Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are all the property of Eric Kripke. I do not own any of the characters, except for Hesediel, in this story.
Author's Note: This was written for Unattainable Dreams' November Prompt Exchange Challenge. My prompt was: "The truth is you could slit my throat and with my one last gasping breath I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt"—You're So Last Summer (Taking Back Sunday).
This is my very first Destiel fic, so please let me know what you think so I can improve in the future.
Dean Winchester was beginning to wonder if all of God's angels were complete douchebags, or if the kind-hearted ones like Castiel just liked to keep themselves hidden for fear of what their brothers would do to them if they didn't. He hoped it was the latter, but at the moment it was impossible to tell.
Dean, Sam, and Cas had just finished a hunt in an abandoned warehouse – a relatively simple one that ended with them getting tossed around a bit while Castiel salted and burned the bones of the vengeful spirit they were supposed to be putting to rest. Satisfied with a job well done, they had packed up and prepared to leave, ready to take the Impala to the nearest diner and get some tasty, artery-clogging burgers. Even Castiel, who was usually pretty much as emotional as a stone around anyone other than Dean, was enjoying the prospect of eating the red meat that he still inexplicably loved – and the inevitable making out that was sure to occur afterwards, just as soon as Sam was out of sight.
Dean wasn't sure when it had begun – perhaps all the way back in Hell, when Cas had grabbed hold of his soul and raised it from damnation – but what had started out as gratitude and a sort of camaraderie between the hunter and the angel had eventually become something much deeper. Not long ago, Cas had confessed to feeling different about Dean than he did about other humans, and after much inner debating and a few brief moments of denial, Dean had admitted to loving Cas as well. Their first kiss had been a little awkward, and Dean had felt more than a little unsure about corrupting an Angel of the Lord, but he had gone through with it anyway and they had never looked back. The fact that Sam did not seem at all surprised by their relationship had bothered him at first. Now, though, he was just happy that his younger brother seemed okay with them being a couple, even going so far as to stay in a separate motel room any time Cas was planning to stay with Dean for more than a few hours – which lately had become every night.
On that note, Dean remembered that this particular motel's beds were extremely comfortable, and he resolved to show Cas how wonderful the "magic fingers" were when they got back. That may have been just an excuse to stay as close to his angel as physically possible, but no one had to know that except for Cas. All in all, the day was ending on an unusually good note – at least until the angels showed up.
There was barely any warning, but Cas still sensed them coming and jumped in front of the brothers, ordering them to cover their eyes. Before the Winchesters could blink, they had been enveloped in a blinding flash of light, so intense it burned even with their eyes clenched shut. When his vision finally cleared, Dean looked up at Castiel, who stood with his back to them in favor of focusing his attention on three angels across the room. All of them had their angel blades drawn, and they lifted them into ready positions when Cas pulled out his own. The trenchcoat-clad angel didn't flinch, didn't move except to heave a tired sigh and shake his head.
"Is there no way to resolve this peacefully, Hesediel?" he asked softly, although his grip tightened on the hilt of his angel blade as he spoke. "You were once regarded as the angel of mercy, after all."
The leader of the three angels, who had taken a frail-looking middle-aged man as a vessel, snarled and shook his head. "There shall be no mercy for you, Traitor to Heaven. For your crimes against our Father and your brothers, you are sentenced to die where you stand." The other two angels stepped forward, moving silently until they were standing on either side of Hesediel, and Dean's heart dropped into his stomach. There was no way this could end well.
Castiel sighed again, turning his head long enough to give Dean and Sam an apologetic look. "Very well. If that's your decision, prepare yourselves to fight against me, Brothers, for I will not go willingly."
In what seemed no more than an instant to the two hunters, the angels were tangled in battle, blades clashing and clanging as each sought to strike a vital point and destroy the grace of their opponents. Castiel was surrounded by the other three but still he held his ground, parrying every strike and even managing to knock one of them off of his feet and onto his back. Before the angel could regain its footing, Cas had driven the tip of his angel blade through the heart of its vessel, destroying its grace in a flash of blue light. When it faded, all that remained were a corpse and a pair of wing prints that spread across the floor for ten feet in either direction.
There was no time to celebrate that small victory, though, for an instant later Hesediel and the other remaining angel had grabbed Castiel's wrists, twisting them until they nearly broke and forcing him to drop the angel blade to the floor with a loud echo of metal on concrete. Dean clenched his teeth as a hand reached into Cas's hair and yanked his head back, pulling farther and farther until he was close enough to feel Hesediel's breath on his nose and cheek. The vengeful angel's eyes were burning with hatred and, surprisingly, pain.
