Episode 14: Through the Fire
Title: Through the Fire
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: dotfic
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam
Rating: R
Word Count: ~22,000
Warnings: language, mild violence, memories of hell, brief depictions of torture
Betas: nyoka and zatnikatel
Author's Note: The opening quote is a line from the poem "How Is Your Heart?" by Charles Bukowski.
Art: Chapter banners by smilla02; digital painting by rumi-nyo, which you can also find here; and painting by august-monsoon, which you can also find here (art contains spoilers for the chapter).
Summary: Some memories never fade.
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." -Charles Bukowski
___
Coventry, RI
Richard's iphone gave off a short, medium-pitched buzz, the sonic screwdriver noise he liked to use for text messages. He picked up his phone.
Don't frgt buy milk!
Of course he'd completely forgotten, his head full of equations, the squiggles of color from the markers he used on the write-erase board at his lab, buzzed on caffeine, a few hours' sleep a night, and the high of being on the edge of discovery.
Stopped at a red light, he texted back to Julie: Wounds me you cld even suggest I might forget!
Ur funny, she replied.
Thats y u married me, he texted in reply, and then he put the phone down before he drove on.
He joked about it, they both did, but still, he felt kind of bad about needing that many reminders. Julie's job as a reporter kept her running around at top speed, but most of the time she seemed to get to bed before it was the next day and didn't forget things, although maybe that was just reporter brain, trained to notice and remember things.
At the next light he turned onto Tiogue Avenue, and after a few minutes pulled into the parking lot of the Super Stop & Shop. The lot was almost full since it was only 6:15 in the evening - rush hour. Usually Richard got to bypass all of that. He was used to doing the shopping at weird hours, wandering the nearly-empty aisles, but after the intensity of the past two weeks of work, and the breakthrough he'd just had, it was time to try to keep normal hours again. He wanted to go home and sleep for a month.
He found a space at the back of the building, alongside the patch of woods that separated the grocery store property from Huron Pond. For a moment he sat in the now dark and quiet car, letting the stillness sweep around him. The ring of his keychain gleamed in the starlight, the tiny plastic TARDIS swinging back and forth before Richard pulled the key out of the ignition and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. He grabbed his gloves and wool hat from the mess of papers on the passenger seat.
The night was cold, the air nearly sucking the breath out of him after the warmth of the car. Only a few other cars were parked way back here. Through the trees, the white ice covering the pond showed.
"Chilly night," a voice said.
Richard turned and saw a tall, thin bald man standing a few yards away with his hands shoved into the pockets of a long, black wool coat.
"Hey, I hear tomorrow it's going to get above freezing," Richard said as he headed towards the grocery store. "I'm thinking of going to the beach for a swim."
There was a laugh from the shadows ahead of him, short and subtle. A woman stepped away from where she was leaning against a Range Rover and walked towards Richard. Her black hair was worn in a bob, her mouth a full, self-confident curve, fuzzy red scarf wrapped around her neck.
"A sense of humor," she said, her breath rising in clouds in the chill air. "Always a plus."
"So I've been told," Richard said, walking past her.
He couldn't help notice how they both turned their heads, how they were both staring at him. Weird.
Another man stepped out from behind a car, blocking Richard's path - spiky hair, pointed chin, face almost elfin with a hint of mischief. His leather jacket looked vintage, like something from a 60's TV show, with lots of buttons and pockets.
This man only grinned, and that's when goosebumps swept over Richard's skin, even under his layers of down and wool and cotton.
They all three watched him intently.
"We've been waiting for one like you," the woman said, her eyes warm and dark. She stepped closer to him, pulling off one of her gloves.
Richard backed up, then moved towards the front of the car but before he could go around it, the first guy in the long coat was right there, again blocking his path.
Letting out a short laugh that came out nervous even though he tried to keep it confident, Richard held up his hands. "Hey, are you going to mug me or something? Because I've got maybe five dollars and thirty-seven cents on me right now and I need that to buy a quart of milk or my wife will make that face that she makes, not that I blame her, I forget stuff a lot…" He was babbling, he knew it, but maybe that was the best thing to do in a situation like this.
"You are kind of the stereotype of the scatterbrained mad scientist, aren't you?" the spiky-haired man said, sounding affectionate. "But there's so much in that brain of yours that doesn't fall out." He licked his lips.
"'Rising star of the field,' I believe they said." The woman held up her bare hand towards Richard's face.
They surrounded Richard now, the bumper of the car cold against the backs of his calves through his slacks. The two men were each taking off a glove, as the woman had, and a brush of warmth rippled through the icy air, as if he were standing near a space-heater, but he couldn't see any source for it. Maybe a vent from the building, but they were far away from it. His breath went invisible, although the breath of the other three continued to form into white clouds.
"Take the money," Richard said. "Here, here's my wallet. My credit cards. I don't want trouble." He considered shoving one of them into the other two, giving him space to escape, but it was risky; if he angered them and they grew violent, he was screwed.
Julie would be so pissed if he did anything stupid, if he got hurt.
"We're after something better, Richard," the bald guy said.
He didn't think to wonder how the man knew his name, not after the woman had quoted the article currently hanging on the fridge at home. Julie'd highlighted that sentence, both of them drinking the wine they kept for holidays and birthdays only, and he'd lifted his wife up onto the counter of their kitchen and kissed her.
Hell. Julie.
The adrenaline jolted through him, and he shoved the tall man, who staggered but didn't fall, while the other two pressed in closer. Sweat tickled Richard's forehead and the back of his neck, dampening his palms - it wasn't fear, he was too warm, the heat radiating at him now as intense as standing before a heated oven.
It was coming from their hands, or seemed to be.
The one with the pointed chin grabbed him from behind, pulling his arms behind his back. He was stronger than he looked, given how skinny he was. The heat grew, his whole body bathed in sweat.
"What…" Richard struggled, but couldn't get free. "What are you?" He yelled at them.
"Don't worry about it," the woman said and put her palm gently against his face while the tall, bald man put his hand around the back of Richard's neck.
Heat flared into his skin where they touched him.
"It'll be over in a moment and then it won't hurt any more," the spiky-haired one whispered into Richard's ear.
The flames surrounded him, and Richard screamed.
____
"Tyrone, Bellefonte, Hazleton," Castiel read.
Sam took a dull silver push-pin and stuck in into the map taped to the wall of his motel room in the Super 8.
Fingers hovering over the laptop keys, as if he wanted to be ready to type something if necessary but wasn't sure what that might be, Castiel read more off the list on the screen. "East Stroudsburg, New City, New Haven, Norwich."
For each city, Sam put another push-pin into the map.
It seemed weird to Sam to see Castiel using a laptop. He'd never been that comfortable with technology and it wasn't as if he'd lost all his powers, but Sam knew Cas had to be careful now. The angel used his own smartphone and computers more and more often - Sam had taught him how to search the app store for more games and anything else he might want, and who knew what Castiel found useful. Last Sam had a look at Castiel's phone, he had a ton of apps involving old texts and reference and languages, which wasn't that much different from the things Sam had on his.
Slumped in his chair with his arms folded, Dean gave off the impression of being bored but Sam knew better. The heel of his boot restlessly knocked against the cross-support of his chair, his leg jostling up and down. He'd been more fidgety than usual since the first body turned up two weeks ago. Castiel reached down and put his hand on Dean's knee, a quick light touch that looked like it was meant to comfort. Sam glanced away back to the map as Dean stilled.
Printouts covered the wall around the map with scribbled notes in sharpie marker, some in Dean's handwriting, some in Sam's, some with symbols drawn in the margins that were from Castiel although they hadn't asked him what they were for. Sam figured they weren't that different from the notes he and Dean made, only in a different language; a few Sam recognized as numbers.
It was late and the motel room's lamps left the corners in shadow. The wall of dates and pictures and maps and pins, the beer bottles and empty pizza boxes, this was all familiar. Despite the grisly images on some of the printouts, Sam was glad they were doing this, that there was work to do and they were all three able to do it.
"Anyone else notice what I'm noticing?" he said, stepping back to see better.
"Whatever it is, it's still heading east." Dean reached for his nearly-empty beer bottle.
"Towards the ocean." Castiel tapped a key on the laptop, scrolling down through the document Sam had made, and muttered, "Always the ocean."
