March-Stalkers Mighty: 3/22
Passus II: Pes dexter.
Gabriel was curled up on the floor with his wings wrapped around him like big cushioned blankets. At least, he was until he caught the creak of the barn door: then he was uncurling into a deliberate lounge against the wall, wings splayed insolently, the better to look sarcastic at them.
Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, R. L. Stevenson, 1886. (Chapter X.)
Caliban: You taught me Language, and my profit on’t [my gain from that]
Is I know how to curse.
The Tempest, William Shakespeare, c. 1611.
Dean shook Sam out of bed. Then he threw his over-sized shoes at his over-sized chest while he was still in the process of sitting up and blinking away the fuzz.
“Clothes, Sam. Now. We’re going to talk to the angel.”
Sam made a sort of protesting “muh?” noise and glared balefully at the dark outside the window.
“Time’s a-ticking, Sammy.”
“Still be there in the morning, Dean,” Sam muttered around a jaw-cracking yawn.
“Yeah, and there’ll be people around in the morning, and I wanna talk to him now.”
It wasn’t until they were halfway back to the barn that Sam woke up enough to ask, “Uh, Dean? Why now? I mean, don’t get me wrong, talking to him’s not a bad idea, but Bobby’s been trying for days and you’ve barely stuck your nose in there. What happened? And what makes you think you can get him talking if Bobby can’t?”
“Cas,” Dean replied shortly.
“Huh?”
“Cas happened, okay?” Dean shot a scowl at Sam’s belt, to avoid meeting his eyes. “He was here, and now he’s not.”
“Holy shit.” Sam sort of froze in place for a minute, then loped after Dean to catch up. “Is he okay? How’s he looking? Did he remember you? Is he married or anything? Is he -” He cut himself off by tripping over one of the shoelaces he hadn’t bothered to do up, and flailed and stumbled for a few paces, because Dean’s little brother was like a cat on a hunt and an overgrown puppy the rest of the time. When he pulled himself together, he aimed the full force of his crinkled-up worried eyes at the side of Dean’s face, the ones Dean could feel without even looking by now. “Hold on, you two didn’t... fight or anything, did you?” You didn’t kill him, did you? Dean heard, half-formed underneath.
“No!” No, he just threatened to strangle me and I killed his brother. “Dude, no, nothing like that. We just... talked,” he trailed off lamely.
“Talked,” Sam deadpanned, in his I-can’t-believe-my-big-brother-is-such-a-loser way.
“Guinevere’s girdle, Sammy, yes. Talked.”
“And that’s what’s got you looking crazed as a dirty dog in flea season.”
“Yes, okay, that’s all we - what? No! I do not.”
“Kinda do, man.” And that was big dopey grin #48.
“Look, screw you, okay? It was... weird as all hell, and he isn’t happy, and it’s all a big steaming mess, so just - drop it, would you?”
“Okay. Okay.”
Only before Dean could push open the barn door Sam reached up and caught at his arm, breaking the fierce rhythm of his stride so that it stuttered into nothing. Then one big hand spread out to press flat over Dean’s heart, the way Sam did sometimes, and his eyes were big and contrite and irresistible. “Just. Why me, Dean?”
Dean eyed the door darkly. “Because the angel likes you.”
Sam scowled. “He doesn’t like me, Dean. That was all him pretending, remember?”
“Well, that’s something else to ask him about then, isn’t it?”
The barn was shaped like one huge pentagon, and the bull press ran all along the inside of one wall, the one that butted onto the stock yard. Most of the time it was just a long walled run, a couple of yards wide, leading from the main pen outside to the smaller sorting pens on the other side or (depending on which gates were open) into the main space of the barn. The bars that formed the inner fence were set deep into the stone of the floor and the immense timber bulwarks of the roof, for strength; but pull the right levers, and shift the right pulleys, and they could be moved in, slotted into a matching set of holes closer in to the wall, or the set after that, or the one after that, until even the medium-sized rams or the larger ewes would have trouble pushing their way through in single file. Then, drop the internal gates in place in front of their noses and behind their tails, and maybe push another loose bar in against their flank if it wasn’t a tight enough fit, and the strongest of bulls could barely even flinch when he lost his balls to the knife.
Right now, with the outer gates firmly bolted and shuttered and warded, and the bars pushed back to their outermost position, the press formed a cage about fifty yards long and three wide. But, you know, that could be changed anytime.
Gabriel was curled up on the floor with his wings wrapped around him like big cushioned blankets. At least, he was until he caught the creak of the barn door: then he was uncurling into a deliberate lounge against the wall, wings splayed insolently, the better to look sarcastic at them.
“Yeah, and that’s another thing,” Dean growled at him by way of a starter. “Why the hell don’t you put those things away? I know you can, and that shit don’t look comfortable in there.”
