FIC: Remaining Grace, Chapter 4: Powerless [4/20]
Title: Remaining Grace, Chapter 4: Powerless
Author: todisturbtheuni
Rating: NC-17, eventually.
Genre and/or Pairing: Angst; Hurt/Comfort; Romance; Castiel/Dean Winchester
Spoilers: Through the end of season 5, but some minor for season 6.
Warnings: Explicit sex; graphic torture scenes, which I'll warn for at applicable chapters; minor/side character death (neither Dean nor Castiel).
Word Count: 100K+, total
Summary: Sam's missing his soul, Castiel has a pissy archangelic nemesis, and Dean wonders if he'll be spending the rest of his life making sure the Apocalypse doesn't go ahead as scheduled. Still, though. He's happy to see Cas. Indiana wasn't really working out. Unabashed six-fix, in a universe where Castiel made a different choice, and things snowball from that point forward.
Mentions of torture in this chapter.
Go back to chapter: 1 | 2 | 3
Cas’s wings were enormous.
Dean had seen their shadow before; he wasn’t likely to forget the first day they’d met. The shadow was nothing compared to the real deal, though. You just didn’t get a real scope for how big the things were when the vision was strictly two-dimensional. The feathers ruffled a bit, the wings curved up to fit within the boundaries of the panic room, and Dean felt strangely underwater, as if he was drowning.
These were the wings he’d seen in his nightmares, the wings he’d cut open and destroyed.
His hands clenched as he stared at them, his jaw working, eyes sweeping over their intricacies. They were black, but the feathers glimmered with glimpses of color here and there: flashes of purple, green, blue, shifting and moving as the wings did, shimmering as though in an invisible breeze. He swallowed, remembering the angel’s blood obscuring those colors, dulling them with imminent death. Easily two times in length the height of Cas himself-if not a bit larger than that-they ran the risk of bumping into and knocking over everything in the room.
But they didn’t. They just went right through things.
Except for Dean.
“This is weird,” he finally said, as tonelessly as he could; the blood was still there, he could feel it on his hands, feel it slicking those feathers as he ripped Cas open--
“I would choose different vocabulary, personally,” Cas replied grimly; his blue eyes watched Dean warily, and Dean, realizing the concern in the stare, forced his gaze away from the wings.
“I’m okay,” Dean reassured. He bent down to pick up the chair, setting it close to Cas again. “They just...surprised me.” Cas was still staring at him, so he talked on, trying to cover the tension he felt in the presence of those wings. “Let’s recap. I beat you up and not only do I not break every bone in my hand, but you can’t heal.”
“Yes,” Cas affirmed.
“And then you touch me with...” Dean couldn’t say it, couldn’t force himself to say the words; when his mouth wasn’t moving his teeth were gritted against the echo of those nightmares. “Why did you touch me, anyway?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Cas said defensively, shifting on the mattress. His discomfort was mounting, too. “When you found the fracture...imagine a knee-jerk response. This is something like that.”
“So it’s a wing-jerk response. That doesn’t sound dirty.” Dean smirked at the angel’s exasperated look; the humor calmed him, settled the rising tide of red in his mind. “So you touch me, and suddenly I can not only see, but feel your...wings.” He forced himself to say it, even if it brought back the image of Cas’s lips open in a terrible scream. “And hear them. I mean, I’ve heard them before, that little rustling noise they make when you pop in and out of places, but never so...loud.”
Cas stayed quiet, watching him.
“What?” Dean asked, though the blood was rushing in his head and he didn’t think he could go back to talking about the nightmares, not so soon, when ten minutes ago it had been all he could do to explain for a moment what they meant--
“You’ve seen them before,” Cas said, his voice low, and Dean flinched.
“I’ve dreamed them, yeah,” he said hoarsely, and Cas reached out, pressed a hand hard into the old scar on his shoulder. His rising panic dulled abruptly; he found himself relatively calm again.
“Not then,” Cas said patiently. “Though, yes, you’ve been remembering them in your nightmares in a context they were never a part of. These are not the wings I had when I raised you from Hell. These were regrown as we escaped.”
Dean took a moment to let that sink in. “Your wings...”
“...burned,” Cas said matter-of-factly, apparently unaffected, while the idea of it alone made Dean cringe. “Shortly after I found you.”
Dean tried to ignore the guilt that crept up inside him. “What were they like before?” he finally ventured.
Cas pulled his hand back from his shoulder, and though Dean missed the contact, the panic, at least, stayed under control. “Indescribable, unfortunately,” he said neutrally. “An angel’s wings are wings only in the most practical sense; they’re what enables us to travel. Otherwise, they only bear passing resemblance to actual wings.”
“Raphael’s lightning,” Dean muttered, and Cas nodded, seemingly irked. “Yours are better,” he said decisively, sparing a glance for the black feathers. “Lightning-wings seem like a bit of a liability.”
Cas smiled, the barest tick upward of his lips. “I am very happy with my wings,” he said, quiet but earnest. “They were indescribable before Hell, yes, but infinitely more beautiful now.”
