Author's Note: Happy New Year! If '12 was good for you, may '13 follow in its footsteps. If '12 sucked, may '13 be much, much better!
The title for this chapter comes from the lyrics of "Frontline", by Pillar.
Stand Beside or Step Aside
The stack of cars had melted together, twisted metal and liquefied rubber fused into shapes that were oddly beautiful under the light from the full moon. Castiel paused before one, inspecting it silently. He reached out and let his hand rest on the cool metal for a moment. Black char scored the front, slashing the chipped and cracked paint. He smudged a thumb through it, inspecting the smear of black on the pad.
It might have easily have been Dean, twisted and scorched by lightning, an unrecognizable lump of component parts. Logically, he knew it wouldn't have looked the same at all; metal was forged to channel electricity and the human body wasn't. Dean wouldn't have melted into the floor, he would have turned to ash and smoke the instant Raphael's lightning touched him. But Castiel couldn't shake the thought out of his head.
It might have been Dean.
Jimmy, he knew, would have helped. Would have at least distracted him from the ice that settled into the pit of his stomach, the sick spin of cold realization that his friend had no defense against Raphael's spite save him. And he almost had not been enough. But Jimmy couldn't help him quell the fear. He was buried deep beneath Castiel's presence, sheltered against the storm Raphael unleashed. He was alone with his coping.
Castiel's hand curled into a fist as he dropped it away from the heap. It might have been Dean.
If he had not shared power with Gabriel… If he had not listened to Gabriel and found an alternate, if somewhat less effective, way of replenishing his Grace… If, if, if…
"You're thinking too much, Castiel." Gabriel's voice came from above, and Castiel looked up. His brother stood on the heap above him, hands in his pockets. "I can hear the hamster gasping for breath, you're making him run that wheel so fast. So knock it off, huh?"
"It might have been Dean." Somehow, it sounded far worse out loud.
Gabriel hopped down, landing lightly in front of Castiel. He shook his head. "Nah. That wasn't Raphael's goal. All of this—" He waved his hand around the junkyard, with its moonlit abstracts of metal and glass. "—was a distraction."
"A distraction," he said flatly.
"Uh huh." Gabriel unwrapped a candy on a stick and shoved it into his mouth. The wrapper gusted away on a breeze, spinning and flipping into the darkness of the yard. "If he could have taken out me, or you, or Balthazar, that would have been bonus points. Even Bobby would have been a footnote. But Sam? Dean? Oh, he has plans for them, and it wouldn't do to damage the goods before Michael and Lucifer have a chance to play out their little emo psychodrama."
Castiel stared at his brother. "Then what was his purpose? I don't understand."
"He was careful," said Balthazar, stepping around from behind a stack of cars, sloshing a drink in his hand. "Very careful, our brother. The attack wasn't directed at the house, but at all the lovely little conductors arranged so tidily around the building. We did exactly as he expected us to."
Comprehension dawned. It only made Castiel angrier. "He knew we would protect Sam and Dean and Bobby."
Balthazar raised one finger. "No," he said smugly. "He didn't know we'd save Bobby. Or, rather, I'd save Bobby."
Gabriel snickered. "How's he taking it, by the way?"
"Oh, very well," Balthazar said breezily, sipping from his glass. "He's threatened to turn me into his Christmas turkey if I don't fix it. Amongst other, less pleasant fates. He has a very creative mind for threats."
"Dean has offered to help him," Castiel supplied, feeling slightly lost with the nonchalance of his brothers. They had just been attacked (it might have been Dean); shouldn't they be planning a counter-move in retaliation?
"Ooh," Balthazar said with a mocking shiver. "I quiver with dread."
Castiel bristled, fingers tightening into fists at his sides. He took one step forward, eyes narrowing. How dare—
Gabriel moved smoothly between him and Balthazar. Castiel considered making a lunge for his brother anyway, then stopped, confused as to why the reaction had triggered that strongly. "Ladies," Gabriel said, hands out to push them apart if need be. "We have other concerns right now. Save the catfight for later, huh?"
Castiel forced his shoulders to unbunch, his hands to relax. It took more effort than it should have. He nodded curtly. "What did Raphael hope to accomplish by indirectly attacking the Winchesters? If his goal wasn't to kill or incapacitate them…"
Gabriel and Balthazar shared a look. Then, Gabriel shrugged and swept a hand between Balthazar and Castiel. "Go ahead."
