Chapter 1 After the Fall
Life planned out before my birth, nothing could I say
Had no chance to see myself, moulded day by day
Looking back I realize, nothing have I done
Left to die with only friend
Alone I clench my gun
~ Metallica
Light caught his peripheral vision and Sam's eyes turned toward it, just catching the end of the flaming tail of the meteorite before it hit the ground. And his chest eased, the next breath deeper. Quieter. Not so hard.
"Dean –" he gasped, and felt Dean's arm circle his shoulders.
"What?"
"I think it's –"
They both turned to look at the sky when they heard it – a rushing, crackling sound, like an enormous satin sheet shaken out, or a monstrous wildfire, distantly heard.
Beside him, Dean stared at the sky, seeing the clouds lit up as the bodies passed through them. "No, Cas," he murmured, knowing what those lights were, knowing what he was seeing.
The sky was filled with meteorites, Sam thought disconnectedly, the long tails blurred and distorted in his vision.
"What's happening?" he asked Dean.
Dean glanced down at him, seeing his chest rise and fall more fully. "Can you breathe?"
Sam nodded, staring past him at the sky. He saw a shape, in flames, his eyes widening as the great wings were burned up and fell away and the humanoid figure hit the river, sending huge clouds of steam from the surface.
Dean turned his head to look back at them, his gaze tracking the plummeting figures across the sky. Was Cas one of them?
"Angels," he told his brother, his voice hushed in awe. "They're falling."
In the curve of his brother's arm, Sam blinked rapidly, staring at the fiery balls that were falling everywhere, no quadrant of the sky unlit.
"Do we have more, Dean?" he asked, leaning against his brother's side, wondering if they'd get into trouble for the fireworks they'd lit in the field. They were all one colour, he thought, brow creasing slightly as he looked at them.
"What?" Dean turned to see Sam's eyes roll back, heat reaching out through his clothes and burning against his skin. "Sam! Sammy!"
No. Not now. No, no, no, NO!
He bent his head, pressing it against Sam's chest, ignoring the torrid flush against his cheek as he listened for his brother's heartbeat. It was there, beating fast and unevenly, matching the staggered breaths that lifted and dropped Sam's chest arrhythmically.
Goddammit!
"Sammy! Can you hear me?" he almost yelled in Sam's face, fists bunching his brother's shirt and dragging him forward, the dull thud of Sam's head hitting the passenger door of the car curling his stomach up and filling his veins with ice-water.
He pulled again, adrenalin giving him the strength to lift Sam forward, away from the door. Reaching up past him, Dean yanked at the handle, the familiar squeal of the hinges focussing his attention and diverting his panic.
Not on my watch.
"C'mon, Sam, gotta get you to a hospital," he muttered, shifting his position to get his arms under Sam's and lift him into the seat. "It's gonna be okay, I swear it is, gonna be okay. You'll be fine."
He had no idea of whether he talking to himself or his brother. He pushed Sam's legs up and got them in, slamming the door shut and sliding over the hood, fingers scrabbling with the keys on the ring for the ignition key as he pulled open the driver's door and threw himself onto the seat. The key went in and he wrenched it and the car's low throbbing growl managed to push aside the fear for a fractional second.
"Don't you leave me now, Sam," he said, hauling the wheel around, gravel spitting from the tyres. "Don't you dare leave me now!"
Crowley was sitting in the church, chained to the chair. The thought came and went and he filed it away with the other things he'd have to deal with as soon as the crisis was over. Just a crisis. Just a trip to the hospital. No big deal. He'd make it. He had to make it.
The light had faded, he thought, his foot hard against the floor and the ball aching because he was pushing harder against the pedal but it couldn't go any further down. The light had faded from Sam's arms and his brother had looked at him in wonder at the peace that had filled his soul. But the trial hadn't been completed. The contract hadn't been fulfilled. Was this the backlash? Punishment for gypping God out of a sacrifice? Was the sonofabitch going to take Sam after all?
Shoving the thoughts aside, he concentrated on the road, his eyes cutting to the right from time to time, narrowing in on the thin skin at the side of his brother's neck where he could see the rapid flutter of Sam's pulse.
He could feel the goddamned heat radiating outward from here. Fever or something else? Another bad thought. Right at the intersection, then the next left and he'd be five miles from town. He changed down for the turn and up again, the rev counter climbing and the engine screaming as he shifted down for the left.
It was how many times I let you down.
He flinched back from the wheel as the memory came back, knuckles whitening. Goddamnit, Sam, it wasn't disappointment in you, he thought wildly, superstitiously looking for anything to tie his brother to life, any bargain to be made, any deal to be struck. I was the one responsible for you, for raising you, for teaching you the wrong way. That was me. Just fucking me.
The blue and white sign glowed in the night and the tyres squealed and smoked as he apexed the turn toward it, sliding out sideways to land the car precisely in front of the Emergency Room doors. He was out and around the other side as the engine stalled and died, ignoring the man who ran toward him, waving his arms.
"Hey! Hey you can't park there –"
Sam was a deadweight and Dean closed his eyes, letting the panic come, letting it bring its flood of adrenalin to his muscles as he lifted.
"Get me a fucking doctor!" he roared at the guy, shifting his position under his brother and straightening his legs. Christ, but he could feel the heat fluxing through Sam, an inferno inside of him, burning out of control. "GET ME A FUCKING DOCTOR! NOW!"
The parking attendant blanched and ran for the doors as two orderlies came out the other way, a gurney between them.
"What happened?" one snapped at him, taking Sam's shoulders as the other caught his legs.
"I don't know!" Dean ground out, following them down the hall, his hand locked around Sam's as he forced his panic back down under control. "It's like, uh, a fever or something, he's burning up and he passed out."
