March-Stalkers Mighty: 9/22
Passus V: Pes dexter.
“I’ll hold them off, Cas,” Dean swore, fierce and low. “I’ll hold them all off.”
I am a Jewe.
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimentions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same foode, hurt with the same weapons, subiect to the same diseases, healed by the same meanes, warmed and cooled by the same Winter and Sommer as a Christian is? If you pricke vs, doe we not bleede? If you tickle vs, doe we not laugh? If you poison vs, doe we not die? And if you wrong vs, shall we not reuenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare, c. 1596. (Shylock, III.i.)
The carthorse’s long morning shadow was stretching lazily away from her hooves towards the west when Gabriel decided to start throwing his weight about again.
“Winchester. Hitch your horse to that hook and get up here.”
Dean was feeling magnanimous and tactful, so he carefully did not retaliate. Even when Gabriel decided not to slow the wagon as Dean slid down off his bay, so he had to jog to hop onto the running board.
Good to know they were going to be all civilised and grown-up about this, and not petty at all.
With that in mind, Dean accidentally-on-purpose sat down on the corner of Gabriel’s wing. “What’s up, big shot?”
Gabriel jerked his wing out from under Dean like he’d been burnt (the big baby, Dean knew perfectly well how those things moved and that couldn’t have hurt), and smiled daggers. “Hey there, champ. Mind taking the reins for a bit? Thanks ever so.”
Sam, loping along beside the wagon, gave them both a despairing look.
Dean took the reins, and cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t pull a muscle, honey.”
The smirk slid into something small and sharp as Gabriel stood up. “Oh, sweetcheeks, don’t even try. I could flirt the hair off your clueless provincial ass and you wouldn’t even know.”
Wait, what? Flirting? “What?”
“Hey Dean,” Gabriel crooned, backing towards the door of the cabin. “What happens if you get a bent twig raised by a family of arrows, all nice and straight, who’ve never seen a twig before?” There was a weird emphasis lying heavily on the word “straight,” which made no sense, except Gabriel was apparently setting up some insult about Dean being metaphorically crooked or something. Which, fine, Dean could hold his tongue for the sake of temporary peace, and also because Cas could probably hear them from back there.
“I’ll bite,” he allowed cautiously. “What?”
“Nothing.” Gabriel pronounced the absolutely pointless answer to his little riddle with the glee of a man laying down an ace. “They don’t have a word for it, so they see... nothing.” Then, according to some tangent only his warped mind could follow, he added, “And let’s keep it that way around my sweet little brother, hm?”
He winked, ludicrously, and ducked inside.
... Crazier and crazier.
Dean turned his attention to the carthorse and the road, because someone had to keep his head on his shoulders here. The wind was stronger here, near the borderlands, and blew right into their faces, right in from the outside. Sometimes, when it was strongest, Dean even thought it carried a faint tang of salt, though he couldn’t imagine why it might. Made no sense anyway - salt had no smell.
Unless it did, outside.
“Where have you been,” was the first thing he heard, muffled by the curtain over the door and the rattle of wheels on the road.
Straight to the point, Cas. Which was kind of interesting, given he’d been avoiding the point with Sam and Deanlike he and Pointville were the repelling ends of a couple of magnets. And again with the completely uninflected ending, like lifting the tone to make it sound like a question was too much to bother with.
There was silence for a moment. Then Gabriel whistled, bright and brittle. “Cold, bro.”
Cas’ low voice was difficult to make out, almost lost in the rumble of the road. “Would you prefer me hot?”
“Maybe,” Gabriel muttered obnoxiously.
Because shouting always solved everything.
They lapsed back into silence again, and Dean started humming to himself, because he really didn’t need to be overhearing this. It was awkward, and painful, and private, and confusing besides. It tugged him between protective indignation on Cas’ behalf (ten years? who ran away and abandoned their little brothers for ten years?) and an aching, reluctant sympathy for the wistfulness in Gabriel’s face when Cas had first looked at him, had hardly recognised him.
There was a wooden creak from inside, then, “Who won?”
Dean stopped humming. Because this could be important.
“Gabriel.” Cas’ voice changed, turned into something soft and tired. “This is not the time.”
“Who won?” Gabriel repeated, stubborn as the cow who hears her calf yelling against the knife. “Neither.” Cas’ voice was dispassionate enough to sound almost gentle. “They killed each other, Gabriel. Lucifer turned Michael’s sword back on him, after he’d already taken his own death blow.”
“Huh.” Gabriel breathed out like a sucker punch. Then, blankly, “So Raphael’s running the place, then? Bully for him.”
Angel politics?
Dean whistled softly, and beckoned when Sam looked up. Sam bunched his hindquarters (he was getting better at this whole four legs business) and jumped up onto the wagon beside Dean, who jerked his head silently at the curtain behind him.
“Raphael is... in no mind to be issuing commands at present,” came Cas’ deep voice, bland enough to make this Raphael guy sound like he was a sobbing broken mess who wouldn’t come out of his cellar. Sam cocked his head and blinked enquiringly. Dean shrugged bafflement.
“Then who..?”
“Nobody,” Cas said, all inscrutable and remote. “There’s nobody.”
Gabriel huffed out a breath, loose and messy and far easier to read than Cas. “Shit.”
There was another silence, just the croaking and whistles of distant marsh birds and the clatter of the horses’ hooves as the road became rockier underfoot, climbing towards the moors. Then, Cas, gruffly, “I have been trying to encourage our brethren to make their own choices. To think for themselves.”
Gabriel laughed then, surprised and soft and sore. “Oh, little bro. Of course you have.” And, “How’s that going for you, then?”
“I imagine you can guess,” Cas returned neutrally.
The wagon bumped and rattled its way up onto the granite, and Sam made a small noise very like a yip as he almost lost his footing on the boards. Dean snorted at him, and looped an arm around his shoulders for a moment until the wagon settled into its noisy stone-on-metal rumble.
“Let me have a look at your wing?” he heard from inside, or something like that; but, though the low murmur of voices went on, he couldn’t make out anything else.
So. Sounded like Cas was more of a leader than Dean had guessed. And like the angels were having some sort of leadership crisis, after two angels that Gabriel had known had done each other in. Dean wasn’t much of a strategist, but he was pretty sure that was meant to be a good time to strike. Although, if Gabriel had known about it before he’d left, it must have been going on since before the angels had ever turned up around here anyway, so that didn’t do them much good.