"Which brings us here." Dean had gone back to slumping in his chair again. "Coventry. Rhode Island in February. Joy."
Sam tried to decide if Dean was being Dean, or if it was calculated indifference, or if his brother only needed more sleep. None of them seemed to be getting enough. Ever since what happened in New Jersey, with the will-'o'-the-wisp, Sam's hell visions had gotten a recharge, and he was guessing Dean and Cas weren't much better off when it came to their own bad dreams. It was like the way silt settled to the bottom of a pool, leaving the water clear, but the water grew murky if something stirred it up again. Unfortunately for them, they kept running into things that stirred it back up. Sam got a lot of research done in the middle of the night, since it beat going back into bad dreams, but that left him fried during the day. Castiel rubbed his eyes a lot lately, although he seemed to actually enjoy doing jaw-stretching yawns, as if he were trying out a perk of his human body. Dean had developed the kinds of shadows in his face that Sam hadn't seen on him for a long while.
"Richard Ames, twenty-eight, body charred to a crispy critter in the parking lot of the Stop & Shop." Sam sat down in the chair next to Dean.
Dean reached for the crime scene photo they'd finagled, picked it up and then put it down again, pulling his hand away. He leaned closer to Castiel, peering over his shoulder to look at their notes on the laptop screen.
"Latest victim doesn't seem to have anything more in common with the rest than the others did." Sam grabbed the last slice of pizza, now gone cold, from the box. "All walks of life, background, schools attended, interests…it almost seems…random."
"Random? With all the crazy crap that's been happening? I doubt it." Dean finished off the last of his beer in a few deep swallows and rubbed his fingers over his mouth. "There's a pattern here, we just have to find it."
Castiel stared down at the laptop keyboard as if he weren't really looking at the letters, then raised his stare to Dean. "Always the ocean," he said, voice flat and clinical, yet a quick flash of goosebumps ran up Sam's arms.
"Okay," Sam said, getting up again. "Let's go through it all one more time and then we should probably try to get some sleep."
____
Most of the time, he used blades, with the fires all around him and Alastair standing too close, mouth near Dean's ear telling him you were made for this and this is who you really are. Sometimes he used the fire, putting flame to flesh, and then Dean couldn't hear what Alastair said over the screaming, only feel his hands on Dean's shoulders.
Dean woke with a force as hard as the Impala's sudden stop, his body jerking. His pulse raced, fluttering crazily in his throat, and his t-shirt was soaked in sweat. Shadows with a red tint to them moved over the motel room walls, and there was heat against his skin. Dean blinked and the shadows vanished along with the heat, replaced with the chilly air of a motel room in the gray darkness of pre-dawn, and Castiel's face inches from his own, watching him with his mouth drawn into a tight, worried line.
Neither of them spoke at first, Dean's too-fast breaths the only sound in the room. Castiel lay facing him, the blanket in a tangle over them both. Theoretically, Dean still bunked with Sam, but he slept in the other bed in Castiel's room on some nights, and he shared a bed with him on others. They hadn't fallen into that part as a routine, neither of them ever willing to ask, but sometimes it happened, curled around each other in the darkness.
Castiel didn't move, only kept his eyes fixed on Dean's face and said softly, "It was a dream. You're not there."
"Haven't had a nightmare that bad in a while." Dean rolled onto his back and took a few deep breaths staring up at the ceiling before he turned, wanting to see Castiel's face, needing to if he was admitting things to himself. In the half-darkness, Castiel's eyes seemed like a darker blue than usual.
With the sweat drying and chilling against his skin, Dean pulled the blanket up, tucking it more securely over the both of them. Castiel wriggled closer to him, an inch at a time, watching Dean's face as if worried he would startle. Yet, they'd done this again and again, Castiel resting his head on Dean's chest, fingers sliding across his stomach to curl at his hip, their bodies notched together. Dean got distracted with the random spikes of Castiel's hair, messy from sleep, the familiar curve of his jawline and the symbols on his tattoo just visible in the v-neck of his t-shirt. Cas may have lost some of his mojo, but this close to him, Dean sometimes became of aware of a muted, faint thrum of something impossible to describe beneath his skin, as if Castiel's blood were imbued with his grace. Since Dean had never been anywhere near this close to Cas while he'd been still fully powered up, he had no idea if this was normal, or if it'd been like that only more so once. Anyway, it didn't matter - it wasn't something Dean looked for, but when it was really quiet like this, he noticed it.
It was a part of who Castiel was, like his rare lopsided smile and knowledge of Enochian and deadpan sense of humor, or how at times he looked right into Dean as if he saw every crack and pressure point, no hiding. Other times it was like they were standing on opposite sides of a chasm and didn't even speak the same language, yet there was always a rope, always a bridge, and they always managed to find it.
Castiel raised his head and put his mouth against Dean's jaw and murmured again, "It was a dream."
Sliding his fingers into Castiel's hair, the dark strands tickling and real against his palm, Dean put his mouth over Castiel's. A brush of lips turned into a slide of tongues, both of them going cautiously at first and then pushing harder, pushing in further. Cas moved on top of Dean, a warm weight pinning him into the mattress, the blanket over them, while Dean pushed up Castiel's shirt. As Dean traced his tongue over the faint lines of the scar from the banishing sigil on Cas's chest, then over the mark his own hand had left, Cas let out a soft moan.
The sky grew incrementally brighter beyond the curtains as their hands fumbled for each other, tugging down the waistbands of their sweatpants. Dean wrapped his fingers around Castiel's cock, guided it so it slid along his own, their fingers touching, slick with pre-come now, breaths going faster. Again Dean's pulse started jumping around in his neck but this time it was welcome, it was a reminder of being alive, a reflection of the aching warmth between his legs and under his skin.
"Cas…" Dean breathed, speeding his own movements, the thrust of his hips. The ache and need was growing unbearable. He put his mouth against Castiel's neck, licked his skin, needing the salty sweat-stained taste of him. He wanted to be buried deep inside of Cas, or he wanted Cas stretching him wide open, filling him up, had wanted that for a while now. Yet, Dean didn't change course or let his hands stray too far. Not yet.
The quick-flash memory of Alastair's fingers wrapped around his wrist, guiding Dean's hand holding the knife, with Alastair pressed up behind him too close, always too close, telling him you'll be my best creation was there and gone again, broken as Castiel thrust down harder against him. Dean only saw Castiel's face, watched as his eyes closed, head thrown back with his neck exposed, groaning Dean's name as he came. It was the way Cas looked in that moment as much as what Castiel was doing to Dean's cock that pushed Dean right over into a burst of heat and release, his vision whiting out.
Castiel slumped down against Dean, his weight making Dean feel protected, safe, enclosed without any sense of panic. He grinned up at Castiel, brushing the hair back from Cas's sweaty forehead with one hand and Cas did his lopsided smile, wry, as if he were a little embarrassed at how obvious he'd been about liking all that. Not for the first time, Dean made a mental note to take Cas out drinking, somewhere with a pool table and loud music that served extra spicy hot wings. Or find a movie that would make Castiel laugh until he had to gasp for air. Most stuff he and Sam showed to Castiel, Cas seemed interested but in a curious, observationally interesting way as he asked lots of questions about what was going on, although Dean had once caught him with his eyes suspiciously bright during E.T.
It was close to dawn, and they'd probably only get about an hour or two of sleep before Sam was banging on the door, but when Cas slid off Dean and arranged himself comfortably with one arm flung across Dean's chest, head on the other pillow, Dean only tugged the blanket up further, and let himself give into his drowsiness.
____
Castiel had grown used to wearing jeans, soft cotton shirts, and scuffed boots with thick treads. Putting on a suit, tie, and dress shoes again was familiar - since he had worn nothing else for several years on earth - and yet the neat stiffness of them was also now enclosing. They pulled him back to recent memories of such clothing on his skin, the frantic sense of being trapped in this shell of blood and bones with a force that pressed him back, used this body for its own purpose. Yet, there had been no sense of division then: it was him, the angel Castiel, and yet not him, and what brought him there was a purposeful strategy whose justification seemed true and sharp, clean as a freshly-formed arrow in his mind.
It reminded him as well of the man whose body was now Castiel's alone to wear, the original owner whose soul was long gone, yet whose trace memory lingered in his damaged grace.
