in the blood/3
Dean watches Sam like a hawk as his brother busies himself chalking archaic symbols within the sigil he daubed on the parquet floor, Castiel’s name in Enochian, a mix of fluid loops and curves, and jagged asymmetrical lines. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he nags again. “Only it was like before. And you weren’t breathing.”
Sam doesn’t look up. “Just - head pounding. Like last time… like I got a cold coming on or something.”
He’s composed, serene even, as he works, but although his brother is outwardly calm, Dean has a jackhammer thudding in his chest and he has to shove his hands down inside his pockets to stop the tremor from giving him away. “But are you really-”
Sam does glance up then, and his eyes are tired and bloodshot, shadowed underneath. “I’m okay, Dean,” he insists quietly. He tents his brows in emphasis. “It’ll be okay. All of it.”
Dean nods, but his stomach is a stagnant pool of steaming, sickly nausea and dread, and he paces, six steps left, six steps right, tries to walk it off as he frets, his mind wandering unbidden to Castiel’s eyes, huge, and sad, and shocked, staring up from a bruised, blood-spattered face. He’s exhausted, wants to sleep, but he’s jittery, never wants to sleep again and see that in his nightmares. He turns away, pulls a furtive hand out of its pocket and grabs at his brow, rubbing his thumb and fingers into his temples, trying to scour away the picture. “Jesus, Cas,” he says softly, so Sam can’t hear him, and his voice comes out weak and teary, undercut by a hopelessness he despises. And fuck, he needs to get past it, needs to start figuring out a solution instead of thinking about the liquor-haze comfort of a fifth of Jack.
He pockets his hand again, swings back around and manages to dredge up a collection of words that makes sense. “So it was like a big nothing? In the flashback? But there were things there with you?” He forces the words out roughly, past a throat so dry he thinks it might be about to crumble to pieces, like rotten wood, like the barrier holding back his brother’s memories. Another brick in the wall, he thinks, and conversation isn’t working as a distraction at all because in his head Castiel is reaching up, imploring for mercy, before blurring and dissolving into his brother reaching out as he keeled over.
Sam slides his eyes up again. “Yeah, it was just - dark,” he says haltingly. “But there were things there, things moving. Things that were blacker than the darkness and they’d sneak up so they were right here.” He holds a hand up in front of his face for emphasis. “You know when you hold your hand right there with your eyes closed, and it’s like you can sense there’s something there even though you can’t see it or feel it?” He huffs, pulls his face into a sudden, crooked smile. “As close as Cas always gets to you when he’s trying to work you out.”
The image, all tilted head and childlike fascination, knitted brows over puzzled eyes, blindsides Dean with an aftershock of complicated despair entwined with a longing he can’t quite categorize, and his heart staggers, his breath catching in his throat.
Sam sets a bowl of brightly colored herbs from Bobby’s pantry down in the center of the sigil, frowns a little as he continues, and his voice is earnest. “And then they’d just dart away. Shapes, wraiths, and I could see their eyes, like silver. Glowing. And their mouths, like holes in their faces. I could smell them… ozone. I don’t even honestly know if they were bad things. And they never touched me. Maybe it was - them. Lucifer. Michael.”
“And they never touched you.” Dean echoes it low and hoarse, drums it into himself. “They never touched you.” He clings to it even though he remembers that’s how it was sometimes for him, how the horror was in thinking they were going to eventually, in knowing they were going to eventually, in thinking about what they might do and in being absolutely certain of what they would do once they were bored of watching. He wonders if it’s like that for Castiel, wherever he is.
“Yeah, but it got so I wanted them to touch me,” Sam interrupts. “And I didn’t care what they might do, because at least it meant I would feel something.” He starts positioning candle stubs around the sigil. “Okay, it’s set up, and we have his name,” he sidetracks. “Once Bobby gets back with the frankincense, we’re good to go.” He sits back on his heels to examine his efforts, blows out a sharp exhale. “You thought any more about what the dreams might have meant?”