"Stand back," a female voice said from behind him and he felt a small hand close around his arm. "Sir, you have to give us some room."
The orderlies transferred Sam from the cart to the bed and at once there were several people in the close confines of the room, cutting away his brother's clothing, attaching electrodes to his chest and forehead and temples, inserting needles, covering his face with a mask … Dean backed away to the wall but stayed in the room, his hands closed into fists and his heart thudding at the base of his throat. Don't you dare leave, Sam.
One day later. Glenwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph, NY.
Dean stared at the film on the lit box on the wall, light-headed from hunger and lack of sleep but able to make out the brighter masses that showed clearly within the confines of his brother's skull.
"The MRI showed massive internal burns affecting many of the major organs; oxygen to the brain has been severely deprived and we're seeing a swelling in the frontal lobe. The coma is the body doing everything in its limited power to protect itself from further harm," the doctor explained, uneasily watching the stone-faced man walk around him and back to the side of the bed.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," Dean said, looking down at the unmoving body in front of him.
"Mr Johnson, we've done everything that we can do for your brother," the doctor continued, his voice low, and sympathetic despite the sense he had the man he was talking to was walking, talking danger with a capital 'D'. "At the moment, he is stable, but the prognosis is that the injuries will worsen. He's on life-support now, and the EEG is showing some brain activity but if his internal conditions deteriorate –"
"He'll be dead," Dean finished the sentence, turning to look at him, his face cool and expressionless.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry."
Dean nodded, wiping a hand over his face as the doctor left. No medical options. Well, he thought, looking around for the bathroom, they'd faced that one before. And had beat it. He shook off the memories of how his brother had done that, back when it'd been him lying in a hospital bed with a prognosis of a life cut short. The small ensuite had a toilet, a cramped shower with a multitude of handrails at various anchor points on the wall, and a basin. Turning on the cold tap, he dipped his hands under the flowing water and sank his face into them, needing the wake-up, the slap of the cold water to get his thoughts in order.
Lifting his head as he turned off the tap, he looked in the mirror, noting dispassionately that he looked like refried crap, as usual. Shadows and hollows and lines etched in and the stubble over his cheeks and jaw because he shaved when he remembered or it got too itchy and not otherwise. When he met his own gaze, he knew what he was going to have to do. Didn't make the prospect any more appealing but he was out of options.
"Just rest, Sam," he said to the unconscious man on the bed as he came out of the bathroom and headed for the door. "I'll be back in a minute, okay?"
The corridor outside the room was busy, and for a moment he stood there, watching the people moving about their business, walking around him as if he were an ill-placed piece of furniture, their gazes looking elsewhere. They'd been on the outside of … all this … for a long time and most of the time he didn't notice how people – normal, regular people – just kind of veered around them, not looking, not noticing. The need to make someone notice, notice his brother's dying, notice the jagged pain in his chest, notice them, was strong. But habit was stronger and he stepped a little closer to the wall, his gaze sweeping past doctors, and nurses and orderlies and patients.
Chapel.
The notice was small and discreet, the arrow pointing to a corridor to the left. The last act of a desperate man, he thought sourly, turning toward it. With everything they knew, everything they'd been through, he should've had more up his sleeve than that.
Four or five people were sitting in the narrow, high-ceilinged room, heads bowed and hands clasped together as they begged for help from an entity who existed but had long since stopped listening. At the end of the chapel, a stained glass window let coloured light through from ceiling to floor, spilling over the altar and along the cramped aisle.
You said there would be a job for me to do, Dean thought, looking up at the figure picked out in the mosaic of glass. You said that it wasn't my quest and you didn't say any fucking thing about anyone dying!
He took the pew at the back, wrapping one hand around the other and tightening both, aware that he was shaking, his emotions held so tightly in check that he could hardly breathe.
Cas, you there? He looked around the chapel, repressing his frustration when no soft beat of wings filled the air. Sammy's hurt … you knew that … it's worse now. I don't know if you can fix it, can heal it, but …
He hesitated, remembering the way the angel had disappeared, his fury at him at the time.
… whatever you did up there, Cas, or didn't do … that doesn't matter, you know that, right? We can work it out … just … the docs can't do anything about Sam … and I can't find a way to get him back … Cas …
He swallowed, his throat tight and sore. He needed the angel. But he only ever needed him when his brother's life hung in the balance. And he only ever needed him when he couldn't fix it himself. What did that say? About him? About the angel?
… I need you to help Sam … need you to get him back for me … I need …
Need someone to trust again, he thought, shoulders slumping as he finally admitted it. Need someone to notice that I'm still fucking alive and I'm hanging on here by the ends of my fingernails.
… please, man, I need some help here … Cas?
Someone coughed, softly, but it echoed in the space, bouncing off the hard walls and floor and rebounding to the high ceiling. No rustle of angel wings. No flap of trenchcoat or gravelly voice behind him, pitched low for his hearing. No angel.
Fuck.
Dropping his head into his hands, he faced the unpalatable fact that he was in the same position, exactly the same position, as he'd been when Jake had stabbed his brother and left him to die in Cold Oak. I'm just supposed to let you die? The memory of that crushing realisation came back to him and he shuddered, crossing his arms against the pew in front of him and leaning his forehead against them, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
The angel had ignored his requests before. Hadn't answered him in Purgatory. Had heard but hadn't come when he'd asked for help for Sam as the toll of trials had worsened. Cas had been under Naomi's control then, but it didn't change things, did it? He hadn't helped then.
"Screw it," he said to himself softly. If he had no friends, no one to turn to, he would go public.