"It was a tight fit," Balthazar said, "but I managed to squeeze into the panic room where you locked the houseguest prior to dinner. As an aside, I'm just going to add when Robert Singer builds a bomb shelter, he builds it to last. You don't see that kind of paranoid craftsmanship much anymore."
Castiel had a feeling he knew where this was going, despite his brother's tangentials. "And?"
"And the demon bitch is gone. And Zachariah's stink is all over the walls. That dreadful cologne he insists on showering in. Ugh."
"Which one's Zachariah again?" asked Gabriel, twirling the lollipop in his mouth.
Castiel's mouth twisted. "Zedkiel." The same one he'd told Dean about—was it really only a few hours ago? He'd never been entirely comfortable around Zachariah; that particular brother had always been a little leery, a little dismissive, of the humans they watched. Angry even, from time to time. Surely his contempt wouldn't extend so far as to working with demons… If it wasn't Balthazar—Jegudiel—saying it, he would not have considered the possibility.
Gabriel's expression cleared. "Ahh. Zedkiel. The angel with four faces. All of them douchebags."
"Succinct." Balthazar tipped his glass towards Gabriel, who sketched a shallow bow.
"He wasn't always this way," Castiel said, but it sounded weak to his own ears.
"True," Gabriel said, "but that doesn't excuse anything now."
That was the problem, Castiel decided. It didn't. Because it might have been Dean. "What is the plan? Obtain the Ark?"
Gabriel shook his head and, with a flick of his fingers, sent the empty white paper stick spinning into the night. "No. That's going to take some time to put together. Knowing where it's hidden is only the first step. We're going to have to fight every step to get it back in our grubby little hands." A hand settled on his shoulder, and Gabriel watched him steadily. "This is the point of no return, Cas," he said. "This is a declaration of war. There's still time to step back, if you want it. Because once this thing is done, that's it. We may as well blast Ride of the Valkyries everywhere we go."
Castiel considered for a long time, letting his gaze wander around the mounds of scrap metal looming like shadow-capped mountains from the ground. Gabriel had good points in their earlier conversation, forcing him to consider if he'd rebelled against Heaven or rebelled against God. He considered Jimmy's chief debate point, that what he chose to do didn't matter to God, because God accounted for everything anyway. He wondered if this was the first step down a long, dark, dirty road.
He wished he could consult Jimmy, a little startled to realize how much he'd come to rely on his host's perspective, but Jimmy was still deeply buried. In the end, he supposed, it didn't matter, because he knew what Jimmy would say. He knew where Jimmy's support would lie. He knew where he had to go.
Because it might have been Dean.
He squared his shoulders, set his jaw. It was simple, and silly, but the very human gesture made him feel more like the stalwart soldier of the Almighty than anything else. "I'm with you," he said. "Tell me what to do."
=0=
Bobby sat on the hood of his truck, which had blessedly been parked a safe distance from the epicenter of the blast, and stared at the wreckage of his home.
Singer Salvage had been in the family for three generations, going all the way back to his granddad who won the whole kit and caboodle in a backroom poker game sometime in the 30s. Grandpa had turned it from a half-assed money sink into a genuine goldmine of post-War prosperity. The Old Man had died on the job, his heart failing while he was tuning up a DeSoto, and the place had passed to Bobby's father who had been a wife-beating, child-hitting piece of shit that nearly ran the business into the ground. After Bobby'd taken care of that little problem, the place had come into his hands, and he'd turned it right around again.
He'd married here, under the elm trees that used to be four and were now two and a half. Family and friends had come and gone. Karen had him build a gazebo which he didn't need but she sure as hell wanted in the shade of the honeylocust by the back porch. There'd been a vegetable garden over there for a few years, while Karen battled with the notion that she had the thumb of death to all vegetation she tried to nurture.
His father was buried here.
His wife was buried here.
He'd sat on the porch with John and Rufus and Gary and Mitchell and Glen and a host of other faces, dead and gone now, pouring over obscure lore and discussing the best ways to deal with all the crap cropping up all over the Midwest.
