Sam is going to do this.
Sam is going to organize his shit, he's going to offer his blood without bitching, he's going to give updates on the gods and be a perfect little soldier because sacrifices, sacrifices, blah blah blah, in the interests of world peace, blah blah blah.
He'd like to say that he came to that very reasonable and mature conclusion on his own, that he didn't have to get talk[ed to by Benny and Amelia and then Benny and Amelia. That he isn't taking a vampire's advice on anything. He'd also like to be able to say that he doesn't hate both Castiel and his brother.
"Most people at least pretend, when they get new boyfriends," Sam mutters. "Most people would be like don't worry, Sam, you're still important, and then pull away slowly, you know?"
"And I'm cutting you off." Amelia reaches forward and tugs the beer out of his hand. "Christ. Winchesters. There are better ways to deal with—"
"You aren't exactly a sober student, either," Sam says, "so don't go around preaching."
She frowns at him, but doesn't say anything.
There's a brief pause.
"Wait, are Castiel and Dean actually—"
Sam has been thinking about how it's unfortunate that his dad had taught him not to hit girls unless they were possessed and-or vampires and-or sirens and-or Rugarus and-or whatever fucking else, because he's pretty sure he can wrestle the cheap beer away from her, when he manages to process the fragment of a question. "What?"
"Dean and Castiel." Amelia looks at Benny, seeming to sense that she's not going to get a good answer from the younger Winchester. They're alone on the sofa, sitting in a rather uninspired line. Don is at the table, but Sam realizes he must have been listening most of the time because he suddenly appears in one of the chairs. Or maybe he was always there, and Sam thought he was a cushion.
Don would make a better cushion than person.
In the interests of world peace, Sam doesn't say that. He also doesn't say that because he knows it's not true and he knows Don is an upstanding citizen and everything else.
He hates his life.
He hates it all so much.
"They're not what?" Benny seems far too amused for the situation. He's breaking around the edges, it's obvious, but Sam doesn't comment. "I mean, if they're not screwing each other's brains out at this very moment, I'd sure hope they were getting there."
Sam raises a hand, as though he can block the mental images. "Don't." Even though he's seen Dean in more compromising positions than he can count. Dean's socks never seemed to stay on the door handle.
Amelia starts to awkwardly laugh, then stops. "Wait, are you serious?" She looks from face to face.
"Lady," Benny drawls, "do you have eyeballs? I mean did you miss that entire thing?"
Don looks at Amelia.
Amelia looks at Don.
"I told you," she says. "I told you."
"I guess I sort of thought they were really good friends." Don seems interested in the ceiling.
And despite the fact that Sam hates his brother with the passion of a thousand hells, he feels the need to interject here, because he always thought of the Richardsons as being reasonably intelligent people. "That's not a problem, right?"
There's a brief silence. "Why would that be a problem?" Amelia asks.
"Well with you being…" he'd heard Don that day, all that Dean Winchester is straight talk, whatever, and he knows they're not supposed to know he was listening, and he wants Dean to stay, he wants Dean to stay, this cannot be happening to him. "…from Texas."
They both stare at him awhile longer.
There's been a lot of awkward staring.
"You know," Benny says, "this might not be the time for gossip." (Sam is less sure he can get cheap beer away from him without breaking something, but he could totally take Benny, if he was a little steadier right now.) "Never mind, this is fantastic. Take our minds off ev'rything. Dean and Cas have had some weird deep thing going since long a'fore I came into the picture. Kept trying to leave them alone in Purg'tory to fuck it out but—"
"Benny." Sam raises a hand. His hands are strange looking. He isn't sure why, but they seem— elongated. It's so weird, the way his fingers move. "Stop."
Benny stops.
They sit in another stint of awkward silence.
Sam wants to kill everybody in this room.
If it would be enough for Dean to stay.
Fuck.
