Unexpected Destinies Chapter 68
Title: Unexpected Destinies
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up to and including Exile on Main St., AU from the end of season 5
Warnings: AU, slash
Word Count: 2,481
Summary: Michael and Dean continue their task.
PAST
The chapel of a high security prison was honestly a place that Dean had never expected to find himself in. Well, it was probably supposed to be one of those multi-faith rooms, but it looked far too much like a generic Christian church for him to bother thinking of it like that. Freaking politically correct names and all that bullshit. He much preferred to call things as they really were, politics and all be damned.
"Why this?" Dean asked as Michael silently approached a man kneeling before an altar. "I mean why here? Surely there are other repentant sinners out there that won't require you to honor a murderer with your presence."
"He has faith and has truly repented," Michael replied.
Dean resisted the urge to snort. He couldn't really argue with the archangel on that one, not when he could practically feel the honesty and remorse radiating from the convict as he prayed. Besides, who was he to decide who could and couldn't be forgiven their crimes? Though horrible, what this man- Daniel Codman- had done was nothing compared to the atrocities that he himself had performed in Hell.
"Besides," Michael added. "His willing blood donation will be worth all the more given the nature of his transgressions."
"Huh?"
"The more severe the sins committed, the more powerful his blood will be, especially since we are performing the Rite on Lucifer."
"Why?"
"Because he would have gone to Hell but for his confession to God and genuine repentance. He would have been one of Lucifer's own, one of those souls that my brother had managed to tear away from our Father."
"So why didn't we just use my blood? If it's the severity of the crimes that counts?"
There was a flicker of anger and, he thought, exasperation, but it was gone before Dean could fully grasp it. The emotions made him feel kinda bad, but he was really curious. Surely his blood would have made everything that much more powerful. The things he'd done to escape Alastair's rack and knife...
Besides, he'd already been to Hell, surely that made the whole thing that much more powerful. Right?
"You were never one of his. For this to work, Lucifer must have had a genuine claim on the soul in question."
Michael's voice sounded strange, tight with some emotion if Dean had to take a guess. The thing was, while they were like this, with him almost fully connected to his meatsuit, he heard Michael's true voice. It was still far too new to him for him to get any kind of good read on it, but it definitely sounded different from before. Less... aw, hell, okay, less musical and he hated how chick-like that made him sound but it was the only way he could put it. It struck him as a negative thing, almost like it had gotten dampened or muffled somehow, and he could only assume that meant the archangel wasn't pleased with him, which went with the anger he'd felt a few moments ago.
"I was in Hell, how could I not have been one of his?" Dean asked.
He wasn't trying to be difficult, he really wasn't for once, but it didn't make any sense to him. Surely having been down there meant that the devil'd had a claim on his soul, didn't it?
"Because you were not meant to be there, Little One. You sold your soul for your brother, a noble if misguided cause and done for love. You never earned yourself a place in Hell and thus even after the hell hounds dragged you down there, your soul was not truly Lucifer's. It was one of the reasons Alastair was so determined to corrupt you even after you had already broken the first seal. He wished to tarnish the light that remained within your soul and truly break you."
It was only because Castiel had said something similar to him once that Dean didn't immediately begin to protest that statement. When it had been just his lover who'd said it, he'd been able to tell himself that the angel was blinded by his feelings for him and couldn't see him for what he'd truly been back then in Hell. Now, however... well, while Michael had clearly come to like him in his own way, he had a hard time believing that the archangel could be that deluded by those emotions. Which would mean that, on some level, he'd still managed to maintain a part of himself even after thirty years on the rack and another ten torturing others.
Dean wanted to shy away from the thought even as he desperately wished to cling to it and never let it go. He hadn't been the only one to be offered the chance to climb down from the rack, had in fact witnessed countless other souls be offered and accept the same deal Alastair had given him but which he'd resisted for so long. Even after he'd accepted it, though, he'd still always been proud of how long he'd resisted, seeing others cave and pick up a knife far faster. What had happened next, however, was part of the reason why he'd always been so resistant to the idea that he'd deserved to be saved or could be forgiven for what he'd done. Time and again, he'd observed how rapidly those souls had blackened and putrefied, finalizing their transformation into full-fledged demons in their own right.
Oddly enough, for once Dean clung to the thought that maybe he'd been different, unique. Better. Whereas before he'd practically outright dismissed the mere notion, now he almost wished for it to be true. To think that he'd managed to protect a part of himself despite the sheer horror and despair of the Pit, that he had managed to thwart Alastair on some level and hadn't completely broken but had instead maintained some of his goodness even when he'd lost all hope. It was a heartening thought and something he could be proud of if he could just come to truly believe it instead of merely regarding it as a nice possibility to be pondered or considered.
