The Hawk Must Fly (3/?)
Title: The Hawk Must Fly (3/?)
Author: Parallel Monsoon
Rating: Adult
Genre and/or Pairing: eventual Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel, light Castiel/Gabriel
Spoilers: up to 5x19 and AU past that point
Warnings: heavy on the angst, pairings but little romance
Word Count: wip
Summary: My fix for 5x19. Castiel was chosen to raise the righteous man from perdition on the basis of one thing alone. He is a creature of the air, made for flight above all else, and when Dean takes that from him the grief is crushing. Gabriel opens Dean's eyes to all that Castiel has lost on his behalf, but it may be too late to make a difference.
Notes: This started as a fix for 5X19 but it will cover up to the seaon finale, meaning there's still quite a bit more to go. It is completely AU past 5X19.
More Notes: This is the first section that has dialogue. I am trying very hard to keep the voices of the characters' authentic to the show, which can be a weird mix with the writing style of the rest of the piece. Hopefully it isn't too jarring.
The archangel descended on Bobby's junkyard from a tear in the fabric of the sky. Great clouds boiled from the wound, flanks rolling with shades of sulfurous yellow. The rapid strobe of lightning turned the Winchester brothers' attempts to shield each other into a slow motion mockery of dance.
The pagan god ascended from the shuddering earth. The rusted carcasses of cars tumbled from their stacks, falling into chaotic configurations. Wind surged and carried on it was a howl, a night noise of hunting death.
Where the forces met was Gabriel.
Still wearing his weak-chinned, too short vessel, but with power ancient and alien swelling in his eyes. Always for Dean there had been a disconnect between the beings he had been told to fear and the robes of meat with which they hide themselves, but behind Gabriel's eyes lived flood and fire, Sodom and Gomorrah smoldering to ash while the waters rose.
And Dean knew himself then to be a small thing, understood that even Sam faded in significance when in the shadow of an Angel of the Lord. Primal instinct urged him to lift his head in offering of his throat. Instead he showed his teeth in a sneer and wished for his pistol, wanting only what he had always wanted, to go out not with a whimper but one last glorious bang.
He felt his brother move beside him, not lifting his head but bowing it, displaying the soft nape of the neck. Dean forgave Sam that, as he had forgiven his brother many things, and snarled all the longer for the both of them.
"Dude, shit or get off the fucking pot!"
Dean's shout was lost in the maelstrom of electric fury. Gabriel's reply was a blast of discordant noise that dropped the brothers to their knees in the oil-tainted mud. Dean clapped his hands over his ears but the murderous sound resonated up through his bones, transforming his body into a tuning fork for an archangel's grief and rage. Dean felt himself vomit in a convulsive heave and what came up was bile and acidic guilt.
When he came back to himself he opened his eyes to find Gabriel now close enough to touch, the soles of his white sneakers hovering inches above the rain lashed sludge. Dean blinked away the water clinging to his lashes and saw for the first time the archangel held something in his arms.
No, not something. Someone. A loose jumble of arms and legs, the dark head thrown back not in submission but sickness.
Castiel.
Made even smaller than Dean had felt himself to be, a broken doll of string and wire. Bracelets of dark fabric circled his wrists, the frayed remains of the suit that had swaddled him. Without it or the trench coat the angel looked more naked than Dean had known a person could, exposed in a fashion the models in his magazines could not match.
Gabriel shifted the limp body, rolling it to show the sigil craved into the vessel's chest. The smell of rot rose up under the tang of ozone in the air, vaguely sweet and all the more distressing for it. Swelling distorted the geometric design, the lines black and pulpy at their edges.
"Fix it."
God's messenger spoke with the voice of a trumpet, ringing high and clear over the constant growl of thunder. The command echoed back on itself until it became the Word, impossible to defy. Dean wrenched away from Sam's steadying hand and took Castiel from Gabriel's hold, slogging his way back toward the house with a haste that left him clumsy.
Bobby met them at the threshold with the Colt in hand and only Sam's protests kept him from blowing Gabriel away on the spot. Dean ignored the ongoing debate and dropped his burden on the couch before going in search of medical supplies.
