Chapter 11 - Hope
A/N: Thank you to yukio87 and twolittlewords for their reviews!
"So there's a way to fix all of this crap?" Dean asked immediately. "The Holy Trials - they can stick the angels back in Heaven?"
"Yeah, yeah. As far as I can tell. I still have to work out all of the specifics - I just thought you'd want to know that there's a possible light at the end of the tunnel," Kevin provided, tucking his notes under his arm. "I don't know how long it will take me, but I'll try to hurry."
Dean's mind was reeling. They could fix this. This was huge. He hadn't expected a revelation like this so soon, and the pessimist in him didn't really expect it at all. He sagged against the wall, feeling almost relieved. Another set of trials wasn't something he wanted to think about, but the fact that they could do something, that meant more than anything.
He was surprised also by Kevin's demeanor. The prophet seemed to have cooled down significantly since breakfast. He was more like his usual self. Perhaps throwing himself back into deciphering the tablets had distracted him from Crowley's presence in the Men of Letters bunker.
"This is good," Dean said. "But I want the entire thing translated before we start them, this time. I don't want to get to the end and have the surprise 'oh, by the way, you die' part again."
"Okay," Kevin agreed. "I'm going to get back to it."
"You hungry?" Dean inquired. He had to make sure he monitored how often the teen was sleeping and eating. He didn't want Kevin to start having paranoid delusions again. Maintaining the prophet's sanity was crucial.
Kevin shrugged. "I could eat."
"Alright, I'll bring you something," Dean said, and Kevin nodded before disappearing back to his bedroom. Dean looked at Castiel, who seemed somewhat stunned. He was staring into the distance, brow furrowed. Dean waved a hand in front of the ex-angel's face. Cas blinked, looking back at him. "What's up with you?"
"I wonder..." Cas pursed his lips. "I wonder why Metatron chose me. He could have chosen any seraph. He could have just as easily taken Naomi's, or dozens of other angels, for that matter. So why did he choose me?"
"I don't know," he told his friend honestly. "Maybe he's got it out for you. Maybe he's just a dick. Maybe it's 'cause you're kind of legendary upstairs. Could be anything."
Cas nodded dimly. "Yes, I suppose so." Dean frowned. Cas was troubled, definitely. He was sure that he felt guilty over the angels being cast down from Heaven, but he shouldn't blame himself, not for this. They all thought Metatron was one of the good guys. Turns out he was just an embittered asshole.
"It doesn't matter, anyway," Dean said. "If we find Metatron, we'll shove an angel blade up his ass and show him that you don't mess with Team Free Will."
Cas tilted his head in that bird-like way of his. "You haven't called us Team Free Will in a number of years."
"Yeah, well, it's been awhile since we've really been a team, hasn't it?"
Cas went silent, averting his eyes. Dean sighed.
"Listen, Cas, there's been a lot of crap in the past few years, and I'm not saying that I ain't still pissed about it, but the fact is, you're my friend. You... you're family, man. Nothing's gonna change that, and with the way things are going, we've got to stick together."
Cas looked at him with something akin to gratefulness, and the way his shoulders sagged, as if he'd just been relieved of a burden. "Yeah..." Castiel gave him a rare smile. It was strained, but genuine. "Go team."
For the first time in days, Dean laughed.
Sam heard a knock on his door, and he raised his head as much as he could. His head throbbed mercilessly, and he'd already bloodied several tissues with his coughing fits since Dean had deposited him back in his room. He was still feeling the after effects of his most recent attack.
"Come in," he groaned, barely audible.
His door creaked open, and Crowley stepped into his room, hands in the pockets of his trousers, looking over him with something akin to concern. It was still strange to see that emotion on the demon's face. Actually, it was strange to see any emotion when it came to Crowley.
"How're you doing, Moose?"
"Can't complain," he replied, slowly moving himself into a sitting position. Crowley scoffed.
"For someone who lies for a living, you're not particularly good at it." The demon shut the door behind him. "We need to talk."
"I'm not touching demon blood," he said immediately. "Especially not behind Dean's back." Although he hated feeling like this, hated being in pain and being bed-ridden, he wouldn't go back down that path. He couldn't.
"Don't get your boxers in a twist, I'll leave that alone. For now, at least. No, I'm talking about this connection." He gestured between the two of them. "It's deeper than I originally thought."
Sam furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?" He was already puzzled by the fact that his attempt to cure Crowley had bound them together like this. Nothing like this had been documented in the Men of Letters files. Maybe it was because of the demon blood already flowing through Sam's veins thanks to Azazel, or because it was a part of the trials.