"No more of this, Castiel," he hissed, kicking the angel blade toward the Winchesters as if daring them to try using it on him. "You have already betrayed all of us who loved you in Heaven; can you not at least die with honor, or must you break my heart by taking the lives of even more of my brothers?"
"You do not have to do this," Castiel said, struggling fruitlessly against the holds the two surviving angels had on his wrists and head. "If there is anything I have learned from my time with the Winchesters, it is that we all have a choice. We have free will, Hesediel. What will you do with yours?"
The other angel seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment, and then his face contorted into a hideous, demented parody of a grin. "You're right, Castiel," he said in a voice as sickeningly sweet as honey. "I do have a choice. And now, I choose to show you how foolish you have been to side with mortals over your own brothers." He let go of Castiel's hair for a moment, and with a flick of his wrist he had pinned Sam up against the wall and forced Dean to his knees on the concrete floor. Try as they might to free themselves, their bodies were at the mercy of the angel's powers.
"Dean! Sam!" Castiel shouted, preparing to use his own powers to combat Hesediel's.
"Make any move to free them, Castiel, and I'll have their heads separated from their necks," Hesediel warned, and two thin slices made their way across the brothers' throats, letting the smallest trickles of blood run down their skin and soak into the collars of their shirts. They flinched and struggled harder, but it was completely useless. Castiel hung his head, knowing that his brother was not bluffing and refusing to let his friends lose their lives just to save himself. If Dean were to die for him, it was likely that he would take his own life soon after; that was how strong their bond had become.
"So kill me then, if you must," the blue-eyed angel growled, his voice somehow managing to contain as much defiance and anger as it did despair. Hesediel laughed airily, and it sent chills up Dean's spine.
"Oh, no, Brother. I haven't finished teaching you your lesson yet. You see, if I kill you it'll be too easy; but if your precious Dean were to kill you…"
"You crazy son of a bitch!" Dean spat furiously. "I'd never hurt Cas and you know it!"
"Of course I know you wouldn't hurt him. Not of your own… free will, at least…"
Hesediel chuckled and Dean suddenly gasped, his eyes widening when his body moved of its own accord and picked up the angel blade before his feet. "Cas, no!" he shouted as he unwillingly strode toward the still-motionless angel. "You gotta run, Cas! Get the hell outta here!" Dean had no idea how things had gotten so bad so fast, but he'd be damned if he was gonna be the one to kill Cas. It was just as bad as asking him to kill Sammy; Cas was part of the family now, and Dean could not imagine anything worse than harming his family.
Castiel shook his head, his blue eyes shimmering with the closest thing to tears Dean had ever seen in them. "No, Dean…" he said softly, his gaze piercingly clear in spite of the sadness in his voice. "I can't fight them forever, and if I run now they'll kill both you and Sam. I cannot allow that to happen – for any reason."
"Cas, please!" Dean whispered, struggling futilely as he crossed the last few feet between them and involuntarily tightened his grip on the blade. "Please…" He raised his hand so that the edge of the sword rested against the center of Castiel's throat, just beneath his Adam's apple. Hesediel pulled Castiel's head back further, making the throbbing carotid arteries in his neck stand out prominently.
"Cas…" Dean begged, his eyes shining with unshed tears as he pressed the blade against the angel's exposed throat.
"It's alright, Dean," Castiel whispered. A single tear slid down his cheek, and he closed his eyes.
Dean let out a strangled sob, and an instant later he slashed Castiel's throat open, releasing a shower of hot, red blood over his hands while a rush of blue light shone from the gaping wound. Hesediel's control over him immediately released, and Dean caught Cas just before he could collapse to the concrete floor. Sam was by his side in an instant, supporting the angel's weight while Dean sank to his knees and gathered his weakly shaking form into his lap.
"Cas. Cas, come on," Dean whispered, holding his lover's limp body against his so that the angel's head lay on top of his shoulder. The hunter could feel the failed, stuttering attempts at breathing as whatever blood hadn't already drained out made itself at home in Cas's lungs; he was fading fast, and whatever grace he might still have wasn't enough to heal him.
"Don't do this to me, Cas," Dean muttered angrily, shaking Cas slightly when his head started to loll against his shoulder. "You don't get to leave me like this – not like this!"
"He will die, human," Hesediel said smugly. "It will not be much longer now."
"Shut up, you son of a bitch! You have no idea what Cas can –"
"D… ean…" Cas slowly choked out, his voice barely audible even in the near silence of the old warehouse. He swallowed convulsively and coughed once, fighting to muster up enough breath to speak while he laced his fingers between Dean's. "I… 'm so… rry…"
"Don't you do that, Cas. This is not goodbye, you understand me?"