Dean leaned forward to take up his examination of Cas’s ribs again. “There’s the fracture,” he said, finding it with his fingers. “How’s it feel?”
The smile was replaced with a puzzled frown. “Not as painful as before.”
He was tense, though, defensive of his injury; where his body did not betray him, his wings did. They had dropped down to hover protectively close to Cas’s ribs, enveloping Dean in the process. He felt the barest brush of a soft, cool feather against his arm, his cheek, and for a second, he saw red again.
“You mean it doesn’t hurt?” he said, pressing against the fracture again. Cas winced.
“No, it is still...painful...but not nearly as painful as before.”
The thought had barely occurred to Dean before he executed it; if he gave it a second thought, he wouldn’t be able to go through it. Just pulling his hand back from Cas’s skin and sliding his fingers into feathers instead was enough to make him shudder, seized with revulsion by the memory of blood slicking that cool, downy plumage, but he held on even when Cas jerked back, trying to free himself.
He was dizzy with the memory of a blade, the rack, when Cas suddenly shuddered and went still in his grasp. The bruise on his face healed as Cas stared back at him, and Dean felt it, the tender soreness slowly receding even as the black faded to yellow and vanished; he felt the pain drain from the split that he had just sewn up while the skin knitted and the stitches fell out. Hell faded as Cas’s injuries mended, as his touch healed rather than killed.
“What in the hell-”
Castiel and Dean turned simultaneously to look at Bobby, who stood in the door to the panic room, gaping at them. He sounded like he had just about had enough insanity in his house for the day. Dean could only just see Bobby’s head over one of Castiel’s outstretched wings, his eyes widening as the wound on Castiel’s forehead scabbed over, then fell away to reveal new, healed flesh beneath.
“Apparently I have a healing touch,” Dean said, the shadow of a smirk touching his lips.
“You’re not touching him,” Bobby said slowly.
Cas comprehended Bobby’s meaning before Dean did. “He can’t see them,” the angel said quietly.
“See what?” Bobby demanded, stepping into the panic room.
“Stop,” Dean said hurriedly, mouth suddenly dry at the thought of anyone touching Cas’s wings, “you’ll run right into them!”
But Bobby was standing right in the middle of Castiel’s wing, as if it wasn’t there.
“It’s fine,” Cas said, reaching out to press a soothing hand once again to Dean’s shoulder. “You all stand in them often enough. They don’t exist for Bobby. Just for you.”
Castiel said just for you in a strange voice, half-curious, half-fearful.
“What?” Bobby said, automatically backing up a step, and Dean breathed a sigh of relief. “What’m I standin’ in?”
“Wings,” Dean managed to croak out, wondering if this situation could possibly get any weirder. “You were standin’ in Cas’s wings.”
Bobby’s gaze travelled from the empty air in front of him, to Cas’s hand pressed into Dean’s shoulder, to Dean’s hand, clenched tight in feathers that Bobby couldn’t see.
“You can see them?” the older hunter said, understanding.
Dean nodded. “And feel them. And, hey, apparently when I touch them, it works a healing trick.”
Bobby was staring at Dean in disbelief. “We need to talk.”
“Hold up a minute. I’m almost done.” Dean turned his gaze back to Cas, whose mouth had ticked halfway up in a smile. He found himself looking at it and almost smiling back. “How’s the rib?”
Cas straightened his back; his feathers rustled as his wings stretched, too. “Fine. I believe it’s healed.” His blue eyes flickered with gratitude. “Thank you, Dean.”
Dean nodded, unsure what to say, and slowly released the feathers. They felt strangely liquid as his hand slipped away. The wings didn’t disappear when he let go, but Cas pulled them back, allowing them to settle into a natural slump behind him.
“Relax, and don’t go disappearin’ just yet,” Dean ordered. He followed Bobby out of the room, Cas’s blue eyes burning into the back of his neck.
“Shouldn’t your eyes be smoked out of your skull?” Bobby demanded as they climbed the stairs. “Aren’t his wings part of that deal?”
“Thought they were,” Dean replied, rubbing his hand absently. “Doesn’t seem that way, though, does it? And you didn’t see anything?”
“Nothin’. Not even a shadow. Something weird is going on here, Dean.”
Dean barked a laugh. “Come on, Bobby, this is us. Life’s always weird.”
“No, this is an extra level of weird.” Bobby dug two beers out of the refrigerator and leaned against the kitchen counter, frowning. “Our weird usually obeys certain rules about weirdness.”
“Oh, come on. Listen to yourself. It so doesn’t.” Dean caught the can Bobby threw to him and cracked it open, taking a deep gulp. “There is no level of usual with us, not since the angels, anyway. Sam’s soulless and I can apparently heal angels by touching their wings. Just another day for us.”
“I seriously doubt it’s all angels. It’s somethin’ in particular about Cas.” Bobby was squinting at him; the scrutinizing gaze made Dean feel exposed, as though Bobby knew something Dean should know.
“Yeah, well.” Dean took another sip of his beer. He decided not to mention the sensation he’d experienced, the pain he’d shared with Cas as his wounds healed. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I have a theory.”