A small, traitorous part of him whispers, Except now they’ve lost Cas, but he shut it down savagely. Because they hadn’t. Cas was going to be fine.
Sam nudged his shoulder against Dean’s upper arm, warm reassuring pressure. Dean glanced warily at him, then looked away at once from the worry and impatience in his eyes.
... Cas was going to be fine, Cas was going to recover, Cas was going to get back up and spread his wings and go back to leading the angels and killing people. Cas. His Cas, with the elegant clever fingers and the soft dark hair that curled at the edges when it was drying, and the tiny smile that hovered at the corners of his eyes, just for Dean.
Only he’d said, he’d said, that he was trying to stop it. Or had he? Trying to throw people off that other angel’s trail, teach them not to hunt angels. Was that peace-making? Or just turning humans defenceless?
Because you do.
What if no one went out hunting angels at all? What would happen then?
Dean was suddenly seized with the urge to go in there, to look at Cas, to see him. To wallow in the warmth and the simple sense of belonging that he held in his eyes, in the impatient crook of his wings, in the sleepy musk that clung to his neck and hair and the softness of his skin in the dark, where no larger questions loomed. Dean’s whole body ached with exhaustion and there was heavy nausea sitting in the pit of his stomach and his head was fucking sore.
“... you doing … here, then?” Gabriel’s voice drifted out in broken fragments.
Dean pricked up his ears. Because if that was the question he thought it was, then yes, screw scruples about eavesdropping, Dean needed to know that. They all needed to know.
“Cleaning ... our messes.” Cas half-growled.
Whatever Gabriel asked next was short and snappy, and Dean only caught one word of it but it was enough to turn his stomach over and send it into a swan dive. “... demons?”
Sam’s eyes, when Dean’s head jerked around to meet them, were wide and... and curious, no shock, no fear of betrayal.
Sam was too damned trusting. He got to be, because he was the little brother. It was up to Dean to mistrust everyone for him. But mistrust Cas...?
“... in the beginning,” he caught Cas saying, which told Dean a whole big bunch of nothing at all.
Fuck.
Then Sam tensed up, a long line of quivering alarm all down Dean’s side. And Dean was far too used to hunting all manner of nasties with Sam beside him to mistake that for anything but danger.
“What?” he hissed, and reached for his gun.
Sam shook his head, a quick single jerk, and nosed at the angel knife in Dean’s belt. Then he tipped his head back and rounded his mouth like a hunting hound raising the cry, though he made no noise himself.
“Angel? Other angel?” he asked, and heard as he did so Cas repeat his first question: “Where have you been, Gabriel?”
“Frivolling,” Gabriel said darkly; and Sam shook his head again, turned his head back down the road the way they’d come, and pricked his ears up pointedly.
“Shit.” Dean pulled the chestnut to an abrupt halt, and in the sudden silence he heard it too, faint but not so very distant, and he cursed all headwinds that carried sound away. The music of the hunt.
There was a soft thump, as someone’s bare feet hit the floor inside the wagon.
“Guys?” Dean said loudly. “Raincheck on the whole tender reunion thing, okay?”
“Out of my seat, Winchester,” said Gabriel curtly, right behind him.
Dean slid down onto the road without a murmur, followed by the heavy thud of paws as Sam took his weight off the mare’s burden too. This time, Gabriel did wait just long enough for Dean to unhitch his horse’s bridle from the wagon before he flicked the reins and set off, too brisk a pace for most cart horses over this terrain.
Dean’s bay shied and ducked, edgy and alarmed by the strange day and the sudden change of mood, and he had to take a moment to calm her before he was on her back and kneeing her up next to the wagon again. “Gabriel. Cas’ wing. Can he fly?”
“If I could heal those wounds, kid, don’t you think I’d have fixed my shoulder?” Gabriel snapped, distracted, and it was the lack of venom in the reference to that which really worried Dean, because if Gabriel was so anxious for Cas as to forget to make a barbed comment... “Did what I could, fixed the bone, and it’ll get better soon enough, but he won’t be flying for weeks.”
“Okay then.” Dean looked back over his shoulder toward the lands he knew, looked forward down the length of the road where it plunged into the broken granite fells and ravines of the eastern borderlands. The limits of Dean’s world, the line that only the pedlars ever crossed. “Okay. So, they don’t catch us.”
Gabriel darted a sideways glance at him, sharp and frowning. “Why do you care?” he asked, like this was something that had been bothering him deeply, something impossible and incomprehensible.
Dean laughed a bit at that, at the perfect absolute inevitability of its answer; because out of all the rest of it, all the stupid impossible mess of it, that was the one thing he was absolutely sure of. “Because he’s my brother.”
The next half hour was a quiet one, barely a word exchanged. Dean and Sam ranged back and forth to the front and to the rear, scouting like this was any other day, making sure the path was clear, making sure nothing nasty was right behind them. Gabriel’s mare trotted on gamely, streaked with sweat, and Gabriel sat there hunched and tense with his wings sharp-angled and almost open. Every now and then he leaned forward to touch her haunches and murmur something gentle and warm; and her ears would prick up, and swivel back to listen, and she would surge forward with renewed energy, strong and eager as if she’d just left the stable.
The jagged line of the tumbled granite ravines and tors drew nearer, scars in the landscape like the marks of giant claws, criss-crossing and dividing and crumbling into mazes. Between them, above them, the tall dark forest of pines, impossibly high, greater by far than any pines that grew on their own lands. Etayns were in there, enormous etayns, rarely seen, and trolls and troglodytes of broken stone: creatures of the earth and its deep graven hunger. That was the edge, beyond which no one of Dean’s people had ever crossed, and which surely they wouldn’t cross now, just for revenge. But as the edge drew closer, so too did the cry of the hunt.
Dean had always thought of that as a happy sound: the hounds, ecstatic and purposeful and childishly delighted with it, everyone around him excited and grim and every nerve on edge, the thrill of the hunt, the deeper sense of righteousness and protectiveness and knowing they were doing good. He had never heard the ominous note in that music before. But then, he’d never been the one hunted.
It wasn’t until the dark walls of the first ravine rose up around them that it really hit Dean. He was crossing a border here.
Well, obviously. And that was terrifying enough in itself. But more than that - he was seriously going beyond the pale. He was leaving their lands in the company of monsters, and out of all the people here that he counted as comrades, his was the only body that would look out of place painted on their walls back home. He hadn’t really thought this far ahead - how far he would ride with them, when he would turn back, what he would say when he got home. What would happen to Cas, and how Dean would ever manage to ride out in the hunt again, against anything with an angel’s wings and a human’s face.