He'd told Karen he never wanted children here, three days before the blackest, bleakest day of his life. He'd never been able to fix it, and had just lived with the ghosts of Karen and the children that never were drifting through the halls.
Less than ten years later, Sam and Dean had stayed summers, playing hide-and-seek in the piles of salvage, digging through the junk to unearth treasures that were trash to anyone else's eyes. He'd taught Dean to fix cars here. He'd patched up Sam's skinned knees. Marked their growth between the times he saw them on the wall beside the mantel, letting the dashes of pencil lead fade with time but never completely disappearing.
All that was gone now. His library, the panic room, the stores of weapons, the photos of Karen, the boys, John, all his ashes-and-dust hunter buddies. His booze, his damned-hard-to-come-by spell components. The phones and the other assorted paraphernalia that made the lifestyle easier to bear.
The memories.
He swigged back on his flask, the sole bit of alcohol to escape the total destruction, and stared at the wreckage of his home. Out beyond the hill of timber and stone and tile, the angels were breaking up from whatever discussion they'd been clustered into, two of 'em flickering out in the space between one blink and the next. The last came walking his way and, by his height and the way he carried himself, he knew it wasn't Gabriel or Castiel.
Rage screamed through him, bright and sudden and sharp. He didn't want to deal with Balthazar, or Jegudiel, or whatever the hell it was he called himself. Not now. Not ever. Bobby's hand went up to scratch viciously at the mark he'd had branded into his skin.
Balthazar might have sensed his mood, because he halted a good, safe distance away. Just out of range of Bobby's throwing arm. Bobby snorted to himself. He might as well have come closer; this was the last of his moonshine and, tempting as it was, he wasn't inclined to chuck it at Balthazar's head until he'd finished it.
"Evening, Robert," the archangel said, and Bobby wanted to strangle him for how cheerful he sounded.
"Fuck off," he snarled and took another belt from the flask.
"Is that any way to talk to your guardian angel?"
Bobby was off the hood of the truck before he realized he'd moved, advancing across the ground between them, hands balled up in fists so tight he knew they'd be pins and needles for hours when he relaxed them. "Nobody asked you to do anything of the sort. Now get this goddamn mark off me, flap away, and leave me alone."
His eyesight had been going down the toilet for the last few years, and Balthazar's face was in shadow, but he thought he saw consternation pass across it. "It was the only way," he said. "Or would you rather I had left you to be crushed to death under your own roof?"
"Maybe you shoulda! Maybe it was my time to go. My way to go. Maybe I didn't ask you to do a damned thing."
Balthazar's forehead creased. "Robert—"
"Don't. Just…" Bobby sagged as the anger left him as suddenly as it had blazed up, and he rubbed at his face as he returned to the hood of his truck. "Just go away and leave me to my drinking."
"Now why would I do that?" Balthazar had the balls to hop up beside him, perching like a cat. The metal didn't even groan under the added weight. "When I can tell you that, first off, I can't just undo it. It doesn't work that way. But—" He hastily raised his hands in appeasement as Bobby shot him a look that would have killed him to a smear of feathers and ash if it could have. "—this is the extent it goes to. You're not really my type."
Bobby said nothing, just scowled as he looked away again and drank some more.
"I'm not besotted with the idea of tying myself to a man with a hatred for his own liver," Balthazar continued, "nor am I normally the type to do this sort of thing. I even tried to get out of prophet duty every time it was my turn. The only good things to have come from humanity, as far as I'm concerned, are disco, whiskey, strippers and mind-altering substances. The rest can hang."
"All the more reason for you to fuck off," Bobby muttered.
"But I'm in this now," Balthazar breezed on, as if Bobby had never interrupted him, "to the hilt, with my brothers. And the very last thing I want to deal with during family visits is the Winchesters sulking and carrying on like widows in the wake of your untimely demise. So really, me slapping a hand on your shoulder was all for my benefit. You just happened to get something out of it as well. Your life. For which, by the way, you're welcome. I mean, I wasn't expecting a tickertape parade of gratitude, but a thank-you wouldn't have gone amiss."
Bobby turned to stare at him in disbelief. He'd heard some convoluted justifications in his time, hell, he'd told some, but that one really took the cake. "Boy, do you smell the shit you're shoveling?"