The angel just cocked one eyebrow, maddeningly polite, and stared at him without comprehension.
Dean swore, very mildly, in his opinion. “Don’t give me that. I’ve had it up to here with this whole angelic I-don’t-understand-squat for one night, okay? You were doing drinking games with my little brother three days ago - don’t you dare play dumb on me now.”
The angel narrowed his eyes, and Dean ploughed right on over him. “So. Angels. What the hell are you? You got names, right? and families that mean shit to you? What are you, then? Monsters or people? ’Cos I gotta tell you, without those wings there you’re as good a fake person as anything I ever saw.”
The angel cocked his head and made a confused little chirruping noise like a sparrow, which Dean might have fallen for if Gabriel hadn’t made the exact same noise when they’d all been drunk and mimicking bird calls the first night he’d got in. Sam huffed at Dean’s side, ridiculous and frustrated, and Gabriel tugged one wing into his lap to poke at it with wide staring eyes, like a chicken completely stymied by a new rock or crate or whatever in its pen.
Fucking mocking them.
Well, fine, if he wanted to play it like that...
“You know an angel by the name of Castiel, by any chance?” The fingers paused, just a flicker of uncertainty, over a patch of broken feathers that were all dull and matted with stable-dirt, but the head didn’t come up. Too careful not to give any tells. Dean gritted his teeth and pressed his advantage. “Well, guess who Chevy and I caught in the feed shed an hour ago?” And, there, a sudden violent bob of the throat as he gulped, the feathers flattening against the skin like a dog’s ears when it cowered, and the bones of the wings pulling in like the sudden clench of fingers. “Yeah, you did know him, huh? How’s about his big brother - neat grey wings and a nasty tongue, the one whose throat I cut last hunt?”
“Dean, back the hell off!” Sam snapped, even as Gabriel snarled hoarse and vicious in his throat and scrabbled back away from the bars to flatten himself against the wall. “What the fuck is he now, some kind of enemy?”
Dean stared. “... Yes, Sam. Yes, that’s exactly what he is. Where the hell have you been the last eight years?”
Sam winced, and squared his shoulders. “Okay, fine. So play fair with someone who can’t fight back, like you always told me.” He turned to the angel in the cage. “Dean didn’t kill that angel tonight, okay? He couldn’t. Dean knew him when we were all kids, they used to hang around together down past old Jim’s farms. The other one, two weeks back, we did kill, after he killed one of ours and had his hands around my throat. Did you know him?”
Hard, terse, fair. Like it was war, not slaughter and the hunt.
Gabriel stayed very still, lounging sluggishly like he could barely move, with his eyes flicking back and forth between them. He was filthy, Dean noticed with a strange irritation. Couple of days’ beard, dusty cobweb caught just behind his left ear, grime on his hands and bare chest, dirt and straw clinging to his pants. Dull incongruous gleam of the engraved iron collar locked around his neck. Dried blood over his left shoulder and matted into the feathers near the base of the wing. That stab wound looked nasty. And he stank, too, just like any person would after so long in a place like this.
“Look. Gabriel.” Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and scowled, using the name deliberately. “I want to listen, I do. Tell me what you wanted here and what your friends are up to and I can help you, honest.”
No answer, just a lowered head and yellow eyes gleaming dangerously from the midst of a mane of tangled hair and stubble gone shaggy.
“I know you’re not just some mindless beast, okay?” Sam pressed, almost gentle; and the angel laughed like a snarl, teeth flashing white in the lantern’s glow.
Dean had to look away for a moment, though he wasn’t really sure why, but Sam went all earnest and pressed in closer to the bars.
“You were born an angel, weren’t you? I mean, it isn’t something you become, like werewights and rugarus and so on?”
Sure, Sammy, all very well being nice and gentle with a spooked horse, but it sure wasn’t getting them anywhere just now.
“Where did the angels come from, huh?” Dean snapped. “What are they doing in our lands?”
Gabriel tilted his head back, bared his face and his teeth to the light and hissed at Dean, vicious and mocking. And, the hell? That was hatred there, in the glint of his eyes, and where the hell did he get off blaming this on Dean?
Dean shoved forward, close against the bars, snarling right at him. “They came here for a reason, chuckles, and we ain’t it, so what the hell is it? How do we stop them?”
Then Gabriel reacted.
It was all of a sudden, all a flurry of motion, limbs and feathers and gleaming teeth, and the sneaky son of a bitch can’t have been that out of it after all because a fist connected with Dean’s cheekbone hard enough to send him sprawling and the room spinning and tilting, and Sam yelled something then it was cut off all strangled and shitshitshit. Dean rolled, limbs so sluggish and the world too far away, but there was his gun under his hand and thank shit that hadn’t gone off. Took him three tries to get it out, then he half pitched over when he tried to get up on his knees, and Sam wasn’t standing where he had been, and - hell.