Bad idea. The thought was instant and he acknowledged it. It was a bad idea. But it was the only card he had left to play. He drew in a deep breath, as much to steady himself as to give him the seconds to think of what he was to ask.
Okay, listen up … this one goes out to any angel with their ears on … this is Dean Winchester … and I … need your help … the deal's this – Glenwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph, New York. The first one that can help me gets my help in return and you know that ain't nothin' … it's no secret that we haven't always seen eye-to-eye … but you know that I'm good for my word and … I … I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't needing … so …
Such a bad fucking idea, the small voice whispered against his prayer and he felt his throat close up tight. Too bad. He'd wear whatever came out of it. He had to.
The throaty rumble of the Impala's engine, the low rasp of the tyres over the asphalt road, they were a familiar backdrop, familiar and comforting as Sam looked at his laptop, balanced on his knees.
"This makes no sense, I mean, how many angels were falling? Hundreds? Thousands?" he said, turning to his brother in frustration. "And nobody sees anything? This is …" He looked back at the screen. "Look at this, they're calling it a meteor shower. Seriously!?"
He shut the lid and huffed out a disparaging exhale, turning to look at his brother when he realised Dean hadn't responded at all. "What's going on, man? You okay?"
"Me? Yea-yes, I'm fine," Dean answered, his hands tightening around the wheel. "It's just we gotta –"
"Gotta major friggin' crap-fest on our hands," Sam cut him off, snorting slightly as he turned away.
"Yeah, tell me about it," Dean muttered, mostly to himself.
"Thousands of super-powered dicks touching down and we got no idea where to start," Sam continued, missing the comment.
Dean's mouth compressed. "Angels aren't our problem right now, okay? Or demons – or Metatron or whatever the hell happened to Cas –"
"Why? Because we hugged it out in that church and now we're gunna go – go to Disneyland?" Sam laughed slightly, brow creasing as he saw Dean's profile harden. "Dean, you said it yourself, we're not gonna sleep until this is done."
"I know."
"So what's the problem?"
Sam stared at him, wondering if he was going to answer. He knew that almost-irritated expression on Dean's face. Whatever it was, he really didn't want to talk about it. But he was going to, he was just figuring out how to start.
"You."
Dean didn't give him time to ask, glancing at him and looking back at the road. "Look, there's no easy way to say this, okay? Somethin' happened back there. In the church. I don't know what, I don't know why –" he paused, eyes closing briefly. "You're dying, Sam."
Sam heard the words. Heard them clearly. He couldn't make them come into context. Was this some new level of bad taste Dean had descended to? Some bizarro prank that Dean thought was funny? Why did everything … including his brother … feel slightly notright?
"Just because you're dyin' doesn't mean you're dead, okay?" Dean said, turning his head and catching sight of the expression on Sam's face. "We've jemmied our way out of worse."
"Dean … out of worse? You selling your soul for me? Or me taking to you to that preacher, with a reaper who took someone else instead of you?" Sam shook his head, wondering what the hell Dean was talking about. "None of those were –"
"You're not dead, we're going to fight this! I just need some time is all. I gotta plan – you just gotta hang on, you hear me?" Dean cut him off sharply.
Shaking his head, Sam agreed, his mouth turning up in a derisive curve. "Absolutely."
Hearing the tone, Dean flicked a sideways look at him, mouth tightening as he saw the smile. "You think I'm lying?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"Hey, you understand that we're not really in this car right now – we're in your head. And you are in coma, and you are dying," Dean said, his voice crisply clear.
Sam looked away, letting it sink in. He didn't feel any different. Nothing looked any different. Except … something was notright.
"How do you know that?" he asked abruptly, uneasily.
"Because I'm you, and you're you, all of this," Dean said, waving expansively at the car's interior, "is you. We're in your head!"
"You're serious."
His brother gave him his patented 'ya-think' slight eye-roll and he let out his breath.
"The whole reason I stopped doing the trials, was not to die," Sam said, biting out each word.
"That contract, the burning out of the demon blood …" Dean said slowly. "It had a price that wasn't on the tag. There's nothing we can do about that – yet. Right now, we gotta fight this, man. You gotta hang on."
Sam sighed. His brother would fight, until the last drop of blood leaked out of his veins, until his last breath – he wouldn't, he couldn't let him die. "Okay. So what's the plan?"
"I'm working on it," Dean said, hunching a bit further over the wheel.
"What does that mean?" Sam frowned at him. "I mean, I'm kind of … dying here, apparently –"
"It means I'm working on it, alright?" Dean cut him off brusquely.
It meant that Dean didn't have a fucking clue what was killing him or how to fix it, Sam thought uneasily. And if his brother didn't know … could he really be saved?
Do you want to be saved?
The thought slid in, smooth as a knife, and he straightened up in the car seat. Maybe he wasn't supposed to be. Maybe this was the sacrifice he was supposed to make all along?
"The thing is, if I'm dying, and I believe you, I do," Sam said hesitantly, trying to find the words that could describe that feeling. "But if you're you, and you're really me, and you're the part of me that wants to fight to live …"
"Yes. I have no idea what you just said, but continue," Dean remarked as Sam paused to get it straight in his own mind.
"But if … you don't have any idea how … I'm supposed to fight, then … am I supposed to fighting at all?"
"Are you serious?" Dean looked at him, brows already drawing together.
"Hell yes, he's serious," the familiar and whiskey-roughened voice came from the back seat. "And if you ask me, I think the kid's gotta good point."
Sam and Dean looked back. Bobby Singer sat in the middle of the back seat, cap shadowing his face as always, looking from Sam to Dean.
"Sam wants to die and you think he's gotta point?!" Dean snarled incredulously at the man behind him.
