Never Come Back
17. Somewhere Only We Know
She watches him in his delirium, takes careful mental notes as he calls out names, spits out curses, and sobs out despair and loss, and she lays a comforting hand on his brow, bends close and whispers soothing words in his ear, "I dreamed of you."
She remembers how having him near made her feel special, how only he could fill the emptiness. She remembers how holding his life in her hands made her feel like God, and how losing him took that power away; until she seized it back again in her daydreams and chased those dreams through every different version of him, fine-tuning each one to make it as perfect as her fantasy of him. And she remembers weeping out her frustration and rage as every blubbering replica proved false.
"But not you," she whispers. "You're the real one. You make me feel good. You make me feel powerful. Back in control."
She grips his chin, digs her nails into the hard planes of his jaw, turns his face towards her and exhales cigarette smoke in his face so that he winces, nose twitching. She places the tip of her knife where the longest lashes rest on his cheek, traces the blade down, seeing blood bead in its path. His eyes crack open in the dim glow of her flashlight, just a slit at first, that second's bleariness between sleep and wake, and then they open wider, startled and then horrified.
He shrinks back into his corner, gasps "Christo."
"Nope, just me," she says playfully, and she maneuvers herself alongside him, leans up against him, can feel him tense up, shudder, feel his heart thudding and the heat of his skin through his tee. "You always were so warm," she murmurs. "Like a furnace."
The word makes him jump, squeak, tense up even more. "Well, what are you waiting for, bitch?" he chokes thickly, and his voice cracks. "Just take me back there. Why the fuck are you holding me in Limbo anyway? Why don't you just take me back?"
She kisses the shell of his ear, sings softly, "Yeah, we can do the limbo rock, all around the limbo clock… How low can you go, angel boy?"
"You can't hurt me anymore," he dares.
She plays her eyes up his red-streaked arm to his wrist, already swollen and red where the plastic tie that secures him to the metal bar is deeply embedded. "Brave boy," she purrs. "My brave little soldier. But I can hurt you good… and you know you love it. You know you want it." She clambers up over his hips, straddles him, grinds herself down on him. "Do you have something big for me to play with?" she teases, and she laughs out her triumph as she feels him squirm and harden underneath her. "I'm in charge of this. Don't you forget who's the boss of you."
"Bitch," he spits out, but it's hollow, desperate, and he turns his face away, squeezes his eyes tight shut again. "It's nothing. It's biological. It means nothing."
"I'll stop," she hums in his ear. "I'll stop if you beg. You were always so good at begging… why don't you beg me to stop like you begged him to, huh?"
And then he looks right at her, his gaze rock steady. "I'm never going to beg you bastards again," he croaks. "You may have me back but I'm not breaking this time. I'm not becoming like you again, not ever. You can't hurt me any worse than you and he did before, and-"
She cuts him off on a garbled cry and the smell of seared flesh as her cigarette makes a crisp blackened hole in the fabric of his tee. "I do love a barbecue," she smiles, and she stabs the butt against his flesh again, wriggles again, feels an answering twitch, sees his appalled look before he closes it down.
"Even good boys get off on pain," she murmurs. "I can feel how much you get off on it, how much you like it. How much you want it, just like you always did back then. You miss it… you miss me and him, and the way it used to be." She smiles fondly. "We had such good times together, the three of us, before he came and took you away."
His eyes widen at that, lighting up with a flash of hope. "He's coming back," he mutters. "He'll come get me again, just like before. He won't leave me here… he'll never leave me here. I know it."
She cocks her head. "Oh, baby… you mean the one who took you back then, picked you up and carried you out of the flames?" She shakes her head. "I heard him calling for you, but you know what? He didn't seem to be looking all that hard. I mean, there you were, right there, just waiting for me, and he didn't even search."
"Lying bitch," he grates out, and he yelps as she flashes her hand across his guts, clutches weakly at the wound while blood seeps through his fingers. "God. Don't."
"Not so brave now, angel boy," she laughs, lays the blade up under his ear. "I could take an ear. Mail it to your nearest and dearest, like they do in all the movies."
He doesn't blink as he looks at her. "He's coming to get me," he whispers unhappily. "I know he is. He'll figure out a way. He did it before."
She sighs out, long-suffering and rueful. "He just stood there by your car, and there you were, not ten yards away in the ditch. I was real lucky seeing where you fell. But he didn't even bother checking the verges. Neither did the other two… they all just stood there and yammered at each other."
"That's a lie, you're lying," he gasps out. "They wouldn't just leave me there… they're looking. I know they are. And you can't hide me from him down here, he'll get a funny feeling about me. He'll find me like before. He won't leave me here."
"Well, why wait?" She smiles a big, wide smile down at him and he flinches minutely. "Cause I got a great idea," she goes on, her drawl lazy. "Why don't I go and fetch Sam here, maybe have him join the party? See how purty he looks when I'm trimming the fat off his bones, maybe hear how loud he can scream when I-"
"No." He shakes his head convulsively. "No!" he sobs out, and his eyes are huge and dazed. "No, that wasn't the deal. Sam isn't part of the deal, you're never having him, you leave him be… we had a deal."
It's a chink in the armor, and she hums out in satisfaction. "I guess we'll see." She holds up her knife, tilts the blade in the flashlight beam. "Can you think of any games we can play to pass the time while we wait and see if anyone comes to rescue you?" she simpers. "Are you going to behave, so I don't have to go and fetch Sammy to watch us play?"
He stares at her, and his eyes are anxious as she slices into his tee and rips the fabric away. She plays her eyes along his skin, sees a darker shadowing of pigment on his shoulder, and lays her palm against it, stretching out her fingers. "That's so pretty," she whispers and she licks her lips, smiles, and wonders how deep it goes. She traces the outline with her blade, digs deep, deeper, and he turns his face away, bites into his right shoulder, stifles his pain and despair as she doodles red patterns on his skin. The muscles jump across his chest and belly, and his lips tremble, but he doesn't make a sound as she drags her knife away from that spot and carves her name on his chest, underlining her script with a flourish.
"My, aren't you a good boy now you're all focused instead of whining and yammering on like you did before when you were hurting," she says admiringly. "We taught you well, him and me." She leans close and he recoils, closes his eyes, as she presses a chaste kiss to his cheek. "You are like us," she breathes. "You always were. You got a murderer's hands, you're a natural born killer. You're my kind. Now sing for me. Sing for me like you always used to back then."
