Luminous [Part One]
LUMINOUS;
PART ONE
Luminous
PART ONE
There is something about silver that sickens the senses and slickens the soul. It beats hard like a breath of fresh sulfur, and in the end it is a knife that does the deed. A flash of flesh, a flick of the wrist, and permission is not given, but it is just as easily taken.
He is Lucifer. The rules don't apply.
The suit is warm -- that's what he calls them. Suits. Monkeys. Fur to be worn over a bright, shining interior, and puppets to play with.
The string is pulled taut, and he can feel the resistance quaking within this body. Jimmy is not dead, and Lucifer is bemused at his brother's decision to keep the soul alive. In possession, a vessel is merely catatonic. In death, the soul does not alight or descend; it disappears. Thus is the fate of an angel's host -- thus is the fate of these oh-so-special people.
Lucifer shrugs, and his wings fold behind him, and tear into flesh and bind with sinew, and he hears the human soul scream at this new level of hurt and violation.
He sighs.
If the ethereal ape was going to cry out with every breath and every break, it would be best to silence it permanently.
Jimmy hears the Devil's thoughts and swallows his pain.
Lucifer snuffs him out anyway. His fragile little soul is like a flickering candle; one flap of the angel's wing, and there is nothing left but wax and smoke.
The body is too little for him. There are cavernous expanses within that have melded to his brother's form, and Lucifer thrills at the familiarity. He smiles, and cracks the joints and dislocates the bones of that skeletal expanse that once housed a soul and now houses a presence. His wings can barely fit inside, let alone the rest of his fallen glory, but he pushes harder against the body he must treat like glass, and when it is about to break, it gives.
His light floods the insides, burns away Castiel's print, and when he sighs again everything shudders and settles.
He has much work to do.
~*~*~*~
He begins with Castiel.
Poor, pathetic Castiel, no doubt bemoaning his lack of allegiance towards anyone of any particular merit in the cosmos.
Dean Winchester is an ant. Lucifer is a god.
When Castiel was pushed out of his vessel, he was met with a pull from Heaven, and a pull from Hell, and a pull from common sense screaming at him to remain innocuous.
There are wards in place, and the little angel has never remained this diaphanous for so long.
Castiel is a ghost.
Lucifer remains an entity inside a stolen body, and casts his brother into the bowels of the earth. Castiel must thread his fingers into the dirt and the mortar, and when he rises he must bend time and space to his will, because Lucifer has sent him to the in-between where water and sky are shimmering over a surface of oblivion, and if he were to squint, he would see a star falling far in the distance.
Castiel will remain a ghost, and Lucifer will have his vessel, and Lucifer will have Dean Winchester soon enough, as well.
~*~*~*~
"Hey, Cas. Pass me a beer, will ya'?
Castiel hesitates, but in that mighty way of his that is less like hesitation and more like contemplation.
"Is it wise to be drinking before a hunt?"
His forehead scrunches up when Dean leans forward and snatches up the bottle.
"Who's the hunter here?" the human scolds, wagging the beer in front of Castiel's face, then pops off the cap. "Take a load off," Dean commands, propping his feet up on Bobby's little coffee table and pressing his shoulders further into the couch.
Cas gives Dean that look that says 'you're talking nonsense again', and Dean lets out a little huff of breath.
He almost slips up. He almost says, "You're worse than Sam," but he knows how touchy the angel can be about his brother's whole kool-aid kick, so he avoids the subject as much as possible.
"I thought we'd wriggled that stick outta your ass last month," he says instead, then takes a leisurely draw of beer.
Castiel gives him that look again when he chugs the rest of it down and reaches for another.
"Dean."
"Was tha' your first word as a baby, or summin'? 'Dean, Dean, Dean.' S'all you gotta say half the time." The steady slur of words is enough of an indication that Dean has had one too many beers. He huddles into the couch and nurses his bottle and studiously ignores the disapproving look his angelic counterpart is boring into his skin. It makes him itchy and uncomfortable, but not nearly as itchy and uncomfortable as he would be were he to acknowledge it in the first place.
He'd already forgotten what 'it' was.
Yep. He was wasted.
Dean Winchester did not giggle, but when he was drunk, he sort of chuckled like a girl. A very manly girl, whose name was Dean fucking Winchester.
And so he gives a raucous round of man-girl chuckles at the thought of baby Cas, with little tiny cherub wings and clad in nothing but a diaper.
And a trench coat.
A diaper and a trench coat.
Dean dies a little on the inside, but that's okay, because the downward pull of Castiel's lips syncs up perfectly with the petulant pout worn by the baby Cas in Dean's mind. The features blend together seamlessly, and it only makes everything that much funnier.
Castiel doesn't seem to be amused, but he's obviously gay, so it doesn't matter.
"You aren't fit to work like this," Castiel surmises without any kind of prompting.
"S'just a simple salt 'n burn," Dean protests, then waves him off in that 'only-a-hunter-would-understand' manner. Because, really, only a trained professional could destroy a cold-hearted, blood-thirsty ghost while simultaneously nursing a half-buzzed hangover. Alone.
Dean is a trained professional.
"I got this," he assures.
~*~*~*~
He doesn't have this.
Dean has never been in this much shit in his entire life, and he has been in a lot of deep shit.
Point one: Ghosts weren't supposed to be so agile they were impossible to fucking see.
Point two: Dean was so smashed, he couldn't even see two feet in front of him, let alone the ghost that was impossible to fucking see.
Point three: He wasn't fighting a ghost.
The minute he drops his gun into an open grave, he realizes, oh yeah, he is royally screwed.
"Not so tough without that big gun of yours to fondle and caress, hm?" taunts the demon -- demon. It rings twice in Dean's head, and he can smell the sulfur, but it is the emotionless black of careless eyes that tips him off and over the edge.
Knife. Knife. He still has the knife.
The demon kicks him while he's down, right in the ribs, right in the side, and he definitely hears something crack, and he definitely knows this isn't good.
Knife knife knife.
"Aw, come on. Don't you want to play anymore?"
Grasping fingers grip Dean's hair and dig into his scalp, propelling him forward the same moment a booted foot digs into his spine. His body arches in an unnatural manner, and Dean thinks, Holy fucking shit, Cas was right.
"Go to hell," he spits out, and the pressure on his back increases.
"Been there, done that," the demon says flippantly through gritted teeth, and it makes his words sound tight and cruel. Dean winces at the tone, suddenly reminded of Alistair, and when the older demon was displeased. Those were memories he would have rather done without.
The grip on his hair tightens and pulls upward, and Dean scrambles for some kind of purchase on the ground.
Where is that fucking knife!?
Dean usually shouts his demands to the open sky because, hell, it's been pretty effective so far. But when his silent shout of frustration is met with the slick thud of metal sinking into flesh, and a resounding pop and heated fizzle prelude the horrendous scream of a demon being pulled back down into Hell, Dean wonders if he's not been wasting his breath.
Or maybe it's just Castiel who's the mind reader.
"Boy, am I glad to see you," Dean coughs out, then struggles to his feet without a word. He ignores the look Cas gives him, and dusts himself off.