"Okay, I don't want to die," Sam interjected, seeing where this was going. "I asked if maybe I was supposed to –"
"Shut up, Sam," Dean snapped, turning to look in the back. "You – go. Oh, and before you throw me under the bus, you're welcome for the Hell rescue."
"Hey! First of all, you didn't rescue jack, halfwit, Sam did," Bobby said.
"Oh, so you two just strolled out of Purgatory, no effort at all from anyone else?" Dean grated, the car speeding up as his foot went down involuntarily.
"Can you two just can –"
"Shut up, Sam!" Dean looked at Bobby in the mirror. "You gonna go with that, old man? I had nothing to fucking do with getting you out?"
"Right, alright!" Bobby gave in abruptly. "You killed your vampire buddy to get us out."
Sam looked at Dean's mouth thinning. "Bobby, don't."
"Second of all," Bobby ignored the order and leaned forward. "Sam, you're in a coma. Now, suck as that may, sometimes that's just the way things go."
"What are you talking about? There's always a way, you taught us that!" Dean said furiously.
"Enough! Both of you!" Sam said, raising his voice. "I can't hear myself think!"
Dean looked at Sam. "You're not actually buying this are you?"
"Excuse me! Are you dead?" Bobby snapped back. "Cos I am, and maybe I'm here because I'm the part of Sam that actually knows what he's talking about!"
"No, no, no, no! I didn't bleed and die and sacrifice my whole fucking life so you could give up the minute things looked too hard, Sam," Dean said, the car accelerating again. "That's not happening!"
"So you gave up everything for your brother?" Bobby said coldly. "Who asked you to do that, huh, Dean? Wasn't that your decision?"
Sam winced inwardly as he saw his brother's expression. "Bobby –"
"Hey, I'm in the front seat, because Sam put me here because he wants to fight, right?" Dean turned to look at Sam and jerked sideways as Bobby appeared next to him, jammed in between the two brothers.
"Well, that just got real uncomfortable," Bobby said, glancing at Dean as he turned and put his hand on Sam's shoulder. "See ya, Dean."
"Sam! Don't you fucking –"
The car and his brother disappeared and Sam and Bobby were standing in a forest, sunlight dappling the ground as it shone through the canopy, the silence, broken only by birdsong from the treetops, deep and welling and … peaceful.
"Yep, yep, yep," Bobby said, taking a deep breath and looking around. "Am I right?"
Sam looked at him and down at the ground. "Honestly, Bobby, I don't know what's right."
"Let's walk."
Longmont, Colorado
Castiel walked slowly along the narrow two-lane highway, feeling hot, tired, and noticing with an increasing alarm that the muscles of his legs were beginning to ache and he thought that the shoe on his left foot didn't fit as well as it should have because he was perceiving a small burning pain on the heel.
No Grace, he thought, head bowing as he put one foot in front of the other, plodding forward. No Grace and no wings and no thread of connection to Heaven at all.
And what did that add up to? Human.
He sighed and looked up, the highway stretching out in front of him with nothing but towering trees to either side. He didn't bother to look back because the view was precisely the same in that direction as well. He was somewhere, but he had no idea where and he was, to all intents and purposes, not only human, but lost.
The voices hit him at the same time, drowning his thoughts with their babble, here and there one rising more clearly or more shrilly or filled with anger, but the rest crashing over him like a wave and he pivoted in place, staring at the canopies of the trees, at the sky, disoriented by the flux of them as they overwhelmed his mind.
Fallingi'mfallinghelpmei'mAFRAIDnowhatishappeningi'mafraidfallingafraidstopitthisisn'tusthereisnohopenoheavensoafraidwhoAREyouwhereamifatherourfatherandbrothershaveFORSAKENushelploststopcan'tfindmywayhelpi'mfallinghelpmei'mafraidnowhatishappeningi'mafraidfallingafraidstopitthisisn'tusthereisnoHOPEnoheavensoafraidwhoareyouwhereamifatherourfatherandbrothershaveforsakenushelpLOSTstopcan'tfindmywayhelpi'mfallinghelpmeHELP!
Eyes narrowed, hands lifted uselessly against his ears, Cas heard the horn at the last second, spinning around and seeing the pickup veering as he stumbled into its path, and he threw himself to the shoulder, landing in the gravel on his hands and knees, hearing the screech of the tyres as they bit down under the pressure of the brakes.
The pickup stopped and the driver's door swung open as Cas looked down at the sticky mess of blood on his grazed palms. Another reminder of being human. It stung, and he processed the pain through a haze of shock.
"Hey, mister, you okay?" the driver asked, walking toward him as he rolled awkwardly to his knees and stood.
"It hurts."
"What the hell were you doing in the middle of the road?"
Cas looked at him briefly, then around the trees. The voices were gone. "I heard angels."
"Mebbe we better get you some water," the driver said, looking at him more closely.
"I don't drink water." Cas looked back at him. "A phone. Do you have a phone?"
"No signal," the man told him, gesturing vaguely at the mountains surrounding them. "How 'bout a lift?"
"Yes." Riding in a car, that would be more comfortable than walking. And faster. He needed to talk to Dean. Needed to make sure the Winchesters were alright. The anxiety about them had been growing without him even noticing it, until now.
"How far is it to the nearest town?" Cas asked, getting into the passenger seat of the truck.
"Not so much a town," the driver said, turning the key and starting the engine. "Wide space in the road, but they got a diner and a phone."
"That will be sufficient, I believe." Dean could come and get him. He had a car. "Where are we? Precisely?"
The driver glanced at him, an eyebrow cocked. "Colorado, this is Longmont, Colorado."
"Colorado," Cas said, rolling the name in his mouth. "Is it far from New York?"
