Warning: This chapter was emotionally trying to write down, please be aware if any of you are disturbed by the aforementioned situations (I refer to warnings and summary in ch 1) in this work, don't read. This part is sad and heavy.
Spoiler: Definitely for episode 8x17 Goodbye Stranger, especially with scene at the beginning of this episode, you'll know what I'm talking about if you've seen it.
A/N: All mistakes are mine. This is fresh off the press—so sorry for any errors. Let me know so I can correct em.
Chapter 3
The thing is a nerve, exposed to the world. The thing is flayed apart, all it's corners inverted. The thing, still conscious enough and able to reason out words and meanings. Words like fire and agony beat fresh hell against what it realizes is still a body, still a mind connected. It translates these words in the only way it can part out its reality, dividing it between what's been done to it and its reply—
Scream.
And if it had tears in its obliterated eye duct, it would cry.
"You fix him now!"
These words dive inside, triggering beyond the physical, shredded meat into a response rooted in self-preservation. These words translate to safety and Dean, two concepts that have very little meaning now. Still, it clings to the echoes of Dean as if this word had all the power to pull it from agony or fire.
Dean continues, and spikes up sharp as if the hurt was shared, as if it was Dean being eaten away, dissolved.
There are other words, just playing out of reach. Not as scathing as Dean. They murmur around as if they are drawn by the gravity of its pain, into the orbit of its death throes. They argue or deny Dean his great anger.
Anger gives Dean color, draws his shape into the weight balancing above its nearly sightless eye. Dean is a man now and nothing more, but nothing less than this. At his shoulder draws another word, almost unheard because of its soft remorse, its ever-carefulness. Sam.
"I'll do it,"says Sam, his colors gentle and lingering, where Dean's pulses. As it continues to writhe beneath both their bitter faces, Sam tells his brother, "I'll do it, Dean."
What will Sam do? What will he do that hasn't been done already? It aches and quivers in arms that call themselves Inias, the only word that came to mean something good and worthy.
It aches and quivers under the radiant sun blasting from Sam's hand, a jagged bright thing that hurts its one good eye.
"I'm sorry, Cas…I'm so sorry,"Sam weeps.
It's here it—he understands. What had been Cas cries out in this between space where the tip of the angel blade and the human matter that continues his existence against all mercy hovers, with his demise just inches out of reach. He cries out as Dean stays his brother's hand with his own, and unites their intentions.
He cries out. Yes…please…End it…!
His friends, his brothers grant him the gift of death. He takes it like a starved thing, all greed and desperation. He takes the blade into his breast, and shatters willingly; the makeup of him scattered to flashing oblivion. Dusk and morning paints his death, inverts it white to a black center.
Everything goes opaque, waiting in the breath of nothing.
And then. The snap and crack of that long-neglected tether. Circling from under the ribs of the Righteous Man is the shard of him that never returned when he raised Dean from Perdition.
Little known fact of angels, even something Castiel himself forgot in the face of his crippling guilt and eagerness to suffer, the death of an angel comes only with the complete destruction of its grace while it occupies a vessel. While being smote by archangels (twice), swallowed then spat back out by Leviathan, ripped apart by Heaven, that little shard stored safely away in Dean Winchester has never let him stay dead.
It doesn't fail him this time, though Castiel has grown ever weary of the price, and this time proves no different.
What had been a celestial wavelength the size of a skyscraper, is now broken down to the dust of crushed glass, to the bends and fractures of metal foundations. That tiny shard acts like glue, affixing only to the most vital because the greater parts of Castiel are darting off with speeds breaking the visible barrier. If Sam and Dean could see in time and expansive wavelengths of color, and follow along with what has happened to their friend, they would go blind with the horror of it.
Only Cas can see, only Cas, because Inias grips him tighter and shields the three oblong faces of his true form that wear his grief and fragility with his wings, and Cas stares on because he has no more sense or reason not to. He can only witness and let the glue that tries to catch onto his slithering pieces, make something out of nothing.
Glue, where cement would've been better.
At the end of it, there's so much missing, so much.
Castiel's story—the beginning, the middle, the end. These are the sentences started that break off suddenly and try to gather again.