Castiel stood with Sam and Dean on the paving stones that formed the front walk of a small white house. It was set back from the street, woods behind it and a garden on one side, withered and dormant from the February cold. The orderly rows of the garden's arrangement and its size spoke to how much care the owners gave to it. In spring it must be a work of beauty. It made Castiel think of one of his favorite places in Heaven, where he'd watch the man flying his kite, vivid color against the blue sky above, green grass and bright flowers below. Castiel had always found a sense of peace there.
Their breaths rose in the cold air. Castiel fingered the badge holder in his coat pocket, thinking of the first time he had worked this way with Dean, pretending to be what he wasn't, which wasn't the same to him as appearing to be ordinary, yet holding more underneath. It was playing a role, and Castiel had lost his taste for doing that, over the long year with Crowley. Doing this made him far too uneasy now, although he understood that in the life he lived now, lies were unavoidable - but the kinds of lies he told he could control.
He stepped forward and rang the doorbell before Sam or Dean could do it, then lifted his head a little in a way he knew projected authority to people.
"Jeez, its cold." Dean shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Maybe she's not home."
They waited another few minutes and then finally the inside door opened and a young woman stared at them through the glass.
"Julie Ames?" Sam flipped open his badge.
The woman's mouth pursed a little, and she tilted her head to one side, impatient. There were dark circles under her eyes, but she exhibited nothing but annoyed self-confidence.
"Already talked to you guys," she said, her voice holding a slight hard edge beneath its wry tone.
"Yeah, sorry, we know you have, but there are always follow-up questions." Sam gave her a quick, apologetic smile. "I'm Agent Evans, this is Agent Hewson, and Agent Mullen," Sam added, pointing to Castiel last.
Dean poked Castiel with his elbow, then held up his badge. Castiel did the same.
The woman let out a puff of breath that stirred the dark hair that fell over her forehead. She was small, maybe a little over five feet, and colored bracelets showed brightly against her dark skin. They were simple, made of leather, fitting her wrist perfectly without dangling.
"Fine." She rolled her eyes and opened the door, her movements decisive.
She stepped back, and as they walked into the house, warm air folded around Castiel.
"You want some coffee, Agents? Tea?" Julie Ames asked, leading them into the kitchen. "Do you want to hang up your coats?"
"No, thanks, ma'am," Dean said with more politeness than he used when he wasn't playing the role of an FBI agent. "We'll try not to take up too much of your time."
"Have a seat," she said and dropped into a chair, gesturing for them to do the same.
The kitchen had big windows, full of light. There were no dishes in the sink, the counters wiped impeccably clean, yet papers, file boxes, file folders, and a laptop covered the table in chaos. It didn't match and as Castiel watched Julie, the way she rubbed a finger along the edge of the table, he caught a quick ripple of emotion, loss, hurt, and anger. Castiel guessed that the kitchen itself was normally not this clean.
"So." She folded her arms on the table and her gaze fixed on Castiel. "What do you want to know?"
Castiel met her eyes, and behind the steadiness of her stare he saw the hurt held firmly back. It reminded him of how Dean looked sometimes, his face gone blank and jaw tight, where if Castiel stared long enough, Dean would falter and reveal himself, or Dean would simply become clear to him because Castiel would take the time to look. Much of his ability to see into the minds of humans and read their thoughts was gone, and it was never something he could do reliably - it came in flashes, and it greatly depended on how open the person was. Once Castiel had gotten past his initial suspicion and unease about him, Sam projected loudly. Dean had always gone in and out, a radio signal Castiel sometimes heard with almost painful clarity, but much of the time Dean radiated a chaotic set of contradictions and defenses.
"Do you remember anything out of the ordinary before your husband's death?" Sam took out a palm-sized notepad and put it on the table, pen poised to write. "Lights flickering, odd power surges, anyone unfamiliar hanging around a lot? Did he mention being uneasy about anything? Mention anything strange?"
Rubbing her hands over her face, then up into her thick dark hair, Julie sighed. She lowered her hands. "I already went over and over this." Her voice was dull and flat.
"I'm very sorry for your loss," Castiel said.
In the long stretch of silence that followed, a car went by, music blasting too loudly for the Ames' quiet street. Castiel found himself thinking abstractedly that Amelia Novak must have sat like this, fingers twisted together on a tabletop, waiting for something that would never happen again.
"As I told the other guys, and the cops, there was nothing unusual about that day. Richard made a big breakthrough, and so he was leaving the lab on time instead of staying late like usual. I texted him to remember to buy milk."
As Sam jotted notes, and Dean tugged at his tie as if he needed more air, Castiel stood up and went over to the bulletin board hanging on the wall. It was covered with news clippings, very similar to the Winchesters' style of investigation, with notes in black marker scribbled in the margins, reference materials from other sources tacked next to the articles.
They represented a series of disappearances. A dozen missing from a small town in Mexico. Thirty vanished from an island in the Pacific. A town in France, whose population went from 2,500 to 500 in one night. The place names stirred in his memory.
The room tilted, and he heard an echo of whispers in his head.
"Cas?" Dean said sharply, and the room steadied.
Castiel turned and came back to his seat, aware of everyone watching him. As he sat, Dean's fingers closed tight around his wrist, palm warm through the layer of shirt and jacket and coat sleeve. With their hands hidden beneath the table, Castiel rubbed his fingers over Dean's knuckles, lingered his touch there until Dean released him.
"Those clippings," Sam nodded at the bulletin board.
"Something I was working on before Richard…" Julie swallowed. "I was working on a story about it. There's something weird going on, and it's global. But right now-" She opened a folder, revealing print-outs, a scientific article. "I want to get whatever or whoever did this to my husband."
She squeezed her eyes shut as two drops of moisture fell on the green folder, leaving twin splotches. Sam scraped back his chair, hastily reaching for the box of tissues on the kitchen counter, while Dean leaned closer to her.
"Hey," Dean said. "Take it easy."
Julie waved away the tissues Sam offered and swiped her index fingers under her eyes, quickly, as if she could wipe away the tears ever happening to begin with. Her jaw tightened.
"I'm sorry," Castiel said, so softly he barely got the words out.
"Yeah," Julie said, her voice a little scratchy. "You, uh, covered that earlier."
A ripple of panic stirred beneath Castiel's skin as he had the sudden urge to take flight, vanish from Julie Ames' kitchen and land in the middle of a lonely field where dried stalks broke through a hard crust of snow. Instead he stayed in the bright warm kitchen, unable to look away from the face of the woman seated across the table.
"You can't think of anything else?" Sam asked, paging through another file folder. He paused, eyes widening slightly, then turned it to show to Dean.
"You've got a record here of all the other victims," Dean said.
"I've been tracking it. Learning everything I can about spontaneous human combustion, and I discovered Richard wasn't the only recent victim. I'm actually wondering, given the frequency of it and how it's all basically in the same area, if it's anything to do with what's been happening around the world."
"Well, that's what we're wondering too." Dean's tight, polite smile had a bitter flavor.
Over time, Castiel had grown to understand the many variations of smiles in Dean's repertoire and what they meant. There were those he gave out for strangers, and those rarer ones he used for the ones he was closest to. There was one only Sam could bring to his face; and another one that appeared to be only for Castiel, and the knowledge of discovering that had formed a pleasant knot of warmth in his belly.
"Just get whoever did it. There is one thing I found." She reached into a box and pulled out another folder, handing it to Dean. "Pulled this off a traffic cam, and don't ask how I got access to it. Those three standing on the corner, the woman, two guys. I saw them a few times before Richard died. They kind of stood out, and anyway, it's my job to notice stuff. I didn't think anything of it at the time, them seeming to be hanging around. But after…I remembered them so I checked the cameras for the time and place where I'd spotted them once."
Dean's eyebrows went up, impressed either by the oddness of the three strangers, or by Julie's research skills.
Looking over Dean's shoulder at the somewhat blurry photo, Castiel studied the figures' dark, well-cut clothes, their confident, stiff postures, as if everything should shift to steer around them, and he thought of angels.
"Here." Castiel handed Julie one of the cards Sam had given him earlier. He thought it looked very official, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation seal embossed on it. "If you find out anything new or strange, call us. We will find what did this to your husband," Castiel added.
