Fic: Symmetry, of a Sort
Title: Symmetry, of a Sort
Characters/Pairings: Castiel/Dean, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,947
Spoilers: Only if you haven't seen the finale.
Disclaimer: Not mine, which is sad. Supernatural belongs to CW.
Notes: Sort of an AR, in which everything is totally the same, but also completely different.
Breath hitching, wheezing, his fingers scramble for purchase on the rough wood above. Splinters have embedded themselves, made homes of his palms and underneath of his nails, but it’s a distant thing. The dull, empty weight of darkness presses down against his chest, constricts his lungs while he strains for the air just outside of his reach. It is there, up there, and he knows if he could just break through this terrible barrier there would be relief.
He stretches, presses with all of his might against this immovable thing, ignores the ache of protesting shoulders and throbbing hands. The wood shifts, creaks, but it is not enough. He is bone-weary, knows not how long he’s been here, but the fierce rush of adrenaline that courses through him urges him on. No amount of rest would grant him the strength he needs to defeat this, not in time, and so he persists.
The tenacity with which he continues to pry at the wood frightens him, makes him feel wild and not quite human, as do the terrible keening noises he hears himself make. But he must get out of here. He needs to get out of here, and if any degree of de-evolution is required to achieve this goal he does not care. The air he draws with shallow breaths is stifling, too humid to offer any real respite to the fire in his lungs. There is no life within these confines. This is death.
Splinters, a dampness that he hollowly recognizes to be the steady drip of blood descend upon his face and neck, paint him in a mask of desperation. But it doesn’t matter. Suddenly it does not matter because at once there is the sharp smell of earth, a final give beneath his fingers, and he is crushed. Decaying wood and dirt compress him but there is room to move, now. He spares a moment to pray the surface is not too far, pray that he can get his feet beneath him and scramble upward. He is choking on earth, breathing in dirt, and knows there is little time. Though his eyes are tightly shut, starbursts flash white in the corners of his vision.
He presses on.
Time lurches.
When he awakes, the sun is beating down upon him with an almost tangible pressure. His skin feels singed, abused, whether from the struggle or this limited exposure to the elements he can’t discern. Unable to summon the energy to move just yet he remains on his back, legs twisted and half-buried still. A frenzied insect scurries across his arm, and he cannot bring himself to care.
His hands and wrists itch and ache terribly, pulse with a pain that intensifies sharply with each lazy curl of his fingers, and he relishes in it. Relies on the hollow twinge of tender joints to keep him anchored.
He breathes. Allows the stale, hot air to expand his lungs to a fullness that aches before he permits himself to release it. This breath is a gift, it is something he has fought for, and the taste of dust on his tongue is sweeter then anything he has ever known.
Any real train of thought is beyond him now: jumbled, disjointed, distorted. Notions float just outside his grasp, begging his attention, but he is unable to hang on to any one thing. His mind is a haze, a conceptual carousel passing by only long enough to give him a glimpse of each Important Thing he is dimly aware deserves his concentration. He breathes.
Castiel is out of the ground thirty-six minutes, filthy and dazed and blessedly alone, before it finally hits him that he is no longer in Hell.
*********
By the time he reaches something resembling civilization, after hours and hours, he is fuming. The shock, the numbness have worn off, and even all the small pains he had begun to feel so distinctly dissipate with a terrifying fury he is barely able to contain. He is back, freed from Hell, and there is only one reason why he can think it could be so. One plausible reason, and he can not abide by it. He must find his brother.
Anticipation makes him pick up his pace, gait shaky from favoring his left ankle (feet bare, for reasons he can’t ascertain) and worry roiling low in his stomach. He is free but it isn’t worth that, it cannot be worth that, and soon his thoughts are a jumble of GabrielGabrielGabriel and desperate pleases, but he’s not really sure who he’s praying to and not totally certain he cares.
The small corner store, when Castiel reaches it, greets him with a fine mist of Holy water as he pushes though the door. It may have been nearly sixty years since the Almost-Apocalypse, but Americans were not about to be caught unawares again, not even small time towns like this one, and he is grateful for this constancy. The two lone occupants of the store eye him warily, as they should, but he ignores them in favor of marching toward the counter.
“I require the use of your phone, please.” The sound of his voice, barely there and broken, astonishes him no more than the fact that he is actually capable of forming words. He had thought that language might come to him slowly at best, after so long when the only speech he’d known had been screaming. Castiel is, he finds, pleasantly surprised.
The young woman behind the counter draws her eyebrows up, dubious and not a little frightened by his appearance. “What the hell happened to you?” And then, after some consideration, “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” He sighs, reaches what he now sees as a trembling hand into his pocket, and winces at the feeling of rough cloth grating against sensitive wounds. He is able to draw his wallet out but only just, and resigns himself to handing it over when he finds stubborn fingers unwilling to work the button. “I’m a hunter.”