He stares at the ceiling of a motel, "You son of a bitch…I believed in…"
He's sure and strong and complete. Anael looks upon him, her Garrison with satisfaction.
He's holding the light of billions, ignited and yet suspended. Glorious and damned.
"There's a right and a wrong here, Cas…"
Naomi. Her face, a gentle façade dropping as she cuts a line into his brain and leashes him.
"I have no family…"
He's screaming as Zachariah pulls him from Jimmy Novak's small form.
"What a peculiar thing you are…"
Dean shouts profanities in his arms as they rise together from the deep.
"Maybe this is pointless. Look…I don't know if any part of you even cares…"
The green pastures of heaven are buried in ash. He stands in ultimate judgment of his brothers and sisters. He stares out serenity at the corpses piled at his feet, thinking on a millisecond of uncertainty that itches infected at the back of his mind—Wrong. This is wrong.
"…but um, I still think you're one of us…"
He's screaming, strapped to a chair in a white room.
"I need you."
"Castiel," Inias gasps in surprise. His hold on his brother only grows impossibly stronger. Cas can only hear and feel, as his surroundings pulse in and out of light, staggering on the beat of a revived heart even as everything tries to die down to black again.
But Inias doesn't let it.
The light is Castiel. All that's left, and Inias treasures it. Guards it, as the forces surrounding the equator start to erode his fragile conciousness. Inias with his tenderness. Inias, who starts to mold something from the rotted shell of a human corpse, working with molecules that are only compatible with Castiel—any other vessel would destroy him at this point in his weakness.
Pieces of Jimmy Novak. The raw meat of him is the only accurate representation of Castiel's true state. Inias stitches something from this broken canvas of God's work, only using material that is salvageable. The rest is scrap, too damaged. Like Castiel.
A patchwork vessel.
Castiel roils in despair against his brother. In that half-moment before he's submerged entirely into this new little box that will bear his essence, he can stare at Inias with his true sight for a final moment. Inias with his concentrated faces, his four wings—the other two taken by Naomi. He can see what his brother intends.
Everything blows out to white—White, too vibrant and quick. A jarring contradiction to the muted world he'd been a part of before, his mind contracting in fear, no more than a pinprick of awareness against this onslaught.
He can't move, the limbs of his vessel—so heavy. Has he turned into a mountain in that strange blackout that happens from time to time? Has the body he possesses dug its roots to the center of the earth where the heat and the fire coils? Because the body is blistering, he's been poured into a vat, small and superheated and he rails against its sides trying to slide off the edges that have no hope of containing him.
Small! It's too small!
He's screaming, and hasn't stopped, trapped between broken memories and what occurs now. He's screaming, and he doesn't remember why.
"Hey, Cas."
Please, make it stop!
"Hey Cas…It's me, buddy. It's Dean. I'm here. Sam's here. You're ok, buddy."
There's a gentle rumble cocooning him now. From the agony. From the terror. It grows with a steady start-stop rhythm; Dean's heartbeat, surrounded by the gentle vibration of his voice.
He can feel it. He can feel something other than despair. Under his cheek, against his ear—realizing for the first time, he possesses these things. In the wide space of Dean's chest, he is held against Dean's heart.
"That's right. It's me, buddy. I've got you…"
And Dean does. Reality is slowly returning; the present is where Dean and Sam are. Dean who surrounds him, so large so overlapping. Where he rests in Dean's arms. His shield. His center.
"I've got you."
Under Dean's protection, he remembers his vessel. Remembers it's face, remembers it has eyes to open. He cannot move the limbs of this new body with its disjointed equilibrium. His control slips like liquid through his fingers. But Dean—Dean is calling him.
So he strains to open these eyes; with heavy lidded weight, opening ever so slowly like flower petals after a great frost, opening for the first time to spring.
It must be the first time. This vessel looks upon an over-bright world, shuddering away from the remembered pain of light. Something towering moves in to shade his gaze, and he finds no fear in its shadow.
His eyes are new, but he makes them search. He struggles to focus the light; the untried lens he looks through is a struggle to control. And like brushing aside the dust of wreckage, and finding clarity once it settles, there's Dean.
Everywhere.
"That's right, buddy."