The question is unexpectedly blunt, and Dean suddenly finds his hands aren’t safely stowed away where their shaking can’t telegraph his panic any more, that a fist is pressed to his mouth and he’s gnawing at it, while his other hand is reaching up again, the heel of it pressing into his eyes, one after the other, to rub away the salt-sting that lurks. “I think he’s reaching out to me,” he mutters out around his knuckle. “Trying to, anyway. I think it’s like that dreamwalking stunt they can pull. But it’s like it got mixed up with a Hell nightmare.”
He shivers at the memory, feels the hair at his nape stand tall. His head is aching from the tight band of anxiety squeezing it above his eyebrows, the visual of the angel reaching up to him seared into his brain as surely as Castiel’s mark is seared into his skin, and his soul. His heart too, if he’s honest, and the acknowledgement makes his chest constrict again because even if he might be coming around to the fact Castiel has become integral to him, he can’t help feeling their connection is more tenuous than it has ever been. “Are you sure this’ll work?” he asks, and his voice sounds thin and desperate.
“We’ll get him back, Dean,” his brother says softly, from right next to him, because Sam is standing there, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. “He has nine lives, remember?”
Dean can’t help leaning into his solid warmth for a second. “When we get him back, we’re taking him to the nearest vet and getting one of those microchips put in him,” he mutters. “Better yet, one of those fuckin’ GPS collars they use to track wolves in Yellowstone.”
Sam huffs out amusement, before they lapse into a brief silence. “I wonder if I’ll ever have dreams like that,” he says then. “I can’t help wondering,” he adds, ahead of the usual rejoinder.
“You won’t,” Dean grinds out harshly. “Since you never did what I did. Now put it out of your head.” He says it even though he knows it’s crap, remembers how those first snapshots of his vacation in the Pit nagged at him like a bad tooth he wanted to keep poking with his tongue, remembers how the sounds of Hell were there in his ears all the time, but muffled, like he was listening to a spousal assault and battery going on in the motel room next door, remembers how the visuals flitted about hazily, like he was peering through muslin drapes at somebody committing bloody murder. From day one it was all right there, just waiting for him to open his mind to it, and then-
“He told me not to scratch,” Sam concedes, oddly wistful. “Death, I mean. But it’s hard not to.”
Dean clears the grit out of his throat. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he says. He thinks about what Castiel said, right up into his face, his eyes dark and angry, that his brother’s soul was in shreds, thinks of what Crowley said, the sloppy bits. “First Bristol, and now this,” he says quietly. “I need you not to scratch.”
There’s a moment when Sam doesn’t respond, and when Dean slides his eyes sideways his brother is miles away. He jabs out an elbow. “Stop it,” he snaps. “Right now, or so help me I will stop it for you.”
Sam swivels his head around, and his brow is furrowed and quizzical, like he didn’t even hear Dean. “I’m pretty sure it was Samuel who showed me the summoning spell,” he observes randomly.
Dean stares back at him, interested despite himself. “How would Samuel know an angel summoning spell?”
His brother shrugs. “I don’t honestly remember… it’s really just a gut feeling. But he was an experienced hunter wasn’t he? Back in the day?”
Dean considers it, remembers Samuel’s words as he stood there, risen from the grave and looking healthier than any long-dead man walking has a right to, I’ll show you tricks your daddy never even dreamed of. “Yeah,” he concedes doubtfully. “But Cas said his kind hadn’t been here for two thousand years, and Bobby didn’t know how to summon him, so I don’t see why-”
“Got it.”
Bobby is brusque as he clatters in through the door, waving a flat package. He tosses it to Sam, who tears it open with his teeth, kneels and snaps one of the sticks into pieces in the bowl at the center of the sigil.
“Here goes nothing,” he announces, as he lights up the match and lets it fall.
Meg stops as she stalks past Gwen, fixes her with a navy-blue leer. “What are you looking at?” she goads, in the same sing-song, lilting voice she’s been using to taunt the angel for the last few hours.
The demon’s eyes are glittering, and her face is mottled gory red, like the bloodstained maw of hyena that just finished snacking on carrion, but Gwen doesn’t blink as she stares back. “Nothing,” she says pointedly. “Absolutely nothing.”