Castiel's head fell back lifelessly, and his hand dropped to the floor from where it been wrapped around Dean's.
"Cas? Cas? Castiel?!" Dean held the angel's body away from him, and he was horrified to see that his skin was already deathly pale, his lips a strange shade of blue-gray. Although his eyes were open, they too had dulled until there was no spark of life behind them at all. As Dean watched, the dark images of two enormous wings etched themselves into the ground beside him. "No, no, no! Damn it all to Hell!" he shouted, punching the ground hard enough to split his knuckles as silent tears streaked down his cheeks. "I'll kill you, you bastard!" he screamed at Hesediel. He picked up the angel blade, still covered in his lover's blood, and prepared to stab Hesediel, but he was stopped short by nothing but a tilt of the angel's head.
"No, Dean Winchester. This is meant to be a punishment for both you and the traitor I once called a brother. He will have died knowing how much pain he caused you, and thinking you must hate him for doing so. And you… You will live, forced to endure the burden of having killed the one you so dearly loved. This is what happens when mortals interfere with the will of Heaven, human. Remember and suffer."
With only a slight fluttering of wings, Hesediel and the other angel vanished, leaving Dean and Sam alone with Castiel's bloodied body. Dean's face betrayed no emotion as he reached down and gathered the corpse into his arms, and he shrugged off Sam's hand when the younger Winchester attempted to lay it on his shoulder.
"Dean…" Sam began, sounding more than a little choked-up.
"Don't," Dean said firmly, staying a few steps behind Sam while they made their way to the Impala. "Just take the keys, okay? I'll handle the… body."
There was a strange sound in Dean's voice when he said that, and although he couldn't identify exactly what it was, Sam hoped he never had to hear it again.
The drive back to the motel had been oppressively silent. Dean had climbed into the backseat with Cas in his arms, sitting against the driver's side door with the angel's dark-haired head in his lap and the rest of his body stretched out over the bench seat. Sam saw how Dean's shoulders shook the entire way back, but by the time they reached the door his eyes were completely dry and Sam didn't say a word about it.
When they stepped inside, Dean laid their friend's body on one of the beds, trying hard not to look at the enormous bloodstains on the once-pristine tan trenchcoat. He leaned down and kissed Castiel's cheek, hissing at how cold he already was. The hunter's face suddenly contorted into an expression of unadulterated rage, and he howled in fury as he whirled to punch a chunk out of the drywall beside the bed.
"Cas, you stupid son of a bitch!" he screamed, glaring through tear-filled eyes at the motionless form on the bed. "How could you be so damn selfish? You get to go off and cease to fucking exist while I have to stay here knowing it was my fault? How could you, you bastard!"
A hand placed itself on Dean's shoulder and he whirled around, about to punch the lights out of Sam for bothering him right now. Instead, he was met with the shockingly familiar face of Gabriel, the Archangel they were sure they had seen Lucifer kill a long time ago. That fact alone stopped him cold, and all he could do was gape open-mouthed at the person before him.
"Easy, there, Dean-o," Gabriel said gently, moving toward the bed on which Castiel lay. Sam made a move to step in front of him, but stopped when Gabriel shook his head and smirked in a way that calmed him immediately. "Let me work my magic here before you start callin' him any more names." When he reached the bed, Gabriel extended his hand and laid his palm across Castiel's throat, binding the deep cut in an instant.
Color had started to return to Cas's face the instant Gabriel touched him, and only a few seconds later his eyes shot open and he sucked in an enormous breath, lurching into a sitting position and coughing up splatters of half-congealed blood into his palms. When it didn't abate after a few seconds, Gabriel sat down beside him on the bed, placing a hand under Castiel's chest and holding him up while he motioned for Dean to sit beside them.
"Easy, Cassie-boy," Gabriel muttered when Dean momentarily left their sight to come around the other side of the bed; the absence of the hunter immediately had Cas on the edge of panic, and Gabriel worried he'd try to get up if he thought Dean was leaving. "I've gotcha, okay? Dean's just moving around the bed, see?" Castiel cleared his throat and managed to stop the coughing for the most part, although he was still panting hard as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against Dean's chest with a weak groan. "Atta boy," Gabriel said softly, ruffling a hand through Cas's hair and patting his shoulder reassuringly. There was more fondness in his voice than either Winchester had ever seen from him before, and it was kind of disorienting.
