Western Rising, 18/19
“Flooding now,” Azazel said through the communicator. “Antipcate total collapse in t-minus five minutes.” He clicked off.
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Azazel almost jumped out of his skin. He turned around - directly into the gun barrel aimed between his eyes.
“Evening squire.”
“You”. The word was a sneer - he confronted his old nemesis.
“You shouldn’t count a chap out of things till you’ve seen the corpse,” Crowley said lightly. “Close the dam.”
“Are you serious?” Azazel gave a short laugh, aware that he sounded vaguely hysterical. For all his bravado, he’d never actually been this close to the business end of a weapon that could kill him. He rapidly decided that he didn’t like it. “Why??”
“Tick-tock,” said Crowley sweetly, and cocked the trigger. Azazel gulped and folded, pressing the button on his remote control to re-seal the dam.
“Now drain the delta,” Crowley commanded. Azazel pressed another button, unsealing several drainage tunnels built into the earth around the fort.
“Why?” he asked again. “Don’t you want Lilith dead? And the boy?”
“Oh yes. Nothing would give me more satisfaction than gutting the little bitch, and that smug choirboy has been nothing but aggravation. Alas, like a child in a candy store, what we want isn’t always what’s best for us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need at least one of them alive,” Crowley sighed. “Contact in the State wants to meet one. See what they’re made of. ” He shrugged one shoulder. “Literally.”
“The State?” Azazel ground out. “Crowley. I knew you were low, but-”
“You obviously failed to appreciate the depths of my ingenuity,” Crowley said boredly. “I may not have the means to obtain one at this moment, but I certainly can’t go letting you kill them both. Now land this contraption, you ignorant little monkey.”
Azazel had no choice but to comply, with the gun barrel pressed to the base of his skull. When they grounded, Crowley fired.
* * *
“Push!” Charlie was screaming.
“No, run!” yelled Dean.
“If we let it go we’re toast!” A small crowd of Ghosts was holding a steel panel over a breach in the wall, desperately pushing back against the water.
“She’s right!” yelled Castiel over the noise of the water. “If we can’t keep this hall sealed the foundations will collapse!” Water streamed around the edges of the panel.
Suddenly, with a shock, the force pushing back against them lessened. It seemed to surge backwards, then return, less strong, and the streams around the edges turned to trickle.
“Listen!” gasped Charlie, and they all heard it - a groan, swish, suck. The water pulled backwards again.
“It’s - draining?” Dean was afraid to voice it as more than a question.
“There are tunnels,” Cas whispered. “Someone must have….” He trailed off. The groan-swish came again, and they weren’t pushing back with all their combined strength anymore, just - holding the panel in place.
“Sam,” said Dean, leaving Charlie and Dylan to hold the panel, and ran for the remains of the staircase. Cas was right behind him. There was nothing left to climb, but Becky found a couple of wooden crates, and if Dean balanced on them and gave Castiel a boost, Cas could reach the edge of the hole in the floor above them. he pulled himself up, then reached back to give Dean a hand up. The next staircase was intact, and they thundered up it -
- To find Sam and Lilith, locked in a shodwon, each holding the other pinned by their powers. Both their faces were red and strained, teeth gritted and noses and bleeding. Each held a hand out in front of them, the other frozen -
Without hesitation, Dean emptied his gun into Lilith’s back. She collapsed forward, horribly alive far longer than she should have been, too long until she stilled. Sam collapsed, barely conscious, and Dean fell to his knees and closed his eyes.
“Kyrie elesion,” said Cas quietly, and closed Lilith’s eyes.
* * *
“We cannot stay here,” said Castiel quietly. He was standing in the doorway of Sam and Dean’s room, as composed as Dean had ever seen him.
“What else is new?” Dean said tonelessly. He was watching Sam sleep, one arm bandaged and held in place by a sling. Their resident ‘doctor’, a Ghost named Sarah who’d been two years into State med school when she’d been forced to run, had pronounced that so far as she could tell Sam was healthy - just unconscious.
“And he’s unconscious because?” Dean had pressed her. Sarah had spread her hands, wide-eyed:
“Short-circuited? Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never met anyone bioengineered. All I can say is that heart, blood-pressure et cetera are relatively normal, and I’d just…let him sleep.”
Dean was about to yell at her, but Becky cleared her throat and glared at him, and he said gruffly, “Thanks,” instead, before settling in to watch Sam. That had been a couple of hours ago, and the Ghosts were salvaging all that they could from the Base and their damaged supplies.
“Only the Resistance could have opened the dam,” Cas went on. “They know we’re here.”
“So who drained it?” Dean asked.
“I have no idea. But I certainly wouldn’t count on the continued goodwill of our mysterious benefactor.”
“God I’m tired of this,” Dean put his head in his hands momentarily. “Always being hunted.”
Cas paused. Dean knew he wouldn’t like what was coming next.
“It is not you they’re hunting,” Cas said quietly: “You do have the option of saving yourself.”
“By leaving Sam. Forget it. I don’t even know why, sometimes, God knows he can be a bitch, and it isn’t always easy, but dammit, I just know I can’t ever do that.”
Pause.
“You would not be the man I have come to admire if you could,” said Cas, and disappeared.
“He’s getting better.”
