vail_kagami
in
ohsam
Getting Lower Ever Since
Title: Getting Lower Ever Since
Author: vail_kagami
Genre: gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Castiel, Uriel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: torture
Spoilers: Set at the end of 4.03, slightly AU
Words: 3263
Summary: While Castiel took Dean for a trip to the past, other angels tooks Sam for a somewhat different purpose. Dean is not amused.
Note: Written for this prompt by minviendha at the latest comment-fic meme.
It’s not even funny. Dean thinks he should be making some crack about this; about this group of angels - heavenly warriors full of grace and all that bullshit - hanging out in some dirty factory and congratulating themselves for beating the shit out of some kid who couldn’t even defend himself if he were not hanging in chains from the ceiling. Dean is pretty sure there is a joke in there somewhere, but he can’t find it, because the kid in question is his little brother and right now he is too furious to even think of anything to say, let along something clever.
His first instinct is to walk to the nearest guy and smash his fist into the heavenly asshole’s face. Shooting all of them in their faces, and then in every other part that hurts only comes second, because when Dean is angry like this, his body demands to work out the anger in a way more physical than the pulling of a trigger, and less quick. (He doesn’t remember if it has been like this before hell, before Alastair and the rack and the knife; the thought that it might not have been, that this is what he brought back with him scares him, normally. Now it’s welcome. Now it’s about Sammy.)
He does neither. These are fucking angels, and if the tries to punch one, he’ll only break his own hand. Shooting them will be a waste of bullets. He’ll need to figure out how to hurt them, and then he’ll do that, but first he needs to get Sam out of here.
Sam, who’s been destined to be the demons’ plaything since he was a baby. Sam, who has been sold out by his own mother before he was even born and who according to Castiel-the-fucking-angel is destined to walk down a dark path leading to an unknown destination.
Sam, who isn’t walking anywhere at the moment, because apparently Castiel’s angelic buddies decided that rather than give Dean a chance to stop him from going anywhere unpleasant they’d take care of that themselves.
Dean returned from the past and the sight of his mother kissing his possessed grandfather over his father’s dead body to find Sam missing from their motel room and have Cas tell him that Sam’s basically been doomed since birth and Dean should do something about that if he wanted to keep his brother. And then he told Dean, with a little worried frown on his face, that he had no idea where Sam was, because apparently he had been taken by something or someone strong enough to hide his presence. Sam had been taken, and Cas had a little frown on his face. Dean had punched him then. That was how he knew it hurt.
At first, Castiel suspected the demons. Dean suspected the demons too - that that bitch Ruby wants to take his brother from him has been obvious since before he’s even seen her for the first time, and a half-denied, ugly part of him was almost glad, because now he had a reason to kill her and Sam wouldn’t have the slightest right to complain, or be shocked, or look at Dean like he just committed a crime. But then Cas pointed out that Ruby wasn’t strong enough to hide Sam from an angel looking for him. Nor was any other demon, for that matter - not like that.
He also said he sensed a gathering of angels nearby, and his frown had gotten a little deeper.
One second later, Dean was feeling disoriented and a little sick and found himself in what looked like an abandoned factory, with bare walls and leftovers of broken machines. Only, the place wasn’t abandoned at all. There were people here, men and women, and the hunter in Dean counted eight and marked their positions on a map in his head almost before the brother in Dean identified one of them as Sam, hanging from one of the machines by chains around his wrists and not moving.
“Uriel,” Castiel calls. “What is this?”
One of the strangers turns his attention away from Sam. It’s a massive, bald man in a suit who doesn’t seem at all pleased to see them. But he doesn’t seem worried by their presence; more like annoyed, as if they were disturbing something particularly amusing.
The other guys (angels, Dean reminds himself) turn as well. Some look at them in interest, one suddenly disappears with the sound of fluttering wings. Dean’s attention remains on Uriel, because he appears the leader of the group. Also, he’s the one standing closest to Sam.