But the sheer walls were rising higher and higher around him, dark trees furring them over at the top and sun retreating halfway up the wall, and there was only forward and backward. And that wasn’t even a choice just now.
It really was a maze in here. If it hadn’t been for Gabriel’s memory they would have been turned about and lost. Of course, Dean reflected distantly, the angel had probably had an advantage the first few times he tried it - he could just spread his wings and fly up, look at it all from overhead, and solve the whole puzzle from up above. The only lone pedlar, and the only one who had never been the apprentice of another.
There was a decent chance, over the rocks and the shallow streams that formed the base of most of the little ravines, that even if the hunt did follow them in here, they’d be lost and confounded before long. Of course, they’d probably be able to find their way back out. Their own scent trail, with all those dog paws and the hot smell of tired horse, would hardly be a challenge. But it would be a stupid thing to try, and if Dean were in charge of the pack he’d never let them go in here.
But Dean wasn’t in charge.
Turn after turn, corner after corner, and the hounds’ voices echoed off the walls, closer and closer. And hooves and paws on this ground had to go faster than wheels.
Then suddenly, staggeringly, they were out. The road was a road again under their feet, and it wound away in a red-brown ribbon through the dark forests below. The land fell away in slopes and gorges towards the lighter greens and purples beyond, a day’s travel or more; and beyond that, strange and distant and almost indistinguishable from the sky, a ribbon of brilliant blue binding the land to the far horizon.
Sam froze, entranced and bewildered; and Dean breathed in the strange air, and nudged his mare up beside Sam. He pushed with his foot against his brother’s shoulder, and heard the wonder in his own voice as he murmured, “This what you were after, Sammy?”
Sam looked up at him, eyes shocked-wide and glittering with delight, even in that moment. And then, behind them, the echoes surged.
The hunt must have rounded a bend. Almost here. Twenty minutes at most before they came.
Dean swung down off his horse’s back and jogged up beside Gabriel. “Mind taking the reins for a bit? Thanks ever so.” Gabriel blinked and, surprisingly, complied; and Dean hopped up onto the wagon, and pushed in through the stupidly tiny door.
Cas was already raising himself onto his elbow, his shadowy wing-girt shape too long and bulky for the tiny bed, incongruous in the little human-like space. When he saw Dean, he sat up properly, movements sharper and cleaner than they’d been for days, and swung his feet to the floor. He didn’t rise, but sat there looking at Dean, with his eyes (so very far from human) too full, fixed on Dean’s face like it held all the questions in the world, and all the answers.
Dean swallowed, and locked his fingers hard around the lintel of the door as the wagon swayed. Too many questions here, between the two of them. Too many doubts, but no time for them.
“Hey there,” he said, and grinned his widest. “I figure it’s just about time for me to turn back.”
“You needn’t,” Cas said at once, low and hoarse like broken glass. “Rachel is on her way. I found her voice in the air and called her.”
So angels could talk to each other over distances, Dean’s mind filed away all on its own. Good to know.
“Yeah, and then?” Dean ducked his head to scrub a hand ruefully over the back of his neck, but he didn’t look away. “If two kids are brawling it out and it looks like someone’s gonna get hurt, you don’t fix it by handing one of them a bigger stick. You get between them, get them the hell apart. Whatever it takes.”
“Dean,” Cas said, and then again, more harshly, as if he’d only just realised how this had to end, that Dean had sort of set a fire on his bridges here. There was something like wonder in the sharp questing hue of those eyes, and something like shame. “You have become... something extraordinary.”
Dean’s breath decided to forget where his lungs were, decided to snag and catch in his throat instead. He went to him; and he marvelled as he did so at how natural and simple it felt to go down on his knees before this creature, before this beautiful, stubborn man; to close his eyes, and to trust him. Even when he shouldn’t.
He felt Cas’ fingers slide into his hair, press warm and insistent in against his scalp; and he tilted his head into it, instead of pulling away. His hands lifted, brushing against shins under heavy linen, and settled themselves comfortably over the sharp bones of Cas’ knees.
“Not so bad yourself, angel,” he said gruffly, and opened his eyes.
Cas shook his head, one sharp negation. There was something in his gaze that made Dean’s throat ache, something wistful and wearily hungry. “My best efforts have been marred by compromise, and have had little lasting effect.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean turned his head far enough to press the side of his face into Cas’ palm, and thought of absolutes and circles without end. “Maybe we could all do with a bit more compromise around here.”
Cas’ mouth thinned into something sad and dark. “Not this kind, Dean.”
Dean rather wanted to lean forward and kiss that ominous line away into softness, but he wasn’t sure how. And there was something in the way Cas was looking at him that made him hesitate, even through the warm reassuring haze of his presence. Something that said, stop, think: to give enough to satisfy that would consume you.
Dean wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Instead, he reached up with one hand and just touched Cas’ mouth; pressed gently against the swell of his lower lip; dragged the pads of his fingers slowly over the paper-dry skin; lingered on the hint of mysterious warmth at the crack.
Cas’ eyes fluttered shut, and he swallowed as if he were in pain. Dean dropped his hand.
“You will be okay with Gabriel, won’t you?” he asked quietly, because it had to be said, and because he wasn’t sure. Gabriel was strong, Dean was starting to realise. That thing with the wall, and the size and brilliance of his wings, and the sheer hot power inside him, and the improvement in Cas who’d been halfway to a corpse not so long ago - it was all far beyond anything Dean had ever seen from even the most hopped-up and desperate of angels on the hunt, all hiding within that compact little pedlar’s body. And he wasn’t exactly the sanest of people right now.
Cas didn’t open his eyes, but he didn’t have to. “He is my brother, Dean,” he said, and the words were heavy with irony and sadness, trusting Dean to unpack all the layers in there. And, hey, it was like a shared joke; except with a whole lot of other things in it too.
“Yeah,” Dean muttered. Then he pressed Cas’ knees under his hands, because they’d always been better at saying the things that mattered than his voice had. “Cas. You know I - hell.” Taboos or no he had to say this, wanted to say this. So he forced past the stutter and shaped the angel’s name (all of it, all of him) in his mouth. “Castiel. I know it doesn’t mean a damn thing to what I did, but I am so - so very fucking sorry about your brother.”
The pale column of Cas’ throat clenched, quick and scared, then released. Just a hint of the steel angel again, holding him cool and steady.