He should probably talk to his brother, let him know that they've just outed them to Don and Amelia and by the way Sam hates him, and Sam never wants to talk to him again, except Sam really wants to talk to him again tomorrow and the day after and maybe not every day for the rest of his life but at least once a week or so. He wants Dean to have a life somewhere. He wants to have one too, but damn if he's going to— blah, blah, he knows, he knows that this is the only way, Dean's choice, staying with Castiel, blah blah blah blah blah he's tired of it, he's so, so tired. He just wants to get a freaking reward or something. An endgame. A merit badge. Hey dude, you've saved a lot of people, stopped the apocalypse, even, so how about we don't take away your brother.
Yeah, that's going to work.
He should tell Dean that he doesn't actually hate him. After all, Dean had let him jump into the pit, the least Sam can do is let him stay in Heaven with his angel forever, right? And that's so not fair. Sam doesn't want to spend eternity in Heaven with an angel, profound bond or no, but it sure beats—
FirefrieburningLuciferlaughinginhisearLucifer'shan dsonhim, 'lookathim,Michael,canwemakehimdance?'
He feels the strong urge to vomit, then but he does not.
He does see Inanna. She kneels next to a statue— a deer, he realizes after a moment, about two and a half feet tall. When she touches it, drags one finger lightly around the edge, light green leaves sprout. Multiply, waving around the deer's feet, growing up the legs.
Sam shakes his head, tries to snap out of it. "In case anyone cares, Inanna is currently making Artemisia grow on Artemis's grave."
"Why?" Don asks.
"Because Artemis would think it was funny," Claire says. She announces her entrance by knocking the samurai sword off the shelf, although she very neatly dodges it. It isn't enough to save the floor, though. "Right?"
Sam closes his eyes. Sees another flash of leaves and red hair, but he doesn't want to get close enough to listen. "Sure."
"Yeah, well, fuck her." Claire hesitates. "Where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"The grave."
Dean isn't going to have a grave. Dean isn't going to have— he's just going to be gone, like that year in Purgatory. Sam needs— something to burn, something to bury. Maybe he can take his coat, or his shoes. Maybe he can build a monument to the skies— Dean Winchester was here, motherfuckers, Dean Winchester was here and don't you dare forget it, any of you.
He presses his thumbs against his eyelids. It's so light around them, circles, circles in the sky. He wants to be unconscious for a while.
"Sam?"
"Leave it, Claire," Amelia says quietly.
Sam can hear Claire knock something over as she leaves. He can't even take a minute to think about, to realize her pain, not right now. But it's okay, because "I don't blame Claire," Inanna says. "I'm sorry, I'm— I'm so sorry." She rests her forehead against the flank. Words almost too quiet for Sam to hear, and he wills himself closer. "She'll be safe, you know. With the angel. It's going to end soon, and I— she'll be safer with them."
When Sam took Physics 101, his teacher had gone on and on about how diamonds were thick enough that they trapped light, making them sparkle more than anything else. This fixation had given spark to several rumors, and when she came to proctor midterms with a ring and a ridiculously generous grade curve, Sam won fifty bucks. He remembered how she had made a point of standing in the light, her happiness and her ring refracting it all over the room.
It had been hard to look at.
He wonders if Inanna's tears are diamonds. It would be fitting, he thinks, but he isn't sure how. Just knows that the statue— simple, white, looks like it could have cost a hundred dollars at any roadside place— is lit from the bottom up. Knows that the light in its eyes makes it look alive.
But when the goddess stands, it's just a statue again.
"We're gonna kick ass, Art," she says, and Sam doesn't want to see any more of this. Doesn't want to hear any more of this. He's done, he's fucking done, and so he opens his eyes.
What he sees there is the batcave, messied by its constant houseguests, and sympathetic, tearful faces. Their tears are not birds or diamonds. They're mortal, plain and fucking mortal, and that's all they're ever going to be.
He's going to drag Inanna down here with them. He's going to make Odin get a job at the post office and Loki is— fuck, Loki will probably end up as the head of the CIA or something. He's going to unleash an army of sociopaths in suits, but it doesn't fucking matter. They'll be human, and it won't be their problem anymore.