And she and her knife play him like a virtuoso, and they make beautiful music together.
As a lead it isn't much, just a scrawled note and a phone number left on a sticky before Coop took off, and Hudak wedges the phone under her chin, wrestles the lid off her anemic looking latte and unscrews the lid of her coffee jar as she taps out the number. She's just stirring in a good-sized extra spoonful of caffeine when she gets a connection and a voice barks back at her.
"Uh, yes - Detective Lansing?"
The man seems to know her, wastes no time in crisply doling out a flood of information, and she sits up straight and listens hard as the tinny voice yacks away on the other end of the line. Dates jump out at Hudak, and she interjects. "Wait, are they're sure about the dates?" Forensics report and, "Can you email it to me?" she interjects again. "Thanks, I appreciate that."
She hangs up, sits and stares at computer monitor in front of her and drifts for a minute. She can't help it, can't help replaying Dean's drunken ramblings in her mind, and she can almost feel his skin under her hands as she smoothed her fingertips across him, marveling at his newly unmarked perfection, and asked if he thought Castiel might do her frown line for her.
He had snuffled and worried that spot on her neck and whispered gentle promises in her ear about slow, lazy, old man sex, I'm seventy now, Kathleen, have to take it slow and steady, takes me a while to get there, and she had flipped him over and sniped back that she was younger than him now, too young for geriatric comfort sex. And she couldn't help herself, she had placed her hand there on the mark, fitting her fingers to the handprint of an angel, as Dean stared darkly up at her. And then he had smiled, whispered, your eyes are so blue, never really noticed that before, as he drew her down to him.
"Kathleen, stop. Stop it."
Hudak rams the heels of her hands up hard against her eyes, and presses her mental pause button.
And then she boots up the computer, clicks on her emails, copies it all over, calls it up onscreen, and hisses out as the faces stare back at her.
She hits print.
It's winter here, and the chill burns him deep in his bones, makes his blood run cold in his veins, and his tears stiffen into icicles.
His eyes freeze half-open and he whimpers as he forces them to blink. The sheet ice covering his eyeballs cracks like the great thaw, and he gazes down at his face, reflected back at him in the glassy surface of the ice pit. He tries to hug himself tighter, tries to find some warmth, but the water crept up to his shoulders while he wasn't looking and his arms are frozen solid in the glacier. His head lolls in exhaustion, and he jerks it back upright because he knows that if he lets it fall, his face will freeze where it makes contact.
As he squints into the bluish light he sees the dark-haired man approaching him across the ice.
The man stops, squats down, and his tone is sad. "Didn't you think happy thoughts, Dean?"
"Happy thoughts?" Dean echoes, incredulous. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, you fuckin' idiot."
The man translates. "All hope abandon, ye who enter in."
"Yeah, it's on the sign above the gate, you prick," Dean replies. "Happy thoughts? Jesus. I got fuckin' demoted because of you… and can you hear that?" He motions his head at the middle distance, from where music wafts faintly. "The Carpenters. The soundtrack to Hell is the fuckin' Carpenters. Christ, if they'd played that first time round I would've cracked on day one."
"Cocytus," says the man. "The river of wailing."
"You don't say," Dean retorts. "Caina, to be exact. Frozen solid by the flapping wings of Lucifer."
"Cain," the man breathes. "Where traitors to blood relatives languish."
Dean feels sudden tears spring, feels them solidify on his frigid cheeks as they trickle out. "I never betrayed my family," he chokes out. I did a lot of crap, Cas, but being a traitor, that's just… unless it's because of my dad. Do you think it's because of my dad? Because I didn't say yes to the reaper before my dad made his deal with Yellow Eyes? Is that it? Am I a traitor to my dad, is that why-"
"No, no," the dark-haired man is saying, and he touches his hand to Dean's chin, gentle where Lilith was cruel, tilts his face up. His eyes are intense, fixed on Dean's own. "Dean, listen to me. This is not real, this is-"
"Of course it's real," Dean croaks. "Look around you. How can it not be real? And you knew I was headed back here, you sonofabitch, and you let me hope I was free and clear, and-"
"Dean, Dean, Dean." The man cuts in again, tumbling out the words. "This isn't real, this isn't Hell… you're dreaming. Listen to me. You're dreaming. Listen to me. Time is short but don't give up." He's wavering before Dean's eyes, going transparent, and his stare turns frantic but Dean can still hear his voice.
"I'll be here with you. Think happy thoughts, Dean."
He's leaving, and, "No!" Dean pleads, fighting to break his arms free of the ice. "Wait a minute! Don't go, I'm supposed to come with you… wait a minute!"
But the man is mist now. "I'll be here with you," he murmurs again as he fades. "Think happy thoughts, Dean. See past Hell, so you will not wake so abruptly."
"Don't you think I'm trying to?" Dean cries. "I've spent years trying to see past Hell."
"There is no try, Dean," the man's voice whispers tenderly in his ear, and Dean thinks he might even feel the man's breath, feel his lips ghost the skin of his cheek. "There is only do. Or do not."
And then the man is gone, and Dean screams his desperation into the shadows, and something else too, some germ of knowledge he can't quite parse but he knows it's important. "Come back. Cas, come back. There are ghosts here. You listen to me. It's important. There are ghosts here, the ghosts of my life. It means something."
He stops, listens.
There is nothing except the sound of distant guitar music.
He yelps as he jerks awake, sucks in his agony and rests a shaking hand on his belly.
"Death by a thousand fuckin' cuts," he mutters hoarsely, because he hollered his wrecked throat raw again along to her tinkling laughter.
He's flat on his back, feels weak and ill. He can feel dried blood crusting his abdomen, can feel himself shaking. His right arm pulls painfully at its tether and he stretches his fingers out, wraps them around something cold, panting out his exertion as he braces on it and hauls himself more upright. A bolt of pain shoots up his leg to his hip as he maneuvers and he grits his teeth to stop his cry from making it past his lips. When he plants his left hand on the floor for leverage, the bolt of agony that rockets through his shoulder has his head spinning and his arm buckling. He breathes through it, waits for the rolling pain to subside before glancing at the joint to see that the skin is shredded, just so much ground meat glistening under a thin shaft of light from above.
Dean follows the light, focuses on the bright vertical crack of yellow that is its source. "Cas," slips out of him, and he can't hold onto his despair. "Why is it taking so long? Please don't leave me here. It's just Limbo, for Christ's sake. It isn't too far to come, it's just the fuckin' edge. Soon it'll be too late."