He had to be careful in the use of his grace; the knowledge that he would never be again as he once was held always in the back of his mind. But there were other ways to fight. Sam and Dean had taught him the value of using his hands, or a shotgun, or a blade, the value of putting the pieces of a puzzle together using nothing more than some old newsprint, or a book that smelled of dust, or a printout on clean computer paper.
Outside, the relief of cold air and blue sky over his head made Castiel stop on the sidewalk.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean's hand was on his back, then slid up, fingers curving firm against the nape of his neck, his head leaning very close to Castiel's.
"No," Castiel said and saw fear jump into Dean's eyes.
Dean's hand stayed on the back of Castiel's neck, the visible clouds of their breaths mingling.
"What's going on, Cas?" A ridge of worry formed in Sam's forehead. There was something very comforting about Sam when he was himself, even when he was threatened with nightmares and flashbacks. Few things had ever unnerved Castiel like Sam without a soul. The fact that he'd been responsible for it, despite his best intentions, only added to the discomfort.
Then, of course, Castiel had destroyed the wall Death had put in place, the one that allowed Sam to return to himself. There was no apology that could be made or a way to take it back or fix it. That he had the Winchesters' acceptance now, after everything, made the prospect of his own additional culpability even more unbearable at times.
"I'm not sure," Castiel said. "I wish I understood what I was feeling so I could help you and Bobby figure this out, so we can prevent what's to come." He let himself lean into Dean's hand a little. "My understanding used to be less limited than this."
Dean shivered, and Castiel felt his hand twitch against his skin before Dean slid his hand down again so it rested at the small of his back. "You know what? It's too friggin' cold to stand out here emoing it up. Hey," Dean added. "You did pretty good in there. Very smooth. Like Mitch Pileggi."
They moved towards the Impala, parked half a block away. "If Cas is Skinner, then I get to be Mulder this time," Sam said.
"No, you're Scully. I'm Mulder."
"In fact you both equally fit the paradigms in different ways, continuously shifting back and forth." Castiel said, and the Winchesters turned to stare at him like he'd grown an extra set of arms. "What?" he said. "I watched several episodes of The X-Files on Sam's laptop. I found their exploration of the nature of faith and doubt absolutely fascinating, although their grasp of the nature of miracles seems to be-"
Yanking open the driver's side door, Dean held up his other hand. "Stop it. Stop. I'm surrounded by geeks."
Sam curled his hand into a fist and put it to his mouth, his cough sounding like a laugh. "Don't listen to him, Cas," he said, as he ducked into his seat on the passenger side - shotgun they called it. "He's seen every episode at least three times. He could quote lines at you."
Twitching his shoulders to rid himself of the residue of the whispering in his head, the way he'd felt looking at the place names in the headlines, the pictures, Castiel slid into the Impala's back seat. The car was still cold, not yet warmed from its engine being on, yet Castiel, who never used to heed the temperature of the air much, was glad to be inside. The scents of vinyl and stale coffee had become among the things that he associated with safety, a point to which he could always return, even if he wasn't sure how deeply it belonged to him, or he to it.
____
They ordered cheeseburgers, delivered for dinner. Sam thought if he had to smell one more pizza, it might actually push him the rest of the way over the edge. His neck and shoulders ached, and it was probably from all the time spent on his laptop, but it wasn't as if he was doing that more than usual and usually he didn't ache this much.
"Hey, what's going on with you? Are you good?" Dean asked, while Castiel went to the motel vending machines to get them caffeine and sugar-laden sodas.
By good, Sam knew that Dean meant not about to fall into a coma, have a series of horrifying flashbacks or collapse from being completely bugnuts insane at any minute.
"Yeah, I'm good. Tired." Sam rubbed at his shoulder, staring down at the patchwork of folders and printouts that covered the small round table. "I still don't…I don't sleep real well. Not that any of us do any more." Off Dean's sharp look, Sam said, "I don't have a lot of nightmares. Or I don't remember them. Some, but it's not nearly as bad as it was back in December when I was having flashbacks during the middle of the day. Mostly I wake up a lot, and it's easier to get up and do stuff than…" Sam shrugged.
"Than just lie there in the dark stuck in your own head?" Dean leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. "Hey, if it'll help, we can share a room. I know I've been bunking with Cas a lot lately."
They had the police scanner going, its volume turned down but loud enough they could catch the nature of the calls. It was the same old battered machine they'd used for years, the one Dean repaired himself every time it started to fritz out.
"No, look, I'm not having screaming nightmares. It's not like it was. I'm not trying to downplay it, I swear. It's…unsettling and weird, my sleep patterns are off, but I haven't had a flashback in a while." Sam busied himself opening packets of ketchup to pour onto his fries. "I'm not twelve years old any more, and anyway, you and Cas…" Sam glanced at Dean, and he was almost sure Dean was flushing slightly. With a grin, Sam picked up a few French fries. "I think you guys need your alone time or you'll start embarrassing the hell out of me. In fact you already are." Dean shot him a glare, and Sam couldn't resist. "Maybe you two should go on a date already. You know, a restaurant where the prices aren't listed on the menu, maybe a single red rose on the table-" Dean threw a French fry at him, and Sam ducked, laughing. "Imagine Cas in a tux for a moment," he added and dunked one of the fries into the little pool of ketchup he'd made.
Dean rolled his eyes, and then he stared a little too long down at the wrapper of his cheeseburger, a flicker of something in his gaze as if he were all of a sudden really thinking about that image and thought maybe that wasn't such a stupid idea after all. Reaching for more fries, Sam bit his lower lip to keep from snickering.
"Okay, but you know if you need anything, any time, I'm right there," Dean said. "Always." After a moment he added, "and Cas too. You need help, if you…"
"Of course," Sam said. "But I'm not the only one messed up right now. And something's going on with Cas." He hated bringing it up, his brother already carried so much on his shoulders, always had - Sam remembered thinking he was nearly invincible, a steady constant, and the cold knot of panic in his stomach Sam used to get each time he realized Dean wasn't. "He also mentioned you've been having a lot of nightmares - more than you've been having lately, ever since we started this case."
"It's no biggie, Sam. The usual Hell stuff."
"Yeah, because Hell stuff is so…normal."
"It is for us."
"Goes both ways, Dean," Sam said. "You need anything, I'm right here."
There was a tap on the door, and Dean got up to let in Castiel, who walked over and put the cans of soda on the table with nearly the same grave formality he'd used when it was items as part of a ritual. He'd gotten three root beers.
Sam took his and popped the tab with a hiss. "So, let's run through the list again." He reached for a folder with greasy fingers. "There has to be a pattern, a commonality here somewhere. We've got a high-school drop-out with an obsession with Galileo, a stockbroker whose coworker says had sort of genius instincts for it, a grandmother who worked for thirty years in administration at an ultra-secret government agency so secret even her kids and grandkids don't know what they did there, one computer hacker, and one biochemist."
"Well, except for the super-secret spy granny and the stockbroker, I would say whatever's causing this has a taste for geeks and nerds," Dean said and bit into his cheeseburger.
"They all had specialized areas of knowledge." Castiel had eaten half his burger already. "An esoteric range of interests." He frowned. "I feel as if whatever's causing these bodies to burn, it's something I should know. But it's escaping me."
It still seemed weird to Sam, having Castiel eat so much, having him mention being cold, and deep down, Sam knew he sometimes had a little knot of unease in his stomach at the reminders that while Castiel had a lot of mojo, he was more vulnerable and limited in his power now. It wasn't quite the same as realizing Dean could crack, because Sam had never thought of Castiel as a constant, although he'd seen the way Dean started leaning on Castiel harder and harder. But it was good, knowing Castiel was watching their backs, that someone that powerful gave a damn what happened to them, because almost everything else that powerful they'd come across either actively wanted to rip out their spleens or only cared as far as Sam and Dean messed up the workings of the cogs of the universe or served a purpose in them.
On the scanner, a cop called in a 10-67, then a 10-54, and requested an ambulance and back-up. Somewhere in the exchange between the officer and the dispatcher, the cop mentioned severe burns on the victim's body.
Dean dropped his cheeseburger. "Son of a bitch."
Castiel was already halfway to the door, pulling on his jacket (an old pea coat they'd found in a thrift store).