Won't be Sam's problem.
He jams his eyes back shut, tries to block everything out, because he doesn't want his world anymore. What he gets is Hades pouring over a binder with Enlil, crossing things out, highlighting and bickering.
"I'll keep Hell," Hades says, "but I maintain that because of that I should still have dominion over all of Latin America."
"Isn't that the same difference?" Enlil asks.
"That joke was never funny. Especially after I heard it from Crowley about thirty times."
"You're sure Crowley will stay neutral?"
The God of the dead trades his yellow highlighter for a green one. "If by neutral, you mean courting favors from all sides? Yes, I'm sure he'll continue doing that."
"Sam?"
"Hades and Enlil have reached an agreement," he mutters. "Now that I've told you that, can I have my beer back?"
"Nope," Amelia says. "I drank it."
There isn't enough beer in the world to be able to deal with this. He wants to be able to close his eyes without Joshua blasting images into his head, but no such luck, apparently.
He has no luck ever.
It's not.
Fucking.
Fair.
He just wanted a life. Why is that too much to ask for?
He hates all of them, from Dean to his mother for making the deal and then dying before he could come to know her, he hates God for fucking with them so much. He hates that he could put in all that work, could go to Stanford, but there is no freedom, there is no fucking American Dream. He can't pull himself out by the bootstraps because his boots are fucking on fire, and that analogy doesn't make sense, and it's not about the American Dream, except when it is. Inanna is screaming in his head again, and he just wants her to shut up. But she won't. She just flings both hands up in the air.
"What do you want me to do, Enki?"
"Dividing weakens us—"
"No shit! But if we put all our energy on earth, and they attack heaven, or if we put all our energy in heaven, and they—"
"But what if we guess wrong?"
"What if they guess wrong? I'm not stupid, I'm not trusting Ningal—"
"Oh really? Because—"
She snorts. Turns away. Behind her, a city is spread out— Sam isn't sure which one. "I've got the goddess of wisdom telling me one thing, and Grima fucking Wormtongue whispering in my ear. Your Galla demons keep coming back with different things, and we can only assume that Zeus and Enlil don't know what we're going to do because we don't even know. We need heaven and earth, and in the meantime, we don't know how much information Castiel has!"
There's a knock on the door, and the gods' eyes meet. Enki nods, and Inanna shouts that the person can come in.
"Freyja, hey. We were just discussing dividing our assets. Thoughts?"
"Well, I'd count on Zeus, Odin and Enlil having this same argument over there." She shrugs.
"Yeah, they have too many kings. They're going to have a breakdown." Enki shifts a little bit, but doesn't change his otherwise rigid stance. "Really, I don't know how gods have run anything."
"We haven't. We've been snoozing for a couple thousand years. We're fighting for a world we don't fully understand yet and—" Inanna stops, shakes her head. "You're sure there's been no word?"
Enki blinks. His eyes flicker for a moment, rainbow like the Galla. "On who?"
"Castiel."
Freyja comes the rest of the way into the room, sits herself down at the table. Sam wonders how many places like this they have— nondescript rooms, office spaces that don't exist on a map, hotels full of random extras that just wanted a vacation. "What about Castiel?"
"They're spying on us, somehow. He appeared at just the right moment to rescue Claire."
"Maybe she was praying."
"Maybe." Inanna shakes her head. "Still, they're not as distracted as we need them to be. I don't know how long the Mes held them out."
Identical sighs come from the other two. "Despite what the vampire told us," Freyja says hesitantly, "I don't think he is worthy of much concern. Once we take Heaven—"
"Castiel has taken Heaven!" Inanna shouts, losing all facade of calm. "Castiel led and won a civil war, committed fucking genocide against his own kind, he teamed with Crowley, King of Hell, backstabbed him, he's come back from the dead how many times now, and you don't think we should be fuckingconcerned?"
"Inanna!" Enki stands, looks to her and then to Freyja.