He listens but there's nothing, just the familiar crash bang of the cussin' weather. "It won't take as long this time," he whispers out to the gloom. A broken giggle bubbles up out of his throat and then turns into something like a gasp, followed by a sob. "It won't take thirty years this time, Cas. You need to come get me before it's too late."
And even though Dean can feel dread gnaw at his guts, can feel himself begin to sink beneath the surface of his own growing panic and distress, there is comfort in the knowledge that he won't fight, that he'll jump right off that rack the very first time Alastair whispers in his ear, and pick up whatever ax, cleaver, knife or straight razor is to hand before laying into them with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.
But Alastair is dead.
It comes out of nowhere, the thought, and, "Isn't he?" Dean rasps out. "Cas. Isn't he? Dead?"
Something isn't right, but Lilith turned his brain into a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of tiny pieces and then she upended it all onto the floor, and as hard as Dean tries to piece it all back together from the outside edges in, vital parts are missing, holes in the picture, the faces, always the faces.
"I don't know where I am," he croaks. "Where am I? I don't know where I am. How can Alastair be here when he's dead?"
He leans his head against his captive arm, whistles out a breath as the cigarette burns tracking it flare, and he blows out air on the ones he can reach, feels them cool slightly. "Cas, you bastard," he murmurs, wiping his tears and snot off on the sleeve of his tee. "Help me. Please. You're the only one who can. And I'm so tired."
And in his mind, Dean hears the echo of a voice he thinks he might have dreamed, distant, he can only just hear it as he strains to listen. "Think happy thoughts," he breathes out to himself. "Happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts, Dean."
"So he said she'd been looking for him for years, and that she knew him from the amulet?" Bobby says, scrubbing at his cap and finally pulling it off and frisbying it over onto the bed.
It doesn't make sense, Sam thinks, and he voices his skepticism aloud. "That doesn't fit in with what we know, it hasn't been years since he got out of there. Unless she's thinking in terms of Hell years?"
"And you say he's in Cocytus?" Bobby cuts in.
Castiel's blue stare is flat as he flicks it between them both. "So it would seem. In this dream, anyway. In the previous dream he was in Violence. He compared it to Lawrence of Arabia."
There's no way, and, "Violence?" Sam asks hoarsely. "But how is that even-"
"Lawrence of Arabia?" Bobby chimes in simultaneously, cutting Sam off.
"The seventh circle," the angel clarifies patiently. "Inner ring. A vast, fiery desert where the violent are cast and the-"
"Sodomites wander," Sam interrupts. "If he's dreaming all of this, if it's his memories from when he was really in Hell… then Violence is real? And Cocytus too?" He can't help glancing over at his brother's jacket, still hanging where Dean left it, remembers Dean's voice, low and barely controlled, ice, and blizzards, a frozen lake of guilt, and shame, and everlasting contempt.
"In a manner of speaking," Castiel replies matter-of-factly. "Hell is in many ways a construct of the mind that manifests in the way we imagine it. And likewise, the damned manifest in Hell the way they see themselves there. To put it simply."
Bobby barks out an unintelligible expletive. "To put it simply? Jesus wept. You mean it's a figment of the imagination?"
Castiel shrugs. "Yes and no. For the dammed, Hell is complete destruction into a state of non-being. Yet they exist there and it is a reality to them."
The old man cocks his head, unimpressed. "Are you jerkin' my chain, son?" he spits acidly, before he goes on to voice Sam's own incredulity. "Because you'll need to get up earlier in the morning to get one over on me. Even I've read the Divine Comedy. Violence, Cocytus, all that circles crap - it's fiction."
The angel's expression switches from impassive to vaguely affronted. "Although Dante depicted what is largely a medieval concept of Hell, he was essentially right," he says defensively. "His visions were, in fact, divine. God-given. So no, Bobby, I'm not jerking your chain. Given that this is hardly the time to wax philosophical. Is it?"
Bobby glowers for a minute before turning on his heel and stalking back to his seat.
Sam leans over where he sits, dips his head down low for a few seconds and deep breathes his roiling gut into submission as his brother's words whisper their halting way through his memory again. "Dean must have read it too," he says. "The Inferno. Remember what he said, Bobby? About Hell? About how he crammed for it. Learned all he could. If he's dreaming it that way, it must have been his version of Hell." On the heels of his despondency, there is a spike of anger and Sam hears his tone change to sharp and resentful as he looks up. "Tell me something, Castiel. Why does God keep telling us we'll be saved if we repent when it isn't true?"
Castiel stands and looks at him, silent, reserved, grave, stoic, in a way that, oddly, makes Sam think of his brother. Loyalty, that's what it is, he realizes. Unswerving loyalty, the kind that made Castiel fight off demons for forty years to get to Dean even though he was infected by the Pit, remote from God and starved of His light. The kind of loyalty that keeps Dean orbiting him, even though Dean knows damn well Sam sealed his dying wish inside a mental time capsule, buried it, and started plotting his revenge practically the day after New Harmony.
"I pushed too hard, and your brother woke," the Castiel deflects, his voice distant. "It was necessary to ease our distress."
"Our distress?" Sam echoes, and he notices that look in the angel's eyes again, the one that is so reminiscent of Dean's thousand-yard stare.
"It isn't easy," Castiel murmurs, and for an instant his rigid composure is gone, and he seems to slump. "Hell is fear, despair. Hell is a hopelessness that is beyond your capacity to imagine. Seeing him like that again… it isn't easy."
The moment is strangely intimate, and Sam finds he has to break it. He clears his throat harshly, shoots a look at Bobby. "That's why I should go in. We could get the dream root. Give it a try at least. So I can talk to him."
Bobby shrugs. "At this point, kid, I don't-"
"It's a bad idea."
Castiel's tone is suddenly icy, and Sam swings his head around in concert with Bobby, feels irritation spike. "It's not your decision to make," he snaps. "If I think it's-"
"Would you torture your brother further by killing him again?" Castiel cuts in, and even if his tone is abruptly icy, his eyes are flashing fire, a warning. "Or by having him kill you?"
Sam flounders. "What do you mean by that? Killing me, what does that mean?"
