Episode 15: Ghosts (Part 2)
Title: Ghosts (Part II)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: zatnikatel
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Bobby, OC and canon characters
Rating: R for Part II
Word Count: ~20,000 for Part II (~40,700 total for both parts)
Warnings: language, mild violence, sexuality
Betas: nyoka
Notes: Due to size, this episode was split into two sections. Read Part I first here.
Art: Chapter banner by geckoholic; digital paintings by kuma-la-la, which you can also find here; digital paintings by ryuu_artist, which you can also find here; and Dean/Castiel digital painting by anncros, which you can also find here (all the art contains spoilers for the chapter).
Summary: "I won't…I won't let you fall," Castiel stutters, and he says her name, not like before, not calculated. He chokes it out as if she is cherished, because in this moment he cherishes her for her father, who no longer can.
Read Ghosts Part I first here.
Bobby stumbles forward on weak legs that buckle him to his knees at the edge of the wound in the earth. Heat is rising up out of it, accompanied by dank, sour air that makes him gag. He swallows the brackish bile that floods his mouth, plants his hands firmly on the edge, and leans forward to peer down. The hole appears to be bottomless, but a vague, greenish glow emanates out of the black, like phosphorescence. "Cas," he hollers, and the echo of his shout resounds up to mock him.
He bends at the elbows, squints to see if he can pick out any ledges that might have broken the angel's fall, the girl's too, he hopes.
"I wouldn't get too close."
Bobby jerks back up, finds himself staring into Crowley's amused face, and he starts saying the words automatically. "Vade satana-"
"Oh, come on," Crowley drawls. "Seriously? That stuff only works in the minor leagues." He strolls over to rest his butt on a rock, folds his arms in a way that's far too relaxed for Bobby's liking. "But you go ahead if it makes you feel better."
Bobby growls out, "You're going after kids now? That's minor league stuff in my book."
Crowley pulls a face, waggles his eyebrows. "Demon. Going after kids is in my job description, sweetie." He smacks his lips and smiles the smile of a shark sizing up an oblivious swimmer. "All that soft, tender flesh…much easier on the teeth. Like milk-fed veal, they are."
Bobby glances down into the crevice again. There are stones and rocks scattered nearby, and he reaches for one, lets it fall, listens hard for something, anything, the sound of impact, a cry, a splash, but there's nothing. "Jesus," he breathes out. "Goddammit, Cas." He barely manages it through the swelling sensation in his throat as he wonders if the angel caught the girl, if he had enough juice to unfurl his wings, enough space to spread them and arrest his descent.
"Word to the wise," Crowley says suddenly, and Bobby fixes wary eyes on him. The demon has his hand up behind his ear, listening, and he directs his gaze away from Bobby, a few feet over to the right, nodding his head briefly as he does. "I think you might be needing the mighty sword of truth and justice any minute now."
Bobby stirs himself to move, crawls the small distance to Castiel's discarded blade, cursing himself as a fool for letting his guard down so completely. As he goes, he hears something, a rustling, far-off but coming closer, getting louder, building into a low, steady clicking.
"They're drawn to it," Crowley says opaquely, and he shrugs. "It leads to where they came from."
Bobby pushes himself up, his knees popping irritably. "They?" He glances uncertainly down at the jagged rip, remembers his suspicion. "Did you do this?" he demands. "Did you work some spell to open this?"
Crowley smirks and steers around the question. "As long as you've got the sword, you should be okay. They won't touch me, they don't like their meat rotten." He levers himself up onto the rock behind him, crosses his legs at the knee. "I recommend seeking higher ground in the next, oh, fifteen seconds."
After a instant of deliberation, Bobby strides over to grab his pack, jogs to a boulder a few yards from where Crowley perches, and clambers up. As he turns, they stream out from the trees, a dense, churning swarm of shiny black arachnoid bodies that sends a wave of revulsion rippling through Bobby's guts. They're in a hurry, and they split apart around Bobby's rock like a black sea parting, seemingly oblivious to his presence as they scuttle on, carpeting the ground now and filling the air with the same steady chittering sound as the one Castiel ran through with his crossbow bolt.
Bobby follows their progress as they flood up to the edge of the crack in the earth and pour over it, down into the depths where his friend and the child fell, and the thought of what might be going on down there has his stomach turning itself inside out. He retches, eyes streaming as he presses his hand up to his mouth to hold back his breakfast. How the fuck am I going to tell Dean?, he's thinking dazedly as Crowley blasts out a shrill whistle. Bobby turns to see that the demon is shaking his head, his own eyes glinting.
"Don't panic old man, you could have a heart attack and fall off there," Crowley taunts. "Anyway, they'll be fine, assuming they've landed by now. Those things won't touch them."
Bobby manages to choke out, "How's that?"
Crowley slips down off his rock. "Let's just say I have a gut feeling about it." He swipes fastidiously at the seat of his pants before he claps his hands together. "Right, what's the plan?"
After gaping at the demon for a few confused seconds, Bobby sputters, "Plan?"
Crowley nods vigorously. "Plan. You know, for getting him out of there."
He fishes in his pocket, pulls out an object he tosses up to Bobby and after snatching it reflexively out of the air, Bobby finds he's looking at a cellphone. He scratches at his beard, feels as bewildered as he ever has as he meets the demon's eyes again.
"We're on the clock," Crowley clips out brusquely. "That path won't stay open forever. I'd get Starsky and Hutch on the horn if I were you. Couple of big, strong vessels is just what we need."
Dean is mid-yawn, his eyes gritty with the effort of long hours staring ahead at the road, when his phone sounds.
Where are you?
Bobby's voice comes through grim and strained, sends Dean's low-grade anxiety spiking back up to eleven and turns his mouth dry. He takes a deep breath, tries to keep at least three-quarters of his focus on the busy highway, licks around his teeth to moisten them before he replies.
"Uh…about twenty miles past Grand Junction. Everything okay? Cas okay? Only you don't sound okay…"
It's. Son, I don't know how to-
"Dean. How goes it?"
The demon materializes out of nowhere, safely out of reach in the backseat of the Impala, and Dean startles almost out of his skin, fishtails the car wildly in and out of the lane. "Fuck," he yelps. "Fuckdammit! Fuck. What the fuck? You fucker."
The demon gives him a fake smile. "I see you haven't lost any of your charm." He flicks his eyes front, leans forward to rest a hand on top of the shotgun seat and nods as Dean shrinks away from him. "Watch out for that semi-truck."
The truck is already blaring irately as it bears down, and the Impala rocks on her tires as the other vehicle screams by with bare inches between them. Dean growls out his response through teeth clenched tight with animosity as he fights the wheel to get the big car back on her true path. "What the fuck do you want?"
Crowley raises a cynical eyebrow at him in the rearview mirror. "Now there's a thought. But. All that aside, you're going to want to pull off and find the nearest mall. Sporting goods store should do it."
Dean barks out a sharp, uncooperative laugh, then sneers, "And exactly why am I going to want to do that?" He weaves threat into his voice under the coldness, and he's fishing in the door pocket for the bottle of holy water he started stowing there the last time Crowley pulled this stunt, sliding it into the crack between his thighs and unscrewing the lid. He's careful, surreptitious, but his anger is growing exponentially, boiling through his veins and nerve endings like lava as he finally confronts his friend's nemesis, and it swamps him with an overwhelming, primal desire to smoke the demon out and send it screaming back to the Pit.
"Because you're going potholing, mate. Or what is it you Yanks call it? Spelunking. And you'll need the proper gear so you don't fall and break your pretty face."
Crowley sniffs, settles back casually and stares out the window, taking in the view. Which is just fine, Dean thinks, as he launches himself into the swift, triumphant jerk of his elbow that should ensure the demon gets a steaming faceful of the liquid. As his hand swings up, fingers clamp around his wrist, stopping him and aborting the attack mid-air.
"I wouldn't," Crowley remarks amiably from where he winked into existence at Dean's right. "Not if you want to see the boyfriend again." He reaches up his other hand, extricates the small bottle from Dean's grip. "Why don't I mind this for you?" he adds, and now there is a harder, unpleasant edge to his tone. "After all, you need two hands on the wheel to drive safely."
Dean stares it out with him, drags himself back to some semblance of control. "I'll just let my intense hatred for you fester then," he says, lethally quiet. "Let it stew some more, before it pops its cap. Because if it's the last thing I damn well do, Crowley, I will end you. Slowly."
After a long, tense moment, Crowley smiles thinly. "Well, we'll see about that," he answers, and Dean imagines he can hear a hint of unease there. "But I should warn you…you're right. It will be the last thing you do."
The tension hangs heavy in the air between them. And then Dean unties the tangled knot of rage that twists inside him, lets his fury dissipate and trickle back down into the dark hollows and voids where it lives.
He switches his gaze back to the road and looks for the next exit.
Castiel wakes gradually, on the memory of plummeting, arrow-straight, arms out ahead of him, a cold wind blasting his face as he fell, before he managed to spread his wings to right himself. He vaguely remembers the sharp edges of rock tearing at the tips of his primary flight feathers and shredding them as he flexed his phalanges for each downstroke, desperately trying to counteract the drag of air and generate the lift and thrust he needed.
He isn't falling anymore, isn't flying either. He's lying on his side, and the surface under his cheek is icy and damp, the air at his back chilly. He manages to unfurl his wing, hears himself groan at the pain that streaks up his radius. Broken, he suspects, but he manages to curl the wing over himself for warmth anyway. The shoulder he's lying on is throbbing mercilessly, and he feels tired, more tired than he has felt in months. He thinks that perhaps he will sleep for a while and hope that he heals.
"It's really you."
The girl's voice is halting, and it floods back to him, her eyes wide and shocked in the dim light, his hand reaching for hers, their fingertips brushing before he stretched himself so far he felt his human shoulder dislocate. He blinks, levers a hand under himself and pushes up, squinting wearily over in the direction of the voice.
Claire Novak is sitting a few feet away, hugging her knees and shivering.
Castiel tracks his gaze briefly up from where she huddles, takes in a vast mountain of sheet rock, stepped ridges and angular blocks that don't seem to end but fade away into the clouds. "Yes. Although…" He frowns, drops his eyes back down to her face. "That depends on who you think I am."
The girl cocks her head. "Castiel," she says. "I know you're not my dad." She considers him, motions a hand up to her shoulder. "The feathers, they kind of gave the game away."