Meg’s nostrils twitch and flare energetically for a few seconds. “Don’t be fooled because he’s a pretty boy,” she says finally. “That’s just a disguise, some poor schmuck who was the right bloodline. Talking of which…” She raises her hand, and her skin is still shining slick and wet. She trails her tongue along her index finger, seals her lips around the tip and sucks at the crimson fluid.
Gwen feels her stomach lurch. “Why are you doing that?” she blurts out. “Shouldn’t it burn you like yours burned him?”
The demon lifts the jar she’s holding in her other hand up to the dim sunlight seeping in through the windows, swirls the ruby-colored liquid around like wine. “It’s in his blood,” she murmurs, almost lovingly. “Everything we want is in the blood.” She slides her gaze back to Gwen, grimaces. “And you’re right, it burns like fire. It’s foul. But it’s necessary. It’ll make me worthy.”
Gwen can’t help her eyes wandering beyond Meg and down, to the ungainly, grisly sprawl of ragged, scarlet-streaked limbs lying in the middle of the trap, and the tableau gives her an uncomfortable knot in her stomach. “Make you worthy of what?” she asks. “And how much more of it are you going to take from him?” This time she keeps her voice a non-judgmental monotone.
“I’m going to take my fill,” the demon sneers. “Use once and destroy, that’s my motto. You want your brother back, don’t you?” She bares her teeth in a mean smile. “Samuel wants his Mary. We all have things we love, things we want back. This way, we all get them.”
Gwen knows surprise shows on her face, and that doubt overtakes it almost instantly, doubt that must be obvious because Meg’s eyes go empty, like doll eyes.
“What, you think I can’t love?” the demon whispers softly. “You think I never had family? The Winchesters took my father from me.” She half-turns to walk away then swings back suddenly, and her face is twisted into a spiteful mask. “And you know, the angels aren’t any better than Legion,” she snaps. “His kind have razed cities, destroyed civilizations, exterminated species, turned day into night, moved the damn planets.” She points a finger upwards. “All in the interests of handing down His rough justice. They’re a heavenly fucking lynch mob. His stormtroopers.”
Gwen swallows thickly. “Stormtroopers?” she echoes, and she can’t help the derision that creeps into her tone. “What does that make your kind? Jedi knights?”
Perhaps she forgot what she was dealing with because it takes her by surprise, the sudden pain and tightness in her chest as Meg raises her clenched fist. As she starts to suffocate, she’s vaguely aware of how small the demon’s hand is. It’s like a child’s hand, incongruously delicate looking, the wrist skinny and frail, the fingers slender as they grind into her own palm with inhuman strength, drawing the oxygen from Gwen’s lungs so that they collapse in on themselves and spots float across her pupils.
She shakes her head to try to clear her vision, feels herself start to sway, hears a hoarse rattle coming from far back in her throat. She knows she’s spacing out, wonders if she might be imagining that the figure on the floor just behind the demon is moving, hauling itself the few inches that separate it from where Meg’s foot is planted just inside the trap that imprisons it. But she’s fairly sure she doesn’t imagine the yelp that results when the angel sinks his teeth into the demon’s ankle, and as the squeezing sensation abruptly stops and she lurches away, she knows she doesn’t imagine the agonized cry of pain she hears from behind her.
And then, suddenly, Meg is heaving her upright from where she’s bent double, her hand pressed to her chest. The demon’s eyes go oily-black, and Gwen feels her skin crawl. She leans in closer, so Gwen can feel fetid sulfur air across her cheek.
“Me and Clarence there, we’re two sides of the same coin,” Meg hisses venomously. “And I’ll lay short odds he’s done worse things than me. Way worse.” She jerks her head back over her shoulder then. “Now, make yourself useful and clean him up. He’s too far-gone to fix himself, and I don’t want flies in here. The buzzing pisses me off.”
She spins, strides away, slams out of the room, and Gwen lets out a breath she wasn’t even aware she was holding. “Christo to you, you little bitch,” she pants painfully.