Gabriel was halfway up the fence, clinging to the cross-bars like a squirrel, wings spread vast and dark behind him, and his free hand was clenched around Sam’s throat. Sam was red-faced, hands locked around the angel’s wrist and tendons straining, feet kicking in the air more than a yard off the ground, scrabbling for purchase on the bars. Their faces were inches apart, and the angel’s was locked in a horrible rictus of a snarl.
The pistol wove and dipped in Dean’s hand, refusing to hold a straight course, and Dean barked “Drop him!” just to stall while he tried to get lined up for a straight shot, tried to blink the blurring away, but dammit, Sam’s gigantean body was masking almost all of Gabriel’s and hitting the wings would only hurt right now, not kill, not disable, and he wasn’t about to piss an angel off any more when it had its hand around his brother’s throat.
Then the floor tipped and slid away from underneath him again, and he came down hard on his elbow.
“Dean, no,” Sam choked out.
Dean’s head was weighed down with fuzz, with a muggy afternoon in autumn.
“He’s killing you, Sammy,” he growled or muttered into the crook of his arm, and the butt of his gun was twisting itself gently out of his fingers because it wanted to just lie down on the floor for a while, just lie still.
Sam’s long brown fingers clamped around one of the cross-bars of the cage, right next to Gabriel’s free hand, and he didn’t even look at Dean, he was too busy staring into the eyes of the angel who was killing him like he was a heart-breaking puzzle. “No, just,” Dean heard, spat out between clenched teeth as Sam took some of his own weight on his arm. “Just... hold on.”
Then there was a voice, nothing like the sly, laughing, sarcastic pedlar of early spring, scraping through the air: “Animal. See? Just like your precious Bobby and Ellen. Just like you, kid.”
And everything blurred for a minute, just for a minute, until there was a harsh thump-thump and Dean was sitting up with empty hands, and Sam was staggering a bit on his own feet between Dean and the bars.
Dean scrambled forward, grabbing at Sam’s calf, his hip, his arm, patting him over, dragging him back away from the cage, stumbling backwards until they were both of them falling on their asses, to the irritably hoarse sound of “I’m fine Dean, hey, I’m fine.”
Then he was crouching over Sam and snarling at the cage, “What the hell are you playing at, angel?”
Gabriel was sauntering backwards, hips swinging and palms open and innocent, wearing a bitter shit-eating grin. “Just playing the role you shoved on me, Winchester.”
It would have been so very much easier, such a relief right then, just to flip out. To grab his gun and use it, like he would on a dog who’d gone mad, on a monster. Except, to do that he’d have to forget Cas. And Sam’s voice just behind his shoulder, quietly cutting through it all.
“Leave it, Dean. Just leave it. I deserved that. It’s okay.”
And - what the hell had just happened there?
So Dean took a breath, then took another breath, and... surprised himself.
“Cas was grieving over his brother, I’d lay good money on it,” he gritted out, addressing a speck of mouse dirt on the floor. “That ain’t something monsters do, things without souls. And he says there was a reason for the angels turning up here, like it was a battle plan or something. And then there’s you.”
In the taut silence, he chanced a quick look up, caught an impression of Gabriel standing dead square in the centre of his narrow space with his feet solid and braced on the ground and his arms crossed tight over his chest.
“You’re good, you’re damn good, better than anything that just acts human long enough to tear your throat out. Hell, you’re even fun to be around when you ain’t acting like a douche. Only the way you guys act, the people you’ve killed? That sure says monster to me. Something don’t add up. You wanna help us out here?”
“So you’ve had a little revelation, Winchester. Well done.” Gabriel sounded perfectly, carefully bored, but there was a vicious defensive gleam in his eyes that said different. “Now fuck off and let me get back to my oh-so-comfy beauty sleep.”
Sam looked stricken, because he was a soft touch, even with a necklace of freaking finger bruises. “Um. We could get you some blankets, I guess...”
“Save it, angel,” Dean snapped. “You seriously gonna sit there and make like this has nothing to do with you? This is your people I’m talking about here. Your goddamn family, and apparently they are people and not monsters and you’re just gonna sit around and sneer at me?”
“So they’re people,” Gabriel spat, vicious and hoarse. “Not everyone that can think and care wants to be your bestest friend. People are monsters, kid, that’s just the way it is, and if you’re only just figuring that out you’ve led a pretty damn sheltered life.”
“Okay, hey hey heyheyhey.” Sam shoved his way in. “You said you wanted to speak to him, not tear him a new one. And you,” to Gabriel, “stop eyeing off my brother’s throat, y’hear? Okay, everyone, three deep breaths, together.”