By the time that Dean had managed to untangle himself from the mental knot he'd tied himself in, Michael had already revealed his presence to Daniel and had apparently gotten what they'd come for if the small, red liquid filled vial and the blood stained knife were any indication. Wait a minute, that was his knife. As if to confirm the thought, Michael cleaned the blade with a flicker of Grace and returned it to the sheath at the back of his pants.
The easy way that the archangel used not only his meatsuit, but also his possessions caused a wave of unease to rise within Dean and he was genuinely surprised that it hadn't happened sooner. It said a lot for how comfortable he was with Michael and how far their relationship had come before he'd said yes, but he also knew that it was more then that. They fit together somehow on a level he was almost afraid to contemplate simply because of what it meant about the inevitability of the circumstances that had pushed them together like this.
He cut off that line of thought ruthlessly as he didn't think it would be fair to Michael if he were to start raging at God while they were together. Besides, Dean really didn't want to start down that path when they had other, more important things to take care of right now. He could have his little useless freak out and rant later, when he was alone in his head again.
"Is something wrong?" Michael was asking the convict when Dean tuned back in to what was going on.
"No, it is just... you are the patron saint of police officers," Daniel replied haltingly. "I would not have expected you to bless me with your presence personally."
"What?" Dean demanded, stunned. "Patron saint of police officers?"
"I am Justice, Little One."
"Aw, man! Now that's just not right."
"Why not?"
"'Cause they used to hunt me, still would if they knew that I was alive."
The anger that washed over him this time was different from the anger he'd felt before though Dean wasn't sure how he knew that, just that he did. Regardless, he sighed as it seemed like he kept putting his foot in it at the moment without meaning to.
/
After the prison, Michael flew them all over the place gathering the remaining ingredients on their collection list. Each 'flight' experience was still that messed up mixture of wonder, amazement, disbelief and complete bewilderment of sights that flashed before him too quickly for him to process. Partway through it all, he slowly became aware of a common bodily necessity and it caught him off-guard as he hadn't thought that angels experienced it.
"Dude!" Dean finally exclaimed when he realized that Michael wasn't just waiting for an opportune time to take care of their little problem. "Hey, Mike!"
"Yes, Dean?"
"You gonna find a bathroom soon or what?" Confusion washed over him and Dean realized that the angel had no clue what he was talking about. "Oh, you can't be serious!"
"What is wrong, Little One?"
"I- You- We need to pee, like right the hell now."
"Pee?"
"Yes! Can't you feel it?"
There was that odd sensation of something shifting both within and alongside him and Dean knew the moment that the archangel had discovered what he meant.
"Oh," Michael said in surprise and wonder and Dean snorted.
"Yeah, oh. Can we take care of it please? It's getting uncomfortable."
Whatever he'd thought would come next, Dean hadn't expected to feel a twist of Grace before the fullness in his bladder just suddenly disappeared.
"What the- Did you just mojo my pee away?" Dean finally demanded in disbelief.
"Yes. Surely it is more convenient then using the restroom?"
"Oh, yeah, it is, I guess."
"Was that wrong?"
"No, I suppose not. I just hadn't thought of doing it that way, is all."
"I see."
"Yeah."
Actually, come to think of it, Dean much preferred the way Michael had chosen to take care of it. It was probably silly of him, but thought of the archangel touching his penis, even if only to piss, was just plain wrong and made him uncomfortable in a way he hadn't felt about his own body since Ala- The moment he realized where his thoughts were going, he shut them down. It didn't even need to get that complicated. Michael was an archangel, one of Castiel's brothers, so vessel or not, there were just some things that shouldn't happen even in so innocent a way.
/
They were just collecting their last ingredient, salt from the Red Sea (and seriously, how cool was that? Dean had seen more of the world in the past few hours then in the rest of his life combined), when an unknown voice suddenly sounded in their head.
"I have gathered all of my ingredients."
Dean jumped at the unexpected intrusion and was already glancing about for the source of the voice before he remembered that angels were able to talk to each other in their heads.
"As have I," another voice stated.
"We are finishing our list," Michael replied and it warmed Dean that the archangel had said 'we' rather then 'I.'
If he'd really had a throat at the moment, Dean knew it would have gone dry as he suddenly realized that, given the circumstances, one of the two angelic voices he had just heard had to be the true voice of his lover.
"Michael," Dean began, nearly tripping over the words in his haste. "Which one is Cas?"
"Which one do you think?"