Episode 14: Through the Fire (Continued)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: dotfic
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam
Rating: R
Word Count: ~22,000
Warnings: language, mild violence, memories of hell, brief depictions of torture
Betas: nyoka and zatnikatel
Author's Note: The opening quote is a line from the poem "How Is Your Heart?" by Charles Bukowski.
Art: Chapter banners by smilla02; digital painting by rumi-nyo, which you can also find here; and painting by august-monsoon, which you can also find here (art contains spoilers for the chapter).
Summary: Some memories never fade.
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." -Charles Bukowski
___
Coventry, RI
Richard's iphone gave off a short, medium-pitched buzz, the sonic screwdriver noise he liked to use for text messages. He picked up his phone.
Don't frgt buy milk!
Of course he'd completely forgotten, his head full of equations, the squiggles of color from the markers he used on the write-erase board at his lab, buzzed on caffeine, a few hours' sleep a night, and the high of being on the edge of discovery.
Stopped at a red light, he texted back to Julie: Wounds me you cld even suggest I might forget!
Ur funny, she replied.
Thats y u married me, he texted in reply, and then he put the phone down before he drove on.
He joked about it, they both did, but still, he felt kind of bad about needing that many reminders. Julie's job as a reporter kept her running around at top speed, but most of the time she seemed to get to bed before it was the next day and didn't forget things, although maybe that was just reporter brain, trained to notice and remember things.
At the next light he turned onto Tiogue Avenue, and after a few minutes pulled into the parking lot of the Super Stop & Shop. The lot was almost full since it was only 6:15 in the evening - rush hour. Usually Richard got to bypass all of that. He was used to doing the shopping at weird hours, wandering the nearly-empty aisles, but after the intensity of the past two weeks of work, and the breakthrough he'd just had, it was time to try to keep normal hours again. He wanted to go home and sleep for a month.
He found a space at the back of the building, alongside the patch of woods that separated the grocery store property from Huron Pond. For a moment he sat in the now dark and quiet car, letting the stillness sweep around him. The ring of his keychain gleamed in the starlight, the tiny plastic TARDIS swinging back and forth before Richard pulled the key out of the ignition and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. He grabbed his gloves and wool hat from the mess of papers on the passenger seat.
The night was cold, the air nearly sucking the breath out of him after the warmth of the car. Only a few other cars were parked way back here. Through the trees, the white ice covering the pond showed.
"Chilly night," a voice said.
Richard turned and saw a tall, thin bald man standing a few yards away with his hands shoved into the pockets of a long, black wool coat.
"Hey, I hear tomorrow it's going to get above freezing," Richard said as he headed towards the grocery store. "I'm thinking of going to the beach for a swim."
There was a laugh from the shadows ahead of him, short and subtle. A woman stepped away from where she was leaning against a Range Rover and walked towards Richard. Her black hair was worn in a bob, her mouth a full, self-confident curve, fuzzy red scarf wrapped around her neck.
"A sense of humor," she said, her breath rising in clouds in the chill air. "Always a plus."
"So I've been told," Richard said, walking past her.
He couldn't help notice how they both turned their heads, how they were both staring at him. Weird.
Another man stepped out from behind a car, blocking Richard's path - spiky hair, pointed chin, face almost elfin with a hint of mischief. His leather jacket looked vintage, like something from a 60's TV show, with lots of buttons and pockets.
This man only grinned, and that's when goosebumps swept over Richard's skin, even under his layers of down and wool and cotton.
They all three watched him intently.
"We've been waiting for one like you," the woman said, her eyes warm and dark. She stepped closer to him, pulling off one of her gloves.
Richard backed up, then moved towards the front of the car but before he could go around it, the first guy in the long coat was right there, again blocking his path.
Letting out a short laugh that came out nervous even though he tried to keep it confident, Richard held up his hands. "Hey, are you going to mug me or something? Because I've got maybe five dollars and thirty-seven cents on me right now and I need that to buy a quart of milk or my wife will make that face that she makes, not that I blame her, I forget stuff a lot…" He was babbling, he knew it, but maybe that was the best thing to do in a situation like this.
"You are kind of the stereotype of the scatterbrained mad scientist, aren't you?" the spiky-haired man said, sounding affectionate. "But there's so much in that brain of yours that doesn't fall out." He licked his lips.
"'Rising star of the field,' I believe they said." The woman held up her bare hand towards Richard's face.
They surrounded Richard now, the bumper of the car cold against the backs of his calves through his slacks. The two men were each taking off a glove, as the woman had, and a brush of warmth rippled through the icy air, as if he were standing near a space-heater, but he couldn't see any source for it. Maybe a vent from the building, but they were far away from it. His breath went invisible, although the breath of the other three continued to form into white clouds.
"Take the money," Richard said. "Here, here's my wallet. My credit cards. I don't want trouble." He considered shoving one of them into the other two, giving him space to escape, but it was risky; if he angered them and they grew violent, he was screwed.
Julie would be so pissed if he did anything stupid, if he got hurt.
"We're after something better, Richard," the bald guy said.
He didn't think to wonder how the man knew his name, not after the woman had quoted the article currently hanging on the fridge at home. Julie'd highlighted that sentence, both of them drinking the wine they kept for holidays and birthdays only, and he'd lifted his wife up onto the counter of their kitchen and kissed her.
Hell. Julie.
The adrenaline jolted through him, and he shoved the tall man, who staggered but didn't fall, while the other two pressed in closer. Sweat tickled Richard's forehead and the back of his neck, dampening his palms - it wasn't fear, he was too warm, the heat radiating at him now as intense as standing before a heated oven.
It was coming from their hands, or seemed to be.
The one with the pointed chin grabbed him from behind, pulling his arms behind his back. He was stronger than he looked, given how skinny he was. The heat grew, his whole body bathed in sweat.
"What…" Richard struggled, but couldn't get free. "What are you?" He yelled at them.
"Don't worry about it," the woman said and put her palm gently against his face while the tall, bald man put his hand around the back of Richard's neck.
Heat flared into his skin where they touched him.
"It'll be over in a moment and then it won't hurt any more," the spiky-haired one whispered into Richard's ear.
The flames surrounded him, and Richard screamed.
____
"Tyrone, Bellefonte, Hazleton," Castiel read.
Sam took a dull silver push-pin and stuck in into the map taped to the wall of his motel room in the Super 8.
Fingers hovering over the laptop keys, as if he wanted to be ready to type something if necessary but wasn't sure what that might be, Castiel read more off the list on the screen. "East Stroudsburg, New City, New Haven, Norwich."
For each city, Sam put another push-pin into the map.
It seemed weird to Sam to see Castiel using a laptop. He'd never been that comfortable with technology and it wasn't as if he'd lost all his powers, but Sam knew Cas had to be careful now. The angel used his own smartphone and computers more and more often - Sam had taught him how to search the app store for more games and anything else he might want, and who knew what Castiel found useful. Last Sam had a look at Castiel's phone, he had a ton of apps involving old texts and reference and languages, which wasn't that much different from the things Sam had on his.
Slumped in his chair with his arms folded, Dean gave off the impression of being bored but Sam knew better. The heel of his boot restlessly knocked against the cross-support of his chair, his leg jostling up and down. He'd been more fidgety than usual since the first body turned up two weeks ago. Castiel reached down and put his hand on Dean's knee, a quick light touch that looked like it was meant to comfort. Sam glanced away back to the map as Dean stilled.
Printouts covered the wall around the map with scribbled notes in sharpie marker, some in Dean's handwriting, some in Sam's, some with symbols drawn in the margins that were from Castiel although they hadn't asked him what they were for. Sam figured they weren't that different from the notes he and Dean made, only in a different language; a few Sam recognized as numbers.
It was late and the motel room's lamps left the corners in shadow. The wall of dates and pictures and maps and pins, the beer bottles and empty pizza boxes, this was all familiar. Despite the grisly images on some of the printouts, Sam was glad they were doing this, that there was work to do and they were all three able to do it.
"Anyone else notice what I'm noticing?" he said, stepping back to see better.
"Whatever it is, it's still heading east." Dean reached for his nearly-empty beer bottle.
"Towards the ocean." Castiel tapped a key on the laptop, scrolling down through the document Sam had made, and muttered, "Always the ocean."