Castiel's voice softens again. "You weren't the only one wielding the knife in Hell, Sam. Alastair saw to it that your brother suffered untold torment and died at your hands in myriad ways. For thirty years. And then Dean climbed off the rack." He pauses briefly. "He was a capable apprentice. And you were his learning curve."
The silence stretches between all of them, numbing, paralyzing, horrifying silence, and Sam has no words. Because there aren't words, he thinks.
"I know you mean well, Sam," Castiel continues. "But as yet, your brother hasn't dreamed of the times he worked on you, and I-" He stops suddenly, and his eyes flick away for a moment and then back, and they're bright, full. "Pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, Sam."
And Sam remembers then, the conversation that seems so long ago, and the angel's sorrow as he spoke, sorrow that aches in his voice now. "You kept that from Dean when you brought him back," he whispers. "And you think that if I show up there without him being in control of it, it could trigger his memory."
"It's possible," Castiel replies gravely. "And if it does…" He pauses, and in the beat that follows, his somber expression suddenly falters, going as unguarded as Sam has ever seen it. In that instant, everything Sam might have suspected about Castiel's feelings for his brother are written clearly in the angel's eyes. "I fear he would be further damaged by this revelation. And I will not risk him in this way."
Sam catches a glimpse of Bobby's face behind Castiel, sees that the old man's expression is itself stricken. "I feel so fucking helpless," he grates out. "Even if he isn't dead and it isn't real, he thinks it is. And he's alone."
Castiel sighs, long and heavy. "He isn't alone, Sam. When he dreams, I will be there with him."
Sam registers that the angel's tone is final, that he's telling them that he'll stop Sam if necessary, and his vision blurs as the reality of Dean's Hell plays out before him: the brother he feared would turn into something else destroying what remained of him in the Pit, until the day he said yes and followed it up by using his own hands to do what he dreaded most. And hot on its tail comes something else, a dawning comprehension of what Castiel meant by our distress, an understanding of the angel's loyalty, the flat look that softens only for Dean. It's devotion, Sam realizes, because Castiel was there, is there, he shared, is sharing, and he has seen Dean and knows him in ways Sam never will, and it has Sam wondering if it isn't the Bloods and the Crips at all, if it's been nothing more than jealousy that fuels his edginess in the angel's presence.
A few feet away, Bobby clears his throat. "He's right Sam," the old man says wearily. "Happy thoughts, remember? Seeing you in what he thinks is Hell could mess with your brother even more."
It falls quiet for a few minutes more, until Castiel breaks the silence. "Dean said something as he woke, something about ghosts being there with him, the ghosts of his life. He said it was important."
"The ghosts of his life?" Bobby scratches his head, his expression puzzled.
Castiel nods. "The ghosts of his life. He said it meant something. He was most insistent." He glances back to Sam. "I assumed it was a message. I hoped you would know the meaning."
It's cryptic enough to spike another burst of irritation in Sam, and he throws up his hands, helpless. "Is it part of the torture that you end up talking in riddles?"
"Probably the dream thing," Bobby suggests. "Dreams can be a message. And a body does all sorts of weird stuff in dreams. God knows, Dean's capable of anything when he's having one of his night terrors."
"The ghosts of his life," Castiel muses, and he stares at some invisible spot on the wall. "Perhaps it isn't literal ghosts. Perhaps he is referring to memories?"
"Lilith is a memory," Bobby offers.
It focuses Sam suddenly, has him backtracking through the conversation. "But not from his life, not really. Why did he say the ghosts of his life? And why did he say she knew him because of his amulet? I took it off him after New Harmony… how would Lilith know about it? Would it have manifested in Hell if it wasn't on his body?"
Castiel frowns. "It seemed that he was trying to tell me something, something he might not fully realize in his conscious state if he's injured or confused. Perhaps that's why it was an indirect reference. But if the ghosts are memories, then perhaps it follows that he knows who has him, knows them from life. Not from death."
Sam shakes his head. "But it doesn't fit with the theory. It is Lilith, it has to be her. That's why all the victims look like him, and that's why he's cloaked. She's hiding him, hiding herself too."
"We don't know for certain if Lilith possesses the knowledge to cloak herself and whoever is with her from the Host," Castiel replies. "Although she is a demon, there's no evidence she is well-versed in the dark magic needed to achieve this." He pauses for a moment, tilts his head and stares Sam right in the eyes, and despite his schooled indifference his tone is heavy with meaning when he continues. "In fact, I can think of only one demon who is qualified."
Sam swallows, knows he colors because he can feel the heat flush his cheeks, and he looks down at his boots for the span of another dragged-out, awkward silence even as his mind insists that he's right.
"Dean did have his doubts it was her," Bobby offers then. "It isn't beyond the realms of possibility this is someone else who knows your brother, Sam. It could be that some other hunter who knows Dean got out of Hell, and that some powerful mojo must've had a hand in that, is trying to-"
And, fuck this doubt, and, "It's Lilith," Sam snaps. "Who else would even know they needed to cloak him from Cas? It's not exactly common knowledge Dean's been touched by an angel. And-"
He's cut off by a tap on the door, spins and strides over to unbolt it. Hudak is standing there holding up two, no, three printouts, and the faces smiling back at Sam could be his brother if he added twenty pounds and a few years.
"David Lerman," Hudak says, without preamble. "Erstwhile resident of Orr. And Ethan Sturgis, late of Virginia. Their bodies were found in May and July respectively. And we've got another possible, a John Doe who showed up in March, up near the Canadian border. Might be something, might be nothing."
"But that's before," Sam hears Bobby saying from miles away. "That was before Dean came back. Lilith had no reason then."
But Dean is cloaked, Sam thinks frantically, and now all he can hear is the clamor in his head, I can think of only one demon who is qualified, and all he can see is his brother scowling down at his soiled clothing as they walked back to the motel from the bar. He stumbles to the corner, grabs his duffel and upends it, starts rifling through his gear, and as he does so his eyes are caught by his brother's worn, filthy jeans tossed in the corner. And the pieces slot into place, we need to do laundry, and, "No," groans out of Sam as Bobby pulls him up and swings him round.
"It was in my jeans," he babbles, desperate. "I didn't think. It didn't occur to me… fuck, Bobby, he must have borrowed them, he didn't have anything clean. And it was in the pocket."
"What?" the old man is saying, his voice rising with alarm. "What was in your pocket, Sam? What are you-"
"Hexbag," Castiel cuts in frostily, from across the room. "The extra-crunchy version, I suspect."
