Chapter 11 Working for the Man
Lebanon, Kansas
Kevin stared down at the pages in front of him. They were covered in symbols, writing, he hoped, although he couldn't read it, couldn't even recognise it. He glanced at the tablet beside him, his forehead wrinkling up in an unconscious frown.
Up till the previous evening, the message from the stone had come through in clear if convoluted waves of meaning. The demon tablet, and before that, the leviathan tablet, had flowed in the same way, filling his mind with archaic images and labyrinthine mazes of understanding that translated would have taken more room than the Library of Congress several times over. But it had been clear and he'd been able to slowly pick through that knowledge for the answers he'd been seeking.
Until last night.
He hadn't sensed a difference in the flow of the Word until it had let go of him, and he'd slumped forward over the desk, his hand slipping from the waxy surface of the rock and his head hitting the rustling piles of notes in front of him, and his eyes had slowly focussed on the chicken scratchings that he'd written down in the trance.
Worse than chicken scratchings, he thought now, looking at them. Indecipherable poop and he had no idea how or why it'd happened. He lifted the top page from the pile and got up, carrying it to the flatbed scanner Sam'd brought in a week ago and hooked up to the laptop that Charlie had set up for him.
As the images loaded, he opened a search engine on the laptop and transferred one section. The engine churned through nodes and networks, across the country and then across the world, looking for a match. After a minute with no results, he got up and left it running, heading for the door.
Dean walked along the line of shelving at the rear of the huge garage, checking off the items that were still neatly oiled and stacked along them. Mufflers and rubber hose, fine steel tubing and thicker round pipe, filters and distributors and carburettor spares, still in their boxes, there were spares for every vehicle, four or two-wheeled, in the garage and a lot more, presumably for the cars of the members who hadn't left their rides here when the place had been shut down.
He came to the end of the garage and turned to follow the wall, this section not lined, but rough cut from the bedrock into which the foundations had been inset and keyed. Work benches held vices, an old-fashioned screw-down drill press, a slow grinder, pipe bender and sheet metal folding press. Unlike the workshops in the upper levels, all the tools here were commercial sized, for working on large machinery, and beside the benches, shelving and drawer units held the finest German and American steel tools, socket and spanner sets in every size and in both metric and Imperial. Old wooden drawer and cabinets contained screwdrivers, hammers, wire brushes, drill sets, grinding discs and in the corner, a massive gas welder, its hoses and attachments precisely coiled beside it. He couldn't help the slight grin at the sight of it.
Pivoting on one foot, he turned back to the centre aisle and looked at her, sitting in gleaming, immaculate perfection in the middle of the garage. He could've backed her into one of the empty slots, but aside from the considerations of leaving at speed, he thought it was more appropriate that she wasn't treated like the others, just one of many. She'd saved his ass too many times.
Having practically rebuilt her twice now, he knew her more intimately than any person in his life. Certainly she was more understandable and predictable than anyone else. All he needed to do was follow a certain number of rules and she would start and go and do her best for him and if she ever let him down, it was because of something he'd done, not from her choice.
On the shelving closest to her new parking spot, he'd stacked and sorted parts that the firm had sourced for him, from wreckers and enthusiasts and companies across the country, and he looked at them with a deep satisfaction. There wasn't anything else he needed to keep her young for another twenty years. Above the work area, two chain hoists hung in the shadows of the high ceiling, and cleverly recessed into the floor under his feet, a monster hydraulic lift was marked out clearly, with a capacity of eight tons, more than enough to give him whatever access he needed to the underside of any one of the cars the garage held. It was, he thought, very close to happiness, his ideal car workshop.
"Dean?"
"Down here," he called back, looking past the car to the stairs that led to the elevator. "At the back."
"Right," Sam climbed the stairs and walked toward him, glancing at the car as he passed it. "You washed it again?"
Ducking his head, Dean allowed a half-shrug as a response. His shoulder still ached a little but the only way through that was exercise. "Wax on, wax off," he quipped. "What's up?"
"Kevin." Sam looked at him. "And he seems agitated about something, sent me down to look for you."
"When is he is not agitated about something?" Dean asked, wondering if he needed to go and get some more of the little blue pills that smoothed out all the wrinkles in the kid's psyche.
"More agitated than usual," Sam amended. "How's the shoulder?"
"Full movement." Dean lengthened his stride, letting his fingertips trail over the car unconsciously as he passed her. "Can't ask for more than that."
"How'd you sleep last night?"
The question wasn't unexpected. Some variation of it appeared every morning, his brother's unsubtle approach to breaking through the walls he perceived between them – hammer at it until it crumbles. He should've known it was the least likely of all possible ways to get an answer, Dean thought, his mouth twisting up in a derisive smile.
"Good, no dreams," he answered blandly, glancing back over his shoulder as they walked down the stairs. "You?"
"Got woken up sometime around three," Sam shot back, his lips thinning in frustration. "Someone was banging around in the kitchen."
Dean looked at him in surprise. "You heard that?"
"What were you doing?"
"Looking for that little pot that I was – never mind," he said, scowling as he realised he'd been about to tell his brother the whole thing. "I knocked some crap over and it got out of hand for a couple of minutes."
"Sounded like it."
"Sorry."
"What did you want a pot for at three in the morning?" Sam persisted, pulling the gate shut as they squeezed into the small elevator. Dean shrugged.
"I felt like having something hot."
Sam looked at him, his breath escaping in a long sigh. "There're some things in the apothecary. Recipes. I could make them up, if you're in pain, or if you're having trouble sleeping."
Shaking his head, Dean let his knees sag a little as he saw the light come on for the first floor. "No need."
"Dean –"
The door opened and Dean pulled opened the gate with a rattling and bang, stepping into the narrow hallway that led around to the situation room. He heard his brother's soft mutter as he reached the round room.
"This isn't over."
It is for now, he thought, catching sight of Kevin sitting slumped over the first table in the library and hurrying toward him.
"What's the story?"
Kevin looked up at him, his face bleak and Dean slowed abruptly.
"There's a problem."
"With the tablet?" he asked, dropping into the chair opposite the prophet. "What kind of problem."