"I told you not to come alone," Castiel says, and Dean can't tell if it's concern or malice in his tone, and the inability to differentiate between the two is really starting to screw with his head.
"Uh. Sorry?" he offers halfheartedly, then scratches the back of his neck. Guilty, maybe, but damned well proud of his earlier binge.
Alcohol won't leave him like Sammy did.
Castiel doesn't say anything, and so they drop the matter. Dean is preoccupied with his aching side and more than likely broken ribs. Cas is staring at the bloody knife in his hand, watching the trail of crimson drip off the blade, and Dean thinks that might be a little weird, but the angel looks more disgusted than intrigued, so he lets it pass. So long as Castiel isn't feasting on demon a la carte, he doesn't really care.
"Don't get me wrong," Dean says while gripping his aching side. "You've got some pretty wicked timing. But couldn't you have swayzeed my ass outta there about two minutes earlier?"
Dean's ribs give a creak of protest when he moves too abruptly, and Castiel tilts his head at the insistently pained noise he makes.
"You need medical attention."
"No shit, Sherlock," he growls in reply, then gives up on the whole walking thing.
Castiel teleports him without asking his permission, and Dean might hate him a little bit for that, even if it was for his own good.
~*~*~*~
Bobby is entirely too unimpressed.
"What'd you do, get in a fight with a bulldozer?"
"Demon," Dean winces.
"Were you sitting there with your thumb up your ass?" Bobby has to ask, because there is no way in hell one single demon could give Dean such a run for his money.
Dean knows he can't lie to Bobby, but he still physically cringes when Castiel answers for him.
"He was intoxicated."
"You were what?"
"It was only a couple of beers!" Dean protests, and Castiel doesn't have to say a word for Bobby to know that he's definitely stretching the truth with that one.
"Boy, if I had a mind, I'd whoop you right here, right now. You'd best be thankful that demon got to you first, else you'd be in a world of hurt."
Dean aches from every bone. He curls and coils, and his joints throb and his veins burn, and holy shit, he is so very thankful that that demon got to him first.
There is a pause in the air, a silence with a modicum of pressure, and when the crushing weight becomes too much, it is broken with a rough sigh.
"No more alcohol."
Dean blanches.
"What?"
Bobby pats him on the knee as he rolls his wheelchair by and pointedly ignores the way Dean cringes at the touch.
"So long as you're shacked up here, coke and water's all you're gettin'. I'm cutting you off cold turkey."
"That's not fair!" It sounds petulant, but it’s all the pain meds allow him to say about the matter.
"This ain't no democracy," Bobby counters. "My house, my rules."
Castiel looks at Dean with a blankness to his features when Bobby rolls out of the room.
"What're you lookin' at, you smug bastard?"
It looks like Cas wants to say something to that, but he tilts his head instead, and when Dean blinks, he is gone.
~*~*~*~
Lucifer loved Heaven. It was a gracious land marked by beauty and belonging. The morning chorus was bright and fluttering, and each of his brothers' and sisters' unique melodies mingled like silver butterfly wings that flit throughout the air. In those early years, their Father's presence stretched wide and welcome, and just the simple act of thinking about Him brought an onslaught of emotion so overwhelming, there was no doubt that He had heard you.
In the beginning, the angels were always thinking about God. He was all they needed -- all Lucifer needed -- and eternity continued on in peace.
Lucifer loved Heaven. The days were long, and the nights were non-existent, and fear had yet to be created. He was surrounded by his brethren, by those that adored him and whom he adored in return, and his mild mannerisms made him a favored member of the Heavenly Host.
His brother was more raucous and abrasive than he; a timer tick-tocking its way to an end no one could really perceive. Even in a perfect world like Heaven, they still bickered and clashed like two forces of nature. The clouds would retreat, and the sky would tremble, and the foundations of Heaven itself would shake in the wake of their magnificence. The angelic armies would watch in fascination as light and will crumbled around them.
Lucifer was unreasonably fond of his big brother.
After they tussled, they would set everything back in its proper place, mending light and tending to the rips and tears in the celestial fabric of their existence, and after that they would laugh, and smile, and beam brighter than before.
Lucifer loved Heaven, and Lucifer missed Heaven, and so Lucifer would see Heaven again.
~*~*~*~
Dean is bored.
He's hurting and he's healing, but he is so fucking bored he can hardly stand it.
Castiel left over a week ago, as silent as the grave, and Dean has been watching old Dr. Sexy, M.D. reruns ever since. He isn't sure how much more he can take of this, but he troops on regardless, willing his body to heal faster because Bobby is adamant about the whole 'no drinking' thing, and Dean needs alcohol, stat.
It's harder to forget the fight he and Sam had when he's sober. He can practically hear the sound of glass shattering against stone, of wood splintering and impacting flesh. Sam had drank the kool-aid -- again -- and Bobby and Dean had had to detox him -- again -- and just when they thought he was okay, he went and freaked the hell out -- again.
Dean was tired. He was sick of the arguments, sick of the bickering, and desperately sick of having to beat common sense back into his brother's demon-blood-addled mind. So he had done the worst thing he could have possibly ever done.
He let Sam go.
They had fought with fists and furious words, and in the end, instead of gripping him tight and beating common sense into his head one more time, Dean had let Sam go.
Dean has been regretting his decision for a month now.
~*~*~*~
When Castiel returns a few days later, Dean is torn between relief and near-crippling agitation. He, of course, acts on the latter.
"Where the hell did you run off to this time?" he bites out while sipping on a glass bottle of coke. He's mostly healed by now, save for a few sore spots here and there, and he figures he'll be up and hunting (and drinking) in a few more days.
Castiel stares out the window for a long while, and when he turns his gaze onto Dean, something flashes in his eyes that reminds the hunter of I can throw you back in, and the shift in demeanor is frightening.
"I was with Sam," he says carefully, and Dean's heart leaps into his throat. He fumbles for something to say, but all he can think of right now is, You slimy bastard and, Is he alright? and, Sam.
He licks his lower lip and takes a step forward and cocks his head to the side and says, "oh".
Castiel nods once, as if he can hear everything unspoken.
"He is straying from the path."
Damned angels and their damned cryptic messages. Dean would have rather Cas just come out and say it. Your brother's vamping out on demon blood again, but that's not really a big surprise. It's in his tone, and it's in his eyes, and Dean could have really done without the angel's sympathy right then; he really, really could have.
"Surprise, surprise," Dean says coldly, then winces at the sound of his own rough voice. It scares him how easy it is to hate Sam.
Castiel doesn't say anything in reply to that comment, but his unwavering stare grates on every one of Dean's nerves. Cas’ glare looks far too accusatory for his tastes.
Still, Dean is curious, and no matter how many times he might have to tell himself otherwise, he is truly deathly afraid for his little brother.
"How's he doing? he asks, and something like remorse makes his mouth taste bitter.
If Castiel is surprised by the question, he doesn't let it show for long.
"Not well."
Big protective brother mode kicks in so abruptly and so immediately that Dean is nearly thrown off balance.
