March-Stalkers Mighty: 4/22
Passus II: Pes sinister.
He walked until his thoughts were quiet, just the murmur of the wild marches and the wuthering of the wind around the rocky heights to keep him company. Sticking to the good paths, the well-trodden ones, where there might be monsters but at least there wouldn’t be any old spells or traps from who-knows-when just lying around to snag his feet. Just the long ribbon of the path ahead and behind, uncurling, merging and splitting and vanishing and reappearing under the steady thud of his feet.
Scarcely had the monk set foot outside the monastery when he came upon a dragon, his jaws wide open and ready to devour him. ‘Quick! Quick!’ he cried. ‘This dragon is going to devour me!’ The monks hurried to help him, but could find no dragon anywhere, so they took him back, shivering and shaking with terror, to the monastery, and he promised faithfully never to leave again.
Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend), Jacobus de Voragine, c. 1265, trans. Stace 1998. (The story of Saint Benedict.)
Two weeks after that, Dean begged off of the next hunt.
That was a mistake. Sammy didn’t come back from it.
The dogs had been kind of subdued for a while. Quiet. Rufus figured it was just having an angel around, so close - confused them, he thought, that smell mingling with the smell of home. Dean just agreed, even though the dogs had known and liked Gabriel, because he was too busy thinking about other things.
He went out a few times, on his own. Careful, of course, but it was stupid anyway, and he knew it. Just. Everything inside the walls seemed kind of stifling all of a sudden - voices, smells, colours, all dinning in on him and filling his thoughts and his lungs with noise. And it had been years since the little oak grove had felt quiet and distant enough to shut out everyone’s thoughts but his own.
He walked until his thoughts were quiet, just the murmur of the wild marches and the wuthering of the wind around the rocky heights to keep him company. Sticking to the good paths, the well-trodden ones, where there might be monsters but at least there wouldn’t be any old spells or traps from who-knows-when just lying around to snag his feet. Just the long ribbon of the path ahead and behind, uncurling, merging and splitting and vanishing and reappearing under the steady thud of his feet.
And if he kept a sharp eye out for a brush of dark feathers against the sky at the edge of his vision, or the slow pound of wing beats almost too low for the ear to catch... well, he’d’ve been a damn fool not to be on guard, right?
Sam didn’t even try to come with him.
Sam had only followed him out of the barn that night for long enough to make sure Dean wasn’t dying or something. Then he’d made Dean promise to go to bed, and dived back inside all bright-eyed and bit-chomping to keep on with his freaking philosophy debate with the angel, or whatever. Like this was just interesting, and not... not something that ripped up everything, something that couldn’t be fixed.
He hadn’t come home for three hours.
Dean kind of suspected Sam’d been back there more than once in the days since, too. He carefully overlooked the bits and pieces that went missing from around the house. That shirt had been too small for Dean for over a year, since his shoulders had started filling out more, and they hadn’t been using that third wash basin anyway. And it was too warm at this time of year for the extra blankets.
Dean didn’t go near the barn, though.
So, all things considered, he really didn’t feel like following the hounds just now. Even if it wasn’t an angel that they flushed out.
Sam insisted on going though, forehead all crumped and stern, looming like a determined tree or something. Some days Dean just didn’t understand how his brother’s mind worked.
So of course, that was when the angels decided to wise up. And what the hunters came back with wasn’t Sam.
First Dean knew about it was when three runners came stumbling back home, bleeding and stunned, to say there’d be two funeral pyres needed tonight. Maybe more, because most of the hunters were hurt one way or another, and some were lost, or had been when the runners had left to carry the news back. But Bill and Isaac were already gone.
And no one seemed to know exactly what had happened. Chasing an angel, yes, fine, and then another angel, and maybe more, only angels never came to help each other, not once the pack was in full cry. And then, darkness at midday, smoke and fog all of a sudden, and the confused whimpers of the dogs, and everyone separated, and screams and snarls that no one could quite identify, coming from anywhere and everywhere like the world was spinning. And then when the darkness began to lift, confusion and panic, and at least two hunters dead, and others lying groaning at the bottoms of rocky slopes or tripped over logs or mired in the marshes.
“Sam?” Dean demanded, and then again when the first of the wounded began trickling back, but no one had seen him. And, dammit, Dean had chosen to stay at home.
Dean worked anyway, fiercely, bandaging and stitching and splinting and doing crowd control on panicked kids and worried dogs, even while he kept every sense straining toward the gate, just waiting. Because any minute now Sam was gonna come loping through there looking all stricken and maybe a bit bloodied up but fine, nothing wrong with him that couldn’t be fixed.
Nothing. And nothing. And a whole shitload of dammit come on Sammy nothing.
Then Ellen and Jo were there, Ellen grim and paler than Dean had ever seen her, Jo looking so young but hard and brittle, and Bill carried in to lie still and bloody on their table. Then out of nowhere, Bobby, grim too and looking as freaked-out as it was possible for Bobby to look, coming up behind Dean to close a painful grip around his arm and hiss at him, “Get to the barn, lock all the doors, and make damn sure you get all the spare keys. Meet me in my cabin quick as you can. Go, boy!”
“Sam?”
Bobby scowled at him, and something in his face scooped out the insides of Dean’s stomach and replaced them with something cold and goopy.
“Just do it.”
Out across the yard, quick, and down the street with Chevy clinging to his heels like a scolded shadow. Slamming the doors to the barn, not looking inside, pocketing the keys (hardly ever used, hardly ever needed), then around by the smithy to lift the spare set. Then to Bobby’s place, familiar and homely, with its smell of old books and whiskey.
Bobby wasn’t there.
Dean paced, back and forth between the narrow kitchen and the living-room-cum-bedroom. Chevy gave him one doleful look and crept over to the rug in front of the empty hearth, where some big tawny dog Dean didn’t know was lying. She tried to sniff noses with it, but it wasn’t having any, just kept on giving Dean a wary look, so she curled up against its side because she was really bad at taking no for an answer when she wanted cuddles. Dean would have felt kinda bad - she’d probably seen some pretty worrying crap today - but he wasn’t exactly in any shape to be reassuring anyone else right now.
The heavy thud-thud-thud-scrape of his boot heels jarred straight back into the middle of his chest and shook it up into something that felt very young and terrified.
He’d seen Dad die, and not been able to do a damn thing to stop it. If Sammy... and Dean hadn’t been there because he’d been having some stupid pacifist crisis...
Not possible. Bobby would have said right out. Wouldn’t he?
The strange dog just wouldn’t relax, kept staring at Dean’s feet with these big soulful brown eyes like it hadn’t eaten for a week and Dean was holding a nice big steak just out of its reach. And where had Bobby gone and got himself another dog from anyway?
The scratch and click of the door latch dragged Dean straight around mid-stride. He was halfway across the room and belligerent before Bobby had got all the way inside.
“What the hell, Bobby?”
Bobby eyeballed him, pushed right past and shook out his coat, making straight for the whiskey. “Sit.”
“Where’s Sam?” Dean demanded.
“Sam’s alive and in a helluva better state than a lot of folk out there. Siddown.”
Dean’s legs kind of folded under him a bit, but he’d meant to sit down anyway because it was quicker to get things out of Bobby if you went along with it. The old sofa creaked in protest under the sudden weight.
“Where is he?”
Bobby turned around and silently held out a double shot. Dean looked at it, then back at Bobby.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Bobby cocked a stern eyebrow at him. Dean made a face and drank, because sometimes it was best not to argue. Bobby eyed the rest of the bottle consideringly, shrugged, and took a swig himself.
“Okay, first. Sam’s alive. He ain’t injured, he’s got all his limbs -” There was a sort of a huff from the other dog, who had got up and was standing closer than Dean had expected, but Bobby just tossed a glare over at it - “shaddup you, I’m telling this” - hold on, what? - “and he’s in his own mind. Just not... you know... in his own body.”
Dean... was missing something.
Bobby gave him a meaningful look, jerked his head toward the dog, and took another swig.
... What?
Something was screaming inside Dean’s head.
His head dragged very slowly around to stare, like a heavy boat being hauled around against the current. The dog stared back. Shaggy and woebegone and big beseeching eyes, and... the way it was looking at him.
“Bobby...” The plea broke and scraped in his throat.
“Lotta old tricks and traps and curses around out there just waiting to be sprung,” Bobby said in a careful monotone, completely failing to deny what couldn’t be true. “Kind of easy to put a foot wrong when you can’t see what you’re doing.”
“No. That -” Dean lifted a hand that was definitely not trembling to point, to block out the sight of it from his eyes. His voice came out violent and too loud. “That is not my brother.”