Castiel nods, clears his throat and tries to concentrate through the pain that waxes and wanes in his damaged wing. "So. How are you?" he asks her politely.
"Seriously?" The girl's look turns unexpectedly baleful. "Would you like a side of epic with that fail?"
After a second or two where he fumbles for an adequate response and remembers that Dean has often compared teenage girls to a diabolical-sounding foe he referred to as a MissyBender, Castiel adopts a more cautious approach. "I…don't understand that reference."
The girl sounds thoroughly disgusted as she answers him. "I've been chased by giant spiders that ate my friends, and kidnapped by a demon who tried to sacrifice me. And then I fell down a great big hole in the ground. How do you think I am?"
In the middle of her tirade there is a word Castiel picks up on instantly despite his discomfort and her peevishness. "He called it sacrifice?" he queries sharply, recalling Crowley's taunts before they fought, the demon's hint that he was cognizant of something, his assertion that this child could stop whatever that something is, or that he, Castiel, could.
After wincing and breathing in deep, the girl nods, her features twisting into a grimace. "He cut me, said he needed my blood." She holds up her hand, showing him a strip of bloodstained cloth she has wound around her palm.
"A sacrifice to what?" Castiel prods. "Did he elaborate? Did he say why it was necessary?"
She shakes her head. "No, and no."
Castiel tries to hide his frustration as he exhales, knows he only partly succeeds when the girl's mouth goes thin and indignant. "It would be useful to know," he defends. "And he had a ritual dagger…" He casts his eyes around him, can't see the knife anywhere, flashes back to the hilt slipping from his fingers as he reached for her. "It had a symbol engraved on the blade, did you see it?"
The girl's eyebrows knit together as she considers. "It was a circle," she decides. "With little squiggles. Wait, I can…" She pats around on the ground next to her, picks up a small stone, twists and uses one of its rough edges to score the rock behind her. "See? A circle. Three squiggles. I think."
It isn't anything Castiel has seen before, but he fixes the glyph in his mind as he folds his wings away and pushes himself up, rocking in place slightly as their surroundings swim around him. He shakes his head against the fog of lassitude that threatens to send him slumping to his knees, and once the feeling has passed he wraps his fingers about his upper arm on the side where his misshapen shoulder juts out, grits his teeth, and rams the displaced bone back into its socket with an audible click.
He hears the girl suck in a breath before she asks, "Shouldn't you be healing?"
She's pointing what could be termed a significant look at him, and her mother's parting words suddenly play out in Castiel's head again as he studies her. "How much do you remember of me?" he diverts.
She doesn't hesitate. "I remember that you fixed my dad when you took him again." Her blue eyes, the perfect copy of the ones he sees looking back at him from the mirror each morning, harden abruptly then. "You gave him back to us and then you snatched him away again," she accuses. "That was a shitty thing to do."
After an uncomfortable beat, Castiel tells her, "I'm sorry."
She casts her eyes down and doesn't acknowledge the apology. It's more than he hoped for after Amelia Novak's reaction, so he leaves it there and takes a step forward to assess their surroundings.
They are in a world of murky grays, the sky above them big and vacant, and the air cold and damp, with a viscous, slimy feel to it. When he shuffles over to look down from their ledge, Castiel can see the terrain dive away into a series of steep drops, crags and talus, intersected by jagged points that look like fanged teeth, before the slope gentles into shallower gradients that end in a distant, tiny strip of sand. Beyond it is an infinity of featureless water, and Castiel is drawn to gaze at it before he tracks his vision back to the beach that marks the boundary between land and sea. He fancies he can almost feel the wet grains and gravel of it under his bare feet, hear the waves lapping on the shoreline. He imagines climbing down, sitting there forever, being content to breathe his last while he watches the tide ebb and wash back in; he imagines himself becoming a feature of this landscape, rooted into the rock and finally at rest, at peace. The notion is surreal and disturbing, and he is suddenly filled with foreboding, the feeling that he has been here before.
Castiel twists, gazes up. The crevice they tumbled down is a clumsy, distorted isosceles triangle cut and smashed into the rock, its top point slender and curling, its lower border merging into the ledge where they landed. Around it, the mountain ripples with muscle formed by great pleats and folds of rock that narrow into long, sinewy tentacle-limbs that spill down around them. It is a brute, a beast, they are in its maw, and Castiel knows this place isn't as empty as it looks, senses on some instinctive level that they need to get away.
"What even is this place?" the girl blurts out, as if she is following his thought process and reacting to it. "How can we fall down a hole and end up in some other world, like - Narnia or something. Or is this the afterlife?" She paddles her hands in the air, taps her sneakered feet up and down in her panic. "Oh my God. Are we dead? Did we die?"
Castiel turns and hurries out, "We aren't dead," in what he hopes is a suitably reassuring way, although he suspects he might be trying to soothe his own nerves as well as the girl's. "I think this is…a rip in the space-time continuum."
She snorts. "That's out of Star Trek."
Looking up, Castiel sees that the cliff face above them is as pitted and ridged as the mile or so that lies below their landing zone. He examines it critically, bites his lip. "Yes," he concedes absently. "I watch reruns with Dean sometimes. It seems as good a description of our circumstances as any."
He picks his way in through the seams and ruts that splinter out from the granite walls of the rift, cranes his head to see as far as he can. There is no obvious source of light at the upper reaches, just shadows that lengthen and dissolve into black.
"It'll be nighttime soon," the girl says glumly.
"No, we're between," Castiel answers as he peers up. "Between space, between time, between dimensions. In the ether. There will be no night or day here, just in-between."
He's stepping back when she replies, "But it's getting dark."
That isn't possible, and Castiel turns to gaze at the horizon again. There in the distance, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, is a dark shadow, an amorphous cloud mass. It's small from this far away, innocuous even.
Something is coming, he thinks from nowhere. It's wrong.
Castiel fists his hands, feels his grace, sluggish and impotent. He's fighting back a yawn already, but his worry, his need to leave this place, is suddenly even keener. "We have to l-"
"Are you going to be able to fly us out of here?" the girl interrupts.
The tremor in her voice is at odds with its previous belligerence, and Castiel slants his eyes down, notices for the first time that her face is ashen and there is blood matting the hair at her temple. He pulled her in tight to himself and cocooned her safely inside a wing, he recalls now, but the crunch of his landing must have sent her tumbling from his embrace.
His lowers his tone into something gentle. "I don't think I am."
She nods, doesn't seem to give it much thought, just scrubs her eyes with the back of her hand. When she speaks again, her voice is firmer. "We can climb. There's a climbing wall at my local YMCA. I know what to do."
Castiel knows what to do too, is already looking up again, plotting the route, complicated and circuitous, a meandering ascent that will wind them around and up by gradual increments until they grow too tired to continue, and then perhaps they will fall again, or lie down on a ledge like this one and die.
"Then…" He stops as he takes note of the doleful pessimism in her eyes, a dejection that is at odds with the confidence in her tone, and something, some basic instinct, tells him what to say next. "I think this calls for teamwork," he prompts carefully.
Her forehead creases, and Castiel sees something that might be hope, might be doubt, war its way through her eyes. "My dad used to say that," she tells him dispassionately.
Castiel feels an odd buzz of apprehension hum through him, clears his throat awkwardly. "Well…I think I may need your help. Can you help me?" He uses her name for the first time then, and his tongue knows the feel of it, almost as if it has formed that shape thousands of times, and his ears know exactly how his voice will sound when he says it, the pitch and timbre the same as it always was when his vessel said it in that other past that he sees glimpses of even though it wasn't his. "Claire," he says. "Claire…will you help me?"
She huffs softly. "Claire," she echoes him. "Claire…will you help me…" Her voice fades, and there is a moment when her eyes blur and shine at him. "You asked me that once before, Castiel," she whispers.
Voices, one he recognizes, and it's mad as hell, Bobby notes blearily. It's getting dark, and his eyes are tired from staring intently at the jagged black scar in the ground from where he still sits on his rock, Castiel's sword gripped tightly in his hand.
He slides awkwardly down to the ground and a few seconds later Dean emerges into the clearing, a heavy pack on his back. He's already maneuvering his arms out of the straps as he approaches, and as he eases its bulk down to the ground Bobby sees Crowley marching smartly along behind him.
"What the fuck happened?" Dean demands harshly. "Crowley says some hole in the ground opened up and swallowed Cas? The kid too? Are they still down there?" He's peering past Bobby as he speaks, sees the opening and strides over to it. "Shit," he says, and he sounds winded. He puts a hand up to the back of his neck as he turns around, his jaw slack.
Crowley hovers nearby, carrying a plastic bag. "That's no ordinary hole, gents," he chips in. "It's a path. Between dimensions."
Dean rounds on him, his shoulders tensing even more but Crowley smirks. "I'm here to help. So, like I keep saying," he adds, "it's a path. Like the Stargate."
Bobby ignores him, puts a hand on Dean's arm and leads him a few feet away. "Are you sure about this?" he asks, low and confidential. "I'm sure he worked some spell to open up that rift…I don't trust the bastard."
Dean's eyes widen. "You think I do?" he counters, voice loud enough to carry, loud enough that Bobby thinks he might be doing it on purpose. "I wouldn't trust the fucker as far as I could throw him." He sucks his bottom lip in, ramps it back down to a whisper. "In New Jersey Kali said something about paths, she said there were thousands of them. So if he knows something…" He turns, takes a threatening step back towards the demon and away from Bobby. "What is this?" he challenges. "And why are you so all-fired up to help us get Cas out of there?"
Crowley rocks on his heels, and his amusement is obvious as he looks from Dean to Bobby and back again. "Well, we were colleagues once, Cas and I," he teases. "Friends, even. We grew very close over that long year of lies, and plotting, and poor lovesick Cas bending over to grab his ankles so he could save you from Raph-"
"You shut your mouth, you sonofabitch, or so help me I will shut it for you."
Dean's tone is brittle with pent-up rage as he cuts the demon off, and Bobby takes a stride forward himself, stands elbow to elbow with Dean as he sees the younger man launch up onto the balls of his feet, his fight stance. "Wild stab in the dark, but seeing as it looked like he was trying to kill you when I ran up through that gorge, it seems to me Cas might not have felt the same way," Bobby responds dryly, while he exerts gentle, steadying pressure on Dean's shoulder.