The man's eyes are filtered clear by the sunlight catching earth warm colors. The edges of his teeth speak easy words along a gentle smile. Dean laughs relief above him bathing him with the tears he spills over Cas' own face.
"I've got you, Cas…"
"Cas!" Dean wraps both hands around those little shoulders, physically turning Cas around to face him. "Castiel."
Cas is staring at the floor, but at the sound of his name it's like gravity working against him not to drive his eyes into Dean. He can't go against this ingrained trait.
"What's happened, Dean?" Castiel's old eyes are imploring in that visceral way whenever he asks impossible questions. "What's happened to me?"
"It's ok, Cas," Dean tries, goes for something soft in his tone, and he tries to rub away the tension in those small shoulders. "You're ok."
"Don't lie me," there's a warrior inlaid into that child's voice. There's no mistaking the threat despite it. The fire in the hearth starts to crackle ominously. "I'm not a child. I-I remember being...being more-" He looks down at himself in barely contained alarm.
At the tips of his fingers, he finds blood. The scratches don't heal. And if he goes inward, into the places of himself that were profound and fathomless, he finds shallow pools, his consciousness only surface deep because there is no more, only the scar tissue of a landscape that was once a universe to itself.
"I'm gone," he cries with a child's voiced earnestness and demand.
The fire in the hearth upsurges with his outrage. It scrapes against the mantle leaving charred scabs over its surface. And there's Sam in the background shielding his face away from the heat, but D-Dean only comes closer.
"No, you're not," the man is kneeling into his space, eyes staring at his level with compassion, he rubs a thumb down over his cheek bursting the drops that have fallen there, "You're not, because I've got you."
D-Dean…his hold is near bruising as he wraps those large arms around Castiel's smaller shoulders, around his shuddering frame, chest to chest, heartbeats meeting in the middle and stuttering wildly together.
D-Dean is shushing into his ear, calming him in the fold.
"You're alright," his Da—Dean says, like he always has. Without caution or fear or insecurity, as if by his declarations alone he would make everything all right. "I've got you."
Castiel fists a hand in the man's shirt, holding on half-believing. The fire is growing at his neck, maybe inside the fine layer of his skin, sparking on guilt. His torn down wings are effigies of his guardianship over this man. He holds onto the Righteous Man, his hands burning on the contact, fingers wrinkling the fabric—
Kill him.
He fists a hand in the man's shirt and stabs through his sternum. The flesh there gives easily enough. There's no obstruction in the path of the blade to his heart. Dean has always made death an easy occupation. He acts like a magnet, attracting the things that want to kill him.
And Castiel has always been dangerous to him, never more so, than now. This is his first success, and it comes too easy, almost child's play to kill Dea—
Cas screams. He beats his hands against Dean's chest, stuttering on a breath only to scream worse than before. He shoves at the larger man, raging, chaotic. He almost breaks free of Dean's arms.
There's only grief here and he doesn't bother to hide his face, cut in odd angles with the emotion. No time to prove he is anything but a weak wounded thing filled with cries and human displays. Eyes blurred and searing with the crime dropped dead at his feet, he has a second of coherent thought to drive the bloody blade in his hand through his own heart, to match with Dean.
Naomi works faster than his grief. Her fingers snap out, making the room go bright, scattering the hall-bent shadows, bringing light to the horror broken in his arms.
"Again," she commands, face devoid of the displeasure her voice surrounds him with. He has a second to wonder before a figure wanders careless in the open hall across from them, dressed in layers like the body in his arms.
Like a puppet on tethers, she makes his weary legs stand, makes him stalk after his prey. Makes him…
"Please…don't!" his little voice grates itself raw. "Don't make me!"
In Dean's arms, his little boy writhes and his fingers are clenched into claws to get away. He's screaming like he's never screamed before, in a way no child could ever scream.
It's the flavor of old despair; a sound that rakes at the soul that Dean has carried inside his body since his turn in Hell. Despite the years, the sound brings him back to that place, or somewhere more terrible, because Dean could handle his own grief—even Sam's—but Cas is his responsibility to a degree that Sam has never been.