Kevin's gaze flicked to Sam. "For some reason, I reached a section where the translation isn't coming through in the usual way."
"What's the usual way?" Sam asked, leaning against the end of the table.
"More or less in a form I can understand and transcribe into English," Kevin said, pushing a pile of notes toward them both.
"How is it coming through?" Dean asked warily, picking up the sheet closest to him, his brows rising as he looked at it.
"In that," Kevin nodded, waving a hand at the papers.
"What is this?"
"I don't know," Kevin admitted. "It's not unknown, exactly, but only three existing samples of that written language exist in the world and no one has found a key to them yet."
Sam frowned. "An extinct language, like, um, Sumerian or Elamite?"
"Not either of those," Kevin said heavily. "The samples pre-date the Sumerian cuneiform by almost a thousand years, and the writing doesn't relate to either Sumerian or Elamite or Akkadian, all of which have been deciphered by scholars to a reasonable level of translation since the late eighteen hundreds," he continued, reaching out for the laptop and turning it around. "It's been called Huzzimite, and the only theory at the moment is that because the samples are much older than Sumerian, it has to be a kind of a hoax."
"Why?" Dean looked at the complex arrangements of repeating symbols that filled the sheet he held.
"Because the oldest true written language is Sumerian, and that –" He gestured wildly at the pages. "– is significantly more complex and sophisticated than what the Sumerians used, even when their language had progressed from cuneiform to rudimentary phonology."
"And why would you translate the tablet into this?" Sam looked at him and Kevin saw the frustration in his face.
"I didn't do it deliberately!" he said, leaning back in his chair. "I don't have any conscious control over the process, what's written in the tablet comes out mostly in a way I can interpret. This time it didn't."
Dean looked at him thoughtfully, then turned to Sam. "You think this is the bit we're interested in? Metatron's personal add-ins?"
"What else could it be?" Kevin said, looking from him to Sam. "It's completely different to the rest of the tablet, and it's not like the demon tablet, where his notes were interspersed through the Word, this is – it's – it's like a closed section – maybe he thought he'd hide the spell inside the Word, to keep it available and safe, I don't know!"
Pointing to the laptop, he crossed his arms and slouched back in his chair. "I can't read it. I don't know what it says. And according to that, no one else does either."
Sam walked around the end of the table and pulled the laptop closer to both himself and Dean, leaning toward it. On the screen, the three hits that Kevin's search had returned were up and he clicked on the first.
"Dr Byrd discusses the reconstruction of phonological constraints within an Optimal Theoretic framework of Proto-Indo-European languages and the lack of relational comparisons with the so-called pre-Sumerian written language …" Sam trailed off as he skimmed the rest of the page.
"You got that in English?" Dean looked past him to the screen.
"Not really," Sam said, scrolling down. "It's pretty dense all the way through."
"So if the leading, uh, linguists don't know about it, how the hell are we going to find out if it's the spell?"
Staring at the screen, Sam was wondering that himself. He alt-tabbed to the search engine for the order, typing in Huzzimite and a list of key words that might bring up a reference to the language that seemed to have been used in 4000 BC.
Charlie's program searched diligently through all the records the order's computer had in its databanks.
"Okay." Sam looked up. "The library has a section on ancient languages, on the third level. There are a hundred and thirty references to what might be this language, but most of those texts couldn't be copied into the machine since they didn't have access to the optical scanning equipment we do now, so we need to start reading."
His gaze slid sideways to his brother, who stiffened slightly at the suggestion. "Problem?"
"Nope," Dean said, looking back at him squarely. "Just wondering where the nearest bottle of Tylenol is."
Rubbing the back of his neck, Sam nodded. "I'll grab a bottle on the way up."
Rexford, Idaho
Nora Franklin pushed through the glass doors of the Rexford Gas'n'Sip expecting the worst. The day had begun with her alarm clock fritzing out for no apparent reason, Tanya throwing her mushed up breakfast over the floor twice, making her too late for her neighbour to take her to daycare, a succession of red lights that would've tested the patience of a saint, particularly as the last three had no cross-traffic going through at all … all of it was telling her that she should've just called in sick and spent the day in pj's playing with her daughter and not leaving the house. Her gaze flicked from one side of the store to the other, noting with an increasingly pleasant surprise that the coffee pots were full, every counter and machine wiped and sparkling clean, the morning deliveries of milk, bread and papers had been accepted and already unpacked, the crates taken out the back … she hung up her coat and looked down the counter at the guy who'd started last week with her first genuine smile of the day.
"Sorry I'm late, but I can see I was worrying needlessly," she said, walking along the staff side of the counter and glancing at the register, open and ready, the order books and day log set neatly back in their slots under it, and Steve undoing the string on the stack of daily papers. "Everything looks great."
"Well," the human formerly known as the angel, Castiel, said modestly. "Just doing my job."
Nora laughed. "Then you're one in a million. Where've you been all my life?"
He looked at her uncertainly.
Eighteen years of dating, two marriages and divorces, and general dealings with the opposite sex had given Nora a good sense for every type of male in existence, and she smiled a little to herself as she saw his discomfort. There were the predators and the mommy's boys, the would-be Lotharios and at the other end of the scale, the very rare, but still occasionally found, genuinely nice and caring men. She had the strong feeling that Steve was one of those, someone who could be trusted with anything, who would never let you down if you needed help. She'd met two others like him. They weren't a type that stirred any feelings in her, other than a relief that she could trust them completely, but she'd cultivated them carefully and they always came through.
"You're special, Steve," she said to him, walking past just that little bit too close for casual acquaintances.
"I can assure you," he said, his voice a little rough, almost gravelly. "I'm no different from anyone else."
"Yeah," Nora said, turning to look at him over her shoulder. "Yeah, you are."
She could feel his eyes on her, but she had the feeling he wasn't looking at her ass as she headed to the back to get her uniform. Genuinely nice guys kept their eyeline above the waist from the back and above the chest from the front and no matter what they wanted, they never pushed over the invisible boundaries for it.