After a sly smile, Crowley shrugs. "What can I say? I've got a special place in my heart for young Castiel, despite his shortcomings. And they are short, believe me." His mouth shows the gleam of teeth then, and he tracks his gaze away from Bobby to Dean. "And I must be going soft in my old age, but you two crazy kids? You deserve another chance."
Dean makes a rough sound of anger and exasperation. "Don't smile at me," he snaps dangerously. "And don't for one second think I don't know you want him out of there for your own reasons."
Crowley feigns indignation. "Oh ye of little faith." He sniffs. "Anyway. I'd fetch him up out of there myself, but…" He flicks his eyes down at himself. "I'd hate to ruin the threads."
Already turning away, Dean retorts, "Or it goes somewhere you don't want to be," as he drops to his knees, unzips his pack and starts pulling out tightly coiled ropes and cables, stacking them on the ground. "I got a mix of climbers and statics," he mutters. "Whole bunch of them. Slings too. We need to find a good solid anchor point, a rock, a tree…" His voice trails off as he glances up, and Bobby can see his face is drawn and strained. "This place gives me the fuckin' creeps," he spits with a shudder. "There's something off about it."
Crowley chuckles. "The woods are lonely, dark and deep, mate," he throws back over his shoulder as he starts picking his way back over to his rock. "So, best get a move on, eh? Since that path won't stay open forever."
Bobby senses Dean bristling, leans in closer. "Don't let him get to you, boy," he soothes. "Mind on the job, eyes on the prize." He frowns then, sees Dean's eyebrow rise in a query at the expression. "It's just what you said," Bobby imparts in a near-whisper. "About Crowley having his reasons. It doesn't make much sense to me, him wanting Cas out of there."
Dean's eyes go bleak. "You're going to tell me that Crowley wanting him out of there means we should leave him there," he races out, his voice faint and breathless.
Even if suspicion is niggling at him, Bobby shakes his head. "Not at all," he replies, and he makes his voice as firm as he can even if he's speaking under his breath. "He's family. We get him out. The kid too."
Dean closes his eyes hard, visibly swallows. He slumps back down onto his butt, passes a hand across his jaw, and Bobby can see that it's shaking. "Dean, you need to keep it together," he says gently. "Did Crowley say anything about how long that sinkhole might stay open?"
The headshake Bobby gets in response doesn't send his confidence soaring, and there's a moment when he plays his mind through the awful possibility of it closing before anyone climbs back out of it. "Anywhere Crowley doesn't want to be isn't going to be a walk in the park," he notes sourly.
The reply he gets is resigned. "Well. I only got about fifteen hundred feet of rope anyway. It's all I can realistically carry. So if it's any deeper than that, well…"
Dean doesn't continue, but his lips pull into a tight line as he directs his gaze into his pack again and retrieves a leather utility harness hung with hooks and clips. He stands and shrugs off his jacket before feeding his legs through the harness and buckling it around his hips. He sits back down on his haunches as he threads his arms through the shoulder straps, eyeballs Bobby for a long moment. A muscle in his cheek twitches, betraying his nerves.
"What?" Bobby prods wearily.
"Cas said something weird happened with Amelia Novak," Dean blurts out, and then he stops, his eyes glued to Bobby's face.
Bobby sighs, tugs his cap off, and scratches his head. "Weird is right," he concedes ruefully. "She's a mess, I guess maybe he felt bad for her, guilty too. But it was almost like…" He stops, thinks back.
"What?" Dean's eyes are desperate now. "Jesus, Bobby. What? Weird how?"
He isn't sure how to put it into words, but Bobby gives it a try. "She was saying stuff, saying she thought Cas was Novak's ghost or something, saying stuff about her sister-in-law, like she thought Cas would remember her." He mulls it some more, the odd way the angel had seemed to feed off what the woman was saying despite his denials, the unblinking stare he aimed at her, and he suddenly realizes the only time he has ever seen Castiel look at something that intensely before, it was Dean.
"And?"
Dean's voice jolts Bobby back to the now. "And - well, it was like he was tapping into it or something," he goes on. "Like he could remember, like he was miles away, lost in memories. He was wringing his hands…I never saw him do that before. And she said her husband used to do it when he was worried."
Dean's voice goes taut. "You're saying he had memories of being Jimmy Novak? What memories? Did he say anything?"
Bobby shakes his head. "Well, no…fact, he got upset about it, said he wasn't Jimmy, said he couldn't remember those things. He told me it was false memories, stuff Novak left behind." He throws up a helpless hand, helpless because he doesn't know if he's any more convinced by the angel's weak assertion now than he was a few hours before. "But it was in his face. Familiarity. And-"
"Are we doing this or not?" Crowley hollers from his rock.
The both turn their heads, shouting, "Shut the fuck up!" in unison.
"And what?" Dean hisses. He drapes a couple of webbing slings around his neck and hooks his arm through a coil of rope as he stands. "Bring the pack, the anchor stuff is in there."
"And he said he knew the kid was alive," Bobby continues quietly, reaching for the bag as he rises himself. He sees the obvious conclusion forming on Dean's face, shakes his head. "It wasn't his angel radar. He said he just knew." He pauses a beat. "Like a parent would," he emphasizes meaningfully. "Like when you see parents on the television news saying they know their missing kid is alive."
Dean is scanning the clearing, stops to shoot a swift, perplexed doubletake at Bobby. "Are you saying he's turning into Jimmy Novak? How is that even possible? Jimmy Novak is dead." He points over to a nearby fir tree and starts walking. "That one."
Bobby picks up a coil of rope and follows. "Better push on that with all your weight, make sure the quake didn't loosen it at the roots," he urges.
Dean drops the slings in a messy heap, plants his hands on the trunk and pushes with all his might. "It's rock solid," he says as he kneels and starts looping one of the slings around the base. "And there's no way," he backtracks. "This happened before, remember? Famine had him chowing down on White Castle like his life depended on it. And he said it was a trace element of Novak back then. That's all it is this time too." He slants his eyes up. "Rap ring?"
The pack is heavy with a large assortment of metal rings, anchors and hexes, and after a few seconds of rooting about Bobby plucks out the required device and hands it down. He watches as Dean threads the sling through the metal ring, waits until the knot is tied good and tight before he voices what's been preying on his mind since he saw the angel come so undone under Amelia Novak's unsettling gaze. Aware of the demon watching interestedly from his rock, he keeps it low and confidential. "Cas said it was transference, what Amelia was doing. Substituting him for her husband. Which makes sense." Bobby pauses, goes on carefully, "But it got me wondering if it might be a two-way street. Because of what happened at my place this morning."
Dean freezes rigid for a second before he responds. "Jesus. Do you think he could be lying down there hurt, thinking I'll just pack my bags and head back to Lisa's if he doesn't get out of there?" The words are wrenched out of him raw, and he dips his head into one hand as he speaks, crumples down onto his butt at the roots of the tree.
"Well…" Bobby supplies reluctantly. "When I asked him about it he said he wanted you to be happy, said if you wanted that, he'd let you go."
Dean twists his head around fast, and his eyes are huge. "You spoke to him about it? For Christ's sake, Bobby, why-"
"Because I had the exact same thought," Bobby cuts him off. "And because I care about what happens to him too, boy." As he says the words it occurs to Bobby for the first time just how much he does care, and he continues, voice quieter but no less firm. "I care about his well-being. His welfare." He exhales slowly. "Grumpy little bastard that he is. I wanted to make sure he knew that if you did choose that, he'd still have a home."
After a long, tense moment, Dean looks away, clears his throat. "If Crowley knows anything about these paths, whatever the hell they really are, we need to get it out of him," he sidetracks. "And we should have another anchor, just in case."
Bobby nods, gestures towards a second tree a few feet away. "I'll set it up. And I'll try and work on him when you're down there, maybe he'll let something slip."
Five minutes later he's watching Dean ease himself gingerly over the lip of the fissure, a helmet with a halogen lamp buckled under his chin, and his pack and a coil of rope on his shoulder. A couple of strong-beam flashlights are hooked to his belt and pointing down, their light vanishing into the black depths. His knuckles are white where they grip the rope ahead of where it feeds through the harness and descender, and he's biting his lip.
"Be careful, son," Bobby warns, as he drops to his knees.
Dean barks out a hoarse laugh. "You know me and holes in the ground. We go together like-"
He's cut off by a piercing whistle. "By the way, watch out for the flock of giant spiders," Crowley calls affably when he has their attention.
And dammit, Bobby had forgotten, and he bites off a curse as Dean's eyes widen. He holds up his hand and fists it. "About yea big. Cas shot one in the woods. It was nasty."
Crowley hails them again. "You're a vessel, they should leave you alone."
Bobby doesn't suppose it'll make a difference anyway, and he knows he's right when Dean takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders before descending until only his head is visible. He stops then and looks Bobby in the eye for along moment. "What you said, about Cas having a home…" he broaches, a little hesitant. "I worry about that, you know. If something happened."
Bobby manages a smile. "Well, you don't have to worry."
Dean grins at him, just barely. "If…you know. If," he says meaningfully. "Make sure Sam doesn't do anything stupid, huh?"
He doesn't wait for an answer, drops into the void. The lamp bobs about in the darkness until it disappears completely, but Bobby keeps searching for its glow.
They stop for a rest on a narrow shelf after what Castiel judges to have been an hour or more of weaving their way up ridges and the intermittent cracks that connect them, inching across flatter, angled slabs like worms, using the friction of clothing to propel themselves. He looks out at the bruise that still mars the distant sky before turning to consider their next move.
At this level, the mountain is layers of slate, granite, and limestone folded together and buffed to a fine sheen, its gunmetal blues and grays lit with a sprinkling of glassy white, green and yellow quartzite, and swirls of red-pink coral. Castiel can see the tendrils of precious metals, the cursive loops of the mountain's vascular system. They pulse life with their gleam of silver and gold, and he can smell iron and coal as the rock exhales, a terrible beauty birthed here in the nothingness between dimensions, and crouched alert, as if it waits for something.
They have reached the point where the rift starts to narrow to a groove eroded into the solid stone over time immemorial. It coils like a snake about to strike, and up closer Castiel can see that it vanishes into the monolith through a skinny aperture, an eye that seems to focus squarely on him as he studies it. It isn't wide enough for them to have passed through easily as they fell together. It's closing, he realizes, and he clambers up on to a jagged ridge for a closer view.
