Author's Note: Hey, long time no fic! I figured I would kick my writing gears back into motion with some- you guessed it!- dark!fic. This was supposed to be a oneshot based off of a "prompt" on angeldicks' tumblr, post/34158478133/, (man this site makes giving out URLs difficult!) but it didn't stop flowing and I couldn't help but make it go on and on. So here's chapter one, expect at least one more!
This is very AU; here, Cas opens the gates of purgatory and immediately becomes LeviaCas- no Godstiel. He still kills Raphael, runs off Crowley, breaks Sam's wall, etc. But the Leviathan stay inside Cas instead of getting out into the water supply. And they are much more like Misha portrays them, highly unbalanced and deadly, but not particularly clever like Dick Roman (bless his slimy black soul). So yeah. my own brand of LeviaCas. Hope you enjoy!
It starts as an itch. Dean absentmindedly scratches his shoulder as he sorts through another stack of books in Bobby's angel-proofed study. It's been almost a week now, six and a half days to be exact. Six and a half days of endless searching for answers, six and a half days of regular checks to make sure Sam hasn't dropped back into another Hell-induced coma, six and a half days of looking nervously over their shoulders in case the monsters in Castiel's skin find a way in. It's been, Dean thinks dryly, Hell.
It's also been quiet since the Leviathan slithered away in Cas' skin, and Dean doesn't know what that means. The massacres that they had been expecting never came, although they have no idea if it's because the Leviathan don't have access to Cas' angel mojo or because they aren't interested in pointless slaughter (yet). In fact, apart from Sam's not-so-slow descent into insanity and Dean's cracked ribs from being tossed into that wall, it would be easy to believe that nothing has gone wrong, that the sigils and symbols painted around the house are there for decoration. But Dean knows that would be lying to himself.
Even Winchester stubbornness can only do so much against exhaustion though, and after another hour Dean finds the letters on the page beginning to swim before his eyes. Dean pushes himself to his feet, deciding that more beer is the solution, and that's when the itch deepens to a slow ache, like a bone deep sunburn.
"Son of a bitch," Dean mutters, rubbing at his arm. Sam looks up from his nest on the couch, frowning.
"Problem, Dean?" he asks carefully, narrowing his eyes in a focused squint that Dean knows only started after his wall broke. Briefly Dean wonders what his brother sees in the space between them that he needs to squint around, what horrors his imagination is dredging out of the cage to throw between Sam and reality. The pain in his shoulder intensifies, distracting him, and Dean swears again.
"It's my arm," he grits out, kneading the muscles of his shoulder even though it's making the pain worse. "Hurts like a bitch, feels like I burned it on something." Sam's frown morphs into his full-blown worry face, and he unfolds himself from the sofa to loom at Dean's side.
"Isn't that where-" he asks hesitantly, but stops himself.
"Spit it out Sammy, you spill your kiddy chem set on my clothes or something?"
Irritated, Dean tears the sleeve of his shirt up to examine the skin below at the same time that Sam quietly finishes "-where Cas grabbed you?"
Both hunters fall silent, staring wordlessly at Dean's upper arm. Bobby walks through the door, laden with groceries and a sawed-off shotgun, and pauses to look at them.
"The hell you boys starin' at?" The old hunter asks gruffly. Dean wordlessly shifts so that Bobby can see the handprint scar slowly developing on his flesh, like a Polaroid in skin and muscle. It's a scar that Dean hasn't worn in over a year. "What in god's name is that?" Bobby demands, leaving his forgotten food in the doorway and striding over to them. "Does it hurt?"
"Like a bitch," Dean repeats, a glimmer of hope swelling in his chest as the raised outlines of Cas' fingers become apparent once more. "Do you think..." he swallows, glances at his brother, then continues."Do you think it's Cas? It's gotta be. Maybe he's trying to tell us something, give us a sign that he's still in there somewhere. Maybe he's fighting back, or- godDAMMIT!" A spike of pain lances through him, agony so intense that Dean swears his heart stuttered for a few beats, and he reflexively curls in on himself, closing his eyes and clasping his hand over the scar. He's still seeing spots from the pain, and it takes him a moment to realize that the wound is sticky.
"Goddammit," he whispers again, panting. "that hurts. Am I bleeding?"
"Not- not exactly, Dean." Sam's voice is shaky like it was the first days after he put himself back together, and Dean looks up in alarm. His brother and Bobby are wearing almost identical expressions of horrified revulsion, and so even though he doesn't want to Dean tilts his head to the left. To the trickles of thick black ooze seeping between his fingers.
"Holy shit." Dean's vision tunnels, and only the fact that Dean Winchester does not simply faint keeps him from passing out right there. His chest is tight and it feels like there's not enough air as he stands paralyzed for a moment before elbowing Bobby out of the way in an uncoordinated stumble to the kitchen. Dean shoves his entire arm in the sink and turns on the water, not caring that it's almost scalding hot, focused only on getting the fluid off of him. He scrubs at his arm like he's trying to peel the skin right off, and globs of dark slime drop into the sink like gorged leeches.
