A/N: Hello again! Here's the sequel to Turn the Page. I just want to thank everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed the last story one more time - I hope you all enjoy this one! The title is a Simon and Garfunkel song, which is amazing and very appropriate - if you don't know it, I suggest you listen to it for your own enjoyment.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize
Background: This is set a year after the first story, so approximately at the end of S6/beginning of S7. There will be some elements that are the same as the series, but a great deal that are different.
Song: Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n' Roses
PREFACE
It has been one year since Dean and Claire left Las Vegas and started on the road together. Over this span of time they've taken some traditional hunting jobs, and Claire has grown to be a fairly decent hunter in her own right. However, their main concern has been putting a stop to Castiel's plan to absorb all the souls in Purgatory. He has been harnessing their power gradually to ensure that his vessel is not overwhelmed, but just recently Crowley has flung himself into the mix, forcing Cas to go all-in.
Meanwhile, Sam has been off soul-searching somewhere in Texas. He's met a girl – a veterinarian – named Amelia Richardson and has every intention of settling down with her. The only hitch in his design is that he's wracked by nightmares and hallucinations and, essentially, suffering from PTSD. He's afraid that maybe Dean was right, maybe there is no escape from this life and maybe it truly is part of the very fabric of his DNA. Even more, he's afraid that he's a danger to Amelia.
. . .
PART I
. . .
CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the Jungle
Dean's cell-phone is glued to his ear as he and his passenger race down a long Kansas highway. The red needle on the speedometer is pushing 100, and the engine roars and groans as it approaches its limit. The Impala is a faithful car, but it is still nearly a half-century old. And though he has rebuilt it from the ground-up many times before, it's still his same old Baby – his dad's same old Baby – that has brought him – them – through so much. This car has outlasted John and predates Dean himself, but along the way it's picked up as many visible and invisible scars as any of the Winchesters. Sometimes, after all the running, even she gets a bit tired.
"Dammit, Sam! Answer the fuckin' phone!" Dean curses, white-knuckling the steering wheel. He flings the offending piece of plastic into the backseat in a frenzy of outrage, after being routed to his brother's voicemail for the sixth time in twenty minutes.
Claire squirms anxiously beside him. Her bare legs, still milky despite near-constant exposure to the sun, stick to the Chevy's leather seats.
"What if he doesn't come?"
"Then it's just you n' me, babe."
She gives his profile a hard, disapproving look, but he is fixated on the road. "We are so screwed," she laments.
Something akin to a bark of laughter claws up his throat. "Yep."
"What if we can't get through to him?"
All of a sudden Dean's expression turns deadly, devoid of all prior traces of dark mirth. "Then we have to stop him," he states, tone like steel.
She doesn't need to be told that 'stop' means kill. Gulping in obvious trepidation, she replies, "This would be a lot easier with backup."
"You're telling me," he snorts.
"What about Bobby?"
"He's working on making special Angel Blade bullets for the Colt, but he'll meet us there. Hopefully all those months of fixing it up weren't for nothin'."
"What do you think the chance of the Angel Blade itself not working are?" she asks cautiously.
He sets his jaw in grim contemplation, grinding his molars slightly. "Well, the sigils don't work anymore – not even blood sigils," he says finally. "I'd say the odds ain't exactly in our favor, at least when it comes to the Colt. But even the Angel Blade would have killed Lucifer, killed an archangel, so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet."
There's a long pause that stretches on for two road markers. The Guns N' Roses, Dean's self-described 'pump-up' music, filter raucously through the stereo.
At some point, Claire questions, "You don't think… You don't think he would actually hurt us, do you? I mean, it's Cas – he would never actually hurt us, right?"
"I dunno. There's a pretty big chance this thing ain't even Cas anymore." There is a poignant twinge of despair in his voice, and she knows that – of everyone who could betray them – Cas' betrayal slices a particularly deep gash in Dean's already fractured heart. Each time they have seen him, he's seemed less and less like Castiel and more and more like something they should be hunting. To watch someone you love disappear before your very eyes is an uncommon sort of torture.
Dean casts her a sidelong glance, and continues, "I'm bankin' on him leaving you alone, though. You're still a prophet, after all." This last sentence is a pointless addition, a fruitless attempt to disguise how wounded he is and how much danger they are truly in. Maybe it does matter that she is a prophet, and she certainly believes that it matters to him – but if Castiel would hurt Dean, it doesn't matter if he wouldn't hurt her.