"Take me to him," he says, grabbing the jacket he had slung over Bobby's couch. He's already halfway to the door before Cas can respond.
"Dean," Cas says sternly. "You are still injured."
"It's all superficial now," Dean replies, taking a few more steps towards the door. A firm hand on his shoulder stops him dead in his tracks.
"Dean," Cas says again, and this time his voice is soft.
He seems to hesitate, and that does not bode well for Dean, so he crosses his arms and faces the angel and says, "Out with it."
Castiel deliberates, but finally casts his gaze to the floor.
"He attacked me."
Dean grows cold and his features darken in a manner not unlike the very first time he had found out that his little brother was drinking demon blood.
"He attacked you," Dean echoes hollowly, and when Cas cants his head to the side, he asks, "I don't suppose you deserved it?" because, honestly, angel dickery was plenty enough grounds to punch a warrior of God in the face. It was in the rule book.
Well, Dean's rule book, anyway.
The angel is like a puppy, Dean imagines, insomuch as that when you kick him, he just gives you these wide, wet, utterly incomprehensible eyes that sort of make you regret sticking your foot up his ass.
"I did nothing to harm him. I merely approached him and asked after his well-being."
Dean isn't particularly proud of the tick of protectiveness that prompts him to seek out Sam and tear him a new one for hurting Cas' feelings like this, but he shakes off the weariness and just goes with it.
Cas may leave him all the time, but at least he comes back.
Dean tries his hand at consolation by wrapping his arm around Castiel's shoulders and dragging him further into Bobby's abode.
"I think you need a drink," he says while releasing the angel to pull a couple of glasses out of Bobby's cupboard. He grabs the bourbon sitting on the counter and pours it, warm, into both cups.
"It'll take your mind off of him," he says while turning around... and nearly jumps out of his skin and drops the drinks because Castiel is suddenly right there.
"Jesus, Cas! We've already had this talk." Dean's spine is digging into the counter, and he's starting to feel very uncomfortable because Cas won't stop staring.
"Is that why you drink?" Castiel asks, ignoring the proffered alcohol and swallowing up Dean's nervousness instead.
Dean breathes deeply, and he thinks about cracking a joke, but Castiel is way too fucking close for him to even be able to think right.
The word 'rape' pops into his head, and Dean nearly splutters out his own agitation because, okay, angel-rape? Did that seriously just cross his mind? He wasn't sure whether to punch Cas in the face for being so fucking close and making him think such seriously misguided things in the first place, or to punch himself in the face for thinking about Cas and sex, and angels and rape, and Cas and rape.
He lifts the bourbon to his lips and is about to take a long overdue draw when a lithe hand shoots out and snatches the cup from between his fingers.
Dean is far too flabbergasted to protest when Castiel reaches around him and pours the drink into the sink, mirroring the action with his own glass.
"Dean," he says, taking a step back and letting the hunter learn how to breathe once again. "There is another way."
It takes Dean a few moments to process what Cas has just said because he is too busy trying to stifle the unexplained sense of foreboding that washes over him.
"What?"
The angel hesitates, and Dean is suddenly sick with worry. He wrenches it from his body and sticks it in his back pocket because this is Castiel -- Cas, the one who faced-off with the entire celestial hierarchy and told them to shove it where the sun don't shine; Cas, the one who has hauled his ass out of trouble more times than he can count; Cas, the angel that fell for him.
If he couldn't trust Cas, he needed to go jump off of a bridge, asap.
"Hey, don't pull that cryptic shit on me now."
Where before Castiel might have berated his impatience, he now just stares.
Dean swallows thickly, and the angel averts his gaze and sighs before turning the full weight of his undivided attention onto the human.
"I can give you something that will help."
Dean blinks.
"Well who would've thought. Castiel, M.D."
Cas is very somber, though, and his eyes keep flitting back and forth as if he's afraid Daddy-dearest is going to strike him down for even mentioning whatever-the-hell he was even mentioning.
"So, what?" Dean continues. "Manna laced with crack is gonna fall from the sky, or something? You gonna hook me up with a new angel drug called divinity?"
"Euphoria."
"Excuse me?"
"It's called euphoria."
Dean blinks, mouth agape, while Cas seemingly fidgets.
"And it isn't manna," the divine being continues. "It's water."
Dean cannot stop staring.
"Blessed water."
"Like holy water?" Dean finally chokes out once he is certain Cas hasn't suddenly grown a twisted sense of humor.
Castiel nods. "A prayer is spoken in the angelic tongue."
The fact that Castiel is talking about giving Dean the heavenly equivalent of cocaine simply can't leave Dean's mind.
"Oh," he says. "That's..." fucked up in every manner possible? Twisted in every sense of the word? "... cool."
Cas nods like he's agreeing that drugs are quite the 'cool' thing (he isn't really, but he has the naivety of a second-grader) and takes a step closer to Dean, invading his personal space again.
"It will shroud your pernicious memories while allowing you to work at optimal capacity."
"So... happiness without the hangover?"
It takes a few moments of deliberation before Castiel nods in a slow and precise manner.
Dean crosses his arms slowly and leans against the counter of Bobby's kitchen.
"Sounds too good to be true."
Castiel's brows scrunch up in that subtle manner of his.
"It is heavenly."
"Yeah, well. What good has Heaven done us lately?"
"Dean," and Cas tips his head to the side. "It is your choice."
The air grows thick with silence before a decision is made.
"Lay it on me."
~*~*~*~
They called it euphoria; nectar of the angels. It was used to quench them, to sustain them, and to soothe their tired voices.
Lucifer had come up with it one day when he had been conducting his choir and one of his brethren had been inflicted with a tired voice. Angels did not need sustenance to survive, but they were capable of having dry throats, which often led to a rough and gravelly tone. Or, in this case, a cracked one.
The Morningstar, as he was sometimes called, had sought out God for His take on a solution. (God had been more easily accessible in the early years, and Lucifer was favored among his kind.)
"Father," Lucifer had said, kneeling before the throne of his Creator, head bowed, as his already luminous presence was overwhelmed by the light of the Almighty. "Our voices want for nothing but to praise You, but I and my brothers and sisters sometimes grow weary. If we could have something that could satisfy our parched throats...?"
Lucifer didn't look up, but he could feel God smiling down at him.
"It took you long enough," said his Father, and the angel smiled because it was really very hard to surprise the all-knowing with a question.
Of course He would know. His Lord knew everything, and the thought made Lucifer's heart flutter in his chest.
Now this was a Being worthy to be praised. Lucifer started to hum a joyous melody beneath his breath -- he couldn't help it. He was so full of happiness that it burst forth from his very being, washed over him like a tidal wave, and he knew this was a direct result of being in God's presence.
"It is done," his Father said, and Lucifer rose to his feet.
The light of that day was grand and seemed brighter than the day before, and it was with this that Lucifer knew God was pleased.
He would compose a song for his Father, and the choirs would sing it in joyous triumph, because this melody would be a work of art, a masterpiece, something God would never tire of.