Balthazar grinned and examined his nails. "It's a talent," he said. "Now, buck up, Robert. With a little bit of luck and some judicial applications of archangelic might, your house will be standing again in a week or so. Besides, if you keep swigging back the hooch like you're doing, your liver won't let you live to see Raphael get served his own head on a plate."
Bobby paused for a long moment, flask halfway back to his lips. Then, he screwed the cap closed, tucked it back into his pocket and turned completely to face his goddamned guardian angel. "I'm listening."
"It's war now, Singer. Full on, in-the-trenches war. So this is where you make your decision. Are you in, or are you out?"
Bobby didn't even need to think about it. Between the dicking around with Sam and Dean, and the attack on his own property and, hell, even for Karen. Balthazar shouldn't have even needed to ask. "Hell yes I'm in," he said.
Balthazar sat back, pleased. Then, thoughtful. "Robert," he said slowly, wiggling his fingers, "how attached are you to your ribs? By that I mean, do you like them as they are, or are you inclined to some… skeletal enhancement?"
=0=
Sam used to do his best work in libraries.
When he was smaller, and Dad was out on the hunt, he'd whine and cajole Dean into taking him to the library where he'd sit for hours, reading page after page, story after story, losing himself in worlds full of dragons and aliens and spaceships and superheroes. Even when his guilty pleasure reading had to be justified (Dracula, Sammy? It's research, Dad) he spun lies gladly, to keep immersed in his escape from the crap of his monster-hunting life.
Even when he'd left the family business and gone off to college, he reveled in Stanford's library, breathing in the scent of old ink and well-worn paper. He left with stacks and stacks, the official limit, every time he checked out books. Jess had laughed at him, gently and without malice, for how much and how broadly he read.
Even after Jess died and he rejoined Dean on the search for his father, Sam took comfort in libraries, in their hidden troves of lore. The microfiche files, where he could unearth demonic signs and portents and weird deaths recorded in newspapers. History, geography, language, culture, folklore. Everything was at his fingertips.
Knowledge was power, and Sam was a natural at gathering it.
Today, he took no comfort in the rows of fiction and reference. Today, he flipped through the pages listlessly, surrounded by piles of tomes on biblical history, angel folklore and histories of the ancient Middle East, but the words refused to make sense to him.
He wanted to pace, he wanted to plunge his hands into his hair and pull it out by the roots. He wanted to load up on angel mace and go hunting for an archangel. He wanted to walk out the door and rage at the sky, where Raphael sat safely in Heaven, smug and condescending. He wanted to steal the keys to the Impala and begin the hunt for Ruby, another name to add to his list, right behind Lilith and Azazel. He wanted to be anywhere but here.
But here was where he was needed, so here he would sit, fuming and useless, staring sightlessly at texts that were no doubt helpful if only he could concentrate on them.
Sam used to do his best work in libraries, but the piles of books looked like the stacks of wrecked cars in the junkyard around the ruins of the only home Sam had ever known.
He sighed. He wasn't getting any work done here right now. There was too much silence in the room, too much noise in his head. His concentration was shot to hell. He absently rubbed his left wrist with his right hand, wishing that there was someone that could make the clamour in his mind shut up for just a little bit. Where the hell was Gabriel?
"Ask and ye shall receive." Hands settled across his shoulders and, though Sam should have jumped and tensed and prepared to fight, he relaxed into them instead.
"Think of the devil," Sam drawled, and let his head tip back.
"Please don't ever say that again." Gabriel's tone was pained and, as Sam's brain caught up to his mouth, he winced. Right. The devil was Big Brother.
"Sorry," he said.
"Over it." Gabriel's chin came to rest on beside the hand on his shoulder, eyes cast at the book open on the table, and he snorted. "Reading St. Catherine of Alexandria? What a dry old bat she was. Always on about Dad this and Dad that. Couldn't get her to unbunch her panties even a little and, believe you me, I tried."
Sam smirked, bemused. "You knew St. Catherine."
Gabriel slid around him to sit on the edge of the table. "I'm old, Sam. I knew a lot of people. Saints, sinners, gods, demons, monsters, men. Some more fun than others." A pause. "How are you doing, kiddo?"
