Don't Move to the Suburbs
It’s not till Dean’s been staying with Lisa and Ben for six months, and Sid and his wife are at their place for dinner that Sid starts to suspect that it’s more than a hard life that’s weighing Dean down. They’re at the table, finishing the last crumbs of the apple pie. Lisa’s just made a joke, and Dean’s laughing this open, warm, genuine laugh that Sid’s never heard before. There’s light in his eyes as he looks at Lisa and Ben. Sid is just realising he truly considers Dean a friend when it happens. There’s a crash like a truck running into the side of the house. Dean is out of his seat and heading to investigate in less than a second, and everyone follows even though he tells them not to.
There’s a hole in the side of the house, like something heavy has smashed into it at high speed, and in front of it is a guy in a trench coat. He’s lying on the ground and his face is twisted in pain. The porch light casts a yellow light over him, and Sid can see blue eyes searching frantically for something.
Dean leaps off the porch and runs to him, and Sid realises Dean knows the guy.
That’s when it gets weird.
“Cas? What happened? What’s wrong with you?” Sid can hear the worry in Dean’s voice as Dean kneels by the guy.
“That’s Cas?” He hears Lisa ask, almost to herself. He thinks he can hear wonder in her voice, but he’s not sure why.
“They tore off my wings, Dean,” the guy - Cas - says. The pain is clear in his voice, but there’s not a scratch visible on him. “They tore off my wings...” He trails off and collapses further onto the ground.
Dean’s freaking out and sounds like he’s trying not to cry. “No. No, Cas, man don’t you dare die on me. Not again.”
Sid’s so taken aback by that that he almost forgets what he was going to say, which was: “I’ll call an ambulance.”
Dean says, “No.”
At the same time, his friend says, his voice strained and wavering, “My vessel is undamaged.”
Lisa tugs them all back into the house. Sid can hear Dean pleading. “I don’t know what to do, Cas. Please, Cas, just tell me how to fix this. You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”
Dean half carries, half drags his friend into the living room and lays him on the couch gently. Sid wants to help, but Lisa holds him back with a shake of the head, and they all just stand there awkwardly as the guy moans in pain, and Dean urgently attempts to heal his clearly undamaged body.
“We don’t have time for this, Dean,” The guy growls in a rough voice that would have been stern if not for the fact that he was saying it while his whole body spasms in pain.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t call an ambulance?” Sid’s wife asks worriedly.
Dean and Cas don’t hear him.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re coming for you, Dean. We need to hide.”
Dean orders them to the basement, then. When Sid tries to protest, Dean pulls a silver handgun from the waistband of his jeans, and they all do what he says. And now they’re all in the basement, and Dean has locked and barred all the exits. If it was just that, being locked in a basement by some kind of gangster and his insane friend, well, Sid wouldn’t be happy about it, but he’s pretty sure he would be able to stave off the panic and try to come up with a plan. But now Dean is painting patterns on the walls in his friend’s blood, and there’s some kind of weird light coming off Cas, who’s trembling and looks like he might be going into shock.
Lisa and Ben are asking Dean questions: “How can I help?” “Is this like the time with the changelings?” “Is that Cas - like Cas Cas?”
Sid holds his wife close and tells her he loves her. She tells him she’s sorry she made him move to the suburbs, which are clearly full of Satan-Worshipping nutjobs. They stay like that for a long time.
“Dean, stop for a second,” Lisa orders.
He pauses, blood dripping from his fingers as she demands an explanation. “Look, I swear I’ll tell you everything, but it’s really important I finish this.”
When Dean finishes his blood-picture, he says something in a language Sid doesn’t recognise, and then he beckons them all over to the corner where the guy in the trench coat is slumped on a mattress that looks like it’s been there for years.
Dean’s kneeling by him, and they’re looking at each other, and Sid thinks they might be more than just friends.
“How’re you doin’, Cas?”
“I am not dead.”
Sid takes that to mean he couldn’t think of anything more positive to say, and it’s really weird because the pain is clearly genuine, even though he has no visible wounds except where he cut his arm to get the blood Dean drew on the walls with.