“It means... not everything, but more than you think.”
Which was probably a hell of a lot more than Dean deserved, but he took it, selfish and covetous, and tucked it away safe.
“Hey,” he said, suddenly acutely aware of the volume and cadence of his own voice, not sure what to do with them. “Hey. Cas. I don’t want to see you again, do you hear me?”
Cas’ eyes flew open, startled and very deep. Dean’s words stumbled forward over each other, trying to plaster over the sudden hurt gaping between them. “You come back in there and I can’t be sure you’ll be safe, okay? You stay with Gabriel, and you get better, and stay away.” He swallowed, then added, too fast, throwing the words against Cas’ frozen stare, “And if you can, get rid of the others, if they’ll listen to you, because, screw it, I don’t know them, Cas, and they’re killing my people, so I’m not going to like them, but most important? Sammy, and you, and then Bobby. Then everyone else after that. If it comes to it, I’d rather you’re safe, you hearing me?”
He heard the shake in his own voice a moment too late, and looked away, fastened his gaze on the wood of the floor.
Cas was still for a minute, as the precious seconds ticked by. Then his fingers were drawing over Dean’s neck, and there was the pressure of a hand in the small of Dean’s back, and his knees were parting around Dean’s hips; and then Dean was pressed up against the length of him, hot and lithe, and Cas was guiding Dean’s head down to rest against his shoulder, where it belonged.
And Dean was suddenly, stupidly grateful for this tiny haven, this close circle of Cas’ arms and body and the warmth of his breath against Dean’s collarbone. Because he had no freaking clue what he was doing here, and it was up to him to know. That was his job.
As if Cas had heard the question: “What will you do.”
The dark murmur heated the air beside Dean’s ear, brushed the skin of it, so close and strangely tantalising. So promising, and so beautiful in ways Dean didn’t know how to describe; and not human, not human, and he couldn’t (wouldn’t) hide from that anymore.
So maybe it was time he faced this thing head on.
(It wasn’t time, it would never be time. He wasn’t ready. He couldn’t do this, but it was rushing at him anyway.)
Because the thing was, even with that terrifying snippet he and Sam had overheard, even with what Cas had confessed to doing, even after seeing the crazed glint in Gabriel’s eyes and the smashed bodies of people he’d known, he couldn’t look at Cas and see a monster. It just wasn’t possible. And if Dean could kill angels to protect his family, his people, his own life, and still be a decent person... well, it stood to reason that Cas could do the same to people - to human people. Pick them up, snatch them from the ground, tear them through the air, throw them and break them to pieces on the rocks below, turn their bodies from living people into meat and gobbets... shit. And not be a monster.
And maybe that was scarier than anything else.
“Dean?”
Dean pulled back and looked at him, one last time. Elegant and ivory and ebony in the shadows, and cool fierce blue. Then he slid his hand into Cas’ hair, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to Cas’ forehead, a promise to himself as much as to the angel.
“I’ll hold them off, Cas,” he swore, fierce and low. “I’ll hold them all off.”
Then he went to pull away; but Cas’ hands were knotting hard into his hair and his collar, and all that damned angel strength was pulling Dean forward and down and Cas’ mouth was opening (opening) under Dean’s, hungry and deep. And, wow, was Dean’s mouth that hot inside too?
Dean felt a growl tear its way out through his chest and he shoved in against Cas, searching for something he had no idea what to do with. His upper lip caught sharply between his teeth and Cas’, and the next push of Cas’ jaw crushed the lower one into a bruise, but for some reason they didn’t register against the hot pound of blood in his head and his stomach, against his fingers’ greed for the curve of Cas’ neck and the rough scratch of his stubble.
And that made sense. Because Cas was his, his to protect and to care for, just like Sammy; and Dean would give so much more than pain if it would save him from having to turn and ride away from him, but he wouldn’t give Cas’ life.
So he pulled away, breathing like a drunk man; and he met Cas’ eyes, and he made himself smile, just a little stunned thing. And Cas tilted his head up, and bit his own lip (swollen and slick-damp), and he nodded.
Dean left.
He took the reins back from Gabriel, and just nodded at him, ignored the narrow eyes and the niggling knowledge that, if things had been different, he might have been able to like the guy. Tired as she was, his bay mare snorted and skittered under him, hot and ready.
“Coming, Sammy?”
And then Sam looked up at him, and he shook his head.
Dean’s heart stuttered in his chest.
He didn’t shout, and he didn’t say “What?” like an idiot, because really, how could he not have known? All along, all of Sam’s frustration and his unbreakable silences, and the impossibilities that even Dean had realised of taking him home. Sam was a thinker, and he had had nothing else to do but think these last few days, and he must have turned over every possibility so many times. This couldn’t be a whim. This was Sam, deciding.
So Dean just said, “You sure?”, and he didn’t recognise his own voice.
Sam looked at him with pleading eyes; then both of them looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel just set his jaw, and shot them an unreadable sideways look. Out here, in this light, his eyes looked almost golden, and the sun caught his hair in streaks to match the brightest feathers in his wings. “If you like,” was all he said.
Sam’s body was broken and twisted, a voiceless inhuman thing. Even if somehow everyone back home did accept what he was and laid no blame on him for it, that wouldn’t change. He couldn’t be human, not in the everyday sense. He couldn’t use his hands to tie a rope, couldn’t swap jokes over a beer, couldn’t pin a sheep between his knees and run the shears down its flank. He’d be outside, no matter how hard people tried to pretend they didn’t think so (if they even bothered). The wolf slinking past the door of the sealed hut that kept all its warmth and humanity inside. The freak he’d always been terrified of becoming.
Dean swallowed the scream and the panic. He just pulled up the utter, bone-deep exhaustion that he’d been fighting back all this time, and let it smother him like half the hay shed in summer.
“Okay then,” he said.
Sam gave him one of his biggest soulful looks, the kind that, honestly, being all canine in the face had only improved on; but Dean couldn’t look at it and still leave him, so he didn’t.
Dean turned his horse’s head back towards the canyon, that great wound in the land, the gash that marked the borders of their land and broke them at the same time. Like the slice of a blade across your skin, carving it open, sundering it, and bringing it at the same time to vivid ecstatic life, reminding you of where it lay and what it was. (Like the unexpected heat inside someone else’s mouth, inside their body, lighting up every nerve of your own.) Making you treasure it. Reminding you what it meant to be whole.
He rode back through that broken barrier, over that border, into the arms of the hunt.