The dog flinched, hard, like he’d struck it across the face with a horsewhip. Then it just drooped, ears and head and tail and its goddamned fur, and that look in its eyes, that look that he’d sworn he’d never put on Sam’s face again, that one that said that he’d always known he’d never be good enough, never be normal...
“... Shit.”
“He can scratch his name in the dirt if you want convincing,” Bobby drawled, somewhere on the edge of the dinning in Dean’s ears.
Dean’s tongue was all big and clumsy in his mouth, and felt like it was covered in flour or something.
“Okay. Okay,” he managed, very reasonably. Then he reached out, wobbling a little, put down the shot glass, and stood up. Five steps, across the room. Two cupboard doors, because what he wanted wasn’t behind the first he opened. One stack of six bowls, just the right size. One bowl, one bottle lifted from Bobby’s hand as he came back, three good-sized glugs of whiskey into the bowl - and the dog (Sam) was halfway into a sorry little crouch, like a pup who doesn’t know if it’s getting the stick or the silent treatment. Dean rolled his eyes at him and plonked the bowl down in front of his brother’s great big hairy feet.
“Okay. So. We’ll fix it. Right, Bobby?”
Huh. He’d never seen a dog roll its eyes before. Only that was exactly Sam’s sweet lord my brother is a useless idiot face with a side of but I guess I’ll keep him anyway as his haunches sank down all relieved to rest on the floor, and - Sam had haunches. This was so very screwed up.
Dean slumped down in the chair again before his knees gave out on him.
“Never seen anything like it,” Bobby muttered non-committally under his hat. “Some kind of smoke bomb, only it was fog and darkness, with panic in it. Hell of a way to throw someone off your tail.”
Sam harrumphed, and put his head down on his paws (his paws!).
Dean tried to focus, because this was what they did when things went wrong. They backtracked, they worked out what had gone wrong, they niggled at all the weird bits, until they figured it out. Then they fixed it.
“Okay, so. You were chasing an angel, yeah? And they were already acting weird, because there were more of them than usual, and they led you into a trap?”
“That’s about the shape of it.” Bobby sighed, and eyed the bottle wistfully. “Is it just me or are those angels getting a hell of a lot more organised lately?”
Which. Yes. Now he mentioned it, definitely. Except that kind of wasn’t the problem here. It was that they could. No angel ever came back to help another angel once they were caught in the hounds’ voices. They’d always assumed it was because they were monsters and monsters didn’t care, but of course, there wasn’t any way for angel two to get angel one out of there without getting snagged too.
... And yeah, okay, if angels did actually care about each other at all, that’d have to suck.
Something suspicious niggled in the back of Dean’s head.
“But what about the dogs?”
“Oh, they were making their usual din. Just didn’t do squat. Seems like the angels have gone and made themselves immune.”
Which would be the first thing Dean would do if he were in charge. If it was his family on the line.
“... Or the dogs are just ordinary dogs all of a sudden.”
He could hear that little suspicion solidifying into clarity and anger in his own voice. Looked at Sam (flinched, couldn’t help it) and saw the same realisation growing there, a beat behind Dean maybe. Because. Dean was an idiot. Had it really taken him this long to ask himself what the hell Cas had been doing in their feed sheds?
Organisation. Yes, dammit. They’d never seen Cas around before, and suddenly he was here and the angels were acting differently, and that’s exactly what he would do, take charge and get clever and sneaky then take the delicate risky business onto himself because he wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it right. And of course, he knew so much better than any other angel just what was inside the walls...
Dean swore at himself, kind of loudly, and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Bobby, I. Er.” His gaze decided to creep away from Bobby and fasten itself onto a nice dusty corner of the room. “There was an angel got in two weeks back. I found him in the feed shed. Standing right by the dogs’ food, too.”
The room was very quiet for a minute. Then Bobby, all careful restraint and how-on-earth-did-I-get-landed-with-these-idjts, “And why in the name of your daddy’s little blue balls didn’t you mention it, boy?”
“I didn’t think he’d...” Dean’s mutter died out, half-born. Because, what the hell could he say? Didn’t think Cas would do something like that? Didn’t think he was dangerous? Didn’t think anyone else needed to know that angels had figured out how to get in? Didn’t think about the fact that Cas was an enemy, even when Cas had rubbed it in his face?
“... Aw, crap.”
“You didn’t think,” Bobby supplied flatly. Dean could feel those sharp old eyes boring into the side of his face, considering. Noticing.
There was too much mess inside Dean right now that he really, really didn’t want anyone to be looking at. Even Bobby. He looked away, looked at Sam, at the price of being all naïve and stupid.
“No.” The scrape of his voice hurt the inside of his throat. “I really didn’t.”
“You know about this?” Bobby threw resignedly over at Sam, like he already knew the answer.
Sam sort of cringed and sank down onto the floor looking all droopy, with his eyes fixed sheepishly on Bobby. Apparently he was even worse at playing dumb as a dog than he was when he was all gangly and giraffe-shaped.
Bobby just sighed. “Idjits.”
Dean poured himself another shot without looking up.
There was a creak and a rustle as Bobby levered himself to his feet, then the sound of him pulling his coat back on. “I told anyone that asked that Sam was trying to work out what happened to that angel we winged,” he said, shortly, more tired than angry. Dean’s gut did the whole guilty twisting thing that was getting far too familiar. “No one’s gonna bother asking for another day or two. Buys us some time.”
And Dean heard all the warnings under there. If people find out. If we can’t fix this quick enough. If words like shifter and werewight start being tossed around...
Werehound, huh?
You want it, or should I kill it?
Dean looked up into Sam’s wide (deep, soft, Sam-like) eyes, and decided, very clearly and firmly, that that was not going to happen.
“Thanks, Bobby.”
Bobby stood there for a moment like he was going to say something else. But he didn’t, and Dean didn’t look at him; so after a minute, the door clicked quietly shut behind him.
Sam eyed his bowl darkly, then settled down to steady it between his paws. Before the big grizzled muzzle could touch the liquor, his eyes crossed, and he sneezed violently.
Huh. Fumes plus sensitive nose. Go figure.
Dean stretched out one foot to shove at Sam’s shoulder. “Lightweight.”
It was a numb, hopeless sort of teasing; but it made Sam look up at him and make an amused and tolerant kind of a huff, so it wasn’t all bad.
Dean tossed back his shot then slid off the chair, slid down onto the floor with his back to the chair and one knee shoved up against his brother’s big warm side.
“Hey,” he muttered to his boot. “We’ll fix it.”
Sam made a grumbling sort of a noise, and lapped messily at the bowl. Then he stopped and glared at it. Apparently working out how to curl your tongue properly took some work.
“You got whiskey all over your chin,” Dean pointed out helpfully.
Sam turned the glare on him. Then there was a clatter as the bowl was overturned and Dean had a lap full of big, heavy dog and whiskers in his mouth and Sam was rubbing his dripping muzzle all over Dean’s face. Dean yelped and shoved, got one arm around his neck and the sloppy tongue away from his face long enough to protest “Dude, gross!”, then he was being trampled under enormous dog feet and had no breath to spare from wrestling his obnoxious little brother back off of him.
It was sort of startling, between shoving his shoulder up against Sam’s chest to throw him off balance and finding it didn’t really work when he had four paws, and tumbling down on top of him and trying to pin him, and getting rolled over in a clumsy twist that felt like it should have involved hands that weren’t there, and getting the breath punched out of his stomach by a misplaced paw, and working out how much easier it was to get Sam in a headlock now he couldn’t reach back to grab Dean’s arm (and completely failed at using his mouth to grab things like a real dog would), to realise that Dean was actually almost laughing. Breathless between shoves, and kind of hysterical, sure, and more than a little bitter, but it was there.
And Sam was here, and... and it could so easily have been a hell of a lot worse.
Dean hooked one arm around Sam’s neck and pressed their foreheads together and just breathed, just for a minute. He felt Sam’s breath slow against him, felt the tension leak out of him together with the quiet, uncontrollable trembling that had been creeping through Sam’s body maybe ever since this thing had happened; and he just sat there for a bit, listening to the sound of his brother’s heart, willing it with each beat to keep going, to let him hear the next one, and then the next, and the next.
He wasn’t sure how long it was before he pulled back, sat up. Sam’s eyes were fixed on the floor, and he didn’t look up as Dean reached behind his own head and untied the cord that he never untied.
“Hey,” Dean said, startled by the croak that was his own voice. “Hey, heads up.”
