A/N: I have little to say about this one, except a huge thank you to my wonderful beta Sternenlicht, for constructive comments and thesaurus ;)
This concoction will be served to you in three courses!
Disclaimer: Recognizable characters belong to Kripke and the CW, unrecognizable ones might be mine.
I hope you'll enjoy! Let me know what you think!
ooo
Find Me An Angel
With Bobby gone, all the usual things, all the coping mechanisms suddenly don't seem to work anymore. Dean begins to wonder if he'll crack soon. And what will be the final straw. There were times before when he felt like he was already in pieces just underneath the skin, and all it'd take would be a little nib. Those times when Sam was gone, dead or in hell (he thought).
Now he feels like that again, it's just also worse. Revenge isn't as healthy a fuel as desperation or promises to keep, it seems.
So it's been harder, lately, to just stay focused, to not let things slip his attention. He doesn't know why. Suddenly he can feel the insomnia, it sits on his eyeballs and his shoulders like something fuzzy that weighs a ton. And while he rarely gets staggering, babbling-nonsense drunk, his body starts to protest the diet of alcohol and not enough meals, even the fast food kind.
And then, finally, there's a moment, somewhere in a big, abandoned and gloomy farmhouse in Idaho, hunting a vampire, where he's just a heartbeat too slow, or turns left instead of right, or whatever. A mistake, something that wouldn't have happened half a year ago.
There's pain. The murky half-light goes a shade darker still, and then everything turns pitch black.
ooo
He feels a pull so strong he thinks his bones might shatter. A violent yank, and then cold and damp and the buzz of the distant interstate again.
Dean blinks, trying to dispel the fuzziness that clouds everything. There's a face hovering in front of his own, a man's, and Dean thinks it looks perfectly livid. But then his vision clears and he's focusing on neutral features and expressionless, patient eyes.
The face disappears.
Somehow, Dean manages to prop himself up on an elbow, his hands automatically patting down his torso, checking for injuries. Below his ribs, the fabric of his shirt is wet and warm. He can smell the blood then, and taste it, metallic and absurdly familiar on his tongue.
'What the hell?' he tries to say, but it comes out like a garbled radio transmission, rough and in fragments. His throat feels parched.
As he struggles into a more or less upright sitting position, he realizes that his shirt is ripped, all the way from his lower back to his abdomen. But that's the only damage, as it seems. Beneath the soaked fabric, his skin is intact. Smeared with blood, but without a scratch.
Finally, Dean remembers he isn't alone and looks up. The other man has moved away and is watching him, leaning against a dusty table someone pushed against the wall and abandoned along with the rest of the house.
A few feet away from him, the vampire lies in a crumpled heap on the floor, unmoving.
Dean stares at it, trying to figure out what on earth is happening.
'Where's Sam?' he asks, reflexively, and is pleased to find that his voice seems to have patched itself up some.
'Downstairs, still looking for the creature. He's safe.'
The man is about Dean's age, but a little shorter and slighter. Light brown hair and dark brown eyes in a face you might encounter anywhere. He's wearing faded denims and a tee that might be black or dark grey or dark blue, beneath a cargo jacket.
The way he's standing there, he looks like he's used to lounging around next to dead monsters.
Slowly, Dean starts getting to his feet, hoping that the movement and the shadows will hide his right hand reaching for his knife.
No such luck.
The other man's eyes follow his motions with unsettling precision, and the corners of his mouth turn up a little, as if he saw this coming from a mile away. 'That's not necessary. And it wouldn't be very effective, either.'
Dean's head is still swimming, and there's an unpleasant sensation somewhere deep in his mind, like a void pressing in from the back of his head and trying to reach into every part of him.
'You're a leviathan,' he states. It's the only thing that makes sense to him right now, and he thinks that if the leviathan attacks, he's done for.
Where's Sam?
'No, Dean, I'm not. I'm an angel.'
