Sorry for the long wait. I've had a bit of a writer's block and I've been trying to figure out the main storyline for this fid; I kinda jumped in half-assed and unsure so I have a few issues to work out.
The wonderful Brokenwings-Learntofly has asked me about writing a fanfic about, well, this fanfic and I seriously screamed when I read that message guys. I'm so honored! Go and welcome her to [she just made an account] and check her out whenever it's posted! I know I'll be an apt reader for sure!
In the end, Dean had relented. He made a show of it, like he was being forced but she saw the way he grinned when she made jokes at both of their expenses so she knew it wasn't all bad.
They decided going to Bobby's was a good idea; since she was joining them there was only need for one car and they needed a place to keep it. Plus, it would do Bobby good to meet her. And for Dean to check in on her story; just because he liked her doesn't mean he's an idiot.
It took three days of almost constant driving to get to Singer Salvage from Oklahoma. Somehow, Dean and Sam took it in stride. Nest, on the other hand, was constantly stopping to get food or pee or run around in circles. Constantly for them being every five or six hours. She thought she was being a trooper and they thought she was slowing them down.
Eventually they got there. Dean was still pissy about the pace, though.
He slammed the door of the Impala shut and walked up to the front door. "Finally!" He exclaimed. "We made it!"
Nest rolled her eyes at his irritability. Sam hung back and muttered, "Where's Cas been?"
"I don't know, I'm not his keeper," she snorted. "Maybe if Dean would stop worrying about a millennia-old creature long enough to pull his head out of his ass then we'd see him down here again. Or he's fighting a battle but it's been, what, weeks up there?"
Sam nodded worriedly. "Would you mind calling him down? Dean was kind of a dick to him last time."
"Kind of?"
Sam gave her a look and she sighed. "Fiiiine. Castiel who art maybe in Heaven. Maybe not. Well he should shake his tail feathers on over here."
"Always so eloquent with your prayers, Nest."
They both turned to see Cas behind them. Dean had already headed inside. "I'm not an openly praying person. Makes me feel weird."
"Your faith is soft."
She frowned. "Sure. Anyways, we figured you and Dean should make up."
Sam nodded beside her, looking a little unsure.
The angel's eyes narrowed and his lips pursed. "Dean has no need to make up with me. He is perfectly content treating me as a baby in a trench coat."
"No he-wait, you're still hung up on that?" Sam asked, bewildered.
"Oh my God, Cas, you're worse than I am sometimes. Just tell him you don't appreciate him babying you. That you're still an angel and he needs to respect that you have a thousand years on him so he can shove it."
It was so easy to forget how old Cas was sometimes that Sam started and then shook his head, wondering how exactly he forgot that Castiel was still this ancient and powerful creature.
Said angel nodded. "I will do just that. Thank you, Nest. Sam." And he disappeared.
Sam grinned down at Nest. "You seem to have a pretty good grasp on people. Uh…angels."
"Helloooo, empath." She said dryly, gesturing at herself with exasperated hands. "I don't know, it's just easy to understand someone if you have the right amount of information."
Sam winced at the similarity between her and Gabriel, nodding.
If she noticed, she didn't comment on it or didn't get the chance. He would never know because of the shout that came from inside Bobby's house two seconds after a rather sudden burst of dry lightning/thunder from not too far away. They both rushed in, expecting Dean and Cas to be in the middle of an altercation or for a demon to have somehow made its way past the iron foundations. Instead they found half of what they were looking for.
Castiel was laying on the couch looking ill while the coffee table lay in pieces, blasted to hell and a scorch mark in the center. Dean was the obvious source of the noise, arm thrown up to protect himself and thrown against the opposing wall.
"What the fuck was that?" He sputtered, obviously distressed.
"What just happened?" Asked Sam, voice tinged with worry and urgency. Nest immediately went over to Castiel, ignoring everything else in favor of whispering to him and smoothing his hair back.
"Cas came in and started talking about how I don't respect him and how he's a thousand years old and then he got this look on his face and turned around and something just…hit him! I don't know! He just doubled over and then he was on the other side of the room with this blast mark in the middle!"
"You guys, shush. Cas is trying to speak." Nest muttered.