"Dean…" Castiel croaked, his eyes still closed as he nuzzled into the warmth of Dean's chest. "Sam…"
"Welcome back, Cas," Sam said when it was clear Dean wasn't about to respond any time soon. He was in awe himself, and he knew that whatever emotions he might be feeling right now were probably a thousand times stronger for Dean. Whether he admitted it or not, Dean had always been the one to take losses harder than anyone else, and to have seen Cas die by his own hand…
"Thank you, Sam."
"How'd you survive that, Cas? I saw your grace flare out and leave wing prints on the ground when… well…"
"That would be thanks to yours truly," Gabriel said with an exaggerated bow. "No one's better at faking deaths than the good ol' Trickster, am I right? That's actually why I'm standing here right now. Lucifer may have been ruthless, but he really was an idiot if he thought he could kill an Archangel that easily. All it took in Cas's case was letting Dean give him that little paper cut, and then I made sure no one could see me and grabbed onto some of his grace before all of it escaped. So even though the concrete got a cool set of wing tattoos and Cas stopped breathing for a little while –"
"I do not normally breathe at all, Gabriel," Cas reminded him with a tiny smile. "If I wasn't so weak as to be almost human right now I still wouldn't."
"Oh, yeah. Well anyway, then I just put that bit of grace back, and voila! You have a hugely-weakened but definitely-alive holy tax accountant!"
"That's… amazing…" Sam said, finding himself once again blindsided by all the things angels managed to do so effortlessly.
"Coming back from the dead is not as comfortable as you claim, Gabriel," Cas said with a fond smirk at his brother.
"Years of practice, Castiel. Thousands of years of practice."
After a few more seconds, Castiel cleared his throat again and pushed himself away from Dean so that he could look him in the eye. "Dean? You have not spoken yet. Are you… angry with me?"
It took a moment for that question to sink in, but then Dean startled as if he'd been jabbed with a hot poker. Before Cas could say anything else he had been pulled flush against Dean's chest, held tight by a pair of shaking arms while the hunter buried his face in the angel's hair and shook with emotion.
"Are you crazy, Cas?" Dean whispered, his mouth still covered by the blood-matted black hair. "I saw you die. I thought I killed you, and you came back! Why the hell would I be mad at you?"
"Because I deceived you, Dean. With Gabriel's help, I was able to fool the other angels into believing I had perished, and hopefully get them to end their pursuit of all three of us. But you had to suffer so much in the process…"
"Right now I don't even care. I'm just so freakin' happy you're back, Cas."
"I think we should give them a minute," Gabriel whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"I agree," Sam said as he followed the Archangel toward the motel door and prepared to head to his own room. "I have a feeling there'll be a lotta chick-flick moments in here very soon."
"Screw you, Sammy," Dean said without any venom in the words. His brother winked at him and shut the door, and he was finally free to turn all of his attention to Cas. "So seriously, man, you're gonna be okay now?" he asked as they situated themselves side-by-side under the covers, as close together as possible.
"Yes. I am weakened now, but my grace should recover sufficiently within a day or two." Apparently it was already starting to recover, because as soon as he spoke the blood that stained nearly every inch of him him vanished, leaving him as perfectly clean – and slightly rumpled-looking – as always.
"Glad to hear it," Dean said, pressing his lips to Castiel's cheek and working down to his jawline. "But from now on, you tell me whenever you're gonna fake your own death, understand? And when you find out your long-lost older brother's hanging around waiting to help us. It's kinda important for us to know these things beforehand."
"I will."
"I'm serious. You do something like this to me again and I'm not touching you at all for a month."
"You don't mean that," Castiel said with a tiny smile as he laid his head on Dean's chest and let the hunter wrap his arm around him.
"I totally mean it – not even wing massages, Cas. I think that little stunt almost gave me a coronary, and I'm nowhere close to being an old man yet."
"I'm truly sorry, Dean. You know I would never want to hurt you if I could avoid it."
"I know. Oh, but that reminds me. If you knew you weren't really gonna die, why'd you say 'I'm sorry,' right before your lights went out?"
"Before my lights… Oh. I was sorry for having to deceive you. And also, I truly felt bad for getting so much blood on your favorite shirt for nothing. I really liked how it looks on you."
Dean just gaped at him for a minute, and then he threw his head back and roared with laughter, pulling Cas even closer to him until he crushed their lips together in an almost desperate kiss. When they broke apart for air, Dean chuckled again, ruffling Cas's hair and staring into his baby blues with equally intense hazel eyes.
"Don't ever change, Cas," he said as the angel snuggled closer to him under the blankets. "Don't ever change."
"…Okay, Dean."