"Which brings us here." Dean had gone back to slumping in his chair again. "Coventry. Rhode Island in February. Joy."
Sam tried to decide if Dean was being Dean, or if it was calculated indifference, or if his brother only needed more sleep. None of them seemed to be getting enough. Ever since what happened in New Jersey, with the will-'o'-the-wisp, Sam's hell visions had gotten a recharge, and he was guessing Dean and Cas weren't much better off when it came to their own bad dreams. It was like the way silt settled to the bottom of a pool, leaving the water clear, but the water grew murky if something stirred it up again. Unfortunately for them, they kept running into things that stirred it back up. Sam got a lot of research done in the middle of the night, since it beat going back into bad dreams, but that left him fried during the day. Castiel rubbed his eyes a lot lately, although he seemed to actually enjoy doing jaw-stretching yawns, as if he were trying out a perk of his human body. Dean had developed the kinds of shadows in his face that Sam hadn't seen on him for a long while.
"Richard Ames, twenty-eight, body charred to a crispy critter in the parking lot of the Stop & Shop." Sam sat down in the chair next to Dean.
Dean reached for the crime scene photo they'd finagled, picked it up and then put it down again, pulling his hand away. He leaned closer to Castiel, peering over his shoulder to look at their notes on the laptop screen.
"Latest victim doesn't seem to have anything more in common with the rest than the others did." Sam grabbed the last slice of pizza, now gone cold, from the box. "All walks of life, background, schools attended, interests…it almost seems…random."
"Random? With all the crazy crap that's been happening? I doubt it." Dean finished off the last of his beer in a few deep swallows and rubbed his fingers over his mouth. "There's a pattern here, we just have to find it."
Castiel stared down at the laptop keyboard as if he weren't really looking at the letters, then raised his stare to Dean. "Always the ocean," he said, voice flat and clinical, yet a quick flash of goosebumps ran up Sam's arms.
"Okay," Sam said, getting up again. "Let's go through it all one more time and then we should probably try to get some sleep."
____
Most of the time, he used blades, with the fires all around him and Alastair standing too close, mouth near Dean's ear telling him you were made for this and this is who you really are. Sometimes he used the fire, putting flame to flesh, and then Dean couldn't hear what Alastair said over the screaming, only feel his hands on Dean's shoulders.
Dean woke with a force as hard as the Impala's sudden stop, his body jerking. His pulse raced, fluttering crazily in his throat, and his t-shirt was soaked in sweat. Shadows with a red tint to them moved over the motel room walls, and there was heat against his skin. Dean blinked and the shadows vanished along with the heat, replaced with the chilly air of a motel room in the gray darkness of pre-dawn, and Castiel's face inches from his own, watching him with his mouth drawn into a tight, worried line.
Neither of them spoke at first, Dean's too-fast breaths the only sound in the room. Castiel lay facing him, the blanket in a tangle over them both. Theoretically, Dean still bunked with Sam, but he slept in the other bed in Castiel's room on some nights, and he shared a bed with him on others. They hadn't fallen into that part as a routine, neither of them ever willing to ask, but sometimes it happened, curled around each other in the darkness.
Castiel didn't move, only kept his eyes fixed on Dean's face and said softly, "It was a dream. You're not there."
"Haven't had a nightmare that bad in a while." Dean rolled onto his back and took a few deep breaths staring up at the ceiling before he turned, wanting to see Castiel's face, needing to if he was admitting things to himself. In the half-darkness, Castiel's eyes seemed like a darker blue than usual.
With the sweat drying and chilling against his skin, Dean pulled the blanket up, tucking it more securely over the both of them. Castiel wriggled closer to him, an inch at a time, watching Dean's face as if worried he would startle. Yet, they'd done this again and again, Castiel resting his head on Dean's chest, fingers sliding across his stomach to curl at his hip, their bodies notched together. Dean got distracted with the random spikes of Castiel's hair, messy from sleep, the familiar curve of his jawline and the symbols on his tattoo just visible in the v-neck of his t-shirt. Cas may have lost some of his mojo, but this close to him, Dean sometimes became of aware of a muted, faint thrum of something impossible to describe beneath his skin, as if Castiel's blood were imbued with his grace. Since Dean had never been anywhere near this close to Cas while he'd been still fully powered up, he had no idea if this was normal, or if it'd been like that only more so once. Anyway, it didn't matter - it wasn't something Dean looked for, but when it was really quiet like this, he noticed it.
It was a part of who Castiel was, like his rare lopsided smile and knowledge of Enochian and deadpan sense of humor, or how at times he looked right into Dean as if he saw every crack and pressure point, no hiding. Other times it was like they were standing on opposite sides of a chasm and didn't even speak the same language, yet there was always a rope, always a bridge, and they always managed to find it.
Castiel raised his head and put his mouth against Dean's jaw and murmured again, "It was a dream."
Sliding his fingers into Castiel's hair, the dark strands tickling and real against his palm, Dean put his mouth over Castiel's. A brush of lips turned into a slide of tongues, both of them going cautiously at first and then pushing harder, pushing in further. Cas moved on top of Dean, a warm weight pinning him into the mattress, the blanket over them, while Dean pushed up Castiel's shirt. As Dean traced his tongue over the faint lines of the scar from the banishing sigil on Cas's chest, then over the mark his own hand had left, Cas let out a soft moan.
The sky grew incrementally brighter beyond the curtains as their hands fumbled for each other, tugging down the waistbands of their sweatpants. Dean wrapped his fingers around Castiel's cock, guided it so it slid along his own, their fingers touching, slick with pre-come now, breaths going faster. Again Dean's pulse started jumping around in his neck but this time it was welcome, it was a reminder of being alive, a reflection of the aching warmth between his legs and under his skin.
"Cas…" Dean breathed, speeding his own movements, the thrust of his hips. The ache and need was growing unbearable. He put his mouth against Castiel's neck, licked his skin, needing the salty sweat-stained taste of him. He wanted to be buried deep inside of Cas, or he wanted Cas stretching him wide open, filling him up, had wanted that for a while now. Yet, Dean didn't change course or let his hands stray too far. Not yet.
The quick-flash memory of Alastair's fingers wrapped around his wrist, guiding Dean's hand holding the knife, with Alastair pressed up behind him too close, always too close, telling him you'll be my best creation was there and gone again, broken as Castiel thrust down harder against him. Dean only saw Castiel's face, watched as his eyes closed, head thrown back with his neck exposed, groaning Dean's name as he came. It was the way Cas looked in that moment as much as what Castiel was doing to Dean's cock that pushed Dean right over into a burst of heat and release, his vision whiting out.
Castiel slumped down against Dean, his weight making Dean feel protected, safe, enclosed without any sense of panic. He grinned up at Castiel, brushing the hair back from Cas's sweaty forehead with one hand and Cas did his lopsided smile, wry, as if he were a little embarrassed at how obvious he'd been about liking all that. Not for the first time, Dean made a mental note to take Cas out drinking, somewhere with a pool table and loud music that served extra spicy hot wings. Or find a movie that would make Castiel laugh until he had to gasp for air. Most stuff he and Sam showed to Castiel, Cas seemed interested but in a curious, observationally interesting way as he asked lots of questions about what was going on, although Dean had once caught him with his eyes suspiciously bright during E.T.
It was close to dawn, and they'd probably only get about an hour or two of sleep before Sam was banging on the door, but when Cas slid off Dean and arranged himself comfortably with one arm flung across Dean's chest, head on the other pillow, Dean only tugged the blanket up further, and let himself give into his drowsiness.
____
Castiel had grown used to wearing jeans, soft cotton shirts, and scuffed boots with thick treads. Putting on a suit, tie, and dress shoes again was familiar - since he had worn nothing else for several years on earth - and yet the neat stiffness of them was also now enclosing. They pulled him back to recent memories of such clothing on his skin, the frantic sense of being trapped in this shell of blood and bones with a force that pressed him back, used this body for its own purpose. Yet, there had been no sense of division then: it was him, the angel Castiel, and yet not him, and what brought him there was a purposeful strategy whose justification seemed true and sharp, clean as a freshly-formed arrow in his mind.
It reminded him as well of the man whose body was now Castiel's alone to wear, the original owner whose soul was long gone, yet whose trace memory lingered in his damaged grace.