“I’ll hold them off, Cas,” Dean swore, fierce and low. “I’ll hold them all off.”
I am a Jewe.
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimentions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same foode, hurt with the same weapons, subiect to the same diseases, healed by the same meanes, warmed and cooled by the same Winter and Sommer as a Christian is? If you pricke vs, doe we not bleede? If you tickle vs, doe we not laugh? If you poison vs, doe we not die? And if you wrong vs, shall we not reuenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare, c. 1596. (Shylock, III.i.)
The carthorse’s long morning shadow was stretching lazily away from her hooves towards the west when Gabriel decided to start throwing his weight about again.
“Winchester. Hitch your horse to that hook and get up here.”
Dean was feeling magnanimous and tactful, so he carefully did not retaliate. Even when Gabriel decided not to slow the wagon as Dean slid down off his bay, so he had to jog to hop onto the running board.
Good to know they were going to be all civilised and grown-up about this, and not petty at all.
With that in mind, Dean accidentally-on-purpose sat down on the corner of Gabriel’s wing. “What’s up, big shot?”
Gabriel jerked his wing out from under Dean like he’d been burnt (the big baby, Dean knew perfectly well how those things moved and that couldn’t have hurt), and smiled daggers. “Hey there, champ. Mind taking the reins for a bit? Thanks ever so.”
Sam, loping along beside the wagon, gave them both a despairing look.
Dean took the reins, and cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t pull a muscle, honey.”
The smirk slid into something small and sharp as Gabriel stood up. “Oh, sweetcheeks, don’t even try. I could flirt the hair off your clueless provincial ass and you wouldn’t even know.”
Wait, what? Flirting? “What?”
“Hey Dean,” Gabriel crooned, backing towards the door of the cabin. “What happens if you get a bent twig raised by a family of arrows, all nice and straight, who’ve never seen a twig before?” There was a weird emphasis lying heavily on the word “straight,” which made no sense, except Gabriel was apparently setting up some insult about Dean being metaphorically crooked or something. Which, fine, Dean could hold his tongue for the sake of temporary peace, and also because Cas could probably hear them from back there.
“I’ll bite,” he allowed cautiously. “What?”
“Nothing.” Gabriel pronounced the absolutely pointless answer to his little riddle with the glee of a man laying down an ace. “They don’t have a word for it, so they see... nothing.” Then, according to some tangent only his warped mind could follow, he added, “And let’s keep it that way around my sweet little brother, hm?”
He winked, ludicrously, and ducked inside.
... Crazier and crazier.
Dean turned his attention to the carthorse and the road, because someone had to keep his head on his shoulders here. The wind was stronger here, near the borderlands, and blew right into their faces, right in from the outside. Sometimes, when it was strongest, Dean even thought it carried a faint tang of salt, though he couldn’t imagine why it might. Made no sense anyway - salt had no smell.
Unless it did, outside.
“Where have you been,” was the first thing he heard, muffled by the curtain over the door and the rattle of wheels on the road.
Straight to the point, Cas. Which was kind of interesting, given he’d been avoiding the point with Sam and Deanlike he and Pointville were the repelling ends of a couple of magnets. And again with the completely uninflected ending, like lifting the tone to make it sound like a question was too much to bother with.
There was silence for a moment. Then Gabriel whistled, bright and brittle. “Cold, bro.”
Cas’ low voice was difficult to make out, almost lost in the rumble of the road. “Would you prefer me hot?”
“Maybe,” Gabriel muttered obnoxiously.
Because shouting always solved everything.
They lapsed back into silence again, and Dean started humming to himself, because he really didn’t need to be overhearing this. It was awkward, and painful, and private, and confusing besides. It tugged him between protective indignation on Cas’ behalf (ten years? who ran away and abandoned their little brothers for ten years?) and an aching, reluctant sympathy for the wistfulness in Gabriel’s face when Cas had first looked at him, had hardly recognised him.
There was a wooden creak from inside, then, “Who won?”
Dean stopped humming. Because this could be important.
“Gabriel.” Cas’ voice changed, turned into something soft and tired. “This is not the time.”
“Who won?” Gabriel repeated, stubborn as the cow who hears her calf yelling against the knife. “Neither.” Cas’ voice was dispassionate enough to sound almost gentle. “They killed each other, Gabriel. Lucifer turned Michael’s sword back on him, after he’d already taken his own death blow.”
“Huh.” Gabriel breathed out like a sucker punch. Then, blankly, “So Raphael’s running the place, then? Bully for him.”
Angel politics?
Dean whistled softly, and beckoned when Sam looked up. Sam bunched his hindquarters (he was getting better at this whole four legs business) and jumped up onto the wagon beside Dean, who jerked his head silently at the curtain behind him.
“Raphael is... in no mind to be issuing commands at present,” came Cas’ deep voice, bland enough to make this Raphael guy sound like he was a sobbing broken mess who wouldn’t come out of his cellar. Sam cocked his head and blinked enquiringly. Dean shrugged bafflement.
“Then who..?”
“Nobody,” Cas said, all inscrutable and remote. “There’s nobody.”
Gabriel huffed out a breath, loose and messy and far easier to read than Cas. “Shit.”
There was another silence, just the croaking and whistles of distant marsh birds and the clatter of the horses’ hooves as the road became rockier underfoot, climbing towards the moors. Then, Cas, gruffly, “I have been trying to encourage our brethren to make their own choices. To think for themselves.”
Gabriel laughed then, surprised and soft and sore. “Oh, little bro. Of course you have.” And, “How’s that going for you, then?”
“I imagine you can guess,” Cas returned neutrally.
The wagon bumped and rattled its way up onto the granite, and Sam made a small noise very like a yip as he almost lost his footing on the boards. Dean snorted at him, and looped an arm around his shoulders for a moment until the wagon settled into its noisy stone-on-metal rumble.
“Let me have a look at your wing?” he heard from inside, or something like that; but, though the low murmur of voices went on, he couldn’t make out anything else.
So. Sounded like Cas was more of a leader than Dean had guessed. And like the angels were having some sort of leadership crisis, after two angels that Gabriel had known had done each other in. Dean wasn’t much of a strategist, but he was pretty sure that was meant to be a good time to strike. Although, if Gabriel had known about it before he’d left, it must have been going on since before the angels had ever turned up around here anyway, so that didn’t do them much good.
A small, traitorous part of him whispers, Except now they’ve lost Cas, but he shut it down savagely. Because they hadn’t. Cas was going to be fine.
