Won't Watch You Fall
Summary: Dean doesn't miss the second time. But the result, and the consequences, aren't what he expected.
He promised he wouldn't miss the second time, and he doesn't.
The angel blade slips into his hand, and he slams it home in Cas's torso. A last minute twist on the angel's part keeps it from being immediately fatal, but it's still a mortal wound, a gut wound. Castiel groans. One hand fists on Dean's shoulder. The other, the closed fist he's been clenching all this time, opens.
And a box-cutter falls from his hand onto the floor.
For a moment, he's incredulous. Seriously, Cas thought he was going to take on the Mark of Cain with a box-cutter? Especially with an angel blade in the mix?
Then memory hits, hard and sharp, a memory of years ago. Standing outside a warehouse.
'Taking on five angels? Isn't that suicide?'
'Most likely, yes. But at least then I won't have to watch you fail. I'm sorry Dean…'
The slide of a box-cutter into Cas's hand. Sam's frown. 'What are you going to do with that?'
It only takes a second for the memory to fade, but that's long enough for Sam to shout something in Enochian, and slap something against his back. And just like that, he's paralyzed, held in a spell that he didn't know his brother could create.
He stares into Cas's blue eyes. There's pain in his face - how could there not be with an angel blade in his gut - but no surprise. No shock. In fact, there's a grim triumph there. Satisfaction.
Several realizations hit him with the force of falling bricks, and the Mark induced calm violence is wiped from his head for a moment.
Cas never hit him back. Never really fought. He never drew his angel blade, he never threw a punch or a kick. Cas knows how to fight, and he's fought in some tight spots and rough situations before, and against some pretty kick-ass opponents. Hell, Cas took him down as a demon, and that was on depleted, borrowed Grace. But he never threw a punch. Never used his power. Never drew his sword. Every move was either restraining or defensive.
He may have thrashed Cas bloody, but he didn't beat the angel. Not now, and not in the library days ago. It's not a victory if it's never a fight.
This was never a fight. The thought crosses his mind even as Cas lifts his hand, stained with blood and Grace, and wraps it in a shockingly strong grip around his arm, over the Mark of Cain. This was never a fight.
This was a sacrifice.
Cas bows his head. Sam begins to chant. Power rises around them. Magic. But also a fierce, strong power he recognizes as angel mojo. Cas's mojo, leaking out of the wound, following the path of his bloodied hand to wrap around Dean's red-drenched arm.
A soft, near silent murmur. "I'm sorry Dean...but I...we need you. We're family...and this is not you."
Another memory.
'Cas. This is not you...We need you. I need you. We're family…'
His blood all over the floor after Cas, controlled and tortured by Naomi, beat him to a bloody pulp.
He knew he couldn't win the fight, so he let Cas beat him, let the angel see him bloodied and broken and wounded, and cried out to him, begging him to stop. Watched the angel's eyes, the way he froze, the way the sword fell from his fingers as pain crossed his previously blank expression.
Power flows around him, fierce and bright, like the power of the angel tablet that restored Cas's control of himself back then.
He and Cas have traded positions. He understands now. Cas came here to be beaten, to stand in this place. To be the sacrifice that would reverse his madness.
He remembers his own words. 'Magic like that comes with a price, a price paid in blood.'
He remembers Cas's. 'I won't let you, because I am your friend...everyone you know, everyone you love, may be long dead. Except for me. I'm the one who will have to watch you murder the world. If there is even a chance that we can save you, then I won't let you walk out of this room.'
An echoing memory.
'At least I won't have to watch you fail.'
The power of the Mark is draining away, washed away by Sam's spell and Castiel's life blood, and in its place comes shock and horror and anguish. Paralyzed as he is, he can't even catch Castiel as the angel sags to his knees, still bleeding around the blade in his stomach.
Now he knows why Castiel fled from him, after the incident with the angel tablet. The agony of seeing this, of watching this angel he loves like a brother bleeding from the wounds he inflicted… he doesn't know which urge he'd follow if he were free to move. Gather Castiel close and try to stop the bleeding, or run as far as he could go, to try and escape the horror of what he has done.
The vision superimposes itself, of that day in the library. The brutal beating he delivered. Cas, lying on the floor, broken and battered, bleeding and spitting up blood. A feeble hand on his wrist. 'No, Dean...please…'
His heart shatters.