"Uh, yeah, it's a fair hike," the driver said, nodding. "'Bout fifteen hundred miles."
"Would it take a long time to drive there, in a car?" the angel asked, wondering if Dean would drive that far just to get him. He might be able to wire money, as Bobby had, when he'd found himself in hospital.
"Couple of days, taking it easy."
"Ah. Thank you," Cas said. He would definitely need money then.
The thought of the angels intruded again, their voices so painful to hear, lost and frightened and not knowing what they were doing. He should be focussing on them, he realised slowly. Dean and Sam would be alright, they knew how to survive. His brothers and sisters did not, not down here, not without their power.
They came around the bend and Cas saw the small row of buildings on the left-hand side of the road. The truck pulled up and he got out, looking at the signs that indicated each building's purpose. He saw a sign with the shape of a telephone on it on one very small structure.
"Hey," the driver said, and he turned around, looking at the notes and coins the man held out to him.
"No, I can't take your money," the angel said, shaking his head.
"It's for the phone, and, uh, a sandwich, if they have one," the driver told him. Cas looked at the money the man put into his hand. The phone, he remembered, cost money.
"Take care, mister, and, uh, word to the wise?"
"Yes?" Cas leaned forward. That he could use.
"Don't tell people you're hearing angels, okay?"
"Uh, yes, okay."
He turned away as the pickup moved forward and closed his fingers around the money in his hand. He vaguely recalled advice from Dean along those lines, sometime in the past.
Glenwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph, New York
Dean looked at his watch, checking the time against both the wall clock in the room and the small digital clock on the nightstand. All three agreed that it'd been four hours since he'd sent his offer (angels don't make deals) into the aether and so far, nada.
The soft knock at the door was barely audible over the humming and quiet beeping of the machines surrounding Sam and he looked up as the door opened, a small, dark-haired woman in a mismatched outfit of brown pants, blue floral blouse and bottle-green cardigan walked in, glancing first at Sam then lifting her gaze to meet his.
"Hi," he said, pushing himself off the window ledge and stepping forward. "I'm just gonna break the ice here – are you an angel?"
She let out a disbelieving little laugh, her expression transparently uncertain as she seemed to debate taking him seriously or not. His face was so full of hope.
"Sometimes, I wish I were," she told him. "My name is Kim Schultz and I'm a grief counsellor, here at the hospital."
The hope vanished instantly, his gaze dropping. "Right, uh, yeah, sorry," he said, lifting a shoulder in a slight shrug. "I'm just tired."
She nodded, looking at Sam. The report that had been left in her tray had said that the patient was this man's brother. There wasn't much of a resemblance, although she'd often found more similarity in people when they were awake, animated.
"Well," Dean's voice hardened a little. "With all due respect, I'm not grieving – not yet at least, so…"
That was a response she knew well and she matched his tone, her voice firming. "I'm afraid that as hard as this may be, this might be a good time to talk." She glanced back down at Sam. "About what's going to happen to your brother."
Dean looked at her, repressing the surge of anger he could feel at both the intrusion and the subtlety of her certainty that he would be grieving, in a very short time.
Not on my watch, lady!
"Look, I'm sure you're a nice person and that you mean well," he said, watching her look away, that certainty dissolving slightly at his tone. "But, I haven't given up on him yet, and I'm not about to start now."
She nodded, accepting the tacit rebuke. "Mr Johnson, I understand and I believe in miracles and hope for them, as much as the next person, but I also know how to read an EEG, and unless you have a direct line to the angels you were looking for –?"
"Yeah," Dean said, his anger vanishing with her sympathy, with the careful way she spoke to him. No one else believed there was a way. "No, I, uh, guess I don't."
No angels. He let himself absorb that knowledge, took it in, looked at it. And another thought stirred, in deeper memories. There was always a way around. If no angels would help … the other side was still available. Better than available. Downright fucking handy.
"But I might have something better," he said, mostly to himself, his gaze going past the counsellor to the door as he started moving.
"Sir, I can come back at a better time if you have –"
"Yeah," Dean said, accelerating as he rounded the bed and reached the doorway in another long-reaching step. "You do that."
The stairs to the parking garage were at the end of the hall and he lengthened his stride, hitting the door with one hand and half-running down the echoing concrete stairwell. How the hell had he forgotten that particular ace, he wondered, half-bemused, half-angry with himself. The door swung open easily when he reached the bottom of the stairs and he looked around at the squeal of tyres over the smooth concrete floor, tracking the leaving car.
No one else was in sight, and he knocked on the Impala's trunk lid. "Crowley, listen up, you sonofabitch," he growled. "One for yes, two for no. You alive?"
The trunk remained obstinately silent and he could see the demon's scowl in his mind's eye as Crowley thought over his options. He wasn't going to give the demon a chance to think of a way to screw him over.
"C'mon, don't be a pouter," he said, rewarded with a single thunk from the inside a second later. "There we go."
He was straightening up, reviewing exactly how to get what he needed from the now-defunct King of Hell when an arm whipped around his neck and the ice-cold edge of the sword touched his skin.
"You prayed?" a voice grated from behind him.
"Yeah," Dean said, his eyes cutting to one side, seeing the arm belonging to the hand holding the sword and a part of a shoulder in his periphery. "For help."
"Yes," the angel nodded, moving further into his vision, the sword pressing harder against his neck. "You'll be helping me."
What the fuck, he barely had time to think before the hand holding his shoulder yanked him almost upright and smashed him face-down into the trunk lid.
"If you lie to me, Dean Winchester, I will rip your throat out," the angel said precisely, putting his weight onto the arm holding him down. "Where's Castiel?"