Sam nudged his shoulder against Dean’s upper arm, warm reassuring pressure. Dean glanced warily at him, then looked away at once from the worry and impatience in his eyes.
... Cas was going to be fine, Cas was going to recover, Cas was going to get back up and spread his wings and go back to leading the angels and killing people. Cas. His Cas, with the elegant clever fingers and the soft dark hair that curled at the edges when it was drying, and the tiny smile that hovered at the corners of his eyes, just for Dean.
Only he’d said, he’d said, that he was trying to stop it. Or had he? Trying to throw people off that other angel’s trail, teach them not to hunt angels. Was that peace-making? Or just turning humans defenceless?
Because you do.
What if no one went out hunting angels at all? What would happen then?
Dean was suddenly seized with the urge to go in there, to look at Cas, to see him. To wallow in the warmth and the simple sense of belonging that he held in his eyes, in the impatient crook of his wings, in the sleepy musk that clung to his neck and hair and the softness of his skin in the dark, where no larger questions loomed. Dean’s whole body ached with exhaustion and there was heavy nausea sitting in the pit of his stomach and his head was fucking sore.
“... you doing … here, then?” Gabriel’s voice drifted out in broken fragments.
Dean pricked up his ears. Because if that was the question he thought it was, then yes, screw scruples about eavesdropping, Dean needed to know that. They all needed to know.
“Cleaning ... our messes.” Cas half-growled.
Whatever Gabriel asked next was short and snappy, and Dean only caught one word of it but it was enough to turn his stomach over and send it into a swan dive. “... demons?”
Sam’s eyes, when Dean’s head jerked around to meet them, were wide and... and curious, no shock, no fear of betrayal.
Sam was too damned trusting. He got to be, because he was the little brother. It was up to Dean to mistrust everyone for him. But mistrust Cas...?
“... in the beginning,” he caught Cas saying, which told Dean a whole big bunch of nothing at all.
Fuck.
Then Sam tensed up, a long line of quivering alarm all down Dean’s side. And Dean was far too used to hunting all manner of nasties with Sam beside him to mistake that for anything but danger.
“What?” he hissed, and reached for his gun.
Sam shook his head, a quick single jerk, and nosed at the angel knife in Dean’s belt. Then he tipped his head back and rounded his mouth like a hunting hound raising the cry, though he made no noise himself.
“Angel? Other angel?” he asked, and heard as he did so Cas repeat his first question: “Where have you been, Gabriel?”
“Frivolling,” Gabriel said darkly; and Sam shook his head again, turned his head back down the road the way they’d come, and pricked his ears up pointedly.
“Shit.” Dean pulled the chestnut to an abrupt halt, and in the sudden silence he heard it too, faint but not so very distant, and he cursed all headwinds that carried sound away. The music of the hunt.
There was a soft thump, as someone’s bare feet hit the floor inside the wagon.
“Guys?” Dean said loudly. “Raincheck on the whole tender reunion thing, okay?”
“Out of my seat, Winchester,” said Gabriel curtly, right behind him.
Dean slid down onto the road without a murmur, followed by the heavy thud of paws as Sam took his weight off the mare’s burden too. This time, Gabriel did wait just long enough for Dean to unhitch his horse’s bridle from the wagon before he flicked the reins and set off, too brisk a pace for most cart horses over this terrain.
Dean’s bay shied and ducked, edgy and alarmed by the strange day and the sudden change of mood, and he had to take a moment to calm her before he was on her back and kneeing her up next to the wagon again. “Gabriel. Cas’ wing. Can he fly?”
“If I could heal those wounds, kid, don’t you think I’d have fixed my shoulder?” Gabriel snapped, distracted, and it was the lack of venom in the reference to that which really worried Dean, because if Gabriel was so anxious for Cas as to forget to make a barbed comment... “Did what I could, fixed the bone, and it’ll get better soon enough, but he won’t be flying for weeks.”
“Okay then.” Dean looked back over his shoulder toward the lands he knew, looked forward down the length of the road where it plunged into the broken granite fells and ravines of the eastern borderlands. The limits of Dean’s world, the line that only the pedlars ever crossed. “Okay. So, they don’t catch us.”
Gabriel darted a sideways glance at him, sharp and frowning. “Why do you care?” he asked, like this was something that had been bothering him deeply, something impossible and incomprehensible.
Dean laughed a bit at that, at the perfect absolute inevitability of its answer; because out of all the rest of it, all the stupid impossible mess of it, that was the one thing he was absolutely sure of. “Because he’s my brother.”
The next half hour was a quiet one, barely a word exchanged. Dean and Sam ranged back and forth to the front and to the rear, scouting like this was any other day, making sure the path was clear, making sure nothing nasty was right behind them. Gabriel’s mare trotted on gamely, streaked with sweat, and Gabriel sat there hunched and tense with his wings sharp-angled and almost open. Every now and then he leaned forward to touch her haunches and murmur something gentle and warm; and her ears would prick up, and swivel back to listen, and she would surge forward with renewed energy, strong and eager as if she’d just left the stable.
The jagged line of the tumbled granite ravines and tors drew nearer, scars in the landscape like the marks of giant claws, criss-crossing and dividing and crumbling into mazes. Between them, above them, the tall dark forest of pines, impossibly high, greater by far than any pines that grew on their own lands. Etayns were in there, enormous etayns, rarely seen, and trolls and troglodytes of broken stone: creatures of the earth and its deep graven hunger. That was the edge, beyond which no one of Dean’s people had ever crossed, and which surely they wouldn’t cross now, just for revenge. But as the edge drew closer, so too did the cry of the hunt.
Dean had always thought of that as a happy sound: the hounds, ecstatic and purposeful and childishly delighted with it, everyone around him excited and grim and every nerve on edge, the thrill of the hunt, the deeper sense of righteousness and protectiveness and knowing they were doing good. He had never heard the ominous note in that music before. But then, he’d never been the one hunted.
It wasn’t until the dark walls of the first ravine rose up around them that it really hit Dean. He was crossing a border here.
Well, obviously. And that was terrifying enough in itself. But more than that - he was seriously going beyond the pale. He was leaving their lands in the company of monsters, and out of all the people here that he counted as comrades, his was the only body that would look out of place painted on their walls back home. He hadn’t really thought this far ahead - how far he would ride with them, when he would turn back, what he would say when he got home. What would happen to Cas, and how Dean would ever manage to ride out in the hunt again, against anything with an angel’s wings and a human’s face.