"I know." She nods. "Sorry. Lost my temper for a second."
She sits. "It'll be fine," she says. "We'll win, and then with all the power of Heaven, we'll find him and the Winchesters and deal with that loose end."
Enki nods. "Very good, ma'am."
"Go fuck yourself, whore. Freyja, was there a reason you had to come in?"
The goddess hesitates a moment, then, "Isis has been captured."
Inanna stands up again. "Fuck. When?"
"Around eight-thirty," Benny says. "I'll wake you up, or we can set the angel-alarm. We, um. We might want to have a sleep-in, but…"
"Yeah, we should move fast."
They're talking about things Sam doesn't care about— they'll tell him, he assumes, if it's important, so he pulls away.
"Tell Athena I want to see her," Inanna calls at Freyja's retreating form. When the door closes, she turns back to Enki. "I want you to help lead the team in Heaven."
He nods, once.
"And—" she checks the room, then, so quietly that Sam can barely hear, "make sure Ningal doesn't come back. I don't care how you do it, I don't care if we're losing, and I don't care if it has to be in front of everyone, alright?"
Enki raises his hand a few inches off the table, as though he's considering touching her arm, but then reconsiders. "Have you thought this through?"
"I have."
"And Nanna?"
"Please, he's worthless without her."
"Alright." Enki nods, makes for the door. "Should I assume that we'll be discussing tactics with Athena and Thor in the conference room?"
"Make it the library." She turns back towards the window. Crosses her arms. "I might need some handy projectiles."
Demon blood, Naomi blood, it's like a sick little shopping list.
"Makes me wish Ruby was still kicking," Dean mutters. "She was free with her blood. Or Meg."
"We could rescue Meg from Crowley," Cas suggests. "Although that might—"
"How do you know Crowley has Meg?"
"When the reigns passed from Dick—"
"Wait." Don holds up both hands in a 'stop' gesture. "This is Meg from Sca— that tried to kill you in Chicago and then possessed Sam and—"
"Yeah," Sam says. "Same Meg. Long story."
"Enemy of an enemy. Also, she and Cas are pals."
Cas looks decidedly unamused at the pettiness.
"We'll find another demon," Dean says. "Can't be hard to nab some of their—" he stops. Looks at Sam. Realizes. "I think me and Claire should take this one."
A what shoots around the table, ending with Claire herself. They should just get one of those trackers like they had at the presidential debates to measure public opinion—it'd be faster than having to listen to all the yelling and objections. Also, Dean has a headache, and the marble pattern-not-pattern on the table isn't helping.
"Just being practical," he says. "Claire can spot and nab 'em from a distance. Sam, I'm sorry, but you're out of the question, a loner won't go within thirty miles of Cas and we need a loner, and Garth is tracking the cell phones of every hunter, which is information that I don't think we want in demon hands."
Don half stands.
"And Claire could kick the crap out of you," Dean finishes. "Sorry, man."
Claire frowns. "Don't I get a say?"
Dean waits.
"I'm in. Let's go." She starts to stand, but Amelia catches her arm.
"Shouldn't you two take some other car?"
Abandoning his baby brings up painful, Leviathan-esque memories of ponies and a trench coat being moved from trunk to trunk. Dean vetoes that out of hand. And then looks at Cas, waiting, wondering if there would be an objection, but the angel just nods.
"You know how to reach me," he says.
"One demon." Dean adjusts Ruby's knife. Between that and Claire's bow— "Back in an hour."
"You know that visual irony thing that happens on TV all the time?" Claire asks.
"Yeah. Every Whedon thing ever," Dean says. "Why?"
"Well, if I was editing this, I'd jump right from you being cocky to now."
Dean wants to point out that Claire was the one who pointed out the compound as a site of high demonic activity. And if they had just broken in, likeDean wanted, maybe they would be sneaking around inside right now, collecting the required amount of blood. And not tied to chairs. But no, no, they had to stay away and stick to the plan of find-the-loners, killing the element of surprise. Or something. It seemed that demons had invested in panic buttons.