Castiel stood with Sam and Dean on the paving stones that formed the front walk of a small white house. It was set back from the street, woods behind it and a garden on one side, withered and dormant from the February cold. The orderly rows of the garden's arrangement and its size spoke to how much care the owners gave to it. In spring it must be a work of beauty. It made Castiel think of one of his favorite places in Heaven, where he'd watch the man flying his kite, vivid color against the blue sky above, green grass and bright flowers below. Castiel had always found a sense of peace there.
Their breaths rose in the cold air. Castiel fingered the badge holder in his coat pocket, thinking of the first time he had worked this way with Dean, pretending to be what he wasn't, which wasn't the same to him as appearing to be ordinary, yet holding more underneath. It was playing a role, and Castiel had lost his taste for doing that, over the long year with Crowley. Doing this made him far too uneasy now, although he understood that in the life he lived now, lies were unavoidable - but the kinds of lies he told he could control.
He stepped forward and rang the doorbell before Sam or Dean could do it, then lifted his head a little in a way he knew projected authority to people.
"Jeez, its cold." Dean shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Maybe she's not home."
They waited another few minutes and then finally the inside door opened and a young woman stared at them through the glass.
"Julie Ames?" Sam flipped open his badge.
The woman's mouth pursed a little, and she tilted her head to one side, impatient. There were dark circles under her eyes, but she exhibited nothing but annoyed self-confidence.
"Already talked to you guys," she said, her voice holding a slight hard edge beneath its wry tone.
"Yeah, sorry, we know you have, but there are always follow-up questions." Sam gave her a quick, apologetic smile. "I'm Agent Evans, this is Agent Hewson, and Agent Mullen," Sam added, pointing to Castiel last.
Dean poked Castiel with his elbow, then held up his badge. Castiel did the same.
The woman let out a puff of breath that stirred the dark hair that fell over her forehead. She was small, maybe a little over five feet, and colored bracelets showed brightly against her dark skin. They were simple, made of leather, fitting her wrist perfectly without dangling.
"Fine." She rolled her eyes and opened the door, her movements decisive.
She stepped back, and as they walked into the house, warm air folded around Castiel.
"You want some coffee, Agents? Tea?" Julie Ames asked, leading them into the kitchen. "Do you want to hang up your coats?"
"No, thanks, ma'am," Dean said with more politeness than he used when he wasn't playing the role of an FBI agent. "We'll try not to take up too much of your time."
"Have a seat," she said and dropped into a chair, gesturing for them to do the same.
The kitchen had big windows, full of light. There were no dishes in the sink, the counters wiped impeccably clean, yet papers, file boxes, file folders, and a laptop covered the table in chaos. It didn't match and as Castiel watched Julie, the way she rubbed a finger along the edge of the table, he caught a quick ripple of emotion, loss, hurt, and anger. Castiel guessed that the kitchen itself was normally not this clean.
"So." She folded her arms on the table and her gaze fixed on Castiel. "What do you want to know?"
Castiel met her eyes, and behind the steadiness of her stare he saw the hurt held firmly back. It reminded him of how Dean looked sometimes, his face gone blank and jaw tight, where if Castiel stared long enough, Dean would falter and reveal himself, or Dean would simply become clear to him because Castiel would take the time to look. Much of his ability to see into the minds of humans and read their thoughts was gone, and it was never something he could do reliably - it came in flashes, and it greatly depended on how open the person was. Once Castiel had gotten past his initial suspicion and unease about him, Sam projected loudly. Dean had always gone in and out, a radio signal Castiel sometimes heard with almost painful clarity, but much of the time Dean radiated a chaotic set of contradictions and defenses.
"Do you remember anything out of the ordinary before your husband's death?" Sam took out a palm-sized notepad and put it on the table, pen poised to write. "Lights flickering, odd power surges, anyone unfamiliar hanging around a lot? Did he mention being uneasy about anything? Mention anything strange?"
Rubbing her hands over her face, then up into her thick dark hair, Julie sighed. She lowered her hands. "I already went over and over this." Her voice was dull and flat.
"I'm very sorry for your loss," Castiel said.
In the long stretch of silence that followed, a car went by, music blasting too loudly for the Ames' quiet street. Castiel found himself thinking abstractedly that Amelia Novak must have sat like this, fingers twisted together on a tabletop, waiting for something that would never happen again.
"As I told the other guys, and the cops, there was nothing unusual about that day. Richard made a big breakthrough, and so he was leaving the lab on time instead of staying late like usual. I texted him to remember to buy milk."
As Sam jotted notes, and Dean tugged at his tie as if he needed more air, Castiel stood up and went over to the bulletin board hanging on the wall. It was covered with news clippings, very similar to the Winchesters' style of investigation, with notes in black marker scribbled in the margins, reference materials from other sources tacked next to the articles.
They represented a series of disappearances. A dozen missing from a small town in Mexico. Thirty vanished from an island in the Pacific. A town in France, whose population went from 2,500 to 500 in one night. The place names stirred in his memory.
The room tilted, and he heard an echo of whispers in his head.
"Cas?" Dean said sharply, and the room steadied.
Castiel turned and came back to his seat, aware of everyone watching him. As he sat, Dean's fingers closed tight around his wrist, palm warm through the layer of shirt and jacket and coat sleeve. With their hands hidden beneath the table, Castiel rubbed his fingers over Dean's knuckles, lingered his touch there until Dean released him.
"Those clippings," Sam nodded at the bulletin board.
"Something I was working on before Richard…" Julie swallowed. "I was working on a story about it. There's something weird going on, and it's global. But right now-" She opened a folder, revealing print-outs, a scientific article. "I want to get whatever or whoever did this to my husband."
She squeezed her eyes shut as two drops of moisture fell on the green folder, leaving twin splotches. Sam scraped back his chair, hastily reaching for the box of tissues on the kitchen counter, while Dean leaned closer to her.
"Hey," Dean said. "Take it easy."
Julie waved away the tissues Sam offered and swiped her index fingers under her eyes, quickly, as if she could wipe away the tears ever happening to begin with. Her jaw tightened.
"I'm sorry," Castiel said, so softly he barely got the words out.
"Yeah," Julie said, her voice a little scratchy. "You, uh, covered that earlier."
A ripple of panic stirred beneath Castiel's skin as he had the sudden urge to take flight, vanish from Julie Ames' kitchen and land in the middle of a lonely field where dried stalks broke through a hard crust of snow. Instead he stayed in the bright warm kitchen, unable to look away from the face of the woman seated across the table.
"You can't think of anything else?" Sam asked, paging through another file folder. He paused, eyes widening slightly, then turned it to show to Dean.
"You've got a record here of all the other victims," Dean said.
"I've been tracking it. Learning everything I can about spontaneous human combustion, and I discovered Richard wasn't the only recent victim. I'm actually wondering, given the frequency of it and how it's all basically in the same area, if it's anything to do with what's been happening around the world."
"Well, that's what we're wondering too." Dean's tight, polite smile had a bitter flavor.
Over time, Castiel had grown to understand the many variations of smiles in Dean's repertoire and what they meant. There were those he gave out for strangers, and those rarer ones he used for the ones he was closest to. There was one only Sam could bring to his face; and another one that appeared to be only for Castiel, and the knowledge of discovering that had formed a pleasant knot of warmth in his belly.
"Just get whoever did it. There is one thing I found." She reached into a box and pulled out another folder, handing it to Dean. "Pulled this off a traffic cam, and don't ask how I got access to it. Those three standing on the corner, the woman, two guys. I saw them a few times before Richard died. They kind of stood out, and anyway, it's my job to notice stuff. I didn't think anything of it at the time, them seeming to be hanging around. But after…I remembered them so I checked the cameras for the time and place where I'd spotted them once."
Dean's eyebrows went up, impressed either by the oddness of the three strangers, or by Julie's research skills.
Looking over Dean's shoulder at the somewhat blurry photo, Castiel studied the figures' dark, well-cut clothes, their confident, stiff postures, as if everything should shift to steer around them, and he thought of angels.
"Here." Castiel handed Julie one of the cards Sam had given him earlier. He thought it looked very official, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation seal embossed on it. "If you find out anything new or strange, call us. We will find what did this to your husband," Castiel added.