After a moment when she sucks huge gulps of air into her newly freed-up airways, she crosses to the corner of the room, roots around in her pack for her first aid kit. She makes her way back to the trap, cranes her head to check if the angel is conscious. It, Samuel had said, a deviation, something that shouldn’t be. It - he - looks like a man, and he - it - was made by God. “He spoke, and they were made,” she murmurs, and in her head she can hear her mother reading Psalms, her finger moving along the dense print, her eyes shining with absolute, unshakeable faith. “He commanded, and they were created.” She chews her lip reflectively. “I don’t even fucking believe,” she scoffs down at the motionless body. “Not really.”
His answer is unexpected and shaky with suffering. “Sometimes I don’t either.”
Gwen contemplates him for a moment. “Why did you do that?” she asks. “You must have known she’d take it out of your hide.”
The angel twists his head to look at her. “I evaluated my circumstances,” he acknowledges frankly, “and realized I need all the friends I can get.”
“There is that.” Gwen squats down, stays far enough away so she can take evasive action if she has to, but close enough that she can feel heat emanating from his body and see that he’s shivering. “She told me to clean you up,” she warns. “Is that going to ruin our friendship?”
His eyes are heavy-lidded and dull with pain. “I won’t hurt you,” he scratches out. “I’m an angel of the Lord.” He must notice her narrow her eyes skeptically, because he furrows his brow at her as if he’s concentrating. “Like… like…” His eyes wander confusedly for a few seconds, and he bites his lip before he focuses back on her face. “Like Michael Landon.”
Gwen chuckles mirthlessly. “Yeah, right.”
He blinks at her blearily. “It would be pointless to hurt you,” he reiterates faintly. “Even if I could get out of the trap and through the wards, I wouldn’t get far like this.”
She studies him for another moment. “I guess not,” she says, and for some reason she believes him. She puts out a wary hand, then stops, dubious. “What about your flashing lights trick?” she thinks to ask. “You said it wasn’t safe to look.”
He gives a small huff. “No flashing lights,” he slurs, almost inaudible now. “My grace… is depleted.”
Gwen holds her hand in mid-air still, sees that it’s trembling slightly. She swallows thickly, comes to a decision. “She left your magic sword right over there,” she lies. “And if you try anything, I will nail you to the floor with it. Can you turn over?”
He rolls, groans out deeply as he does. His shirt is shredded, and his throat, chest and belly are a mess of bloody rips, tears and puncture wounds that glow luminous, bluish-violet light seeping out, ethereal, like St Elmo’s fire is dancing across his skin. It’s beautiful, even against the crosshatched background pattern of torture, and Gwen can’t help but stare, entranced.
“It won’t burn you,” he whispers. “It’s too weak. You can put your hand right through it.”
It shakes her alert and she makes herself businesslike, fishes out gauze and moistens it with antiseptic. “I don’t suppose you even need this,” she remarks with forced detachment, as she slides the pads tentatively through the radiance and across his skin, wiping a pale trail through tacky, leaking blood. His muscles twitch and contract underneath her touch, and he feels human. “Do I need to bandage these?” she asks. He doesn’t respond, and when she darts a look at his face, his eyes are tracking her hand, more alert than they were before. Their shine is suddenly electric and unearthly, at once thrilling and deeply unsettling. He isn’t human at all, she reminds herself.
“No,” he confirms. He returns his focus to her face, and his gaze is dim again, the flash of otherworldliness gone. “You don’t need to. I will heal, eventually. Assuming I ever get out of here. In any case she probably hasn’t finished, so it would be a waste of your time.”
It’s quietly philosophical, acquiescent in a way that jars Gwen further with the knowledge that she’s aiding and abetting, that she’s an accessory in this. Her guilt has her hand go heavy, and she scrubs hard at the wounds even as she diverts herself from her own culpability by attacking the victim. “You know she has a short fuse. You’re just making it worse for yourself with the backchat.”
The angel sucks in sharply, winces under her touch, and his damaged fingers tremble and fan out a few millimeters. “It hurts,” he blurts out, higher-pitched and breathless. “I’m unaccustomed to pain.”