Sympathy flashes in the woman’s eyes as she takes the wallet from him, snapping it open and no doubt examining the I.D. for authenticity. “Castiel Singer? Must’ve been some kind of rough case.” And, when he can only stare in confirmation, “C’mon sweetie. Let’s get those hands cleaned up a little and then you can use the phone in the office.”
He has barely blinked before he finds himself seated in a small room, perched upon the edge of an ancient loveseat. With no small degree of shock he realizes that his hands are bandaged, throbbing anew, but undoubtedly clean. The small mountain of bloody gauze and paper towels as well as the questionably murky bowl of water attest to this. The amount of splinters and decidedly larger woodchips is concerning. He has lost time, again.
“You back with me for real?” Concern colors the woman’s words. Her voice is gentle, tone soft as though she is attempting to comfort a wounded animal, and Castiel cannot help but smile softly.
“Yes, I’m…back.” He is, he is. He is back.
“Okay.” She snorts, none to gracefully, and hands him the receiver. “Go ahead and make your call. You can stay back here till they come pick you up.”
At that, Castiel starts. He cannot believe he hadn’t thought to ask earlier. “Excuse me, would you… do you happen to know the date? And perhaps, exactly where it is that we are?” He pauses. “So I might tell him where to come.”
“You are just all kinds of out of it, aren’t you? Lawrence, Kansas. Mae’s market on Evesham road.” The woman rolls her eyes upward, considering. “And I’m pretty sure it’s July nineteenth.”
“July nineteenth..?” Castiel can see the expression of disbelief form as his implication dawns on the woman. Thankfully, though, she continues. “2063. Are you sure you don‘t need me to call you an ambulance?”
“No, thank you.” 2063. He’d only been in Hell for a little over a month and a half, here. Barely long enough to miss. His mouth moves without him, carries on his part of the conversation dutifully while he grapples with the realization. “Thank you so much for everything. You’ve been very kind.”
The woman smiles sadly. “Make your call, honey. Tell them to get here quick.” A gentle pat on the head, a rustling of hair that dislodges innumerous amounts of dirt and dust, and she is gone.
Castiel stares at the phone in his hands.
***********
Twenty minutes later a hand grips his arm, shakes him. His first instinct is to jerk awake, fight back. But he is tired, so tired, and the best he can do is open his eyes and will them to focus on the bleary form of the old man seated next to him.
“Cas, kid.” Large, calloused hands sweep over his cheek, fall to cup his jaw and tilt his face back. “What the hell did you do to yourself? Do you have any idea how nuts your brothers been going, looking for you? Do you have any idea how nuts I‘ve been? We thought you were…” Hazel eyes clouded over. “Let’s get you home, okay? We‘ll call your brother in the morning.”
And if Castiel is appalled to feel, rather than the words of thanks he meant to convey, moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes to roll down his cheeks, he chooses not to acknowledge it. And if deceptively strong parchment paper hands brush that moisture away, he chooses not to acknowledge that, either. “Thank you.”
“Hey,” The familiar voice is soft, and hands quiet their ministrations in order to hover uncertainly above him. He was thinking, mind moving at it’s usual terrifying speed, and Castiel could all but see him calculate whether an eighty year old man in decent shape could lift the smaller man before him.
“You’ll crack a hip.” He warns, and though his voice is still torn he is glad to hear the humor conveyed. Gladder still, to see the wide smile that transformed the worry on the old man’s face into something much more welcome. “I can walk, Mr. Johnson.” At the very least he could hobble to the car.
Those features flash critically once more, and Castiel wonders how obviously he wears his damage to be the recipient of so many looks. “Okay… but you lean on me as much as you need to, alright kid? I Know I’m about a thousand, but I’m not gonna break.”
Hands ease him into a sitting position, hold him steady while he closes his eyes and finds his balance. “You are in so much trouble.” Stern words inform him, with feigned annoyance and absolutely no degree of reinforcement.
“Sorry.” He heaves himself upward, relying much more on the arm of the couch as well as the one offered to him than he cares to admit. The adrenaline from earlier is gone now, and it is all crashing down so, so heavy, far too much for him to carry, but he would do it. Willpower carries him forward, tells him to ignore the careful hand at his back, the slight boost as he hauls himself into the passenger seat of the truck.. Only the distant rumble of the engine coming to life tells him he’s been dozing, and when the vehicle fails to move he forces himself to look over at his companion.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” The look in the old man’s eyes is knowing, empathetic in ways Castiel doesn’t care to consider. “And don’t give me any ‘better than you were expecting’ bullcrap either, Cas, I mean it.”
Slumping in the seat, he lets his eyes slip closed. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. But I’m Fine.” He is not. “I’ll be fine, Mr. Johnson.”