Dean's first thought is that it's a bad joke, pretty bad even for a monster. But then he looks at the dead vampire again that's lying between them now like the arrow on a strung bow. There's no blood on the dusty, dirty floorboards but Dean's own, no traces of a fight. Only a few smudges of soot where the vampire's head is touching the floor, and burnt-out holes where its eyes and mouth used to be.
The man isn't lying. The realization goes through Dean like a cold snap, and is just as sobering.
This isn't good. He was done with angels. Meeting another one is the last thing he needs.
Buying time, he slowly goes and picks up his gun where it must have landed when the vampire knocked him down. Wiping dust and dirt off the smooth metal, he straightens up again, but doesn't turn.
'What do you want?'
'What makes you think I want something?'
Dean snorts. He turns around and fixes the angel with a cold stare. 'Was I dead?'
The angel returns his gaze curiously, surprised by the non sequitur, but eventually he shrugs. 'Hard to say when it's that close, but I don't think so.' He pauses, then adds, 'You should be more careful, though.'
Dean almost sneers. Keep your advice to yourself, he thinks. 'So you saved me, yeah? In my experience, you guys don't just go around saving people's lives. You always want something.' He shoves the gun into his pants' waistband and shakes his head. 'Whatever it is, you can stick it where the sun shines, alright? I've got enough on my plate without your shit on top.'
There are a few moments of silence. The angel drops his gaze, but otherwise seems infuriatingly unperturbed.
'I don't want anything from you. I'm your guardian. The whole point of us is to go about saying people's lives and not want anything in return.'
'My guardian,' Dean repeats, suddenly feeling sick. He wonders if it's from blood loss, and is quite certain that it isn't.
'And your brother's,' the angel is replying. 'Everyone has one. You need one.'
We had one.
'That so, huh?' Dean's voice is dripping acid now, but he hardly cares. He doesn't give a damn about what this angel thinks he has to do or what the point of anything is. This is beyond ridiculous, it's beyond presumptuous.
'Then what were you doing a couple of weeks ago, huh? Were you around? Yeah? Then what the fuck were you doing when our friend, the guy who's like a father to us, took a bullet to the head and died in a fucking hospital? Were you taking a fucking leak or what?'
The look of discomfort that Dean catches on the angel's face is satisfying, but it at the same time it makes him even more angry. He's met enough of these creatures to have a pretty good idea what it's supposed to mean.
'Bobby Singer isn't my charge. I can't –'
'Oh shut the fuck up! Don't give me that crap,' Dean all but yells. 'I don't need a babysitter, alright? I don't need a guardian angel. What I need is my friend, alive. Now you can either fix that, or you can stay the hell away from me.'
'I can't,' the angel says. 'Either.'
Dean just laughs, bitterly. If the angel thinks he's already got him figured out, well, he can play that game too. 'Yeah, sure.' Can't, won't.
He shakes his head. He's never been so sick of angels.
Downstairs, floorboards creak, or a door. Sam, finally.
'Who says you're anyone's guardian, anyway?'
'My superiors, of course.'
Of course. 'And who the hell would that be, at this point?'
The angel hesitates briefly, then answers, 'No one who … wants to blow up your world.'
Now Dean does snort. What kind of answer is that?
It really doesn't matter, though, he's done with heaven. But then a thought crosses his mind. Well if you can use us
'What about the leviathans? Can you kill them?'
There's a pause before the angel admits, 'I don't know. I'd … give it a shot if I met one. But until I get that chance, I can't say. They're older than us. They're powerful.'
'Well then go ahead and do some field work. If you find out you're any good against them at all, we can talk.'
With that, he turns on his heel and heads out the door, to finally find Sammy.
ooo
Sam sighs, so wistfully it almost makes Dean smile. They're both perched on some stolen car's hood, neither of them even bothered to check what make it is. It'll carry them a couple of miles or a couple hundred, that's all. Sam really wishes it were a newer model, though, something with comfortable reclining seats and leak-proof windows, because they'll be sleeping in the thing tonight.
'Man, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the crappy motel rooms.'