"Who's asking?" Dean said through one side of his mouth, the other side being mashed between his teeth and the car's trunk. His ribs were creaking a little as the angel pressed him down harder, and he felt the sheet metal buckle slightly under the bones of his face.
"Try every angel who was ejected from their home," the angel said coldly.
"Oh." Dean grimaced. "Oh, well, in that case, I have no clue."
He felt the fingers on the back of his neck tighten and he was lifted and slammed onto the shiny black trunk, the first blow taken on brow and cheek, the next more on the jaw. Fuck, he thought dazedly, hold it together, forcing his eyes to stay open, his ear ringing furiously, and grey mists shrouding the edges of his vision.
"Easy there, my brother," another voice said from behind him and the grip on his neck loosened. "This young man has prayed for our assistance. Are we creatures of wrath? Or of compassion and guidance? I would argue the latter."
Listening to the soft voice of the second angel, Dean hoped like hell he was twice the size of the first one. His head was ringing like a friggin' church bell and one eye was definitely not working as per the manufacturer's specifications, flattening out what he could see and filming it in pale shades of red. He was also, he realised with a spurt of irritation, gonna have to beat out the indentations of his face from the car's trunk.
"Forgive me – brother," the first angel said, his tone sounding anything but contrite. "I don't recognise you."
"I would be happy to make your re-acquaintance," the second angel promised. "After you disarm."
The pressure disappeared from Dean's neck and he risked rolling his still-working eye around, catching a glimpse of a tall, broad-shouldered man standing to one side, his lean, weathered face watching the dick who must have been behind him with a wariness he silently applauded.
The first angel swung a fist blindingly fast, taking the second in the jaw and knocking him back. Dean watched as the second angel turned back and straightened up, his hand probing lightly at the area that'd been hit.
"Come now," the second angel said, with remarkable patience. "Is that any way to treat a brother, injured in the Fall?"
Angel Number One swung the sword toward him and there was a flurry of action as the second blocked the strike, his fist striking back snake-fast.
Dean slid down the trunk a little, looking around for something to cold-cock the dick with.
"You still alive, Dean?" Crowley's voice murmured from inside the trunk. "One for yes, two for no."
Dean grimaced at the car and lifted a hand, wiping at his right eye, relieved when he realised that the red tinge in his vision was from a small split over his brow, not from the damned eyeball. He looked at the angels, fighting in front of him and felt himself tense at the sledgehammer blows, given and received. The memory of Cas, pounding the crap out of him in a dark alley, brought a visceral shock, his body remembering the power in the angel's punch. He'd lasted about three minutes, he thought, before his body had shut everything down.
The bright clatter of the sword falling dragged his attention back to the here and now. Picking it up, Dean moved up behind the dick angel in the suit as he threw the other one into the side of a car. One shot, make it count. Reaching out, he gripped the shoulder, bracing himself as he thrust the sword straight through the angel's back and into the heart.
Pure, white light poured from the mouth and eyes of the vessel, eye-searingly bright. Turning his head away and screwing his eyes shut, Dean twisted the sword, angling it down. Then the light was gone, and he let the body fall, keeping a tight grip on the sword as he looked at the second angel, slumped against the car's side.
"Who're you?" he asked shortly, lifting the point of the sword to emphasise the question.
"It's not important," the angel replied, clinging to the car's door and looking up at him. "You're Dean Winchester, and I heard your prayer. And I am here to help."
His eyelids fluttered, and Dean watched his eyes roll back slightly as they closed completely, the angel sliding slowly down the side of the car and crumpling on the ground.
"Okay," he muttered, looking around the parking lot. One body to hide, one unconscious angel to drag somewhere private for questioning, a hospital full of people. No fucking problem.
"Dean!" Crowley's voice was muffled and breathless inside the trunk.
"Relax, you're back on the bench," Dean said, rapping the lid twice as he walked around the car to get a tarp from the backseat.
Longmont, Colorado
"I know you."
Cas turned to see a woman standing and staring at him, big blue eyes wide in a face of doll-like prettiness, framed by long dark hair.
"I don't think so," he answered, hunching his shoulders in his coat as he swung away.
"Castiel."
He stopped, turning to look back at her.
"We met in Heaven," she said, a soft tremor in her voice betraying her nervousness. "My name is Hael."
"You're an angel."
"Am I?" she asked him, her eyes cutting away, her hand rising in a helpless gesture. "Am I still an angel without my wings? Without a connection to Heaven?"
Cas looked around the damp parking lot. "You will always be an angel, even here," he said to her, motioning to the raised kerb beside the storefront. "What happened to you?"
They sat on the kerb and she looked away, looked inward at what she remembered. "It was a normal day. And then … then I was falling and my wings … they were burning."
Cas bowed his head. The pain had been endless and then it had gone, when he'd landed on the forest floor. Everything had just gone. He remembered feeling cold.
"How could that happen?" Hael turned to look at him and he lifted his head.
"I don't know."
Metatron had used his Grace, somehow. He remembered that much. A spell? What possible spell could cast out every angel from the celestial plane, together? Hael was looking at him intently.
"Your Grace … it's gone?"
"Yes," he said. "I can still hear our brothers and sisters."
"Then you've heard them talking of you?" she asked him, her voice dropping. "What happened? What happened to you?"
Castiel debated telling her – everything. From the moment he'd listened to the demon to the last minutes he could remember in Heaven. He hadn't been able to tell his friend. Not all of it. Too ashamed of what he'd done. Too confused by the memory alterations of Naomi. Too lost in himself.
"I forgot what I was," he said, not looking at her, looking down at the asphalt at his feet. "Forgot my purpose. Forgot everything I'd ever believed in."
"How?" she asked, and he heard the disbelief in her voice. "How is that possible?"