A frustrated sigh beside him, and Castiel is suddenly grateful that exhaustion is a valid excuse for keeping his eyes shut. “Yeah.” The conviction in that one word a testament to his horrendous lack of lying ability. “Okay. But I’ve told you a million times, kid, call me Sam.”
Sleep claims him.
*********
It is nearly impossible, he finds, to cleanse himself of such copious amounts of filth with swollen hands, abused and unwilling to cooperate. The cloth slips repeatedly from his grasp, plummets to the porcelain below within an obscene splat, and the delicate basin is splattered with his blood and the dirt from his grave.
He watches, entranced, as the flow of running water whorls them together, sweeps them spiraling down the drain. He thinks, dully, this is me. He is alive, returned, but death is as much a part of him as blood, now. He wonders if he can cope. He wonders if he can pretend. He thinks of his brother, of Sam, and decides he doesn’t have to.
Castiel stares at his reflection in the mirror, at the hollowness of once-familiar blue eyes, and wonders perhaps, in the chaos of being reborn, if a piece of himself was forgotten.
**********
He is making coffee, attempting to recall the exact sugar-to-milk ratio Mr. Johnson prefers, when the old man shuffles in. He plops gracelessly into a chair, looks comically large as he awkwardly attempts to fold too long legs underneath the table. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Castiel shrugs to himself, deems the coffee palatable as he slides it across the tabletop toward his friend. “It’s possible I may have just made you what amounts to diabetes in a cup.”
“Perfect.” Sam takes the proffered mug, pulls it in close to wrap large hands around it as though they’re cold. “Look, I’m sorry I slept in so late. Long night, I guess.”
The lie hangs between them, brazen, and Castiel chooses to let it slide. He remembers sleepovers, camping trips in his youth. Remembers that spending the night with Sam means being up and at ‘em absolutely no later than eight a.m. because the man is a terminal early bird. These hours alone were an offering, a chance to recuperate before the inevitable barrage of questions. For that he is grateful.
“So anyway,” Sam sips delicately at his coffee, tries and fails to disguise a grimace. “Mmm. Where have you been, Cas? What the hell happened to you? Gabe said…”
He waits, reluctant to encourage this line of questioning, but gives in with a sigh when it becomes obvious the old man is not going to elaborate. “He told you he believed I may have made a deal.”
“Did you?” Sam pushes his mug aside, leans forward on knobby elbows. Castiel can all but hear the silent tell me you didn’t conveyed through too-wide eyes.
“I did, yes.”
The confession is met with indignant sputters, a furious clenching of fists. He expects to hear the knuckles pop, a rapid gunfire of sound, but they do not. When the man finally speaks, Castiel is dimly surprised the words are able to slip through such tightly clenched teeth “And why the hell would you do that?”
“I don’t know.” Castiel holds up a hand, begging patience before he can be assaulted with what promises to be rather voluminous shouts. “I don’t remember. Much of anything, actually. But it’s not of import.”
Sam lets out something between a strangled laugh and a growl, furrows his brow. “And how, exactly, is that ‘not of import’? You were in Hell, kid. You’ve been in Hell? For what, almost two months now? How is that not of import?”
Castiel frowns at the incredulity in the other man’s tone. He does not appreciate being mocked, having his words thrown back at him. “It is beside the point,” He snarls, “because I am back. And because I believe the angels may have had something to do with it.”
He does not say like in the gospels, but they both hear the words anyway.
“Why…” Sam swallows, a great gulping sound in the silence of the small kitchen. He is pale under the harsh fluorescent light, steeling himself, and Castiel feels a rush of affection for the man so suddenly it startles him. “Why would you think that?”
“Firstly, I’m alive.” The smile he offers is without humor, a strained stretch of dry lips over teeth. “And secondly…”
Castiel twists himself to the left, rolls back the sleeve of his borrowed shirt until it is bunched above his shoulder. Lifts his arm up and across his chest so that the back is more easily visible.
He knows the second Sam sees it: a quick intake of breath, a soft exhalation of murmured profanity. “Shit.”
“Yes.” He rolls the sleeve back down with a solemn nod. He can feel as the soft cotton brushes against the sensitive skin of the handprint, an unpleasant sensation imprinted upon the back of his upper arm. “That’s a succinct way of putting it.”
********
Three days pass before Castiel decides he can take advantage of Mr. Johnson’s hospitality no longer. His presence in the house has become ghost-like, silent and anxious, and he can see the echoing strain in his companion. Time has provided them no answers, nor has it done anything to ease their frayed nerves, and he can barely breathe through what has become near desperate anticipation.
He does not wish to seek revelation, but he has been still long enough. It is time he left.
“Are you sure about this?” Sam stands before him, disapproval apparent in his posture. “Kid, you just… You’ve been through a lot lately. Are you positive you don’t want me to come with you?”