It pained him to offer praise to the absent son of a bitch in the sky, but the simple truth was that Bobby was a godsend. There were antibiotics in the closet, IV fluids under the kitchen sink, ice bags rimmed by frost in the freezer.
"Can't you just make with the snappy snap?" he asked Gabriel as he slid a catheter into Castiel's vein.
"If I could, do you think I would have turned to you lot for help? Castiel was too clever by half when he made the damn thing. My Grace can't touch it and first aid isn't one of my many skill sets."
Gabriel looked down at where Castiel lay splayed across the cushions like a dead thing and shook his head. His smile spooked Dean, the expression too honest to suit the mobile face and falling halfway between exasperated and fond. The look was familiar, one he knew from a thousand roach-infested motels where Sam had bent over his computer while Dean turned up the radio as far as it would go, the look one brother gives another when the bonds of blood are only just holding back the desire to punch the stupid out of each other.
And maybe angels were one big cosmically dysfunctional family, but as far as Dean was concerned the archangel hadn't earned the right to look at Castiel like that. Not when the last time they'd met Gabriel had left Castiel's eyes as bruised as his face. The angel's faith had first faltered while he faced Gabriel across a ring of fire, long before his Father had officially kicked him to the curb.
"So you came charging in here and destroyed half my yard to ask for help?" Bobby groused. He was all but invisible behind Sam, who had apparently decided the best way to ensure Gabriel remained intact was to keep himself in the line of fire.
"Call me a cynic, but I'm pretty sure I can blame at least one of you for my little bro showing up half-dead. Let me guess- a plan went pear-shaped and Castiel drew the short straw for the role of noble sacrifice."
Dean let Sam take up the task of explaining Zachariah's plans for Adam and their failed attempt at rescue, turning his own attention back to Castiel. What had started as a simple infection of a relatively minor wound had become systematic. Dean's focus narrowed to the blade of the scalpel as it punched down into pockets of corruption, releasing spurts of honey colored pus. He trimmed back the dead skin until the blood ran bright, threading Penrose drains into the deeper holes to keep them from closing back over.
Through it all he was aware the body under his hands was not his angel's. It was a truth he had known but never fully grasped, not until he saw what walked behind Gabriel's eyes. He understood now how a battle between Lucifer and Michael could lay waste to the earth, his visions of hammering punches and clashing swords naïve and thoroughly human.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked. Sam cut short his description of Zachariah's death and looked over at Dean in confusion, gesturing at the vessel as if the answer lay in the borrowed sack of meat and fluids. "Not Novack. What's wrong with Castiel?"
If pressed, Dean wouldn't have been able to explain how he knew the angel suffered. The feel of it hung heavy in the room, pushed out with the shallow rise and fall of the mutilated chest. Dean found his own breathing slowing to match, as if he could tie Castiel to the world by the shared burn. In the oh-so-mortal act of exchanging air, Dean felt the wax and wane of Grace more clearly than he ever had.
He listened while Gabriel told them of his stand against Lucifer. How Castiel had snatched him away, diving past at a speed that left the Elysian Fields Hotel leveled in his wake. Of the cost Castiel had paid for the rescue, a cost that might have been lessened if the angel hadn't flown on a wing already bloodied and broken. The archangel spoke slowly, giving the story in the manner of confession. He trailed off at the end, head tilting back as if absolution could be found in the water-stained ceiling above.
"I was going to say yes," Dean said, exchanging sin for sin instead. If Gabriel had been the first to fray Castiel's faith and the God the one to shatter, it had been Dean who ground the remnants to dust under his heels. The least of what he owed Castiel was honesty. "He didn't want to stick around to see it go down. That's why he took on Zachariah's goon squad."
There was something soft about the way Gabriel looked at him then, his shoulders slumping as if weighted by terrible fatigue. "What changed your mind?"
Dean shrugged. "I decided to be selfish just a little while longer."
Dean knew himself. He knew that his strength and his weakness were the same, knew that in the end it would always come down to Sammy. Not for loyalty or love, but out of the old fear of being left behind, of feeling emptiness as his back where a brother should stand. To say yes would be to go somewhere Sam could not follow.