“Castiel,” he says with a false smile on his face. “And Dean Winchester. How interesting.”
“What are you doing to my brother?” Dean asks. He wants to run over to Sam, but Castiel’s hand on his shoulder holds him back with inhuman strength.
“Your brother, right.” Uriel seems amused, as if Dean just said something funny. “I had nearly forgotten about that.” And then he lifts his hand and balls it to a fist, and behind him Sam jerks in his chains and screams.
Dean might be yelling something insulting; someone does, anyway, and he kind of thinks it might be him. He doesn’t really care, though, since all his attention is on the fucker before him, whom he can’t get to because Cas is holding him back from behind.
“What are you doing, Uriel?” Castiel’s voice is sharp, but he makes no move to stop whatever it is Uriel is doing. “You have no right to interfere like this.”
“We are not interfering any more than you are, Castiel,” the other angel replies. “You took all those pains of time travel to let Dean know what his brother is. Why mind us doing the same for Sam?” He opens his fist and Sam falls still, hanging in the chains like a dead body. Only, Dean can see now that he’s awake, sees the tension in his body and hears his harsh breaths.
Uriel turns to him, not at all impressed by having Dean in his back and willing to kill him. “Except, of course, that Sam already knew. It’s just that he didn’t understand. All we did was help with that. As you did for Dean.”
“You tortured him.” Castiel seems disturbed by the idea, but Dean doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about what Catiel is feeling about this. He just wants to be let go.
Uriel throws a look over his shoulder. “What if we did? Sam Winchester is demon spawn, Castiel, need I remind you of that? He’s an enemy - why should he be protected from our justice?”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong yet.”
“His entire existence is wrong,” Uriel insists. Dean looks over to Sam, who has to be hearing every word but doesn’t react in any way. When he looks back to Uriel, the angel’s attention is on him.
“You know what he is now,” he says. “Sam was tainted from birth. He isn’t worth your concern - he never was. You think he has changed while you were gone, but your brother has been vile all his life.” He smiles as he throws a glance at Sam, but it’s nasty and turns Dean’s stomach when the angel looks at him again. “It’s quite amusing that someone like him believed in us and our father so strongly. We did hear his prayers, you know. We used to laugh at them. At him and his self-absorbed assumption a creature like him could be saved, or be worth even a second of our time. It was really quite funny. I can only speak for myself, but I think I’m not the only one who will miss that.”
The fluttering of wings can be heard again as another two the angels around disappear. Maybe something important came up for them. Or maybe they have an ounce of common sense and know that even if it won’t kill them, it’s still going to fucking hurt if Dean nails them to the wall and sets them on fire.
He doesn’t start nailing just yet, for lack of nails and chances. Instead, he lets go of his own common sense and pulls out his gun, wasting a lot of bullets by shooting them right into Uriel’s face.
It’s not going to have any effect but piss the angel off. But apparently Dean means something to the angels, enough to pull him out of hell and dump the responsibility for saving the world on his shoulders, and it’s time they understand that the ‘vile creature’ they’ve been torturing means more to him than the whole damn planet he’s supposed to save, and he won’t stand by and watch them do this without comment.
It’s well known among the hunting community that the best way to make Dean Winchester an enemy for life is hurting his little brother. Apparently, angels just aren’t that smart.
Except that another one uses this moment to flutter away. Two others make a move towards Dean, but a gesture from Castiel holds them back.
True to Dean’s expectations, Uriel needs all of fife seconds to recover from having a magazine emptied into his face. Five seconds are long enough for Dean to slam in another one. For one second they’re facing each other: the angel with blood and fury on his face and Dean, ready to fire however often it takes to lessen the helpless rage inside him. There is a real possibility of him dying now, he realises, no matter what Cas told him about the part he has yet to play, but he finds he doesn’t really care, because he’s currently incapable of stopping himself. He can’t even say if he needs to hurt Uriel so badly because of what he did, or because he’s still standing between Dean and his brother.