They eventually pull off of the highway and, after a few minutes of sloppy navigation, veer onto a derelict road. Weeds sprout between the cracks in the sun-washed pavement, and in the distance they can see the spectral outline of the factory they seek. It cuts across the horizon like a jagged stripe of black paint atop the muted beauty of a watercolor landscape.
Dean parks the car. In front of them is a chain-link fence, broken in many places and strangled by winding vines. They know the building must be swarmed with various obstacles on the inside, but from this vantage point it's impossible to feel anything but utterly alone.
Claire has no idea what they're getting themselves into. Something in the atmosphere carries an ominous weight, more ominous than anything she has experienced before. It feels like they're about to enter a showdown.
They step out of the car in unison. Dean walks around back, stocking himself with every weapon he could possibly have use of, knowing they'll all likely be useless. Still he must take the precaution, still he must follow the ritual. It's mental preparation as much as it is physical. He then gives Claire as many weapons as she can comfortably carry, which, to his chagrin, is less than he can and far less than Sam ever could.
He still compares her to Sam sometimes, not because she reminds him of him but because he's the only one he's ever done this with before her. He knows he shouldn't, and the comparisons have become far more infrequent now that they've grown accustomed to one another. But still, every so often, thoughts of Sam, of the past, slip through. This present isn't necessarily worse, he supposes, just starkly different.
"When we go in there you stay behind me, you hear?" he briefs her.
Claire wants to roll her eyes, but doesn't because his stony expression warns against it. "Yeah, yeah."
In the beginning, she deferred to him completely. The first few hunts she asked so many questions he felt like a goddamn college professor – it was cute at first, but quickly devolved into a nuisance. But she learned fast, and time has made her cocky. Cockiness – after a year on the job – is exactly the thing that gets hunters killed. You see, most hunters don't die on their first case – no, the death rate spikes at about a year, when they think they know what they're doing and they let their guard down.
He worries about this incessantly. Do as I say, not as I do, he tells her, and she thinks he's joking but he isn't. She calls him paranoid and maybe he is, but he'd be crazy not to be. This is the source of the vast majority of their arguments.
"I'm serious."
"Okay," she concedes.
They're just about to start towards the vacant, overrun parking lot, when they sense someone standing behind them. Dean spins around, shotgun aimed, loaded, and ready to fire.
The person behind them raises his hands in apparent surrender – it's Crowley.
"Hello, my darling lovebirds."
"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean demands, the words gushing out of his mouth in a fast, garbled stream of rage. "Gimme one good reason why I shouldn't blow your brains out right this second."
"Because that would be incredibly foolish," he drawls, inexplicably relaxed. "I'm here to help."
"Why should we trust a word you say?" Claire spits. The sentence drips with venom.
He cocks an eyebrow. "You shouldn't," he says plainly. "But we're after the same thing – to stop your lovably misguided Castiel from going nuclear. Believe it or not I don't want to be obliterated, and I'm fairly sure 'King of Hell' is near the top of his angelic little hit-list. So, I'm here to help. 'The enemy of my enemy,' and all that."
"We're here to stop him, not kill him," says Dean, well beyond wary.
"Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to. You're telling me that if you can't stop him you're going to let him walk?"
The muscle in Dean's jaw contracts visibly, but he does not reply.
"That's what I thought," he says smugly. "Listen, I understand that you're not keen on the proposition, and frankly, neither am I. But do you really want that socially-inept Robocop flouncing around with unlimited power? You know as well as I that good ole Cas is seeming even more self-righteous than usual these days."
"I'd rather take my chances with Cas than ride the bullet with you."
"Oh pish-posh – what have I ever done to you really?"
"Are you kidding?" Claire interjects incredulously.
"If you're referring to our encounter in Las Vegas, that was ages ago, and an isolated incident. To be entirely honest, I could have done far worse. I've stayed out of your way for the most part since then, haven't I? Didn't you find it odd, Clyde, that your life has been flooded with demons since the age of four and then suddenly they all just disappear?"
The only present Winchester does not answer.
"You were planning on trying to make this deal all along?" she wonders aloud.
"Bingo," he replies, speaking to them as though they are idiots.
Claire has been staring at Dean curiously throughout this exchange, and in this moment he finally reciprocates her gaze.
"Would you like a moment to chat amongst yourselves?" asks Crowley, a smirk playing at his lips. He gesticulates outwards to them. "By all means."