Claire Novak watches him from a boulder where she sits. "What happened to you anyway?" she asks frankly. "Why can't you fly us out? Why aren't you healing?"
Castiel can't help but grimace at her questions, and after a swift glance to her face, alight with curiosity, he flicks his gaze back to the rift. "I flew too close to the sun," he offers cryptically as he pushes up onto the next vertical shelf of rock. "My…" He pauses, wonders how to put it. "My battery is drained."
The girl rests her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, and her gaze goes skeptical. "And there isn't anything you can do to recharge it?"
There is a moment after she asks him when Castiel feels utterly detached, feels like he is floating on the outskirts of a half-remembered, half-fantasized effigy of himself, a live conductor for the souls, as he recalls how their power thrilled through him as he tapped into their fuel, how they galvanized him with their heat and energy as he absorbed them, how intoxicating they were, and how brightly he shone as their force made him feel Godlike.
He snaps back into himself, into reality, with a strained, "No. There's nothing I can do." Nothing he will ever do again, he knows, and even the thought of it has him unnerved and parched in his throat. "I'm just - not what I was," he adds, and it's all he can do to get the words out, baked dry as they are. "I won't ever be that again."
She sighs and seems accepting of his explanation or is too tired to interrogate further, so he gathers himself and returns to his examination of the mountainside. Here on the outside he can plot their progress via a scattering of convenient slots, edges, and bumps; see an infinite number of permutations that translate into flowing upward motion. But the belly of this beast is an unknown quantity, a black void framed by rock, and no doubt intricate and deadly. He shivers involuntarily at the thought.
Castiel, what have you done?
The voice is as loud in his ear as if his brother is standing next to him. Castiel gasps, chokes out the name as he whirls, bent at the knees and poised to defend himself, and he wonders abstractedly why it should be no real surprise that Balthazar is here even though his presence is a shock that runs through Castiel like the cold blade of a knife.
There is nothing, no one but the girl, gazing up at him quizzically.
"Balthazar," she says slowly, considerately, playing out each syllable as if she is trying out their sound for the first time. She frowns. "I know him, know your memory of him. He's your brother. Something happened to you, you were called back…they tortured you. But he helped you."
Castiel swallows, and his reply is hoarse. "He haunts me now." He stares past her, down at the beach, even more distant from this vantage point, and there is the glimmer of a dream-memory where he walked with Balthazar across sand, and how his brother's gaze was at once warm with pity and hard with censure. "I killed him," Castiel murmurs. "I killed many of my brothers and sisters. The things I've done…" He swallows as he slants his eyes towards her again. "You can never imagine them."
She blinks up at him, her eyes rapt and reverent, and Castiel recalls again what her mother said.
"You've missed me," he says softly. "Me, Castiel. Your mother told me this. But you shouldn't. You should fear me, scorn me, hate me. I took a child and used it, even while the little humanity I'd learned screamed that it was wrong. You should miss your father, who gave himself up for you. He was the better man."
The expression on her face flickers as she contemplates what he said. "What if my dad hadn't done that?" she ventures carefully.
"Then your mother would have been left with nothing," Castiel tells her.
Twenty minutes after Dean vanishes into the crevice, Bobby hears distant hammering, and he heaves out a breath he wonders if he might have been holding in all this time at the relief his boy has hit something solid enough to set up his second line. After that there is only silence, and after another short while passes Bobby pushes up, glancing suspiciously at Crowley.
There is barely any light now, and the demon has a flashlight perched beside him as he thumbs through a magazine. When he becomes aware of Bobby's appraisal he reaches into his bag and pulls out a stack of offerings. "I popped into Borders on the way back," he says. "Reader's Digest? Or I've got People, Time, and Newsweek. Oh, and the New York Times. Playboy and Playgirl." He leers. "For the articles, of course. This could be an all-nighter, so I stocked up."
Bobby remembers how the demon jerked his chain over his own deal, and he feels his dislike surging instinctively. "What the hell are you even doing here?" he snaps. "How is it you know to show up here now, when the kid and her mom have been on silent running for three years?"
Crowley cocks his head, contemplates him for a moment. "She's a vessel," he offers. "That's powerful medicine. I've been on the lookout for her since she gave us the slip first time round." He looks down, rifles through the magazines. "I've got O magazine too, if that's more your style." He glances up again with a smirk. "Oprah's one of mine, you know."
Bobby glowers back at him and refuses to be thrown off-track. "And what the hell do you know about that?" He stabs a finger at the crack in the earth. "What kind of crap are you pulling now?"
The demon raises a warning finger. "Not guilty," he hisses. "That was here already, one of many, I might add. They're everywhere now, haven't you lot noticed? I just knew how to find it. So, don't blame me for this mess."
That pulls Bobby up, and he cocks his head, eyes the demon doubtfully because there's something about Crowley's expression, the meaningful glitter in his eyes that manages to be both sly and sincere at the same time, something about his vehemence, that speaks of honesty. "What do you know about all this?" Bobby fishes, and he grits his teeth and forces the question to come out a little more diplomatically than before.
Crowley smiles thinly. "Oh, don't tell me," he scoffs. "This is where I do my evil monologue isn't it? It's where I throw out a few barbed insults while giving the entire plot away for the audience." His tone goes scalpel-sharp, and his body seems to vibrate tension. "I'm not the exposition fairy, mate, and this isn't the Department of Backstory. Forget it."
He doesn't break Bobby's gaze for a full minute, his eyes gone obsidian, and when the chime of the demon's cellphone sounds Bobby thinks it's almost a relief. Crowley slides it out of his pocket and squints at it. "Excuse me, Robert," he says icily. "Important matters of state to attend to."
It dawns on Bobby as he watches Crowley talk into the phone, too low for Bobby to pick out what's being said, and he plays it out in his mind again, joining the dots as he goes: Amelia Novak's halting, shocked voice telling him the what, where and when. Telling Crowley too.
When the demon ends the call and looks back up, Bobby smiles himself.
"I'll be checking my landline for your wiretap when I get back to Sioux Falls," he growls.
There is a bulge of rock just past the eye of the mountain, and after they squeeze past it, they sit for a few moments in a silence that might be companionable.
They're in a chimney of sorts, dank-smelling and cavernous, lit only by the dim green glow cast by pockets and stripes of crystals that sparkle in between dark, carved-in ruts and corrugations that track the rock like veins and arteries. Castiel takes his bearings, tracks his eyes as high as he can see, and his weariness flares suddenly as he does, makes him turn his face into his shoulder to stifle his yawn. The henley he's wearing is Dean's, pilfered from Dean's duffel, and Castiel inhales his friend's familiar scent, blinks hard, and thinks longingly of sleep, of Dean's arms around him and Dean's even breaths soft at the nape of his neck. The distraction warms him briefly, fills him with a fierce, diamond-hard need that sharpens his motivation, steels him against his exhaustion. I will see you again, he vows inwardly.
"We have to break this ascent down into sections we can manage," he decides out loud. "Speed is important, but so is stamina. We need to move from rest to rest." He feels the girl shiver next to him as he speaks, and without pause for thought, he unhooks his crossbow sling, places the weapon down beside him and pulls the henley over his head. "It's torn from our fall," he says as he offers it to her. "But it's better than nothing."
She takes it wordlessly, pulls it on over her shirt. "Sounds like you don't need my help," she mutters as she turns her face upwards. He can see her sharp movements as she darts her eyes about them, and her voice is small and doubtful when she speaks again. "It looks difficult. And my hand is sore."
Castiel turns to gesture to the closest and most discernible of the cracks he hopes might line the walls all the way up. As he does, his knee knocks into his crossbow and sends it skittering away, so that he has to lean forward and streak his hand out reflexively just in time to stop it from falling back into the abyss.
Beside him, the girl yelps and grabs a handful of his t-shirt. Her face is appalled when he glances around at her. "I thought you were falling," she says weakly.
Castiel holds up the crossbow. "It belongs to Dean," he says as he clips it back in place. "I don't want to lose it." He fakes a confident smile then. "I won't fall," he reassures her as convincingly as he can, and he points over at the crack again. "Those are the paths out of here." He looks up, spots a wide ledge about fifteen feet further up. "We rest there."
He levers himself backwards on his behind, twists as agilely as he can against the ache of his overstretched muscles, ignores the dull, far-off throb of his damaged wing as it makes itself known through the nerves of the body he wears now. He pushes up into a crouch. "Do exactly as I do, go where I go," he instructs. "You're shorter, but I'll use handholds you can reach. Set your feet precisely and use your legs to push up. And remember to breathe."
Just below the rock where they sit is the rough ledge that is his first foothold, and Castiel pushes his boot in slowly and carefully as he rises to lean out and grip a sharp vertical protrusion of granite with his fingers. He pushes up warily, sliding his foot along the crack inch-by-inch, eyes fixed to his next handhold.
"I can't," the girl confesses forlornly from behind him.
"Then you'll die here," Castiel says sternly, without looking back. "And so will I, since I won't leave you." He pauses a beat. "Would you be responsible for my death?" he goads then. "Would you leave your mother alone to mourn you as well as your father?"
He hears her gulping sounds fall quiet, hears the rubbery squeak of her sneakers on the rock, hears the tiny gasp of panic as she launches herself.
"We're fine," Castiel tells her, gentler now. "Don't get too close. Hang back so you can see where I put my hands and feet."
He continues on, looking up, ignoring the sick feeling at the pit of his stomach, his own fear of this place. As he moves further from what little light seeps in through the aperture, the hand and foothold ciphers that decode the puzzle they're climbing through are harder to pick out even with his keen vision. He finds them only by groping, and he chisels his fingers into tiny furrows that Claire Novak's hands will fit perfectly, flexes and strains the digits to gain purchase, feeling his fingertips and knuckles split and graze as he goes. He contorts his hands around small bulges and gnarled twists of rock that will nestle perfectly in the girl's palms, squints against dislodged flakes of grit and the occasional flurry of small stones that erupt and bombard his face. He moves his feet slowly and precisely, his toes striving for accuracy as they wedge into indentations and slots, and slither along seams, his belly pressed close to the rough surface. He searches constantly for the next ledge, the next notch, mapping each point three, four, five moves ahead as he goes, keeping every milestone on his route within the girl's range, never overreaching.
He glances back just once, sees her following in his wake, her eyes alert to every nook and cranny Castiel uses, her mouth a firm line, every careful movement an exact copy of his own, and he feels something he thinks may be pride.