Next
She watches him in his delirium, takes careful mental notes as he calls out names, spits out curses, and sobs out despair and loss, and she lays a comforting hand on his brow, bends close and whispers soothing words in his ear, "I dreamed of you."
She remembers how having him near made her feel special, how only he could fill the emptiness. She remembers how holding his life in her hands made her feel like God, and how losing him took that power away; until she seized it back again in her daydreams and chased those dreams through every different version of him, fine-tuning each one to make it as perfect as her fantasy of him. And she remembers weeping out her frustration and rage as every blubbering replica proved false.
"But not you," she whispers. "You're the real one. You make me feel good. You make me feel powerful. Back in control."
She grips his chin, digs her nails into the hard planes of his jaw, turns his face towards her and exhales cigarette smoke in his face so that he winces, nose twitching. She places the tip of her knife where the longest lashes rest on his cheek, traces the blade down, seeing blood bead in its path. His eyes crack open in the dim glow of her flashlight, just a slit at first, that second's bleariness between sleep and wake, and then they open wider, startled and then horrified.
He shrinks back into his corner, gasps "Christo."
"Nope, just me," she says playfully, and she maneuvers herself alongside him, leans up against him, can feel him tense up, shudder, feel his heart thudding and the heat of his skin through his tee. "You always were so warm," she murmurs. "Like a furnace."
The word makes him jump, squeak, tense up even more. "Well, what are you waiting for, bitch?" he chokes thickly, and his voice cracks. "Just take me back there. Why the fuck are you holding me in Limbo anyway? Why don't you just take me back?"
She kisses the shell of his ear, sings softly, "Yeah, we can do the limbo rock, all around the limbo clock… How low can you go, angel boy?"
"You can't hurt me anymore," he dares.
She plays her eyes up his red-streaked arm to his wrist, already swollen and red where the plastic tie that secures him to the metal bar is deeply embedded. "Brave boy," she purrs. "My brave little soldier. But I can hurt you good… and you know you love it. You know you want it." She clambers up over his hips, straddles him, grinds herself down on him. "Do you have something big for me to play with?" she teases, and she laughs out her triumph as she feels him squirm and harden underneath her. "I'm in charge of this. Don't you forget who's the boss of you."
"Bitch," he spits out, but it's hollow, desperate, and he turns his face away, squeezes his eyes tight shut again. "It's nothing. It's biological. It means nothing."
"I'll stop," she hums in his ear. "I'll stop if you beg. You were always so good at begging… why don't you beg me to stop like you begged him to, huh?"
And then he looks right at her, his gaze rock steady. "I'm never going to beg you bastards again," he croaks. "You may have me back but I'm not breaking this time. I'm not becoming like you again, not ever. You can't hurt me any worse than you and he did before, and-"
She cuts him off on a garbled cry and the smell of seared flesh as her cigarette makes a crisp blackened hole in the fabric of his tee. "I do love a barbecue," she smiles, and she stabs the butt against his flesh again, wriggles again, feels an answering twitch, sees his appalled look before he closes it down.
"Even good boys get off on pain," she murmurs. "I can feel how much you get off on it, how much you like it. How much you want it, just like you always did back then. You miss it… you miss me and him, and the way it used to be." She smiles fondly. "We had such good times together, the three of us, before he came and took you away."
His eyes widen at that, lighting up with a flash of hope. "He's coming back," he mutters. "He'll come get me again, just like before. He won't leave me here… he'll never leave me here. I know it."
She cocks her head. "Oh, baby… you mean the one who took you back then, picked you up and carried you out of the flames?" She shakes her head. "I heard him calling for you, but you know what? He didn't seem to be looking all that hard. I mean, there you were, right there, just waiting for me, and he didn't even search."
"Lying bitch," he grates out, and he yelps as she flashes her hand across his guts, clutches weakly at the wound while blood seeps through his fingers. "God. Don't."
"Not so brave now, angel boy," she laughs, lays the blade up under his ear. "I could take an ear. Mail it to your nearest and dearest, like they do in all the movies."
He doesn't blink as he looks at her. "He's coming to get me," he whispers unhappily. "I know he is. He'll figure out a way. He did it before."
She sighs out, long-suffering and rueful. "He just stood there by your car, and there you were, not ten yards away in the ditch. I was real lucky seeing where you fell. But he didn't even bother checking the verges. Neither did the other two… they all just stood there and yammered at each other."
"That's a lie, you're lying," he gasps out. "They wouldn't just leave me there… they're looking. I know they are. And you can't hide me from him down here, he'll get a funny feeling about me. He'll find me like before. He won't leave me here."
"Well, why wait?" She smiles a big, wide smile down at him and he flinches minutely. "Cause I got a great idea," she goes on, her drawl lazy. "Why don't I go and fetch Sam here, maybe have him join the party? See how purty he looks when I'm trimming the fat off his bones, maybe hear how loud he can scream when I-"
"No." He shakes his head convulsively. "No!" he sobs out, and his eyes are huge and dazed. "No, that wasn't the deal. Sam isn't part of the deal, you're never having him, you leave him be… we had a deal."
It's a chink in the armor, and she hums out in satisfaction. "I guess we'll see." She holds up her knife, tilts the blade in the flashlight beam. "Can you think of any games we can play to pass the time while we wait and see if anyone comes to rescue you?" she simpers. "Are you going to behave, so I don't have to go and fetch Sammy to watch us play?"
He stares at her, and his eyes are anxious as she slices into his tee and rips the fabric away. She plays her eyes along his skin, sees a darker shadowing of pigment on his shoulder, and lays her palm against it, stretching out her fingers. "That's so pretty," she whispers and she licks her lips, smiles, and wonders how deep it goes. She traces the outline with her blade, digs deep, deeper, and he turns his face away, bites into his right shoulder, stifles his pain and despair as she doodles red patterns on his skin. The muscles jump across his chest and belly, and his lips tremble, but he doesn't make a sound as she drags her knife away from that spot and carves her name on his chest, underlining her script with a flourish.
"My, aren't you a good boy now you're all focused instead of whining and yammering on like you did before when you were hurting," she says admiringly. "We taught you well, him and me." She leans close and he recoils, closes his eyes, as she presses a chaste kiss to his cheek. "You are like us," she breathes. "You always were. You got a murderer's hands, you're a natural born killer. You're my kind. Now sing for me. Sing for me like you always used to back then."