Dean jumped. “Hey,” he squeezed Sam’s fingers. “How long you been awake?”
“Long enough,” Sam shifted uncomfortably. “Ugh. I feel like I got hit by a…planet.”
“Lilith’s dead,” said Dean.
“I know. You killed her.”
Pause. For a moment Dean wondered if Sam was angry, but then Sam blew out his breath and said,
“Thanks. I - really am gonna have to start saving your ass for a change.”
“I’m not keep score,” Dean shrugged, then winced as the movement pulled on his damaged arm.
“You okay?” said Sam.
“All things considered? I got off pretty lightly.”
A shadow fell over Sam’s face. “Oh. How many…how many…?”
“Twelve of ours dead. All of theirs, however many there were of them.”
Sam swallowed. Wordlessly Dean passed him a tin cup of water.
“So,” Sam said, lying back. “The water. I think I forgot to tell you about that.”
Dean explained about the dam and drainage system.
“But - why? I understand the State flooding it, but why would they drain it?”
“Cas is going with Act of God,” Dean’s mouth quirked. Sam smiled half-heartedly.
“I’m - glad,” he said after a moment. “That you have a friend.”
“Gee thanks,” said Dean dryly. “Nice to know my choice of buddies meets with your approval.”
Sam gathered himself, then pushed himself up on his elbows, grabbed Dean and pulled his face in to kiss his mouth. Dean did kiss him back, but Sam could tell that he was smiling at the same time, and wondered if the smile wasn’t a little bit at his expense.
* * *
“Then what?” Becky scurried after Castiel, scribbling frantically in Chuck’s old journal.
“I believe I have already told you that Dean shot Lilith. In fact I have told you several times.” Castiel deposited the crate he was carrying into the back of the van, then turned, nearly colliding with Becky.
“YES BUT WHAT WAS IT LIKE?” Becky practically yelled. “Dammit Cas I need descriptions! Dialogue, face expressions, body language! What’s the point of me recording the New Movement if the narrative is so dry no-one reads it?”
“Perhaps Sam and Dean would be better people to ask for the details of the incident,” Castiel said mildly, trying to maneauver around her to receive a box of computer equiptment from Charlie, but Becky sighed:
“Dean already told me he wouldnn’t help anymore. Actually he told me something much ruder than that, but I won’t report it. And Sam barely remembers the whole thing. Come on Cas the future needs you!” she followed him into the building.
The Ghosts were packing.
“Why are they following us?” Dean said lamely. “I don’t know where we’re going. Why do they imagine we can protect a bunch of civilians from the State and the Resistance?”
“Dean,” said Sam: “Look around. Look at them. They’re not just civilians anymore.”
It was true. The Ghosts worked with a quiet efficiency, handled weapons like they knew what they were doing, packed perishable food items correctly, purifying water. They discarded what they didn’t need without sentimentality, and worked together without getting in each other’s way.
“They’re soldiers,” said Dean. “Fuck, Sam, what have we done?”
“What they asked us to.”
“Did they though?”
“Look, we never made any promises. God knows you tried your best to discourage them from imagining we could help them. But, Dean, you’re good at this.”
“At what?”
“This.” Sam waved an arm in an expansive gesture. “Organizing people. Training them. I’m not saying I believe Chuck’s destiny stuff,” Sam held up a hand to stall Dean’s objections. “But I’m saying - you want a better future, right?”
“No that’s you. I just hate the State and the Resistance bastards with equal passion.”
“Whatever, don’t admit it then. Your actions speak otherwise. I’ve been having ideas-“
“Nooo…”
“What if me, you, Castiel, we had a sort of - training facility…that moved around. All schools were peripatetic once, we don’t need a permanent building.”
“Training them to do what?” Dean narrowed his eyes.
“Survive, mostly. Defend themselves but also - make assaults, if they want t. Sabotage a few of the State’s more horrific-“
“And then what, exactly,” Dean cut him off sharply, “Distinguishes us from Resistance terrorists?”
“Um, the fact we’re not trying to take over the world, for one thing, but to stop it being taken over by one of two destructive powers too blind to realize how exactly alike they are.”
“Hm,” Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at the nearest people carrier as though it has personally offended him.
“Look,” said Sam, pointing towards where Sarah and Dylan were shepherding a couple of children out to a transit further away. “That little boy’s mother was killed by Resistance shrapnel, and when he got here he had a wound on his arm that was well on its way to being septic. Sarah said he wouldn’t have lasted much longer in the Badlands. What’s he gonna do when he grows up? Drift around as a Ghost forever - get caught in the crossfire and killed - or could there be another option?”
“I agree with Sam.”
“ARGH! Cas, I swear to God, I am gonna put a bell on you.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“So you - never mind. So you’re on board with this crazy scheme, huh?”
“It would seem….that of the limited options left to us in this world, it is one of the most sensible, in addition to being morally sound.”
“Dammit.” Dean covered his face with his hands theatrically. “I just knew you two would gang up on me.”
Sam and Cas shared a repressed smile and from behind them, Becky let out a noise that was cross between a squeak and a sigh, hugging Chuck’s journal to her chest.
“Oh my God, this is gonna be the greatest love triangle romance story the world has ever known.”
Part Nineteen