Ok, so I managed to get the next chapter up. For those who don't know, I'm writing between bouts of caring for my mum, who has become suddenly very ill. I'm sorry if it's not quite up to standard. I'm filling again, I know I am, but I also know where I'm going and I'm determined to get this arc done before the season starts.
What have you done now?
I, I've been waiting for someone like you
But now you are slipping away
What have you done now?
Why, Why does fate make us suffer
There's a curse between us
Between me and you
Dean now has a new found appreciation for Sam and how hard it was for him to come off the demon blood, especially after the agony of his first detox, the detox he never finished. Thinking about his little brother hurts, rather like a knife to the gut, but it is a pain he would rather experience when compared to the anguish he is going through as he is reminded of all the things that he did in Hell, all the things he enjoyed doing to people playing out over and over before his eyes. Sometimes he is the one holding the blade, standing over the rack, more often that not he is the one strapped to it and days like that Cas has to hold him down physically because they have no restraints. It leaves Dean sore and bruised.
When he is lucid, which is growing more and more frequent as the days pass, he asks about the research, asks if they have found anything new or a way to get Lucifer out of Sam. It frustrates him that Castiel remains close lipped about it, makes him want to lash out at something, at anything but he does not, because he needs Cas, cannot take care of himself without him so cannot afford to push him away.
Sometimes he hears Katie moving about in the house, hears her singing softly as she cooks, because there is no way that Castiel is preparing the food that Dean sometimes manages to keep down when he is hovering over the hunter day and night to make certain that he does not hurt himself. Dean does not have to think about the reason that she does not come into his room, does not have to wonder at the way she stays just out of sight, knows that it is all down to the things he did while Lucifer was controlling him, will have to apologise, if she will let him, though apologies do not come any more easily now than they have in the past.
When Dean is not hallucinating or trying desperately to hang on to his more lucid moments, he is sleeping and he knows that Castiel takes those moments, those opportunities, to talk to Katie, for the pair of them to talk about whatever it is that she spends her days doing while Dean is in this room battling to regain what little remains of his humanity. Some days he hears them arguing about it, a power creeping into Castiel's voice more and more each day, almost as though caring for Dean has given him the purpose and distraction he needs to start to heal a little more, to start to use his grace more fully, even if he never gets it back properly.
This time when he wakes they are arguing and from the way that Katie's voice hitches and trembles Dean is fairly certain that she is crying. His lucid periods have been getting longer, his hallucinations less vivid and he hears them more now, their soft moments of, if not friendship, comradeship, quiet movements around the small, one bedroom cabin they have holed up in. Today, however, Castiel is angry and she is upset, though his words are spoken almost softly, only a little more hoarse than usual to show his feelings and Dean wonders when he came to know that angel so well.
"Lucifer is too well guarded," he hears Cas snap, the thump of something heavy hitting wood.
"We still have to try," the tremble is gone now, though Katie's voice still seems to catch. "For his sake. He doesn't need me, he needs Sam. This will work, I know it will."
"He needs to become well again, it does not matter whether Sam is here or not, we cannot leave him." Castiel is insistent and Dean drags himself out of bed on his own for the first time in three weeks, frowning at how unsteady he feels and knowing that his recuperation is going to be more than just flushing the angel blood out of his system. "If we go after Lucifer now, without Dean, we will fail, we will die and we will not be there to aid him when the time comes."
Katie is silent at that and Dean wants to open the door and tell them that he does not need the support, does not need the help, is aware of how broken he is and how hard everything will be. He does not, because if the last few months have taught him anything, it is that without the support of others the world would be collapsing around his ears while he stared blankly ahead as nothing more than Lucifer's puppet. He stays quiet a moment longer, reaches his hand towards the door when he thinks that they have finished their conversation and pauses when she speaks again.
"The nightmares are getting worse, Castiel," Katie admits softly, almost too low for Dean to hear and suddenly he is intruding on something private, something he suspects that he should not hear. "Every night, ever since I found that book and I don't know why."
"Perhaps they are memories of Seraphiel's," Castiel suggests and even Dean can tell that he is not convinced of it, that Katie is not either because her laugh is bitter.