Sending him one final lethal glare, Dean pulls Claire aside. Their backs are to Crowley, who takes one hand out of his black suit pocket and begins to casually inspect his fingernails.
"I know it's not ideal," she hisses, "but we need all the help we can get."
"You're not seriously considering what he said," he deadpans.
"You heard him – he has as much incentive to want to stop Cas as we do."
"To kill Cas," he corrects.
"If Crowley stooping to team up with us is any indication of how worried he is, I think Cas can probably hold his own."
"But it's Crowley," he growls. "The guy who kidnapped you and held you hostage, remember?"
"I know – how could I forget. And I don't trust him for shit. But let's be realistic, we're two humans – it'd be useful to have something supernatural in our corner. And if Crowley tries anything fishy, we take him out. We are the least of his problems right now – Cas is the threat. You have to figure self-preservation is more important to him than screwing us over is."
Dean sucks the inside of his cheek, mulling this over. "Fine… But as soon as we stop Cas, we kill that son of a bitch and every other demon we can get our hands on."
"Okay," Claire agrees.
They whirl back around in an almost choreographed motion and Crowley peers up from his fingernails cheerily.
"So, have you two arrived to a decision?"
"Alright," Dean says through locked teeth. He raises his weapon once more, wagging it at him as he continues, "But if you or any of your mooks try anything – anything – funny, we're switchin' sides and you're angel meat."
"Splendid," exclaims Crowley, clasping his hands together. He shifts his body slightly closer to the abandoned building. "Now, as King of Hell, I'm plenty prepared to go after these flying monkeys with my own forces – angel may trump demon, but I've got the numbers. The only thing is, your dear and shrewd Castiel has taken it upon himself to demon-proof the place, as you say, which is where you come in…"
"You want us to sneak inside and un -demon-proof it?" Dean observes.
"Precisely. And then my demon army and I scurry on in and save the day… Or, you know, something like that."
"And you can guarantee us immunity from them?" Claire questions, warranted suspicion lacing each letter.
"Of course," he replies. He sounds like he's lying and he knows it – he takes a sick pleasure in tormenting them with uncertainty.
Dean glances at Claire, before approaching a gaping, uneven hole in the fence. "We're gonna regret this…" he mutters to himself as he ducks through.
. . .
Dean and Claire have only desecrated one demon-warding sigil before a blonde, statuesque figure appears in their path, within yet another abandoned factory.
"Dean Winchester," she says disdainfully, "we may have expected you, but we did not expect this."
Dean is in no mood to make conversation; he lunges at her, Angel Blade in hand. She dodges him easily and throws him against the concrete wall with merely an extension of her palm.
"Does your depravity know no bounds?" she continues. "Was it not enough to shirk your sacred duty or to corrupt one of the Lord's most holy servants? Must you attempt to bring demons into Castiel's barracks now, too?"
"Listen, bitch," he snarls from the floor, "Whatever Cas told you he was doing, he was lying."
She laughs harshly, the sound burning through them like acid. "He is doing our father's work," she says, "after our father has abandoned us. The archangels are gone. Heaven is in ruins. We must follow someone, and that someone must be Castiel – he is God's clear successor."
"Great," Dean snaps, more to himself than anyone else, "More brainwashed sons of bitches."
He scrambles to his feet and jumps at her again, this time making contact. They tumble to the ground in a messy tangle of limbs, and Dean's Angel Blade somehow makes contact with her gut. She is consumed by a burst of white light, and it flickers as life tears from her vessel, grasping desperately and vainly for handholds on its way out. They both look away, but not out of respect; if they stare directly at it, it burns their retinas.
Once upon a time, killing angels – killing the so-called 'good guys' – might have bothered him. But not anymore. Things that aren't human aren't trustworthy, this he's learned the hard way.
Panting, sweating, and bruised, he tells Claire, "We gotta hurry with the sigils. Someone probably heard that, and before we know it we're gonna have a stampede of angels on our asses."
"Okay," she obeys, quickly spray-painting black X's over the occult graffiti decorating the dingy gray walls. The can makes an innocuous jingling sound when she shakes it, but even this noise could get them killed.
The factory is vast, but they don't need to canvas all of it – just enough to allow the most powerful demons through.
Three more dead angels later, Claire hisses, "How are we gonna know when it works?"
Dean does not need to answer her question; as if on cue, they are suffocated by a telltale sandstorm of black smoke.
"We gotta find Cas!" he yells over the sound of rushing air. Through the chaos, they cannot see each other.