He left the throne room in good faith; countenance bright and intentions pure.
It wouldn't be until much later that everything started to sour.
~*~*~*~
It has been two months since Dean has spoken to Sam, and the best part (which, subsequently, also happens to be the worst part) is that he doesn't even fucking care.
He would say he could live off of this euphoria stuff, but he had already beat himself to the punch there. The clear, seemingly innocuous liquid packs a kick stronger than vodka, but the taste is something between sweet and sour, and has the tendency to be sinfully addicting.
Bobby disapproves, but Dean isn't high, he's just happy, so he really can't do anything to prevent these events from unfurling like the coils of a secret little snake. He glares at Cas every time the angel is around, though, but Cas only has eyes for Dean.
He watches him, cuts him off when needed, and ups the dosage when Dean's dreams start to devolve into gut-wrenching nightmares as a result of all the repressed emotions.
Castiel has been steadily increasing the amount of euphoria Dean is to take each day. The nightmares have only gotten worse. Dean, of course, doesn't remember them. When he wakes up he is bleary eyed and incoherent, and a fog seems to cover his entire countenance. He asks for his daily dosage of heavenly cocaine every morning, jolts awake when Castiel is kind enough to bless the stale water sitting in a paper cup by his bedside, and then whips himself up out of bed and asks if pie counts as a suitable breakfast food.
He is bright-eyed, but he is far from lucid.
Bobby is worried, but Castiel will not listen to his protests and Dean is far too happy to be upset.
"He's getting dependent on this drug 'a yours," says Bobby one day when he and Castiel are alone in the kitchen and Dean is in the next room watching a football game on the television.
"It is helping him," replies the angel in a steady tone, as if he's had to explain this several times before.
Bobby levels with him, rolls his wheelchair closer and seems to tower above the only other man in the room, even though it is glaringly apparent that he is several feet shorter while sitting down.
"If this becomes his new drink," he says, "all it's gonna do it hurt him."
Bobby will not see Dean hurt again.
Castiel’s curiosity is peaked by this blatant display of familial protection, so he tilts his head to the side and listens.
"If you harm my boy," Bobby goes on to say, his voice lowering to a heated whisper, "you'll need something stronger than spiked angel-water to get you back on your own two feet."
Dean comes in at about that time, smiling, oblivious to their conversation, and claps a hand on Castiel's back.
"Just flipped to the news. There's been some omens down in southern Louisiana." He turns fully to Cas and gives him a big grin. "So what d'you say? Wanna send some demon bitches back down to Hell?"
Something sparks in Castiel's eyes that Dean would call passion.
Bobby would call it wrath.
~*~*~*~
This is good, he thinks, and he loves the feel of a knife slipping through demonic flesh, even though demonic flesh bleeds a lot like human flesh. But he doesn't think about that part. He couldn't if he wanted to. Thanks to Cas' lovely little drug, Dean is oblivious to pain -- even the mental kind.
It's better that way, he figures, and lets all inhibitions slide when he stabs a black-eyed little girl in the heart.
Monster. Beast. This is divine retribution and he knows it.
The demon screams through the voice of the orphan, and pretty soon an overbearing blackness seeps out between the child's teeth and it is the orphan herself who screams at the pain of bleeding from the heart.
She falls and writhes and grows silent as death takes her.
Dean is clear-headed enough to realize that there is something genuinely wrong with massacring a group of young female grade schoolers from an orphanage -- demon possession or no -- but he isn't even capable of thinking, If Sam were here, he could just yank these sons of bitches right out, so he is left with an emptiness inside of him that grows with each shrill cry.
He sinks biting metal into another child's stomach and twists the blade, rending demon from human and sending both into the afterlife.
He would regret his actions if he had the time, but he doesn't, so he simply moves on to the next demon.
He slips and slides, and there is so much blood on the floor that he wonders, briefly, if the girls were planning on finger painting with it; and then he remembers, oh, wait, they can't, because he's currently mangling their fragile little bodies with a demon blade, and at that point he sort of shuts down and starts killing again.
If he thinks too hard, he thinks about Sammy, so it's best to just not think at all.
Dean has gotten so used to Castiel's gaze on him that the absence of it makes him itch. The second the angel looks away to deal with his own problems, it is immediately noticeable to Dean. He pauses, distracted, and is nearly bowled over by an inhumanly strong child. Tangled blond locks fall across his eyes as young, blunt teeth latch onto his neck and try to cause as much damage as possible. Little white pincers tear into his skin and tug, tug, tug and pull, pull, pull and with the kind of cold clarity borne of reflex, Dean lodges his weapon into the side of the girl's neck and tears a line from one ear to the next. Blood gushes out and drips onto his face, and with a silent huff he shoves the body off of him, watching as it rolls to the side and drowns in a pool of red, red, red.
He rubs his neck where the skin had been ground between chewing teeth and winces.
That was gonna hurt like a bitch in the morning.
Dean spares a glance at Castiel, then lifts himself up off the floor and heads for the nursery -- god, the fucking nursery.
Wraith-like wails pierce the night air, two-toned and bleak, unforgiving like the whiz of steel, and a dozen black eyes stare at him from between the wooden bars of rickety cradles.
Dean is going to slaughter a room full of babies, and all he can think is, This sucks. This fucking sucks.
He grips the knife tight and sets about his gruesome task and doesn't bother to look back because regret is a hard pill to swallow.
Castiel joins him eventually, and Dean is fixated on his companion because he needs something to distract him from the morbid task at hand.
As the last child squirms and hisses and spittles in the angel's grip, Castiel tilts his head towards Dean and settles unnervingly calm blue eyes on the human. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a gesture of reassurance.
It's okay.
They are surrounded by the bleeding bodies of dead infants, and Dean is trembling like a pathetic little leaf because Castiel has just dropped the empty shell of a human child to the floor with no respect for the unjustly deceased, and it will be okay.
It isn't really a lie if Castiel never spoke the words out loud.
~*~*~*~
Dean doesn't know what to think when Castiel tells him they must leave. The conversation is short and mostly one-sided.
"Bobby knows."
About the children Dean had slaughtered, of course. The guilt has been eating away at him for days, crippling him, making it harder to focus. He can barely eat, and God help him when he actually manages to fall asleep.
"You have done the right thing," Castiel assures him, and takes a step forward when Dean crumples into one of the creaky motel room chairs.
"He kicked us out?" Dean says in a whisper, then flinches when Castiel settles a hand on his shoulder.
"No." And the pause that follows is laden with a cruelty too subtle for Dean to notice. "He is hunting us." The angel squeezes his shoulder and Dean winces as bony fingers dig into his flesh. "He is hunting you."
The words ring in delicate human ears, and Dean can't make them stop.
He is hunting you, he is hunting you. Bobby is hunting you. Sam is gone and he's never coming back and Bobby is hunting you.
Dean feels like throwing up, but he smiles instead.
"Well, what're you waiting for? Work some of that angel mojo and let's take a vacation to the Bahamas."