Still the stuff bubbles forth, and Dean doesn't have any idea where it could possibly be coming from. The tissues of the mark are putrefying, turning black and dead, and Dean keeps up a steady mantra of "shit, dammit, shit, fuck, fuck!" as he tries to staunch the flow of black from Cas' mark. It takes several minutes, but eventually the streamers of sludge thin to dribbles, and then to drops, but they never stop completely. As Dean slams the tap off and turns away, a single trickle of black weeps from the palm of the scar like a mocking tear. Sam and Bobby are standing in the doorway behind Dean, wide-eyed. Bobby's mouth is working like he wants to say something but doesn't know what. Sam has his hands out in front of him in a calming, placating gesture because he knows Dean, can follow the swing of his brother's moods, and is waiting nervously for the anger that must follow on the heels of the fear.
Dean does not disappoint. Slowly his hands curl into fists, tightening until the knuckles crack and show white through the skin. Dean's jaw clenches until his face looks like some sort of pained mask and the treacherous drip of the black liquid winds its way over the tense lines of his muscles. When it hits the sensitive skin of his wrist Dean snaps, and before Sam can even finish his warning "Dean, no!" the elder Winchester is past him and out the front door, paying no mind to the protected threshold he crosses.
"What the hell is this?" Dean stands in the open yard and roars at the sky in a broken, deadly voice that Sam has never heard him use before. A voice that no one outside of the fire and chains has heard in over ten years. It's the way Dean screams when he is shattered beyond repair. "Is this some kind of sick game you son of a bitch? I'll kill you right now, come here and face me you bastard!"
Dean is still screaming when Sam grabs him, spins him around, and slaps him. The blow silences Dean, but Sam can see the furious, lost expression in his brother's face.
"Dean, listen to me, we've got to get inside, we can't fight those things, we aren't ready. Come on." He tries to tug his brother towards the relative safety of the open door, where Bobby stands casting nervous glances at the sky, but Dean doesn't move. He mumbles something, and Sam has to lean in to catch it.
"I can't let them do this Sammy. They can't do this to me, they can't do this to Cas. They're in me, like they're in him and I can't just ignore it. I can't Sammy they've got Cas. What did they do to Cas to make this happen Sammy, what could they have done?" Dean keeps muttering, repeating himself, but he doesn't seem to realize it. Sam looks over Dean's head to Bobby, and at a nod from the old hunter he delivers a short hard punch to Dean's jaw. Catching his unconscious brother before he can faceplant in the dirt, Sam cradles him in his arms and hurries back into the house, as a storm rumbles in the distance.
( )( )( )( )( )
When Dean wakes up he is in a depressingly familiar room. Although he knows what will happen, he tries to sit up anyway, wincing as the carefully padded handcuffs on his limbs keep him pinned. Overhead the fan whirls hypnotically behind it's devil's trap grating. Dean closes his eyes and the flickers of sunlight make little black and red lines dance behind his eyes. It's a nauseating reminder of his scar, so he opens them again. His head is not strapped down at least, and when he turns it he can see a fresh bandage wrapped around his bicep, hiding the cancerous print from view. When he looks the other way he can see Sam and Bobby, once more watching him from the doorway with concern in their eyes.
"Dean?" his brother asks hesitantly, and Dean knows he is both afraid for Dean and of him. A flash of his temporary insanity comes back to Dean and he groans, instinctively trying to cover his face with his hands before remembering the restraints.
"Well that was stupid of me," Dean admits, a little ashamed. His feelings have not changed, but now that reason has restored itself he sees no reason to drag Sam and Bobby down with him.
Sam visibly relaxes at Dean's demonstration of logic, but Bobby just snorts. "Gee, do ya think idjit?" he responds, voice heavy with sarcasm and worry. "If those things didn't know where we were before they sure as hell do now. And we still don't know how to do a damn thing to them." Dean drops his gaze, unable to meet the old man's eyes. "Idjit," he hears the hunter snort once more. "I'm gonna go check the damn angel-proofing." There is the sound of Bobby's boots clumping up the stairs, then silence. Dean knows Sam is still watching him.
"So," he starts, still not looking at his brother. "I assume I'm in the panic room to keep Cas- the things inside Cas" he hastily corrected himself, "away from me." Sam nods. "And the handcuffs are for...?"
"Keeping you from hurting yourself." Sam's serious expression does not change at Dean's disbelieving bark of laughter. "Dean, you have black goo leaking out of that scar. You completely lost your mind and ran into the yard screaming bloody murder. Now look me in the eye and tell me that if I let you go your first move wouldn't be to try and cut it off, or cauterize it, or somehow hurt yourself?" Dean kept his eyes fixed on the lazy twirl of the fan, but didn't respond. "That's what I thought."
"So what, you're just gonna leave me here?" Dean asks, even though he knows the answer. They are locking him up as much for their own safety as his, and Dean knows it. He's been marked by the Leviathan somehow, from afar, and they don't know what else the monsters might be able to do to him. Or make him do. It's a race to see if Dean will crack before Sam and Bobby can find a way to destroy the Leviathan. A game the hunters have already lost, but Sam doesn't need to know that.
"I'm sorry, Dean. I wish we didn't have to do this." The sincerity in Sam's voice does nothing to make Dean feel better. Dean doesn't respond, just turns his head and closes his eyes and waits for the sound of the heavy door swinging shut. He doesn't bother to open his eyes again when he hears it close, because what's the point? There's nothing to see. For the first time since Cas opened purgatory, Dean wishes he could pray.
to be continued...