He grabs her hand so they can stay together and they run down the hallway, run with the black wind at their back. It propels them so that they are half running and half soaring.
The demons sweep over them before they can follow their trail. For a brief moment Dean turns around, and instantly regrets it: scattered across the damp, moldy floor are the mangled bodies of at least a dozen angels, washed up by the tide of disembodied demons. He turns back around, and Crowley appears directly in front of them, blocking their way like a pop-up brick wall. He's not alone.
"Brought you a present," he says, stepping aside with a flourish to reveal Bobby. Without another word, he's gone.
Dean doesn't even need to look at him to know that Bobby is livid.
"What in the –"
"Later, Bobby," he interrupts gruffly, taking off once more.
Claire flies after him, and so does a reluctant Bobby. Unsystematic puddles are collected on the floor, recording their movements. The sound of their shoes sloshing through water echoes throughout the hall, which is now vacant but for the fallen angels. Their bodies impede the noise as it bounces from surface to surface.
. . .
Castiel is in the heart of the building – the boiler room. It is ironic that they find him here, in the deepest and darkest place available to him, the closest place to Hell he could have chosen.
He is glowing, almost beautiful. They have already failed. And he is alone.
The three of them hide in the doorway, watching in horror as he studies his radiating hand, as if for the first time.
"Dean," comes Castiel's voice. He doesn't look at them, but doesn't need to see them to know they are there.
Bobby fiddles with something in his pocket.
"Cas?" Muddled hesitation and fear and heartbreak make his voice more hoarse than usual. "Did you kill Crowley?"
"No," he answers flatly. "When he discovered he was too late, he fled before I had the chance." He pauses, finally turning to address them directly. By this time, they've filtered into the dank room and are standing in a line in front of him, opposite the entrance. "Did you come here to kill me?" There is no accusation in his tone, only inquiry.
"No," Dean replies unconvincingly.
Whatever Bobby was fiddling with in his pocket – the Colt, it turns out – tears from his hand and hits the opposite wall like a bird flying into a window. Bobby's eyes bulge out of his skull in dismay and Dean automatically bars Claire with one of his arms.
"Don't lie to me," Castiel growls, sounding only a smidgeon less mechanical.
"I'm not lying, Cas," says Dean, his voice wavering suddenly and unexpectedly. It is as though the sight of Colt has reminded him of the gravity of the situation, that this is his friend, not a monster, and that maybe he's now both. "Please… please don't do this."
Castiel tilts his head like a cat observing a canary. "It is already done, Dean."
"Then end it – put the souls back where they belong."
"They belong in me, where I can do good with them."
"Don't you see, Cas? Don't you see what this is really doing to you? It's going to your head –"
"No," he cuts him off. "The only thing the souls are doing to my head is allowing me to think more clearly. I see everything, and now I understand what I must do. All this time – all my previous failures – have been because of you, Dean. I went to unfathomable lengths to protect you and your brother, sometimes in ways that you don't even know. Everything I have done has been for you, don't you see? This entire thing began as a way to rescue Sam from Hell. No – my attachment to you Winchesters has clouded my judgment long enough. You must either stand down, or I will be forced to smite you."
"Cas…" Dean's eyes brim with unshed tears, but his mouth is pulled into a terse, angry line.
"I do not want to hurt you. I never did. But you betray me in favor of one of your – our – worst enemies? You allowed demons in here, Dean. Do you have any idea how many angels lost their lives today because of you? How few there were left to begin with? I don't understand – I don't understand why you can't trust me with this."
Castiel punctuates his sentence with a forlorn, disappointed look. Dean wants to respond, but the words hitch in his throat. At some point he manages, "I do trust you, Cas, but not like this…"
"Don't you see? For the greater good, I cannot allow you to stand in my way. Please don't force me to do something I don't want to."
Two things happen at exactly the same time: there's a loud clatter as Dean lets his Angel Blade slip out of his hand, and an errant gunshot cuts through the congested room.
A bloody hole blossoms in the center of Castiel's forehead. His eyes widen, along with everyone else's. In his shock, Dean inadvertently lets the tears slide down his cheeks and his green eyes become lucid. Claire gasps audibly, and Bobby lets out a low whistle.
Castiel teeters where he stands for a moment, before falling to the side like a tree in the wind. His collapse reveals his unsung assailant, who is still holding the smoking gun.
It's Sam.
A/N: I hope you all liked it! Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think :)