Then Uriel isn’t standing there anymore. Dean barely registers the massive body being thrown into a half-dismantled machine before Castiel says “Take care of your brother!” and slams his hand against the wall behind him.
There is a bright light, and when Dean can see again, all the angels are gone. A quick look over his shoulder tells him that Cas, too, has vanished, leaving only a weird symbol painted in blood on the wall where he was standing.
Dean doesn’t waste time thinking about it. He runs over to his brother the moment he can, for the first time becoming aware of the blood running down Sam’s arms from where his wrists are rubbed raw by he shackles. He becomes aware of the bruises on his face (a black eye, a split lip) and neck (finger shaped, a hand gripping too tightly). He becomes aware that despite the doubt and hurt Sam has caused him since Dean came back from hell, he still takes precedence over anything else in Dean’s world. Or maybe it’s because he means so much to Dean that the doubt hurt so much in the first place. He isn’t really up to analysing himself right now. First of all, he needs to get Sam down there.
And that’s when Dean becomes aware that the shackles don’t seem to have a lock.
“Shit,” he mutters. “Hey, Sammy.” He cubs his brother’s face, gently lifting it up. “Talk to me.”
Sam’s eyes are open, but he doesn’t react to Dean’s presence, and all tension is gone from his body. He doesn’t only look hurt - he looks defeated.
Dean wishes Uriel would come back here, so he can empty the next round of bullets into his balls. Fucking asshole!
At least - and it’s a very weak at least, but he’s grasping for straws here - at least Uriel mostly used his jedi-powers on Sam, so what he did hurt but caused no actual damage. So there are only the lacerations on Sam’s wrists and the bruises and the general realisation that angels aren’t quite what he hoped they would be.And maybe dehydration, too. Sam’s lips are dry and cracked and he looks feverish on top of everything else. Dean realises he doesn’t know when Sam was taken. He’s been in the past for three days. He doesn’t even want to imagine that these dicks took Sam right after Cas took Dean.
Then the thinks that he doesn’t need to worry, because while he was in the past for days, he can’t have been gone from the present for more than a few hours. In fact, Cas told him no time at all had passed, which just doesn’t leave any room for Uriel and his pals to do this much damage.
Dean is at a loss to explain it. He’ll ask Sam about it later. Not now. Now he has to get him down somehow.
The chains are solid and he has no tools with him. Sam’s feet touch the ground, but he doesn’t even try to stand on them. And then he jerks his head out of Dean’s hands and starts coughing helplessly until blood runs over his lips and splatters onto the floor. So much for Uriel doing no real damage.
“It’s okay,” Dean says, uselessly patting Sam’s back. “You’re gonna be okay, Sammy.” He looks around, desperately hoping to find something, anything to help him get Sam down. He starts fumbling for his phone, ready to call Bobby and have him come here with any tool he can carry, because Dean certainly isn’t going to leave Sam alone just now. However, before he even pushes the first button, he remembers that he doesn’t even know in what state Castiel dropped him in.
Or on what planet, for that matter.
When he hears the flutter of wings behind him, the weapon is back in Dean’s hand in less than a second. But it’s only Castiel, looking agitated but none the worse for wear - not that Dean cares much about Castiel’s physical state at the moment.
“Where the hell were you?” he explodes.
“There was something I needed to take care of,” Cas explains, helpful as ever. “It’s been taken care of now.” He snaps his fingers and Sam falls when the shackles crumble around his wrists. It happens so quickly that Dean is barely fast enough to catch him before he hits the ground.
“Damn it, Cas!” he curses. “Give me a warning next time!”
Cas doesn’t answer. Instead he reaches out and takes Sam out of Dean’s arms as if he weren’t a considerable lot taller than him. Dean protests, tries to hold on to his brother, but he doesn’t stand a chance against the angel’s strength. So Castiel takes Sam to hold him in his arms like a child and Dean wants to punch him in the face simply on the ground of him being an angel. And maybe that is prejudiced, or racist or something, but Dean can’t help resenting angels in general quite a lot right now.