Episode 15: Ghosts (Part 2 Continued)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: zatnikatel
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Bobby, OC and canon characters
Rating: R for Part II
Word Count: ~20,000 for Part II (~40,700 total for both parts)
Warnings: language, mild violence, sexuality
Betas: nyoka
Notes: Due to size, this episode was split into two sections. Read Part I first here.
Art: Chapter banner by geckoholic; digital paintings by kuma-la-la, which you can also find here; digital paintings by ryuu_artist, which you can also find here; and Dean/Castiel digital painting by anncros, which you can also find here (all the art contains spoilers for the chapter).
Summary: "I won't…I won't let you fall," Castiel stutters, and he says her name, not like before, not calculated. He chokes it out as if she is cherished, because in this moment he cherishes her for her father, who no longer can.
Read Ghosts Part I first here.
Bobby stumbles forward on weak legs that buckle him to his knees at the edge of the wound in the earth. Heat is rising up out of it, accompanied by dank, sour air that makes him gag. He swallows the brackish bile that floods his mouth, plants his hands firmly on the edge, and leans forward to peer down. The hole appears to be bottomless, but a vague, greenish glow emanates out of the black, like phosphorescence. "Cas," he hollers, and the echo of his shout resounds up to mock him.
He bends at the elbows, squints to see if he can pick out any ledges that might have broken the angel's fall, the girl's too, he hopes.
"I wouldn't get too close."
Bobby jerks back up, finds himself staring into Crowley's amused face, and he starts saying the words automatically. "Vade satana-"
"Oh, come on," Crowley drawls. "Seriously? That stuff only works in the minor leagues." He strolls over to rest his butt on a rock, folds his arms in a way that's far too relaxed for Bobby's liking. "But you go ahead if it makes you feel better."
Bobby growls out, "You're going after kids now? That's minor league stuff in my book."
Crowley pulls a face, waggles his eyebrows. "Demon. Going after kids is in my job description, sweetie." He smacks his lips and smiles the smile of a shark sizing up an oblivious swimmer. "All that soft, tender flesh…much easier on the teeth. Like milk-fed veal, they are."
Bobby glances down into the crevice again. There are stones and rocks scattered nearby, and he reaches for one, lets it fall, listens hard for something, anything, the sound of impact, a cry, a splash, but there's nothing. "Jesus," he breathes out. "Goddammit, Cas." He barely manages it through the swelling sensation in his throat as he wonders if the angel caught the girl, if he had enough juice to unfurl his wings, enough space to spread them and arrest his descent.
"Word to the wise," Crowley says suddenly, and Bobby fixes wary eyes on him. The demon has his hand up behind his ear, listening, and he directs his gaze away from Bobby, a few feet over to the right, nodding his head briefly as he does. "I think you might be needing the mighty sword of truth and justice any minute now."
Bobby stirs himself to move, crawls the small distance to Castiel's discarded blade, cursing himself as a fool for letting his guard down so completely. As he goes, he hears something, a rustling, far-off but coming closer, getting louder, building into a low, steady clicking.
"They're drawn to it," Crowley says opaquely, and he shrugs. "It leads to where they came from."
Bobby pushes himself up, his knees popping irritably. "They?" He glances uncertainly down at the jagged rip, remembers his suspicion. "Did you do this?" he demands. "Did you work some spell to open this?"
Crowley smirks and steers around the question. "As long as you've got the sword, you should be okay. They won't touch me, they don't like their meat rotten." He levers himself up onto the rock behind him, crosses his legs at the knee. "I recommend seeking higher ground in the next, oh, fifteen seconds."
After a instant of deliberation, Bobby strides over to grab his pack, jogs to a boulder a few yards from where Crowley perches, and clambers up. As he turns, they stream out from the trees, a dense, churning swarm of shiny black arachnoid bodies that sends a wave of revulsion rippling through Bobby's guts. They're in a hurry, and they split apart around Bobby's rock like a black sea parting, seemingly oblivious to his presence as they scuttle on, carpeting the ground now and filling the air with the same steady chittering sound as the one Castiel ran through with his crossbow bolt.
Bobby follows their progress as they flood up to the edge of the crack in the earth and pour over it, down into the depths where his friend and the child fell, and the thought of what might be going on down there has his stomach turning itself inside out. He retches, eyes streaming as he presses his hand up to his mouth to hold back his breakfast. How the fuck am I going to tell Dean?, he's thinking dazedly as Crowley blasts out a shrill whistle. Bobby turns to see that the demon is shaking his head, his own eyes glinting.
"Don't panic old man, you could have a heart attack and fall off there," Crowley taunts. "Anyway, they'll be fine, assuming they've landed by now. Those things won't touch them."
Bobby manages to choke out, "How's that?"
Crowley slips down off his rock. "Let's just say I have a gut feeling about it." He swipes fastidiously at the seat of his pants before he claps his hands together. "Right, what's the plan?"
After gaping at the demon for a few confused seconds, Bobby sputters, "Plan?"
Crowley nods vigorously. "Plan. You know, for getting him out of there."
He fishes in his pocket, pulls out an object he tosses up to Bobby and after snatching it reflexively out of the air, Bobby finds he's looking at a cellphone. He scratches at his beard, feels as bewildered as he ever has as he meets the demon's eyes again.
"We're on the clock," Crowley clips out brusquely. "That path won't stay open forever. I'd get Starsky and Hutch on the horn if I were you. Couple of big, strong vessels is just what we need."
Dean is mid-yawn, his eyes gritty with the effort of long hours staring ahead at the road, when his phone sounds.
Where are you?
Bobby's voice comes through grim and strained, sends Dean's low-grade anxiety spiking back up to eleven and turns his mouth dry. He takes a deep breath, tries to keep at least three-quarters of his focus on the busy highway, licks around his teeth to moisten them before he replies.
"Uh…about twenty miles past Grand Junction. Everything okay? Cas okay? Only you don't sound okay…"
It's. Son, I don't know how to-
"Dean. How goes it?"
The demon materializes out of nowhere, safely out of reach in the backseat of the Impala, and Dean startles almost out of his skin, fishtails the car wildly in and out of the lane. "Fuck," he yelps. "Fuckdammit! Fuck. What the fuck? You fucker."
The demon gives him a fake smile. "I see you haven't lost any of your charm." He flicks his eyes front, leans forward to rest a hand on top of the shotgun seat and nods as Dean shrinks away from him. "Watch out for that semi-truck."
The truck is already blaring irately as it bears down, and the Impala rocks on her tires as the other vehicle screams by with bare inches between them. Dean growls out his response through teeth clenched tight with animosity as he fights the wheel to get the big car back on her true path. "What the fuck do you want?"
Crowley raises a cynical eyebrow at him in the rearview mirror. "Now there's a thought. But. All that aside, you're going to want to pull off and find the nearest mall. Sporting goods store should do it."
Dean barks out a sharp, uncooperative laugh, then sneers, "And exactly why am I going to want to do that?" He weaves threat into his voice under the coldness, and he's fishing in the door pocket for the bottle of holy water he started stowing there the last time Crowley pulled this stunt, sliding it into the crack between his thighs and unscrewing the lid. He's careful, surreptitious, but his anger is growing exponentially, boiling through his veins and nerve endings like lava as he finally confronts his friend's nemesis, and it swamps him with an overwhelming, primal desire to smoke the demon out and send it screaming back to the Pit.
"Because you're going potholing, mate. Or what is it you Yanks call it? Spelunking. And you'll need the proper gear so you don't fall and break your pretty face."
Crowley sniffs, settles back casually and stares out the window, taking in the view. Which is just fine, Dean thinks, as he launches himself into the swift, triumphant jerk of his elbow that should ensure the demon gets a steaming faceful of the liquid. As his hand swings up, fingers clamp around his wrist, stopping him and aborting the attack mid-air.
"I wouldn't," Crowley remarks amiably from where he winked into existence at Dean's right. "Not if you want to see the boyfriend again." He reaches up his other hand, extricates the small bottle from Dean's grip. "Why don't I mind this for you?" he adds, and now there is a harder, unpleasant edge to his tone. "After all, you need two hands on the wheel to drive safely."
Dean stares it out with him, drags himself back to some semblance of control. "I'll just let my intense hatred for you fester then," he says, lethally quiet. "Let it stew some more, before it pops its cap. Because if it's the last thing I damn well do, Crowley, I will end you. Slowly."
After a long, tense moment, Crowley smiles thinly. "Well, we'll see about that," he answers, and Dean imagines he can hear a hint of unease there. "But I should warn you…you're right. It will be the last thing you do."
The tension hangs heavy in the air between them. And then Dean unties the tangled knot of rage that twists inside him, lets his fury dissipate and trickle back down into the dark hollows and voids where it lives.
He switches his gaze back to the road and looks for the next exit.
Castiel wakes gradually, on the memory of plummeting, arrow-straight, arms out ahead of him, a cold wind blasting his face as he fell, before he managed to spread his wings to right himself. He vaguely remembers the sharp edges of rock tearing at the tips of his primary flight feathers and shredding them as he flexed his phalanges for each downstroke, desperately trying to counteract the drag of air and generate the lift and thrust he needed.
He isn't falling anymore, isn't flying either. He's lying on his side, and the surface under his cheek is icy and damp, the air at his back chilly. He manages to unfurl his wing, hears himself groan at the pain that streaks up his radius. Broken, he suspects, but he manages to curl the wing over himself for warmth anyway. The shoulder he's lying on is throbbing mercilessly, and he feels tired, more tired than he has felt in months. He thinks that perhaps he will sleep for a while and hope that he heals.
"It's really you."
The girl's voice is halting, and it floods back to him, her eyes wide and shocked in the dim light, his hand reaching for hers, their fingertips brushing before he stretched himself so far he felt his human shoulder dislocate. He blinks, levers a hand under himself and pushes up, squinting wearily over in the direction of the voice.
Claire Novak is sitting a few feet away, hugging her knees and shivering.
Castiel tracks his gaze briefly up from where she huddles, takes in a vast mountain of sheet rock, stepped ridges and angular blocks that don't seem to end but fade away into the clouds. "Yes. Although…" He frowns, drops his eyes back down to her face. "That depends on who you think I am."
The girl cocks her head. "Castiel," she says. "I know you're not my dad." She considers him, motions a hand up to her shoulder. "The feathers, they kind of gave the game away."