Sam glanced up with a wariness that shouldn’t have hurt but did; then his eyes went wide and anxious when he saw what Dean was holding, and hell but he was transparent when he was wearing an animal that did all its talking with the language of its whole body.
“I’m not,” Dean began to protest, because how in hell could he possibly throw this away, but, well, his voice was a mess right now and. Actions louder and all that.
He reached out, and carefully fastened the amulet around Sam’s shaggy neck.
“Think you could use it more than me right now,” he offered, when the silence stretched out a bit too long.
Sam wrinkled up his nose and gave Dean that look that he was pretty sure meant “jerk,” but he looked a little bit happier. Dean was about to say “bitch” back when he realised that, uh, no, so instead he just sort of mussed up Sam’s ears instead of his hair and grinned weakly. “Dude, your ears are freakishly floppy.”
Sam gave him a long-suffering look. Then he sat back, so there was a bit of carpet between them, and jiggled one paw to get Dean’s attention. After a quick glance to make sure Dean was watching, he laboriously described a nice big arc in the air, almost a whole circle, then looked up expectantly.
Dean felt his forehead furrow. “Huh?”
Sam rolled his eyes. Then a different shape: two lines, leaning towards each other, then a horizontal line slashing across them. Like - oh!
“A? C, A?”
Sam nodded, then made another letter, an unmistakeably serpentine one, and looked up at Dean quizzically.
Dean’s stomach sank.
“I don’t know, Sammy. I really don’t. I mean, it’s not like we had time for some big heart-to-heart. Hell, he was busy trying to make out like he couldn’t speak at all, even after he had, but...”
Cas’ eyes, tired and blue and sort of fondly impatient. But hell, all those regrets there...
No apology, but regrets.
And no matter what happened, Dean really couldn’t blame him for it, because he had no idea how far he’d go to protect his own family. And sometimes that terrified him.
Dean scrubbed his hand over his mouth, looked over at Chevy all healthy and comfortable on the mat, and regretted for a moment leaving the bottle out of reach on the table. “He coulda killed them, Sam. It’s gotta be easier finding a simple poison than working out exactly how we got the dogs juiced up then figuring how to reverse it. He could have killed them, and he went out of his way not to.”
Which was something, wasn’t it? Just... “Hell,” he muttered. “Why couldn’t he have come and talked to us earlier? Before it all got this bad?”
Sam eyed him, sad and impatient at once, and why did people keep looking at him like that? The sort of look that said Because someone would have shot him anyway. Idiot.
And it hurt, but the only thing Dean could do was to look away and sigh, “Yeah. Guess you’re right about that.”
Except. Something was niggling again. Something about working out how to power down the dogs. Because. That would be stupid, and impractical, and he knew Cas, or he had once. Family’s lives on the line, and did you waste time going over a way to save the lives of the dogs that were their weaknesses if you didn’t already have a lead on it? And who knew about the dogs, and - shit.
Sam was cursed. Sam was cursed by angel magic, goddammit. Dean was far too slow.
“Bobby. I need the keys.”
Bobby stepped out of the semi-circle of tired and grief-grey faces standing around uselessly outside the Roadhouse, and looked him up and down.
“Hell no you don’t,” he said decisively.
“Why the hell not? I need to talk to the angel!”
“Why d’you think I made you lock the place down?” Bobby growled. “He may be an angel but he’s my responsibility. I’m not standing for a bunch of hot-heads storming in there to take what went down today out of his ass.”
Dean spun away and back again, boot heels jamming agitatedly into the dirt. “Dammit, Bobby, don’t you get it? If anyone can fix Sam it’ll be him!”
“Don’t give me those big doe-eyes, boy.” Bobby narrowed his eyes into his I-will-not-be-moved face. “You think I hadn’t already got a little chat lined up for tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” Dean stared at him, then looked over at the hunched, miserable shape of Sam, hovering just out of the light, where he could be any other dog at all.
Bobby followed his gaze, and slumped. “Fine. Not a lot we can do for anyone here anyway. But I’m coming with you, and you’re handing over your gun and your knife before you get through that door.”
“Bobby,” Dean growled. “I’m not gonna shoot the guy when he’s locked in a freaking cage.”
Bobby completely failed to look impressed. “Uh-huh. And if it weren’t Sam on the line, and this weren’t the guy that can rile you up like no one’s business even when you think he’s human, I just might have bought that.”
Gabriel must have been able to hear the commotion, because he was already on his feet and pacing. He still had his wings out; but this time they were folded neatly at his back instead of spread wide, more like a coat than some animal’s defensive ruff. Of course, that meant they were folded over one of Dean’s old shirts, which must have been slashed at the back to slip over them.
... Dean had more important things to be pissed about than that. And Dean was being polite.
The angel’s eyes slid derisively over Dean, over Bobby, then snagged oddly on Sam’s long, shaggy form. Dean moved to stand in front of him.
“Gabriel,” he stated flatly, through a clenched jaw. “How’re you doing?”
It sounded stupid. Judging by the squinty face Gabriel made at him, he wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“Wow. That hurt?”
Dean glowered. “Bite me.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows climbed sarcastically. “Okay then. My shoulder’s fucking sore, and I’m locked in an animal pen. Next question?”
Then Dean saw the small pile of books behind Gabriel’s bare foot. Specifically, the one on top. The sketchbook. The one from the third summer, where Dean had got obsessed with trying to catch that secret little half-smile that Cas did when he thought no one was looking. No one but Dean and Cas and Sammy were ever allowed to know about those books.
“Wait. Where the hell did you get -” Oh. How else.
Dean whipped around to glare at Sam, who had the grace to look sheepish. Except there wasn’t really anything he could say, not with Bobby there, not when there were more important things they had to do. Not when Sam was looking all apologetic and sad at him. So he had to make do with an explosive, “Dammit, Sammy!”
Gabriel whistled soft and maddening behind him. “Well, well. Ain’t that just... precious?”
Dean rounded on him. The angel’s eyes were fixed on Sam, and there was an ironic curve to his mouth that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Don’t start, okay? Please. Just - not now.” Gabriel blinked and refocused on him, eyes honey-dark and alien. “Look. Did you know anything about what was going down today?”
The angel’s face slipped back into its half-savage mask of disdain, the one where he pretended he couldn’t speak. “Wrong question, Winchester.”
“Okay, fine.” Dean made himself breathe smoothly, sound rational. “You’re the go-to guy for these dogs, right? Did you know what the angels had planned with them?”
“Not exactly been in the loop these last ten years, sweetheart,” Gabriel shot back. “Been kind of busy, you know, not being an angel.”
“Seems like one of your lot dosed up the dogs,” Bobby put in, cutting steady and firm over the panicked fury clawing its way up Dean’s chest. “Took their mojo away, then turned the tables on us pretty bad out there today. That something that just any angel would know how to do?”
Gabriel’s mouth curled, a bit shaky. “Yeah? Good on the plucky little guys.”
“Dragon’s blood, Gabriel.” Because. There was bitterness in there, and something too sharp and vicious to be only resentment. Had Gabriel been sitting in the Roadhouse with them for years, laughing with them and hating them the whole time? “Were you always this much of a dick, and we were just too dense to notice?”
“Hey.” Gabriel stepped back, swept his arms and his wings sarcastically wide to encompass the whole of the room, the whole of his cage (and Dean couldn’t help noticing how stiffly the left wing still moved). “Might have escaped your notice, hot shot, but I’m not really feeling like one of the team right now.”
Dean felt some last vestige of ‘cool and rational’ snap. He didn’t mourn it. “So, what, that’s it? Your feelings are hurt so you’re gonna just leave Sam as he is?”
Gabriel stared. Then he laughed, sharp and hard. “Wait. Wait. That’s what this is about? You’re asking for my help?”
“You see anyone else in here who might have a clue about angel magic?” Dean snarled.
“Huh. Right.” Gabriel’s smirk was jagged and wild. “Thought we’d get to this part sooner or later. Have to say, Singer, I expected it to be sooner.” Wait, what? “I mean, all those books, all that obscure knowledge? Not the sort of thing you get without bringing out the knives and thumbscrews pretty damn regular.”
Dean felt abruptly sick.
Okay, so he’d helped Bobby with that on some captive things, when they had to. Was never fun, but hell, if it was that or a human life... but on Gabriel? Seriously? What made him think they’d threaten him with that to -
“No,” he blurted out, before Bobby could speak. “No, I just thought you might -”
Only, might what? Care? And why the hell would Gabriel care about any of them by now? even the kid with the goofy smile and the earnest scowl who brought him blankets and freaking books when everyone else was carefully pretending he was dead?