Sam blew out a breath. "Better than if someone died," he admitted, "but overall? Not good."
Gabriel nodded. "Figured as much. Anything I can do?"
"You're doing it."
There it was again, that soft light of vulnerability that always floored Sam to see. It was only there for a moment, before Gabriel's patented smirk slid back into place. "Good thing I've got an industrial-strenth sweet tooth, Sammy, or you'd rot 'em all out of my head."
Sam shrugged with a smile. "Dean keeps telling me I'm the touchy-feely one," he said. "It's gotta be good for something, right?"
Sam must have blinked and missed it, because Gabriel was suddenly there, in his personal space, golden eyes scanning his face intently. "How touchy-feely are we talking about?" he asked, and there was something in his tone that had Sam swallowing convulsively against a bone-dry mouth.
"Oh," he said, breath catching, "just touchy-feely enough." And nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand pressed lightly against his chest.
"Gotta keep you safe," Gabriel murmured from a breath away.
"Okay," Sam said, heart hammering in his throat.
"It's going to hurt," Gabriel said seriously. "A lot."
"I can take it."
"I can help a little."
Sam squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself. He had no idea what Gabriel was going to do, but he trusted him. "Just do it."
His eyes flew open when Gabriel's free hand slid to cradle his head and Gabriel's mouth slanted over his. Sam stiffened in shock, and Gabriel's lips curved against his. "Relax." The word was more a hum, a vibration, than a vocalization.
And Gabriel was kissing him again, lips warm and soft, smelling of peppermint and chocolate. Sam's eyes fluttered closed and let Gabriel's tongue slip into his mouth. It was nothing like what he would have thought. It was soft and sweet, almost tentative. Wondrous. Awed.
He had only a single heartbeat to get used to it before Gabriel's fingers clamped down on the back of his head and Gabriel was really kissing him.
Higher thought shut down under the assault. Gabriel kissed him like he was air and water, necessary for survival. He moaned, low in his throat, and Gabriel's hand on his chest shifted, caught tight between their bodies.
Discomfort sparked as Gabriel shoved hard, and Sam had one crazy minute where it felt almost like Gabriel's fingers were heating up, and then the agony washed everything else away in a sheet of red and white.
Sam scrabbled for purchase, clinging to Gabriel's shoulders with white-knuckled fingers, hanging between lust and pain, pleasure and torture, for what seemed an eternity before it was over, and Sam was left gasping into Gabriel's mouth, thoughts overflowing in confusion and fear and desire and hunger for more.
Gabriel set him back down in his chair with gentle hands, and Sam immediately doubled over, clutching his chest. A lingering ache pulsed, stealing his breath for a second before abating again. His jeans were uncomfortably tight, but he wasn't thinking about that right now. He wasn't.
"Enochian sigils, carved on your ribs," Gabriel said without prompting, and his voice shook just a little. By the time Sam glanced up, whatever expression Gabriel had been wearing was gone, but his eyes were a little wild and his hair mussed like Sam had been running his fingers through it. Oh God, he had been. "You're invisible to angels now. Except me. Because I'm awesome."
"Neat," Sam said, prodding gingerly at his chest. The ache had faded to near non-existence.
Gabriel sauntered towards the door, swinging around halfway there like he'd forgotten to mention something. "Oh," he said, with a snap of his fingers. "Right. Before I forget. We're declaring war on Heaven. Wanna come along?"
=0=
There was a Dr. Sexy marathon on, but Dean couldn't concentrate on it. He sat on the couch, staring blankly at the flickering screen, a now-warm beer tucked between his thighs and too many black thoughts in his head.
This hadn't happened the first time around. He'd been prepared for Bobby's paralysis, for Crowley to put in his slimy, homoerotic appearance at some point. For Meg and Ruby and the whole squadron of feathery dickwads to start screwing around with events. Since the buruburu and the ghost sickness, he'd been scribbling up the back pages of Dad's journal, recording insights and snippets of all the crap Gabriel had shoved into his head in the mindfuck of a future Zachariah had sent him to.
He hadn't been expecting a direct attack on them but, in hindsight, he should have been.