Gabriel made a show of looking around the room. "Unless you're hiding baby Winchester away, I'm going to assume your little rescue mission failed." The archangel nodded to Dean, his tone more gentle than accusing. "Which means Castiel threw himself back home and got his wing split open for nothing. Just like my big thrown down with Lucy would have accomplished nothing expect getting my beautiful ass killed. Looks like we both screwed up on this one."
Dean was halfway through a reply when his brain tripped over Gabriel's words and fell flat. "Wait- what? You mean Heaven? He sent himself to Heaven?"
He heard the pride in Gabriel's tone as he went over the banishing sigil's creation, but his floundering mind had no room left to absorb the details of its markings or its dual use as both weapon and beacon. All he could see was the disbelief on Castiel's face when he walked into the panic room and recognized the trap for what it was. Dean had taken it for straightforward surprise, but now he knew the look for what it was.
Betrayal.
It was the silence that drew Dean out of the memory. Gabriel's brow was furrowed, his head tilted to the side in a manner that bore only a passing resemblance to Castiel's. There was nothing of curiosity in the gesture, just the coiling of muscle and purpose like a snake readying itself to strike.
"Dean- what did you do?"
Gabriel already knew. Dean could see it in the way the archangel's eyes deepened, filling with the dust of civilizations past. He didn't flinch when the lights cut out in a shower of sparks.
"I didn't know! I swear, I didn't know!" Dean told the darkness, speaking over Bobby's shouted threats and Sam's cursing. "He didn't tell me."
I didn't ask.
There was time to think of blood on the walls of a prophet, to wonder if it would hurt when his body fell to pieces. Time to realize he had lost the cadence of Jimmy Novak's breathing, leaving Castiel to struggle on alone.
The click when it came was shattering, piercing the night with the violence of a gunshot. Dean did flinch then, screwing shut his useless eyes. A minute or more passed before he realized he was still whole.
He opened his eyes to a world aflame.
Next
Author: Parallel Monsoon
Rating: Adult
Genre and/or Pairing: eventual Dean/Castiel, Sam/Gabriel, light Castiel/Gabriel
Spoilers: up to 5x19 and AU past that point
Warnings: heavy on the angst, pairings but little romance
Word Count: wip
Summary: My fix for 5x19. Castiel was chosen to raise the righteous man from perdition on the basis of one thing alone. He is a creature of the air, made for flight above all else, and when Dean takes that from him the grief is crushing. Gabriel opens Dean's eyes to all that Castiel has lost on his behalf, but it may be too late to make a difference.
Notes: This started as a fix for 5X19 but it will cover up to the seaon finale, meaning there's still quite a bit more to go. It is completely AU past 5X19.
More Notes: This is the first section that has dialogue. I am trying very hard to keep the voices of the characters' authentic to the show, which can be a weird mix with the writing style of the rest of the piece. Hopefully it isn't too jarring.
The archangel descended on Bobby's junkyard from a tear in the fabric of the sky. Great clouds boiled from the wound, flanks rolling with shades of sulfurous yellow. The rapid strobe of lightning turned the Winchester brothers' attempts to shield each other into a slow motion mockery of dance.
The pagan god ascended from the shuddering earth. The rusted carcasses of cars tumbled from their stacks, falling into chaotic configurations. Wind surged and carried on it was a howl, a night noise of hunting death.
Where the forces met was Gabriel.
Still wearing his weak-chinned, too short vessel, but with power ancient and alien swelling in his eyes. Always for Dean there had been a disconnect between the beings he had been told to fear and the robes of meat with which they hide themselves, but behind Gabriel's eyes lived flood and fire, Sodom and Gomorrah smoldering to ash while the waters rose.
And Dean knew himself then to be a small thing, understood that even Sam faded in significance when in the shadow of an Angel of the Lord. Primal instinct urged him to lift his head in offering of his throat. Instead he showed his teeth in a sneer and wished for his pistol, wanting only what he had always wanted, to go out not with a whimper but one last glorious bang.