He felt a little flash of annoyance, how was he supposed to know? The whole point with humans and angels was that humans couldn't see or hear an angel's true form, or visage as Castiel had once called it. Both voices had sounded musical and unbelievably beautiful to his ears, much as he hated to associate either of those words with Raphael. They were clearly different, but he was loath to try and figure out which one he liked best least he chose the wrong one.
"Go with your instincts," Michael encouraged.
"The second one?"
Dean wasn't sure why he picked that one, but it had seemed softer, maybe? That probably wasn't the right word for it, but he was more drawn to it.
"Yes."
Relief washed over Dean and he waited impatiently for his lover to speak again, just so he could enjoy his voice. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long.
"Shall we meet back at the motel?" Castiel inquired.
"It would be best," Michael agreed. "The ingredients would be safest with Dean."
Not to mention that Deirdre's body was still there and Michael would need to return to it in order get back into her without potentially damaging anyone. The thought made Dean feel an odd something in his chest that he couldn't quite identify. He tried to puzzle it out and realized that he felt a bit sad knowing that the archangel was about to leave him soon. It was strange, he'd fought, dreaded and outright feared the joining for so long that to now have a part of him dread Michael leaving him was jarring to say the least. Though, to be honest, being the archangel's vessel had been absolutely nothing like what he'd thought it would be so that accounted for the majority of the change in sentiment. As for the rest, well he just wasn't sure about it.
He had to admit that it felt nice to so closely linked to someone else, to literally be able to feel what someone whom he'd come to regard as a friend felt for him, especially since it was so much more then he'd ever expected it to be. Yet, despite that, Dean was only all too keenly aware of the fact that he couldn't be with his lover until Michael left and he missed Castiel something fierce right now. It was weird to be so conflicted and in such a way that he'd never been before. Despite all of that, there was absolutely no question in his mind what he'd chose, so he just went with it, trying to shove the rest aside for later contemplation.
"Very well," Raphael stated.
"How much do we need?" Dean asked once he was sure the other two angels were done speaking.
"This is enough," Michael replied, rising from where he had been crouched, collecting salt from the sea.
Dean watched the archangel carefully put the salt away before a wicked grin crossed his face. "So, time to tap our heels and wish for home?"
"I do not understand."
A.N.: Thanks for bearing with me guys, things should settle by down again by next weekend. But just to give you something to look forward to, the next chapter should not only see Cas again, but a jump in rating as well :)
Chapter 69
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up to and including Exile on Main St., AU from the end of season 5
Warnings: AU, slash
Word Count: 2,481
Summary: Michael and Dean continue their task.
PAST
The chapel of a high security prison was honestly a place that Dean had never expected to find himself in. Well, it was probably supposed to be one of those multi-faith rooms, but it looked far too much like a generic Christian church for him to bother thinking of it like that. Freaking politically correct names and all that bullshit. He much preferred to call things as they really were, politics and all be damned.
"Why this?" Dean asked as Michael silently approached a man kneeling before an altar. "I mean why here? Surely there are other repentant sinners out there that won't require you to honor a murderer with your presence."
"He has faith and has truly repented," Michael replied.
Dean resisted the urge to snort. He couldn't really argue with the archangel on that one, not when he could practically feel the honesty and remorse radiating from the convict as he prayed. Besides, who was he to decide who could and couldn't be forgiven their crimes? Though horrible, what this man- Daniel Codman- had done was nothing compared to the atrocities that he himself had performed in Hell.
"Besides," Michael added. "His willing blood donation will be worth all the more given the nature of his transgressions."
"Huh?"
"The more severe the sins committed, the more powerful his blood will be, especially since we are performing the Rite on Lucifer."
"Why?"
"Because he would have gone to Hell but for his confession to God and genuine repentance. He would have been one of Lucifer's own, one of those souls that my brother had managed to tear away from our Father."
"So why didn't we just use my blood? If it's the severity of the crimes that counts?"
There was a flicker of anger and, he thought, exasperation, but it was gone before Dean could fully grasp it. The emotions made him feel kinda bad, but he was really curious. Surely his blood would have made everything that much more powerful. The things he'd done to escape Alastair's rack and knife...
Besides, he'd already been to Hell, surely that made the whole thing that much more powerful. Right?
"You were never one of his. For this to work, Lucifer must have had a genuine claim on the soul in question."
Michael's voice sounded strange, tight with some emotion if Dean had to take a guess. The thing was, while they were like this, with him almost fully connected to his meatsuit, he heard Michael's true voice. It was still far too new to him for him to get any kind of good read on it, but it definitely sounded different from before. Less... aw, hell, okay, less musical and he hated how chick-like that made him sound but it was the only way he could put it. It struck him as a negative thing, almost like it had gotten dampened or muffled somehow, and he could only assume that meant the archangel wasn't pleased with him, which went with the anger he'd felt a few moments ago.