Dean’s head was throbbing, sick and giddy. “The hell? Now you’re talking like we just had a bit of a pissing contest over some chick and five beers? He’s an angel, Sam. They want us dead, we want them dead, period.”
Sam threw a pissy face at Dean, the one that said he wasn’t going to back down. “Except for when they’re people. Apparently.”
Gabriel was staring at Sam strangely. Dean glowered at him on principle.
“Gabriel. Look.” Sam turned full on to the angel, hands reaching out like a peace offering and a plea. “Why’d’you come here? I mean, not just this year. Why the whole pedlar gig?”
“Well, it sure ain’t for the accommodation,” Gabriel drawled, sarcastic and refined as if he hadn’t been snarling into Sam’s face two minutes back. “It stinks like sheep shit in here. And of me.”
“Okay, okay.” Sam sounded placating, kind of apologetic, with this weird kernel of frustration under it, and Dean wanted to shout at him but he wasn’t sure what about. “We’ll get you washing water and soap. And... a razor, I guess.”
... Razor. Huh? Something tugged at the edges of Dean’s swooping consciousness.
“Don’t suppose mine hostes benevolentes feel like cleaning up that mess?” The angel nodded towards the end of the press that he’d obviously been using as a midden, grinning darkly, tongue pushed between teeth.
Sam scowled, responding to something Dean hadn’t heard, or maybe the old words that Sam could always follow a hell of a lot better than Dean even when Dean knew which way was up. “Yeah, well, you’re the one who walked into the enemy camp pretending to be something you’re not, so what did you expect?”
... Razor. Stubble. Beard. Cas’ smooth, clean chin. That other angel two weeks back. Every other male angel they’d ever seen, clear and smooth.
“Prisoner of war now, am I?” the angel growled, his smirk too bright and his wings drawn in too tense, too sharp, and the left one was lagging behind the right, stiff and painful. “Don’t you have to call something human before you can declare war on it?”
“Sam.” Dean’s tongue obeyed him sluggishly, but his fingers tugged on Sam’s sleeve okay. “Look at his chin.”
Sam flicked an irritated sort of a look in his direction. “What, Dean?”
“His chin,” Dean mumbled reproachfully. Because, this was suddenly vitally important. “Dude, he’s growing a beard.” Sam blinked, slow and careful. “Angels shave, man!”
For a disturbing moment there, Dean was almost sure Sam and the angel exchanged what the hell is he on looks.
“Razors, Sammy!” Dean pleaded, something deep-shadowed and dangerous opening to yawn right under him, waiting.
Because, because.
To shave you needed a razor, a damn good blade and a damn good edge. And for that you needed a damn good smithy. And a smith. And you didn’t get that just in one generation. You had years, centuries, you had history and you had memory and you had apprentices and books and tradition, and for apprentices you had families and exchanges of money or trust or goods or services or favours, you had investment and education...
“Dean, what, are you drunk?”
Dean stumbled, head thumping sickeningly on the inside.
Smithies.
But humans. Humans made them. And a razor might be stolen, from any of the human towns they could have plundered by now, but, but, Cas’ tunic, the same style as the one he’d always worn (but darker now, camouflage in the night). One piece around the neck and shoulders, then four pieces falling from that, one down the front, one down behind either arm, one down the centre of the back, and the wings came out between them and they didn’t join at the bottom, they were laced and belted into place. Clothes made for angels, not stolen. Fabric, linen, sewing. Trade, or agriculture, or both. Design. Shit. The embroidery on the hem - art.
Dean backed away.
And they weren’t illusions, like a ghoul’s creations. Dean remembered re-sewing Cas’ clothes after a tumble, seeing the same clumsy stitches in them the next day.
If it ain’t shaped human, it ain’t human. You got that, boy?
Except, except...
“... Dean?”
The angel’s throat gaping under his knife. Cas’ brother.
The darkness lurched up to swallow him as all the walls, all the careful walls he’d relied on all his fucking life, came crashing down around him.
The catch of the coarse linen on his fingertips. The little moue of irritation on a young Cas’ mouth whenever anything had disarranged one feather, or two, and Gabriel’s vast wings cramped and matted in that narrow space, so narrow that he could hardly even reach them to groom. The ugly mouth of the wound in Gabriel’s shoulder, the sick-sweet smell of infected flesh from when Tamara had tripped and got a sharp branch through her thigh and died of it, the animal viciousness in Syd’s face when he’d slashed that other angel’s guts to ribbons last year after it had killed Cathy.
Cas’ eyes tonight, bitter and tired, when he’d pressed his thumb into Dean’s throat as if to say, this, this is what we should be doing, Dean, I can’t, where did our choices go? Why are you what you are?
Dean barely made it outside before his stomach turned over and upended itself. Then all he remembered was the too-bright glare of the moon in his eyes and vomiting in the mud, heaving until there was nothing left to bring up and still not stopping.