He looked down at Sam’s frustrated, impatient pacing, and set his jaw. “You know what? Forget it. I should’ve known you’d be like this. I mean, what else would you say but screw you guys, screw eight years of knowing you all, just when we could really use your help?”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. Then he shoved forward, wings bristling and half-mantled, hands locking around the bars so tight they half looked like they might think about bending, and snarled right back into Dean’s face, “Listen to me, you arrogant dick. I’m not the one who decided I’m the enemy here, okay? You got one whiff and you stuck a knife in me. If you had asked - if any of you had ever asked - I would have told you. We could have talked it all out like civilised adults. Swapped life stories like best bros over a beer.”
Then he smirked, hard and suave, and stepped back, letting go of the bars and spreading his hands ironically wide.
“But, hey. Not my call.”
“Okay,” Bobby interjected like the voice of reason, like everyone else in the room was all of two years old and throwing toys at the wall. “So why are you talking now and you wouldn’t before?”
Gabriel cut him a dark look. “Because these two jokers get on my fucking nerves.”
“Gabriel.” Dean swallowed pride and the hitch in his voice, and tried again. “Please. He’s...” My brother. My everything. Something like a friend to you once, maybe. “... Sam.”
The angel stared at him, long and hard. Then he looked at Sam, who was standing off to the side, head hanging low, ears and tail sagging.
Gabriel sighed, stuck his hands in his pockets, and fixed his gaze on the distant wall. “I can’t.”
“What do you want?” Dean pleaded. “Gabriel, tell me what you want and I’ll do it for you. Anything. Just -”
“Don’t say anything to a monster, you muttonhead,” Gabriel snapped. “And I can’t. Even if it is an angel thing, which it mightn’t be.”
“Why the hell not?”
Gabriel gave him a withering look. “Hello? Trickster. I never learned how. Ran away and started playing human when I was eighteen. How many complex arcane angel secrets do you think I know?”
Dean gulped, past the swollen burn in his eyes and throat. “Please, Gabriel. Please, could you just - try?”
Gabriel shook his head and tipped his head back, like he was imploring the skies for patience. “I swear. Talking to a brick wall.” And there was something uncharacteristically serious and sincere in his eyes when he lowered them to lock onto Dean’s.
“Look, kid. Dean. When I say I never learned, I’m not talking just like a kid learning to walk, muscles and control and instinct. Or even something most people don’t get around to working out, like climbing to the top of that wall behind me - you know, give ‘em time, patience, skill, muscles, you could probably do it. I’m talking like Sammy Colt making this lovely accessory for my delicate gullet here.” One half-curled finger tapped against the collar at his throat. “I’m talking stuff you gotta be taught, generations of tricks and tools. And then, Bobby here working out the Enochian and passing that on to him, and even after all that?” His wings flicked out weirdly to gesture at the walls, but this time his hands stayed tightly curled in his pockets. “Fat lot of good any of it would do him if he didn’t have his tools because he was locked in a fucking barn.”
“Okay!” Dean snapped, then looked away and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “Okay. So. There’s really nothing you can do?”
Had he really expected anything else? Not really. Mostly. Just. Someone to ask? No. Someone to yell at. Great. Lovely. Thanks, brain.
“You want my honest opinion?” he heard Gabriel mutter, and it didn’t sound like he was directing it at Dean. “Feels more like imps or witches than angels to me. But if it is, you’ll have a hell of a time shaking it.”
“We’ll look into it,” Bobby acknowledged gruffly.
Sam let out a whine that was half a growl, wheeled around, and stalked away down the length of the cage, towards the far corner.
“Sam,” Dean called out, kind of belatedly, but Sam didn’t look around.
This sucked. Sam wouldn’t even be able to help research his own cure. Sam hated not being able to research stuff.
Dean exhaled heavily and slumped against the bars of the cage. Then he remembered what happened when you got within Gabriel’s reach, and jumped away. The angel gave him a withering look, like he knew exactly what Dean had been thinking. Dean scowled at him, on reflex. God, he was tired.
“So,” Bobby prompted, almost gently. “Any idea why your lot are acting different all of a sudden?”
Gabriel’s mouth curled. “Yeah, I’ll tattle on ‘my lot’ just as soon as you dob these boys in to a wendigo, Singer.”
“Suit yourself,” Bobby returned calmly. “You’re looking pretty comfy in here anyway.”
Gabriel glanced, half-guilty, at the little pile of books and basic comforts behind him, then down the length of his narrow world to the shadowy lump of Sam, just outside it. “Yeah. About that.” He snagged Dean’s old sketch book between two fingers and held it out through the bars, without looking at him. “Don’t blame the sasquatch, okay? I wouldn’t believe him about Castiel.”
Dean snatched it off him before Bobby could furrow his face up and say, “What the hell’s Castiel?”
Gabriel’s eyebrows lifted, and his gaze slid sideways from Bobby to Dean, lazily calculating.
“... Mutual friend.”
Bobby’s eyes went narrow.
Great. Now the angel had dirt on him. Dean scowled at him and tucked the book securely into his jacket.
Gabriel flipped him off in a very human kind of way, and sauntered down the length of his pen after Sam. Sam was standing at the far end, drooping and resigned, and (the idiot, didn’t he remember?) just within arm’s reach of the bars. So when Gabriel leaned in against the bars and reached out one arm towards him, what else should Dean do but snap out, “Don’t you touch him!”.
“Fuck off, Winchester,” Gabriel snapped back, and Sam tossed a look over his shoulder that almost said the same. Then he blinked grumpily at the angel right next to him, haunches half-sunk into a tired, hopeless posture that Dean had seen so many times in dogs who were past hoping to fight their way out.
Gabriel’s hand settled curtly on his shoulder.
“Hey,” the angel said, in a voice that sounded like it wasn’t sure whether to be sarcastic or gentle. “Hard luck, Sam-bug.”
Sam exhaled, hard and messy, and let go of all his muscles and just slumped against the bars. Gabriel’s arm fell around his shoulders, and - that was a hug, dammit. An actual rough, perfunctory, heartfelt hug.
... What the hell had they been talking about in here?
“Okay, you know what? Screw this,” Dean announced, too loudly. “I’m gonna go actually find a way to fix this. Come on, Sam.”
And, what the hell? Sam shot him an actual death glare.
Gabriel smirked, obscenely triumphant. “Might want to try talking to your little bro like he’s not actually a dog, hot shot.”
Sam turned the same glare on Gabriel. Which, honestly, what? If he was wrong, why scowl at him? If he was right, why scowl at Dean?
“Cute,” Dean shot back. “That’s how I always talk to him, angel.”
Gabriel’s smirk just got bigger. “Oh, y’think?”
Sam huffed, and shoved past Dean to push out the door in front of him. By the time Dean had tossed the angel a smug look and followed him, Sam was nowhere to be seen.
The door closed behind him with an ominously stern clunk.
“You gonna tell me what the hell’s up with you lately?” Bobby asked, nice and steady.
Dean clenched his fist in his jacket, over the hidden sketchbook. “My brother’s a goddamned dog, Bobby.”
“Yeah, and you’ve been crazy as a desert coot ever since we locked the angel down,” Bobby countered inexorably. “So?”
Dean shoved his hands into his gunless pockets and glowered at the ground. “Oh, come on, Bobby. We broke bread with him, for crying out loud. Can you seriously look at that in there and say there’s nothing wrong with it?”
“You know damn well I can’t. And I don’t try to,” Bobby added, sounding stupidly unruffled. “That ain’t what I asked.”
Dean looked at him, and looked at the door, and looked into the darkness where Sam had vanished, and looked at the lump in his jacket where all that shit was hidden away. The wind was cutting through his jacket, too cold for this time of year.
“It’s just messing with my head, is all,” he grumbled, because this was Bobby, and he deserved some sort of honesty. “Look, all I know is, the thought of killing another one of them? It makes me want to hurl. Only we’ve been going at it so long, I don’t see that there’s anything else we can do. Wanting or not.”
Bobby just looked at him steadily for a long time, until Dean’s hot cheeks had cooled under the wind’s fingers, and the flush of useless anger had succumbed to the icy grip of reality. Of just how many people’s lives had been lost, or close to lost, today, because of Dean.
“Can I rely on you?”
Dean let out a breath, because that was all it came down to - that was all it could possibly come down to. Because that sounded far more like the promise of forgiveness than anything Dean deserved.
“Yeah, Bobby.” His throat was too tight, but that was nothing new, tonight. This was the least he could swear to. “Course you can.”