'Come on, don't tell me you're complaining,' Dean replies, watching the sky, an expanse of forbidding clouds with only a few patches where stars come through. 'This is like the good old days. When we just used to, you know. Hunt a wendigo this week and, say, a djinn the next. No crazy-ass sea urchins from hell.'
Sam snorts, amused by the image in spite of the fact that nothing about this is funny.
'Yeah,' he says. 'God.' Something about his voice makes Dean suddenly feel the chill of the night more acutely. Maybe because nostalgia has such a very bitter taste these days.
They're both silent for a while, and in the odd sense of sobriety that followed Sam's quiet words, Dean decides that he'll have to tell his little brother about that angel after all. It's been a couple of days already and he's been doing his best to file it away with all the other crap and weird stuff they come across every day, because that's what he wants it to be. But he knows it doesn't work like that, so he begins to talk.
At first, Sam seems a little upset about the whole thing, but not for the reason Dean expected.
'Why are you only telling me this now? Don't you think that's kinda huge?'
Dean makes a point of not meeting his brother's eye and just keeps staring upwards. 'Is it?'
'Well … yeah! It's gotta mean something.'
No, it doesn't. It's not a big deal. 'Don't know,' he says. 'Don't care.'
'What's his name?'
Dean frowns at the clouds, caught off guard, oddly vexed by the question. He doesn't know the angel's name. He didn't ask, and he isn't planning to.
ooo
Time begins to feel like nothing at all. Days turn to weeks and Dean is reminded of those scenes in movies where everything wheels and changes and spins around one fixed point that never moves at all, and he feels like that point.
It's February and then March and he breaks time up into highway miles and research and periods of inertia where he does his best not to think about anything.
Their cases don't really touch him, it's only hunting Dick Roman that shakes some life back into him, every lead like a jolt of energy. But if it was difficult to find the leviathan boss in the beginning, it only gets harder as the weeks go by.
In April, they corner one of Dick's gophers, but figure out that he isn't as alone as they thought a bit too late. Dean watches the leviathans' nondescript human faces turn into nothing but jaws and razor-teeth and hissing tongue, and then all of a sudden he's looking at dark, unfinished wood and smells resin.
He whirls around, and there's the angel, standing some feet away from him and Sam.
'What the fuck was that?' he explodes. 'We had them!'
'No, they had you.'
It's the truth but Dean isn't prepared to admit that. He knows he isn't furious about having been snatched out of the leviathans' jaws at the last second. He's not that far gone yet. But he's furious that … he doesn't know. That it was the angel that saved them. Him, but most of all Sammy. That they'd be dead, him, but most of all Sam.
That the angel showed up at all, and that they needed him. He's furious they needed him.
'Thanks.' That's Sammy, being much more gracious about it all, somehow. 'For getting us out of there … It's good to meet you.' He doesn't offer the angel his hand like he did with Cas.
The angel says nothing, and after a moment, Sam asks, 'What's your name?'
Dean turns his back on the answer.
It's Amatiel.
ooo
Dean looks pale and drawn, and some of his movements, the little, unconscious ones, are like he's underwater. His eyes are red-rimmed from tiredness and cheap whiskey and his jacket looks like he bought it a size too big. Except he didn't.
Sam looks worried and sad. Sad about the loss of Bobby Singer and worried about Dean. And he's battling demons somewhere deep inside, out of anyone else's sight, all by himself. He's easier to read than the older brother. His eyes speak volumes and he makes no attempts at hiding what he feels.
The angel doesn't go too close to them when his presence isn't required, but his job is to watch so sometimes he watches. Especially when they're asleep because that's the only time he can help them a little in their day-to-day lives. Since Sam doesn't sleep much and Dean barely sleeps at all, that's not a lot of help.
And sometimes they seem braced against him even in their sleep.
He wonders how long they'll be able to keep going like that. And he thinks of Dean's request, the one he made in the abandoned house in Idaho. If he does that, the angel thinks, it'll cost him.