Cas sighed as he watched her walk back to the staff room. He knew he wasn't proficient in judging human emotions, despite those he'd been feeling himself. Absently unpacking the papers and stacking them onto the rack next to him, he remembered Kirsten's gentle care, when she'd pulled him from the river bank and taken him to her home. She had been a simple woman, completely straightforward and without guile and he'd never had to think about what she meant or what she was thinking or feeling, she'd simply told him. Nora, he thought, glancing involuntarily toward the back, was more like Meg, in some ways. The demon had twisted every word that came out of her mouth, but he'd felt the attraction between them, like the slow-burning embers of a fire that could be fanned into flame at any time. He'd been mostly confused by her double-meanings and trick questions, but he'd felt it there nonetheless.
Nora's attention was different, somehow. Sometimes he thought he could feel her interest, at other times, it seemed to be absent completely. He looked down at the paper in his hands, and as the headline slowly registered, his musings on human emotions and the more confusing aspects of social interaction disappeared.
Local Man Presumed Dead.
The report underneath was vague, despite being on the front page. Four people in the area had vanished in the last four weeks, their vehicles and personal belongings had been found at their homes, no known altercations, the police were baffled. The reporter had included the fact that in each case, the home of the presumed victim had been coated in some substance, currently unknown. Cas felt a primitive shiver trickle up his spine. Unexplained disappearances were not uncommon on this small world. They usually had a perfectly prosaic explanation. But sometimes they didn't.
"Steve, could you clean out and refill the Slushy machine?" Nora's voice came from the storeroom, breaking through his concerns.
"Right away," he responded automatically, looking back at the paper. Dean needed to know about this, if he didn't already.
Lebanon, Kansas
Closing the book in front of him, Dean rubbed a hand over his eyes and stretched back in his chair. Forty-five references a bust, he thought, glancing at Kevin and his brother, both bowed over the books they were reading, iconic students hard at their labours.
Metatron had been covering his tracks, he thought, picking up the next book in the stack beside him and glancing at the list Sam had written out about the references to the pre-Sumerian language. The method to throw out every angel from Heaven had to have come from God and according to Cas, at the time of writing, Metatron had been happy as a clam to be sitting at the feet of his Father, scribbling away. So why'd he hidden the spell when he'd transcribed the Word onto the rock? Just another angel that didn't play well with others?
"You find out anything else on that stone before you hit this bit, Kevin?" he asked.
Kevin looked up, his eyes slowly refocussing. "Uh, well, yeah, a lot about the hierarchies in Heaven, who did what … there was a section on the holy oil and why it constrains the angels …"
"What about weapons?" Dean asked. "Like the demon bombs?"
"Aside from the angel swords themselves and the holy oil if it touches the angels while it's burning, I haven't seen anything else yet."
"What?" Sam looked at his brother.
"Metatron added this non-translatable section while he was carving the rock," Dean said, gesturing at the tablet that sat in the middle of the table. "So he must've been thinking about using it, even back then."
"You don't think it's part of the Word?"
"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't," Dean said with a shrug. "I just want to know what beef he could've had with his brothers when they were all supposed to be happy campers?"
"Cas might know?" Sam suggested. "He said that Metatron told him that the tablets were made after the First War, maybe there was still a lot of bad feeling up there?"
"Maybe," Dean allowed, the motivations of the dicks he'd met so far had been damned simple.
A shrill ringing came from his jeans pocket and he pulled out his phone.
"Hello?"
"I may have a – case – for you," Cas' voice came through clearly and Dean's concentration sharpened instantly on it. "Four missing in Rexford, Idaho, presumed dead but no bodies have been released to love ones. And –"
Dean frowned as a number of clacks and clunks sounded in the background.
"– a strange substance was found at the scenes," the angel continued, the noises getting louder.
"Oh, well, hello to you too, Cas," Dean said, getting up from the table and walking across the room, his relief overriding the habitual annoyance at Cas' lack of social skills. "How're you?"
"I … am … busy," Cas said.
Busy? There was a word that took in a lot of ground. Dean shook his head. He could go into the angel's adventures when he got there. "Alright, so how're we going to do this? We meet up at the scene; you want me to pick you up? What?"
At the other end of the line there was rattling noise, closely followed by a hissing.
"What the hell you doing?"
"Um, I've got my hands full over here," Cas said, the hissing noise resolving into something that sounded a lot more like gushing liquid, getting louder under the gravelly voice. "Um …"
More rattling and clicking filled the airwaves and Cas' voice dropped out.
"Cas? Hello?"
"Um … thought you'd want to know about the case," Cas said hurriedly, his voice getting higher as it was accompanied by several more bangs and a crash.
"Hey, you sure everything's–"
The call ended and he lowered the phone, looking at the screen and the number. "Okay."
Turning around, he looked at Sam. "Cas' got a case – maybe – up in Idaho. I'm gonna take a look-see."
"What?"
Here we go, Dean thought, heading for the stairs. "It won't take long, I'm sure I won't miss too many volumes of …" He gestured vaguely at the books on the table. "… whatever those are."
Sam scowled, pushing his chair back as Dean walked past him. "What'd he say?"
"Said four people have disappeared and a strange substance has been found at each last known place they were seen."
"That's it?"
"That's what he had," Dean agreed noncommittally. "Relax, Sam, I'll take a look, I'm sure it's nothing." He frowned. "Nothing along our kind of weird, anyway."
"Did he say anything about where he was? What he'd been doing?"
Glancing over his shoulder at his brother, who was now trailing him along the hall, Dean shook his head. "This is Cas, not exactly the most socially adept of the litter."
"Is he there? At – at – where is this at?"
"Rexford," Dean supplied shortly. "I don't know if he's there or not, he didn't say."
He stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to him. "What's the problem?"
"It's just – this is pretty vital, don't you think?" Sam waved a hand back toward the upper library. "And it sounds like you're taking off on something that might not even be a job."
"I'll check the reports, Sam, but you know, Cas doesn't have a reason to lie about this," he said heavily. "People have disappeared. No reason, everything still in place. That's something we check out – used to check out – on nothing more than a news article."
Sam ducked his head. "How long?"
"Day to get there, a day or two to look around, a day to get back," Dean said with a shrug. "If I sleep. Less if I don't."
