrant.
“Shit,” he breathes to himself. “Why didn’t you call me, you fat sonuvabitch?”
He lowers his head to say a quick prayer of absolution-to god or Zach, he isn’t sure-but stops when he spots blood stains on one of Zachariah’s hands. Carefully, so as not to disturb the crime scene more than he has done already, Castiel pries open the fingers and studies the box cutter wound. Blood is already drying over it. Reaching for an ice cube from where a bag of crushed ice was torn open during Zach’s rampage, Castiel slowly circles it around the mark on Zach’s hand, wiping away the dried blood as it melts. He quickly realizes that Zachariah didn’t injure his hand by accident-the marks have a distinct shape. Castiel grabs a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it against Zachariah’s palm.
The residual blood creates a perfect replica of the symbol on the white fabric, a circle intersected by a cross. Castiel has no idea what it is, but has no doubt that it’s important. Whatever it means, Zachariah died trying to get him the message. Bobby will know.
“Rest in peace, brother,” he whispers, and gently presses the swollen eyelids closed.
Rising to his feet, Castiel looks over at Dean, who has been watching him in silence ever since they walked into the convenience store and found Zach dead. The detective is no stranger to death, just like Castiel, but at the moment they both look like they've seen enough of it to last a lifetime. Still, Castiel knows better. Wishes like that are for children.
He lifts the corner of his mouth in an ironic smile that probably looks no better than a grimace. To Dean, he says, "I need to see where Sam died."