"I was in Hell, how could I not have been one of his?" Dean asked.
He wasn't trying to be difficult, he really wasn't for once, but it didn't make any sense to him. Surely having been down there meant that the devil'd had a claim on his soul, didn't it?
"Because you were not meant to be there, Little One. You sold your soul for your brother, a noble if misguided cause and done for love. You never earned yourself a place in Hell and thus even after the hell hounds dragged you down there, your soul was not truly Lucifer's. It was one of the reasons Alastair was so determined to corrupt you even after you had already broken the first seal. He wished to tarnish the light that remained within your soul and truly break you."
It was only because Castiel had said something similar to him once that Dean didn't immediately begin to protest that statement. When it had been just his lover who'd said it, he'd been able to tell himself that the angel was blinded by his feelings for him and couldn't see him for what he'd truly been back then in Hell. Now, however... well, while Michael had clearly come to like him in his own way, he had a hard time believing that the archangel could be that deluded by those emotions. Which would mean that, on some level, he'd still managed to maintain a part of himself even after thirty years on the rack and another ten torturing others.
Dean wanted to shy away from the thought even as he desperately wished to cling to it and never let it go. He hadn't been the only one to be offered the chance to climb down from the rack, had in fact witnessed countless other souls be offered and accept the same deal Alastair had given him but which he'd resisted for so long. Even after he'd accepted it, though, he'd still always been proud of how long he'd resisted, seeing others cave and pick up a knife far faster. What had happened next, however, was part of the reason why he'd always been so resistant to the idea that he'd deserved to be saved or could be forgiven for what he'd done. Time and again, he'd observed how rapidly those souls had blackened and putrefied, finalizing their transformation into full-fledged demons in their own right.
Oddly enough, for once Dean clung to the thought that maybe he'd been different, unique. Better. Whereas before he'd practically outright dismissed the mere notion, now he almost wished for it to be true. To think that he'd managed to protect a part of himself despite the sheer horror and despair of the Pit, that he had managed to thwart Alastair on some level and hadn't completely broken but had instead maintained some of his goodness even when he'd lost all hope. It was a heartening thought and something he could be proud of if he could just come to truly believe it instead of merely regarding it as a nice possibility to be pondered or considered.
By the time that Dean had managed to untangle himself from the mental knot he'd tied himself in, Michael had already revealed his presence to Daniel and had apparently gotten what they'd come for if the small, red liquid filled vial and the blood stained knife were any indication. Wait a minute, that was his knife. As if to confirm the thought, Michael cleaned the blade with a flicker of Grace and returned it to the sheath at the back of his pants.
The easy way that the archangel used not only his meatsuit, but also his possessions caused a wave of unease to rise within Dean and he was genuinely surprised that it hadn't happened sooner. It said a lot for how comfortable he was with Michael and how far their relationship had come before he'd said yes, but he also knew that it was more then that. They fit together somehow on a level he was almost afraid to contemplate simply because of what it meant about the inevitability of the circumstances that had pushed them together like this.
He cut off that line of thought ruthlessly as he didn't think it would be fair to Michael if he were to start raging at God while they were together. Besides, Dean really didn't want to start down that path when they had other, more important things to take care of right now. He could have his little useless freak out and rant later, when he was alone in his head again.
"Is something wrong?" Michael was asking the convict when Dean tuned back in to what was going on.
"No, it is just... you are the patron saint of police officers," Daniel replied haltingly. "I would not have expected you to bless me with your presence personally."
"What?" Dean demanded, stunned. "Patron saint of police officers?"
"I am Justice, Little One."
"Aw, man! Now that's just not right."
"Why not?"
"'Cause they used to hunt me, still would if they knew that I was alive."
The anger that washed over him this time was different from the anger he'd felt before though Dean wasn't sure how he knew that, just that he did. Regardless, he sighed as it seemed like he kept putting his foot in it at the moment without meaning to.
/
After the prison, Michael flew them all over the place gathering the remaining ingredients on their collection list. Each 'flight' experience was still that messed up mixture of wonder, amazement, disbelief and complete bewilderment of sights that flashed before him too quickly for him to process. Partway through it all, he slowly became aware of a common bodily necessity and it caught him off-guard as he hadn't thought that angels experienced it.
"Dude!" Dean finally exclaimed when he realized that Michael wasn't just waiting for an opportune time to take care of their little problem. "Hey, Mike!"
"Yes, Dean?"