Dean hadn’t expected Cas to obey his command, so it was no surprise that the angel had appeared right behind him, fully clad in trench coat, suit jacket, and backwards tie. Cas was frowning thoughtfully, and one of his wings absently brushed Dean’s shoulder. Dean reached out and yanked the tie straight, his fingers tightening the knot while Cas stared at him, clearly amused.
“Care to share with the class?” Dean asked when the silence stretched on and he had awkwardly smoothed the tie down, only belatedly realizing what he was doing.
“I have to confirm it. It’s unprecedented.” Dean didn’t like how often Cas had used that word in recent memory. “I’ll speak to Joshua; he should have more knowledge on the subject.” Cas glanced from Bobby back to Dean. “I shouldn’t be long.”
“You know where to find us,” Dean said. “Watch your back, Cas.”
The angel nodded, a feather brushed Dean’s arm, and he vanished with a rustle.
“Okay, well,” Dean said, cracking his neck to the side. “I’m going to take this rare opportunity to get some sleep before Featherbrain gets back.”
Bobby huffed in exasperation, dropping his beer can into the recycling bin. “I hope when he turns up in the middle of the night he decides to wake you up and leave me out of it.”
Dean toed off his shoes and flopped down on the couch. “I’d say the odds are in your favor, Bobby. I’ll let you know what he says tomorrow.”
Bobby took the stairs up to his bedroom, and the house was still. Sam must have gone into town to drink his way through the local bars; the whole not-sleeping thing had really led to a surge in his social life. Dean smirked-only momentarily, because truth be told, it wasn’t really a laughing matter-and slipped down further into the old couch, trying to get comfortable, trying to settle, but the thought of Castiel’s feathers and their absent brushes fluttered in his mind, and he knew that his sleep would be restless at best.
Dean woke up promptly at the sound of wings.
Castiel perched on the arm of the couch near his feet, frowning. His wings draped out and around the room: one stretched along the back of the sofa beside Dean; the other curved around Bobby’s desk. Dean had once believed that he would never adjust to Castiel: popping in and out of their lives at whim, misunderstanding human things, displaying powers that even Dean had a hard time comprehending. Now Dean didn’t believe he would ever adjust to Cas-plus-wings, particularly the way they seemed to sprout through his trench coat as though it wasn’t there.
“Learn anything interesting?” Dean grunted, hauling himself into a sitting position and rubbing the back of his neck. Bobby’s couch was even less comfortable than the average motel bed.
“Yes,” Cas answered; his feathers rustled. Dean glanced sideways at the wing nearest him, just before the tip of a feather brushed against the back of his neck and the pain was gone.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“Joshua agrees with me,” Cas said, turning now to look at Dean, who was distracted by his wing going straight through the window without breaking it. “My wings are tied to my Grace, and my Grace is what healed your soul when I found you in Hell. It’s possible that my Grace has memory of your soul and your soul has memory of my Grace. And souls are quite powerful.”
“Like the healing thing.”
“Yes.” Cas was looking at Dean closely. “You’re feeling all right? No repercussions from healing me?”
“No,” Dean said, shaking his head. “I feel fine.”
“That’s unusual in itself. Typically, there would be some fallout.”
“So why is this all starting now?” Dean asked, frowning. He got to his feet, stretched out his back, and leaned against Bobby’s desk. “If I could heal you with one freakin’ touch, that would’ve been useful when you were going all human on us last year. And saved you from a few comas, while I was at it.”
“My Grace was compromised at that time,” Cas answered. “Joshua thinks that might have...damaged...the connection.”
“Hold up. The connection?”
Cas’s lips twinged, just barely, toward a grimace. “It’s a poor word to describe it, but functional. I know what you’re thinking,” Cas added sharply, as if sensing Dean’s overwhelming discomfort, “but I don’t have a direct line into the power of your soul. It doesn’t work that way. I would have to expend much more effort to tap into that kind of...juice, as you call it. No, the healing only worked because you offered it willingly.”
Dean frowned. “Okay. Fine. Good. So compromised Grace means I don’t have any juice, either? Seems a little useless.”
“We won’t face that dilemma again, hopefully,” Cas said. “My Grace is now independent of Heaven; the authority corrupting the connection has been removed.”
“So why not right when you were resurrected?” Dean asked. “Why didn’t I see your wings until now? The timing’s still off.”
“I have theories, but nothing more. As I said, it’s unprecedented.” Cas stood, his wings rising with him.
“Well?” Dean said, staring at him. “Go ahead.”
Castiel gave him an uncertain look, but went on talking. “I’ve always been...aware...that there was some sort of bond,” he said, clearly not pleased to admit it. “The handprint on your shoulder attests to that. I knew it would make you uncomfortable, however, and after failing to appear to you in my true form, I chose to seal it off. I thought that it could potentially injure you. There has never been enough stress on me to open that seal, but it appears to have broken last night. Thus...” Cas gestured at his wings. “It might also explain why you can now hurt me. The connection opens both ways, leaving me vulnerable to you when I wouldn’t have been before.”
Dean frowned more deeply, pushing off from Bobby’s desk. “You’re stressed?”
