With Both Eyes Closed
a/n: minor update, I know. I'm trying to figure out where this is going right now, so this is a bit filler. I'll be going deeper next chapter. And certainly longer. and, god, writing for Bobby is making me downright weepy. The angst everywhere right now. It's killing me.
-GS
disclaimer: kripke is their keeper; I am, sadly, not.
Holy shit.
Dean thinks that he should maybe probably keep walking until he hits Australia, and then keep going, keep going until everything is just freaking over. The end of the world, he could deal with. Hell, he did deal with it. He freaking beat it. But the fact that he beat it just to end up here, walking on the side of a highway with his shoulders tucked against a brutal wind and the beginnings of a rainstorm meant that God was kind of a dick.
"Dean."
He's so used to Cas popping up that he doesn't even falter, just keeps walking and waits for the angel to fall into step with him. There isn't anything he can say right now that will make this okay. This will never be okay. They're pretty far gone.
"Dean, I—"
"Don't give me that, Cas," he says tiredly, glancing to his left. The angel looks impassive, as blank as he was when he was trying to convince Dean to be the Good Man that the whole freaking world needed. Well guess what? He was. And did he get a thank you? No. He got the goddamn Devil. "Don't try and reason this out. Don't try and find a—a bright side to this. All I can think of is trying to figure out how to end him, and how to do it, and getting to move on. And now I can't even do that—"
Cas is quiet for a moment, just walking steadily alongside him. A car blares its horn as it flashes past, side mirror almost clipping Cas in the arm. Dean tugs him to the side.
"I can't be around him, Cas," Dean says slowly, considering. "I know this—I realize you don't—listen. You're doing what you think we have to, and I get that. I do. I just can't go back there, Cas. I can't." He sticks a hand out to stop Cas and turns to face him, hopes he sees exactly what he's trying to get across in his eyes. "I can't go back there."
Oh, hell.
Those goddamn Winchesters. Anything bad will find them, anything worse will stay. Bobby eyes Sam from his perch at the desk, And now, they've left him here with the goddamn devil. What the hell is he supposed to do with a baby devil? Here, have a binky, and maybe a side of torture while you're at it? Idjits.
Sam blinks at him. "What?" he demands automatically. "Somethin' you wanna say?"
He shakes his head, quickly, shifting a little on the bed. Bobby has to fight back an automatic surge of sympathy. The devil. It's the devil. Lucifer, not Sam. But Cas did brief him, a little bit, before chasing after the other idjit. But evil is evil. It's what the angel doesn't seem to understand. Doesn't matter what outfit you stick the wolf in, it still ain't no sheep. Bobby knows that. He knows that that's killing Dean, right now, wherever the hell he ran off to.
It's silent, him staring at the abomination, the abomination staring anywhere else. And then he—it—he, does break the silence with a question.
"What I did… it must've been pretty bad, huh?"
"That's one way of putting it," Bobby snorts, and takes in the flinch of Sam's shoulders. He can't help comparing them to the way he used to shake under anxiety and stay steady under pressure. It's a dead-ringer. "Jesus H. Christ. You really don't remember a thing of it, do you?"
Sam's head shakes, his gaze open and earnest when he meets Bobby's eyes. "No. Nothing. Well, one thing." His expression darkens into a frown, and Bobby remembers, for a second, that he died today and it wasn't no great shakes. He remembers that that's the expression that led to Cas shattering across the ground and splattering across him. Remembers that expression accompanying his neck breaking.
But, then, he remembers, also, that expression from when Sam was little Sammy, struggling through archaic text no eight year old had any place to look at; remembers him older, that expression when he did research, when he was hunting something, trying to save someone, putting all of himself out there for strangers who would probably never know it.
"I remember one thing," Sam says, meeting Bobby's eye again, and Bobby tries his hardest not to look away. "Dean."
"You remember your brother?" Bobby blurts, before he can think it through, before he can think that, uh, yeah, Lucifer probably misses Michael, and that might count as a trigger, but Sam's head isn't exploding and Bobby isn't dead, so he guesses it didn't trigger much.
Sam shrugs. "I guess. It's the only memory I have. Just one thought. 'Dean.' But it was like… Like I had to do everything for him. It felt like I was going to die, that I just had to do something—" He shifts uncomfortably under Bobby's scrutiny. Bobby can't look away. "And then everything sort of exploded and I woke up on the ground."
Bobby blinks at him. "Oh, hell."
"Dean, where the hell are you?"
"Diner," Dean mumbles through a mouth full of cheeseburger. "With Cas. Guy was hungry. Why?"
"Cas was hungry my ass. I think you should both get back here. We've got some figuring out to do."
Dean swallows, throat dry. The burger goes down like ash and dust. "Bobby, I can't do that."
"Well, you're gonna have to figure out how to stomach it. He's asking for you. He's worried about you, Dean. I don't know what freaking kind of devil that is, but it's freaking me out."
"Yeah, fine. We'll head back in a little while." Dean closes his phone with a snap. Cas looks at him from over an almost-full plate of fries, his burger, at the very least, long gone. "Something's going on with Sam." Cas nods, reaching towards Dean's forehead. "Whoah, what are you—not here. Not right now. We've got a little while."
Dean calls the waitress over and orders some food for Bobby, and then, after a moment of hesitation, something for Sam, too. He sees Cas, out of the corner of his eye, look somewhat appeased, and that's a little bit of an upside, at least. Making an angel nearly smile.
Which reminds him.
"Cas…" He's not sure how to ask this. It gets personal, doesn't it? And how personal do angels get? How closely do they guard their privacy? He's not all that into the idea of getting smote, here, but all he's really asking for is information, and how bad could that be? "What are angels… I mean… When did you start?"
Cas cocks his head, eyes narrowing and lips turning down at the edges. "Start what, Dean?"
"You know, like… Were you a kid? How did you come into things? Did you grow up?" Dean can feel his cheeks heating up. God, but he sounded like a five year old learning for the first time that girls and boys have different anatomies, and that's where babies come from. Jesus. He didn't really want to know where angel babies come from. That is what it sounded like, though.
"Of course," Cas answers, confused. "I came into being, and then I grew into my place."
Dean's nodding, because maybe Cas has made things a little bit better. "Great. Okay. So you can be raised? You don't finish up exactly as you're born."
Cas shakes his head, brow furrowed to his nose. "Of course not. I was born the way I was meant to be. God molded me to what I am."
When the waitress arrives at the table again, Dean can't even raise enough interest to smile at her. So much for hope. All it did was hurt, every goddamn time. It's just him who is just dumb enough to forget it.