He saw instantly that the comment had diverted his little brother from his arguments, Sam's head lifting and his expression hardening.
"I'll sleep, as much as possible," he added quickly, to forestall the lecture he could see building. "There aren't that many references left to check, and they might all pan out to a fat, fucking zero, Sam. I don't know what else we can do to nail this language problem, but Kevin might have to look for something else on the tablet until we can figure it out."
"I'm going to call around the universities," Sam told him.
Dean nodded, catching his brother's look of surprise. "Never know if someone's quietly working on – whatever the fuck it is – in the background. Good idea."
"Maybe I should go with you."
Shaking his head, Dean look past him. "No, you're right about how vital this is. If it's something big, I'll call you, but I'm just gonna take a look."
"Don't take any chances."
"Hey, it's me."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Sam said sourly, turning back down the hall to return to the library.
I-80W, Wyoming
The sun was setting, straight into his eyes as he drove west, and he tipped the visor down, blocking out a little of the reddish light that spilled past the mountains and threw the car's shadow out long behind him.
The angel had sounded alright, he thought. No more than the usual level of peculiarity, anyway. The prefix for Idaho had accompanied the number and he had a feeling that Cas wouldn't've picked up on a job that was outside his immediate perimeter. So he was there, doing something that was keeping him … busy.
He flicked on the headlights as the sky washed through every shade and hue of gold and red, dimming to a palette of purples and pinks and dusky blues, the mountains ahead towering cutouts of indigo and charcoal. Oblivious to the panoramic display, Dean wrestled instead with his thoughts, that great, overwhelming morass of contradictions, hopelessly tangled with emotional reactions he still hadn't gotten clear.
Cas had screwed him over a few times now, and as he'd said to Sam months ago, if it'd been anyone else, he'd've stabbed them in the neck for doing it. Somehow, things had gotten smoothed over, too much going on and not enough time to even consider how that'd happened and he wondered if he had forgiven the angel, or if there just wasn't any choice but to try and forget what had happened, what Cas had done, as he had with Sam time after time.
The memory of looking down at him, slumped in the chair in that Raven's apartment, his blood still leaking from the wounds covering his chest and stomach, but slow, no longer pumped out by a beating heart, came back with a vivid clarity.
He'd felt … devastated to lose his friend, the one who knew what he'd done, but at the same time, as he'd stepped back and looked at Sam, there'd been a faint flush of relief in Cas' death as well. It'd been familiar. He'd felt the same thing when he'd fished the angel's trenchcoat from the reservoir. Because Cas' death meant that he didn't have to face up to all the mistakes, all the betrayals of trust, the lies and the omissions that had been between them, didn't have to try to remember if his memories of taking on too much responsibility had been correct or distorted, didn't have to try to deal with how to get through another relationship that had been battered and broken and try to find the pieces to put it back together.
Rubbing a hand over his face, Dean exhaled. It'd been bad enough knowing he'd have to go through it with Sam, sometime after they got through what was going on now. Having to do the same thing with Cas … he admitted to himself that there'd been a part of him that had been glad he wasn't going to have to.
Then Zeke had shown up and healed him. At a risk to Sam that he hadn't mentioned until much later.
He frowned. Considering the angel's vehemence on the subject of Cas being a danger to them, to him, why had he resurrected Cas and brought him back? It would've been easier to let him die, at least a pretty damned simple solution to the angels who'd been after him. None of it made sense and he was getting the feeling that none of it was going to make sense, not without a helluva more information than Zeke was currently sharing.
Cas was a lightning rod for every disgruntled and pissed angel on the planet. They had good reason to want him dead, he considered. When the angel'd taken on the souls of Purgatory, and the influence of the leviathan that had come with them, he'd laid waste to Heaven, killing thousands of his brothers. Then he'd left them to clean up the mess and try to reorganise themselves without a single leader. And when he'd shown up again, he'd opened the way for Metatron to take his revenge on the whole lot, working his spell and casting them out. Who wouldn't be looking for payback after that?
Dean, I thought I was doing the right thing, Cas'd said. Yeah, you always do, he'd responded, too angry to stay in the same room with him.
No soul. No conscience. No ability to figure out what was right from what seemed right. No answer to that, he thought in frustration. Cas hadn't fucked everything over deliberately. But he'd made the choice not to tell him about it deliberately. Made the choice not to trust him, deliberately.
Was that what rubbed him so raw, he wondered? That neither Sam nor Cas had ever trusted him when the worst things happened and the world's fate hung in the balance? That despite the fact that he could see clearly what they were doing wasn't the right thing, they never believed him, always choosing someone or something else to put their faith in?
Snorting with impatience, he sucked in a breath and shook his head at the questions. It didn't matter. Probably not then, definitely not now. Now, he had a brother who was too close to death for comfort, a world full of angry angels, an archdemon on the loose and no immediate, concrete way of dealing with any of it. He was lying to Sam, lying to Cas, and maybe, just maybe this was his payback, his lesson to be learned that sometimes the way the cards fell meant you couldn't follow the principles you thought you lived by, that sometimes betraying those you loved was just a part and parcel of life.
He'd cut Linda Tran loose to close the gates of Hell, cut Kevin loose to make sure Sam was okay, cut Benny lose to save Sam and Bobby … what the hell did he know about principles anyway?
Ahead, the headlights lit up the interstate and the taillights glowed like red eyes in the darkness in front of him. The tyres thrummed over the seamed concrete. The road was endless and he'd never be free of it, he thought distantly.
Rexford, Idaho
Castiel climbed down from the ladder and looked up at the light. The new bulb glowed steadily and he nodded to himself. Another job done. There was a distinct satisfaction in what he was doing, he mused, picking up the ladder and carrying it carefully back to the storeroom. A predictability to what he did through the days that was building a sense of security and peace. It could be a false sense, that, but it felt better than running aimlessly, away from everything and toward nothing.
Nora was standing by the counter as he came back out, looking around the store thoroughly. It was almost closing and they'd both spent the last hour cleaning and making everything ready for the next day's business.
"You did a terrific job today, Steve," she said, turning to him with a smile.
