A/N The chapter title isn't meant to be a pun... I... honestly.
Thanks to Guest, tranland, and mudkipz
Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock/Doctor Who/Supernatural/the Avengers/Jekyll, or any associated characters, events, etc.
CHAPTER XI. Fury
"Cas," Dean gasped, finally harnessing control of his lungs, or at least enough so to get the name out. "What—what the hell—where is he? Did you let him—" Lack of breath cut off his intended accusations, and he ended up coughing, squeezing his eyes shut as his lungs and stomach heaved painfully and a retch worked its way into his throat. He still felt nauseated from Hyde's iron punch, but he forced himself to stand up, anyways, legs shaking as he leaned heavily against the cold wall and tried to ignore the sickness pulsing inside of him.
"He is strong," Cas breathed, whisking around swiftly enough that his coat swished in the breeze of his movement. He paced over to Natasha, whose pale face was drenched in scarlet, and moved his fingers to her neck. "Much stronger than I could have anticipated."
"Yeah, but you're an angel," Dean managed to get out. He tried to pretend like he couldn't see Natasha's chilling stillness, or like he wouldn't care about the worst even if it was happening, but it was impossible, and moments later he found himself at Castiel's side, just as eager to check the condition of the assassin as he was to try and get more answers from the angel. "It shouldn't be a problem for you—to smite him, I mean."
"He's fast."
"Dude, can you be just a bit more specific here?"
Cas was silent for a long moment, then moved his hand under Natasha's head, lifting her slowly from the ground and hoisting her limp form over his shoulder. "She's alive," he murmured, switching the subject around entirely, "but not for long. We need to get back to SHIELD, as fast as possible."
"Cas!" Dean snapped, finally managing to force his voice into something more than a ghostly rasp. "Where the hell did Hyde go?"
For the first time, a blue flame scorched through Cas's stoic expression, and his lips pulled back from his teeth as he near-spat the next words, his voice low and grating. "I don't know, Dean! I was too careless, I sliced open the bars and he ran out. I had no way to leave the rest of you behind—he could be anywhere by now."
"Can't you detect him? You've got all your angel mojo, come on, don't suddenly act useless! And you can heal Natasha, too—what are you waiting for? You said yourself she's almost dead!"
"You do not come near understanding the precision of my powers," was the sharp retort. "Hyde's spiritual signature was very chaotic, very dynamic. It's as challenging to target him amongst the billions of lights in this world as it would be for you to choose a copper coin from a gallon of silver ones by taste alone. And, yes, I can heal her. Of course I can."
"Then—then what are you waiting for?" he spluttered, trying to set aside the first issue for now—Hyde's danger certainly wasn't lowered by the injury of their companion, but it was becoming clear enough that Cas had nothing more to say on the subject.
"The rest of them need to see this. They need to understand how powerful this creature is—otherwise, there's a chance of underestimation, which could result in us repeating our failure."
"For Christ's sake, Cas! Just tell them! They don't need—they don't need to see this! She's dying…"
"An explanation won't have nearly as much impact. And impact is exactly what we need right now."
"So you're sacrificing her life for us to have more impact?"
"She is not going to die!"
"You just said yourself that she was!" Dean shouted, his throat aching. His desperation was beginning to trim down his sense of logic, and the thought that he was delaying Cas, or even that every minute they spent here was a bit closer to being caught by the prison guard who would surely be showing up after the destruction of the cell, came nowhere near crossing his mind.
"Which is why I have to leave as soon as possible."
"What if it was me?" Dean blurted out, all too aware of how shallowly Natasha's chest was rising and falling. Cas's eyes widened briefly, his neck and shoulders seeming to stiffen up, but Dean didn't relent, just plowed on, taking ahold of the only advantage he had and twisting it to get as much leverage as possible. "What if I was the one who got almost killed, not just socked in the gut? Would you waste time being a pretty little soldier, or would you fix me up before I died? Tell me the goddamned truth."
The angel was silent for too long, far too long, so that the only noise in the small cell was the layered breathing of its four occupants. Dean was about to burst out again, scream at Cas to forget it and just stop wasting time, just get Natasha to safety, before the angel spoke—each of his words hard, resolved, colder than liquid nitrogen.
"I would do my duty to the greater good."