He walked until his thoughts were quiet, just the murmur of the wild marches and the wuthering of the wind around the rocky heights to keep him company. Sticking to the good paths, the well-trodden ones, where there might be monsters but at least there wouldn’t be any old spells or traps from who-knows-when just lying around to snag his feet. Just the long ribbon of the path ahead and behind, uncurling, merging and splitting and vanishing and reappearing under the steady thud of his feet.
Scarcely had the monk set foot outside the monastery when he came upon a dragon, his jaws wide open and ready to devour him. ‘Quick! Quick!’ he cried. ‘This dragon is going to devour me!’ The monks hurried to help him, but could find no dragon anywhere, so they took him back, shivering and shaking with terror, to the monastery, and he promised faithfully never to leave again.
Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend), Jacobus de Voragine, c. 1265, trans. Stace 1998. (The story of Saint Benedict.)
Two weeks after that, Dean begged off of the next hunt.
That was a mistake. Sammy didn’t come back from it.
The dogs had been kind of subdued for a while. Quiet. Rufus figured it was just having an angel around, so close - confused them, he thought, that smell mingling with the smell of home. Dean just agreed, even though the dogs had known and liked Gabriel, because he was too busy thinking about other things.
He went out a few times, on his own. Careful, of course, but it was stupid anyway, and he knew it. Just. Everything inside the walls seemed kind of stifling all of a sudden - voices, smells, colours, all dinning in on him and filling his thoughts and his lungs with noise. And it had been years since the little oak grove had felt quiet and distant enough to shut out everyone’s thoughts but his own.
He walked until his thoughts were quiet, just the murmur of the wild marches and the wuthering of the wind around the rocky heights to keep him company. Sticking to the good paths, the well-trodden ones, where there might be monsters but at least there wouldn’t be any old spells or traps from who-knows-when just lying around to snag his feet. Just the long ribbon of the path ahead and behind, uncurling, merging and splitting and vanishing and reappearing under the steady thud of his feet.
And if he kept a sharp eye out for a brush of dark feathers against the sky at the edge of his vision, or the slow pound of wing beats almost too low for the ear to catch... well, he’d’ve been a damn fool not to be on guard, right?
Sam didn’t even try to come with him.
Sam had only followed him out of the barn that night for long enough to make sure Dean wasn’t dying or something. Then he’d made Dean promise to go to bed, and dived back inside all bright-eyed and bit-chomping to keep on with his freaking philosophy debate with the angel, or whatever. Like this was just interesting, and not... not something that ripped up everything, something that couldn’t be fixed.
He hadn’t come home for three hours.
Dean kind of suspected Sam’d been back there more than once in the days since, too. He carefully overlooked the bits and pieces that went missing from around the house. That shirt had been too small for Dean for over a year, since his shoulders had started filling out more, and they hadn’t been using that third wash basin anyway. And it was too warm at this time of year for the extra blankets.
Dean didn’t go near the barn, though.
So, all things considered, he really didn’t feel like following the hounds just now. Even if it wasn’t an angel that they flushed out.
Sam insisted on going though, forehead all crumped and stern, looming like a determined tree or something. Some days Dean just didn’t understand how his brother’s mind worked.
So of course, that was when the angels decided to wise up. And what the hunters came back with wasn’t Sam.
First Dean knew about it was when three runners came stumbling back home, bleeding and stunned, to say there’d be two funeral pyres needed tonight. Maybe more, because most of the hunters were hurt one way or another, and some were lost, or had been when the runners had left to carry the news back. But Bill and Isaac were already gone.
And no one seemed to know exactly what had happened. Chasing an angel, yes, fine, and then another angel, and maybe more, only angels never came to help each other, not once the pack was in full cry. And then, darkness at midday, smoke and fog all of a sudden, and the confused whimpers of the dogs, and everyone separated, and screams and snarls that no one could quite identify, coming from anywhere and everywhere like the world was spinning. And then when the darkness began to lift, confusion and panic, and at least two hunters dead, and others lying groaning at the bottoms of rocky slopes or tripped over logs or mired in the marshes.
“Sam?” Dean demanded, and then again when the first of the wounded began trickling back, but no one had seen him. And, dammit, Dean had chosen to stay at home.
Dean worked anyway, fiercely, bandaging and stitching and splinting and doing crowd control on panicked kids and worried dogs, even while he kept every sense straining toward the gate, just waiting. Because any minute now Sam was gonna come loping through there looking all stricken and maybe a bit bloodied up but fine, nothing wrong with him that couldn’t be fixed.
Nothing. And nothing. And a whole shitload of dammit come on Sammy nothing.
Then Ellen and Jo were there, Ellen grim and paler than Dean had ever seen her, Jo looking so young but hard and brittle, and Bill carried in to lie still and bloody on their table. Then out of nowhere, Bobby, grim too and looking as freaked-out as it was possible for Bobby to look, coming up behind Dean to close a painful grip around his arm and hiss at him, “Get to the barn, lock all the doors, and make damn sure you get all the spare keys. Meet me in my cabin quick as you can. Go, boy!”
“Sam?”
Bobby scowled at him, and something in his face scooped out the insides of Dean’s stomach and replaced them with something cold and goopy.
“Just do it.”
Out across the yard, quick, and down the street with Chevy clinging to his heels like a scolded shadow. Slamming the doors to the barn, not looking inside, pocketing the keys (hardly ever used, hardly ever needed), then around by the smithy to lift the spare set. Then to Bobby’s place, familiar and homely, with its smell of old books and whiskey.
Bobby wasn’t there.
Dean paced, back and forth between the narrow kitchen and the living-room-cum-bedroom. Chevy gave him one doleful look and crept over to the rug in front of the empty hearth, where some big tawny dog Dean didn’t know was lying. She tried to sniff noses with it, but it wasn’t having any, just kept on giving Dean a wary look, so she curled up against its side because she was really bad at taking no for an answer when she wanted cuddles. Dean would have felt kinda bad - she’d probably seen some pretty worrying crap today - but he wasn’t exactly in any shape to be reassuring anyone else right now.
The heavy thud-thud-thud-scrape of his boot heels jarred straight back into the middle of his chest and shook it up into something that felt very young and terrified.
He’d seen Dad die, and not been able to do a damn thing to stop it. If Sammy... and Dean hadn’t been there because he’d been having some stupid pacifist crisis...
Not possible. Bobby would have said right out. Wouldn’t he?
The strange dog just wouldn’t relax, kept staring at Dean’s feet with these big soulful brown eyes like it hadn’t eaten for a week and Dean was holding a nice big steak just out of its reach. And where had Bobby gone and got himself another dog from anyway?
The scratch and click of the door latch dragged Dean straight around mid-stride. He was halfway across the room and belligerent before Bobby had got all the way inside.
“What the hell, Bobby?”
Bobby eyeballed him, pushed right past and shook out his coat, making straight for the whiskey. “Sit.”
“Where’s Sam?” Dean demanded.
“Sam’s alive and in a helluva better state than a lot of folk out there. Siddown.”
Dean’s legs kind of folded under him a bit, but he’d meant to sit down anyway because it was quicker to get things out of Bobby if you went along with it. The old sofa creaked in protest under the sudden weight.
“Where is he?”
Bobby turned around and silently held out a double shot. Dean looked at it, then back at Bobby.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Bobby cocked a stern eyebrow at him. Dean made a face and drank, because sometimes it was best not to argue. Bobby eyed the rest of the bottle consideringly, shrugged, and took a swig himself.
“Okay, first. Sam’s alive. He ain’t injured, he’s got all his limbs -” There was a sort of a huff from the other dog, who had got up and was standing closer than Dean had expected, but Bobby just tossed a glare over at it - “shaddup you, I’m telling this” - hold on, what? - “and he’s in his own mind. Just not... you know... in his own body.”
Dean... was missing something.
Bobby gave him a meaningful look, jerked his head toward the dog, and took another swig.
... What?
Something was screaming inside Dean’s head.
His head dragged very slowly around to stare, like a heavy boat being hauled around against the current. The dog stared back. Shaggy and woebegone and big beseeching eyes, and... the way it was looking at him.
“Bobby...” The plea broke and scraped in his throat.
“Lotta old tricks and traps and curses around out there just waiting to be sprung,” Bobby said in a careful monotone, completely failing to deny what couldn’t be true. “Kind of easy to put a foot wrong when you can’t see what you’re doing.”
“No. That -” Dean lifted a hand that was definitely not trembling to point, to block out the sight of it from his eyes. His voice came out violent and too loud. “That is not my brother.”
