A/N: This is a gift!fic for the lovely Cass (ShadedRogue) for her birthday. She wanted to see Dean/Castiel, torture, and angst. While I believe I have succeeded in writing torture and angst, the Dean/Castiel can easily be read simply as friendship. I hope no one minds. The very basic idea of this fic is one I've had for a while, but it took a stroke of inspiration for me to set it in an X-Men!AU, and while it is an X-Men!AU, I don't think it's necessary to be at all familiar with X-Men to understand what is happening.
Outstretched Wings, Left Tattered
"And love will keep me tethered
for my wings are stripped of flight
but into my mad deluded world
they cross the battle lines"
- The Crüxshadows, "Seraphs."
The dingy warehouse was filled with the a haze of dust, the sounds of cruel shouting, and the smells of human sweat and cigarette smoke. There wasn't much to look at, but there was only one place Dean's eyes could look, because the anti-mutant hate group, "Friends of Humanity" (or whatever the hell pretentious bull crap they called themselves), had Cas in the middle of a makeshift stage nailed to a freaking cross by his wings. Maybe "nailed" wasn't exactly the correct term, since there seemed to be only one nail...alongside a horrifying assortment of broken glass, knives, scissors, and at least one scalpel. Blood oozed from a multitude of wounds, soaking his bedraggled feathers before dripping onto the floor. He wore only black pants, shiny in places where his blood had splattered. Cas' head hung as though in defeat above his bound hands, and his breath was coming in pained gasps. It was enough to make Dean want to kill everyone in the room, other than Cas of course. But there were at least fifty of these ass-holes and each of them had some sort of weapon.
Dean cursed himself for stupidly getting drunk. Maybe if he'd been stone cold sober they could have fought off the twelve or so guys who jumped him and Cas as they were leaving the bar. Maybe. Twelve guys armed with various weapons might have been too many, even for a fully sober Dean and his mutant friend. But if nothing else, he would have at least made more of them pay before being overpowered and subsequently forced to watch his best friend be tortured in horrific ways. People who could inflict this sort of pain on a person for no other reason than that he was different deserved pain themselves...pain Dean wished with all his heart he could provide.
And Dean was feeling more sober by the second.
A new sharp pain tore though Cas. He had lost count of how many objects these people had stabbed through his wings, but he knew from how light-headed he was that he had lost a lot of blood. A human would have passed out already, but his mutant physiology cruelly kept him conscious—partially conscious at least. He could hear Dean's voice yelling, could hear the desperation and anger in it, but he couldn't make out the words. No doubt Dean was begging futilely for them to just let Cas go. Cas almost smiled to himself at the thought: Dean—always so righteous, always so loyal. He raised his head and looked in the direction of Dean's voice, but he found he couldn't see though the haze of pain. He hung his head again.
"What's wrong, buddy?" a vicious-looking man to Dean's left asked with a cruel grin. "This mutant your boyfriend or something?" A chorus of rough laughter erupted from those in the crowd near enough to hear. Under normal circumstances, Dean would have had a witty comeback, but right now his mind was too filled with anger and desperation.
"Stop it—" Dean said, then turned and looked at the scruffy blond man who stood near the front of the filthy stage with a microphone, the man who had been directing the proceedings. "Stop it!" Dean yelled. "Just stop hurting him!"
It wasn't anything Dean hadn't said at least thirty times, but the man to Dean's left called out, "This human's the mutant's boyfriend! Doesn't like to see his little 'angel' boy hurt!" More rough laughter erupted in answer.
The man with the microphone grinned and crouched down at the edge of the stage looking at Dean with an exaggerated look of pity. "Don't like to see your pretty feathered friend hurt?"
Dean glared at him, feeling the muscles in his neck twitch as his hands curled so tightly into fists that his blunt fingernails began to dig painfully into his palms. "Just stop hurting him," he ground out. "Please."
The man stood and addressed the crowd with exaggerated facial expressions and sweeping gestures. "It seems, ladies and gentlemen, that we have here amongst us tonight...a traitor to our own kind! A mutant-loving human who just can't stand to watch his beloved, our feathered friend here, suffer at the hands of honest humans such as ourselves." Had Dean not been so angry, he would have rolled his eyes. It wasn't like everyone hadn't already known he was Cas' friend; they had jumped them both together and even in his drunken state, Dean had tried hard enough to fight them off that it had to be obvious to everyone whose side he'd been on this whole time. Predictable jeers from the crowd answered microphone-guy as he crouched down near Dean once again. "Tell me your name."