"Just doing my job," Cas said, feeling a flush of discomfort at the praise. It was a strange thing, these human feelings, he felt both pleased by the compliment but also as if it shouldn't matter as much as it seemed to. It was … disorienting.
"I think you might be the most responsible man I've ever met," she said, head tilting to one side as she looked at him.
"No, I –" He looked away. Responsible wasn't a word he could apply to himself, not any more. "I'm just … trying to do things better than I have. In the past," he finished awkwardly.
"Well, I can't imagine you doing anything too bad, Steve," Nora commented, walking over to him. She ducked her head, hands clasping together as she stopped in front of him.
"Look, I don't want to take advantage of our working relationship, and I don't want to jeopardise it," she added hurriedly, seeing the confusion in his face. "It's just that, with everything, I mean, as a working, single mom, it's hard to find the time to get a date, let alone meet a really great guy, and I – tomorrow's my night off, and I know you're off too … and I was wondering if there's any chance you're … free? Tomorrow night?"
Cas looked at her, several thousand hours of television coming back to him with a rush, conversations playing out on the small screen just like this. Almost just like this.
"Um … yes?" he responded uncertainly. Had it been an invitation? It had sounded like one. Both free. To spend time together. He watched her smile widen, blue eyes lighting up at his answer.
"Yes," he added, a little more firmly, his gaze dropping.
Nora closed the distance between them, her hands resting on his shoulders as she leaned in and kissed his cheek. The sensation, although not unfamiliar, was unexpected. And pleasant.
"You're the best," she said, stepping back and turning away.
Cas frowned. He seemed to have missed something vital. Some confirmation of the invitation, he thought, his cheek tingling where her lips had pressed against it. A plan?
Perhaps she wanted to 'wing it', his friend's terminology coming back to him. See what happened. He wondered what that might entail.
"Steve, can you lock up?" Nora called out from the front and he turned around.
"Yes, of course." He watched her go through the door and pulled it closed behind her. "I'll, um, see you … tomorrow."
His vessel's heart, his heart, was beating a little faster. He moved around the store, shutting off the lights and moving the till to the safe, emptying the trash cans and thinking about what she'd said.
He was responsible, there was no doubt of that. Responsible for mass murder, for the destruction of his family, of his home. Responsible for thinking that he could make amends and making everything worse. For someone who'd tried to do the right thing, to do the best he could, he'd failed more spectacularly than any human he knew of.
Like bolting off with the Angel tablet then losing it, because you didn't trust me. You didn't trust me.
Dean's words echoed in his mind again, and he leaned against the counter, his eyes closing.
Why?
Naomi had been controlling him for so long he hadn't been sure who trust, or what was real. It didn't really change the fact that Dean had never given him a reason to doubt that he could trust him. It didn't explain why, when Metatron had come to him later, he'd gone with him without telling his friends, without asking them for help. Without trusting in them, more than he'd trusted in the scribe who'd never earned his trust.
We were family once. I'd have died for you. I almost did, a few times.
At the time, he'd barely heard the words, barely heard the raw plea under them, or considered the effort that plea had taken from a man who found it almost impossible to ask for anything. He'd ignored it, as he had so many other things.
And he'd made the same mistake, over and over again. He had no soul, no guiding spark to show him the way. But he'd had friends, he thought. Friends who'd been willing to lead him out of the mistakes he'd made, before they'd gotten too big. Even when they had been too big. Friends he'd betrayed and ignored and left for dead.
Considering that he knew Dean had at least two angel swords in the trunk of the black car, it was a miracle the man hadn't killed him outright for what he'd done. He didn't even know how to describe the circumstance that the eldest Winchester was still talking to him. Still trying to keep him safe.
He shut off the lights by the door and opened it, stepping through and locking it carefully behind him. One day at a time, he said to himself, the same as every other day. He would take this new life one day at a time until he finally felt he had atoned.
Lebanon, Kansas
"It's a bust, Kevin," Sam said tiredly, slamming the cover of the last reference file shut. "None of these refer to a key for the language."
"How old is Crowley?"
Sam turned to look at him curiously. "He died in 1693, according to his tombstone," he said. "Made a deal and went straight to Hell. Why?"
"Because when I was translating the demon tablet, Metatron had written some of the footnotes in Enochian and Crowley could read them," Kevin said, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. "How'd he learn Enochian?"
Frowning, Sam tried to remember all the occasions he and his brother'd had dealings with the demon. "He knew a few languages, even before he became the King of Hell," he said, memories of the demon's fluency with spells in Greek and Latin coming back. "I don't know."
"Maybe he's got a leaning that way?"
"Couldn't hurt to ask."
Kevin snorted disbelievingly. "Oh, well, it could … but I don't think we've got any other options."
Sam considered him for a moment. The kid was right. Crowley would smell the opportunity as soon as he walked into the room. It couldn't be helped. They were out of good choices. That left only the only the bad ones.
"Give me the first page," he said, getting up. "You stay here."
Kevin nodded, pulling the sheet from the pile of notes that were covered in the stylised hieroglyphics.
"What if he wants his freedom for this?"
"Then we'll have to figure out another way," Sam said firmly, taking the sheet. "That's not on the table."
Crowley looked at the writing briefly and back to the man in front of him.
"I've been politely asking for reading material for weeks," he said dryly. "And this is what you bring me?"
Sam watched him drop the sheet to the table.
"Pass."
"Can you read it or not?" Sam asked carefully, wondering if his brother's usual response would derail the conversation or make the demon pay closer attention.
"It's by no means my favourite of the ancient tongues, but yes," Crowley allowed, and Sam saw the fractional twitch of the demon's mouth.
"Will you help us read it?"
"Why on earth would I?" Crowley asked him, the twitch developing into a one-sided smile.
"Because if you help us, I might consider giving you something in return," Sam said, staring down at him. "Because I was there, in that church, Crowley. I know how close you were to redemption, I know how much you wanted it."
He watched the demon turn away, eyes rolling. "Didn't seem to really take, did it?"
"If I did an exorcism here, now, would you be forced out of the meat you're wearing?" Sam asked him, eyes narrowing. Crowley flinched, infinitesimally, but he saw it. "You're not all demon anymore."