He stood up, pacing the confines of the motel room like a caged animal. He should have known that, once Team Free Will stopped playing by the rulebook, the other side would do the same. He'd met Raphael a couple of times, knew what a cold, emotionless bastard the arch-douche was. Knew what he was capable of. Why hadn't he planned for something like this?
He stopped abruptly by the table, where he'd left the battered old journal, flipping pages furiously. But it didn't matter whose handwriting it was: Dad's, his or even Sam's. There was nothing there that would help with this, that could fix any of this. All of his foreknowledge, all of the ideas and half-sketched plans he'd been forming, completely useless.
Enraged, he snatched the book up and chucked it as hard as he could across the room. It dented the wall beside the door, narrowly missing Castiel's head. To his credit, the angel didn't even blink, merely looked at the book as it thudded to the floor, before bending to pick it up.
"Cas, man… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"It's fine, Dean." Dean didn't know how Castiel did it, but he could deliver worldbreaking news in that gravelly voice of his, and Dean always felt just a little better. The trenchcoat flared slightly as Castiel walked forward, holding his Dad's journal like he was cradling the Holy Grail. "I should know by now that surprising either of you rarely leads to positive reactions."
Dean didn't know how to take that. It sounded like an insult, but Castiel wasn't one for backhandedness. If he thought you were being a dick, he said it straight out. He blew out a breath, scrubbed at his hairline with his fingernails, and finally asked, "How's Bobby?"
"Better, I think." Castiel carefully placed the journal back on the table, resting his fingertips atop it. "Balthazar was speaking to him as I departed. He is… upset still, but I believe he is being made aware of an alternate outlet for his anger as we speak."
Dean arched an eyebrow. Cas obviously didn't know Bobby very well if he thought he'd ever take an 'alternate outlet for his anger'. "Oh?"
Castiel nodded. "He put his flask back in his pocket. I assumed that was a good sign."
"Alright," Dean said slowly. "And this… outlet? What's that."
Castiel regarded him, steady as a rock. "War."
Dean's eyebrow wasn't going anywhere but up. "War. Like, angel-on-angel war? Because I thought we were trying to avoid that."
"We were, but we no longer can. Raphael has dealt insult and injury, and it cannot go unanswered. Events are unfolding rapidly now, Dean. Seals are breaking. A more direct response is required and we are preparing to give it."
"War on Heaven."
"War on Raphael," corrected Castiel, "and whatever forces of Heaven choose to follow him."
A few weeks back, Castiel had been adamant about following Heaven's directions. That only Heaven had the answers, the plan. Now, here he was, calmly talking about going to war with his own kind as if he were discussing the weather. Dean shook his head. "You do that, and you're signing a death warrant, Cas. I'm pretty sure rebelling is something they kick you out of the angel club for. You're cut off right now from whatever power lines you're supposed to tap into. You sure you want to risk Falling completely?"
A tiny smile tugged at Castiel's mouth. "Gabriel told me there is a difference between rebelling against Heaven and rebelling against the Father."
The other eyebrow joined the crawl to the ceiling. Dammit, he'd promised Cas he wouldn't make any more snide remarks about the pipsqueak, but sometimes a man had to break his promises. "Gabriel, the poster child for paganism, gave you advice on what makes rebellion a rebellion. Cas, man, think this through."
"I have. Dean, whatever Raphael has planned, it is not God's will. It is his will done in God's name, and that is blasphemy. For no other reason, he must be called to answer for his heresy. But there are other reasons. Lucifer cannot be allowed to walk the Earth. Lilith must be stopped before the final Seal breaks. Gabriel is right; if the Father were disappointed in me, my Grace would dwindle with no chance of replenishment until I finally ceased to be. Yet here I stand, still His angel. I'm asking you, Dean, to stand with me."
Well, hell. What the hell was he supposed to say to that? Dean sighed, squeezed the bridge of his nose to ward off the headache that was no doubt coming. He was going to name it Gabriel when it showed up. "Of course I'm with you, Cas. You don't even have to ask."
Castiel stood, arms loose at his side, smiling fully in a way that warmed Dean's insides. "There is something I have to do," he said, "to protect you from the Host."
Aww, crap. "Will it hurt?"
The smile was gone, replaced with sympathy. "Yes. I'm sorry."
Dean braced himself, thinking of a cocoon of black, soft feathers. "I can take it," he said.