He had to be careful in the use of his grace; the knowledge that he would never be again as he once was held always in the back of his mind. But there were other ways to fight. Sam and Dean had taught him the value of using his hands, or a shotgun, or a blade, the value of putting the pieces of a puzzle together using nothing more than some old newsprint, or a book that smelled of dust, or a printout on clean computer paper.
Outside, the relief of cold air and blue sky over his head made Castiel stop on the sidewalk.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean's hand was on his back, then slid up, fingers curving firm against the nape of his neck, his head leaning very close to Castiel's.
"No," Castiel said and saw fear jump into Dean's eyes.
Dean's hand stayed on the back of Castiel's neck, the visible clouds of their breaths mingling.
"What's going on, Cas?" A ridge of worry formed in Sam's forehead. There was something very comforting about Sam when he was himself, even when he was threatened with nightmares and flashbacks. Few things had ever unnerved Castiel like Sam without a soul. The fact that he'd been responsible for it, despite his best intentions, only added to the discomfort.
Then, of course, Castiel had destroyed the wall Death had put in place, the one that allowed Sam to return to himself. There was no apology that could be made or a way to take it back or fix it. That he had the Winchesters' acceptance now, after everything, made the prospect of his own additional culpability even more unbearable at times.
"I'm not sure," Castiel said. "I wish I understood what I was feeling so I could help you and Bobby figure this out, so we can prevent what's to come." He let himself lean into Dean's hand a little. "My understanding used to be less limited than this."
Dean shivered, and Castiel felt his hand twitch against his skin before Dean slid his hand down again so it rested at the small of his back. "You know what? It's too friggin' cold to stand out here emoing it up. Hey," Dean added. "You did pretty good in there. Very smooth. Like Mitch Pileggi."
They moved towards the Impala, parked half a block away. "If Cas is Skinner, then I get to be Mulder this time," Sam said.
"No, you're Scully. I'm Mulder."
"In fact you both equally fit the paradigms in different ways, continuously shifting back and forth." Castiel said, and the Winchesters turned to stare at him like he'd grown an extra set of arms. "What?" he said. "I watched several episodes of The X-Files on Sam's laptop. I found their exploration of the nature of faith and doubt absolutely fascinating, although their grasp of the nature of miracles seems to be-"
Yanking open the driver's side door, Dean held up his other hand. "Stop it. Stop. I'm surrounded by geeks."
Sam curled his hand into a fist and put it to his mouth, his cough sounding like a laugh. "Don't listen to him, Cas," he said, as he ducked into his seat on the passenger side - shotgun they called it. "He's seen every episode at least three times. He could quote lines at you."
Twitching his shoulders to rid himself of the residue of the whispering in his head, the way he'd felt looking at the place names in the headlines, the pictures, Castiel slid into the Impala's back seat. The car was still cold, not yet warmed from its engine being on, yet Castiel, who never used to heed the temperature of the air much, was glad to be inside. The scents of vinyl and stale coffee had become among the things that he associated with safety, a point to which he could always return, even if he wasn't sure how deeply it belonged to him, or he to it.
____
They ordered cheeseburgers, delivered for dinner. Sam thought if he had to smell one more pizza, it might actually push him the rest of the way over the edge. His neck and shoulders ached, and it was probably from all the time spent on his laptop, but it wasn't as if he was doing that more than usual and usually he didn't ache this much.
"Hey, what's going on with you? Are you good?" Dean asked, while Castiel went to the motel vending machines to get them caffeine and sugar-laden sodas.
By good, Sam knew that Dean meant not about to fall into a coma, have a series of horrifying flashbacks or collapse from being completely bugnuts insane at any minute.
"Yeah, I'm good. Tired." Sam rubbed at his shoulder, staring down at the patchwork of folders and printouts that covered the small round table. "I still don't…I don't sleep real well. Not that any of us do any more." Off Dean's sharp look, Sam said, "I don't have a lot of nightmares. Or I don't remember them. Some, but it's not nearly as bad as it was back in December when I was having flashbacks during the middle of the day. Mostly I wake up a lot, and it's easier to get up and do stuff than…" Sam shrugged.
"Than just lie there in the dark stuck in your own head?" Dean leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. "Hey, if it'll help, we can share a room. I know I've been bunking with Cas a lot lately."
They had the police scanner going, its volume turned down but loud enough they could catch the nature of the calls. It was the same old battered machine they'd used for years, the one Dean repaired himself every time it started to fritz out.
"No, look, I'm not having screaming nightmares. It's not like it was. I'm not trying to downplay it, I swear. It's…unsettling and weird, my sleep patterns are off, but I haven't had a flashback in a while." Sam busied himself opening packets of ketchup to pour onto his fries. "I'm not twelve years old any more, and anyway, you and Cas…" Sam glanced at Dean, and he was almost sure Dean was flushing slightly. With a grin, Sam picked up a few French fries. "I think you guys need your alone time or you'll start embarrassing the hell out of me. In fact you already are." Dean shot him a glare, and Sam couldn't resist. "Maybe you two should go on a date already. You know, a restaurant where the prices aren't listed on the menu, maybe a single red rose on the table-" Dean threw a French fry at him, and Sam ducked, laughing. "Imagine Cas in a tux for a moment," he added and dunked one of the fries into the little pool of ketchup he'd made.
Dean rolled his eyes, and then he stared a little too long down at the wrapper of his cheeseburger, a flicker of something in his gaze as if he were all of a sudden really thinking about that image and thought maybe that wasn't such a stupid idea after all. Reaching for more fries, Sam bit his lower lip to keep from snickering.
"Okay, but you know if you need anything, any time, I'm right there," Dean said. "Always." After a moment he added, "and Cas too. You need help, if you…"
"Of course," Sam said. "But I'm not the only one messed up right now. And something's going on with Cas." He hated bringing it up, his brother already carried so much on his shoulders, always had - Sam remembered thinking he was nearly invincible, a steady constant, and the cold knot of panic in his stomach Sam used to get each time he realized Dean wasn't. "He also mentioned you've been having a lot of nightmares - more than you've been having lately, ever since we started this case."
"It's no biggie, Sam. The usual Hell stuff."
"Yeah, because Hell stuff is so…normal."
"It is for us."
"Goes both ways, Dean," Sam said. "You need anything, I'm right here."
There was a tap on the door, and Dean got up to let in Castiel, who walked over and put the cans of soda on the table with nearly the same grave formality he'd used when it was items as part of a ritual. He'd gotten three root beers.
Sam took his and popped the tab with a hiss. "So, let's run through the list again." He reached for a folder with greasy fingers. "There has to be a pattern, a commonality here somewhere. We've got a high-school drop-out with an obsession with Galileo, a stockbroker whose coworker says had sort of genius instincts for it, a grandmother who worked for thirty years in administration at an ultra-secret government agency so secret even her kids and grandkids don't know what they did there, one computer hacker, and one biochemist."
"Well, except for the super-secret spy granny and the stockbroker, I would say whatever's causing this has a taste for geeks and nerds," Dean said and bit into his cheeseburger.
"They all had specialized areas of knowledge." Castiel had eaten half his burger already. "An esoteric range of interests." He frowned. "I feel as if whatever's causing these bodies to burn, it's something I should know. But it's escaping me."
It still seemed weird to Sam, having Castiel eat so much, having him mention being cold, and deep down, Sam knew he sometimes had a little knot of unease in his stomach at the reminders that while Castiel had a lot of mojo, he was more vulnerable and limited in his power now. It wasn't quite the same as realizing Dean could crack, because Sam had never thought of Castiel as a constant, although he'd seen the way Dean started leaning on Castiel harder and harder. But it was good, knowing Castiel was watching their backs, that someone that powerful gave a damn what happened to them, because almost everything else that powerful they'd come across either actively wanted to rip out their spleens or only cared as far as Sam and Dean messed up the workings of the cogs of the universe or served a purpose in them.
On the scanner, a cop called in a 10-67, then a 10-54, and requested an ambulance and back-up. Somewhere in the exchange between the officer and the dispatcher, the cop mentioned severe burns on the victim's body.
Dean dropped his cheeseburger. "Son of a bitch."
Castiel was already halfway to the door, pulling on his jacket (an old pea coat they'd found in a thrift store).
Episode 14: Through the Fire (Continued)