Castiel nods, clears his throat and tries to concentrate through the pain that waxes and wanes in his damaged wing. "So. How are you?" he asks her politely.
"Seriously?" The girl's look turns unexpectedly baleful. "Would you like a side of epic with that fail?"
After a second or two where he fumbles for an adequate response and remembers that Dean has often compared teenage girls to a diabolical-sounding foe he referred to as a MissyBender, Castiel adopts a more cautious approach. "I…don't understand that reference."
The girl sounds thoroughly disgusted as she answers him. "I've been chased by giant spiders that ate my friends, and kidnapped by a demon who tried to sacrifice me. And then I fell down a great big hole in the ground. How do you think I am?"
In the middle of her tirade there is a word Castiel picks up on instantly despite his discomfort and her peevishness. "He called it sacrifice?" he queries sharply, recalling Crowley's taunts before they fought, the demon's hint that he was cognizant of something, his assertion that this child could stop whatever that something is, or that he, Castiel, could.
After wincing and breathing in deep, the girl nods, her features twisting into a grimace. "He cut me, said he needed my blood." She holds up her hand, showing him a strip of bloodstained cloth she has wound around her palm.
"A sacrifice to what?" Castiel prods. "Did he elaborate? Did he say why it was necessary?"
She shakes her head. "No, and no."
Castiel tries to hide his frustration as he exhales, knows he only partly succeeds when the girl's mouth goes thin and indignant. "It would be useful to know," he defends. "And he had a ritual dagger…" He casts his eyes around him, can't see the knife anywhere, flashes back to the hilt slipping from his fingers as he reached for her. "It had a symbol engraved on the blade, did you see it?"
The girl's eyebrows knit together as she considers. "It was a circle," she decides. "With little squiggles. Wait, I can…" She pats around on the ground next to her, picks up a small stone, twists and uses one of its rough edges to score the rock behind her. "See? A circle. Three squiggles. I think."
It isn't anything Castiel has seen before, but he fixes the glyph in his mind as he folds his wings away and pushes himself up, rocking in place slightly as their surroundings swim around him. He shakes his head against the fog of lassitude that threatens to send him slumping to his knees, and once the feeling has passed he wraps his fingers about his upper arm on the side where his misshapen shoulder juts out, grits his teeth, and rams the displaced bone back into its socket with an audible click.
He hears the girl suck in a breath before she asks, "Shouldn't you be healing?"
She's pointing what could be termed a significant look at him, and her mother's parting words suddenly play out in Castiel's head again as he studies her. "How much do you remember of me?" he diverts.
She doesn't hesitate. "I remember that you fixed my dad when you took him again." Her blue eyes, the perfect copy of the ones he sees looking back at him from the mirror each morning, harden abruptly then. "You gave him back to us and then you snatched him away again," she accuses. "That was a shitty thing to do."
After an uncomfortable beat, Castiel tells her, "I'm sorry."
She casts her eyes down and doesn't acknowledge the apology. It's more than he hoped for after Amelia Novak's reaction, so he leaves it there and takes a step forward to assess their surroundings.
They are in a world of murky grays, the sky above them big and vacant, and the air cold and damp, with a viscous, slimy feel to it. When he shuffles over to look down from their ledge, Castiel can see the terrain dive away into a series of steep drops, crags and talus, intersected by jagged points that look like fanged teeth, before the slope gentles into shallower gradients that end in a distant, tiny strip of sand. Beyond it is an infinity of featureless water, and Castiel is drawn to gaze at it before he tracks his vision back to the beach that marks the boundary between land and sea. He fancies he can almost feel the wet grains and gravel of it under his bare feet, hear the waves lapping on the shoreline. He imagines climbing down, sitting there forever, being content to breathe his last while he watches the tide ebb and wash back in; he imagines himself becoming a feature of this landscape, rooted into the rock and finally at rest, at peace. The notion is surreal and disturbing, and he is suddenly filled with foreboding, the feeling that he has been here before.
Castiel twists, gazes up. The crevice they tumbled down is a clumsy, distorted isosceles triangle cut and smashed into the rock, its top point slender and curling, its lower border merging into the ledge where they landed. Around it, the mountain ripples with muscle formed by great pleats and folds of rock that narrow into long, sinewy tentacle-limbs that spill down around them. It is a brute, a beast, they are in its maw, and Castiel knows this place isn't as empty as it looks, senses on some instinctive level that they need to get away.
"What even is this place?" the girl blurts out, as if she is following his thought process and reacting to it. "How can we fall down a hole and end up in some other world, like - Narnia or something. Or is this the afterlife?" She paddles her hands in the air, taps her sneakered feet up and down in her panic. "Oh my God. Are we dead? Did we die?"
Castiel turns and hurries out, "We aren't dead," in what he hopes is a suitably reassuring way, although he suspects he might be trying to soothe his own nerves as well as the girl's. "I think this is…a rip in the space-time continuum."
She snorts. "That's out of Star Trek."
Looking up, Castiel sees that the cliff face above them is as pitted and ridged as the mile or so that lies below their landing zone. He examines it critically, bites his lip. "Yes," he concedes absently. "I watch reruns with Dean sometimes. It seems as good a description of our circumstances as any."
He picks his way in through the seams and ruts that splinter out from the granite walls of the rift, cranes his head to see as far as he can. There is no obvious source of light at the upper reaches, just shadows that lengthen and dissolve into black.
"It'll be nighttime soon," the girl says glumly.
"No, we're between," Castiel answers as he peers up. "Between space, between time, between dimensions. In the ether. There will be no night or day here, just in-between."
He's stepping back when she replies, "But it's getting dark."
That isn't possible, and Castiel turns to gaze at the horizon again. There in the distance, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, is a dark shadow, an amorphous cloud mass. It's small from this far away, innocuous even.
Something is coming, he thinks from nowhere. It's wrong.
Castiel fists his hands, feels his grace, sluggish and impotent. He's fighting back a yawn already, but his worry, his need to leave this place, is suddenly even keener. "We have to l-"
"Are you going to be able to fly us out of here?" the girl interrupts.
The tremor in her voice is at odds with its previous belligerence, and Castiel slants his eyes down, notices for the first time that her face is ashen and there is blood matting the hair at her temple. He pulled her in tight to himself and cocooned her safely inside a wing, he recalls now, but the crunch of his landing must have sent her tumbling from his embrace.
His lowers his tone into something gentle. "I don't think I am."
She nods, doesn't seem to give it much thought, just scrubs her eyes with the back of her hand. When she speaks again, her voice is firmer. "We can climb. There's a climbing wall at my local YMCA. I know what to do."
Castiel knows what to do too, is already looking up again, plotting the route, complicated and circuitous, a meandering ascent that will wind them around and up by gradual increments until they grow too tired to continue, and then perhaps they will fall again, or lie down on a ledge like this one and die.
"Then…" He stops as he takes note of the doleful pessimism in her eyes, a dejection that is at odds with the confidence in her tone, and something, some basic instinct, tells him what to say next. "I think this calls for teamwork," he prompts carefully.
Her forehead creases, and Castiel sees something that might be hope, might be doubt, war its way through her eyes. "My dad used to say that," she tells him dispassionately.
Castiel feels an odd buzz of apprehension hum through him, clears his throat awkwardly. "Well…I think I may need your help. Can you help me?" He uses her name for the first time then, and his tongue knows the feel of it, almost as if it has formed that shape thousands of times, and his ears know exactly how his voice will sound when he says it, the pitch and timbre the same as it always was when his vessel said it in that other past that he sees glimpses of even though it wasn't his. "Claire," he says. "Claire…will you help me?"
She huffs softly. "Claire," she echoes him. "Claire…will you help me…" Her voice fades, and there is a moment when her eyes blur and shine at him. "You asked me that once before, Castiel," she whispers.
Voices, one he recognizes, and it's mad as hell, Bobby notes blearily. It's getting dark, and his eyes are tired from staring intently at the jagged black scar in the ground from where he still sits on his rock, Castiel's sword gripped tightly in his hand.
He slides awkwardly down to the ground and a few seconds later Dean emerges into the clearing, a heavy pack on his back. He's already maneuvering his arms out of the straps as he approaches, and as he eases its bulk down to the ground Bobby sees Crowley marching smartly along behind him.
"What the fuck happened?" Dean demands harshly. "Crowley says some hole in the ground opened up and swallowed Cas? The kid too? Are they still down there?" He's peering past Bobby as he speaks, sees the opening and strides over to it. "Shit," he says, and he sounds winded. He puts a hand up to the back of his neck as he turns around, his jaw slack.
Crowley hovers nearby, carrying a plastic bag. "That's no ordinary hole, gents," he chips in. "It's a path. Between dimensions."
Dean rounds on him, his shoulders tensing even more but Crowley smirks. "I'm here to help. So, like I keep saying," he adds, "it's a path. Like the Stargate."
Bobby ignores him, puts a hand on Dean's arm and leads him a few feet away. "Are you sure about this?" he asks, low and confidential. "I'm sure he worked some spell to open up that rift…I don't trust the bastard."
Dean's eyes widen. "You think I do?" he counters, voice loud enough to carry, loud enough that Bobby thinks he might be doing it on purpose. "I wouldn't trust the fucker as far as I could throw him." He sucks his bottom lip in, ramps it back down to a whisper. "In New Jersey Kali said something about paths, she said there were thousands of them. So if he knows something…" He turns, takes a threatening step back towards the demon and away from Bobby. "What is this?" he challenges. "And why are you so all-fired up to help us get Cas out of there?"
Crowley rocks on his heels, and his amusement is obvious as he looks from Dean to Bobby and back again. "Well, we were colleagues once, Cas and I," he teases. "Friends, even. We grew very close over that long year of lies, and plotting, and poor lovesick Cas bending over to grab his ankles so he could save you from Raph-"
"You shut your mouth, you sonofabitch, or so help me I will shut it for you."
Dean's tone is brittle with pent-up rage as he cuts the demon off, and Bobby takes a stride forward himself, stands elbow to elbow with Dean as he sees the younger man launch up onto the balls of his feet, his fight stance. "Wild stab in the dark, but seeing as it looked like he was trying to kill you when I ran up through that gorge, it seems to me Cas might not have felt the same way," Bobby responds dryly, while he exerts gentle, steadying pressure on Dean's shoulder.