Gabriel was curled up on the floor with his wings wrapped around him like big cushioned blankets. At least, he was until he caught the creak of the barn door: then he was uncurling into a deliberate lounge against the wall, wings splayed insolently, the better to look sarcastic at them.
Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, R. L. Stevenson, 1886. (Chapter X.)
Caliban: You taught me Language, and my profit on’t [my gain from that]
Is I know how to curse.
The Tempest, William Shakespeare, c. 1611.
Dean shook Sam out of bed. Then he threw his over-sized shoes at his over-sized chest while he was still in the process of sitting up and blinking away the fuzz.
“Clothes, Sam. Now. We’re going to talk to the angel.”
Sam made a sort of protesting “muh?” noise and glared balefully at the dark outside the window.
“Time’s a-ticking, Sammy.”
“Still be there in the morning, Dean,” Sam muttered around a jaw-cracking yawn.
“Yeah, and there’ll be people around in the morning, and I wanna talk to him now.”
It wasn’t until they were halfway back to the barn that Sam woke up enough to ask, “Uh, Dean? Why now? I mean, don’t get me wrong, talking to him’s not a bad idea, but Bobby’s been trying for days and you’ve barely stuck your nose in there. What happened? And what makes you think you can get him talking if Bobby can’t?”
“Cas,” Dean replied shortly.
“Huh?”
“Cas happened, okay?” Dean shot a scowl at Sam’s belt, to avoid meeting his eyes. “He was here, and now he’s not.”
“Holy shit.” Sam sort of froze in place for a minute, then loped after Dean to catch up. “Is he okay? How’s he looking? Did he remember you? Is he married or anything? Is he -” He cut himself off by tripping over one of the shoelaces he hadn’t bothered to do up, and flailed and stumbled for a few paces, because Dean’s little brother was like a cat on a hunt and an overgrown puppy the rest of the time. When he pulled himself together, he aimed the full force of his crinkled-up worried eyes at the side of Dean’s face, the ones Dean could feel without even looking by now. “Hold on, you two didn’t... fight or anything, did you?” You didn’t kill him, did you? Dean heard, half-formed underneath.
“No!” No, he just threatened to strangle me and I killed his brother. “Dude, no, nothing like that. We just... talked,” he trailed off lamely.
“Talked,” Sam deadpanned, in his I-can’t-believe-my-big-brother-is-such-a-loser way.
“Guinevere’s girdle, Sammy, yes. Talked.”
“And that’s what’s got you looking crazed as a dirty dog in flea season.”
“Yes, okay, that’s all we - what? No! I do not.”
“Kinda do, man.” And that was big dopey grin #48.
“Look, screw you, okay? It was... weird as all hell, and he isn’t happy, and it’s all a big steaming mess, so just - drop it, would you?”
“Okay. Okay.”
Only before Dean could push open the barn door Sam reached up and caught at his arm, breaking the fierce rhythm of his stride so that it stuttered into nothing. Then one big hand spread out to press flat over Dean’s heart, the way Sam did sometimes, and his eyes were big and contrite and irresistible. “Just. Why me, Dean?”
Dean eyed the door darkly. “Because the angel likes you.”
Sam scowled. “He doesn’t like me, Dean. That was all him pretending, remember?”
“Well, that’s something else to ask him about then, isn’t it?”
The barn was shaped like one huge pentagon, and the bull press ran all along the inside of one wall, the one that butted onto the stock yard. Most of the time it was just a long walled run, a couple of yards wide, leading from the main pen outside to the smaller sorting pens on the other side or (depending on which gates were open) into the main space of the barn. The bars that formed the inner fence were set deep into the stone of the floor and the immense timber bulwarks of the roof, for strength; but pull the right levers, and shift the right pulleys, and they could be moved in, slotted into a matching set of holes closer in to the wall, or the set after that, or the one after that, until even the medium-sized rams or the larger ewes would have trouble pushing their way through in single file. Then, drop the internal gates in place in front of their noses and behind their tails, and maybe push another loose bar in against their flank if it wasn’t a tight enough fit, and the strongest of bulls could barely even flinch when he lost his balls to the knife.
Right now, with the outer gates firmly bolted and shuttered and warded, and the bars pushed back to their outermost position, the press formed a cage about fifty yards long and three wide. But, you know, that could be changed anytime.
Gabriel was curled up on the floor with his wings wrapped around him like big cushioned blankets. At least, he was until he caught the creak of the barn door: then he was uncurling into a deliberate lounge against the wall, wings splayed insolently, the better to look sarcastic at them.
“Yeah, and that’s another thing,” Dean growled at him by way of a starter. “Why the hell don’t you put those things away? I know you can, and that shit don’t look comfortable in there.”