PART ONE // PART TWO // PART THREE || PART FOUR \\ PART FIVE \\ EPILOGUE
PART ONE
Luminous
PART ONE
There is something about silver that sickens the senses and slickens the soul. It beats hard like a breath of fresh sulfur, and in the end it is a knife that does the deed. A flash of flesh, a flick of the wrist, and permission is not given, but it is just as easily taken.
He is Lucifer. The rules don't apply.
The suit is warm -- that's what he calls them. Suits. Monkeys. Fur to be worn over a bright, shining interior, and puppets to play with.
The string is pulled taut, and he can feel the resistance quaking within this body. Jimmy is not dead, and Lucifer is bemused at his brother's decision to keep the soul alive. In possession, a vessel is merely catatonic. In death, the soul does not alight or descend; it disappears. Thus is the fate of an angel's host -- thus is the fate of these oh-so-special people.
Lucifer shrugs, and his wings fold behind him, and tear into flesh and bind with sinew, and he hears the human soul scream at this new level of hurt and violation.
He sighs.
If the ethereal ape was going to cry out with every breath and every break, it would be best to silence it permanently.
Jimmy hears the Devil's thoughts and swallows his pain.
Lucifer snuffs him out anyway. His fragile little soul is like a flickering candle; one flap of the angel's wing, and there is nothing left but wax and smoke.
The body is too little for him. There are cavernous expanses within that have melded to his brother's form, and Lucifer thrills at the familiarity. He smiles, and cracks the joints and dislocates the bones of that skeletal expanse that once housed a soul and now houses a presence. His wings can barely fit inside, let alone the rest of his fallen glory, but he pushes harder against the body he must treat like glass, and when it is about to break, it gives.
His light floods the insides, burns away Castiel's print, and when he sighs again everything shudders and settles.
He has much work to do.
~*~*~*~
He begins with Castiel.
Poor, pathetic Castiel, no doubt bemoaning his lack of allegiance towards anyone of any particular merit in the cosmos.
Dean Winchester is an ant. Lucifer is a god.
When Castiel was pushed out of his vessel, he was met with a pull from Heaven, and a pull from Hell, and a pull from common sense screaming at him to remain innocuous.
There are wards in place, and the little angel has never remained this diaphanous for so long.
Castiel is a ghost.
Lucifer remains an entity inside a stolen body, and casts his brother into the bowels of the earth. Castiel must thread his fingers into the dirt and the mortar, and when he rises he must bend time and space to his will, because Lucifer has sent him to the in-between where water and sky are shimmering over a surface of oblivion, and if he were to squint, he would see a star falling far in the distance.
Castiel will remain a ghost, and Lucifer will have his vessel, and Lucifer will have Dean Winchester soon enough, as well.
~*~*~*~
"Hey, Cas. Pass me a beer, will ya'?
Castiel hesitates, but in that mighty way of his that is less like hesitation and more like contemplation.
"Is it wise to be drinking before a hunt?"
His forehead scrunches up when Dean leans forward and snatches up the bottle.
"Who's the hunter here?" the human scolds, wagging the beer in front of Castiel's face, then pops off the cap. "Take a load off," Dean commands, propping his feet up on Bobby's little coffee table and pressing his shoulders further into the couch.
Cas gives Dean that look that says 'you're talking nonsense again', and Dean lets out a little huff of breath.
He almost slips up. He almost says, "You're worse than Sam," but he knows how touchy the angel can be about his brother's whole kool-aid kick, so he avoids the subject as much as possible.
"I thought we'd wriggled that stick outta your ass last month," he says instead, then takes a leisurely draw of beer.
Castiel gives him that look again when he chugs the rest of it down and reaches for another.
"Dean."
"Was tha' your first word as a baby, or summin'? 'Dean, Dean, Dean.' S'all you gotta say half the time." The steady slur of words is enough of an indication that Dean has had one too many beers. He huddles into the couch and nurses his bottle and studiously ignores the disapproving look his angelic counterpart is boring into his skin. It makes him itchy and uncomfortable, but not nearly as itchy and uncomfortable as he would be were he to acknowledge it in the first place.
He'd already forgotten what 'it' was.
Yep. He was wasted.
Dean Winchester did not giggle, but when he was drunk, he sort of chuckled like a girl. A very manly girl, whose name was Dean fucking Winchester.
And so he gives a raucous round of man-girl chuckles at the thought of baby Cas, with little tiny cherub wings and clad in nothing but a diaper.
And a trench coat.
A diaper and a trench coat.
Dean dies a little on the inside, but that's okay, because the downward pull of Castiel's lips syncs up perfectly with the petulant pout worn by the baby Cas in Dean's mind. The features blend together seamlessly, and it only makes everything that much funnier.
Castiel doesn't seem to be amused, but he's obviously gay, so it doesn't matter.
"You aren't fit to work like this," Castiel surmises without any kind of prompting.
"S'just a simple salt 'n burn," Dean protests, then waves him off in that 'only-a-hunter-would-understand' manner. Because, really, only a trained professional could destroy a cold-hearted, blood-thirsty ghost while simultaneously nursing a half-buzzed hangover. Alone.
Dean is a trained professional.
"I got this," he assures.
~*~*~*~
He doesn't have this.
Dean has never been in this much shit in his entire life, and he has been in a lot of deep shit.
Point one: Ghosts weren't supposed to be so agile they were impossible to fucking see.
Point two: Dean was so smashed, he couldn't even see two feet in front of him, let alone the ghost that was impossible to fucking see.
Point three: He wasn't fighting a ghost.
The minute he drops his gun into an open grave, he realizes, oh yeah, he is royally screwed.
"Not so tough without that big gun of yours to fondle and caress, hm?" taunts the demon -- demon. It rings twice in Dean's head, and he can smell the sulfur, but it is the emotionless black of careless eyes that tips him off and over the edge.
Knife. Knife. He still has the knife.
The demon kicks him while he's down, right in the ribs, right in the side, and he definitely hears something crack, and he definitely knows this isn't good.
Knife knife knife.
"Aw, come on. Don't you want to play anymore?"
Grasping fingers grip Dean's hair and dig into his scalp, propelling him forward the same moment a booted foot digs into his spine. His body arches in an unnatural manner, and Dean thinks, Holy fucking shit, Cas was right.
"Go to hell," he spits out, and the pressure on his back increases.
"Been there, done that," the demon says flippantly through gritted teeth, and it makes his words sound tight and cruel. Dean winces at the tone, suddenly reminded of Alistair, and when the older demon was displeased. Those were memories he would have rather done without.
The grip on his hair tightens and pulls upward, and Dean scrambles for some kind of purchase on the ground.
Where is that fucking knife!?
Dean usually shouts his demands to the open sky because, hell, it's been pretty effective so far. But when his silent shout of frustration is met with the slick thud of metal sinking into flesh, and a resounding pop and heated fizzle prelude the horrendous scream of a demon being pulled back down into Hell, Dean wonders if he's not been wasting his breath.
Or maybe it's just Castiel who's the mind reader.
"Boy, am I glad to see you," Dean coughs out, then struggles to his feet without a word. He ignores the look Cas gives him, and dusts himself off.