For all Dean has practically raised his brother, Sam is his own man—a lesson paved with years of regret and frustration, finally sinking in. And thank Go—whoever for Sam, who's already grabbing Cas by his kicking feet as he contorts his small body into impossible angles. The fire goes higher, forgotten as Sam maneuvers Cas between them. Despite Sam's strength, he's so careful trying to rein Cas in, even getting kicked by a socked foot for all his troubles.
The boy chokes on his own voice, eyes going white and rolling, scared in an animalistic way as he fights his caretakers. The tree finally crashes into the wall behind them, and then it cracks in half at its trunk, split down the middle—an invisible force splintering it unnaturally.
The cut of Dean's jaw is filled with tension; he breaks out in a sweat trying to hold onto this vital piece of his life. He rests his chin against the top of Cas' head, biting his own tongue with all the jerky movements going on beneath him.
"Cas!" Dean gives a fierce whisper. "Come on—Stay with me," a father brackets his son in his trembling arms, with worry.
Sam bites back a curse of surprise, leaning just some of his greater weight into Cas' ankles. The fire is raging in full fury now, red fork-tongued tapping high enough to skim the low ceiling. Sam's pulse is pounding with shock just looking at the war zone their quiet festive den has become. Cas is doing this—not on purpose—but he has mojo enough to burn the house around their ears, so Sam bites the inside of his cheek and calls out to his brother.
"Dean," Sam finally breaks through the protective circle Dean has drawn around Cas. His older brother takes a moment frowning up to Sam's gaze, eyes helpless and torn trying to hold on. He's sees the growing fire, eyes going saucer-wide like Sam's.
Oddly the pyrotechnics stay in one place, just climbing higher like a red streamer smoking up the mantle and wall with ashy fingers. Dean figures it out, gut instinct still sharp despite the few years of retirement. He throws a cautious look to Sam, and just like signal lights communicating the traffic of thoughts, it's understood the fire goes into second priority.
It's Sam, bright, dependable former-Stanford man—Sam who remembers the small syringe and sedative in the downstairs bathroom, just past the open double doors out in the hall. He takes a second to gain Dean's attention, and as his brother tightens his grip on the kid, Sam shoots off for the bathroom.
He's knocking aside aspirin bottles, and sunblock, cluttering the floor with plastic things and the empty sounds they make hitting the bathroom tile. The medicine cabinet is empty before Sam remembers past his panic—the first aid kit is in the lower drawer of the sink.
Sam loads the syringe with minimal shaking, accurate with the dosage for Cas' weight and size. They've never had to use it before, always kept it handy because there have been days bad enough to contemplate using it. And if John Winchester, and then Bobby Singer, drilled anything more useful into their skulls, it's to always be prepared.
Sam runs carefully back to Dean's side. Cas' is practically seizing in his older brother's arms. Even life-hardened, been-to-Hell-and-back Sam hesitates in quick heartbreak at the picture they make. Because the little boy in Dean's arms is reparation from the universe for all the crap they've suffered, and every chance Sam gets to make him smile is like a balm settling over his lifetime of wounds, Sam searches for a thin vein—despite the flailing arm—inserts the needle, and drives the plunger home with all the stoicism of a registered nurse working the emergency room floor.
Because Sam will be damned before he sees his family torn apart…again.
As the sedative takes effect, Sam contemplates how he would never survive it. Looking at Dean now, as his muscles settle back from painful contraction, twitching as Cas goes still if not entirely peaceful, Sam thinks how it would be worse for Dean.
The fire goes as soon as Cas is under. There is some damage to the mantle, wall and ceiling, but only cosmetic. Repaired easily with sanding and paint.
Sam's brother isn't so easily put back together. He recognizes the wild, burning thing glowing in Dean's eyes, even as he strokes tenderly at Cas' cheek and shoulder, old well-practiced movements that have only perfected with time. He gathers Cas to him gently, softly rounded shoulders bearing the weight of a six-year-old—Dean makes the impression of a pillow or a cloud not to disturb Cas' artificial nap. He's being painfully quiet. A glare over his shoulder commands Sam should follow, that they should continue ignoring the mess in the den. He can practically hear Dean barking, "Second priority, Sam."