And she and her knife play him like a virtuoso, and they make beautiful music together.
As a lead it isn't much, just a scrawled note and a phone number left on a sticky before Coop took off, and Hudak wedges the phone under her chin, wrestles the lid off her anemic looking latte and unscrews the lid of her coffee jar as she taps out the number. She's just stirring in a good-sized extra spoonful of caffeine when she gets a connection and a voice barks back at her.
"Uh, yes - Detective Lansing?"
The man seems to know her, wastes no time in crisply doling out a flood of information, and she sits up straight and listens hard as the tinny voice yacks away on the other end of the line. Dates jump out at Hudak, and she interjects. "Wait, are they're sure about the dates?" Forensics report and, "Can you email it to me?" she interjects again. "Thanks, I appreciate that."
She hangs up, sits and stares at computer monitor in front of her and drifts for a minute. She can't help it, can't help replaying Dean's drunken ramblings in her mind, and she can almost feel his skin under her hands as she smoothed her fingertips across him, marveling at his newly unmarked perfection, and asked if he thought Castiel might do her frown line for her.
He had snuffled and worried that spot on her neck and whispered gentle promises in her ear about slow, lazy, old man sex, I'm seventy now, Kathleen, have to take it slow and steady, takes me a while to get there, and she had flipped him over and sniped back that she was younger than him now, too young for geriatric comfort sex. And she couldn't help herself, she had placed her hand there on the mark, fitting her fingers to the handprint of an angel, as Dean stared darkly up at her. And then he had smiled, whispered, your eyes are so blue, never really noticed that before, as he drew her down to him.
"Kathleen, stop. Stop it."
Hudak rams the heels of her hands up hard against her eyes, and presses her mental pause button.
And then she boots up the computer, clicks on her emails, copies it all over, calls it up onscreen, and hisses out as the faces stare back at her.
She hits print.
It's winter here, and the chill burns him deep in his bones, makes his blood run cold in his veins, and his tears stiffen into icicles.
His eyes freeze half-open and he whimpers as he forces them to blink. The sheet ice covering his eyeballs cracks like the great thaw, and he gazes down at his face, reflected back at him in the glassy surface of the ice pit. He tries to hug himself tighter, tries to find some warmth, but the water crept up to his shoulders while he wasn't looking and his arms are frozen solid in the glacier. His head lolls in exhaustion, and he jerks it back upright because he knows that if he lets it fall, his face will freeze where it makes contact.
As he squints into the bluish light he sees the dark-haired man approaching him across the ice.
The man stops, squats down, and his tone is sad. "Didn't you think happy thoughts, Dean?"
"Happy thoughts?" Dean echoes, incredulous. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, you fuckin' idiot."
The man translates. "All hope abandon, ye who enter in."
"Yeah, it's on the sign above the gate, you prick," Dean replies. "Happy thoughts? Jesus. I got fuckin' demoted because of you… and can you hear that?" He motions his head at the middle distance, from where music wafts faintly. "The Carpenters. The soundtrack to Hell is the fuckin' Carpenters. Christ, if they'd played that first time round I would've cracked on day one."
"Cocytus," says the man. "The river of wailing."
"You don't say," Dean retorts. "Caina, to be exact. Frozen solid by the flapping wings of Lucifer."
"Cain," the man breathes. "Where traitors to blood relatives languish."
Dean feels sudden tears spring, feels them solidify on his frigid cheeks as they trickle out. "I never betrayed my family," he chokes out. I did a lot of crap, Cas, but being a traitor, that's just… unless it's because of my dad. Do you think it's because of my dad? Because I didn't say yes to the reaper before my dad made his deal with Yellow Eyes? Is that it? Am I a traitor to my dad, is that why-"
"No, no," the dark-haired man is saying, and he touches his hand to Dean's chin, gentle where Lilith was cruel, tilts his face up. His eyes are intense, fixed on Dean's own. "Dean, listen to me. This is not real, this is-"
"Of course it's real," Dean croaks. "Look around you. How can it not be real? And you knew I was headed back here, you sonofabitch, and you let me hope I was free and clear, and-"
"Dean, Dean, Dean." The man cuts in again, tumbling out the words. "This isn't real, this isn't Hell… you're dreaming. Listen to me. You're dreaming. Listen to me. Time is short but don't give up." He's wavering before Dean's eyes, going transparent, and his stare turns frantic but Dean can still hear his voice.
"I'll be here with you. Think happy thoughts, Dean."
He's leaving, and, "No!" Dean pleads, fighting to break his arms free of the ice. "Wait a minute! Don't go, I'm supposed to come with you… wait a minute!"
But the man is mist now. "I'll be here with you," he murmurs again as he fades. "Think happy thoughts, Dean. See past Hell, so you will not wake so abruptly."
"Don't you think I'm trying to?" Dean cries. "I've spent years trying to see past Hell."
"There is no try, Dean," the man's voice whispers tenderly in his ear, and Dean thinks he might even feel the man's breath, feel his lips ghost the skin of his cheek. "There is only do. Or do not."
And then the man is gone, and Dean screams his desperation into the shadows, and something else too, some germ of knowledge he can't quite parse but he knows it's important. "Come back. Cas, come back. There are ghosts here. You listen to me. It's important. There are ghosts here, the ghosts of my life. It means something."
He stops, listens.
There is nothing except the sound of distant guitar music.
He yelps as he jerks awake, sucks in his agony and rests a shaking hand on his belly.
"Death by a thousand fuckin' cuts," he mutters hoarsely, because he hollered his wrecked throat raw again along to her tinkling laughter.
He's flat on his back, feels weak and ill. He can feel dried blood crusting his abdomen, can feel himself shaking. His right arm pulls painfully at its tether and he stretches his fingers out, wraps them around something cold, panting out his exertion as he braces on it and hauls himself more upright. A bolt of pain shoots up his leg to his hip as he maneuvers and he grits his teeth to stop his cry from making it past his lips. When he plants his left hand on the floor for leverage, the bolt of agony that rockets through his shoulder has his head spinning and his arm buckling. He breathes through it, waits for the rolling pain to subside before glancing at the joint to see that the skin is shredded, just so much ground meat glistening under a thin shaft of light from above.
Dean follows the light, focuses on the bright vertical crack of yellow that is its source. "Cas," slips out of him, and he can't hold onto his despair. "Why is it taking so long? Please don't leave me here. It's just Limbo, for Christ's sake. It isn't too far to come, it's just the fuckin' edge. Soon it'll be too late."