"I told you not to come alone," Castiel says, and Dean can't tell if it's concern or malice in his tone, and the inability to differentiate between the two is really starting to screw with his head.
"Uh. Sorry?" he offers halfheartedly, then scratches the back of his neck. Guilty, maybe, but damned well proud of his earlier binge.
Alcohol won't leave him like Sammy did.
Castiel doesn't say anything, and so they drop the matter. Dean is preoccupied with his aching side and more than likely broken ribs. Cas is staring at the bloody knife in his hand, watching the trail of crimson drip off the blade, and Dean thinks that might be a little weird, but the angel looks more disgusted than intrigued, so he lets it pass. So long as Castiel isn't feasting on demon a la carte, he doesn't really care.
"Don't get me wrong," Dean says while gripping his aching side. "You've got some pretty wicked timing. But couldn't you have swayzeed my ass outta there about two minutes earlier?"
Dean's ribs give a creak of protest when he moves too abruptly, and Castiel tilts his head at the insistently pained noise he makes.
"You need medical attention."
"No shit, Sherlock," he growls in reply, then gives up on the whole walking thing.
Castiel teleports him without asking his permission, and Dean might hate him a little bit for that, even if it was for his own good.
~*~*~*~
Bobby is entirely too unimpressed.
"What'd you do, get in a fight with a bulldozer?"
"Demon," Dean winces.
"Were you sitting there with your thumb up your ass?" Bobby has to ask, because there is no way in hell one single demon could give Dean such a run for his money.
Dean knows he can't lie to Bobby, but he still physically cringes when Castiel answers for him.
"He was intoxicated."
"You were what?"
"It was only a couple of beers!" Dean protests, and Castiel doesn't have to say a word for Bobby to know that he's definitely stretching the truth with that one.
"Boy, if I had a mind, I'd whoop you right here, right now. You'd best be thankful that demon got to you first, else you'd be in a world of hurt."
Dean aches from every bone. He curls and coils, and his joints throb and his veins burn, and holy shit, he is so very thankful that that demon got to him first.
There is a pause in the air, a silence with a modicum of pressure, and when the crushing weight becomes too much, it is broken with a rough sigh.
"No more alcohol."
Dean blanches.
"What?"
Bobby pats him on the knee as he rolls his wheelchair by and pointedly ignores the way Dean cringes at the touch.
"So long as you're shacked up here, coke and water's all you're gettin'. I'm cutting you off cold turkey."
"That's not fair!" It sounds petulant, but it’s all the pain meds allow him to say about the matter.
"This ain't no democracy," Bobby counters. "My house, my rules."
Castiel looks at Dean with a blankness to his features when Bobby rolls out of the room.
"What're you lookin' at, you smug bastard?"
It looks like Cas wants to say something to that, but he tilts his head instead, and when Dean blinks, he is gone.
~*~*~*~
Lucifer loved Heaven. It was a gracious land marked by beauty and belonging. The morning chorus was bright and fluttering, and each of his brothers' and sisters' unique melodies mingled like silver butterfly wings that flit throughout the air. In those early years, their Father's presence stretched wide and welcome, and just the simple act of thinking about Him brought an onslaught of emotion so overwhelming, there was no doubt that He had heard you.
In the beginning, the angels were always thinking about God. He was all they needed -- all Lucifer needed -- and eternity continued on in peace.
Lucifer loved Heaven. The days were long, and the nights were non-existent, and fear had yet to be created. He was surrounded by his brethren, by those that adored him and whom he adored in return, and his mild mannerisms made him a favored member of the Heavenly Host.
His brother was more raucous and abrasive than he; a timer tick-tocking its way to an end no one could really perceive. Even in a perfect world like Heaven, they still bickered and clashed like two forces of nature. The clouds would retreat, and the sky would tremble, and the foundations of Heaven itself would shake in the wake of their magnificence. The angelic armies would watch in fascination as light and will crumbled around them.
Lucifer was unreasonably fond of his big brother.
After they tussled, they would set everything back in its proper place, mending light and tending to the rips and tears in the celestial fabric of their existence, and after that they would laugh, and smile, and beam brighter than before.
Lucifer loved Heaven, and Lucifer missed Heaven, and so Lucifer would see Heaven again.
~*~*~*~
Dean is bored.
He's hurting and he's healing, but he is so fucking bored he can hardly stand it.
Castiel left over a week ago, as silent as the grave, and Dean has been watching old Dr. Sexy, M.D. reruns ever since. He isn't sure how much more he can take of this, but he troops on regardless, willing his body to heal faster because Bobby is adamant about the whole 'no drinking' thing, and Dean needs alcohol, stat.
It's harder to forget the fight he and Sam had when he's sober. He can practically hear the sound of glass shattering against stone, of wood splintering and impacting flesh. Sam had drank the kool-aid -- again -- and Bobby and Dean had had to detox him -- again -- and just when they thought he was okay, he went and freaked the hell out -- again.
Dean was tired. He was sick of the arguments, sick of the bickering, and desperately sick of having to beat common sense back into his brother's demon-blood-addled mind. So he had done the worst thing he could have possibly ever done.
He let Sam go.
They had fought with fists and furious words, and in the end, instead of gripping him tight and beating common sense into his head one more time, Dean had let Sam go.
Dean has been regretting his decision for a month now.
~*~*~*~
When Castiel returns a few days later, Dean is torn between relief and near-crippling agitation. He, of course, acts on the latter.
"Where the hell did you run off to this time?" he bites out while sipping on a glass bottle of coke. He's mostly healed by now, save for a few sore spots here and there, and he figures he'll be up and hunting (and drinking) in a few more days.
Castiel stares out the window for a long while, and when he turns his gaze onto Dean, something flashes in his eyes that reminds the hunter of I can throw you back in, and the shift in demeanor is frightening.
"I was with Sam," he says carefully, and Dean's heart leaps into his throat. He fumbles for something to say, but all he can think of right now is, You slimy bastard and, Is he alright? and, Sam.
He licks his lower lip and takes a step forward and cocks his head to the side and says, "oh".
Castiel nods once, as if he can hear everything unspoken.
"He is straying from the path."
Damned angels and their damned cryptic messages. Dean would have rather Cas just come out and say it. Your brother's vamping out on demon blood again, but that's not really a big surprise. It's in his tone, and it's in his eyes, and Dean could have really done without the angel's sympathy right then; he really, really could have.
"Surprise, surprise," Dean says coldly, then winces at the sound of his own rough voice. It scares him how easy it is to hate Sam.
Castiel doesn't say anything in reply to that comment, but his unwavering stare grates on every one of Dean's nerves. Cas’ glare looks far too accusatory for his tastes.
Still, Dean is curious, and no matter how many times he might have to tell himself otherwise, he is truly deathly afraid for his little brother.
"How's he doing? he asks, and something like remorse makes his mouth taste bitter.
If Castiel is surprised by the question, he doesn't let it show for long.
"Not well."
Big protective brother mode kicks in so abruptly and so immediately that Dean is nearly thrown off balance.