“Dammit, Cas.”
“My true form is damaged, Dean. There is nothing you can do.”
“Your wings, will they grow back?”
“I doubt it.”
Dean looks desperately sad, and not at all like the pleasant suburbanite Sid’s been going for beers with for the last six months, or the psychopath who’d been drawing on the walls in blood a minute ago. It’s almost like he believes that his friend’s wings have really been torn off.
“Hello,” Cas says, addressing the other people present for the first time. “My name is Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.”
Castiel, angel of the Lord, sits up, despite Dean’s protests.
“Did you really get exploded?” Ben asks, and the whole situation gets even weirder because it kind of seems like Ben and Lisa believe this slender man with the rumpled suit and crazy eyes when he says he’s an angel.
“Twice,” Castiel says, and wavers slightly where he sits. Dean reaches across to steady him.
Sid looks around desperately. Maybe if he can find a hammer or a piece of wood, he can knock Dean out while he’s distracted, and make a run for it.
Castiel looks at him, and the big blue eyes seem to see further than the surface. “It would not be advisable to escape,” he says, but it’s not like a threat, more like a warning that he won’t like what’s waiting for him outside. And that’s terrifying, because what could be more scary than this?
There is an enormous crash of thunder. The basement trembles. It’s almost like something is trying to get in.
“How long will the blood sigils hold?” Dean asks.
“Not indefinitely,” Castiel, angel of the Lord replies.
Sid thinks he might have peed himself a little. Something is definitely trying to get in. It’s ramming against the ceiling. The rafters are shaking in their joists. The light bulb explodes.
“Someone needs to explain what the hell is going on right now,” Lisa’s voice demands in the darkness.
“I sincerely doubt you will find the explanation reassuring,” Castiel’s voice rumbles tiredly.
“Lie back down, Cas,” Dean says. He pulls a small flashlight out of somewhere. Sid doesn’t know where he’s been keeping it - he never seemed to have anything in his pockets - but then, Sid didn’t know Dean carried a gun in the small of his back either.
Sid’s not sure it makes him feel better to know he’ll see it coming when he dies.
“Tell us anyway.”
So Dean tells them, while the basement trembles and the thunder roars, and tiny bits of ceiling rain down on them, that the thing trying to get into the basement is an angry archangel who wants to restart the apocalypse.
Which is ridiculous, because there hasn’t even been a first apocalypse. Sid is at least seventy-five percent sure that it’s a gang with heavy machinery trying to get in. Okay, maybe sixty-five.
“What if he gets in?” Sid’s wife asks, her voice shaking. Even she, the most sensible woman he knows, has started to believe it.
“I am... much weakened... I doubt there is anything I can do...” Castiel trails off. He sounds much weakened.
Dean hands the flashlight to Lisa, and kneels over his friend, swearing quietly and murmuring things he thinks no-one can hear about Cas not being allowed to die.
Cas says: “My injuries are comparable to you having your arms ripped off, Dean, I am having difficulty healing.”
When Dean stands up, Cas is sleeping, trying to heal, and Dean is holding a silver-white blade that seemed to come from nowhere.
“If he gets in, I’ll kill him,” Dean says with grim determination, and Sid doesn’t doubt that Dean could win a fight with an archangel.
When a section of the ceiling caves in entirely, Sid gives up pretending it’s gang related and follows Dean’s instructions, tipping something called holy oil in various uneven circles on the floor. The last one he draws is around himself, his wife, Lisa, Ben and the unconscious Castiel. He makes sure the ends meet, and throws his lighter on it. The flames light up the whole basement, and Dean, standing ready for the confrontation, an angel-blade in one hand and a lighter in the other.
Lisa shouts at him: “Dean Winchester, you better not die.”
Sid realises he’s never even known Dean’s real last name.
The ceiling collapses on the other side of the room, and now there’s another man in there, and there’s lightning coming from his shoulders. He stalks toward Dean.