A shuffle suddenly came from beside Dean, and he tore his eyes all too willingly away from the angel, like the response hadn't caused his stomach to heave and his shoulders to shake, like he didn't feel the purest of bittersweet pains coursing through every vein in his body. He turned to Clint, whose eyes were suddenly wide open rather than half-lidded as he scrambled into a standing position.
"Tasha?" he mumbled, the word barely articulate. He lifted a hand to rub at the back of his skull where it had collided with the wall after Hyde threw him. "What… ugh. Goddammit." He pressed his lips tightly together as if holding back a pained wail, and Dean might have felt a twinge of sympathy if his own agony level wasn't so high that he could barely stand already.
He glanced back in Cas's direction, about to prompt the angel to just go and fucking save Natasha, but his eyes fell only upon empty space—the two of them had already vanished, soundlessly as always. It caused an odd drop in his stomach to see them gone, but it was a sort of twisted relief, at the same time—now he could focus on Clint, on making sure that the two of them lasted until Cas could return and take them away.
"You alright?" he asked of the archer, offering a hand to help him into a steadier position. Clint accepted it wordlessly, wincing.
"Don't know. Doesn't matter. Where did Castiel and Natasha go?"
"He's taking her back to SHIELD—she got beat up pretty bad."
"Shit." He leaned his head against the wall, teeth clenched tight. His eyes gleamed with what were unquestionably tears, but Dean told himself they must be from the physical pain; he'd never seen Clint Barton anywhere near concerned enough to actually approach crying. "How bad?"
"She was alive, but… barely, according to Cas. He can fix her up, though," Dean promised, hoping that the words didn't ring too hollow. "He's got his angel powers and all that."
"Angel powers. Right. What about Hyde?" His tone made it clear that he didn't want to change the subject, but rather was acting as a good little agent, covering all the bases even with a clearly tormenting urge to stay on a single one.
"Gone. That's all Cas said. The son of a bitch let him go… I don't know how. Or why. Maybe he'll explain better later."
The two of them stood in silence for a bit—both breathing heavily, both thinking and worrying about Natasha and both cursing themselves for how pathetic they'd been, for how they'd failed so utterly and completely, nearly gotten one of their friends killed in what was supposed to be an easy retrieval mission.
Hyde. Whoever and whatever he really was, Dean now harbored for him a seething and all-controlling hatred, of the type he hadn't felt since Lucifer had walked the earth. He had known that Tom Jackman was responsible from the start, sensed it somehow. And even if it was a different creature sharing the same body… what did it matter, even? He'd learned long ago to give up feeling sorry for the vessels of demons that had to be put down, and he honestly didn't see how this was any different.
Before he let that train of thought take him down any more dangerous of a track, there was a flutter in the air and Cas appeared again, his face drawn and his eyes dark.
"Where is she?" Clint demanded instantly, his eyes raking down the front of the angel's trench coat, which was ominously stained with dark red blotches of not-yet-dried blood. "Is she alright?"
"She will be fine," Cas promised, and Dean's stomach twisted in two directions at once—it was wonderful that Natasha was alive and had a future ahead of her, of course it was. But if she was fine, then that meant that the shadows cast over the angel's expression were there for a different reason—one that dominated even over the victory of keeping Natasha from death.
"God…" Clint slumped back, his eyes cast up at the ceiling and the muscles in his neck strained tight.
"I healed the worst of her injuries as soon as Fury saw what had become of her," the angel continued, his tone resonant with the monotone of retelling immediate events. "It will take time, however, for her to reach a full physical recovery, and a mental one as well. Though her mind is strong, it is not quite capable of resisting the shock that Hyde's damage inflicted."
"Fine, fine… as long as she's okay. Just… as long as she's okay."
Dean gulped as Cas nodded gently and turned then to him, his head tilting back and his back tensing with uncomfortable formality. "I was told to retrieve you and return immediately. Fury is… not happy with the product of our ventures."
This was clearly the thing that was weighing him down. Rather than being sickened at it, however, Dean only snorted, nothing more dangerous than a flame of frustration licking at him from the inside. "Fury? I don't think any of us give two craps what Fury wants at this point, to be honest, Cas."
"Regardless of whether or not you give two craps, he is the one in the most powerful position of us all—our boss, you could say," Castiel growled back. "And right now, he is incredibly angry."