He felt his brother move beside him, not lifting his head but bowing it, displaying the soft nape of the neck. Dean forgave Sam that, as he had forgiven his brother many things, and snarled all the longer for the both of them.
"Dude, shit or get off the fucking pot!"
Dean's shout was lost in the maelstrom of electric fury. Gabriel's reply was a blast of discordant noise that dropped the brothers to their knees in the oil-tainted mud. Dean clapped his hands over his ears but the murderous sound resonated up through his bones, transforming his body into a tuning fork for an archangel's grief and rage. Dean felt himself vomit in a convulsive heave and what came up was bile and acidic guilt.
When he came back to himself he opened his eyes to find Gabriel now close enough to touch, the soles of his white sneakers hovering inches above the rain lashed sludge. Dean blinked away the water clinging to his lashes and saw for the first time the archangel held something in his arms.
No, not something. Someone. A loose jumble of arms and legs, the dark head thrown back not in submission but sickness.
Castiel.
Made even smaller than Dean had felt himself to be, a broken doll of string and wire. Bracelets of dark fabric circled his wrists, the frayed remains of the suit that had swaddled him. Without it or the trench coat the angel looked more naked than Dean had known a person could, exposed in a fashion the models in his magazines could not match.
Gabriel shifted the limp body, rolling it to show the sigil craved into the vessel's chest. The smell of rot rose up under the tang of ozone in the air, vaguely sweet and all the more distressing for it. Swelling distorted the geometric design, the lines black and pulpy at their edges.
"Fix it."
God's messenger spoke with the voice of a trumpet, ringing high and clear over the constant growl of thunder. The command echoed back on itself until it became the Word, impossible to defy. Dean wrenched away from Sam's steadying hand and took Castiel from Gabriel's hold, slogging his way back toward the house with a haste that left him clumsy.
Bobby met them at the threshold with the Colt in hand and only Sam's protests kept him from blowing Gabriel away on the spot. Dean ignored the ongoing debate and dropped his burden on the couch before going in search of medical supplies.
It pained him to offer praise to the absent son of a bitch in the sky, but the simple truth was that Bobby was a godsend. There were antibiotics in the closet, IV fluids under the kitchen sink, ice bags rimmed by frost in the freezer.
"Can't you just make with the snappy snap?" he asked Gabriel as he slid a catheter into Castiel's vein.
"If I could, do you think I would have turned to you lot for help? Castiel was too clever by half when he made the damn thing. My Grace can't touch it and first aid isn't one of my many skill sets."
Gabriel looked down at where Castiel lay splayed across the cushions like a dead thing and shook his head. His smile spooked Dean, the expression too honest to suit the mobile face and falling halfway between exasperated and fond. The look was familiar, one he knew from a thousand roach-infested motels where Sam had bent over his computer while Dean turned up the radio as far as it would go, the look one brother gives another when the bonds of blood are only just holding back the desire to punch the stupid out of each other.
And maybe angels were one big cosmically dysfunctional family, but as far as Dean was concerned the archangel hadn't earned the right to look at Castiel like that. Not when the last time they'd met Gabriel had left Castiel's eyes as bruised as his face. The angel's faith had first faltered while he faced Gabriel across a ring of fire, long before his Father had officially kicked him to the curb.
"So you came charging in here and destroyed half my yard to ask for help?" Bobby groused. He was all but invisible behind Sam, who had apparently decided the best way to ensure Gabriel remained intact was to keep himself in the line of fire.
"Call me a cynic, but I'm pretty sure I can blame at least one of you for my little bro showing up half-dead. Let me guess- a plan went pear-shaped and Castiel drew the short straw for the role of noble sacrifice."
Dean let Sam take up the task of explaining Zachariah's plans for Adam and their failed attempt at rescue, turning his own attention back to Castiel. What had started as a simple infection of a relatively minor wound had become systematic. Dean's focus narrowed to the blade of the scalpel as it punched down into pockets of corruption, releasing spurts of honey colored pus. He trimmed back the dead skin until the blood ran bright, threading Penrose drains into the deeper holes to keep them from closing back over.