Cas let his gaze fall to the floor; it was such a human thing to do, such a not-Cas thing to do-Cas who stared, Cas whose people skills were always rusty-that Dean’s stomach plummeted in reaction. He was becoming more human again, by the day, by the hour, and Dean couldn’t decide if it was awesome or terrible.
“Heaven is on the brink of civil war,” he said quietly. “I was never meant to be a leader, Dean. And my regret for pulling you back into hunting, for raising your brother without his soul, is crippling.” He said it matter-of-factly, without any proper inflection, and Dean was simultaneously dismayed and relieved that most of the time, Cas still sounded like an angel. “My abilities may be independent of Heaven, but they are now instead compromised by emotion. You once called me a hammer.” His lip twitched. “I have never been further from a hammer than I am now.”
Dean swallowed hard, stepped forward, and reached out a hand to rest on Castiel’s shoulder. He wanted to do more, suddenly longed to prove that Cas’s regret was neither required nor useful, wanted to grab the angel tight and hug the tension out of him. Instead his thumb just pressed, deep, into the flare of Cas’s collarbone, because he couldn’t offer anything else, because the angel wouldn’t understand, because now wasn’t the time.
Cas looked up, tilted his head to the side, and a small smile turned up the corner of his mouth. “You’re doing all you can,” he said quietly, as though he heard Dean’s anxiety, and now that the bond was open, he probably did.
“It’s not enough,” Dean muttered.
“I can’t take you into my war zone, Dean.”
“I know that,” Dean replied, “I know. I’m just sick of this, Cas. I thought we were done. You’ve already died on me twice, man. I don’t want to see if third time’s the charm and it sticks.”
Cas lifted a hand, pressed it over Dean’s on his shoulder, and squeezed. Dean’s pulse jumped and the reassuring warmth of Castiel’s hand stayed, holding tight. He wondered if Cas knew what he was doing, if he understood that his gesture was not really just one of friendship, but couldn’t bring himself to question the angel. He drew too much comfort from the contact to deprive himself of it.
“We’re better equipped than we’ve been in the past,” Cas said, his voice low.
“That’s not saying much,” Dean returned.
“I know,” Cas said, his eyes sad. “But it’s something. This...connection...as loathe as I am to admit it, it may help keep both of us alive. It’s not something I wanted to inflict on you, but now that it’s open, it might act as a tether. If one of us is fatally injured, but the other alive, it’s possible that we’d both survive.”
“How did it happen?” The words left his mouth unbidden; he’d never wanted to know, had never been interested in Castiel’s siege on Hell, but his nightmares had left him craving the story he didn’t remember. He released Cas’s shoulder but didn’t step back. “Hell. How did you find me?”
Cas stared at him for a long, tense moment before he spoke. “It was luck, I think. I used to believe it was fate.” His sudden smile was pained. “I believed that my higher purpose had been discovered, my integral part of Heaven’s plan unearthed. That I was meant to find you. But fate would have been cruel to you, and worse to Sam, and I’ve long since derailed any plan of Heaven’s. It was luck, or strategy, that led me to your light. If my rebellion was an act of free will, then raising you from Hell could not have been fate.”
His blue eyes suddenly shuttered, as though what he remembered was too painful to convey. “My garrison was divided by the fighting. It was truly a siege on Hell to evict you, and we had so few numbers compared to the demons in those depths. I slipped through the chaos, hoping-as I’m sure some other angels hoped-to find you quickly and save us all from the fate of the garrison before ours. And I found you.”
The shutters opened; the pain flooded his blue eyes and Dean suddenly felt it so acutely that it could be nothing but the bond conveying it to him. “I saw how lost you believed you were, how resistant you were to being saved,” Cas said softly, gently, a curious tone similar to the one he’d heard that first night, when Cas had first tilted his head in confusion at Dean. “When I told you I was an Angel of the Lord, you thought I had come to kill you, really kill you. Erase you from existence, burn you out of Hell, burn you out of everything. Before Alastair returns, you said. You stepped back from the soul you were torturing, dropped your tools, spread your arms. Hurry. Do it.” Castiel paused and cleared his throat, looking away from Dean. “I did have to hurry. None of us would last much longer in that Pit. I alerted the other angels, took hold of you, pulled us both out of Hell and into the space between there and this world, where I could heal enough of the damage to your soul to put you back into your body. I don’t think the connection would have formed at all, except...”
Castiel hesitated a beat too long for Dean’s patience. “Except what?” Dean’s heart pounded, leapt; the story sounded so familiar, conjured images and flashes in his mind that might have been Hell, that might have been Castiel.
“Except, you held on.” Cas rolled up the sleeve of his trench coat, pushed up suit jacket and shirt, baring his skin, and there, on his right forearm, was an imprint, an old scar, in the shape of a hand. Appalled, Dean reached out and covered it with his fingers. It fit his hand exactly. “The mark always manifests in that location when I take a vessel, ever since. I used the power of my Grace to heal the damage to your soul, and in return, your soul healed the damage my Grace sustained in Hell. I told you my wings burned on exiting.” Dean nodded, unable to find his voice, his eyes full of that handprint. “They would have regrown in time, but you remade them instantaneously.”