"Take me to him," he says, grabbing the jacket he had slung over Bobby's couch. He's already halfway to the door before Cas can respond.
"Dean," Cas says sternly. "You are still injured."
"It's all superficial now," Dean replies, taking a few more steps towards the door. A firm hand on his shoulder stops him dead in his tracks.
"Dean," Cas says again, and this time his voice is soft.
He seems to hesitate, and that does not bode well for Dean, so he crosses his arms and faces the angel and says, "Out with it."
Castiel deliberates, but finally casts his gaze to the floor.
"He attacked me."
Dean grows cold and his features darken in a manner not unlike the very first time he had found out that his little brother was drinking demon blood.
"He attacked you," Dean echoes hollowly, and when Cas cants his head to the side, he asks, "I don't suppose you deserved it?" because, honestly, angel dickery was plenty enough grounds to punch a warrior of God in the face. It was in the rule book.
Well, Dean's rule book, anyway.
The angel is like a puppy, Dean imagines, insomuch as that when you kick him, he just gives you these wide, wet, utterly incomprehensible eyes that sort of make you regret sticking your foot up his ass.
"I did nothing to harm him. I merely approached him and asked after his well-being."
Dean isn't particularly proud of the tick of protectiveness that prompts him to seek out Sam and tear him a new one for hurting Cas' feelings like this, but he shakes off the weariness and just goes with it.
Cas may leave him all the time, but at least he comes back.
Dean tries his hand at consolation by wrapping his arm around Castiel's shoulders and dragging him further into Bobby's abode.
"I think you need a drink," he says while releasing the angel to pull a couple of glasses out of Bobby's cupboard. He grabs the bourbon sitting on the counter and pours it, warm, into both cups.
"It'll take your mind off of him," he says while turning around... and nearly jumps out of his skin and drops the drinks because Castiel is suddenly right there.
"Jesus, Cas! We've already had this talk." Dean's spine is digging into the counter, and he's starting to feel very uncomfortable because Cas won't stop staring.
"Is that why you drink?" Castiel asks, ignoring the proffered alcohol and swallowing up Dean's nervousness instead.
Dean breathes deeply, and he thinks about cracking a joke, but Castiel is way too fucking close for him to even be able to think right.
The word 'rape' pops into his head, and Dean nearly splutters out his own agitation because, okay, angel-rape? Did that seriously just cross his mind? He wasn't sure whether to punch Cas in the face for being so fucking close and making him think such seriously misguided things in the first place, or to punch himself in the face for thinking about Cas and sex, and angels and rape, and Cas and rape.
He lifts the bourbon to his lips and is about to take a long overdue draw when a lithe hand shoots out and snatches the cup from between his fingers.
Dean is far too flabbergasted to protest when Castiel reaches around him and pours the drink into the sink, mirroring the action with his own glass.
"Dean," he says, taking a step back and letting the hunter learn how to breathe once again. "There is another way."
It takes Dean a few moments to process what Cas has just said because he is too busy trying to stifle the unexplained sense of foreboding that washes over him.
"What?"
The angel hesitates, and Dean is suddenly sick with worry. He wrenches it from his body and sticks it in his back pocket because this is Castiel -- Cas, the one who faced-off with the entire celestial hierarchy and told them to shove it where the sun don't shine; Cas, the one who has hauled his ass out of trouble more times than he can count; Cas, the angel that fell for him.
If he couldn't trust Cas, he needed to go jump off of a bridge, asap.
"Hey, don't pull that cryptic shit on me now."
Where before Castiel might have berated his impatience, he now just stares.
Dean swallows thickly, and the angel averts his gaze and sighs before turning the full weight of his undivided attention onto the human.
"I can give you something that will help."
Dean blinks.
"Well who would've thought. Castiel, M.D."
Cas is very somber, though, and his eyes keep flitting back and forth as if he's afraid Daddy-dearest is going to strike him down for even mentioning whatever-the-hell he was even mentioning.
"So, what?" Dean continues. "Manna laced with crack is gonna fall from the sky, or something? You gonna hook me up with a new angel drug called divinity?"
"Euphoria."
"Excuse me?"
"It's called euphoria."
Dean blinks, mouth agape, while Cas seemingly fidgets.
"And it isn't manna," the divine being continues. "It's water."
Dean cannot stop staring.
"Blessed water."
"Like holy water?" Dean finally chokes out once he is certain Cas hasn't suddenly grown a twisted sense of humor.
Castiel nods. "A prayer is spoken in the angelic tongue."
The fact that Castiel is talking about giving Dean the heavenly equivalent of cocaine simply can't leave Dean's mind.
"Oh," he says. "That's..." fucked up in every manner possible? Twisted in every sense of the word? "... cool."
Cas nods like he's agreeing that drugs are quite the 'cool' thing (he isn't really, but he has the naivety of a second-grader) and takes a step closer to Dean, invading his personal space again.
"It will shroud your pernicious memories while allowing you to work at optimal capacity."
"So... happiness without the hangover?"
It takes a few moments of deliberation before Castiel nods in a slow and precise manner.
Dean crosses his arms slowly and leans against the counter of Bobby's kitchen.
"Sounds too good to be true."
Castiel's brows scrunch up in that subtle manner of his.
"It is heavenly."
"Yeah, well. What good has Heaven done us lately?"
"Dean," and Cas tips his head to the side. "It is your choice."
The air grows thick with silence before a decision is made.
"Lay it on me."
~*~*~*~
They called it euphoria; nectar of the angels. It was used to quench them, to sustain them, and to soothe their tired voices.
Lucifer had come up with it one day when he had been conducting his choir and one of his brethren had been inflicted with a tired voice. Angels did not need sustenance to survive, but they were capable of having dry throats, which often led to a rough and gravelly tone. Or, in this case, a cracked one.
The Morningstar, as he was sometimes called, had sought out God for His take on a solution. (God had been more easily accessible in the early years, and Lucifer was favored among his kind.)
"Father," Lucifer had said, kneeling before the throne of his Creator, head bowed, as his already luminous presence was overwhelmed by the light of the Almighty. "Our voices want for nothing but to praise You, but I and my brothers and sisters sometimes grow weary. If we could have something that could satisfy our parched throats...?"
Lucifer didn't look up, but he could feel God smiling down at him.
"It took you long enough," said his Father, and the angel smiled because it was really very hard to surprise the all-knowing with a question.
Of course He would know. His Lord knew everything, and the thought made Lucifer's heart flutter in his chest.
Now this was a Being worthy to be praised. Lucifer started to hum a joyous melody beneath his breath -- he couldn't help it. He was so full of happiness that it burst forth from his very being, washed over him like a tidal wave, and he knew this was a direct result of being in God's presence.
"It is done," his Father said, and Lucifer rose to his feet.
The light of that day was grand and seemed brighter than the day before, and it was with this that Lucifer knew God was pleased.
He would compose a song for his Father, and the choirs would sing it in joyous triumph, because this melody would be a work of art, a masterpiece, something God would never tire of.
He left the throne room in good faith; countenance bright and intentions pure.