Of course, Sam follows—as if he needed to be told to feel the anxiety tethering him to Cas—hovering a step behind Dean, with questions growing in his brain like weeds. Is he ok, Dean? Is he alright? Dean, let me look at him. Sam chokes them down as Dean leads them in a somber parade march up the stairs to Cas' room.
Sam only sidesteps in front to pull down the comforter and arrange the pillows, disturbing them from their pristine order. Cas makes his bed to military standard every morning, and Dean returns him to it despite having left it only a few hours before.
Dean shifts his small body comfortably, socks staying on because Cas gets cold, little robe still draped around him. It's reminding Sam now of before, of an overcoat and the man who wore it—so painfully different and yet similar to the child he eventually became.
Here they all are, two brothers standing vigil over an occupied bedside.
Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one drop out with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there. Awesome.
Sam shifts uncomfortable at the thought, like a twinge of pain from some old war wound flaring—which he supposes, it is. Dean's mouth is a tight line, a muscle in his neck jumps as he swallows thickly. Sam doesn't have to be psychic to know that Dean's thinking the same thing.
Regret always follow the memories of Castiel, of how he was before.
How they were poor teachers for the all-experience of the human race. How they were no better substitutes for Cas' brothers. How they took him for granted in some respect. How they should've tried to be more like family, tried to fit it in with the hunting and the apocalypses, the gates, and the tablets. Should've shown him how much he meant…
Sam sees the echo of these thoughts in Dean as they wait for the other little corner of their family to wake up. Making up for lost…well, everything.
Cas has helped Sam reconcile with most of this. He has helped Dean too. But right now, it only seems to create fuel for that fire stoking in his brother. Dean radiates with the energy of restlessness, or new purpose.
Whatever it is, Dean's eyes go sharp and focused. He drags the covers over Cas', straightening them half-heartedly, delaying from pulling his touch completely away from his son. The last thing he does, is rest one broad calloused hand over a small covered shoulder while the other cups the side of Cas' face. He doesn't stroke his thumb, or display any other affection he typically allows with Cas. He stays still, leaning for inordinate time, almost like he's fortifying them both, anchoring them to each other. Beneath the thin parchment colored skin of his blue-veined lids, Cas' eyes stop rolling for a fraction of a second. Sam notices this silently.
Dean nods to himself, looking decided. It's here, he finally addresses Sam.
"Watch him," dragging from his mouth like it costs him everything, Dean says it like an order or a plea.
Sam nods mutely, already plucking a chair to sit bedside in. He doesn't acknowledge Dean's departure, just listens to the barely contained noises he makes heading downstairs. In the time it takes Dean to be outside, Sam wrestles a small hand from the sheets and covers it with his own. He hears the open and shut creak of metal the Impala gives as his brother disturbs her rest in the garage.
Sam is tall enough, even sitting down as he is, to peek out the lightly frosted window near the bed. He sees his brother, snow boots trudging in the napping winter dirt, making his way past the bare tree with the tire swing. The car heap in old Singer salvage yard is now paved brick and a garden. It's their garden patch so every herb is used for protection, and charms are buried under plants resting in winter hibernation and the white picket fence is reinforced by white-wash iron and riddled with hidden warding sigils. Dean walks past this, to the white open field touched with packing snow, where the underground pipes arranged in a devil's trap don't reach.
There's a jug of holy oil in Dean's hand, probably the last one. With it, he makes a large circle in the open field. It'll burn despite the layer of snow on the ground, just one of those inexplicable phenomenas that surround their former occupation. Resting at his hip under the lining of the jeans he'd slapped on, is an angel blade. Squinting at the white sun once he's finished, he sets the jar at his feet. There's no preamble as he cranes his neck to the sky and starts to shout for all he's worth, breath fogging out like a tea kettle come to boil.
"Inias!" it echoes long and disused among the low snow drifts they've had to shovel out the driveway these past few days, and the few spokes of yellow dry grass peeking out of it. Dean abuses his prayers and shouts it out several times before he goes rough and quiet. Then, he draws back from the circle, leaning most of his weight on his right leg, he waits. In his other hand, Sam notices the silver lighter. In the post-morning, Dean flicks it on and off, it's tempo counting down to something.
Tbc...