“Dean Winchester,” he snarls.
Dean snarls right back. “Raphael.”
Sid trembles. His wife is crying.
Dean flicks his lighter and throws it. A ring of fire flickers up around the archangel. “You should really work on the whole holy fire thing, it gets you every time,” Dean says smugly.
“Just because I am imprisoned it doesn’t mean I am powerless. Give me one reason not to smite you where you stand.” Thunder rings in Raphael’s voice.
“When I come back, I’ll be pissed,” says Dean, and he glows in the light of the fires. He seems more than human and he strides towards the archangel.
Sid wants to ask if Dean’s an angel too, but it doesn’t really seem like the time.
“You can’t kill me, you stupid man. The only thing that can kill an angel is another angel.”
“I can show you how it feels to have your wings cut off,” Dean growls. He’s nearly at the wall of fire.
“You would torture an angel? But of course you would. We had you torture Alastair and saw you enjoy it.”
Dean falters. “But then again, I did kill Zachariah, so maybe that ‘only an angel’ thing is a myth.”
He is almost stepping over the ring of flame, the shadows playing on the hard planes of his face, when Castiel’s voice interrupts. It’s stronger now, and doesn’t waver, instead ringing deep and stern. “No, Dean,” he says, and then, “Close your eyes. All of you.”
Sid obeys, but is still sent reeling backwards by the wave of air and light that rushes through the room.
When he opens his eyes, the flames are still burning, but Raphael is gone. Dean puts out the fire around them, carries Cas up the stairs, leaving the others to follow on shaking legs. They go next door to Sid’s house and gather in the living room with the strongest liquor in the house. Dean hugs Lisa and Ben and checks everyone’s okay, and then proceeds to yell at Cas for several minutes about being reckless and things being dangerous and what if the banishing sigil had got him too.
Sid is too dazed and shocky to really understand what had happened, but he gathers Castiel had painted some kind of spell on the ground in his own blood and it had blown Raphael out of the holy fire, killing him.
They give Ben and Lisa the spare room, and Castiel the couch. Dean sleeps on the floor beside his angel. Sid takes three sleeping pills and doesn’t suggest painting protective symbols on the wall because it seems like the angel is running out of blood.
He holds his wife close in bed. Tomorrow they are moving to New Zealand.
Next chapter: sameuspegasus.livejournal.com/8263.html
There’s a hole in the side of the house, like something heavy has smashed into it at high speed, and in front of it is a guy in a trench coat. He’s lying on the ground and his face is twisted in pain. The porch light casts a yellow light over him, and Sid can see blue eyes searching frantically for something.
Dean leaps off the porch and runs to him, and Sid realises Dean knows the guy.
That’s when it gets weird.
“Cas? What happened? What’s wrong with you?” Sid can hear the worry in Dean’s voice as Dean kneels by the guy.
“That’s Cas?” He hears Lisa ask, almost to herself. He thinks he can hear wonder in her voice, but he’s not sure why.
“They tore off my wings, Dean,” the guy - Cas - says. The pain is clear in his voice, but there’s not a scratch visible on him. “They tore off my wings...” He trails off and collapses further onto the ground.
Dean’s freaking out and sounds like he’s trying not to cry. “No. No, Cas, man don’t you dare die on me. Not again.”
Sid’s so taken aback by that that he almost forgets what he was going to say, which was: “I’ll call an ambulance.”
Dean says, “No.”
At the same time, his friend says, his voice strained and wavering, “My vessel is undamaged.”
Lisa tugs them all back into the house. Sid can hear Dean pleading. “I don’t know what to do, Cas. Please, Cas, just tell me how to fix this. You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”
Dean half carries, half drags his friend into the living room and lays him on the couch gently. Sid wants to help, but Lisa holds him back with a shake of the head, and they all just stand there awkwardly as the guy moans in pain, and Dean urgently attempts to heal his clearly undamaged body.
“We don’t have time for this, Dean,” The guy growls in a rough voice that would have been stern if not for the fact that he was saying it while his whole body spasms in pain.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t call an ambulance?” Sid’s wife asks worriedly.