But he also already knows he'll do it. At least he'll try. After all, that kind of thing is what he's there for.
ooo
It's just before five in the morning when Dean's phone rings.
The motel room is dark, all black shadows and patches of dirty grey where the light of a porch lamp filters through the thin curtains. It isn't strong enough to reach the ceiling, let alone throw shapes or patterns there, but Dean has been staring straight up anyway, for the past half an hour, or the past two, he couldn't be sure.
Now he covers his eyes with one hand and tries to rub the sleeplessness and the long staring away.
The phone rings again.
He has no idea who it might be, and he doesn't really want to know. He's tired of talking to other hunters, telling them no, he and Sam can't take the case or help out, they're busy and it's nobody's business what they're working on. And much more than that, he's tired of telling other hunters that no, Bobby isn't there. And that he won't be back later.
Stop, he thinks.
On the third ring, Sam grunts in the other bed.
'Answer it already,' he mumbles, or Dean supposes that's what his little brother is saying into his pillow with a heavy tongue.
Dean closes his eyes, and takes a breath, and finally rolls over to pick up.
'Yeah,' he says, his own voice sounding parched, like it got dusty in the hours he hasn't been talking, just lying there and pretending to be asleep for Sam's sake.
'Where the bloody hell are you?'
In an instant, Dean is sitting bolt upright in bed, feeling like his heart jumped to his throat. Sam lifts his head, peering through a fringe of tousled hair with a frown.
'Bobby?'
Dimly, Dean hears the sound of the alarm clock hitting the floor as Sam fumbles for the switch on the bedside lamp, but his whole awareness is trimmed on the voice at the other end of the line.
'No, it's Santa Claus,' the voice is saying, sounding every bit like a not actually annoyed Bobby. 'Of course it's me. Now are you gonna tell me where you are?'
'Batesville, Arkansas,' Dean says automatically.
'Doing what?'
'Rugaru. Bobby?'
This time, something in his voice must tell Bobby that not everything's right, because his usual gruff manner softens a bit. 'Yeah, kid, it's me. What's going on?'
'I …' Dean falters. His mind is screaming at him to stop feeling this because that can't be Bobby, it's a leviathan or a demon if they're lucky, but it could never be Bobby. Out of nowhere, his eyes are burning again and he feels like he's running low on oxygen. This is too much. He doesn't know what's happening, he only knows that if that isn't Bobby he's talking to (and it isn't), he'll go mad.
'Dean?'
'Yeah.' Dean clears his throat and struggles to get a grip on himself. 'It's just that … where are you, Bobby?'
'Rufus's cabin. It's freezing and dusty in here. I just woke up on the floor with the mother of all headaches and I ain't really sure how I got here.'
'You were dead,' Dean says thickly.
'I was what?' Bobby asks, but on the last syllable Dean can already hear him remembering.
'Oh. Huh.' That's what they say to things like that these days.
It takes all of three seconds, then –
'What did you do?'
'Nothing, Bobby, we … I swear we didn't do anything. Bobby –'
'Fine, it's alright, I'm here, kid. Think I might even still have my soul.' A pause. 'Except, of course, you gotta assume I'm lying.'
'Yeah,' is all Dean can think of saying. He's got to assume it. Because if he doesn't, and lets himself believe this, he might not come out the other side. That's aside from the fact that assuming anything else would be dumb.
Trouble is, he's already believing it, because he wants to so very badly.
Maybe this is the final straw he was wondering about a while ago. Maybe this is him finally losing it.
There's a long silence at the other end, then Bobby's voice asks, 'How's that case going?'
'The … um, yeah, it's alright. We're basically done.'
'Good. Then come back here, alright? Let's meet up. You can test some window wipes on me.'
They do. After a few hours, even Dean allows himself to believe it's really Bobby. He can't remember the last time he was this relieved, and this giddy.
For quite a while, he doesn't obsess as much over Dick Roman, and he doesn't drink much more than he used to before the world came apart all around him without even an apocalypse to help it along.
TBC