Crowley's gaze shifted back to him, his expression stony. "Sorry Moose, to the last drop."
Sam got to his feet, and leaned back on the table. "Crowley, the only reason you're still alive is that my brother thought you'd be useful. So far, you've done jack."
The demon's face remained expressionless and Sam straightened up, reaching for the sheet of paper and turning away as he picked it up. "Back to Plan B, I guess," he murmured as he headed for the door.
"Which is?"
Sam stopped, looking down at the paper in his hands. "Give you up to Abaddon."
"You think you can threaten me with that – that hack!?" Crowley rasped from behind him. "She's all fury – no finesse!"
Turning, Sam smiled slightly. "I don't know, Crowley. Last time we had a face-to-face, she had it all planned out, pretty terrifying to tell you the truth. A hell of lot scarier than you've been in years."
"Bring that to me."
He hid his surprise that the simplistic push had been so successful, retracing his steps to the table and handing over the sheet.
"How's it you know ancient languages, by the way?" he asked as Crowley's eyes skimmed down over the page.
The demon looked at him expressionlessly. "There's a lot of free time in Hell."
His hand closed around the sheet and crumpled it into a ball, his chains rattling as he threw it back at Sam.
Sam turned for the door, striding out and closing it behind him, the locks clunking into place with a finality as the light went out. He had the feeling that Crowley would come around, but it would be in his time.
Walking out of the filing room, he turned off the lights and locked that door as well. They had a little room to play with, but not much, he thought. Not enough to leave Crowley in the dark indefinitely.
Rexford, Idaho
Dean pulled the car over behind the police car, glancing around at the usual busyness of a scene being processed. He'd picked up the alert on the scanner twenty miles out of town and had stopped at a fill-up to get changed.
The suit felt tight across his shoulders and the tie was throttling him, very slowly. He got out of the Impala and walked to the sheriff, showing his badge first and shaking hands as the older man nodded at him.
"Four disappearances –" he started, looking at the decrepit house behind the crime tape.
"Four deaths," the sheriff cut him off. "Got the lab results this morning."
"What'd they have in common?"
"For the most part, nothing," the sheriff said, following him under the crime tape and up the weed-infested path. "This one, Joe Green, had the suicide hotline on speed dial. Lost his family a year ago in a car accident and has been living in a bottle since. The gal before him was a shut-in, had enough antidepressants in her medicine cabinet to stock a drugstore. The first vics were a married couple out of Sugar City, they lost a baby, he got religion, she didn't, and they were regulars down at the clinic for therapy."
"So, all basket-cases," Dean said, looking at him.
The sheriff nodded. "Pretty much the headliners for this county."
"But these aren't suicides."
A deputy came up to them as they reached the porch steps. The sheriff took a pair of blue plastic booties from her, turning to hand them to Dean. "You're gonna want to put these on."
Dean took them and sighed inwardly. Local cops loved show and tell. More emphasis on the show than the tell. He pulled the booties over his shoes and cuffs and took the pair of latex gloves the deputy passed him next.
The interior of the cabin stunk. Not the ripe smell of a body decomposing, gases filling up the body and liquids seeping out, but a more universal odour of rotting meat. The walls, from the right of the doorway, around to the middle of the rear, were almost uniformly covered in a greying substance that might have started out reddish, Dean thought, peering closer at the small table next to the door. The stench was worse the closer his nose got to it. In the middle of the room a forensic tech was scraping some of the substance from the edges of a clear patch. Dean frowned as he realised that the clear patch was man-shaped.
"This look like suicide to you, Agent?" the sheriff asked, looking at the spray.
"This isn't just blood."
"No," the sheriff agreed readily. "If the results come back same as the others, and I have no reason to doubt they will, it's pretty much everything. Blood, tissue, bone, hair, cloth particles …" He shook his head. "Nothin' I know of could do this. Blast force is outward –"
"This, uh, shadow, here," Dean said, looking down at the clear floorboards. "You're thinking this is the guy that did it?"
"I don't know how, but yeah," the sheriff said. "If the vic was standing in front of him, the … explosion … would follow the path it has." He gestured slightly toward the tech. "Got a forensics team out from Boise, second scene. They've been stringing and such. Evidence agrees."
Looking around the room, Dean saw that despite the appearance of full coverage, only one side of everything was in fact covered, confirming the direction of the explosion. He shut away the image of whoever had done it, walking out of the house covered with blech from head to foot.
"What about witnesses?"
The sheriff shook his head. "Too isolated here. The shut-in, Caroline Hardy, her neighbour said she happened to be looking out the window at the time, saw a flash, said it was pink but not long-lasting. By the time we got there, all that was left was … this. No one saw anyone entering or leaving."
"I'd like to see the pathology reports," Dean said. It wasn't necessary. Whatever had come in here and blown Joe Green into microscopic particles hadn't left any trace evidence of any kind and he was pretty damned sure that he was looking for yet another pissed angel. Only the MO didn't quite agree. Burned out eyes and liquefied insides were the usual.
"Should be there tomorrow," the sheriff said. "Come around to the office."
"Thanks."
They walked out and dumped the gloves and booties in the trash can left on the porch, and he headed back to the car. There'd been a motel on the outskirts of town, he'd get a room, then go and look for Cas.
An hour later, he parked the car on the opposite side of the road to the Gas'n'Sip and pulled out his phone. Sam answered on the first ring.
"Hey, how's it going?"
"We're almost finished with the references," Sam's voice sounded far off and tinny over the line.
"You tried that professor in Seattle?"
"Yeah, he went on sabbatical. Twelve months in Papua New Guinea, apparently," Sam said with a sigh. "I'm working my way through a dozen other universities, but it's not a popular subject."
"So you're stuck?"
"Not entirely," Sam said slowly. "We took it to Crowley."
The silence on the end of the line was lengthy and Sam stared at the wall as he waited for his brother to come up with a half a dozen reasons why that had been a bad idea.
"And?"
"And he threw it back in my face." He looked at the ceiling. "He's having some thinking time."