As if realizing that the blast had injured the angel, Dean's head snapped up to Cas's form on the couch and he was kneeling beside it in an instant. "What is it?"
She shot him an irritated look. "If you'd shut up for two seconds I'd be able to tell you."
Dean was about to snap back when the angel wheezed. "Gandiva."
"Ghandi?" Parroted Dean back incorrectly. "What's a peacekeeper in diapers got to do with this?"
"Raphael…has…Gandiva."
"Sam? Google is a thing!" Sam flinched at the worry in her voice, whipping out his smart phone [Dean had scoffed at him] and googling 'gandiva' as fast as he could.
"Uh…Gandiva…Gandiva….was a, uh, a bow used in the Kurukshetra war by some guy named Arjuna bestowed upon him by Brahman, supreme God of Hindu mythology and it made him invincible. Legend says no mortal can wield it except Arjuna and his son was killed in battle so no descendants. Also it looks like he had to give it back at the end of the war. It sounds like thunder when it shoots an arrow. Is that right, Cas?"
The angel nodded, face sheet white and lips pressed together in pain. "My true form…has been injured. I-my wings." He shot Nest a pleading glance.
"Say no more, Cassie. I got you," Nest turned to the boys and a sudden thought wondering where Bobby was in all this shot across her head, which she quickly shook away. It wasn't important right now. Priorities. "I need you to leave. Both of you. Neither of you can handle his true form."
"What, and you can?" Shot Dean, irritated at the insinuation that she could and he couldn't for some reason, even if it was true.
She glared right back. "Yes, I can. I'm a vessel and before you say anything, I haven't been to Hell and back so I can and you can't. Besides, he needs to touch my soul to heal."
"Wouldn't any of our souls work?" countered Dean.
"Yes, but I need to be able to touch his wing to complete a circuit so he can direct the energy there. Neither of you could do this. Shoo."
Sam practically dragged Dean kicking and protesting (screaming isn't manly) out of the house.
Nest nodded at Cas and he released his true form.
Despite the confidence she had projected to the boys earlier, as if she had seen him before, she hadn't and she was scared witless. She wasn't prepared for whatever she might see and tried to prepare herself for it but she set herself up to be even less prepared than before.
She definitely didn't imagine he would look like this. Almost human in shape but stretched out. His limbs were long, lithe, and his torso was so very thin and long. He looked so flexible and exuded a strength. His face was incredible and genderless, shifting between small features until she had a hard time telling what he looked like. His jawline, strong and so similar to Jimmy's, stayed the same and his blue eyes were bluer and pupil-less. She could drown in them. Atop his head sat a mop of the blackest hair, floating as if he were underwater.
Nest was suddenly struck with envy. She had always loved when Ariel's hair did that in the movies and even now made a point to play with her hair underwater when she went swimming.
Ignoring yet another useless thought, she shifted attention to his wings. There were six of them, each about as big as she was. The colors took her breathe away; they were peacock blue and the larger feathers had designs similar to those she had seen on peacocks. The circles within circles that resembled eyes shimmered and she realized they were changing colors. And another thing, he was glowing. Honest-to-God glowing with a beautifully iridescent light that reminded her of the inside of a clam shell.
She realized she had spent more time than she should observing him and realized also that, somewhere in that mess of observation, tears had made their way down her cheeks.
She moved forward and immediately spotted the injury. There was a distinct hole in his center left wing that dripped golden fluids (she dubbed this ichor, after the blood of the gods in Greek mythology). Castiel walked over to her and hovered his hand over her heart, waiting for her to place her left over his wound. She did and then the pain came. It was all she knew. Her world was ripping apart and she suddenly didn't care that she was Nest or he was Castiel or that he was an angel. She didn't know who she was or where she was or care. She was an animal down to her genetic material and she wanted this pain over with.
She registered cool wood on her face and then a warmth that almost came close to breaking through the shell of nothing and pain but then the cold came and the darkness after.
She woke slowly, voices softly spilling over her. Everything was slightly sore and she somehow realized that the soreness was a construct to keep her body from going from that level of pain to nothingness in an instant. It would probably cause shock. Didn't mean she couldn't hate the defense mechanism. Along with the soreness came a sense of sadness she couldn't explain but chalked it up to missing soul juice.