After a sly smile, Crowley shrugs. "What can I say? I've got a special place in my heart for young Castiel, despite his shortcomings. And they are short, believe me." His mouth shows the gleam of teeth then, and he tracks his gaze away from Bobby to Dean. "And I must be going soft in my old age, but you two crazy kids? You deserve another chance."
Dean makes a rough sound of anger and exasperation. "Don't smile at me," he snaps dangerously. "And don't for one second think I don't know you want him out of there for your own reasons."
Crowley feigns indignation. "Oh ye of little faith." He sniffs. "Anyway. I'd fetch him up out of there myself, but…" He flicks his eyes down at himself. "I'd hate to ruin the threads."
Already turning away, Dean retorts, "Or it goes somewhere you don't want to be," as he drops to his knees, unzips his pack and starts pulling out tightly coiled ropes and cables, stacking them on the ground. "I got a mix of climbers and statics," he mutters. "Whole bunch of them. Slings too. We need to find a good solid anchor point, a rock, a tree…" His voice trails off as he glances up, and Bobby can see his face is drawn and strained. "This place gives me the fuckin' creeps," he spits with a shudder. "There's something off about it."
Crowley chuckles. "The woods are lonely, dark and deep, mate," he throws back over his shoulder as he starts picking his way back over to his rock. "So, best get a move on, eh? Since that path won't stay open forever."
Bobby senses Dean bristling, leans in closer. "Don't let him get to you, boy," he soothes. "Mind on the job, eyes on the prize." He frowns then, sees Dean's eyebrow rise in a query at the expression. "It's just what you said," Bobby imparts in a near-whisper. "About Crowley having his reasons. It doesn't make much sense to me, him wanting Cas out of there."
Dean's eyes go bleak. "You're going to tell me that Crowley wanting him out of there means we should leave him there," he races out, his voice faint and breathless.
Even if suspicion is niggling at him, Bobby shakes his head. "Not at all," he replies, and he makes his voice as firm as he can even if he's speaking under his breath. "He's family. We get him out. The kid too."
Dean closes his eyes hard, visibly swallows. He slumps back down onto his butt, passes a hand across his jaw, and Bobby can see that it's shaking. "Dean, you need to keep it together," he says gently. "Did Crowley say anything about how long that sinkhole might stay open?"
The headshake Bobby gets in response doesn't send his confidence soaring, and there's a moment when he plays his mind through the awful possibility of it closing before anyone climbs back out of it. "Anywhere Crowley doesn't want to be isn't going to be a walk in the park," he notes sourly.
The reply he gets is resigned. "Well. I only got about fifteen hundred feet of rope anyway. It's all I can realistically carry. So if it's any deeper than that, well…"
Dean doesn't continue, but his lips pull into a tight line as he directs his gaze into his pack again and retrieves a leather utility harness hung with hooks and clips. He stands and shrugs off his jacket before feeding his legs through the harness and buckling it around his hips. He sits back down on his haunches as he threads his arms through the shoulder straps, eyeballs Bobby for a long moment. A muscle in his cheek twitches, betraying his nerves.
"What?" Bobby prods wearily.
"Cas said something weird happened with Amelia Novak," Dean blurts out, and then he stops, his eyes glued to Bobby's face.
Bobby sighs, tugs his cap off, and scratches his head. "Weird is right," he concedes ruefully. "She's a mess, I guess maybe he felt bad for her, guilty too. But it was almost like…" He stops, thinks back.
"What?" Dean's eyes are desperate now. "Jesus, Bobby. What? Weird how?"
He isn't sure how to put it into words, but Bobby gives it a try. "She was saying stuff, saying she thought Cas was Novak's ghost or something, saying stuff about her sister-in-law, like she thought Cas would remember her." He mulls it some more, the odd way the angel had seemed to feed off what the woman was saying despite his denials, the unblinking stare he aimed at her, and he suddenly realizes the only time he has ever seen Castiel look at something that intensely before, it was Dean.
"And?"
Dean's voice jolts Bobby back to the now. "And - well, it was like he was tapping into it or something," he goes on. "Like he could remember, like he was miles away, lost in memories. He was wringing his hands…I never saw him do that before. And she said her husband used to do it when he was worried."
Dean's voice goes taut. "You're saying he had memories of being Jimmy Novak? What memories? Did he say anything?"
Bobby shakes his head. "Well, no…fact, he got upset about it, said he wasn't Jimmy, said he couldn't remember those things. He told me it was false memories, stuff Novak left behind." He throws up a helpless hand, helpless because he doesn't know if he's any more convinced by the angel's weak assertion now than he was a few hours before. "But it was in his face. Familiarity. And-"
"Are we doing this or not?" Crowley hollers from his rock.
The both turn their heads, shouting, "Shut the fuck up!" in unison.
"And what?" Dean hisses. He drapes a couple of webbing slings around his neck and hooks his arm through a coil of rope as he stands. "Bring the pack, the anchor stuff is in there."
"And he said he knew the kid was alive," Bobby continues quietly, reaching for the bag as he rises himself. He sees the obvious conclusion forming on Dean's face, shakes his head. "It wasn't his angel radar. He said he just knew." He pauses a beat. "Like a parent would," he emphasizes meaningfully. "Like when you see parents on the television news saying they know their missing kid is alive."
Dean is scanning the clearing, stops to shoot a swift, perplexed doubletake at Bobby. "Are you saying he's turning into Jimmy Novak? How is that even possible? Jimmy Novak is dead." He points over to a nearby fir tree and starts walking. "That one."
Bobby picks up a coil of rope and follows. "Better push on that with all your weight, make sure the quake didn't loosen it at the roots," he urges.
Dean drops the slings in a messy heap, plants his hands on the trunk and pushes with all his might. "It's rock solid," he says as he kneels and starts looping one of the slings around the base. "And there's no way," he backtracks. "This happened before, remember? Famine had him chowing down on White Castle like his life depended on it. And he said it was a trace element of Novak back then. That's all it is this time too." He slants his eyes up. "Rap ring?"
The pack is heavy with a large assortment of metal rings, anchors and hexes, and after a few seconds of rooting about Bobby plucks out the required device and hands it down. He watches as Dean threads the sling through the metal ring, waits until the knot is tied good and tight before he voices what's been preying on his mind since he saw the angel come so undone under Amelia Novak's unsettling gaze. Aware of the demon watching interestedly from his rock, he keeps it low and confidential. "Cas said it was transference, what Amelia was doing. Substituting him for her husband. Which makes sense." Bobby pauses, goes on carefully, "But it got me wondering if it might be a two-way street. Because of what happened at my place this morning."
Dean freezes rigid for a second before he responds. "Jesus. Do you think he could be lying down there hurt, thinking I'll just pack my bags and head back to Lisa's if he doesn't get out of there?" The words are wrenched out of him raw, and he dips his head into one hand as he speaks, crumples down onto his butt at the roots of the tree.
"Well…" Bobby supplies reluctantly. "When I asked him about it he said he wanted you to be happy, said if you wanted that, he'd let you go."
Dean twists his head around fast, and his eyes are huge. "You spoke to him about it? For Christ's sake, Bobby, why-"
"Because I had the exact same thought," Bobby cuts him off. "And because I care about what happens to him too, boy." As he says the words it occurs to Bobby for the first time just how much he does care, and he continues, voice quieter but no less firm. "I care about his well-being. His welfare." He exhales slowly. "Grumpy little bastard that he is. I wanted to make sure he knew that if you did choose that, he'd still have a home."
After a long, tense moment, Dean looks away, clears his throat. "If Crowley knows anything about these paths, whatever the hell they really are, we need to get it out of him," he sidetracks. "And we should have another anchor, just in case."
Bobby nods, gestures towards a second tree a few feet away. "I'll set it up. And I'll try and work on him when you're down there, maybe he'll let something slip."
Five minutes later he's watching Dean ease himself gingerly over the lip of the fissure, a helmet with a halogen lamp buckled under his chin, and his pack and a coil of rope on his shoulder. A couple of strong-beam flashlights are hooked to his belt and pointing down, their light vanishing into the black depths. His knuckles are white where they grip the rope ahead of where it feeds through the harness and descender, and he's biting his lip.
"Be careful, son," Bobby warns, as he drops to his knees.
Dean barks out a hoarse laugh. "You know me and holes in the ground. We go together like-"
He's cut off by a piercing whistle. "By the way, watch out for the flock of giant spiders," Crowley calls affably when he has their attention.
And dammit, Bobby had forgotten, and he bites off a curse as Dean's eyes widen. He holds up his hand and fists it. "About yea big. Cas shot one in the woods. It was nasty."
Crowley hails them again. "You're a vessel, they should leave you alone."
Bobby doesn't suppose it'll make a difference anyway, and he knows he's right when Dean takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders before descending until only his head is visible. He stops then and looks Bobby in the eye for along moment. "What you said, about Cas having a home…" he broaches, a little hesitant. "I worry about that, you know. If something happened."
Bobby manages a smile. "Well, you don't have to worry."
Dean grins at him, just barely. "If…you know. If," he says meaningfully. "Make sure Sam doesn't do anything stupid, huh?"
He doesn't wait for an answer, drops into the void. The lamp bobs about in the darkness until it disappears completely, but Bobby keeps searching for its glow.
They stop for a rest on a narrow shelf after what Castiel judges to have been an hour or more of weaving their way up ridges and the intermittent cracks that connect them, inching across flatter, angled slabs like worms, using the friction of clothing to propel themselves. He looks out at the bruise that still mars the distant sky before turning to consider their next move.
At this level, the mountain is layers of slate, granite, and limestone folded together and buffed to a fine sheen, its gunmetal blues and grays lit with a sprinkling of glassy white, green and yellow quartzite, and swirls of red-pink coral. Castiel can see the tendrils of precious metals, the cursive loops of the mountain's vascular system. They pulse life with their gleam of silver and gold, and he can smell iron and coal as the rock exhales, a terrible beauty birthed here in the nothingness between dimensions, and crouched alert, as if it waits for something.
They have reached the point where the rift starts to narrow to a groove eroded into the solid stone over time immemorial. It coils like a snake about to strike, and up closer Castiel can see that it vanishes into the monolith through a skinny aperture, an eye that seems to focus squarely on him as he studies it. It isn't wide enough for them to have passed through easily as they fell together. It's closing, he realizes, and he clambers up on to a jagged ridge for a closer view.
Claire Novak watches him from a boulder where she sits. "What happened to you anyway?" she asks frankly. "Why can't you fly us out? Why aren't you healing?"