Dean and Cas don’t hear him.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re coming for you, Dean. We need to hide.”
Dean orders them to the basement, then. When Sid tries to protest, Dean pulls a silver handgun from the waistband of his jeans, and they all do what he says. And now they’re all in the basement, and Dean has locked and barred all the exits. If it was just that, being locked in a basement by some kind of gangster and his insane friend, well, Sid wouldn’t be happy about it, but he’s pretty sure he would be able to stave off the panic and try to come up with a plan. But now Dean is painting patterns on the walls in his friend’s blood, and there’s some kind of weird light coming off Cas, who’s trembling and looks like he might be going into shock.
Lisa and Ben are asking Dean questions: “How can I help?” “Is this like the time with the changelings?” “Is that Cas - like Cas Cas?”
Sid holds his wife close and tells her he loves her. She tells him she’s sorry she made him move to the suburbs, which are clearly full of Satan-Worshipping nutjobs. They stay like that for a long time.
“Dean, stop for a second,” Lisa orders.
He pauses, blood dripping from his fingers as she demands an explanation. “Look, I swear I’ll tell you everything, but it’s really important I finish this.”
When Dean finishes his blood-picture, he says something in a language Sid doesn’t recognise, and then he beckons them all over to the corner where the guy in the trench coat is slumped on a mattress that looks like it’s been there for years.
Dean’s kneeling by him, and they’re looking at each other, and Sid thinks they might be more than just friends.
“How’re you doin’, Cas?”
“I am not dead.”
Sid takes that to mean he couldn’t think of anything more positive to say, and it’s really weird because the pain is clearly genuine, even though he has no visible wounds except where he cut his arm to get the blood Dean drew on the walls with.
“Dammit, Cas.”
“My true form is damaged, Dean. There is nothing you can do.”
“Your wings, will they grow back?”
“I doubt it.”
Dean looks desperately sad, and not at all like the pleasant suburbanite Sid’s been going for beers with for the last six months, or the psychopath who’d been drawing on the walls in blood a minute ago. It’s almost like he believes that his friend’s wings have really been torn off.
“Hello,” Cas says, addressing the other people present for the first time. “My name is Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.”
Castiel, angel of the Lord, sits up, despite Dean’s protests.
“Did you really get exploded?” Ben asks, and the whole situation gets even weirder because it kind of seems like Ben and Lisa believe this slender man with the rumpled suit and crazy eyes when he says he’s an angel.
“Twice,” Castiel says, and wavers slightly where he sits. Dean reaches across to steady him.
Sid looks around desperately. Maybe if he can find a hammer or a piece of wood, he can knock Dean out while he’s distracted, and make a run for it.
Castiel looks at him, and the big blue eyes seem to see further than the surface. “It would not be advisable to escape,” he says, but it’s not like a threat, more like a warning that he won’t like what’s waiting for him outside. And that’s terrifying, because what could be more scary than this?
There is an enormous crash of thunder. The basement trembles. It’s almost like something is trying to get in.
“How long will the blood sigils hold?” Dean asks.
“Not indefinitely,” Castiel, angel of the Lord replies.
Sid thinks he might have peed himself a little. Something is definitely trying to get in. It’s ramming against the ceiling. The rafters are shaking in their joists. The light bulb explodes.
“Someone needs to explain what the hell is going on right now,” Lisa’s voice demands in the darkness.
“I sincerely doubt you will find the explanation reassuring,” Castiel’s voice rumbles tiredly.
“Lie back down, Cas,” Dean says. He pulls a small flashlight out of somewhere. Sid doesn’t know where he’s been keeping it - he never seemed to have anything in his pockets - but then, Sid didn’t know Dean carried a gun in the small of his back either.
Sid’s not sure it makes him feel better to know he’ll see it coming when he dies.
“Tell us anyway.”
So Dean tells them, while the basement trembles and the thunder roars, and tiny bits of ceiling rain down on them, that the thing trying to get into the basement is an angry archangel who wants to restart the apocalypse.