The angel just cocked one eyebrow, maddeningly polite, and stared at him without comprehension.
Dean swore, very mildly, in his opinion. “Don’t give me that. I’ve had it up to here with this whole angelic I-don’t-understand-squat for one night, okay? You were doing drinking games with my little brother three days ago - don’t you dare play dumb on me now.”
The angel narrowed his eyes, and Dean ploughed right on over him. “So. Angels. What the hell are you? You got names, right? and families that mean shit to you? What are you, then? Monsters or people? ’Cos I gotta tell you, without those wings there you’re as good a fake person as anything I ever saw.”
The angel cocked his head and made a confused little chirruping noise like a sparrow, which Dean might have fallen for if Gabriel hadn’t made the exact same noise when they’d all been drunk and mimicking bird calls the first night he’d got in. Sam huffed at Dean’s side, ridiculous and frustrated, and Gabriel tugged one wing into his lap to poke at it with wide staring eyes, like a chicken completely stymied by a new rock or crate or whatever in its pen.
Fucking mocking them.
Well, fine, if he wanted to play it like that...
“You know an angel by the name of Castiel, by any chance?” The fingers paused, just a flicker of uncertainty, over a patch of broken feathers that were all dull and matted with stable-dirt, but the head didn’t come up. Too careful not to give any tells. Dean gritted his teeth and pressed his advantage. “Well, guess who Chevy and I caught in the feed shed an hour ago?” And, there, a sudden violent bob of the throat as he gulped, the feathers flattening against the skin like a dog’s ears when it cowered, and the bones of the wings pulling in like the sudden clench of fingers. “Yeah, you did know him, huh? How’s about his big brother - neat grey wings and a nasty tongue, the one whose throat I cut last hunt?”
“Dean, back the hell off!” Sam snapped, even as Gabriel snarled hoarse and vicious in his throat and scrabbled back away from the bars to flatten himself against the wall. “What the fuck is he now, some kind of enemy?”
Dean stared. “... Yes, Sam. Yes, that’s exactly what he is. Where the hell have you been the last eight years?”
Sam winced, and squared his shoulders. “Okay, fine. So play fair with someone who can’t fight back, like you always told me.” He turned to the angel in the cage. “Dean didn’t kill that angel tonight, okay? He couldn’t. Dean knew him when we were all kids, they used to hang around together down past old Jim’s farms. The other one, two weeks back, we did kill, after he killed one of ours and had his hands around my throat. Did you know him?”
Hard, terse, fair. Like it was war, not slaughter and the hunt.
Gabriel stayed very still, lounging sluggishly like he could barely move, with his eyes flicking back and forth between them. He was filthy, Dean noticed with a strange irritation. Couple of days’ beard, dusty cobweb caught just behind his left ear, grime on his hands and bare chest, dirt and straw clinging to his pants. Dull incongruous gleam of the engraved iron collar locked around his neck. Dried blood over his left shoulder and matted into the feathers near the base of the wing. That stab wound looked nasty. And he stank, too, just like any person would after so long in a place like this.
“Look. Gabriel.” Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and scowled, using the name deliberately. “I want to listen, I do. Tell me what you wanted here and what your friends are up to and I can help you, honest.”
No answer, just a lowered head and yellow eyes gleaming dangerously from the midst of a mane of tangled hair and stubble gone shaggy.
“I know you’re not just some mindless beast, okay?” Sam pressed, almost gentle; and the angel laughed like a snarl, teeth flashing white in the lantern’s glow.
Dean had to look away for a moment, though he wasn’t really sure why, but Sam went all earnest and pressed in closer to the bars.
“You were born an angel, weren’t you? I mean, it isn’t something you become, like werewights and rugarus and so on?”
Sure, Sammy, all very well being nice and gentle with a spooked horse, but it sure wasn’t getting them anywhere just now.
“Where did the angels come from, huh?” Dean snapped. “What are they doing in our lands?”
Gabriel tilted his head back, bared his face and his teeth to the light and hissed at Dean, vicious and mocking. And, the hell? That was hatred there, in the glint of his eyes, and where the hell did he get off blaming this on Dean?
Dean shoved forward, close against the bars, snarling right at him. “They came here for a reason, chuckles, and we ain’t it, so what the hell is it? How do we stop them?”
Then Gabriel reacted.
It was all of a sudden, all a flurry of motion, limbs and feathers and gleaming teeth, and the sneaky son of a bitch can’t have been that out of it after all because a fist connected with Dean’s cheekbone hard enough to send him sprawling and the room spinning and tilting, and Sam yelled something then it was cut off all strangled and shitshitshit. Dean rolled, limbs so sluggish and the world too far away, but there was his gun under his hand and thank shit that hadn’t gone off. Took him three tries to get it out, then he half pitched over when he tried to get up on his knees, and Sam wasn’t standing where he had been, and - hell.