It wouldn't be until much later that everything started to sour.
~*~*~*~
It has been two months since Dean has spoken to Sam, and the best part (which, subsequently, also happens to be the worst part) is that he doesn't even fucking care.
He would say he could live off of this euphoria stuff, but he had already beat himself to the punch there. The clear, seemingly innocuous liquid packs a kick stronger than vodka, but the taste is something between sweet and sour, and has the tendency to be sinfully addicting.
Bobby disapproves, but Dean isn't high, he's just happy, so he really can't do anything to prevent these events from unfurling like the coils of a secret little snake. He glares at Cas every time the angel is around, though, but Cas only has eyes for Dean.
He watches him, cuts him off when needed, and ups the dosage when Dean's dreams start to devolve into gut-wrenching nightmares as a result of all the repressed emotions.
Castiel has been steadily increasing the amount of euphoria Dean is to take each day. The nightmares have only gotten worse. Dean, of course, doesn't remember them. When he wakes up he is bleary eyed and incoherent, and a fog seems to cover his entire countenance. He asks for his daily dosage of heavenly cocaine every morning, jolts awake when Castiel is kind enough to bless the stale water sitting in a paper cup by his bedside, and then whips himself up out of bed and asks if pie counts as a suitable breakfast food.
He is bright-eyed, but he is far from lucid.
Bobby is worried, but Castiel will not listen to his protests and Dean is far too happy to be upset.
"He's getting dependent on this drug 'a yours," says Bobby one day when he and Castiel are alone in the kitchen and Dean is in the next room watching a football game on the television.
"It is helping him," replies the angel in a steady tone, as if he's had to explain this several times before.
Bobby levels with him, rolls his wheelchair closer and seems to tower above the only other man in the room, even though it is glaringly apparent that he is several feet shorter while sitting down.
"If this becomes his new drink," he says, "all it's gonna do it hurt him."
Bobby will not see Dean hurt again.
Castiel’s curiosity is peaked by this blatant display of familial protection, so he tilts his head to the side and listens.
"If you harm my boy," Bobby goes on to say, his voice lowering to a heated whisper, "you'll need something stronger than spiked angel-water to get you back on your own two feet."
Dean comes in at about that time, smiling, oblivious to their conversation, and claps a hand on Castiel's back.
"Just flipped to the news. There's been some omens down in southern Louisiana." He turns fully to Cas and gives him a big grin. "So what d'you say? Wanna send some demon bitches back down to Hell?"
Something sparks in Castiel's eyes that Dean would call passion.
Bobby would call it wrath.
~*~*~*~
This is good, he thinks, and he loves the feel of a knife slipping through demonic flesh, even though demonic flesh bleeds a lot like human flesh. But he doesn't think about that part. He couldn't if he wanted to. Thanks to Cas' lovely little drug, Dean is oblivious to pain -- even the mental kind.
It's better that way, he figures, and lets all inhibitions slide when he stabs a black-eyed little girl in the heart.
Monster. Beast. This is divine retribution and he knows it.
The demon screams through the voice of the orphan, and pretty soon an overbearing blackness seeps out between the child's teeth and it is the orphan herself who screams at the pain of bleeding from the heart.
She falls and writhes and grows silent as death takes her.
Dean is clear-headed enough to realize that there is something genuinely wrong with massacring a group of young female grade schoolers from an orphanage -- demon possession or no -- but he isn't even capable of thinking, If Sam were here, he could just yank these sons of bitches right out, so he is left with an emptiness inside of him that grows with each shrill cry.
He sinks biting metal into another child's stomach and twists the blade, rending demon from human and sending both into the afterlife.
He would regret his actions if he had the time, but he doesn't, so he simply moves on to the next demon.
He slips and slides, and there is so much blood on the floor that he wonders, briefly, if the girls were planning on finger painting with it; and then he remembers, oh, wait, they can't, because he's currently mangling their fragile little bodies with a demon blade, and at that point he sort of shuts down and starts killing again.
If he thinks too hard, he thinks about Sammy, so it's best to just not think at all.
Dean has gotten so used to Castiel's gaze on him that the absence of it makes him itch. The second the angel looks away to deal with his own problems, it is immediately noticeable to Dean. He pauses, distracted, and is nearly bowled over by an inhumanly strong child. Tangled blond locks fall across his eyes as young, blunt teeth latch onto his neck and try to cause as much damage as possible. Little white pincers tear into his skin and tug, tug, tug and pull, pull, pull and with the kind of cold clarity borne of reflex, Dean lodges his weapon into the side of the girl's neck and tears a line from one ear to the next. Blood gushes out and drips onto his face, and with a silent huff he shoves the body off of him, watching as it rolls to the side and drowns in a pool of red, red, red.
He rubs his neck where the skin had been ground between chewing teeth and winces.
That was gonna hurt like a bitch in the morning.
Dean spares a glance at Castiel, then lifts himself up off the floor and heads for the nursery -- god, the fucking nursery.
Wraith-like wails pierce the night air, two-toned and bleak, unforgiving like the whiz of steel, and a dozen black eyes stare at him from between the wooden bars of rickety cradles.
Dean is going to slaughter a room full of babies, and all he can think is, This sucks. This fucking sucks.
He grips the knife tight and sets about his gruesome task and doesn't bother to look back because regret is a hard pill to swallow.
Castiel joins him eventually, and Dean is fixated on his companion because he needs something to distract him from the morbid task at hand.
As the last child squirms and hisses and spittles in the angel's grip, Castiel tilts his head towards Dean and settles unnervingly calm blue eyes on the human. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a gesture of reassurance.
It's okay.
They are surrounded by the bleeding bodies of dead infants, and Dean is trembling like a pathetic little leaf because Castiel has just dropped the empty shell of a human child to the floor with no respect for the unjustly deceased, and it will be okay.
It isn't really a lie if Castiel never spoke the words out loud.
~*~*~*~
Dean doesn't know what to think when Castiel tells him they must leave. The conversation is short and mostly one-sided.
"Bobby knows."
About the children Dean had slaughtered, of course. The guilt has been eating away at him for days, crippling him, making it harder to focus. He can barely eat, and God help him when he actually manages to fall asleep.
"You have done the right thing," Castiel assures him, and takes a step forward when Dean crumples into one of the creaky motel room chairs.
"He kicked us out?" Dean says in a whisper, then flinches when Castiel settles a hand on his shoulder.
"No." And the pause that follows is laden with a cruelty too subtle for Dean to notice. "He is hunting us." The angel squeezes his shoulder and Dean winces as bony fingers dig into his flesh. "He is hunting you."
The words ring in delicate human ears, and Dean can't make them stop.
He is hunting you, he is hunting you. Bobby is hunting you. Sam is gone and he's never coming back and Bobby is hunting you.
Dean feels like throwing up, but he smiles instead.
"Well, what're you waiting for? Work some of that angel mojo and let's take a vacation to the Bahamas."
PART ONE // PART TWO // PART THREE || PART FOUR \\ PART FIVE \\ EPILOGUE