But the sheer walls were rising higher and higher around him, dark trees furring them over at the top and sun retreating halfway up the wall, and there was only forward and backward. And that wasn’t even a choice just now.
It really was a maze in here. If it hadn’t been for Gabriel’s memory they would have been turned about and lost. Of course, Dean reflected distantly, the angel had probably had an advantage the first few times he tried it - he could just spread his wings and fly up, look at it all from overhead, and solve the whole puzzle from up above. The only lone pedlar, and the only one who had never been the apprentice of another.
There was a decent chance, over the rocks and the shallow streams that formed the base of most of the little ravines, that even if the hunt did follow them in here, they’d be lost and confounded before long. Of course, they’d probably be able to find their way back out. Their own scent trail, with all those dog paws and the hot smell of tired horse, would hardly be a challenge. But it would be a stupid thing to try, and if Dean were in charge of the pack he’d never let them go in here.
But Dean wasn’t in charge.
Turn after turn, corner after corner, and the hounds’ voices echoed off the walls, closer and closer. And hooves and paws on this ground had to go faster than wheels.
Then suddenly, staggeringly, they were out. The road was a road again under their feet, and it wound away in a red-brown ribbon through the dark forests below. The land fell away in slopes and gorges towards the lighter greens and purples beyond, a day’s travel or more; and beyond that, strange and distant and almost indistinguishable from the sky, a ribbon of brilliant blue binding the land to the far horizon.
Sam froze, entranced and bewildered; and Dean breathed in the strange air, and nudged his mare up beside Sam. He pushed with his foot against his brother’s shoulder, and heard the wonder in his own voice as he murmured, “This what you were after, Sammy?”
Sam looked up at him, eyes shocked-wide and glittering with delight, even in that moment. And then, behind them, the echoes surged.
The hunt must have rounded a bend. Almost here. Twenty minutes at most before they came.
Dean swung down off his horse’s back and jogged up beside Gabriel. “Mind taking the reins for a bit? Thanks ever so.” Gabriel blinked and, surprisingly, complied; and Dean hopped up onto the wagon, and pushed in through the stupidly tiny door.
Cas was already raising himself onto his elbow, his shadowy wing-girt shape too long and bulky for the tiny bed, incongruous in the little human-like space. When he saw Dean, he sat up properly, movements sharper and cleaner than they’d been for days, and swung his feet to the floor. He didn’t rise, but sat there looking at Dean, with his eyes (so very far from human) too full, fixed on Dean’s face like it held all the questions in the world, and all the answers.
Dean swallowed, and locked his fingers hard around the lintel of the door as the wagon swayed. Too many questions here, between the two of them. Too many doubts, but no time for them.
“Hey there,” he said, and grinned his widest. “I figure it’s just about time for me to turn back.”
“You needn’t,” Cas said at once, low and hoarse like broken glass. “Rachel is on her way. I found her voice in the air and called her.”
So angels could talk to each other over distances, Dean’s mind filed away all on its own. Good to know.
“Yeah, and then?” Dean ducked his head to scrub a hand ruefully over the back of his neck, but he didn’t look away. “If two kids are brawling it out and it looks like someone’s gonna get hurt, you don’t fix it by handing one of them a bigger stick. You get between them, get them the hell apart. Whatever it takes.”
“Dean,” Cas said, and then again, more harshly, as if he’d only just realised how this had to end, that Dean had sort of set a fire on his bridges here. There was something like wonder in the sharp questing hue of those eyes, and something like shame. “You have become... something extraordinary.”
Dean’s breath decided to forget where his lungs were, decided to snag and catch in his throat instead. He went to him; and he marvelled as he did so at how natural and simple it felt to go down on his knees before this creature, before this beautiful, stubborn man; to close his eyes, and to trust him. Even when he shouldn’t.
He felt Cas’ fingers slide into his hair, press warm and insistent in against his scalp; and he tilted his head into it, instead of pulling away. His hands lifted, brushing against shins under heavy linen, and settled themselves comfortably over the sharp bones of Cas’ knees.
“Not so bad yourself, angel,” he said gruffly, and opened his eyes.
Cas shook his head, one sharp negation. There was something in his gaze that made Dean’s throat ache, something wistful and wearily hungry. “My best efforts have been marred by compromise, and have had little lasting effect.”
“Yeah, well.” Dean turned his head far enough to press the side of his face into Cas’ palm, and thought of absolutes and circles without end. “Maybe we could all do with a bit more compromise around here.”
Cas’ mouth thinned into something sad and dark. “Not this kind, Dean.”
Dean rather wanted to lean forward and kiss that ominous line away into softness, but he wasn’t sure how. And there was something in the way Cas was looking at him that made him hesitate, even through the warm reassuring haze of his presence. Something that said, stop, think: to give enough to satisfy that would consume you.
Dean wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Instead, he reached up with one hand and just touched Cas’ mouth; pressed gently against the swell of his lower lip; dragged the pads of his fingers slowly over the paper-dry skin; lingered on the hint of mysterious warmth at the crack.
Cas’ eyes fluttered shut, and he swallowed as if he were in pain. Dean dropped his hand.
“You will be okay with Gabriel, won’t you?” he asked quietly, because it had to be said, and because he wasn’t sure. Gabriel was strong, Dean was starting to realise. That thing with the wall, and the size and brilliance of his wings, and the sheer hot power inside him, and the improvement in Cas who’d been halfway to a corpse not so long ago - it was all far beyond anything Dean had ever seen from even the most hopped-up and desperate of angels on the hunt, all hiding within that compact little pedlar’s body. And he wasn’t exactly the sanest of people right now.
Cas didn’t open his eyes, but he didn’t have to. “He is my brother, Dean,” he said, and the words were heavy with irony and sadness, trusting Dean to unpack all the layers in there. And, hey, it was like a shared joke; except with a whole lot of other things in it too.
“Yeah,” Dean muttered. Then he pressed Cas’ knees under his hands, because they’d always been better at saying the things that mattered than his voice had. “Cas. You know I - hell.” Taboos or no he had to say this, wanted to say this. So he forced past the stutter and shaped the angel’s name (all of it, all of him) in his mouth. “Castiel. I know it doesn’t mean a damn thing to what I did, but I am so - so very fucking sorry about your brother.”
The pale column of Cas’ throat clenched, quick and scared, then released. Just a hint of the steel angel again, holding him cool and steady.