The final syllable of the spell rings out. The last taint of the Mark burns away in a flood of magic and Grace. Then it's over, and he can move again.
He drops to his knees, cradles that dark head to his shoulder. Clamps his other hand over the wound on Cas's torso. "Cas..."
"Dean..." Soft, rough voice, hoarse and weak from pain, but so uniquely Castiel. Then pressure on his now unmarked forearm, and Cas raises his head. Looks at the place where the Mark of Cain used to be. Looks at Dean's eyes. And smiles, warm and deep and so full of relief that it breaks his heart anew. "Dean..."
"Cas..." He chokes on the name, then ducks to look at the bloody wound. "Hang on...we're gonna fix this...I'm gonna fix this for you..."
Cas coughs wetly, spits blood. "I've...recovered from this type of wound before." He coughs again. "During the war..." More coughing.
"Easy." Sam kneels beside them. He helps take Cas's weight, helps Dean lay the angel back on the floor. He has a bundle of medical gauze in his fist. He looks at Castiel's face, gets a tiny nod from the angel, then wrenches the blade from his gut. Cas convulses, chokes, but Dean and Sam together keep the pressure on the wound, keep the angel from cracking his skull on the concrete floor of the room they came together in. Castiel gasps, chokes, then settles back, heaving a sigh.
Dean doesn't know whether to feel comforted or heartbroken, that one of Cas's hands is clenched around his arm, as tightly as his other hand grips Sam.
He swallows. "Cas...I..."
Blue eyes meet his, and Cas shakes his head. "It wasn't you."
"It was the Mark." Sam's voice joins with Cas's, quiet and absolutely sure. "It wasn't you. The Mark took over. That's it."
"But I let it. Man, I screwed up so bad…"
Shockingly, a tiny smile graces Cas's pain-filled expression. "I believe the human phrase is...join the club." His blue eyes are filled with so much love and forgiveness and understanding that it almost hides the pain in them.
Sam snorts in laughter. Then his expression sobers, and he nods. "Cas is right. We've all been there Dean. Screwed up, done terrible shit for the sake of the world. I drank demon blood, Cas opened Purgatory. I might not like it dude, but Dean..." He raises his eyes to meet his brother's finds Sam staring at him with an intensity that should burn holes in him. "I may not like it, but I'm not gonna judge you. And I'm not gonna let you run off and hide and drown your sorrows. What you did sucks, and we'll have to hash it out. But Cas and I...we're not leaving you. And we don't want you to leave us."
"Indeed. If you try, then I will hunt you the length and breadth of the globe." Cas looks up at him, perfectly sincere.
"You aren't in shape to hunt anything." The bleeding is slowing, almost stopped, but Cas still looks like hell.
"Then don't make me come after you." The angel says it like it's the most obvious answer in the world, and he can feel his throat close up.
He swallows hard. "Damn it Cas...why did you…."
Cas grips his arm, pulls him close. The blue eyes burn with a fire that no spell, no hell-fire, no Grace, could ever hope to match. "You are family Dean. No matter what happens. You are family. You are my friend. I would raze Heaven, Hell, and Earth for you. And I swore it...I will not watch you fall. Not if I can stop you. Not if I can catch you."
"Yeah. What he said." Sam's voice is solid earth next to Castiel's fire, and just as sure.
He bows his head, fighting tears.
His brother and his angel. He can't believe he let himself forget how important they were. How deep their bond was. How tightly they were linked together. He can't believe he forgot that breath-taking loyalty that holds them. The love, the power, the protectiveness. Even when they feel like they hate each other, it's there.
Why did he ever doubt that they would fight for him? Why did he give up? Why did he lose sight of the fact that they would never stop trying, until they succeeded or the world burned to ash? Why did he let himself believe that they would fail or give up? Why did he think they would accept his decision to yield, when none of them have ever been willing to let the others fall into the darkness forever, if there was the slightest hope otherwise?
He doesn't feel he deserves them, but as he looks at his exhausted sibling, and the angel slowly recovering, wrapped in their arms as his wounds heal, he renews a promise to himself. A promise he once thought he would leave to rot, because he thought it was broken and useless, like the bonds that tied them together and were strained to the snapping point.
He won't let them fall either.
Author's Note: Saw the final scene from Episode 10.22, and this just wrote itself.