Castiel can't help but grimace at her questions, and after a swift glance to her face, alight with curiosity, he flicks his gaze back to the rift. "I flew too close to the sun," he offers cryptically as he pushes up onto the next vertical shelf of rock. "My…" He pauses, wonders how to put it. "My battery is drained."
The girl rests her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, and her gaze goes skeptical. "And there isn't anything you can do to recharge it?"
There is a moment after she asks him when Castiel feels utterly detached, feels like he is floating on the outskirts of a half-remembered, half-fantasized effigy of himself, a live conductor for the souls, as he recalls how their power thrilled through him as he tapped into their fuel, how they galvanized him with their heat and energy as he absorbed them, how intoxicating they were, and how brightly he shone as their force made him feel Godlike.
He snaps back into himself, into reality, with a strained, "No. There's nothing I can do." Nothing he will ever do again, he knows, and even the thought of it has him unnerved and parched in his throat. "I'm just - not what I was," he adds, and it's all he can do to get the words out, baked dry as they are. "I won't ever be that again."
She sighs and seems accepting of his explanation or is too tired to interrogate further, so he gathers himself and returns to his examination of the mountainside. Here on the outside he can plot their progress via a scattering of convenient slots, edges, and bumps; see an infinite number of permutations that translate into flowing upward motion. But the belly of this beast is an unknown quantity, a black void framed by rock, and no doubt intricate and deadly. He shivers involuntarily at the thought.
Castiel, what have you done?
The voice is as loud in his ear as if his brother is standing next to him. Castiel gasps, chokes out the name as he whirls, bent at the knees and poised to defend himself, and he wonders abstractedly why it should be no real surprise that Balthazar is here even though his presence is a shock that runs through Castiel like the cold blade of a knife.
There is nothing, no one but the girl, gazing up at him quizzically.
"Balthazar," she says slowly, considerately, playing out each syllable as if she is trying out their sound for the first time. She frowns. "I know him, know your memory of him. He's your brother. Something happened to you, you were called back…they tortured you. But he helped you."
Castiel swallows, and his reply is hoarse. "He haunts me now." He stares past her, down at the beach, even more distant from this vantage point, and there is the glimmer of a dream-memory where he walked with Balthazar across sand, and how his brother's gaze was at once warm with pity and hard with censure. "I killed him," Castiel murmurs. "I killed many of my brothers and sisters. The things I've done…" He swallows as he slants his eyes towards her again. "You can never imagine them."
She blinks up at him, her eyes rapt and reverent, and Castiel recalls again what her mother said.
"You've missed me," he says softly. "Me, Castiel. Your mother told me this. But you shouldn't. You should fear me, scorn me, hate me. I took a child and used it, even while the little humanity I'd learned screamed that it was wrong. You should miss your father, who gave himself up for you. He was the better man."
The expression on her face flickers as she contemplates what he said. "What if my dad hadn't done that?" she ventures carefully.
"Then your mother would have been left with nothing," Castiel tells her.
Twenty minutes after Dean vanishes into the crevice, Bobby hears distant hammering, and he heaves out a breath he wonders if he might have been holding in all this time at the relief his boy has hit something solid enough to set up his second line. After that there is only silence, and after another short while passes Bobby pushes up, glancing suspiciously at Crowley.
There is barely any light now, and the demon has a flashlight perched beside him as he thumbs through a magazine. When he becomes aware of Bobby's appraisal he reaches into his bag and pulls out a stack of offerings. "I popped into Borders on the way back," he says. "Reader's Digest? Or I've got People, Time, and Newsweek. Oh, and the New York Times. Playboy and Playgirl." He leers. "For the articles, of course. This could be an all-nighter, so I stocked up."
Bobby remembers how the demon jerked his chain over his own deal, and he feels his dislike surging instinctively. "What the hell are you even doing here?" he snaps. "How is it you know to show up here now, when the kid and her mom have been on silent running for three years?"
Crowley cocks his head, contemplates him for a moment. "She's a vessel," he offers. "That's powerful medicine. I've been on the lookout for her since she gave us the slip first time round." He looks down, rifles through the magazines. "I've got O magazine too, if that's more your style." He glances up again with a smirk. "Oprah's one of mine, you know."
Bobby glowers back at him and refuses to be thrown off-track. "And what the hell do you know about that?" He stabs a finger at the crack in the earth. "What kind of crap are you pulling now?"
The demon raises a warning finger. "Not guilty," he hisses. "That was here already, one of many, I might add. They're everywhere now, haven't you lot noticed? I just knew how to find it. So, don't blame me for this mess."
That pulls Bobby up, and he cocks his head, eyes the demon doubtfully because there's something about Crowley's expression, the meaningful glitter in his eyes that manages to be both sly and sincere at the same time, something about his vehemence, that speaks of honesty. "What do you know about all this?" Bobby fishes, and he grits his teeth and forces the question to come out a little more diplomatically than before.
Crowley smiles thinly. "Oh, don't tell me," he scoffs. "This is where I do my evil monologue isn't it? It's where I throw out a few barbed insults while giving the entire plot away for the audience." His tone goes scalpel-sharp, and his body seems to vibrate tension. "I'm not the exposition fairy, mate, and this isn't the Department of Backstory. Forget it."
He doesn't break Bobby's gaze for a full minute, his eyes gone obsidian, and when the chime of the demon's cellphone sounds Bobby thinks it's almost a relief. Crowley slides it out of his pocket and squints at it. "Excuse me, Robert," he says icily. "Important matters of state to attend to."
It dawns on Bobby as he watches Crowley talk into the phone, too low for Bobby to pick out what's being said, and he plays it out in his mind again, joining the dots as he goes: Amelia Novak's halting, shocked voice telling him the what, where and when. Telling Crowley too.
When the demon ends the call and looks back up, Bobby smiles himself.
"I'll be checking my landline for your wiretap when I get back to Sioux Falls," he growls.
There is a bulge of rock just past the eye of the mountain, and after they squeeze past it, they sit for a few moments in a silence that might be companionable.
They're in a chimney of sorts, dank-smelling and cavernous, lit only by the dim green glow cast by pockets and stripes of crystals that sparkle in between dark, carved-in ruts and corrugations that track the rock like veins and arteries. Castiel takes his bearings, tracks his eyes as high as he can see, and his weariness flares suddenly as he does, makes him turn his face into his shoulder to stifle his yawn. The henley he's wearing is Dean's, pilfered from Dean's duffel, and Castiel inhales his friend's familiar scent, blinks hard, and thinks longingly of sleep, of Dean's arms around him and Dean's even breaths soft at the nape of his neck. The distraction warms him briefly, fills him with a fierce, diamond-hard need that sharpens his motivation, steels him against his exhaustion. I will see you again, he vows inwardly.
"We have to break this ascent down into sections we can manage," he decides out loud. "Speed is important, but so is stamina. We need to move from rest to rest." He feels the girl shiver next to him as he speaks, and without pause for thought, he unhooks his crossbow sling, places the weapon down beside him and pulls the henley over his head. "It's torn from our fall," he says as he offers it to her. "But it's better than nothing."
She takes it wordlessly, pulls it on over her shirt. "Sounds like you don't need my help," she mutters as she turns her face upwards. He can see her sharp movements as she darts her eyes about them, and her voice is small and doubtful when she speaks again. "It looks difficult. And my hand is sore."
Castiel turns to gesture to the closest and most discernible of the cracks he hopes might line the walls all the way up. As he does, his knee knocks into his crossbow and sends it skittering away, so that he has to lean forward and streak his hand out reflexively just in time to stop it from falling back into the abyss.
Beside him, the girl yelps and grabs a handful of his t-shirt. Her face is appalled when he glances around at her. "I thought you were falling," she says weakly.
Castiel holds up the crossbow. "It belongs to Dean," he says as he clips it back in place. "I don't want to lose it." He fakes a confident smile then. "I won't fall," he reassures her as convincingly as he can, and he points over at the crack again. "Those are the paths out of here." He looks up, spots a wide ledge about fifteen feet further up. "We rest there."
He levers himself backwards on his behind, twists as agilely as he can against the ache of his overstretched muscles, ignores the dull, far-off throb of his damaged wing as it makes itself known through the nerves of the body he wears now. He pushes up into a crouch. "Do exactly as I do, go where I go," he instructs. "You're shorter, but I'll use handholds you can reach. Set your feet precisely and use your legs to push up. And remember to breathe."
Just below the rock where they sit is the rough ledge that is his first foothold, and Castiel pushes his boot in slowly and carefully as he rises to lean out and grip a sharp vertical protrusion of granite with his fingers. He pushes up warily, sliding his foot along the crack inch-by-inch, eyes fixed to his next handhold.
"I can't," the girl confesses forlornly from behind him.
"Then you'll die here," Castiel says sternly, without looking back. "And so will I, since I won't leave you." He pauses a beat. "Would you be responsible for my death?" he goads then. "Would you leave your mother alone to mourn you as well as your father?"
He hears her gulping sounds fall quiet, hears the rubbery squeak of her sneakers on the rock, hears the tiny gasp of panic as she launches herself.
"We're fine," Castiel tells her, gentler now. "Don't get too close. Hang back so you can see where I put my hands and feet."
He continues on, looking up, ignoring the sick feeling at the pit of his stomach, his own fear of this place. As he moves further from what little light seeps in through the aperture, the hand and foothold ciphers that decode the puzzle they're climbing through are harder to pick out even with his keen vision. He finds them only by groping, and he chisels his fingers into tiny furrows that Claire Novak's hands will fit perfectly, flexes and strains the digits to gain purchase, feeling his fingertips and knuckles split and graze as he goes. He contorts his hands around small bulges and gnarled twists of rock that will nestle perfectly in the girl's palms, squints against dislodged flakes of grit and the occasional flurry of small stones that erupt and bombard his face. He moves his feet slowly and precisely, his toes striving for accuracy as they wedge into indentations and slots, and slither along seams, his belly pressed close to the rough surface. He searches constantly for the next ledge, the next notch, mapping each point three, four, five moves ahead as he goes, keeping every milestone on his route within the girl's range, never overreaching.
He glances back just once, sees her following in his wake, her eyes alert to every nook and cranny Castiel uses, her mouth a firm line, every careful movement an exact copy of his own, and he feels something he thinks may be pride.
Episode 15: Ghosts (Part 2 Continued)