"Finally broke his cool, huh?" Though still not particularly frightened by the notion, Dean did feel misery beginning to squeeze in his stomach—they had failed, yet again; almost gotten Natasha killed, at that, and now Fury was mad, too. "Whatever. Might as well face it sooner rather than later, right?" He glanced towards Clint, seeking agreement, but the archer's eyes were dark, and it was clear that he couldn't care less about what Fury had to say—the only thing important to him was Natasha, and as long as she was alive, he would manage.
Dean could remember a time like that all too vividly—a time when another person was the most important thing in the world, when nothing mattered as long as they were alive… Sam, of course. For him, it had been Sam.
But now Sam was dead, and nothing did matter.
That was what he told himself as he extended an arm, let Cas take it and closed his eyes and waited for the pressure of teleportation. And if he was lying to himself, there was no one to tell him.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
He didn't reply to the shout that assaulted his ears the moment the Director got them in a closed room. Clint had refused to come, instead dashing to the hospital ward and threatening to shoot the eye out of anyone who tried to stop him, and that had only worsened Fury's mood, so that now he was full-on incensed, his teeth bared and his pupils dilated, bellowing into Dean's face while Castiel stood nearby, his head down, the perfect portrait of shame.
"I asked you a question, Winchester."
"I wasn't really thinking at all, actually!" Dean spat back. "I was more concerned with the fact that one of your agents was about to die to give much planning to the matter! I might have saved her life, alright?"
"You didn't save her life. Your damned angel did, and that's just about the only reason that I'm not giving him what I'm giving you."
"Nice reasoning, too. He's the one who let Hyde get away, not me!" Despite his best attempts to stay cool, anger was rising instead of Dean, too, and each word was bit off individually, fired like a bullet towards the scowling face of the Director. "Him, are you fucking deaf?"
"You'll talk to me with respect, Winchester!" Fury barked. "I am your superior. Valuing Romanoff over Hyde cost us what might be our only chance. Couldn't you have kept your head, just once? You have wasted everything, do you understand? An insane killer is on the loose again, and it doesn't matter that you saved Romanoff, because now more people are going to die, most likely many more. And you might as well have killed them, yourself."
Dean was silent for half a second, everything inside of him fuming until it boiled over. Instead of exploding, though, his anger swept over him in a dark cloud, dragging him into an odd sort of acceptance—sudden coldness seemed to be filling his bones, as though he'd gone over the brink, into a whole new sort of madness. At Hyde, at Cas, and now at Fury—all the way back to Lucifer, and Sam, and everything else that had started him down the path he was stranded on now.
"Fine," he said baldly, blankly. "Fine. I get it. I failed. Punish me however the hell you want to, see if I give a shit. Personally, I'm just glad that Natasha made it out alive. Because, believe it or not, I've done a lot of fighting on my own. I've known how to fire a gun since before I knew how to ride a damned bicycle, and I've taken advantage of that—I was forced to. I don't know anything about what you've been through, alright? But I know what I've been through. And that's one hell of a lot. I lost my mom, and my dad, and my brother. Just about everyone else who was important to me, too. And I did all that fighting for the greater good. I'm done with that. I'll help fight Hyde, of course I will. But until then, I'm done wasting time trying to protect people who I've never so much as seen in my goddamned life. Screw morality. I don't care about them as much as I do about the people who are close to me, and I'm not going to put more value on them. Understand?"
Fury stared at him for what felt like a long, long time after that—not speaking, not moving, just gazing in something that could have been admiration as easily as disgust. Rather than conflicting emotions, there was absolutely nothing on his scarred face—it had gone from blindingly ferocious to utterly blank in a matter of moments, and it stayed like that as the seconds swept by. Dean could feel his own heart pounding inside of his chest—not elevated in terms of speed, but heavy, very heavy, like a fist repeatedly darting out to bruise against the inside of his ribcage.
"Fine," Fury said finally, his tone just as pointedly calm as Dean's had been. "Fine. But you're still my man, Winchester. You're still going to follow the directions I give you to defeat Hyde, because you're a soldier. You agreed to that the instant you made the decision to join the Avengers."
There were another several seconds of silence, during which Dean gazed on in something that was almost amusement, feeling a deep gap in his stomach—something chillingly close to absolute uncaring. He had completely forgotten Cas's presence in the room—or, even if he was still aware of it in some depth that he didn't want to admit to himself, he was telling himself that he didn't care, that there was no reason why the angel should be any more important than the rest of the nothingness.
"Screw the Avengers," he said, and left the room.