"You gonna find a bathroom soon or what?" Confusion washed over him and Dean realized that the angel had no clue what he was talking about. "Oh, you can't be serious!"
"What is wrong, Little One?"
"I- You- We need to pee, like right the hell now."
"Pee?"
"Yes! Can't you feel it?"
There was that odd sensation of something shifting both within and alongside him and Dean knew the moment that the archangel had discovered what he meant.
"Oh," Michael said in surprise and wonder and Dean snorted.
"Yeah, oh. Can we take care of it please? It's getting uncomfortable."
Whatever he'd thought would come next, Dean hadn't expected to feel a twist of Grace before the fullness in his bladder just suddenly disappeared.
"What the- Did you just mojo my pee away?" Dean finally demanded in disbelief.
"Yes. Surely it is more convenient then using the restroom?"
"Oh, yeah, it is, I guess."
"Was that wrong?"
"No, I suppose not. I just hadn't thought of doing it that way, is all."
"I see."
"Yeah."
Actually, come to think of it, Dean much preferred the way Michael had chosen to take care of it. It was probably silly of him, but thought of the archangel touching his penis, even if only to piss, was just plain wrong and made him uncomfortable in a way he hadn't felt about his own body since Ala- The moment he realized where his thoughts were going, he shut them down. It didn't even need to get that complicated. Michael was an archangel, one of Castiel's brothers, so vessel or not, there were just some things that shouldn't happen even in so innocent a way.
/
They were just collecting their last ingredient, salt from the Red Sea (and seriously, how cool was that? Dean had seen more of the world in the past few hours then in the rest of his life combined), when an unknown voice suddenly sounded in their head.
"I have gathered all of my ingredients."
Dean jumped at the unexpected intrusion and was already glancing about for the source of the voice before he remembered that angels were able to talk to each other in their heads.
"As have I," another voice stated.
"We are finishing our list," Michael replied and it warmed Dean that the archangel had said 'we' rather then 'I.'
If he'd really had a throat at the moment, Dean knew it would have gone dry as he suddenly realized that, given the circumstances, one of the two angelic voices he had just heard had to be the true voice of his lover.
"Michael," Dean began, nearly tripping over the words in his haste. "Which one is Cas?"
"Which one do you think?"
He felt a little flash of annoyance, how was he supposed to know? The whole point with humans and angels was that humans couldn't see or hear an angel's true form, or visage as Castiel had once called it. Both voices had sounded musical and unbelievably beautiful to his ears, much as he hated to associate either of those words with Raphael. They were clearly different, but he was loath to try and figure out which one he liked best least he chose the wrong one.
"Go with your instincts," Michael encouraged.
"The second one?"
Dean wasn't sure why he picked that one, but it had seemed softer, maybe? That probably wasn't the right word for it, but he was more drawn to it.
"Yes."
Relief washed over Dean and he waited impatiently for his lover to speak again, just so he could enjoy his voice. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long.
"Shall we meet back at the motel?" Castiel inquired.
"It would be best," Michael agreed. "The ingredients would be safest with Dean."
Not to mention that Deirdre's body was still there and Michael would need to return to it in order get back into her without potentially damaging anyone. The thought made Dean feel an odd something in his chest that he couldn't quite identify. He tried to puzzle it out and realized that he felt a bit sad knowing that the archangel was about to leave him soon. It was strange, he'd fought, dreaded and outright feared the joining for so long that to now have a part of him dread Michael leaving him was jarring to say the least. Though, to be honest, being the archangel's vessel had been absolutely nothing like what he'd thought it would be so that accounted for the majority of the change in sentiment. As for the rest, well he just wasn't sure about it.
He had to admit that it felt nice to so closely linked to someone else, to literally be able to feel what someone whom he'd come to regard as a friend felt for him, especially since it was so much more then he'd ever expected it to be. Yet, despite that, Dean was only all too keenly aware of the fact that he couldn't be with his lover until Michael left and he missed Castiel something fierce right now. It was weird to be so conflicted and in such a way that he'd never been before. Despite all of that, there was absolutely no question in his mind what he'd chose, so he just went with it, trying to shove the rest aside for later contemplation.
"Very well," Raphael stated.
"How much do we need?" Dean asked once he was sure the other two angels were done speaking.
"This is enough," Michael replied, rising from where he had been crouched, collecting salt from the sea.
Dean watched the archangel carefully put the salt away before a wicked grin crossed his face. "So, time to tap our heels and wish for home?"
"I do not understand."
A.N.: Thanks for bearing with me guys, things should settle by down again by next weekend. But just to give you something to look forward to, the next chapter should not only see Cas again, but a jump in rating as well :)
Chapter 69