Those words reached Dean; his chin snapped up, eyes darting from Cas’s face to his wings. “I remade them?” he repeated, disbelieving.
“Yes,” Cas answered.
“Why did I make them black?” Dean muttered, eyeing the feathers.
Cas shrugged. It looked awkward, him doing that. “You hardly knew what you were doing, though I suspect that if there was a thought process involved, you must have at least believed that black wings were more badass than the wings that humans typically imagine angels possessing.”
Dean shook his head, unable to stop his smile. “Sure. Maybe. That’s why they’re more like a bird’s wings than Raphael’s?”
“Yes. They were what you imagined them to be.”
Dean didn’t know what do say to that, so he kept quiet, pulling his hand back from the scar on Cas’s forearm.
“I thought, for perhaps obvious reasons, that once you were returned to your body, you would be able to perceive my true form,” Cas continued. “Maybe I went about it the wrong way. I thought that sealing off the connection would be safer for you, but opening it has allowed you to perceive at least part of my true form without any damage at all.” Cas’s confusion manifested as frustration. “It’s very unusual, if not completely unique.”
“And you think this could be a tether,” Dean said slowly. “Keep you alive.”
“Or you. It could.” Castiel’s lip twitched. “I have mentioned that this is unprecedented, right?”
Dean frowned at him and then, disbelieving, watched Cas smirk, the sheer pleasure of it dancing in his eyes. “You’re joking,” he groaned, but he grinned and couldn’t stop. “You’re being sarcastic. I didn’t even know you had a full grasp on sarcasm.”
“I don’t always,” Cas admitted. “It’s still a shot in the dark most of the time.”
For a moment, they stood grinning at one another. It happened too little not to savor, but eventually, Dean’s smile faded. “I still don’t like this,” he warned. “Nothing’s a guarantee.”
For a moment, Cas’s features twitched toward Sam’s Bitchface #4, an expression that Robo-Sam never made, but that Sam had always used when Dean was being really stubborn about something to make him relent. “Nothing is ever a guarantee, Dean. Isn’t that what free will means? No fate, no destiny-no right or wrong path, just choices and consequences. That’s the risk we take.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “You’re just the poster boy for angel rebellion these days.”
Castiel smiled. “I learned from the best.” Before Dean could parse whether that was genuine or not, Cas squeezed his shoulder, right over his own handprint scar, and he felt a jolt of warmth, affection, a sincere belonging that left nothing unclear. “I should return to Heaven.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. Gotta rally the troops.” Don’t go, he wanted to say, but when did he ever get what he wanted?
Cas lifted his chin a fraction to look up at Dean. “You are a good friend.” He paused, tilted his head just slightly to the side. “I’ve lived a very long time, and I don’t believe I’ve ever had a friend as good as you.”
“You’ve had some shit friends, then.,” Dean muttered.
Cas smiled, a little bitterly. “They’re angels. Limited by the very fabric of their beings. They don’t all have you to lead the way.” Cas’s blue eyes were warm and sincere as they looked into his. “I will check in tomorrow. Sleep well.”
Castiel was gone by the time Dean opened his mouth to reply. The warmth of Cas’s palm still lingered on his shoulder, reassuring, and that night he dreamed of a glassy lake, a comfortable chair, a fishing pole, a cold beer, and Cas smiling beside him, the silence between them comfortable and deafening.
Heaven was quiet.
It was always quiet, these days. The human souls inhabiting the place went about their business silently, unaware of the mounting tensions in their midst, and the angels all moved swiftly, under the radar of opposing forces.
Castiel was growing to loathe it here. It was worse when he’d just left Dean’s company, so warm and reassuring compared to the ice he felt gilding his wings when he landed in Heaven.
“Castiel.”
He turned to see his lieutenant smiling wanly at him. He inclined his head. “Rachel.”
“You have been on Earth,” she observed, falling into step beside him.
“Yes,” he answered. “The Winchesters required my assistance.”
“They are...all right?” she asked hesitantly.
Rachel had struggled with Castiel’s devotion to the Winchesters, but she was slowly coming to understand it; all of his angels were. Ultimately, they believed in Castiel, and they were gradually adopting his conviction to humanity as a result.
He didn’t hope that they would ever be as devoted as him; he doubted it was even a possibility. Dean was the reason for his humanity. Dean was the linchpin in his compassion. No other angel had Dean. It was covetous of him, but he smiled at the thought, pleased by the idea.
They would be devoted enough: devoted to protecting the human race, but never tempted to walk among them, and that was sufficient.
“Fine,” Castiel answered. “Dean was mildly injured. He is safe now.”
“Good,” Rachel said uncertainly. “Have they learned anything new?”
Castiel let out a heavy sigh. “I am afraid there is not much to learn. Their experience is limited. Angels are still new to them.”
They walked, pacing slowly back to their gathered forces.
“Can we truly stand against them, Castiel?” Rachel asked softly.
“We must try.”
“What if...”