Which is ridiculous, because there hasn’t even been a first apocalypse. Sid is at least seventy-five percent sure that it’s a gang with heavy machinery trying to get in. Okay, maybe sixty-five.
“What if he gets in?” Sid’s wife asks, her voice shaking. Even she, the most sensible woman he knows, has started to believe it.
“I am... much weakened... I doubt there is anything I can do...” Castiel trails off. He sounds much weakened.
Dean hands the flashlight to Lisa, and kneels over his friend, swearing quietly and murmuring things he thinks no-one can hear about Cas not being allowed to die.
Cas says: “My injuries are comparable to you having your arms ripped off, Dean, I am having difficulty healing.”
When Dean stands up, Cas is sleeping, trying to heal, and Dean is holding a silver-white blade that seemed to come from nowhere.
“If he gets in, I’ll kill him,” Dean says with grim determination, and Sid doesn’t doubt that Dean could win a fight with an archangel.
When a section of the ceiling caves in entirely, Sid gives up pretending it’s gang related and follows Dean’s instructions, tipping something called holy oil in various uneven circles on the floor. The last one he draws is around himself, his wife, Lisa, Ben and the unconscious Castiel. He makes sure the ends meet, and throws his lighter on it. The flames light up the whole basement, and Dean, standing ready for the confrontation, an angel-blade in one hand and a lighter in the other.
Lisa shouts at him: “Dean Winchester, you better not die.”
Sid realises he’s never even known Dean’s real last name.
The ceiling collapses on the other side of the room, and now there’s another man in there, and there’s lightning coming from his shoulders. He stalks toward Dean.
“Dean Winchester,” he snarls.
Dean snarls right back. “Raphael.”
Sid trembles. His wife is crying.
Dean flicks his lighter and throws it. A ring of fire flickers up around the archangel. “You should really work on the whole holy fire thing, it gets you every time,” Dean says smugly.
“Just because I am imprisoned it doesn’t mean I am powerless. Give me one reason not to smite you where you stand.” Thunder rings in Raphael’s voice.
“When I come back, I’ll be pissed,” says Dean, and he glows in the light of the fires. He seems more than human and he strides towards the archangel.
Sid wants to ask if Dean’s an angel too, but it doesn’t really seem like the time.
“You can’t kill me, you stupid man. The only thing that can kill an angel is another angel.”
“I can show you how it feels to have your wings cut off,” Dean growls. He’s nearly at the wall of fire.
“You would torture an angel? But of course you would. We had you torture Alastair and saw you enjoy it.”
Dean falters. “But then again, I did kill Zachariah, so maybe that ‘only an angel’ thing is a myth.”
He is almost stepping over the ring of flame, the shadows playing on the hard planes of his face, when Castiel’s voice interrupts. It’s stronger now, and doesn’t waver, instead ringing deep and stern. “No, Dean,” he says, and then, “Close your eyes. All of you.”
Sid obeys, but is still sent reeling backwards by the wave of air and light that rushes through the room.
When he opens his eyes, the flames are still burning, but Raphael is gone. Dean puts out the fire around them, carries Cas up the stairs, leaving the others to follow on shaking legs. They go next door to Sid’s house and gather in the living room with the strongest liquor in the house. Dean hugs Lisa and Ben and checks everyone’s okay, and then proceeds to yell at Cas for several minutes about being reckless and things being dangerous and what if the banishing sigil had got him too.
Sid is too dazed and shocky to really understand what had happened, but he gathers Castiel had painted some kind of spell on the ground in his own blood and it had blown Raphael out of the holy fire, killing him.
They give Ben and Lisa the spare room, and Castiel the couch. Dean sleeps on the floor beside his angel. Sid takes three sleeping pills and doesn’t suggest painting protective symbols on the wall because it seems like the angel is running out of blood.
He holds his wife close in bed. Tomorrow they are moving to New Zealand.
Next chapter: sameuspegasus.livejournal.com/8263.html