"Just be careful, okay? Don't fall for any of his quid pro quo crap."
"Noted." Sam winced as he thought of the demon. "So, what about you? How's Cas' lead panning out?"
"Four vics, all in various stages of life-sucks-syndrome, all almost vaporised from the inside out," Dean said, watching the clerk behind the counter in the store opposite. "I've eliminated all the usual suspects. No hex, EMF, combustion, cultists, psychics or anything the order's got records of, at least not that I can pull up on the computer."
"That sounds like a real case," Sam said, his voice thickening with concern. "Dean, I should be there."
"No, man, it's, uh, not necessary, I got this one covered," Dean said, hoping he sounded confident. "I got some more checking to do, pathology and what the cops have on back order, I'll get back to you later, see if it rings any bells."
"Yeah, alright, but –"
"I'll talk to you later, Sam," Dean said firmly, hitting the end button. Through the plate glass window, he could see the angel, serving customers, the bright blue vest marking him out.
Clerking in a gas station. The thought was uncomfortable.
Read the Bible, Cas had told him in the dark kitchen of Bobby's place. Angels are warriors of God. I'm a soldier.
It wasn't right.
About as right as lying to Sam, the voice in his head piped up rudely. As right as keeping Crowley locked up instead of killing his ass for good. As right as everything his life had turned into, over the last three years. And before.
Yeah, well this was something he could do something about, he argued with himself. He could get the damned angel out of a fucking Gas'n'Sip.
Sarah Morrison-Platchett ran down the steps of the school blindly, lifting her hand to dash away the tears that were turning her vision of the big front lawn into an abstract water-colour, uncertain of where she was going but just needing to get out of the school, off the grounds, away from what'd just happened. She saw the school buses parked across the road and sped up, barely looking to either side as she crossed the street, ignoring the short beep of a car that braked hard to avoid her, wheeling around the nose of the closest bus and sagging against its side.
Six months, she thought, her breath coming raggedly. Six months and then bang, in front of absolutely everyone, it was all over. Two weeks before Homecoming. Her tears rose up again and she bit down on a wail as the memory of the dress hanging in its plastic wrapping in her closet filled her mind, its promise gone with the careless condemnation of the boy she'd thought she'd loved.
She wasn't clear, in her own mind, if it was the break-up or the lack of a date for the dance that finally brought the sobs out, but she didn't want to hold them back any longer, her head throbbing and her heart aching with the pressure of trying to keep it all in long enough to just get away from everyone. Tucking her face against her arm, her tears splashed down onto the kerb, and she didn't hear the footsteps behind her.
"You are in such pain," the man's voice said and Sarah jerked her head up, spinning around to stare at him. Tall but slender, he wore black – black shirt, and pants, relieved only by the discreet gleam of a tiny gold cross in one ear. "Please, let me take it all away."
"What?"
"Don't be afraid," the man said gently, smiling at her. It was a creepy smile, and she backed up a step as he moved closer, wondering if she should scream. "I can give you peace."
Her phone rang, the sound shrill in the strange and thick silence that seemed to press around her. Looking down to pull it out of her bag, she didn't see the man take another step toward her, or lift his hand, her thumb pressing the Call button as she looked up.
"Wait -!" she gasped, trying to flinch away from the touch of his fingers on her forehead.
On the sidewalk, next to the fine spray that covered a third of the bus' side, a thin, reedy voice came from the phone. "Sarah! Sarah, you there? Are you alright?"
Dean stood behind the woman, listening to the angel's patter.
"Thank you, ma'am," Cas was saying. "And – good luck!"
He watched the woman turn away, smiling a little as Cas' eyes widened in surprise. "I'll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols," he told him, grin widening.
"What are you doing here?" Cas said, looking away.
"Gee, it's nice to see you too, Cas." He felt his smile disappear.
"It's, uh –Steve – now," the angel said in a low voice, making a small gesture toward the name tag on his vest. "And, you, uh, surprised me."
"Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual," Dean remarked, watching him look furtively around. "I mean, I know you had to lay low from the angel threat but, uh, wow – this is some cover."
Cas looked around again and moved up the counter, closer to the door. Dean followed him bemusedly.
"My Grace is gone," Cas hissed at him quietly. "What did you expect?"
Frowning, Dean looked at him. "I expected you to remember that you're a warrior of God, I guess."
Cas' face screwed up at the comment. "Not any more, now I'm just – human. Do you have any idea of how hard it was when I fell to Earth? When I heard the lost cries of my brothers? I haven't just lost my power, my connection with Heaven, Dean, I've lost … everything." He straightened a little, meeting the man's eyes. "Now, I'm a sales associate."
"Sales associate," Dean repeated, looking back at him.
"Hey, Steve."
He stepped aside as the delivery man handed the angel an order book on a clipboard.
"Can you sign here?"
Cas picked up a pen and scrawled a signature across the form, handing it back. "Yes, I'm responsible for inventory, sales, customer service, I keep this place – thank you," he asided to the delivery man. "clean and presentable, and when my manager's busy, I even prepare the food."
Dean's brows rose as he took that in. "Wow. So you went from fighting evil on Earth and heavenly battles … to nuking taquitos."
Cas nodded confirmation, missing the sarcasm. "Nachos too. And if you'll excuse me, I need to restock the shelves."
Dean followed him down to the storeroom, shaking his head as the angel came out with a box of jars. "This is not you, you're above this. Come on!"
Putting the case on the counter, Cas looked down at the jars. "No, Dean. I am not," he said decisively. "I failed at being an angel. You know that better than anyone. Everything I ever attempted came out wrong, ruined lives, took lives –" He cut himself off and drew in a deep breath. "I am not an angel now. And here, at least I have a chance of getting things right. Small things, they may be, but they are of importance to some and I cannot – I cannot be overcome by pride, here."
He looked at Dean and back at the jars. "I guess you can't see it, but there's a real dignity to what I do – a – a – human dignity," he continued softly. "I can build on this –"
"Um, Steve?" Nora called, holding a mop in one hand. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but one of the customers had an accident in the men's room."
"I'm on it," Cas said. Dean wondered how much dignity that job was going to give the angel.