Gabriel was halfway up the fence, clinging to the cross-bars like a squirrel, wings spread vast and dark behind him, and his free hand was clenched around Sam’s throat. Sam was red-faced, hands locked around the angel’s wrist and tendons straining, feet kicking in the air more than a yard off the ground, scrabbling for purchase on the bars. Their faces were inches apart, and the angel’s was locked in a horrible rictus of a snarl.
The pistol wove and dipped in Dean’s hand, refusing to hold a straight course, and Dean barked “Drop him!” just to stall while he tried to get lined up for a straight shot, tried to blink the blurring away, but dammit, Sam’s gigantean body was masking almost all of Gabriel’s and hitting the wings would only hurt right now, not kill, not disable, and he wasn’t about to piss an angel off any more when it had its hand around his brother’s throat.
Then the floor tipped and slid away from underneath him again, and he came down hard on his elbow.
“Dean, no,” Sam choked out.
Dean’s head was weighed down with fuzz, with a muggy afternoon in autumn.
“He’s killing you, Sammy,” he growled or muttered into the crook of his arm, and the butt of his gun was twisting itself gently out of his fingers because it wanted to just lie down on the floor for a while, just lie still.
Sam’s long brown fingers clamped around one of the cross-bars of the cage, right next to Gabriel’s free hand, and he didn’t even look at Dean, he was too busy staring into the eyes of the angel who was killing him like he was a heart-breaking puzzle. “No, just,” Dean heard, spat out between clenched teeth as Sam took some of his own weight on his arm. “Just... hold on.”
Then there was a voice, nothing like the sly, laughing, sarcastic pedlar of early spring, scraping through the air: “Animal. See? Just like your precious Bobby and Ellen. Just like you, kid.”
And everything blurred for a minute, just for a minute, until there was a harsh thump-thump and Dean was sitting up with empty hands, and Sam was staggering a bit on his own feet between Dean and the bars.
Dean scrambled forward, grabbing at Sam’s calf, his hip, his arm, patting him over, dragging him back away from the cage, stumbling backwards until they were both of them falling on their asses, to the irritably hoarse sound of “I’m fine Dean, hey, I’m fine.”
Then he was crouching over Sam and snarling at the cage, “What the hell are you playing at, angel?”
Gabriel was sauntering backwards, hips swinging and palms open and innocent, wearing a bitter shit-eating grin. “Just playing the role you shoved on me, Winchester.”
It would have been so very much easier, such a relief right then, just to flip out. To grab his gun and use it, like he would on a dog who’d gone mad, on a monster. Except, to do that he’d have to forget Cas. And Sam’s voice just behind his shoulder, quietly cutting through it all.
“Leave it, Dean. Just leave it. I deserved that. It’s okay.”
And - what the hell had just happened there?
So Dean took a breath, then took another breath, and... surprised himself.
“Cas was grieving over his brother, I’d lay good money on it,” he gritted out, addressing a speck of mouse dirt on the floor. “That ain’t something monsters do, things without souls. And he says there was a reason for the angels turning up here, like it was a battle plan or something. And then there’s you.”
In the taut silence, he chanced a quick look up, caught an impression of Gabriel standing dead square in the centre of his narrow space with his feet solid and braced on the ground and his arms crossed tight over his chest.
“You’re good, you’re damn good, better than anything that just acts human long enough to tear your throat out. Hell, you’re even fun to be around when you ain’t acting like a douche. Only the way you guys act, the people you’ve killed? That sure says monster to me. Something don’t add up. You wanna help us out here?”
“So you’ve had a little revelation, Winchester. Well done.” Gabriel sounded perfectly, carefully bored, but there was a vicious defensive gleam in his eyes that said different. “Now fuck off and let me get back to my oh-so-comfy beauty sleep.”
Sam looked stricken, because he was a soft touch, even with a necklace of freaking finger bruises. “Um. We could get you some blankets, I guess...”
“Save it, angel,” Dean snapped. “You seriously gonna sit there and make like this has nothing to do with you? This is your people I’m talking about here. Your goddamn family, and apparently they are people and not monsters and you’re just gonna sit around and sneer at me?”
“So they’re people,” Gabriel spat, vicious and hoarse. “Not everyone that can think and care wants to be your bestest friend. People are monsters, kid, that’s just the way it is, and if you’re only just figuring that out you’ve led a pretty damn sheltered life.”
“Okay, hey hey heyheyhey.” Sam shoved his way in. “You said you wanted to speak to him, not tear him a new one. And you,” to Gabriel, “stop eyeing off my brother’s throat, y’hear? Okay, everyone, three deep breaths, together.”
Dean’s head was throbbing, sick and giddy. “The hell? Now you’re talking like we just had a bit of a pissing contest over some chick and five beers? He’s an angel, Sam. They want us dead, we want them dead, period.”