The dog flinched, hard, like he’d struck it across the face with a horsewhip. Then it just drooped, ears and head and tail and its goddamned fur, and that look in its eyes, that look that he’d sworn he’d never put on Sam’s face again, that one that said that he’d always known he’d never be good enough, never be normal...
“... Shit.”
“He can scratch his name in the dirt if you want convincing,” Bobby drawled, somewhere on the edge of the dinning in Dean’s ears.
Dean’s tongue was all big and clumsy in his mouth, and felt like it was covered in flour or something.
“Okay. Okay,” he managed, very reasonably. Then he reached out, wobbling a little, put down the shot glass, and stood up. Five steps, across the room. Two cupboard doors, because what he wanted wasn’t behind the first he opened. One stack of six bowls, just the right size. One bowl, one bottle lifted from Bobby’s hand as he came back, three good-sized glugs of whiskey into the bowl - and the dog (Sam) was halfway into a sorry little crouch, like a pup who doesn’t know if it’s getting the stick or the silent treatment. Dean rolled his eyes at him and plonked the bowl down in front of his brother’s great big hairy feet.
“Okay. So. We’ll fix it. Right, Bobby?”
Huh. He’d never seen a dog roll its eyes before. Only that was exactly Sam’s sweet lord my brother is a useless idiot face with a side of but I guess I’ll keep him anyway as his haunches sank down all relieved to rest on the floor, and - Sam had haunches. This was so very screwed up.
Dean slumped down in the chair again before his knees gave out on him.
“Never seen anything like it,” Bobby muttered non-committally under his hat. “Some kind of smoke bomb, only it was fog and darkness, with panic in it. Hell of a way to throw someone off your tail.”
Sam harrumphed, and put his head down on his paws (his paws!).
Dean tried to focus, because this was what they did when things went wrong. They backtracked, they worked out what had gone wrong, they niggled at all the weird bits, until they figured it out. Then they fixed it.
“Okay, so. You were chasing an angel, yeah? And they were already acting weird, because there were more of them than usual, and they led you into a trap?”
“That’s about the shape of it.” Bobby sighed, and eyed the bottle wistfully. “Is it just me or are those angels getting a hell of a lot more organised lately?”
Which. Yes. Now he mentioned it, definitely. Except that kind of wasn’t the problem here. It was that they could. No angel ever came back to help another angel once they were caught in the hounds’ voices. They’d always assumed it was because they were monsters and monsters didn’t care, but of course, there wasn’t any way for angel two to get angel one out of there without getting snagged too.
... And yeah, okay, if angels did actually care about each other at all, that’d have to suck.
Something suspicious niggled in the back of Dean’s head.
“But what about the dogs?”
“Oh, they were making their usual din. Just didn’t do squat. Seems like the angels have gone and made themselves immune.”
Which would be the first thing Dean would do if he were in charge. If it was his family on the line.
“... Or the dogs are just ordinary dogs all of a sudden.”
He could hear that little suspicion solidifying into clarity and anger in his own voice. Looked at Sam (flinched, couldn’t help it) and saw the same realisation growing there, a beat behind Dean maybe. Because. Dean was an idiot. Had it really taken him this long to ask himself what the hell Cas had been doing in their feed sheds?
Organisation. Yes, dammit. They’d never seen Cas around before, and suddenly he was here and the angels were acting differently, and that’s exactly what he would do, take charge and get clever and sneaky then take the delicate risky business onto himself because he wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it right. And of course, he knew so much better than any other angel just what was inside the walls...
Dean swore at himself, kind of loudly, and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Bobby, I. Er.” His gaze decided to creep away from Bobby and fasten itself onto a nice dusty corner of the room. “There was an angel got in two weeks back. I found him in the feed shed. Standing right by the dogs’ food, too.”
The room was very quiet for a minute. Then Bobby, all careful restraint and how-on-earth-did-I-get-landed-with-these-idjts, “And why in the name of your daddy’s little blue balls didn’t you mention it, boy?”
“I didn’t think he’d...” Dean’s mutter died out, half-born. Because, what the hell could he say? Didn’t think Cas would do something like that? Didn’t think he was dangerous? Didn’t think anyone else needed to know that angels had figured out how to get in? Didn’t think about the fact that Cas was an enemy, even when Cas had rubbed it in his face?
“... Aw, crap.”
“You didn’t think,” Bobby supplied flatly. Dean could feel those sharp old eyes boring into the side of his face, considering. Noticing.
There was too much mess inside Dean right now that he really, really didn’t want anyone to be looking at. Even Bobby. He looked away, looked at Sam, at the price of being all naïve and stupid.
“No.” The scrape of his voice hurt the inside of his throat. “I really didn’t.”
“You know about this?” Bobby threw resignedly over at Sam, like he already knew the answer.
Sam sort of cringed and sank down onto the floor looking all droopy, with his eyes fixed sheepishly on Bobby. Apparently he was even worse at playing dumb as a dog than he was when he was all gangly and giraffe-shaped.
Bobby just sighed. “Idjits.”
Dean poured himself another shot without looking up.
There was a creak and a rustle as Bobby levered himself to his feet, then the sound of him pulling his coat back on. “I told anyone that asked that Sam was trying to work out what happened to that angel we winged,” he said, shortly, more tired than angry. Dean’s gut did the whole guilty twisting thing that was getting far too familiar. “No one’s gonna bother asking for another day or two. Buys us some time.”
And Dean heard all the warnings under there. If people find out. If we can’t fix this quick enough. If words like shifter and werewight start being tossed around...
Werehound, huh?
You want it, or should I kill it?
Dean looked up into Sam’s wide (deep, soft, Sam-like) eyes, and decided, very clearly and firmly, that that was not going to happen.
“Thanks, Bobby.”
Bobby stood there for a moment like he was going to say something else. But he didn’t, and Dean didn’t look at him; so after a minute, the door clicked quietly shut behind him.
Sam eyed his bowl darkly, then settled down to steady it between his paws. Before the big grizzled muzzle could touch the liquor, his eyes crossed, and he sneezed violently.
Huh. Fumes plus sensitive nose. Go figure.
Dean stretched out one foot to shove at Sam’s shoulder. “Lightweight.”
It was a numb, hopeless sort of teasing; but it made Sam look up at him and make an amused and tolerant kind of a huff, so it wasn’t all bad.
Dean tossed back his shot then slid off the chair, slid down onto the floor with his back to the chair and one knee shoved up against his brother’s big warm side.
“Hey,” he muttered to his boot. “We’ll fix it.”
Sam made a grumbling sort of a noise, and lapped messily at the bowl. Then he stopped and glared at it. Apparently working out how to curl your tongue properly took some work.
“You got whiskey all over your chin,” Dean pointed out helpfully.
Sam turned the glare on him. Then there was a clatter as the bowl was overturned and Dean had a lap full of big, heavy dog and whiskers in his mouth and Sam was rubbing his dripping muzzle all over Dean’s face. Dean yelped and shoved, got one arm around his neck and the sloppy tongue away from his face long enough to protest “Dude, gross!”, then he was being trampled under enormous dog feet and had no breath to spare from wrestling his obnoxious little brother back off of him.
It was sort of startling, between shoving his shoulder up against Sam’s chest to throw him off balance and finding it didn’t really work when he had four paws, and tumbling down on top of him and trying to pin him, and getting rolled over in a clumsy twist that felt like it should have involved hands that weren’t there, and getting the breath punched out of his stomach by a misplaced paw, and working out how much easier it was to get Sam in a headlock now he couldn’t reach back to grab Dean’s arm (and completely failed at using his mouth to grab things like a real dog would), to realise that Dean was actually almost laughing. Breathless between shoves, and kind of hysterical, sure, and more than a little bitter, but it was there.
And Sam was here, and... and it could so easily have been a hell of a lot worse.
Dean hooked one arm around Sam’s neck and pressed their foreheads together and just breathed, just for a minute. He felt Sam’s breath slow against him, felt the tension leak out of him together with the quiet, uncontrollable trembling that had been creeping through Sam’s body maybe ever since this thing had happened; and he just sat there for a bit, listening to the sound of his brother’s heart, willing it with each beat to keep going, to let him hear the next one, and then the next, and the next.
He wasn’t sure how long it was before he pulled back, sat up. Sam’s eyes were fixed on the floor, and he didn’t look up as Dean reached behind his own head and untied the cord that he never untied.
“Hey,” Dean said, startled by the croak that was his own voice. “Hey, heads up.”