He listens but there's nothing, just the familiar crash bang of the cussin' weather. "It won't take as long this time," he whispers out to the gloom. A broken giggle bubbles up out of his throat and then turns into something like a gasp, followed by a sob. "It won't take thirty years this time, Cas. You need to come get me before it's too late."
And even though Dean can feel dread gnaw at his guts, can feel himself begin to sink beneath the surface of his own growing panic and distress, there is comfort in the knowledge that he won't fight, that he'll jump right off that rack the very first time Alastair whispers in his ear, and pick up whatever ax, cleaver, knife or straight razor is to hand before laying into them with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.
But Alastair is dead.
It comes out of nowhere, the thought, and, "Isn't he?" Dean rasps out. "Cas. Isn't he? Dead?"
Something isn't right, but Lilith turned his brain into a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of tiny pieces and then she upended it all onto the floor, and as hard as Dean tries to piece it all back together from the outside edges in, vital parts are missing, holes in the picture, the faces, always the faces.
"I don't know where I am," he croaks. "Where am I? I don't know where I am. How can Alastair be here when he's dead?"
He leans his head against his captive arm, whistles out a breath as the cigarette burns tracking it flare, and he blows out air on the ones he can reach, feels them cool slightly. "Cas, you bastard," he murmurs, wiping his tears and snot off on the sleeve of his tee. "Help me. Please. You're the only one who can. And I'm so tired."
And in his mind, Dean hears the echo of a voice he thinks he might have dreamed, distant, he can only just hear it as he strains to listen. "Think happy thoughts," he breathes out to himself. "Happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts, Dean."
"So he said she'd been looking for him for years, and that she knew him from the amulet?" Bobby says, scrubbing at his cap and finally pulling it off and frisbying it over onto the bed.
It doesn't make sense, Sam thinks, and he voices his skepticism aloud. "That doesn't fit in with what we know, it hasn't been years since he got out of there. Unless she's thinking in terms of Hell years?"
"And you say he's in Cocytus?" Bobby cuts in.
Castiel's blue stare is flat as he flicks it between them both. "So it would seem. In this dream, anyway. In the previous dream he was in Violence. He compared it to Lawrence of Arabia."
There's no way, and, "Violence?" Sam asks hoarsely. "But how is that even-"
"Lawrence of Arabia?" Bobby chimes in simultaneously, cutting Sam off.
"The seventh circle," the angel clarifies patiently. "Inner ring. A vast, fiery desert where the violent are cast and the-"
"Sodomites wander," Sam interrupts. "If he's dreaming all of this, if it's his memories from when he was really in Hell… then Violence is real? And Cocytus too?" He can't help glancing over at his brother's jacket, still hanging where Dean left it, remembers Dean's voice, low and barely controlled, ice, and blizzards, a frozen lake of guilt, and shame, and everlasting contempt.
"In a manner of speaking," Castiel replies matter-of-factly. "Hell is in many ways a construct of the mind that manifests in the way we imagine it. And likewise, the damned manifest in Hell the way they see themselves there. To put it simply."
Bobby barks out an unintelligible expletive. "To put it simply? Jesus wept. You mean it's a figment of the imagination?"
Castiel shrugs. "Yes and no. For the dammed, Hell is complete destruction into a state of non-being. Yet they exist there and it is a reality to them."
The old man cocks his head, unimpressed. "Are you jerkin' my chain, son?" he spits acidly, before he goes on to voice Sam's own incredulity. "Because you'll need to get up earlier in the morning to get one over on me. Even I've read the Divine Comedy. Violence, Cocytus, all that circles crap - it's fiction."
The angel's expression switches from impassive to vaguely affronted. "Although Dante depicted what is largely a medieval concept of Hell, he was essentially right," he says defensively. "His visions were, in fact, divine. God-given. So no, Bobby, I'm not jerking your chain. Given that this is hardly the time to wax philosophical. Is it?"
Bobby glowers for a minute before turning on his heel and stalking back to his seat.
Sam leans over where he sits, dips his head down low for a few seconds and deep breathes his roiling gut into submission as his brother's words whisper their halting way through his memory again. "Dean must have read it too," he says. "The Inferno. Remember what he said, Bobby? About Hell? About how he crammed for it. Learned all he could. If he's dreaming it that way, it must have been his version of Hell." On the heels of his despondency, there is a spike of anger and Sam hears his tone change to sharp and resentful as he looks up. "Tell me something, Castiel. Why does God keep telling us we'll be saved if we repent when it isn't true?"
Castiel stands and looks at him, silent, reserved, grave, stoic, in a way that, oddly, makes Sam think of his brother. Loyalty, that's what it is, he realizes. Unswerving loyalty, the kind that made Castiel fight off demons for forty years to get to Dean even though he was infected by the Pit, remote from God and starved of His light. The kind of loyalty that keeps Dean orbiting him, even though Dean knows damn well Sam sealed his dying wish inside a mental time capsule, buried it, and started plotting his revenge practically the day after New Harmony.
"I pushed too hard, and your brother woke," the Castiel deflects, his voice distant. "It was necessary to ease our distress."
"Our distress?" Sam echoes, and he notices that look in the angel's eyes again, the one that is so reminiscent of Dean's thousand-yard stare.
"It isn't easy," Castiel murmurs, and for an instant his rigid composure is gone, and he seems to slump. "Hell is fear, despair. Hell is a hopelessness that is beyond your capacity to imagine. Seeing him like that again… it isn't easy."
The moment is strangely intimate, and Sam finds he has to break it. He clears his throat harshly, shoots a look at Bobby. "That's why I should go in. We could get the dream root. Give it a try at least. So I can talk to him."
Bobby shrugs. "At this point, kid, I don't-"
"It's a bad idea."
Castiel's tone is suddenly icy, and Sam swings his head around in concert with Bobby, feels irritation spike. "It's not your decision to make," he snaps. "If I think it's-"
"Would you torture your brother further by killing him again?" Castiel cuts in, and even if his tone is abruptly icy, his eyes are flashing fire, a warning. "Or by having him kill you?"
Sam flounders. "What do you mean by that? Killing me, what does that mean?"