"Oh, and tonight, seven at my place work for you?" Nora continued, glancing at Dean, her eyes flicking over him in a rapid and familiar appraisal that left him with a faint reminder of being of interest to the opposite sex.
Cas nodded shyly and Dean watched her gaze shift back to the angel, the smile gear-up to mega-wattage.
"Great!" she said. "You're the best." She turned away, leaving the bucket and mop by the doorway.
He turned back to Cas, seeing a quickly-hidden smile. "That's what this is about!"
"What?"
"The blonde."
"No, Dean, it's not. I – I have a lot to make up for and that's what this is about," Cas said, his gaze going involuntarily to the door Nora had disappeared through. "Nora … is a very nice woman. I'm pretty sure she's not a Raven, intent on killing me, and she's asked me out." He turned away at his friend's amused expression. "Going on dates, that's something humans do, right?"
Dean looked at him carefully. "Yeah," he said, his mouth twisting up to one side as he acknowledged that. "My dates usually end when I run out of singles, but uh, yeah. Yeah, that's something that humans do."
The smile he'd seen her give the angel, full-power and designed to dazzle, and that speculative look she'd bestowed on him formed a questionable juxtaposition in his mind and he opened his mouth to ask Cas about it when his phone rang. Pulling it out, he forgot about the woman when he heard the sheriff's voice on the other end of the line.
"I'll be right there," he said, closing the phone and looking back at Cas. "There's another kill, over at the high school. You coming?"
Cas unpacked the jars from the box to the shelves. "I wouldn't be much use, since I don't have my powers."
"So? I've never had powers," Dean said, frowning at him.
"You are a hunter," Cas said, as if the difference was self-evident.
"You wanted to be a hunter," Dean reminded him.
"And I believe your opinion was that I sucked," Cas said stiffly.
"I said that?" Dean looked away, face scrunching up a little. "I never said that, I might've said there was … uh … room for improvement? Come on."
The angel sighed. For whatever reason, he had the feeling Dean would not take no for an answer. "Alright, my shift's over in five minutes, and my date's not till later –"
"Atta boy, I'll go get the car."
"Not just yet," Cas said exasperatedly, gesturing behind him. "I have to clean the bathroom."
Clean the bathroom, Dean thought, watching him head for the mop and bucket. And there it is, human dignity at its finest. He let out the breath he'd been holding.
He got what Cas was doing. He didn't agree with it, any more than he'd agreed with the angel's attempt at penance-slash-suicide in Purgatory, or his decision to take the Lucifer-echo out of Sam's head before that. Cas' attempts to atone for what he'd done had a bad habit of backfiring on not only him but everyone around him. In the last case, on everyone in Heaven and on Earth, not to put too fine a point on it.
And it wasn't like he could do anything about taking him back to the bunker and keeping an eye on him. At least not until Zeke had vacated the premises. So why stir the poor dude up?
Walking restlessly to the front door, he realised he didn't want to look too hard at that. That it was a topic that had to do with what he'd done, down in Hell. What he'd done in Purgatory. With the memories he'd thought were sound which had turned out to be not at all accurate. There was no one else he could talk about those things. Not that he wanted to talk about them at all. But there wasn't anyone else anyway.
The front of the high school was closed off, crime tape stretching across the road, keeping the rubberneckers from getting too close. Pulling in next to the tape, Dean pulled his tin from the glove box and got out, walking across the street toward the bus and the sheriff, who seemed to be interviewing one of the kids.
The side of the bus away from the school was coated in the same fine spray as the room of the house, not yet decomposing although he had the feeling it wouldn't take long once the sun moved around and hit it. He slowed to look along the sidewalk, and the grassy verge beside it. The cops would've been over with a fine-toothed comb, but it was a reflex to check anyway.
"So you didn't actually talk to her?" The sheriff looked at Dean as he stopped beside them.
"No, she answered. "The line was open, but she didn't say anything and then there was a crashing noise and I thought – I thought I might've heard her scream."
The girl was maybe sixteen, Dean thought as he listened to her hesitant statement. She couldn't seem to stop herself from looking at the bus.
"God, could that really be her?" she said, and he glanced at the sheriff.
"Your friend –"
"Sarah."
"Sarah," Dean amended apologetically. "Was she depressed?"
"Depressed?"
"Any thoughts of suicide?" he clarified, watching her expression.
She flinched back from him a little, her nose wrinkling up in obvious distaste. "Ew, no."
Dean felt the sheriff's gaze shift to him at the comment, the break in the pattern too obvious. What would a teenager have to be feeling about that dying was a solid option anyway? Half his teenaged years had been spent in some kind of pain, one way or the other.
"I mean, she was kind of bummed," she said, shrugging a little. "Her boyfriend just dumped her in front of most of the school."
"Kind of bummed?" Dean pressed, wondering exactly what that meant, these days.
"Yeah," the girl said, her grief disappearing as her temper rose with impatience at his obtuseness. "Like … more bummed than when she got a C on a quiz and … less bummed than when her parents split up. Kind – a – bummed," she finished with a duh! look at him.
He saw the sheriff's mouth tuck in from the corner of his eye and sighed inwardly, looking away. Cas was no longer standing by the bus and he turned, spotting the angel back by the car.
"Excuse me," he said to the sheriff and girl automatically as he turned for the road.
Cas was leaning on the side of the trunk, shoulders hunched around his ears.
"Cas? What's wrong?"
The angel's head lifted slightly and he kept his voice down as he answered, "I've seen this before."
"What? Where?"
"In Heaven," Cas replied, staring at the polished black paint under his hands. "Here, during the First War."
"What? You saying an angel did this?" Dean demanded. He'd known it, he thought. Known it and hadn't known what to do with that knowledge. He did need Cas around, he thought sourly. "It's not the right, uh, MO for an angel kill, Cas – burned and melted is the usual –"
"Not a seraphim, no ordinary angel," Cas cut him off, glancing at him briefly. "Dean, this is bad. This is very bad."
Cas was almost hyperventilating. Dean looked at him and around at the vapid faces of the onlookers and gestured sharply to the car door. "Get in."