"I met a human. A man."
It was, he thought, even now, almost impossible to describe the impact that meeting had had. To describe the certainty that had flowed from the man, a certainty in what he did, what he felt, what he thought, particularly when he considered the circumstances of their meeting. Not the first meeting on this plane, but the one that had occurred before that.
Tainted and beaten and close to broken, the soul he'd been sent to lift out of Hell's stinking pit had been pitiful. It had clung, as most souls did, to the memories it'd had of itself in life, and he'd seen a man, emaciated and scarred, despair etched into every line of his face, radiating pain and desolation.
There'd only been an echo of that, when he'd seen him later in the flesh of his body, face to face in a building covered in summonings and wards. That echo had been filled with a fear, and a self-loathing, that he had been unable to understand. God had commanded the saving of this soul. That should have been enough. Enough to know he'd been cleansed. Enough to know he'd been forgiven. It'd taken the angel a long time to realise that the man would never forgive himself, that deep within the memories that had not been wiped out, what he'd done lived on, and he saw it as a stain he could never remove, never be free of.
He told Hael of the treasons of Raphael and Uriel and Zachariah, disjointedly, hesitantly. The collusion of Heaven and Hell had been shocking enough to crack his foundations, to shake his belief that what he did, and what he was told, was pure and noble. He told her it had been that man who had pried apart those millennia-old beliefs further, forcing him to see past the lies, to see to the truth. And forcing him to act, of his own will, to take responsibility for the flaws that were all too apparent to him when he looked at his superiors.
Every memory he had of the last few years was filled with the humans. Filled with their inability to give up or surrender to a greater power. Filled with the examples of true selflessness, of fighting against insurmountable odds with no more weapons than their own courage, their own belief in each other. And that had been tested to its extremes so many times.
"Lucifer didn't realise what our Father had given humanity," he said slowly. He hadn't been there for that final battle, the archangel's arrogant fury against the human's love. It'd been Sam who'd told him, much later, of Dean's refusal to die, refusal to quit. "He was defeated by something he'd never even thought of, a strength he regarded as a weakness."
"But God brought you back," Hael said, her voice almost dreamy.
Castiel looked at her, wondering if she'd even realised the import of what he'd just said. "Yes, he brought me back."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he admitted. To heal Dean? To continue a line of destiny that had kept worsening, days becoming darker and darker as he'd struggled to find a way to defeat his brothers from undoing what those men had sacrificed everything for? He still didn't know.
Dean's face, when he'd touched him and healed all those physical injuries, had shown, for an instant, that nothing had been healed inside. Not his past, nor his despair, nor the agony of knowing what had happened to his brother and where he was. There was nothing in his touch that could reach through and heal those things. Not all the power of Heaven could heal his heartache. And when he'd gone to Indiana, to begin a new life, the last thing he'd ever wanted to do was ask anything more of that man, ever again.
So, he told Hael, pride, Lucifer's sin, had led him down a path that he should never have trodden. Pride and the belief that he could defeat an archangel and keep the world safe, as the brothers had done, somehow.
He'd been wrong, he said to her. So unbelievably wrong that he'd wished for death, for not-being, so many times in the days and weeks and months that had followed that he no longer considered himself angel at all. Angels did not despair. Angels did not wish for death.
"You were doing the best you could," she told him, her voice uncertain. "Doing what you thought was right."
His laugh was strangled, and he coughed in the damp air as he tried to repress it. Dean had said it. He always tried to do what was right. He had never managed it yet.
Hester had told Dean that his touch had corrupted. Of all the things he'd wished his friend had never had to hear, never had touch him, that one was near the top of the list. It wasn't true, and yet, in a way, it was. He'd learned from the man, learned of friendship and courage, of sacrifice and honour, and had willingly followed him on a quioxical quest to save the world, not once but twice, because of that corruption. And Dean had known that there was truth in her words. Had felt it.
"My pride knew no bounds when I took the souls from Purgatory," he told the angel sitting next to him. "They were … not like the souls of Heaven. They were foul and filled with rage, with darkness and malice. And there were more than the souls of the monsters locked into that realm."
He had never worked out if it had been the Leviathans who had driven him to Heaven, to slay the angels in their thousands, to lay waste to the celestial plane. The vessel could not hold the souls, and his mind, his pure harmonic frequency had been corrupted as well. He had killed, wantonly, across two dimensions, and when the humans had opened the door and tried to free him, he had been subsumed in a guilt that had no bounds.
"You were resurrected a second time," Hael said softly, watching his face. He could feel her curiosity, unangel-like but there.
"It was a chance," he said heavily. "To atone for what I'd done, to put it right."
He knew he could not have done that without the brothers. He couldn't face himself, let alone anyone else. Killing Roman had been his only chance to begin atoning for what he'd done. And it wasn't enough. And with his decision to remain in Purgatory, to serve penance for his actions and choices, he had hurt his friend again.
He pulled in a deep breath, the mistiness of the parking lot tickling his lungs. "Metatron did this," he told the angel, pushing aside the memories as he thought of what he had to do. He needed to talk to Dean. "Cast us all down and closed the gates so that we would know exile as he had."
"There are those who will not believe that, Castiel," Hael said to him, her eyes narrowing a little as she looked at him. "Those who believe that you are to blame, again."
"I must call my friend," Cas said. "He will – he'll know where to start."
Glenwood Memorial Hospital, Randolph, New York
Dean watched Ezekiel return to consciousness, take in the flames leaping around him. He glanced at the basement doors, uncomfortably aware that this interrogation was under a severe time constraint. He'd taken out the floor's smoke detectors, but sooner or later someone was gonna notice that the doors were locked.