It doesn’t help that Cas himself has made more than clear that the angels in general, himself included, don’t like Sam very much and would do whatever it took to stop him. Even if they don’t yet know from what.
Sam is pale and motionless and seems to have lost consciousness after all. He hangs in Castiel’s arms with blood on his lips. Sam, who only ever wanted to be normal, be worth it. Who so desperately clung to the hope that he could be redeemed despite the plans fate had for him.
Sam, who prayed every fucking day because if God and his angels didn’t save him, who would?
Fucking dicks, all of them.
Dean puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder and holds on tight, just in case Cas plans to fly away without warning and leave him behind. “Take us to a hospital,” he says roughly.
The next thing he sees is a very startled nurse.
-
Somehow, despite having no IDs with them or any kind of faked insurance, Cas manages to not only get Sam the best and quickest treatment available, but also a private room, which Dean appreciates greatly. Sam will appreciate it as well once he fully wakes up, Dean’s sure - and he’ll make sure that Sam appreciates it for as long as he has to until he’s fully healed. And that he doesn’t get any unwelcome visitors in the form of angels or demon bitches.
If anyone feels the need to complain about the devil’s traps Dean painted on the ceiling over the door and the window, he’s pretty certain Cas can take care of that as well.
Cas sticks around. Dean isn’t really sure why. He guesses the angel feels sorry, or maybe he just wants to make sure he didn’t lose Dean’s cooperation over this. He did, though; at least until Sam is back on his feet again, Dean doesn’t really care about the end of the world. It may come, for all he cares, as long as it spares this hospital room and takes out Uriel and his buddies when it happens. And Ruby, as an extra sweet bonus.
“I never meant for this to happen to your brother,” Castiel says on the third day, over the beeping of Sam’s monitors. “I’m sorry.” He does sound sorry, but so did Dean when he was caught stealing cookies as a child, when actually he was only sorry he’s been caught.
“Yeah, right,” Dean mutters. “I suppose when you said you’d stop him, you meant you would kindly ask him to be a good boy and go home, right?”
“I meant we would kill him,” Castiel admits bluntly. “Our orders were clear. If it is any consolation at all, I would have found no pleasure in it.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes me feel so much better. At least you’d be feeling sorry.”
“Killing him would have fulfilled a necessary purpose,” Castiel goes on without reacting to Dean’s acid tone. “This… torture didn’t. It was pointless.”
“Glad we agree there,” Dean says sourly. “What did you do to Uriel and his gang?”
“Nothing. I lack the power and authority to deal with them. I managed to get Uriel to someone who will deal with him, though.”
“Oh. That’s… good. I guess.” Dean turns back to his brother who is still sleeping his unnaturally still sleep. He has been awake a few times, but hasn’t said much. Dean supposes he has a lot to work through right now.
Hopefully he’ll find something else to believe in. Dean doesn’t want to see what would happen if Sam gave up on himself.
“Cas,” he says, after a while.
“Yes, Dean?”
“Is it true, what Uriel said? That you heard his prayers and ignored them?”
There is a long uncomfortable silence before Castiel answers. “We were not allowed to answer his prayers in any way. You have to understand,” he hastens to add, “that we very rarely get involved in the affairs of men.”
“But him in particular you were ordered to ignore?”
Castiel sighs. “Yes.”
Dean snorts, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Bloody fantastic.”
“I never laughed at his prayers,” Castiel tells him quietly. “I found them sad to listen to.”
Dean only closes his eyes and shakes his eyes. He hopes Castiel has gone away by the time Sam wakes up, and doesn’t come back.
“Seems I was right after all,” he says tiredly. “The angels Sam used to believe in all his life just don’t exist.”
Castiel doesn’t say anything in return. Dean takes his silence as a sign of agreement.