The voices were Bobby and Sam. She heard a slight ruffle and realized Castiel was with them, too.
"Are you sure she'll be okay?"
"She breathing ain't she? She should be fine. Besides, mojo-boy here would fix her up if anything was wrong."
She could practically picture the look Castiel would give the eldest hunter right here; like a lost husky.
She let out a laugh but all she got was a sudden pain and a dry wheeze.
She must have been screaming during the ordeal that was healing Cas.
She turned over and realized that she had an impressive amount of blankets piled on top of her. A tan sleeve came into view and she tugged on it, not relying on her obviously lost voice for communication.
Blue eyes turned to her and he touched her throat softly. Instantly she felt better, as if someone had poured tasteless aloe down her maw.
"Thanks, Cas." Her face wrinkled. That was not her voice. "What did you just do?"
He did that odd thing where he smiled with his face and not necessarily his mouth, peering at her out of the corner of his eyes. "I fixed the damage you had received as an infant to your nasal passages."
Indeed it was easier to breathe and she sounded less nasally. She felt both grateful and slightly annoyed so she settled for slapping his stomach with the back of her hand playfully. "Next time you decide to play doctor, warn a girl."
Sam sat down on the couch next to her as she struggled under the girth of fabric to sit upright. "You alright? That was a pretty intense light show. You've been out of it for about a day."
"Order me some Pizza Hut with extra cheese and I'll be fine," She grumbled. "And no skimping on breadsticks with marinara. I feel like you guys need to make this up to me."
"'You guys'?" Sam questioned with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, okay, maybe just Dean."
"You don't seem to like him very much."
She pursed her lips and glanced at Castiel who, for the record, was doing a very good job at pretending he wasn't listening as he helped Bobby pour over some old books in Sanskrit, but his hand twitched as Dean came up in the conversation and she knew he was tuned in.
Might as well be honest.
"Dean's cool. He is. Cool care, cute, good music, and once he accepts you as part of his family he'll die for you. I can respect that. But he also kinda assigns himself to this role of caretaker which I find kind of arrogant of him and sad at the same time that he feels he needs to take care of everyone. He forgets that Cas doesn't need that or want it and I understand. He's struggling with trying to figure out where he fits in his life but it's just irritating how he's trying to push him away until he figures it out."
Sam nodded. "That's just how Dean does things, though. He's not too hard to understand, but you seem to have a pretty good grasp on it."
A deadpan look took over her features and she opened her mouth to speak but was halted by Sam holding a hand up. "Right, right. Got it. You guys find anything else on this weapon that Raphael shot at you, Cas?"
The angel looked grim. "Gandiva is a weapon of Heaven and it seems Raphael has suddenly found it. It has an aim that is always true and can harm creatures of a supernatural origin. What has been hidden is that the Kurukshetra war was filled with demons and angels handed it to Arjuna as a means of assistance. We were not allowed to interfere other than that. I need to confer with Balthazar to find a means for protection from this. It could cause great harm to us."
Nest nodded. "Sounds pretty bad. I hope he can help you out."
"You met Balthazar?" Inquired Sam.
"No, but I still hope he can help. Where's Dean in all this?"
Bobby snorted. "Idjit's got eye envy and is out back fixin' up a useless Mustang. I'm Bobby Singer, by the way. We haven't met."
She smiled. "Hi, Bobby. Nice to meet you, I'm-"
"Nest. I got the low-down on you in the past few hours. Think I know everything about you now. Already did the usual tests while you were sleeping."
Nest blinked. "Usual…?"
"Silver, iron, holy water." Explained the younger brother at her slowly climbing look of horror.
"Ah."
A flutter of wings interrupted the slowly dying conversation and Castiel was gone.
She pouted. "I always hug him before he leaves. I didn't get to."
"Maybe that's why he left."
That earned Sam a well-deserved shove onto the ground. His protests were muffled by the multitude of blankets she then piled on him on her way to the kitchen. "I'm ordering pizza. Want anything?"
Bobby requested a meat lover's deal and at Sam's request for a Hawaiian she rolled her eyes. "Meat lover's. Got it."
"Don't forget the Hawaiian!" Called Sam.
"I will!" She shouted back good-naturedly.
Maybe being with the Winchesters wasn't going to be as bad as she thought.
