Note: Hope you're enjoying the story so far! Warning: A bit of violence in this chapter.
Dean ran out into the confusion of a night filled with the cries and screams of his group of survivors, and the insistent crack of gunshots. He barrelled past a group of children being ushered into the most secure place in the camp, the mess hall, and cursed himself again. If he hadn't been so caught up in his lustful thoughts about the angel would he have seen this coming? Had there been a warning sign he had missed?
When Dean reached the perimeter fence he scaled the watch tower, pulled bodily the last few feet by Chuck, who was awkwardly holding a rifle.
"What's the situation?" Dean snapped, grabbing the binoculars out of the smaller man's hands.
"An incursion to the west," Chuck replied grimly, his face pale as chalk in the moonlight.
Moonlight! Dean thought, alarm flowing through him. Where are the floodlights? He whipped out his walkie-talkie.
"Western Barricade this is Watch Tower One, where are the lights?"
His heart skipped a beat as a familiar voice came over the lines. "Power's out, Watch Tower," Cas said, sounding out of breath, "something's wrong with the generator. I'm on it."
Dean wanted to scream into the walkie-talkie for Cas to get the hell away from the front lines, but he bit back the words grimly. This was about the entire camp, not just one man, best friend or not.
"Get to it, Wings," Dean said instead, and heard the familiar hiss that Cas made whenever he used that hated code name. If his world hadn't been about to come crashing down on him Dean might have smiled.
"Get fucked, Fearless Leader," Cas replied mildly, and this time Dean did grin. He wanted to say 'already have' but not only did he still have mixed feelings about that, he also had an audience. And the entire camp was about to be overrun by Croatoan virus-carrying assholes.
"Stay safe, Cas," he whispered instead as he clicked off the walkie-talkie and turned to Chuck, who was nervously scanning the forest outside the camp walls.
"Do we have numbers?" Dean asked, trying to make out something, anything, in the gloom. The flashes of gunfire weren't enough to illuminate the scene, although he could see enough movement to make him worried. Very worried.
"Scout team Alpha reported close to a hundred before they were overrun," Chuck said, swallowing visibly. Dean felt his heart stutter in his chest, that was far more than they'd ever faced before.
"I've got to get down there," he muttered.
Chuck shook his head. "We need you up here, directing the battle."
"I can't direct anything if I can't see what's happening!" Dean snapped, tight knots of anxiety coiling in his belly.
Chuck held his hands up in surrender. "Whatever you think is best, Dean," he said, with just a hint of sarcasm. "Just, stay safe, ok? We need you."
"You have Cas, if I was gone he'd step up to the plate," Dean said absently, already starting down the ladder.
"Don't be an ass," the normally mild-mannered man snapped, causing Dean to look up in surprise. "You're the only thing stopping Cas from falling apart completely. He needs you alive as well."
Dean looked into Chuck's suddenly stern face for a heartbeat longer, before nodding sharply and continuing on his way down the ladder.
Above him he heard the radio click on. "Western Barricade, it's Watch Tower One. You Know Who is en route."
"Fuck!" he heard Cas exclaim, "Can't you stop him?"
"Stop him how, exactly?" Chuck replied sarcastically before the world went white, an explosion rocking the tower and almost causing Dean to lose his grip on the ladder. He squinted into the brightness; an explosion like that meant only one thing, the Croats had navigated the pits and had reached the last line of traps before the wall. He dropped the last few feet to the ground and raced in the direction of the gunfire.
Cas violently ended the call to Chuck and got back to work on the generator, frantically trying to get it working before his idiot friend went charging into the fray with that 'no thought for personal safety' attitude and got himself killed. He felt his shoulder blades itch; they always felt that way in situations like this, when he most desperately missed his wings.
After what seemed an eternity, but was really only a few minutes, his shaking hands finally found the loose connection and light flooded the camp. A ragged cheer went up from the wall and he jumped to his feet, picking up his rifle and heading for the battle. From the sound of it the Croats hadn't breached their defenses yet, but from what he'd seen before he made for the generator it wouldn't be long.
He was almost to the wall when he heard Dean's voice.
"They're over!" he screamed out. "Section Two, get in position!" the rallying call went up, punctuated by a short, sharp blast on an air horn, letting the camp know the wall had been breached.
Screams came from the perimeter and Cas ran harder, still hearing the hunter's voice even through the barrage of sound. He would have been able to pick out Dean's voice even if a hundred thousand people had been screaming in concert.
"Don't let them bleed on you!" Dean shouted to their army who, despite the endless drills and foraging trips, were in disarray; the defensive line broken into pockets of fighting all along the wall.
Cas came running up, shooting at the few Croats who'd made it past their last line of defense. "To me!" he cried out, pulling out the flare he'd snagged from the supply room. Seeing the red glow the ragtag group of survivors flocked to Cas's side, and he had a moment to look around and take in the gravity of the situation.