Castiel's voice softens again. "You weren't the only one wielding the knife in Hell, Sam. Alastair saw to it that your brother suffered untold torment and died at your hands in myriad ways. For thirty years. And then Dean climbed off the rack." He pauses briefly. "He was a capable apprentice. And you were his learning curve."
The silence stretches between all of them, numbing, paralyzing, horrifying silence, and Sam has no words. Because there aren't words, he thinks.
"I know you mean well, Sam," Castiel continues. "But as yet, your brother hasn't dreamed of the times he worked on you, and I-" He stops suddenly, and his eyes flick away for a moment and then back, and they're bright, full. "Pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, Sam."
And Sam remembers then, the conversation that seems so long ago, and the angel's sorrow as he spoke, sorrow that aches in his voice now. "You kept that from Dean when you brought him back," he whispers. "And you think that if I show up there without him being in control of it, it could trigger his memory."
"It's possible," Castiel replies gravely. "And if it does…" He pauses, and in the beat that follows, his somber expression suddenly falters, going as unguarded as Sam has ever seen it. In that instant, everything Sam might have suspected about Castiel's feelings for his brother are written clearly in the angel's eyes. "I fear he would be further damaged by this revelation. And I will not risk him in this way."
Sam catches a glimpse of Bobby's face behind Castiel, sees that the old man's expression is itself stricken. "I feel so fucking helpless," he grates out. "Even if he isn't dead and it isn't real, he thinks it is. And he's alone."
Castiel sighs, long and heavy. "He isn't alone, Sam. When he dreams, I will be there with him."
Sam registers that the angel's tone is final, that he's telling them that he'll stop Sam if necessary, and his vision blurs as the reality of Dean's Hell plays out before him: the brother he feared would turn into something else destroying what remained of him in the Pit, until the day he said yes and followed it up by using his own hands to do what he dreaded most. And hot on its tail comes something else, a dawning comprehension of what Castiel meant by our distress, an understanding of the angel's loyalty, the flat look that softens only for Dean. It's devotion, Sam realizes, because Castiel was there, is there, he shared, is sharing, and he has seen Dean and knows him in ways Sam never will, and it has Sam wondering if it isn't the Bloods and the Crips at all, if it's been nothing more than jealousy that fuels his edginess in the angel's presence.
A few feet away, Bobby clears his throat. "He's right Sam," the old man says wearily. "Happy thoughts, remember? Seeing you in what he thinks is Hell could mess with your brother even more."
It falls quiet for a few minutes more, until Castiel breaks the silence. "Dean said something as he woke, something about ghosts being there with him, the ghosts of his life. He said it was important."
"The ghosts of his life?" Bobby scratches his head, his expression puzzled.
Castiel nods. "The ghosts of his life. He said it meant something. He was most insistent." He glances back to Sam. "I assumed it was a message. I hoped you would know the meaning."
It's cryptic enough to spike another burst of irritation in Sam, and he throws up his hands, helpless. "Is it part of the torture that you end up talking in riddles?"
"Probably the dream thing," Bobby suggests. "Dreams can be a message. And a body does all sorts of weird stuff in dreams. God knows, Dean's capable of anything when he's having one of his night terrors."
"The ghosts of his life," Castiel muses, and he stares at some invisible spot on the wall. "Perhaps it isn't literal ghosts. Perhaps he is referring to memories?"
"Lilith is a memory," Bobby offers.
It focuses Sam suddenly, has him backtracking through the conversation. "But not from his life, not really. Why did he say the ghosts of his life? And why did he say she knew him because of his amulet? I took it off him after New Harmony… how would Lilith know about it? Would it have manifested in Hell if it wasn't on his body?"
Castiel frowns. "It seemed that he was trying to tell me something, something he might not fully realize in his conscious state if he's injured or confused. Perhaps that's why it was an indirect reference. But if the ghosts are memories, then perhaps it follows that he knows who has him, knows them from life. Not from death."
Sam shakes his head. "But it doesn't fit with the theory. It is Lilith, it has to be her. That's why all the victims look like him, and that's why he's cloaked. She's hiding him, hiding herself too."
"We don't know for certain if Lilith possesses the knowledge to cloak herself and whoever is with her from the Host," Castiel replies. "Although she is a demon, there's no evidence she is well-versed in the dark magic needed to achieve this." He pauses for a moment, tilts his head and stares Sam right in the eyes, and despite his schooled indifference his tone is heavy with meaning when he continues. "In fact, I can think of only one demon who is qualified."
Sam swallows, knows he colors because he can feel the heat flush his cheeks, and he looks down at his boots for the span of another dragged-out, awkward silence even as his mind insists that he's right.
"Dean did have his doubts it was her," Bobby offers then. "It isn't beyond the realms of possibility this is someone else who knows your brother, Sam. It could be that some other hunter who knows Dean got out of Hell, and that some powerful mojo must've had a hand in that, is trying to-"
And, fuck this doubt, and, "It's Lilith," Sam snaps. "Who else would even know they needed to cloak him from Cas? It's not exactly common knowledge Dean's been touched by an angel. And-"
He's cut off by a tap on the door, spins and strides over to unbolt it. Hudak is standing there holding up two, no, three printouts, and the faces smiling back at Sam could be his brother if he added twenty pounds and a few years.
"David Lerman," Hudak says, without preamble. "Erstwhile resident of Orr. And Ethan Sturgis, late of Virginia. Their bodies were found in May and July respectively. And we've got another possible, a John Doe who showed up in March, up near the Canadian border. Might be something, might be nothing."
"But that's before," Sam hears Bobby saying from miles away. "That was before Dean came back. Lilith had no reason then."
But Dean is cloaked, Sam thinks frantically, and now all he can hear is the clamor in his head, I can think of only one demon who is qualified, and all he can see is his brother scowling down at his soiled clothing as they walked back to the motel from the bar. He stumbles to the corner, grabs his duffel and upends it, starts rifling through his gear, and as he does so his eyes are caught by his brother's worn, filthy jeans tossed in the corner. And the pieces slot into place, we need to do laundry, and, "No," groans out of Sam as Bobby pulls him up and swings him round.
"It was in my jeans," he babbles, desperate. "I didn't think. It didn't occur to me… fuck, Bobby, he must have borrowed them, he didn't have anything clean. And it was in the pocket."
"What?" the old man is saying, his voice rising with alarm. "What was in your pocket, Sam? What are you-"
"Hexbag," Castiel cuts in frostily, from across the room. "The extra-crunchy version, I suspect."
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