Through it all he was aware the body under his hands was not his angel's. It was a truth he had known but never fully grasped, not until he saw what walked behind Gabriel's eyes. He understood now how a battle between Lucifer and Michael could lay waste to the earth, his visions of hammering punches and clashing swords naïve and thoroughly human.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked. Sam cut short his description of Zachariah's death and looked over at Dean in confusion, gesturing at the vessel as if the answer lay in the borrowed sack of meat and fluids. "Not Novack. What's wrong with Castiel?"
If pressed, Dean wouldn't have been able to explain how he knew the angel suffered. The feel of it hung heavy in the room, pushed out with the shallow rise and fall of the mutilated chest. Dean found his own breathing slowing to match, as if he could tie Castiel to the world by the shared burn. In the oh-so-mortal act of exchanging air, Dean felt the wax and wane of Grace more clearly than he ever had.
He listened while Gabriel told them of his stand against Lucifer. How Castiel had snatched him away, diving past at a speed that left the Elysian Fields Hotel leveled in his wake. Of the cost Castiel had paid for the rescue, a cost that might have been lessened if the angel hadn't flown on a wing already bloodied and broken. The archangel spoke slowly, giving the story in the manner of confession. He trailed off at the end, head tilting back as if absolution could be found in the water-stained ceiling above.
"I was going to say yes," Dean said, exchanging sin for sin instead. If Gabriel had been the first to fray Castiel's faith and the God the one to shatter, it had been Dean who ground the remnants to dust under his heels. The least of what he owed Castiel was honesty. "He didn't want to stick around to see it go down. That's why he took on Zachariah's goon squad."
There was something soft about the way Gabriel looked at him then, his shoulders slumping as if weighted by terrible fatigue. "What changed your mind?"
Dean shrugged. "I decided to be selfish just a little while longer."
Dean knew himself. He knew that his strength and his weakness were the same, knew that in the end it would always come down to Sammy. Not for loyalty or love, but out of the old fear of being left behind, of feeling emptiness as his back where a brother should stand. To say yes would be to go somewhere Sam could not follow.
Gabriel made a show of looking around the room. "Unless you're hiding baby Winchester away, I'm going to assume your little rescue mission failed." The archangel nodded to Dean, his tone more gentle than accusing. "Which means Castiel threw himself back home and got his wing split open for nothing. Just like my big thrown down with Lucy would have accomplished nothing expect getting my beautiful ass killed. Looks like we both screwed up on this one."
Dean was halfway through a reply when his brain tripped over Gabriel's words and fell flat. "Wait- what? You mean Heaven? He sent himself to Heaven?"
He heard the pride in Gabriel's tone as he went over the banishing sigil's creation, but his floundering mind had no room left to absorb the details of its markings or its dual use as both weapon and beacon. All he could see was the disbelief on Castiel's face when he walked into the panic room and recognized the trap for what it was. Dean had taken it for straightforward surprise, but now he knew the look for what it was.
Betrayal.
It was the silence that drew Dean out of the memory. Gabriel's brow was furrowed, his head tilted to the side in a manner that bore only a passing resemblance to Castiel's. There was nothing of curiosity in the gesture, just the coiling of muscle and purpose like a snake readying itself to strike.
"Dean- what did you do?"
Gabriel already knew. Dean could see it in the way the archangel's eyes deepened, filling with the dust of civilizations past. He didn't flinch when the lights cut out in a shower of sparks.
"I didn't know! I swear, I didn't know!" Dean told the darkness, speaking over Bobby's shouted threats and Sam's cursing. "He didn't tell me."
I didn't ask.
There was time to think of blood on the walls of a prophet, to wonder if it would hurt when his body fell to pieces. Time to realize he had lost the cadence of Jimmy Novak's breathing, leaving Castiel to struggle on alone.
The click when it came was shattering, piercing the night with the violence of a gunshot. Dean did flinch then, screwing shut his useless eyes. A minute or more passed before he realized he was still whole.
He opened his eyes to a world aflame.
Next