“Rachel,” he interrupted gently. “There are some things worth dying for. This is one of those things. I know it is difficult to believe-”
“It isn’t,” she interrupted, her voice earnest. “It truly isn’t, Castiel. You have died twice for this cause; I believe in its righteousness, if only because you are still standing before me. I am...” She hesitated, considering. “I am just afraid.”
“We all are,” Castiel agreed.
A crack of thunder sounded, echoing with a discordant crash.
“Raphael,” Rachel said, tensing beside him.
His knife dropped into his open palm, and he halted in his tracks, waiting. He wondered if this was to be the end, and he thought of the look on Dean’s face when his hand had pressed to the man’s shoulder, thought of the warmth thrilling through him when Dean’s hand gripped gently in his feathers.
“Castiel,” the familiar voice boomed out, but it seemed to transverse Heaven rather than originate from anywhere nearby; Raphael was incapable of locating an angel so easily now, his powers somewhat tarnished by the rent in the Holy Host. “I wish to speak with you alone.”
“Go back to the garrison,” he murmured to Rachel. “Be ready.” She vanished instantly, leaving him alone.
He thought of how Dean would have never obeyed that command; how Dean, loyal to the end, would have faced Raphael with a song of defiance in his heart, firm at Castiel’s side.
“Speak, Raphael,” he called.
When Raphael appeared, he did so with palms raised, a good distance from Castiel. “I’m here to talk only,” he said, his deep voice laced with the crackle of electricity; his wings flared out in webs of lightning.
Yours are better, Dean’s voice echoed in his head, and Castiel had to suppress a smile.
“As you wish,” Castiel replied, allowing his knife to slide back into his sleeve.
The archangel strode forward. “I must admit, I am impressed, brother,” he said, his features stoic. “I did not believe you would be capable of command.”
“It is not to my taste,” Castiel allowed. “But we do what must be done.”
Raphael smiled. “And must this really be done, Castiel? Must you insist on preventing Paradise?”
“The Apocalypse is what I’m preventing, Raphael.” He grew weary of this argument, weary of the logic that precious few seemed to understand. “You know that.”
“Yes,” Raphael said, a slight smile on his lips. “And, by extension, Paradise. Why are you doing this? Because the Winchester boys told you to?”
“Because God raised me from death to do so,” Castiel returned. “Not once, but twice. You must remember. Lucifer could not have been the one to raise me, after all. You know he was back in his cage by then.”
“So for all your talk of free will, you are still obeying orders,” Raphael mused. “What a good soldier you are.”
“I have no direct commands,” Castiel countered, feeling a flash of irritation. “I am following the path I believe to be the most right. That is free will: a choice made with no guidance.”
“Protecting humanity from mass annihilation is a fruitless enterprise, brother,” Raphael said, shaking his head. “You watched the last century, same as I did. You know what they are capable of. They will kill themselves off, even if we don’t.”
“They might,” Castiel acknowledged. “But that is their affair. Their choice, if you believe in such a thing. You have all of Heaven. Do you truly need Earth, too?”
“I see there is no convincing you,” Raphael said, stepping back.
“No,” Castiel replied. “Nor I you.”
“Then we are truly at war,” Raphael said grimly, “and you and your forces will be laid to waste.”
With another crack of thunder, the archangel was gone.
The night sky of this particular section of Heaven stretched above him, brilliant with stars, a view that could only be seen in the middle of nowhere. This one belonged to an astrophysicist; Castiel could see his telescope in the distance, the man himself stretched out beside it. The spark of his soul was dim, muted, but content. He was unaware of what transpired between the angels around him.
But he, and every other soul in Heaven, would suffer if Raphael was allowed to attack his forces here. He would notice it then, as the very fabric of his eternal rest was rent apart by the archangel’s wrath. Heaven was, and had to remain, the last great refuge; if the war started here, the place would be torn to shreds. The alternative was hardly a better option. After all, hadn’t he just told Dean that he would not take him into combat?
He couldn’t deny, though, that Earth would be better suited for a battleground. Humans would be caught in the crossfire, yes, but not nearly so many souls sacrificed as would be if Castiel and his followers remained here.
He stared up at the outstretched arm of the Milky Way for a long moment, considering. Finally, his mind made up, Castiel strode on to rejoin his forces. They would make their escape from Heaven immediately.
“They will be watching,” Rachel pointed out, as the solemnity of Castiel’s announcement settled among the angels. “Here, we are protected, but as soon as so many of us breach Heaven’s boundaries...”
“I know,” Castiel answered. “It’s a risk, but one that I believe we must take. We may see our first battle as we remove to Earth.”
Had they been human, they would have stirred, muttered, exchanged looks of anxiety and excitement, but the majority of the angels merely nodded, mute, and grimly accepted the possibility. There were very few among them who would speak out against this plan if they had doubts, and he disliked counting on that, but they had very little time to spare, and very little time to argue.
Inias, though, raised his voice above the silence. “We aren’t ready,” he protested. “Castiel, if they attack, if Raphael attacks, none of us will survive.”
“If Raphael intended to attack personally, he would have killed me during our conversation,” Castiel reassured him.