Dean has heard enough, he retreats from the door, returns to the bed and closes his eyes. Just the simple act of standing, crossing the little room to door and keeping silent has drained him of what little strength he has. He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks up when the door opens, Castiel stood there with a tray and a bowl of something hot and steaming and Dean feels his stomach lurch in hunger, has not eaten properly since this whole thing started and for one idiotic moment he thinks that is worse than everything else about the withdrawal.
"We woke you," Castiel comments as he hands Dean the soup, something bland with some sort of vegetables floating in it and it honestly has to be the most healthy thing that Dean has eaten in years, junk food at diners being easily more palatable than the limp salads and overcooked carrots and greens that Sam seems, seemed, to prefer. He all but falls into it in his rush to eat something, anything, and even though he knows that later, as soon as he hallucinates or fits again, he will throw it all back up, but he does not care, is tired of the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach and knows that it will take more than just a bowl of soup and a few more decent meals to fill it.
He shakes his head at Castiel's comment. Their conversation did not wake him so much as he had become aware of it as he had returned to consciousness. He does not mention it, his stomach beginning to hurt with the amount food that he has put in it even though it is less than a fifth of what he would usually eat. The angel notices and takes the tray from him, ignoring the scowl he receives in return, and they lapse into awkward silence, broken only by Castiel insisting that Dean lie down and rest and Dean protests against it, is afraid that if he sleeps he will have nightmares or fit or hallucinate again. Castiel is insistent, however, insists that Dean lie down, that he sleep again, because he will not be left alone to deal with the horrors that he will see in his mind.
SPN
After so many centuries in Hell, Astaroth had forgotten what it was like to have a human vessel, a human suit. Now into her second month in this particular fleshy sack she is beginning to wonder if the convenience of hands and arms and vocal chords is really worth it. Human hair is a bunch of aggravating fluff that cascades from the head, the skin is restricting and she finds it overly sensitive to the stimuli in the environment around her. At first it was a novelty, now she simply finds it irksome.
Still, there are some pleasures to be had from it all, Hell may have taken Astaroth's grace and turned it into darkness, but she has not forgotten the reason that she was sent to the pit in the first place, has not forgotten the adoration of the mortals who would flock to her temples to ask for her favour. Nor has she forgotten just how addictive it was, how intoxicating it was to hold the lives and souls of these humans in her hands, even knowing that their worship of her would damn them all to the circles of Perdition rather than allowing them access to Paradise.
Like Lillith and Azazel, Astaroth has her own part to play in the breaking of the seals and the beginning of the apocalypse. While the former were focussed entirely on getting their master out of Hell, she was, is, focussed on what happens after that. Her own tasks are no less important than theirs were. Fortunately her tasks do not involve oblivion in order to complete them. Her job has been to find the cage that contains the four Horsemen. To find out where Michael locked them away when he shut Lucifer up in his cag, not long before Astaroth was tossed into Perdition for her part in everything, for distracting the humans from her Father while Lucifer waged a war.
Finding the actual cage has been relatively easy in the grand scheme of things, figuring out the key to the door has been a little more difficult. The two part incantation is only piece of it, it turns out, requiring sigils drawn in blood, the burning of plants that have been extinct for hundreds of years due to the human destruction that they are so very good at and a number of other little things that are difficult to find. She does not have long, however, to bring it all together, the hardest being finding an angel in the body of a child given that angels have no fondness for taking unwilling vessels, although they often keep them ignorant.
Eventually she finds all that she needs, an angel in the body of a blonde adolescent girl, Astaroth does not know how the angel managed to convince the child to take it in, she does not care, she has the angel bound in chains of iron cooled in the blood of demons and engraved with sigils and signs designed to hold angels captive and powerless.
They have only to wait two days, two days until all the circumstances are right and the Horsemen can be freed.
What have you done?
What have you done now?
What have you done ?
What have you done now?
Reviews are little Castiels that fly above our heads and mini Deans under the bed. A small Sam in hand and a tiny John by the chair, a review that can show how much you care.
Artemis