It’s helpless, disarming, and his eyes are wide and bewildered as he stares up. Gwen feels a wave of confusion that ends up as contrition, and she gentles her hand, makes her point again. “Why are you pushing her like that?”
His features relax and soften into weary, disconcerting amusement. “Why are you?”
She ignores the question, reaches for another pad, but she can feel his eyes fixed on her, like he’s reading her mind. Can he? she wonders.
“Samuel… I think he wishes to redeem his daughter from Purgatory,” he says. “And she spoke of Purgatory… has she said anything about opening a portal? A doorway to Purgatory?”
Gwen throws up a hand. “Why do you think she would tell me anything?” she replies tersely.
He ignores her deflection. “Do you have a deal with her?” he presses.
Even the thought of it makes her grimace, and she barks her answer out loud and indignant, like she’s hollering down at him from the moral high ground. “No, I damn well-”
“And yet here you are,” he cuts in reproachfully. “Assisting her. Even though it makes you uncomfortable.” He arches his eyebrows and his eyes are eloquent and accusing, like x-ray vision that can see through to her conscience.
The best defense is a good offense, she knows. “I’m not in this with her, I’m in this with Samuel,” she snips out. “I’ve been helping him hunt down Crowley’s alphas for more than a year now, and I’ve heard that speech from every one of those monsters. So if you’re trying to psych me because I’m the girl, you can save it. And no, she isn’t opening a doorway to Purgatory. She told Samuel she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t even know where it is.”
He frowns at her. “I can assure you that your gender is immaterial to me,” he responds tartly. “However, your integrity isn’t. And demons lie. You should know that by now.” His gaze goes shuttered again in the space after he speaks, and he stares at her like he’s seeing right through her instead of inside her head. “If Samuel made a deal with her, she won’t kill him,” he says randomly, and his voice is weak and strained again. “But you need to be careful. Don’t push her too far. As for me…” He curls his lips into a wry, tired smile. “I’m softening her up. Lulling her… into a false sense of security. It’s part of my escape plan. Do you think she… suspects?”
She shakes her head. “You’re a piece of work.”
“I’m an acquired taste,” he murmurs distantly. “Dean says… he… Dean…” He trails off, and then his breath abruptly hitches. “No, don’t,” he wheezes, and a sudden yelp punches out of him violently. His eyes spin in their sockets and glaze over, and he flips onto his side as Gwen flops onto her butt and scores the heels of her boots on the concrete to scoot herself backwards, cursing herself as an idiot for trusting him as she goes.
But the angel isn’t trying anything at all, because now he’s jack-knifing, bringing his cuffed hands up to his head, burying his face in the swollen, bruised digits. “No, don’t,” he chokes out again. “Dean. No… not now, I can’t… I can’t…”
Gwen swivels her head as the door crashes open and Samuel skids to a halt beside her as the angel’s moans turn into whimpering, sobbing, and it’s frantic, desperate, and then he starts crying out incoherently, over and over, until his voice goes hoarse and fractures, and he slumps, limp.
“That’s eight times, Dean,” Sam says carefully, as he watches the flame fizzle and die. He feels damned despondent about it himself as he glances up, apologetic, sympathetic.
His brother is looking at him with an expression that flits between hurt, confused, and enraged, like he can’t or won’t believe Castiel hasn’t materialized out of thin air to stare at him like he hung the moon, like he wants to sink his fist into the nearest face within reach and pound it to a pulp, maybe Sam’s face, and Sam has to blink because of an odd feeling of déjà vu at the thought.
There’s a long, dragged-out moment before Dean replies, and when he does his voice is low-pitched and dangerous. “Godfuckindammit. Are you sure you’re remembering it right?”
Sam frowns up at him, because the sigil is clear in his mind, sort of, but it’s like ripples on water and smoke on the air, oscillating and billowing across his memory. It fluctuates, surges and wafts back and forth in there, and it makes his head throb. “Yes,” he says. “Well - no, I’m not. I mean… I’m as sure as I can be. But that isn’t very sure. What I remember is pretty hazy.”