March 3, 2011
Author: vail_kagami
Genre: gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Castiel, Uriel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: torture
Spoilers: Set at the end of 4.03, slightly AU
Words: 3263
Summary: While Castiel took Dean for a trip to the past, other angels tooks Sam for a somewhat different purpose. Dean is not amused.
Note: Written for this prompt by minviendha at the latest comment-fic meme.
It’s not even funny. Dean thinks he should be making some crack about this; about this group of angels - heavenly warriors full of grace and all that bullshit - hanging out in some dirty factory and congratulating themselves for beating the shit out of some kid who couldn’t even defend himself if he were not hanging in chains from the ceiling. Dean is pretty sure there is a joke in there somewhere, but he can’t find it, because the kid in question is his little brother and right now he is too furious to even think of anything to say, let along something clever.
His first instinct is to walk to the nearest guy and smash his fist into the heavenly asshole’s face. Shooting all of them in their faces, and then in every other part that hurts only comes second, because when Dean is angry like this, his body demands to work out the anger in a way more physical than the pulling of a trigger, and less quick. (He doesn’t remember if it has been like this before hell, before Alastair and the rack and the knife; the thought that it might not have been, that this is what he brought back with him scares him, normally. Now it’s welcome. Now it’s about Sammy.)
He does neither. These are fucking angels, and if the tries to punch one, he’ll only break his own hand. Shooting them will be a waste of bullets. He’ll need to figure out how to hurt them, and then he’ll do that, but first he needs to get Sam out of here.
Sam, who’s been destined to be the demons’ plaything since he was a baby. Sam, who has been sold out by his own mother before he was even born and who according to Castiel-the-fucking-angel is destined to walk down a dark path leading to an unknown destination.
Sam, who isn’t walking anywhere at the moment, because apparently Castiel’s angelic buddies decided that rather than give Dean a chance to stop him from going anywhere unpleasant they’d take care of that themselves.
Dean returned from the past and the sight of his mother kissing his possessed grandfather over his father’s dead body to find Sam missing from their motel room and have Cas tell him that Sam’s basically been doomed since birth and Dean should do something about that if he wanted to keep his brother. And then he told Dean, with a little worried frown on his face, that he had no idea where Sam was, because apparently he had been taken by something or someone strong enough to hide his presence. Sam had been taken, and Cas had a little frown on his face. Dean had punched him then. That was how he knew it hurt.
At first, Castiel suspected the demons. Dean suspected the demons too - that that bitch Ruby wants to take his brother from him has been obvious since before he’s even seen her for the first time, and a half-denied, ugly part of him was almost glad, because now he had a reason to kill her and Sam wouldn’t have the slightest right to complain, or be shocked, or look at Dean like he just committed a crime. But then Cas pointed out that Ruby wasn’t strong enough to hide Sam from an angel looking for him. Nor was any other demon, for that matter - not like that.
He also said he sensed a gathering of angels nearby, and his frown had gotten a little deeper.
One second later, Dean was feeling disoriented and a little sick and found himself in what looked like an abandoned factory, with bare walls and leftovers of broken machines. Only, the place wasn’t abandoned at all. There were people here, men and women, and the hunter in Dean counted eight and marked their positions on a map in his head almost before the brother in Dean identified one of them as Sam, hanging from one of the machines by chains around his wrists and not moving.
“Uriel,” Castiel calls. “What is this?”
One of the strangers turns his attention away from Sam. It’s a massive, bald man in a suit who doesn’t seem at all pleased to see them. But he doesn’t seem worried by their presence; more like annoyed, as if they were disturbing something particularly amusing.
The other guys (angels, Dean reminds himself) turn as well. Some look at them in interest, one suddenly disappears with the sound of fluttering wings. Dean’s attention remains on Uriel, because he appears the leader of the group. Also, he’s the one standing closest to Sam.
“Castiel,” he says with a false smile on his face. “And Dean Winchester. How interesting.”