"Dean," he said while glaring murderously at the other man over the microphone thrust into his face.
"And, Dean," his voice was dripping with mock kindness. "What was that you wanted us to do for your little mutant friend?"
"Let him go! Stop hurting him."
"And why should we do that? He's a mutant; he deserves to be punished for his putrid genetic code, the genes that make him an abomination against humanity."
"Listen to me you ass-hole!" Dean's words prompted amused laughter from the other man and more answering jeering from the crowd—this crowd was so pathetically predictable it made Dean's brain hurt. "He didn't ask to be born that way, but there's nothing at all wrong with him—you're the 'abominations against humanity.'" He raised his voice to be heard above the louder jeering. "If you have to torture someone...let it be me."
"I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, Dean." The blond man affected exaggerated shock and mock confusion. "You want us to take your mutant boy-toy down and put you in his place?"
Dean's eyes burned even brighter with rage and hatred as he stared back at the man. "Yes. Let me take his place." Dean wasn't sure if he should be surprised that most of the answering jeering seemed to approve.
Through the fuzzy red haze of pain, Cas groggily became aware that Dean's voice was speaking to him, softly and from nearby. "Cas, man—listen." Dean's voice was at once gruff and gentle. "You're gonna get some rest now." Dean was standing quite close to him, Cas realized. He could feel the warmth of Dean's hands now on his bare shoulders, and the soft brush of Dean's breath as he spoke close to his ear. "I'm so sorry Cas—this is probably going to hurt, but then this'll all be over, and we know you heal up fast."
As Dean started to pull the objects out of Cas' wings as carefully as he could, Cas' mind started to process certain things he had heard without understanding. Cold horror pooled in his stomach. Dean had...Dean had offered to take his place. His still unseeing eyes widened and he grasped blindly for Dean, catching his arm.
"Hey, hey, Cas, I'm sorry—I'm trying to make this hurt as little as possible." Dean's voice was low and gentle, roughened by emotion.
Cas shook his head. Why was it so hard to think? "I need—" He tried to swallow. His throat constricted painfully. His tongue felt as though it was swollen to at least three times its normal size. "I need you—you can't...can't—" I need you strong. I need you to get us both out of here. You can't do this. You can't take my place. He tried, but he could not force the words out.
But Dean was speaking again. "Okay, last one." Cas was distantly aware of a tug, a pain, and a relief in some part of his body. "You're going to be okay, Cas."
He stumbled and felt Dean's hands catching him and guiding him away from the blood-stained cross before Dean was pulled away from him again by several burly men. Cas sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around his bare torso, shivering violently. His vision was cruelly beginning to clear in time for him to see Dean being tied tightly to the cross he had so recently vacated and to see someone stab him in the thigh with a scalpel still red with Cas' own blood. Cas could even see the clench of Dean's jaw and the harsh rise and fall of his chest. Dean said nothing, his defiant eyes staring straight ahead.
Cas wondered if these hateful humans realized that it was actually far worse torture to watch them hurt his friend than it had been for them to simply hurt him. He wondered if Dean knew...if he was only now realizing it. As Cas' body desperately struggled to pull itself back together, his eyes remained on his friend, and he missed nothing that was done to him. And he wondered bitterly how Dean could be so selfish.
Yet somehow, Cas couldn't blame Dean, for he knew that given the chance, he'd swap places with Dean again in a heartbeat. Less time than that, actually.
A/N: Despite appearances, there are no OCs in this fic. The man with the microphone is meant to be Lucifer, who is actually a mutant in this universe, but is pretending to be a normal human. The "vicious-looking man to Dean's left" is meant to be Gordon Walker. The rest of the crowd is made up of all the jerks and douche-bags who were ever on Supernatural...the human ones anyway. So Lucifer (who obviously has a different name in this universe) is a lone mutant leading a group of mutant-haters who have no idea that their leader is actually a mutant.
What happens to Cas here is at least in part inspired by what happens to Warren Worthington III ("Archangel") in the X-Men comics when his wings are broken and pinned to the wall by Blockbuster and Harpoon. The anti-mutant hate group "Friends of Humanity" was founded by Graydon Creed in the X-Men comics and has made appearances in at least three distinct Marvel universes including the X-Men Animated Series.