Sam glanced up with a wariness that shouldn’t have hurt but did; then his eyes went wide and anxious when he saw what Dean was holding, and hell but he was transparent when he was wearing an animal that did all its talking with the language of its whole body.
“I’m not,” Dean began to protest, because how in hell could he possibly throw this away, but, well, his voice was a mess right now and. Actions louder and all that.
He reached out, and carefully fastened the amulet around Sam’s shaggy neck.
“Think you could use it more than me right now,” he offered, when the silence stretched out a bit too long.
Sam wrinkled up his nose and gave Dean that look that he was pretty sure meant “jerk,” but he looked a little bit happier. Dean was about to say “bitch” back when he realised that, uh, no, so instead he just sort of mussed up Sam’s ears instead of his hair and grinned weakly. “Dude, your ears are freakishly floppy.”
Sam gave him a long-suffering look. Then he sat back, so there was a bit of carpet between them, and jiggled one paw to get Dean’s attention. After a quick glance to make sure Dean was watching, he laboriously described a nice big arc in the air, almost a whole circle, then looked up expectantly.
Dean felt his forehead furrow. “Huh?”
Sam rolled his eyes. Then a different shape: two lines, leaning towards each other, then a horizontal line slashing across them. Like - oh!
“A? C, A?”
Sam nodded, then made another letter, an unmistakeably serpentine one, and looked up at Dean quizzically.
Dean’s stomach sank.
“I don’t know, Sammy. I really don’t. I mean, it’s not like we had time for some big heart-to-heart. Hell, he was busy trying to make out like he couldn’t speak at all, even after he had, but...”
Cas’ eyes, tired and blue and sort of fondly impatient. But hell, all those regrets there...
No apology, but regrets.
And no matter what happened, Dean really couldn’t blame him for it, because he had no idea how far he’d go to protect his own family. And sometimes that terrified him.
Dean scrubbed his hand over his mouth, looked over at Chevy all healthy and comfortable on the mat, and regretted for a moment leaving the bottle out of reach on the table. “He coulda killed them, Sam. It’s gotta be easier finding a simple poison than working out exactly how we got the dogs juiced up then figuring how to reverse it. He could have killed them, and he went out of his way not to.”
Which was something, wasn’t it? Just... “Hell,” he muttered. “Why couldn’t he have come and talked to us earlier? Before it all got this bad?”
Sam eyed him, sad and impatient at once, and why did people keep looking at him like that? The sort of look that said Because someone would have shot him anyway. Idiot.
And it hurt, but the only thing Dean could do was to look away and sigh, “Yeah. Guess you’re right about that.”
Except. Something was niggling again. Something about working out how to power down the dogs. Because. That would be stupid, and impractical, and he knew Cas, or he had once. Family’s lives on the line, and did you waste time going over a way to save the lives of the dogs that were their weaknesses if you didn’t already have a lead on it? And who knew about the dogs, and - shit.
Sam was cursed. Sam was cursed by angel magic, goddammit. Dean was far too slow.
“Bobby. I need the keys.”
Bobby stepped out of the semi-circle of tired and grief-grey faces standing around uselessly outside the Roadhouse, and looked him up and down.
“Hell no you don’t,” he said decisively.
“Why the hell not? I need to talk to the angel!”
“Why d’you think I made you lock the place down?” Bobby growled. “He may be an angel but he’s my responsibility. I’m not standing for a bunch of hot-heads storming in there to take what went down today out of his ass.”
Dean spun away and back again, boot heels jamming agitatedly into the dirt. “Dammit, Bobby, don’t you get it? If anyone can fix Sam it’ll be him!”
“Don’t give me those big doe-eyes, boy.” Bobby narrowed his eyes into his I-will-not-be-moved face. “You think I hadn’t already got a little chat lined up for tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” Dean stared at him, then looked over at the hunched, miserable shape of Sam, hovering just out of the light, where he could be any other dog at all.
Bobby followed his gaze, and slumped. “Fine. Not a lot we can do for anyone here anyway. But I’m coming with you, and you’re handing over your gun and your knife before you get through that door.”
“Bobby,” Dean growled. “I’m not gonna shoot the guy when he’s locked in a freaking cage.”
Bobby completely failed to look impressed. “Uh-huh. And if it weren’t Sam on the line, and this weren’t the guy that can rile you up like no one’s business even when you think he’s human, I just might have bought that.”
Gabriel must have been able to hear the commotion, because he was already on his feet and pacing. He still had his wings out; but this time they were folded neatly at his back instead of spread wide, more like a coat than some animal’s defensive ruff. Of course, that meant they were folded over one of Dean’s old shirts, which must have been slashed at the back to slip over them.
... Dean had more important things to be pissed about than that. And Dean was being polite.
The angel’s eyes slid derisively over Dean, over Bobby, then snagged oddly on Sam’s long, shaggy form. Dean moved to stand in front of him.
“Gabriel,” he stated flatly, through a clenched jaw. “How’re you doing?”
It sounded stupid. Judging by the squinty face Gabriel made at him, he wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“Wow. That hurt?”
Dean glowered. “Bite me.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows climbed sarcastically. “Okay then. My shoulder’s fucking sore, and I’m locked in an animal pen. Next question?”
Then Dean saw the small pile of books behind Gabriel’s bare foot. Specifically, the one on top. The sketchbook. The one from the third summer, where Dean had got obsessed with trying to catch that secret little half-smile that Cas did when he thought no one was looking. No one but Dean and Cas and Sammy were ever allowed to know about those books.
“Wait. Where the hell did you get -” Oh. How else.
Dean whipped around to glare at Sam, who had the grace to look sheepish. Except there wasn’t really anything he could say, not with Bobby there, not when there were more important things they had to do. Not when Sam was looking all apologetic and sad at him. So he had to make do with an explosive, “Dammit, Sammy!”
Gabriel whistled soft and maddening behind him. “Well, well. Ain’t that just... precious?”
Dean rounded on him. The angel’s eyes were fixed on Sam, and there was an ironic curve to his mouth that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Don’t start, okay? Please. Just - not now.” Gabriel blinked and refocused on him, eyes honey-dark and alien. “Look. Did you know anything about what was going down today?”
The angel’s face slipped back into its half-savage mask of disdain, the one where he pretended he couldn’t speak. “Wrong question, Winchester.”
“Okay, fine.” Dean made himself breathe smoothly, sound rational. “You’re the go-to guy for these dogs, right? Did you know what the angels had planned with them?”
“Not exactly been in the loop these last ten years, sweetheart,” Gabriel shot back. “Been kind of busy, you know, not being an angel.”
“Seems like one of your lot dosed up the dogs,” Bobby put in, cutting steady and firm over the panicked fury clawing its way up Dean’s chest. “Took their mojo away, then turned the tables on us pretty bad out there today. That something that just any angel would know how to do?”
Gabriel’s mouth curled, a bit shaky. “Yeah? Good on the plucky little guys.”
“Dragon’s blood, Gabriel.” Because. There was bitterness in there, and something too sharp and vicious to be only resentment. Had Gabriel been sitting in the Roadhouse with them for years, laughing with them and hating them the whole time? “Were you always this much of a dick, and we were just too dense to notice?”
“Hey.” Gabriel stepped back, swept his arms and his wings sarcastically wide to encompass the whole of the room, the whole of his cage (and Dean couldn’t help noticing how stiffly the left wing still moved). “Might have escaped your notice, hot shot, but I’m not really feeling like one of the team right now.”
Dean felt some last vestige of ‘cool and rational’ snap. He didn’t mourn it. “So, what, that’s it? Your feelings are hurt so you’re gonna just leave Sam as he is?”
Gabriel stared. Then he laughed, sharp and hard. “Wait. Wait. That’s what this is about? You’re asking for my help?”
“You see anyone else in here who might have a clue about angel magic?” Dean snarled.
“Huh. Right.” Gabriel’s smirk was jagged and wild. “Thought we’d get to this part sooner or later. Have to say, Singer, I expected it to be sooner.” Wait, what? “I mean, all those books, all that obscure knowledge? Not the sort of thing you get without bringing out the knives and thumbscrews pretty damn regular.”
Dean felt abruptly sick.
Okay, so he’d helped Bobby with that on some captive things, when they had to. Was never fun, but hell, if it was that or a human life... but on Gabriel? Seriously? What made him think they’d threaten him with that to -
“No,” he blurted out, before Bobby could speak. “No, I just thought you might -”
Only, might what? Care? And why the hell would Gabriel care about any of them by now? even the kid with the goofy smile and the earnest scowl who brought him blankets and freaking books when everyone else was carefully pretending he was dead?