Dean considers him for a moment, unblinking, his mouth a grim line, before his gaze suddenly goes harder, and calculating. “Okay,” he says flatly, but even though his voice is unnaturally calm now, his fingers claw at the air for a few seconds before he curls his hands into tight fists. “Okay. You said Samuel showed you the spell. So cast your mind back to when-”
“Dean.” Bobby’s voice is sudden and sharp, and decisive, and Sam slants his eyes up, sees the old man is fixing his brother with a look that’s worried but annoyed too, one that sends an eyeball message to back off.
They stare it out endlessly, and then Dean’s face turns stony and he stomps away, kicking out at a pile of books and sending them tumbling before pulling up with his back to Sam. His frame is locked taut, his fingers interlaced across the back of his head. “Fuck,” he grates out, and his voice is anguished. “Cas. Fuck.”
Sam scrubs a hand through his hair, flounders for a moment, because if he ever needed proof positive that Dean’s affection for the angel ran deeper than he let on, there it was, in his willingness to chip at the wall, and he feels helpless in the face of his brother’s desolation. “Look,” he starts. “Maybe I can try to take myself back there in my mind, maybe it won’t count as scratching if I’ve already remembered-”
“Wait a minute.” Dean whirls, his hand raised and his eyes bright and hopeful. “Just - the summoning ritual, it works for any angel, right? We just need their name in Enochian?” He stabs a finger through the air at Sam, and his voice is triumphant. “Balthazar.” He strides past Sam, starts flicking through the book on Bobby’s desk. “We try it on Balthazar, and if he shows up at least we know we did it right. And if it works, he might know something, might be able to pick Cas up on angel radar.”
Sam can’t help gaping. “Balthazar? After he used us as bait for Raphael’s pitbull?”
Dean waves a dismissive hand. “Fuck that. Cas said they were friends once, and he helped Cas get the weapons back didn’t he? He might know something, might know if Cas is still on terra firma or if…” He pauses a beat, and his voice goes strained and hoarse again. “Or if he isn’t. It’s got to be worth a shot.”
It makes sense, even if there’s something about Balthazar that raises Sam’s hackles, something he can’t quite put his finger on, something outside of the stunt the angel pulled on them. He sighs, shoves his misgivings to the back of his mind, leans forward and uses the cuff of his shirtsleeve to rub away the chalked symbols, starts transcribing new letters in their place. “What if he comes but he-”
“How did you know that?” Bobby is squatting down opposite him, his face quizzical. He nods down at the letters. “His name, I mean.”
“Uh…” Sam flounders briefly, then nods to where his brother is still leaning over the desk. “The Big Book of Enochian…?”
Bobby’s eyes narrow. “But you didn’t look at it,” he says pointedly. I mean, you asked me for it so you could check for spelling Castiel. But you didn’t check for Balthazar.”
Sam churns it over in his head for a second longer, thinks he might even squirm, because the old man is right and he doesn’t actually have an answer, can’t actually remember, only maybe it’s that he doesn’t want to remember but he can’t tell the difference any more. His eyes are drawn to his brother, still leafing through the book, his lips moving as he mutters under his breath, his free hand rubbing his brow, back and forth. Sam looks back to Bobby, leans closer. “Can we just figure it out later?” he says quietly. “Because he is not handling it, and I think we both know that.”
He doesn’t wait for the old man to respond, he’s already lighting the match and letting it fall, and the draught tickles the back of his neck the second the flames leap to life.
“What the fu…” Balthazar is aghast, his brows tenting. “Seriously?”
Sam pushes up in tandem with Bobby, and he doesn’t know whether to feel relieved they might be getting somewhere, or even more anxious at the fact it’s clearer than ever that something is wrong if the summoning ritual worked this time.
“The ego has landed.” Dean is already stepping forward, his composure regained, his voice terse and authoritative. “Houston, we have a problem. Cas has dropped off the radar and he isn’t answering when we call him.”
The angel doesn’t miss a beat. “Oh don’t tell me,” he scathes back. “Some infinitely minor in the scheme of things crisis has come up, and you expect my brother to stop playing World of Warcraft with Raphael and mop up after you?”
Dean bristles. “Cut the crap. Just do your little Borg hive-mind collective trick, and tell us where he is.”