“What are you doing to my brother?” Dean asks. He wants to run over to Sam, but Castiel’s hand on his shoulder holds him back with inhuman strength.
“Your brother, right.” Uriel seems amused, as if Dean just said something funny. “I had nearly forgotten about that.” And then he lifts his hand and balls it to a fist, and behind him Sam jerks in his chains and screams.
Dean might be yelling something insulting; someone does, anyway, and he kind of thinks it might be him. He doesn’t really care, though, since all his attention is on the fucker before him, whom he can’t get to because Cas is holding him back from behind.
“What are you doing, Uriel?” Castiel’s voice is sharp, but he makes no move to stop whatever it is Uriel is doing. “You have no right to interfere like this.”
“We are not interfering any more than you are, Castiel,” the other angel replies. “You took all those pains of time travel to let Dean know what his brother is. Why mind us doing the same for Sam?” He opens his fist and Sam falls still, hanging in the chains like a dead body. Only, Dean can see now that he’s awake, sees the tension in his body and hears his harsh breaths.
Uriel turns to him, not at all impressed by having Dean in his back and willing to kill him. “Except, of course, that Sam already knew. It’s just that he didn’t understand. All we did was help with that. As you did for Dean.”
“You tortured him.” Castiel seems disturbed by the idea, but Dean doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about what Catiel is feeling about this. He just wants to be let go.
Uriel throws a look over his shoulder. “What if we did? Sam Winchester is demon spawn, Castiel, need I remind you of that? He’s an enemy - why should he be protected from our justice?”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong yet.”
“His entire existence is wrong,” Uriel insists. Dean looks over to Sam, who has to be hearing every word but doesn’t react in any way. When he looks back to Uriel, the angel’s attention is on him.
“You know what he is now,” he says. “Sam was tainted from birth. He isn’t worth your concern - he never was. You think he has changed while you were gone, but your brother has been vile all his life.” He smiles as he throws a glance at Sam, but it’s nasty and turns Dean’s stomach when the angel looks at him again. “It’s quite amusing that someone like him believed in us and our father so strongly. We did hear his prayers, you know. We used to laugh at them. At him and his self-absorbed assumption a creature like him could be saved, or be worth even a second of our time. It was really quite funny. I can only speak for myself, but I think I’m not the only one who will miss that.”
The fluttering of wings can be heard again as another two the angels around disappear. Maybe something important came up for them. Or maybe they have an ounce of common sense and know that even if it won’t kill them, it’s still going to fucking hurt if Dean nails them to the wall and sets them on fire.
He doesn’t start nailing just yet, for lack of nails and chances. Instead, he lets go of his own common sense and pulls out his gun, wasting a lot of bullets by shooting them right into Uriel’s face.
It’s not going to have any effect but piss the angel off. But apparently Dean means something to the angels, enough to pull him out of hell and dump the responsibility for saving the world on his shoulders, and it’s time they understand that the ‘vile creature’ they’ve been torturing means more to him than the whole damn planet he’s supposed to save, and he won’t stand by and watch them do this without comment.
It’s well known among the hunting community that the best way to make Dean Winchester an enemy for life is hurting his little brother. Apparently, angels just aren’t that smart.
Except that another one uses this moment to flutter away. Two others make a move towards Dean, but a gesture from Castiel holds them back.
True to Dean’s expectations, Uriel needs all of fife seconds to recover from having a magazine emptied into his face. Five seconds are long enough for Dean to slam in another one. For one second they’re facing each other: the angel with blood and fury on his face and Dean, ready to fire however often it takes to lessen the helpless rage inside him. There is a real possibility of him dying now, he realises, no matter what Cas told him about the part he has yet to play, but he finds he doesn’t really care, because he’s currently incapable of stopping himself. He can’t even say if he needs to hurt Uriel so badly because of what he did, or because he’s still standing between Dean and his brother.