Out of the over one hundred Croats who had attacked the camp it seemed only a third or so were left. But the incursion had taken a heavy toll on the defenders, some lay injured on the ground, others lay dead by their own hand. It was one of those things that went unspoken in the camp; if you were infected it was better to die on your own terms than to turn and become a danger to your friends and family. Most waited out the mandatory four hour quarantine, just in case. But a few couldn't face the wait, and the inevitable toll it took on their loved ones. Cas couldn't blame them.
On the wall, outlined against the surrounding darkness by the floodlights, Dean had abandoned his rifle and was grappling hand-to-hand with the enemy. Cas felt his heart leap into his throat as Dean dispatched his adversary, jumping back and pulling his injured arm away from the spray of blood. A long heartbeat passed before Dean was apparently satisfied he hadn't been infected, and Cas breathed again. And then a hand snaked over the wall and wrapped itself around Dean's ankle.
The fearless leader toppled from the wall and into the mass of Croats outside.
As Dean fell he twisted in mid-air, landing on his feet. Immediately the remaining Croats turned to look at him.
"Son of a bitch!" he muttered, pulling the gun out of his thigh holster and preparing for the fight of his life.
Before he could even get one shot off Cas was there, leaping from the wall with more agility than any human had a right to posses. He landed with cat-like grace, teeth bared, his eyes shining with a feral intensity. His angel blade gleamed wickedly in his hand as he stalked towards the nearest Croat, and Dean almost felt sorry for it.
What followed next was like nothing Dean had ever witnessed. Cas flowed across the battlefield, handing out death with a precise efficiency that had chills running up and down the hunter's spine. He was sharply reminded that Cas hadn't just been an Angel, but a warrior of Heaven. He briefly wondered what Cas had been like on the heavenly battlefield; he could almost picture him with his wings unfurled, grace shining from every pore, his eyes blazing with the purity of battle. Dean shivered.
In seconds the ten or so Croats who had still been outside the walls had been massacred… there was no other word for it. Cas stood surrounded by a pile of corpses, his head hanging low, breathing heavily. Dean was by his side in an instant, tilting the angel's head up to look at him.
As he looked into Cas's eyes he saw the horror in them. And the love. Love blazed from those blue eyes; they were so bright that Dean was reminded intensely of the day he had first met Castiel.
That day had been a pivotal moment in the young hunter's life; he vividly remembered how light bulbs had blown and sparks had showered across the floor as Cas had stalked towards him with a measured step. He recalled regretfully how they had stabbed the angel, fearing what they hadn't understood. But Cas had pulled out the knife like it was nothing more than a minor irritation, which, Dean conceded, was all it had been. And then had come Cas's confession… I'm an Angel of the Lord… and his whole being had blazed with supernatural intensity, the shadow of his wings stretching across the walls. Dean remembered how hard he had tried to fight the awe and wonder he'd felt as the angel had first gazed into his soul with those piercing blue eyes.
He wondered now how long the angel had loved him. Then, with a moment of clarity, he wondered how long he had loved the angel.
Forever, his heart said.
He was suddenly struck by the inevitability of this moment, had there really been any other outcome since Castiel had placed a hand on his soul and raised him from Perdition?
Then his eyes moved from Cas's face to take in the rest of his body, and he drew in a sharp breath. Cas was drenched in Croat blood. The only part of his body that wasn't red with it were his eyes. It dripped from his hands, dripped from his hair, pooled around his feet in a macabre puddle.
"Cas!" Dean hissed, horrified. Cas smiled a small, regretful smile and lifted the blade, clearly about to use it on himself. Dean knocked it out of his hand with so much force he thought he might have broken his friend's wrist. Cas stood and stared at him, head tilted to the side reproachfully. A part of Dean wondered what it was about these intense moments between them that seemed to cause Cas to revert to his angelic disposition; he could swear he saw Grace behind those eyes, could swear he smelt that faint ozone tang that he associated with Castiel the Angel of the Lord.
Dean held up his hands, talking to his friend like he might a wild animal.
"Cas… think first. Did they cut you? It's only transmitted blood-to-blood, remember? Cas… did they cut you?!"
Cas reached out to Dean and every instinct screamed at him to flinch away, no one wanted blood on them in case it got in an unnoticed abrasion. Instead he held himself still as his friend pointed to his shirt, and then to his mouth. Dean understood, quickly ripping a strip of cloth for Cas to wipe his face with.
"They didn't deliberately infect me, Dean," Cas said at last. They didn't have time, Dean supplied the rest of the sentence internally. "But the chances are there's a scratch on me somewhere. The way we live… it's not kind on the skin."
"Screw that," Dean spat. "What you're saying is you don't know for sure. You only knife yourself if you're sure, you son of a bitch! We need every able-bodied man we can get. I need…" Dean didn't finish the sentence, clenching his hands into fists. Cas nodded slowly.
"Ok Dean, but if in a few hours I start to turn, or if we find out I was scratched… you won't stop me again."
"Deal," Dean said, letting out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Two blasts of the air horn followed his words, sounding the all-clear.
Dean mentally steeled himself for what awaited him on the other side of the wall. He'd be burning a lot of friends tonight. But not Cas. Never Cas.
He'd watch the world burn first.