Balthazar rolls his eyes dramatically. “I’m sorry, I simply cannot be arsed with this. I don’t work on days that end in day.” His body tenses with the almost imperceptible flex of muscles Sam has come to know heralds the flap of unseen wings, and Sam moves closer himself, reaches out to grip his brother’s arm.
“Dean, just-” He puts his other hand out, palm up, speaks sincerely. “Balthazar. Look. Please stick around and hear us out.”
Balthazar looks at him almost curiously, before he curls his lips in a wintry smile. “Well. Since I have a soft spot for you, Sam,” he mocks, “do tell.” His eyes bore into Sam, and it’s unsettling, but before Sam can continue Dean is shaking his hand off and crowding closer.
“I’ve been calling him, all day and all last night,” Dean races out. “Yesterday too. And he hasn’t-”
“Good.” Balthazar fixes him with a cynical stare. “He’s weaning himself off the breast. It’s about bloody time.”
Sam persists. “Something’s wrong. We think he’s in trouble.”
He gets a snort in response. “I’d know if something was wrong. I’d sense a disturbance in the Force.”
Dean cuts in again, a decisive rasp. “Well, I know. Because I dreamed it.”
The angel’s eyes dart from Sam’s face to Dean’s, and his expression dissolves into an inquisitive leer. “You’re dreaming about Castiel?” He barks out an amused laugh. “Was it a sex dream?”
Sam can see his brother’s fingers tapping at thin air, can sense the build up to the explosion of rage that Dean has been keeping corked since Sam lit the first match and nothing happened.
“He was dreamwalking me,” Dean growls back. “And no, it wasn’t a sex dream. So rev up your proximity detector and find out where he is. Now.”
The request is surprisingly calm, and purposeful. It’s an order, and suddenly Sam is looking at nothing. He sighs out ruefully, glances across at Bobby.
The old man scowls. “Well that could have gone bett-”
He doesn’t get to finish the thought, because the angel is back, hands in his pockets, contemplative as he gazes at them all in turn.
“Don’t tell me,” Dean says acidly. “You looked everywhere.”
Balthazar shrugs extravagantly. “He’s gone.”
Sam sees his brother flinch. “Gone?” Dean parrots, and his voice is abruptly higher, frustrated, with a wobble in it that suggests he might even be on the verge of panic. “Can you elaborate? Gone as in Raphael has him upstairs?”
The angel cocks his head in the same birdlike way Castiel sometimes does, and his face falls serious. “No… this isn’t Raphael, I’d have heard,” he muses. “And Castiel is in this dimension if he managed to get in your dream. But he’s hidden from me. Warded. It’s the only explanation.”
“Dammit.” Dean’s voice cracks on the word and he spins, leans his head into his hand. “Something has him. It’s hurting him, like in the dream.”
Bobby steps over, rests a hand on his shoulder, and Balthazar watches them for a moment. Sam studies him, notes how his gaze flicks away from Dean to the middle distance, how he purses his lips before scrunching them up thoughtfully, as if he’s mulling something, working it out in his head.
“You know something,” Sam challenges. “Tell us. Please. We need something to go on.”
Pale blue eyes swivel up to fix on Sam’s. “Have you tried asking Crowley?” the angel says simply.
Dean whirls back around, incredulous and impatient. “Crowley? Newsflash. Cas burned his bones. Crowley has ceased to be. He’s an ex-demon.”
Balthazar huffs out contemptuously, speaks with an exaggerated patience that’s in direct contrast to Dean’s edgy snap but still manages to sound annoyed. “Newsflash. Crowley isn’t as flammable as you think.”
Sam croaks, “What?” He’s amazed he manages to get the word out at all, because his throat has dried up so fast and so thoroughly he wonders abstractly if he might have to dust it before he can say anything more. He twists his head around to gauge Dean’s reaction, sees that his brother’s eyes are like emerald chips and a muscle is jumping in his cheek.
“We were there,” Dean snarls. “Cas spontaneous-angel-combustioned him right in front of us.”