Then Uriel isn’t standing there anymore. Dean barely registers the massive body being thrown into a half-dismantled machine before Castiel says “Take care of your brother!” and slams his hand against the wall behind him.
There is a bright light, and when Dean can see again, all the angels are gone. A quick look over his shoulder tells him that Cas, too, has vanished, leaving only a weird symbol painted in blood on the wall where he was standing.
Dean doesn’t waste time thinking about it. He runs over to his brother the moment he can, for the first time becoming aware of the blood running down Sam’s arms from where his wrists are rubbed raw by he shackles. He becomes aware of the bruises on his face (a black eye, a split lip) and neck (finger shaped, a hand gripping too tightly). He becomes aware that despite the doubt and hurt Sam has caused him since Dean came back from hell, he still takes precedence over anything else in Dean’s world. Or maybe it’s because he means so much to Dean that the doubt hurt so much in the first place. He isn’t really up to analysing himself right now. First of all, he needs to get Sam down there.
And that’s when Dean becomes aware that the shackles don’t seem to have a lock.
“Shit,” he mutters. “Hey, Sammy.” He cubs his brother’s face, gently lifting it up. “Talk to me.”
Sam’s eyes are open, but he doesn’t react to Dean’s presence, and all tension is gone from his body. He doesn’t only look hurt - he looks defeated.
Dean wishes Uriel would come back here, so he can empty the next round of bullets into his balls. Fucking asshole!
At least - and it’s a very weak at least, but he’s grasping for straws here - at least Uriel mostly used his jedi-powers on Sam, so what he did hurt but caused no actual damage. So there are only the lacerations on Sam’s wrists and the bruises and the general realisation that angels aren’t quite what he hoped they would be.And maybe dehydration, too. Sam’s lips are dry and cracked and he looks feverish on top of everything else. Dean realises he doesn’t know when Sam was taken. He’s been in the past for three days. He doesn’t even want to imagine that these dicks took Sam right after Cas took Dean.
Then the thinks that he doesn’t need to worry, because while he was in the past for days, he can’t have been gone from the present for more than a few hours. In fact, Cas told him no time at all had passed, which just doesn’t leave any room for Uriel and his pals to do this much damage.
Dean is at a loss to explain it. He’ll ask Sam about it later. Not now. Now he has to get him down somehow.
The chains are solid and he has no tools with him. Sam’s feet touch the ground, but he doesn’t even try to stand on them. And then he jerks his head out of Dean’s hands and starts coughing helplessly until blood runs over his lips and splatters onto the floor. So much for Uriel doing no real damage.
“It’s okay,” Dean says, uselessly patting Sam’s back. “You’re gonna be okay, Sammy.” He looks around, desperately hoping to find something, anything to help him get Sam down. He starts fumbling for his phone, ready to call Bobby and have him come here with any tool he can carry, because Dean certainly isn’t going to leave Sam alone just now. However, before he even pushes the first button, he remembers that he doesn’t even know in what state Castiel dropped him in.
Or on what planet, for that matter.
When he hears the flutter of wings behind him, the weapon is back in Dean’s hand in less than a second. But it’s only Castiel, looking agitated but none the worse for wear - not that Dean cares much about Castiel’s physical state at the moment.
“Where the hell were you?” he explodes.
“There was something I needed to take care of,” Cas explains, helpful as ever. “It’s been taken care of now.” He snaps his fingers and Sam falls when the shackles crumble around his wrists. It happens so quickly that Dean is barely fast enough to catch him before he hits the ground.
“Damn it, Cas!” he curses. “Give me a warning next time!”
Cas doesn’t answer. Instead he reaches out and takes Sam out of Dean’s arms as if he weren’t a considerable lot taller than him. Dean protests, tries to hold on to his brother, but he doesn’t stand a chance against the angel’s strength. So Castiel takes Sam to hold him in his arms like a child and Dean wants to punch him in the face simply on the ground of him being an angel. And maybe that is prejudiced, or racist or something, but Dean can’t help resenting angels in general quite a lot right now.