“Then why didn’t he?” Hester asked. “You were overpowered and alone; why not kill you and end the war now, before it begins?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Rachel said. “He’s afraid of Castiel. He killed you once,” she pointed out, sharing a small smile with her leader. “He doesn’t know what will happen if he does it again-if Father will bring you back, or perhaps end Raphael himself.”
“But,” Castiel interjected, turning back to Inias and Hester, “that does not prevent Raphael from sending others to deal with us.” The other two nodded, mollified, and stepped back into the ranks of angels. “Go to ground and wait,” he finished. “For now, we must stall Raphael a while longer. Until we are ready to face him.”
He closed his eyes, listening. Heaven was silent with tension, as though anticipating their leaving.
“Now,” he ordered, and together, they flew.
The trajectory from Heaven to Earth was not a simple one, not a matter of up and down, but instead a matter of sliding through different planes, different levels of reality. They flipped by quickly, barely noticeable in the course of flight.
A presence hovering behind them, however, was painfully noticeable. Castiel sensed that Raphael was not with them, but his followers were numerous and powerful enough.
When he landed in a deserted field in South Dakota, he was ready for the battle that ensued.
“Engage!” he roared, and knives dropped into the palms of his fellow angels as they chose their targets.
His opponent had been chosen for him; he recognized the blinding light of Virgil’s righteousness as the angel stalked toward him. Panic lit up Castiel’s mind. If the weapons keeper of Heaven had aligned himself with Raphael, the odds were slotted even more firmly against them.
“Virgil,” he said.
“Castiel,” Virgil returned, moving closer. “Raphael sends his regards.”
“I find it difficult to believe you have aligned yourself with him,” Castiel said, standing his ground.
Virgil’s eyes flashed briefly, clear hatred burning through his Grace. “After Balthazar’s blatant slight against my authority, I saw no other option.”
“Balthazar? Balthazar is dead,” Castiel returned, unnerved by this pronouncement.
“Balthazar is alive,” Virgil hissed. “Balthazar pilfered weapons from Heaven’s stores on your orders-”
But Castiel had heard enough; he moved forward to engage the weapons keeper. His angels fought on around him, engaging more of Raphael’s followers, while he thrust his knife at Virgil. The angel dodged his attack, twisting around to deal a blow of his own, and Castiel dropped bonelessly to the ground, avoiding a fatal strike. A fight like this was too swift to think about, to follow properly; he acted on instinct, rolling back to his feet and out of Virgil’s reach. He had always been exceptional at fighting with angelic blades, and though Virgil was more powerful than him, he could escape this fight with his life intact. He could even escape it beaten to a pulp, so long as he could return to Dean.
He heard the screams of angels dying behind him, but their voices were indistinguishable from one another, and he thought, a little madly, that if he couldn’t tell the deaths of his own from the deaths of the others, then perhaps the battle was already lost.
He slashed out at Virgil, whose blood was drawn on the blade, but it wasn’t nearly a penetrating enough wound to kill him; he lunged back, bulldozing Castiel to the ground. They struggled against one another, Castiel’s heart beating wildly as he held off Virgil’s fist, which struggled to drive a knife into his chest. The force of it scraped him back against the ground, burying dirt and rock into opening wounds on his scalp, twisting his arm up in pain, and then, very suddenly, he heard Dean shout his name.
Cas!
The hunter wasn’t in the clearing, but nonetheless, he was here, somehow: the power of his soul surged through Castiel’s Grace and blasted Virgil away. “Fall back!” the weapons keeper shouted as he regained his footing, his face a bloodied mess. “Retreat!” he bellowed, and Raphael’s angels began to evaporate from the midst of battle, fleeing back to Heaven.
Castiel was left with his followers and the casualties as he slowly stood. Virgil disappeared before him, a last flash of rage, touched by fear, visible in his features.
“Report,” he said finally, hoarsely, as his angels gathered slowly around him, picking their way across the field.
“Five dead,” Rachel replied promptly, appearing at his right. “Two of ours. Three of theirs.”
Castiel nodded. “We fight on,” he said. The battle could scarcely be called a victory, but it wasn’t a defeat, either, and the angel felt a shred of hope. “But for now, the plan is unchanged. Go to ground. Lie in wait. We must stall a while longer.”
“What are we waiting for?” Rachel asked softly.
“I have a plan,” he replied grimly. “Trust me. I will find you when the time is right.”
One by one, his forces vanished, taking flight. At long last, he stood alone in the field and, closing his eyes, listened a moment longer to Dean’s incessant, violent cursing, the sound of the Righteous Man blaspheming him in his mind. With a smile, he opened his wings and flew to Singer Salvage Yard, following the light of Dean’s soul, which suddenly glowed like a forest fire against the landscape of Earth.
Dean was outside, his voice long since hoarse, pacing the dirt lot in the fading afternoon light. He walked forward when Castiel appeared, his stride full of purpose, and before the angel could say anything, he grabbed a fistful of Castiel’s trench coat with his left hand and rooted his right hand in the wing extended toward him. Castiel shuddered in reaction as the full blast of Dean’s soul poured through him, knitting his injuries in an instant, but Dean’s expression was still furious.