Sam threw a pissy face at Dean, the one that said he wasn’t going to back down. “Except for when they’re people. Apparently.”
Gabriel was staring at Sam strangely. Dean glowered at him on principle.
“Gabriel. Look.” Sam turned full on to the angel, hands reaching out like a peace offering and a plea. “Why’d’you come here? I mean, not just this year. Why the whole pedlar gig?”
“Well, it sure ain’t for the accommodation,” Gabriel drawled, sarcastic and refined as if he hadn’t been snarling into Sam’s face two minutes back. “It stinks like sheep shit in here. And of me.”
“Okay, okay.” Sam sounded placating, kind of apologetic, with this weird kernel of frustration under it, and Dean wanted to shout at him but he wasn’t sure what about. “We’ll get you washing water and soap. And... a razor, I guess.”
... Razor. Huh? Something tugged at the edges of Dean’s swooping consciousness.
“Don’t suppose mine hostes benevolentes feel like cleaning up that mess?” The angel nodded towards the end of the press that he’d obviously been using as a midden, grinning darkly, tongue pushed between teeth.
Sam scowled, responding to something Dean hadn’t heard, or maybe the old words that Sam could always follow a hell of a lot better than Dean even when Dean knew which way was up. “Yeah, well, you’re the one who walked into the enemy camp pretending to be something you’re not, so what did you expect?”
... Razor. Stubble. Beard. Cas’ smooth, clean chin. That other angel two weeks back. Every other male angel they’d ever seen, clear and smooth.
“Prisoner of war now, am I?” the angel growled, his smirk too bright and his wings drawn in too tense, too sharp, and the left one was lagging behind the right, stiff and painful. “Don’t you have to call something human before you can declare war on it?”
“Sam.” Dean’s tongue obeyed him sluggishly, but his fingers tugged on Sam’s sleeve okay. “Look at his chin.”
Sam flicked an irritated sort of a look in his direction. “What, Dean?”
“His chin,” Dean mumbled reproachfully. Because, this was suddenly vitally important. “Dude, he’s growing a beard.” Sam blinked, slow and careful. “Angels shave, man!”
For a disturbing moment there, Dean was almost sure Sam and the angel exchanged what the hell is he on looks.
“Razors, Sammy!” Dean pleaded, something deep-shadowed and dangerous opening to yawn right under him, waiting.
Because, because.
To shave you needed a razor, a damn good blade and a damn good edge. And for that you needed a damn good smithy. And a smith. And you didn’t get that just in one generation. You had years, centuries, you had history and you had memory and you had apprentices and books and tradition, and for apprentices you had families and exchanges of money or trust or goods or services or favours, you had investment and education...
“Dean, what, are you drunk?”
Dean stumbled, head thumping sickeningly on the inside.
Smithies.
But humans. Humans made them. And a razor might be stolen, from any of the human towns they could have plundered by now, but, but, Cas’ tunic, the same style as the one he’d always worn (but darker now, camouflage in the night). One piece around the neck and shoulders, then four pieces falling from that, one down the front, one down behind either arm, one down the centre of the back, and the wings came out between them and they didn’t join at the bottom, they were laced and belted into place. Clothes made for angels, not stolen. Fabric, linen, sewing. Trade, or agriculture, or both. Design. Shit. The embroidery on the hem - art.
Dean backed away.
And they weren’t illusions, like a ghoul’s creations. Dean remembered re-sewing Cas’ clothes after a tumble, seeing the same clumsy stitches in them the next day.
If it ain’t shaped human, it ain’t human. You got that, boy?
Except, except...
“... Dean?”
The angel’s throat gaping under his knife. Cas’ brother.
The darkness lurched up to swallow him as all the walls, all the careful walls he’d relied on all his fucking life, came crashing down around him.
The catch of the coarse linen on his fingertips. The little moue of irritation on a young Cas’ mouth whenever anything had disarranged one feather, or two, and Gabriel’s vast wings cramped and matted in that narrow space, so narrow that he could hardly even reach them to groom. The ugly mouth of the wound in Gabriel’s shoulder, the sick-sweet smell of infected flesh from when Tamara had tripped and got a sharp branch through her thigh and died of it, the animal viciousness in Syd’s face when he’d slashed that other angel’s guts to ribbons last year after it had killed Cathy.
Cas’ eyes tonight, bitter and tired, when he’d pressed his thumb into Dean’s throat as if to say, this, this is what we should be doing, Dean, I can’t, where did our choices go? Why are you what you are?
Dean barely made it outside before his stomach turned over and upended itself. Then all he remembered was the too-bright glare of the moon in his eyes and vomiting in the mud, heaving until there was nothing left to bring up and still not stopping.