It doesn’t help that Cas himself has made more than clear that the angels in general, himself included, don’t like Sam very much and would do whatever it took to stop him. Even if they don’t yet know from what.
Sam is pale and motionless and seems to have lost consciousness after all. He hangs in Castiel’s arms with blood on his lips. Sam, who only ever wanted to be normal, be worth it. Who so desperately clung to the hope that he could be redeemed despite the plans fate had for him.
Sam, who prayed every fucking day because if God and his angels didn’t save him, who would?
Fucking dicks, all of them.
Dean puts a hand on Castiel’s shoulder and holds on tight, just in case Cas plans to fly away without warning and leave him behind. “Take us to a hospital,” he says roughly.
The next thing he sees is a very startled nurse.
-
Somehow, despite having no IDs with them or any kind of faked insurance, Cas manages to not only get Sam the best and quickest treatment available, but also a private room, which Dean appreciates greatly. Sam will appreciate it as well once he fully wakes up, Dean’s sure - and he’ll make sure that Sam appreciates it for as long as he has to until he’s fully healed. And that he doesn’t get any unwelcome visitors in the form of angels or demon bitches.
If anyone feels the need to complain about the devil’s traps Dean painted on the ceiling over the door and the window, he’s pretty certain Cas can take care of that as well.
Cas sticks around. Dean isn’t really sure why. He guesses the angel feels sorry, or maybe he just wants to make sure he didn’t lose Dean’s cooperation over this. He did, though; at least until Sam is back on his feet again, Dean doesn’t really care about the end of the world. It may come, for all he cares, as long as it spares this hospital room and takes out Uriel and his buddies when it happens. And Ruby, as an extra sweet bonus.
“I never meant for this to happen to your brother,” Castiel says on the third day, over the beeping of Sam’s monitors. “I’m sorry.” He does sound sorry, but so did Dean when he was caught stealing cookies as a child, when actually he was only sorry he’s been caught.
“Yeah, right,” Dean mutters. “I suppose when you said you’d stop him, you meant you would kindly ask him to be a good boy and go home, right?”
“I meant we would kill him,” Castiel admits bluntly. “Our orders were clear. If it is any consolation at all, I would have found no pleasure in it.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes me feel so much better. At least you’d be feeling sorry.”
“Killing him would have fulfilled a necessary purpose,” Castiel goes on without reacting to Dean’s acid tone. “This… torture didn’t. It was pointless.”
“Glad we agree there,” Dean says sourly. “What did you do to Uriel and his gang?”
“Nothing. I lack the power and authority to deal with them. I managed to get Uriel to someone who will deal with him, though.”
“Oh. That’s… good. I guess.” Dean turns back to his brother who is still sleeping his unnaturally still sleep. He has been awake a few times, but hasn’t said much. Dean supposes he has a lot to work through right now.
Hopefully he’ll find something else to believe in. Dean doesn’t want to see what would happen if Sam gave up on himself.
“Cas,” he says, after a while.
“Yes, Dean?”
“Is it true, what Uriel said? That you heard his prayers and ignored them?”
There is a long uncomfortable silence before Castiel answers. “We were not allowed to answer his prayers in any way. You have to understand,” he hastens to add, “that we very rarely get involved in the affairs of men.”
“But him in particular you were ordered to ignore?”
Castiel sighs. “Yes.”
Dean snorts, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Bloody fantastic.”
“I never laughed at his prayers,” Castiel tells him quietly. “I found them sad to listen to.”
Dean only closes his eyes and shakes his eyes. He hopes Castiel has gone away by the time Sam wakes up, and doesn’t come back.
“Seems I was right after all,” he says tiredly. “The angels Sam used to believe in all his life just don’t exist.”
Castiel doesn’t say anything in return. Dean takes his silence as a sign of agreement.
March 3, 2011