“What the fuck was that?” Dean roared, giving Castiel a shake that nearly lifted the angel from the ground. “Were you seriously engaging in the first battle of the goddamn Holy Civil War without warning me first?!”
“It was unexpected,” Castiel returned, trying to stretch out a hand to touch Dean’s shoulder, but the man shook him again, deterring him.
“Do not pull that calming touch crap on me,” Dean snarled. “I don’t want to be calmed. You just came uncomfortably close to dying and I got to be the backseat power generator to the whole thing, so I want some fucking answers, Cas!”
“I haven’t been allowed to say anything yet,” Castiel said helplessly, shooting a desperate look over Dean’s shoulder; Sam and Bobby were perched on the hood of the Impala, Sam smirking, Bobby watching with raised eyebrows.
“He doesn’t want to listen,” Sam pointed out helpfully. “He wants to shout at you some more.”
“Shut up, Sam!” Dean barked, his eyes never leaving Castiel’s face.
“We decided to leave Heaven,” Castiel said, hoping that if he started talking, Dean would allow him enough time to explain. “Very suddenly. Raphael confronted me and made it clear that he intended on inciting battle in the very near future. I realized the repercussions for the souls in Heaven if war was allowed to break out there.”
Dean’s hold in his trench coat had slackened. “What repercussions?”
“Raphael would not hesitate to tear apart the very fabric of Heaven in the midst of all-out war,” Castiel said. “If Heaven is destroyed, there is no refuge for any human soul. I do not know where the souls would go-Purgatory and Hell, for example, are options, but-that could not be allowed.”
Dean’s features had softened, his grip slackened. “You left Heaven,” he said quietly, “to save the souls.”
“It isn’t as permanent as you think,” Castiel returned. “If we win this war, the others will be free to return.”
Dean seemed about to continue on this line of questioning, but shook his head and let it go. “And Raphael’s guys caught up with you on your way out?”
“He sent Virgil,” Castiel explained quickly, “the...the armorer of Heaven. He guards the weapons. Weapons we desperately need.”
“And that was the one pinning you down.”
“What did you see?” Castiel asked, frowning. The worst of his friend’s rage seemed to have passed, replaced instead by a boneless relief. “I heard your voice...”
“I heard you,” Dean said, his grip now just barely a loose touch on Castiel’s chest and wing. “The instant you were back on Earth, I think, I heard you. It wasn’t really seeing, it was just-I just knew what was going on.”
Sam suddenly began to crow with laughter from the hood of the Impala. “I’m sorry,” he gasped out, when both Castiel and Dean turned to glare at him, “I’m sorry, it’s just...this whole thing, it’s just too weird, man. What the fuck is up with our family, anyway? I’m an ex-demon-blood junkie destined to be Lucifer’s vessel, walking around without a soul, and now you’re sharing brainspace with an Angel of the Freakin’ Lord, and it’s not Michael and he isn’t driving you. It’s fucking nuts.”
Bobby’s mustache twitched toward what might have been a smile while Sam laughed, doubled over with his arms clutching his stomach. “He has a point,” he allowed.
Dean sighed and turned back to Castiel. “So, what? The battle’s coming to Earth now? Thought that wasn’t part of the plan. What if Raphael decides to fry all of humanity down here? Kind of the same thing as Heaven, right?”
“No,” Castiel said, aware that he was on the verge of babbling; the giddy aftermath of a survived battle had begun to catch up with him. “No, the Earth is untouchable by anyone but Michael, and only in the event of his battle with Lucifer. We can do a lot of things, but there are absolute limits on our powers, especially when such a rift exists in the Holy Host and no particular faction is in power. The vessel rule, for instance. When it comes to humans...”
“...God hard-wired you with a ‘do not destroy’ button,” Dean said, nodding. “Okay. I’ve got it. So who the hell is Balthazar, why is he stealing weapons, why did they think it was on your orders, and why did you think he was dead?”
Castiel let out a long breath of air. “Because he was,” he said, and Dean’s eyebrows raised in reaction. “Or, at least, he appeared to be, and he was very convincing about it. But Balthazar was always...well. Funny.”
“Funny,” Dean repeated, skeptical.
“He must have faked his death,” Castiel continued, irked at the thought. Balthazar had been a close friend, and Castiel had been deeply unhappy at the news of his demise. “Our friendship is known; he was part of my garrison. I’m sure Raphael assumed that his actions were being guided by me. Why he decided to steal weapons from Heaven, I can’t say, but it is imperative that I find him.”
“You think the weapons could be used against Raphael?” Dean asked, hope lighting briefly in his green eyes, still fixed on Castiel’s face.
“A few of them, yes,” Castiel answered. “I’m not certain that he has them, but at the very least, he has broken into the armory before, and he is an old friend. If I ask him for help, he will comply.”
Dean straightened the trench coat that he had wrenched askew through the numerous shakings, and then released his grip on Castiel.
“Okay,” he said, gesturing for Castiel to follow him into the house. “How do we find him?”
Sam was still snickering as they made their way inside.
Go on... Chapter 5: Shadows.