Balthazar flaps a patronizing hand. “Just - summon him. Give it a try, see what happens.” He backs away, leans his butt on Bobby’s desk, and crosses his arms. “What have you got to lose?”
Dean stares it out with him through a long, weighty silence. “We saw Crowley burn,” he insists sourly, before he glances over to Sam and then Bobby. “He’s bullshitting us,” he says faintly. “Isn’t he?”
Bobby heaves out a sigh. “Come on. Place is demon-proofed, we’ll need to do it outside.”
This time re-entry isn’t as painful, even though the failed summoning spells are still drilling through his head like a thousand needles. Castiel takes a moment, fancies that when he opens his eyes he might be staring into green, and he imagines what that might be like, to be fallen, to sleep, and to wake to those eyes gazing promises down at him, to a rough, callused palm gentle against his cheek, and bare, muscular legs tangled with his own. It’s like sanctuary, and he drifts on its warmth and softness, secure in his private place.
He can sense them outside his bubble, feel them watching him, smell their anxiety and irritation acrid on the air. He cracks his eyelids and the woman is alert, squatting at a safe distance and poised to jump back further if necessary.
Samuel is next to her, his stare as dark and intense as Sam Winchester’s. “What the fuck was all that?” the man demands. “Is someone in your head? I saw you at the compound, how you were getting telepathic messages or something. Are you doing some kind of secret Vulcan mind meld with Dean?”
Castiel rolls his eyes. “I’d hardly tell you if I was, would I?” he says, coldly rational. “Then it wouldn’t be secret.”
Campbell’s jaw sets and he pushes up so he looms over Castiel. He steps close, closer, close enough, pulls his leg back and sinks his boot into the small of Castiel’s back. The impact of the blow spreads up Castiel’s spine and down his back in waves of pain that have him bite into the meat of his own upper arm to stop his cry, but the throb is dull and faraway, a sign his grace is stronger and shielding him from the worst of his wounds for now, even if it’s still damaged and fragile.
He’s recovering, he knows, but he doesn’t have the luxury of time and he reasons that the demon is nowhere in sight. When he heaves himself up and swings his cuffed arms into the back of Campbell’s legs with all the force he can muster, he’s utterly composed, but he’s working with the one-hundred-sixty pound, slightly-built human body of an ad salesman built for speed and not endurance, and he knows he won’t last long. He flops down on top of the man, bites back a cry at the impact on his torso, and there’s a frozen moment when Campbell gazes up with stupefied eyes, too stunned to react. Castiel takes full advantage of it. “Your deal,” he grates out. “I know what’s in it for you. What’s in it for her?”
Campbell’s eyes go slitty and cold. “You,” he snarls contemptuously, and he’s already starting to pitch and yaw under Castiel. “That’s all she wanted.”
Castiel feels a numb lack of surprise at the man’s sheer obtuseness. “And you believed her?” he hisses. “Do you even know who she is? Azazel spawned her.” He sees the man’s eyes widen at that, and he rams it home relentlessly. “You’re dealing with the issue of the demon who possessed you. I’m beginning to suspect you were born last night after all.”
The big man starts pummeling him immediately, brings a rock hard knee up between Castiel’s legs and smashes it into that tender spot, and Castiel groans as he struggles to maneuver his fists up between them so he can push in and seek that source of power that might restore him. Campbell grunts out unintelligible curses as Castiel finds the spot he’s seeking, and Castiel can see the flash of realization, of memory, pass through the man’s eyes, can see the first flare of pain spark there.
He’s vaguely aware of shouting in the background, and then he feels a fist gather a handful of his hair, and he’s hauled off the yelling man and swung around violently. Sharp knuckles connect with his jaw so hard he hears his teeth rattle, and he slams down onto the ground, his head spinning. He feels himself being flipped over, and the demon’s black eyes are delighted as she straddles his crotch. He sees the flash of silver as the blade rises and begins its swift arc down, and in this moment of his destruction he thinks of Dean.
He turns his head and stares into Gwen Campbell’s stricken face. “Shut your eyes,” he screams, as the metal meets his flesh.
Prologue · 1 · 2 « 3 » 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · Epilogue
( master post )