"I'm catching stray thoughts from you," Crowley said, crossing his arms and leaning casually against the wall. He eyed Sam, waiting for a reaction.
"Stray thoughts?" Sam repeated. Crowley was inside his head, now? He was feeling more than just emotions from him? "What do you mean, what did I think?"
"Various things. You were afraid that going on the demon blood would cause you to turn your back on Squirrel again. Then complaints about your current condition." Crowley played absent-mindedly with the bottom of his lip. "And so the plot thickens."
"I've been researching blood magic," Sam said. "Discretely. I mean, I don't want Dean or Cas asking questions. It's not that I want to hide this from them, but Dean's got enough on his mind..." He leaned back against his pillows, muffling a cough with his hand. He felt warm blood splatter against his skin. He grimaced. "Anyway, I haven't found anything that's like this. Sometimes rituals can be performed between black witches who already have psychic predispositions to open up a kind of mind bond, but there's never been anything like this, especially between a demon and a human."
"This is the first occurrence, so far as I can tell," Crowley said. "We need to be careful."
"Careful?" Sam echoed.
"We don't know all the repercussions of this. What if one of us dies, hmm?" The demon waved towards him. "You do have a nasty tendency to die on a semi-annual basis. Would I die as well? Or vice versa? This could be very, very bad - not to mention, it's unpredictable. I don't like unpredictable."
"I think the connection would probably be broken if one of us died, at least that's what I can gather from the blood magic books we've got," Sam replied. He realized all too late that he'd just said something he definitely shouldn't have to Crowley. Crowley arched an eyebrow, uncrossing his arms and stepping away from the wall.
"Oh?"
Sam subtly put a hand on Ruby's knife, which was tucked into one of his belt loops. "Err, yeah."
There was a beat of silence before Crowley spoke.
"I'm not going to kill you," Crowley sighed, almost as if he was angry at himself. "I can't."
"Not that I'm ungrateful... but why not?" Sam asked, letting his curiosity get the best of him. He was surprised. Even with Crowley's humanity, he was still the King of Hell. If killing him would end the risk and agony that the trials posed, Sam was almost sure that Crowley would take the opportunity.
"Not completely sure," Crowley evaded, eyes darting away. "I'd blame it on the Moose juice running through my veins."
Sam suspected that it was something deeper than that, but decided not to dig, since Crowley didn't seem to want to continue with discussions of his newly attained humanity. He pursed his lips, waiting for the demon to continue.
"Are you hungry?"
The question caught him off guard. He was hungry, but his stomach was currently doing very unpleasant flips, and he wasn't sure what he would be able to keep down. He shrugged his large shoulders. "I am... I'm not sure what I can manage, though."
"Toast and soup probably wouldn't kill you," Crowley mused. "Hopefully Squirrel picked some up. I'll bring it to you when it's done." With that, the demon turned on his heel and strolled out of the room, leaving Sam blinking in surprise.
Crowley had been at his side consistently since he'd broken out of the dungeon early that morning. He'd wiped the sweat off of his forehead, he'd brought him a trash can, he'd... well, he'd taken care of him, just like Dean would have, and that fact alone threatened to blow his mind and his understanding of Crowley.
"All those motels, and you never watched HBO? Not once? Girls? You're my Marnie, Moose! A-and Hannah, she just wants to be loved. She deserves it. Don't we all? You, me, we deserve to be loved! I DESERVE TO BE LOVED! I just want to be loved..."
He needed to reevaluate Crowley. Who he was as a demon and who he was as a demon with humanity were two different ends of the spectrum, at least from what he'd seen thus far. Crowley was acting like he cared about Sam, and it was hard to believe that someone other than Dean and Cas cared whether he lived or died.
Crowley had emotions, Cas was human, he was bed-ridden. The angels had fallen and were waging war on the demons, with Earth as their battleground. Things were changing, and he didn't know how to keep up, especially with the trials swiftly draining the life out of him.
He thumped his head back against his pillows, sighing heavily. He could only hope that they would be able to find Gabriel so he could get out of this damn bunker and do something.
"Dean," Castiel spoke up, catching the hunter's attention. Dean looked up from his laptop, green eyes meeting his own. Since Castiel didn't know how to properly operate a computer, Dean had printed out recent newspapers from the bigger cities in the United States and asked him to scan through for strange happenings. Dean was researching online, trying to find signs of Gabriel.
While he'd been reading, a thought had occurred to him. He was intent on becoming a hunter, intent on trying to still be useful to Dean and Sam, to not be dead weight. Although he was skilled in hand-to-hand and melee combat, he was not particularly experienced with firearms. He knew how to operate a shotgun, but other than that, he'd never used ranged weapons. He'd never had a reason to, after all. But now, he needed to learn how to shoot properly. It was imperitive.