He looked down at Sam’s frustrated, impatient pacing, and set his jaw. “You know what? Forget it. I should’ve known you’d be like this. I mean, what else would you say but screw you guys, screw eight years of knowing you all, just when we could really use your help?”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. Then he shoved forward, wings bristling and half-mantled, hands locking around the bars so tight they half looked like they might think about bending, and snarled right back into Dean’s face, “Listen to me, you arrogant dick. I’m not the one who decided I’m the enemy here, okay? You got one whiff and you stuck a knife in me. If you had asked - if any of you had ever asked - I would have told you. We could have talked it all out like civilised adults. Swapped life stories like best bros over a beer.”
Then he smirked, hard and suave, and stepped back, letting go of the bars and spreading his hands ironically wide.
“But, hey. Not my call.”
“Okay,” Bobby interjected like the voice of reason, like everyone else in the room was all of two years old and throwing toys at the wall. “So why are you talking now and you wouldn’t before?”
Gabriel cut him a dark look. “Because these two jokers get on my fucking nerves.”
“Gabriel.” Dean swallowed pride and the hitch in his voice, and tried again. “Please. He’s...” My brother. My everything. Something like a friend to you once, maybe. “... Sam.”
The angel stared at him, long and hard. Then he looked at Sam, who was standing off to the side, head hanging low, ears and tail sagging.
Gabriel sighed, stuck his hands in his pockets, and fixed his gaze on the distant wall. “I can’t.”
“What do you want?” Dean pleaded. “Gabriel, tell me what you want and I’ll do it for you. Anything. Just -”
“Don’t say anything to a monster, you muttonhead,” Gabriel snapped. “And I can’t. Even if it is an angel thing, which it mightn’t be.”
“Why the hell not?”
Gabriel gave him a withering look. “Hello? Trickster. I never learned how. Ran away and started playing human when I was eighteen. How many complex arcane angel secrets do you think I know?”
Dean gulped, past the swollen burn in his eyes and throat. “Please, Gabriel. Please, could you just - try?”
Gabriel shook his head and tipped his head back, like he was imploring the skies for patience. “I swear. Talking to a brick wall.” And there was something uncharacteristically serious and sincere in his eyes when he lowered them to lock onto Dean’s.
“Look, kid. Dean. When I say I never learned, I’m not talking just like a kid learning to walk, muscles and control and instinct. Or even something most people don’t get around to working out, like climbing to the top of that wall behind me - you know, give ‘em time, patience, skill, muscles, you could probably do it. I’m talking like Sammy Colt making this lovely accessory for my delicate gullet here.” One half-curled finger tapped against the collar at his throat. “I’m talking stuff you gotta be taught, generations of tricks and tools. And then, Bobby here working out the Enochian and passing that on to him, and even after all that?” His wings flicked out weirdly to gesture at the walls, but this time his hands stayed tightly curled in his pockets. “Fat lot of good any of it would do him if he didn’t have his tools because he was locked in a fucking barn.”
“Okay!” Dean snapped, then looked away and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “Okay. So. There’s really nothing you can do?”
Had he really expected anything else? Not really. Mostly. Just. Someone to ask? No. Someone to yell at. Great. Lovely. Thanks, brain.
“You want my honest opinion?” he heard Gabriel mutter, and it didn’t sound like he was directing it at Dean. “Feels more like imps or witches than angels to me. But if it is, you’ll have a hell of a time shaking it.”
“We’ll look into it,” Bobby acknowledged gruffly.
Sam let out a whine that was half a growl, wheeled around, and stalked away down the length of the cage, towards the far corner.
“Sam,” Dean called out, kind of belatedly, but Sam didn’t look around.
This sucked. Sam wouldn’t even be able to help research his own cure. Sam hated not being able to research stuff.
Dean exhaled heavily and slumped against the bars of the cage. Then he remembered what happened when you got within Gabriel’s reach, and jumped away. The angel gave him a withering look, like he knew exactly what Dean had been thinking. Dean scowled at him, on reflex. God, he was tired.
“So,” Bobby prompted, almost gently. “Any idea why your lot are acting different all of a sudden?”
Gabriel’s mouth curled. “Yeah, I’ll tattle on ‘my lot’ just as soon as you dob these boys in to a wendigo, Singer.”
“Suit yourself,” Bobby returned calmly. “You’re looking pretty comfy in here anyway.”
Gabriel glanced, half-guilty, at the little pile of books and basic comforts behind him, then down the length of his narrow world to the shadowy lump of Sam, just outside it. “Yeah. About that.” He snagged Dean’s old sketch book between two fingers and held it out through the bars, without looking at him. “Don’t blame the sasquatch, okay? I wouldn’t believe him about Castiel.”
Dean snatched it off him before Bobby could furrow his face up and say, “What the hell’s Castiel?”
Gabriel’s eyebrows lifted, and his gaze slid sideways from Bobby to Dean, lazily calculating.
“... Mutual friend.”
Bobby’s eyes went narrow.
Great. Now the angel had dirt on him. Dean scowled at him and tucked the book securely into his jacket.
Gabriel flipped him off in a very human kind of way, and sauntered down the length of his pen after Sam. Sam was standing at the far end, drooping and resigned, and (the idiot, didn’t he remember?) just within arm’s reach of the bars. So when Gabriel leaned in against the bars and reached out one arm towards him, what else should Dean do but snap out, “Don’t you touch him!”.
“Fuck off, Winchester,” Gabriel snapped back, and Sam tossed a look over his shoulder that almost said the same. Then he blinked grumpily at the angel right next to him, haunches half-sunk into a tired, hopeless posture that Dean had seen so many times in dogs who were past hoping to fight their way out.
Gabriel’s hand settled curtly on his shoulder.
“Hey,” the angel said, in a voice that sounded like it wasn’t sure whether to be sarcastic or gentle. “Hard luck, Sam-bug.”
Sam exhaled, hard and messy, and let go of all his muscles and just slumped against the bars. Gabriel’s arm fell around his shoulders, and - that was a hug, dammit. An actual rough, perfunctory, heartfelt hug.
... What the hell had they been talking about in here?
“Okay, you know what? Screw this,” Dean announced, too loudly. “I’m gonna go actually find a way to fix this. Come on, Sam.”
And, what the hell? Sam shot him an actual death glare.
Gabriel smirked, obscenely triumphant. “Might want to try talking to your little bro like he’s not actually a dog, hot shot.”
Sam turned the same glare on Gabriel. Which, honestly, what? If he was wrong, why scowl at him? If he was right, why scowl at Dean?
“Cute,” Dean shot back. “That’s how I always talk to him, angel.”
Gabriel’s smirk just got bigger. “Oh, y’think?”
Sam huffed, and shoved past Dean to push out the door in front of him. By the time Dean had tossed the angel a smug look and followed him, Sam was nowhere to be seen.
The door closed behind him with an ominously stern clunk.
“You gonna tell me what the hell’s up with you lately?” Bobby asked, nice and steady.
Dean clenched his fist in his jacket, over the hidden sketchbook. “My brother’s a goddamned dog, Bobby.”
“Yeah, and you’ve been crazy as a desert coot ever since we locked the angel down,” Bobby countered inexorably. “So?”
Dean shoved his hands into his gunless pockets and glowered at the ground. “Oh, come on, Bobby. We broke bread with him, for crying out loud. Can you seriously look at that in there and say there’s nothing wrong with it?”
“You know damn well I can’t. And I don’t try to,” Bobby added, sounding stupidly unruffled. “That ain’t what I asked.”
Dean looked at him, and looked at the door, and looked into the darkness where Sam had vanished, and looked at the lump in his jacket where all that shit was hidden away. The wind was cutting through his jacket, too cold for this time of year.
“It’s just messing with my head, is all,” he grumbled, because this was Bobby, and he deserved some sort of honesty. “Look, all I know is, the thought of killing another one of them? It makes me want to hurl. Only we’ve been going at it so long, I don’t see that there’s anything else we can do. Wanting or not.”
Bobby just looked at him steadily for a long time, until Dean’s hot cheeks had cooled under the wind’s fingers, and the flush of useless anger had succumbed to the icy grip of reality. Of just how many people’s lives had been lost, or close to lost, today, because of Dean.
“Can I rely on you?”
Dean let out a breath, because that was all it came down to - that was all it could possibly come down to. Because that sounded far more like the promise of forgiveness than anything Dean deserved.
“Yeah, Bobby.” His throat was too tight, but that was nothing new, tonight. This was the least he could swear to. “Course you can.”