“I’m sure.” Castiel smiles, and though it’s small it is the most genuine thing he has felt since his return. This man is family, the father he never had, or needed. These few days, stressful at best, are still the most he has spent with Sam in a long time, and a part of him aches for the prospective loss. But he will not drag him into this any further than he already has, cannot risk it.
The man hums his displeasure. “Let me see your hands.” And, when Castiel presents the bandaged digits for his inspection, “You look like a cage fighter with these.”
“I don’t know what that is.” He draws his hands back, flexes the fingers experimentally. There is pain, yes, but it is a distant twinge compared to the agony he had previously experienced. His hands, at least, would heal.
“Never mind.” Hazel eyes study him. “And your brother’s really ready for you? He’s not gonna, like, kill you? Or anything?”
“He won’t. He knows it’s me.” This, the result of what Castiel believes to be the most traumatic phone call of his life, not to mention the longest. It had taken him over an hour to assure his brother of his identity, to endure the bombardment of ridiculous questions before he finally believed. Who was he named for, in full (the angel, his grandmother), what had been the name of his childhood toy moose (Moose).
It had only been after a particularly frustrating back and forth of ‘How do I know you’re not a ghoul’ ‘Because I am not a ghoul’ and ‘that’s what a ghoul would say’, that Gabriel finally silenced his questioning with a sob. Castiel is absolutely certain he could go a lifetime without hearing his brother ever make that sound again.
“Thank you, Sam. Really.” He tries, tries to elaborate the depth of his gratitude but the words, as they so often do, elude him. He is saved a struggle, however, when his train of thought is immediately derailed as he’s enveloped in a bone crushing hug.
“Be careful.” Sam punctuates this sentiment with a squeeze. “Really be careful. And call me, like, as soon as you get home. Or even before that, okay?”
Castiel nods, remembers suddenly that hugs are generally meant to be a mutual thing. He wraps his arms around the taller man, tucks his head into the crook between neck and shoulder because it’s the most comfortable option available. His shirt smells of coffee, of home, of the thousand dusty books that line the walls.
He is going to miss him.
It’s time to go.
*********
Four hours into the trip Castiel regrets his decision to take the train. He had thought, initially, the nearly twenty hour ride would be restful, an opportunity to collect his thoughts and organize some preemptive action. Or at the very least, it would be wise not to mistreat his hands any further by subjecting them to a steering wheel for so long.
But he is fairly certain he is going to kill the small child seated behind him. Feigned ignorance had only strengthened the child’s drive, emboldened him. Polite cooperation with his games had resulted in, rather than appeasement, a heightened level of hysterical fervor.
It is only after Castiel informs him that yes, he is a hunter and therefore a government supported upholder of the law and yes, little boys have been arrested for annoying such officers while on a case, that the boy’s bored-looking mother finally interferes. The child is blessedly quiet for the next forty-five minutes, when a loudspeaker announces their upcoming transfer.
Dodging people, skirting the crowd with eyes averted as he makes his way onto the next train, he is immensely relieved as yet another voice informs the patrons to head to their overnight bunks. The exposure is too much, far too soon, and he can’t help but wonder at feeling so removed from the humanity that surrounds him. He thinks these people have no idea, but is not positive he knows what he means.
By the time the train has begun to move, Castiel is seated in the small cabin with eyes closed. The door is locked, he knows it’s locked because he has checked it again and again. Tested the fortitude by shaking the handle multiple times, by trying to slide open the door. It is flimsy, but for now it will do. However…
He rises, lines the doorway with salt from the small tub adhered to the wall. Eases a length of double sided tape from the dispenser by the undersized window and lines the sill, sprinkles that with salt as well. They are, more than likely, unnecessary precautions, but they help him to feel more at ease all the same.
As per requested, he is the only occupant of this particular bunk. Considering the appearance of his obvious caution (paranoia, his mind supplies), Castiel decides this is a good thing. Most people, he is aware, find the mandatory presence of salt aboard public transportation ridiculous. Still, he is momentarily grateful for the preposterous lawsuit that brought this edict into being.
He sits, closes his eyes once more. He is unsure if he should attempt to rest, conscious of the fact that such a state will be less than probable to achieve. The first day of his rebirth had resulted in nearly twelve hours of sleep. The next three had seen him less than nine. It has become progressively more difficult, and he ruminates on whether that first night had been a fluke, whether three and four hours a night can be sufficient. He finds that he does not entirely care.
Castiel does not hear the soft wumph of displaced air over the rumbling of the train’s progress, but he does not have to. He is aware, as surely as he’d have been with eyes open, the instant the angel is seated across from him.
What he is not prepared for, upon first examination of his dubious savior, is the sudden rush of familiarity the moment he meets wide green eyes.
Chapter 2: http://neurawkward.livejournal.com/1639.html#cutid1