"Yeah, Cas?"
"I believe that it would be practical for me to learn how to shoot," he told him, standing up from his chair. The two of them had been sitting across from each other at the large table in the foyer. "Would you be willing to teach me?"
Dean seemed surprised for a moment before he nodded. "Shit, yeah. I didn't think of that. You need to learn." He put a hand on the lid of his laptop, shutting it carefully. "Now's as good a time as ever, I guess. Come on."
Dean rose, leading Castiel to a staircase that led to a lower level of the bunker, obscured by a partition near the entrance to the kitchen. Dean thundered down the stairs, and Castiel tailed him down. He'd never seen this part of the bunker. Dean's hand fumbled along the side of the wall before he found a light switch. He flicked it upward with his thumb, illuminating the room that Castiel quickly realized was an indoor firing range.
A steel table was off to the side, with a veritable armory of spare weapons piled on it, with a shelf underneath the table holding boxes of ammunition. Dean made his way over, rifling through the handguns that were gathered there. He would pick up each one separately, run a hand along the barrel, take out the magazine and look it over. He did this five times, eventually shaking his head and placing each one back on the table.
Finally, he picked up the sixth pistol, testing it in his hand. His lip curled in an almost-smile, and he promptly handed the handgun to Castiel. "There you go. Griffon 1911 combat issue. Anything comes within thirty feet of you, you're good. It's lightweight, good for someone who's new to handguns. It reloads easy and it's accurate as all hell, not to mention the recoil isn't bad. Grip's comfortable, too."
Castiel gripped the gun in his hand, raising it in front of him and eyeing down the sight as he had seen Dean do many times. Dean was right, it was lightweight and fit his hands well. "Yes. This will work."
Next, Dean showed him how to load and reload the gun. He instructed him on the different parts of the weapon, explaining their purpose. Castiel learned quickly. Even with his brain power reduced dramatically by his human state, he was still a quick study, something he was incredibly grateful for, as there was much he needed to learn as a human.
It was well into the late evening when Dean finally let Castiel test his accuracy on the range. From behind the barrier, he aimed at the target about fifteen feet away. He fired six rounds. Three missed, but the other three hit the outer circle of the target. The recoil surprised him slightly, but he kept his grip on the weapon tight.
"Not bad for your first time. Next time, though, don't let your arms slack after the first bullet. You gotta keep 'em straight and rigid. It'll help with the recoil, too."
Castiel nodded mutely. For the next several hours, he practiced, putting all of his focus and energy into the single-minded task of hitting the bull's-eye. He began to get somewhat frustrated when he wasn't able to do so, even after several hours. When the digital clock on the wall struck midnight, Dean laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Cas, man, we need to sleep," he said. Castiel jumped slightly from the contact. His ears were ringing from the continuous gunfire. "We can pick this back up tomorrow, okay? You're doing great."
"I've yet to hit the bull's-eye," Castiel pointed out in a disappointed tone. Dean eased the gun out of his hands and placed it back on the steel table.
"It's only your first time. You'll get better." Dean nodded towards the staircase. "You can bunk in my room again, if you want. Or you can give sleeping on your own a shot."
Castiel fiddled nervously with the edge of his tie. He'd slept peacefully next to Dean. He was afraid that if he tried to sleep alone again that he might have nightmares, and just the thought of the ones he had last night made him shudder. "I... would prefer to sleep with you."
Dean winced at his wording, for some reason. "Okay."
The two of them made their way upstairs. They headed to the bathroom, where Dean removed Castiel's new toothbrush from the packaging and handed it to him. Dean took his own, squirted tooth paste along the brush, and instructed Castiel to follow his lead because according to the hunter his breath was supposedly starting to smell like ass. Castiel was still unsure of what exactly ass smelled like.
Castiel carefully replicated Dean's actions, alternating between brushing, spitting, and gargling. When they were finished, his mouth felt fresh and pleasant. Dean told him to smile at the mirror. Castiel did so, and saw that his teeth were bright white. Dean smirked.
"You're learning."
After that, the two of them changed in their separate rooms into pajamas before meeting in Dean's bedroom. Dean set the alarm again, laid down with his head near the top of the bed this time, and promptly tugged the covers over himself. Castiel didn't get under the covers, but laid down on the bed next to Dean, letting his head sink into one of the pillows.
"Night, Cas," Dean murmured, half-asleep already.
Castiel watched him for a moment before closing his eyes, calm washing over him.
"Goodnight, Dean."