“It means... not everything, but more than you think.”
Which was probably a hell of a lot more than Dean deserved, but he took it, selfish and covetous, and tucked it away safe.
“Hey,” he said, suddenly acutely aware of the volume and cadence of his own voice, not sure what to do with them. “Hey. Cas. I don’t want to see you again, do you hear me?”
Cas’ eyes flew open, startled and very deep. Dean’s words stumbled forward over each other, trying to plaster over the sudden hurt gaping between them. “You come back in there and I can’t be sure you’ll be safe, okay? You stay with Gabriel, and you get better, and stay away.” He swallowed, then added, too fast, throwing the words against Cas’ frozen stare, “And if you can, get rid of the others, if they’ll listen to you, because, screw it, I don’t know them, Cas, and they’re killing my people, so I’m not going to like them, but most important? Sammy, and you, and then Bobby. Then everyone else after that. If it comes to it, I’d rather you’re safe, you hearing me?”
He heard the shake in his own voice a moment too late, and looked away, fastened his gaze on the wood of the floor.
Cas was still for a minute, as the precious seconds ticked by. Then his fingers were drawing over Dean’s neck, and there was the pressure of a hand in the small of Dean’s back, and his knees were parting around Dean’s hips; and then Dean was pressed up against the length of him, hot and lithe, and Cas was guiding Dean’s head down to rest against his shoulder, where it belonged.
And Dean was suddenly, stupidly grateful for this tiny haven, this close circle of Cas’ arms and body and the warmth of his breath against Dean’s collarbone. Because he had no freaking clue what he was doing here, and it was up to him to know. That was his job.
As if Cas had heard the question: “What will you do.”
The dark murmur heated the air beside Dean’s ear, brushed the skin of it, so close and strangely tantalising. So promising, and so beautiful in ways Dean didn’t know how to describe; and not human, not human, and he couldn’t (wouldn’t) hide from that anymore.
So maybe it was time he faced this thing head on.
(It wasn’t time, it would never be time. He wasn’t ready. He couldn’t do this, but it was rushing at him anyway.)
Because the thing was, even with that terrifying snippet he and Sam had overheard, even with what Cas had confessed to doing, even after seeing the crazed glint in Gabriel’s eyes and the smashed bodies of people he’d known, he couldn’t look at Cas and see a monster. It just wasn’t possible. And if Dean could kill angels to protect his family, his people, his own life, and still be a decent person... well, it stood to reason that Cas could do the same to people - to human people. Pick them up, snatch them from the ground, tear them through the air, throw them and break them to pieces on the rocks below, turn their bodies from living people into meat and gobbets... shit. And not be a monster.
And maybe that was scarier than anything else.
“Dean?”
Dean pulled back and looked at him, one last time. Elegant and ivory and ebony in the shadows, and cool fierce blue. Then he slid his hand into Cas’ hair, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to Cas’ forehead, a promise to himself as much as to the angel.
“I’ll hold them off, Cas,” he swore, fierce and low. “I’ll hold them all off.”
Then he went to pull away; but Cas’ hands were knotting hard into his hair and his collar, and all that damned angel strength was pulling Dean forward and down and Cas’ mouth was opening (opening) under Dean’s, hungry and deep. And, wow, was Dean’s mouth that hot inside too?
Dean felt a growl tear its way out through his chest and he shoved in against Cas, searching for something he had no idea what to do with. His upper lip caught sharply between his teeth and Cas’, and the next push of Cas’ jaw crushed the lower one into a bruise, but for some reason they didn’t register against the hot pound of blood in his head and his stomach, against his fingers’ greed for the curve of Cas’ neck and the rough scratch of his stubble.
And that made sense. Because Cas was his, his to protect and to care for, just like Sammy; and Dean would give so much more than pain if it would save him from having to turn and ride away from him, but he wouldn’t give Cas’ life.
So he pulled away, breathing like a drunk man; and he met Cas’ eyes, and he made himself smile, just a little stunned thing. And Cas tilted his head up, and bit his own lip (swollen and slick-damp), and he nodded.
Dean left.
He took the reins back from Gabriel, and just nodded at him, ignored the narrow eyes and the niggling knowledge that, if things had been different, he might have been able to like the guy. Tired as she was, his bay mare snorted and skittered under him, hot and ready.
“Coming, Sammy?”
And then Sam looked up at him, and he shook his head.
Dean’s heart stuttered in his chest.
He didn’t shout, and he didn’t say “What?” like an idiot, because really, how could he not have known? All along, all of Sam’s frustration and his unbreakable silences, and the impossibilities that even Dean had realised of taking him home. Sam was a thinker, and he had had nothing else to do but think these last few days, and he must have turned over every possibility so many times. This couldn’t be a whim. This was Sam, deciding.
So Dean just said, “You sure?”, and he didn’t recognise his own voice.
Sam looked at him with pleading eyes; then both of them looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel just set his jaw, and shot them an unreadable sideways look. Out here, in this light, his eyes looked almost golden, and the sun caught his hair in streaks to match the brightest feathers in his wings. “If you like,” was all he said.
Sam’s body was broken and twisted, a voiceless inhuman thing. Even if somehow everyone back home did accept what he was and laid no blame on him for it, that wouldn’t change. He couldn’t be human, not in the everyday sense. He couldn’t use his hands to tie a rope, couldn’t swap jokes over a beer, couldn’t pin a sheep between his knees and run the shears down its flank. He’d be outside, no matter how hard people tried to pretend they didn’t think so (if they even bothered). The wolf slinking past the door of the sealed hut that kept all its warmth and humanity inside. The freak he’d always been terrified of becoming.
Dean swallowed the scream and the panic. He just pulled up the utter, bone-deep exhaustion that he’d been fighting back all this time, and let it smother him like half the hay shed in summer.
“Okay then,” he said.
Sam gave him one of his biggest soulful looks, the kind that, honestly, being all canine in the face had only improved on; but Dean couldn’t look at it and still leave him, so he didn’t.
Dean turned his horse’s head back towards the canyon, that great wound in the land, the gash that marked the borders of their land and broke them at the same time. Like the slice of a blade across your skin, carving it open, sundering it, and bringing it at the same time to vivid ecstatic life, reminding you of where it lay and what it was. (Like the unexpected heat inside someone else’s mouth, inside their body, lighting up every nerve of your own.) Making you treasure it. Reminding you what it meant to be whole.
He rode back through that broken barrier, over that border, into the arms of the hunt.