"You wanna help?" he said to the angel. "Start with a name."
The angel rolled to one knee, in the precise centre of the circle. "Ezekiel."
"Alright, Ezekiel, how do I know that you aren't hunting me or Cas, like the other angels?"
"Oh, I'm sure that there are many angels who are," Ezekiel said, his gaze moving around the room slowly. "Many more who are on their way here, most likely."
Dean looked at the flames. Cas had said that holy oil cut the angels off from Heaven, from their powers. "How do you know that?"
"You put out an open prayer, like that, you must –"
"I must really be desperate," Dean finished, meeting his gaze steadily through the fire. Well, he had been. He still was.
The angel exhaled softly, getting to his feet and turning to face him squarely.
"Believe it – or not. Some of us still really do believe in our mission, to protect and to guide," Ezekiel said quietly. "And that means we believe in Castiel. And in you."
Dean brushed that off, ignoring the stab at the offer inherent in the words. He couldn't afford to let anything warm and fuzzy through, not now. "You said you were hurt during the Fall?"
Ezekiel nodded. "I was," he admitted readily. "And tangling with my brother back there did me no favours."
He inclined his head as he watched Dean's mouth compress, the human transparently mistrustful. "But what strength I have left, I offer to you."
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, Dean thought uneasily. On the other hand, it was also probably a good idea to leave the gift horse's mouth alone. Especially if the angel could heal Sam.
When Cas said he couldn't? The small, derisive voice in his head asked tartly. When he told you it was beyond him?
He turned away, walking to the wall and grabbing the bucket of sand that was a part of the floor's fire-fighting equipment. Tipping it up, he walked around the circle, dowsing the flames with it.
Only game in town.
Dean watched the angel reach out, his arms crossed tightly over his chest to prevent himself from moving. Trust him or don't, but you know the way these mooks do this, it's through touch.
"You still able to cure things?" he asked, his voice hoarse, and low with the need to hide what he felt. "After the Fall?"
Ezekiel laid his palm on Sam's chest, eyes half-closing as he reached into the biological structure of the body.
"Yes," Ezekiel answered distractedly, listening to the man under his hand. "I should be, but … he's so weak."
Looking at his brother, Dean shut that pronouncement out. He knew it, but he didn't want to know it. Didn't want to think about it. His phone rang, shrill in the near-silence of the room and he pulled it out, frowning as he looked at the unfamiliar number.
"Who is this?"
"Dean –"
The voice was familiar, and he glanced at Ezekiel. "Can't talk in here, the machines," he muttered, holding the phone against his chest as he walked to the door and pulled it open, moving down the corridor.
"Cas, what the hell's going on?"
"Metatron … tricked me," Cas said. "It wasn't the angel trials, it was a spell. I wanted you to know that."
Dean stopped at the window at the end of the hallway, glancing around. "Yeah, well that's great, but we've got ourselves a problem."
"What's wrong?"
"Sam," Dean said, turning to the window. He hadn't realised how much he'd needed to talk to someone who was going to listen, going to hear him. The angel wasn't a friend, not any more, but he was the closest thing he had. "He's, um, they say he's dying."
"What happened?"
"I don't know," Dean muttered. "At first he was okay, then he wasn't and – you heard my prayers? I been praying to you all night!"
Cas closed his eyes. It'd had taken him a long time to understand the man he considered a friend, a long time to realise that Dean's anger most frequently came out of his fear. He could hear that fear now, behind the hunter's anger. There wasn't a way to put this off. He couldn't help and Dean needed to know that, so that they could come up with something else for his brother. "Dean – Metatron, he … he took my Grace."
"What!?"
"What are you doing for Sam?"
"Uh, everything I can," Dean said, filing away Cas' brush-off. He'd deal with it when Sam was walking and talking again, he thought. "There's actually another angel in there working on him right now."
"What other angel?"
"His name is Ezekiel?" Dean said. "He's cool. I think. I mean, I think he is."
"Ezekiel," Cas said, remembering the tall, fair-haired warrior from the garrison with a smile. "Yes. He's a good soldier. He should be able to help until I get there."
"Uh, no, no, no," Dean said hurriedly. "Hey, that's not an option."
"Might be a few days, but –" Cas said, ignoring the protest. He couldn't now ask Dean to come and get him and he didn't think his friend had enough money to send either.
"Hey, Cas, listen to me," Dean cut him off. "There are angels out there, okay? And they're looking for you and they're pissed!"
"Not all of them, Dean," Cas said, his voice softening. "Some are just looking for direction. Some are just lost."
Dean's brows drew together. "What are you talking about?"
"I've met one," Cas told him. "I think I can help her, Dean."
"No – Cas," Dean said tightly, eyes closing in frustration. "I know you want to help, I do, okay? But helping angels is what got you in trouble in the first place! Now, I'm begging you, for once, just look out for yourself!" He waited for a protest, looking around. "Until we figure out what the hell is going on, trust nobody!"
"And do what?" Cas asked disbelievingly. "Just abandon them all?"
"Dammit, Cas!" Dean glanced around as he heard his voice rise. "There's a war on, and it's on you! There's thousands of them out there –" He cut himself off, sucking in a quick breath as he thought of another argument, one that might make the dumb fucking angel think. "You said you lost your Grace, right? That means you're human, that means you bleed, and you eat and you sleep and all the things you never had to worry about before!"
"I'm fine, Dean," Cas said quietly.
Rolling his eyes, Dean stared up at the ceiling, his attention focussing to a narrow pinpoint as the building shook slightly under his feet. "Whoa."
"What's going on?"
"I think we got more company," Dean told him tersely. "Look, get your ass to the bunker. Alone! You hear me?"
"Dean –"