"Did you see where they put our weapons?"
Well, he's not totally useless. "Room next to us."
They're quiet for a moment. Both have spent enough time in trouble that neither is too unnerved— although this would be a freaking sad ending. Not fighting to close Heaven, not dying in Heaven, but getting their throats slit while trying to grab some demon blood.
That Sam used to find so easily.
Yeah.
Lovely.
Claire cranes her neck around to study the lock on her chains. "Can you pick that?"
Dean misses good, old fashioned ropes. "Soon as we get out of here," he says, "I'll learn to pick a lock without looking and without hands." Then he remembers that if all goes according to plan, he won't have time, in a week he won't even be on earth, and, oh, Christ. He's not wild about the world, but he isn't as eager to leave it as he pretends, because Heaven hadn't been so much fun last time it was there (Sam's heaven was abandoning him, his heaven was—) but the last thing he wants is to remind Claire that sometime soon, even more people will be leaving her, so he tries to cover. "So when do you think we should start praying for Cas?"
But that's the wrong thing to say too, because her face goes hard. Dean glances from her to the small cement walls of their room, wondering if Cas could blast through them.
The walls are covered in sigils. He's pretty sure those are the ones to keep occupied vessels out.
So maybe not.
"I don't pray," Claire says. Then, at his look— "I swore off… when my dad came back, for that one night, he didn't say Grace. And I didn't understand why. And then— all the stuff with angels happened, and I believed more than ever. Castiel was in my head, he was me, fighting demons. Fighting Hell. And so I started praying harder than ever, believed more than ever—" she stops. "And then I felt him die. All those times he died, I felt it."
Dean can empathize.
He'd felt it, too.
Although he had the visuals to go along with it.
"Did you know when he came back, too?''
"Yeah." She hesitates. "But they stopped answering. They never brought my dad back. And then I saw him two and a half years ago, on TV, as God— gave the Our Father a whole new connotation, by the way—" (And Dean cracks a smile, trying really hard not to be uncomfortable thinking about thoroughly he'd been fucked by that same body,) "—and killing that priest and stuff. And I realized." The words are spilling out, faster and faster, and Dean wonders how long she's been thinking about this. Holding it in. Wonders what's really going on in Claire Novak's head. "I realized that… people were changing religions some. There are still some Castiel cults out there. And people were changing to find Churches they agreed with. And I'd never considered that before. I know it's common, but I sort of realized all at once— people change churches depending on what they believe. We go to Church so that they'll tell us what we want to hear, and if we don't like it, we go listen to someone else. And I was an angsty fifteen year old girl who felt lied to, because Castiel had just died again, and I decided that I was done praying, done with religion in general because I'd known that there were some things that weren't accurate, you know, that the Church said, but then I realized that it's all just straight-up lies. That if Castiel was God, and if Castiel was dead— there was nobody. And then I saw the faces of the demons that killed Lily's parents. And…"
There's a noise outside the door, and they both look. But it doesn't open, and there's no air offered. So Dean asks a question, because, what the hell.
"So why'd you run off with Artemis?"
"Because I found a god that cared. I needed to believe in something." She's studying her fingernails now, very closely. "And Artemis didn't— she changed her mind sometimes, but she never sugar coated, she never lied."
Huh.
Dean's tempted to ask what she'll do if they win— keep hunting, go back to her mom and her life, wants to say that they'll try and save Lily if they can, but he doesn't, because she's just lost everything and Dean knows how that feels. Knows that empty promises won't make anything better, knows that the future is more terrifying than the past. The present.
That there is nothing beyond the moment.
Also, the pre-death share-all is over, because the door is opening now, for real.
"Oh, excellent, my squirrel trap is working."
Fuck.
Dean had really not bargained on running into Crowley in Kansas City. What the hell is Crowley doing in Kansas City?
"Little bit," he says, straining again at his chains. If he cracks his thumb back, he might be able to get it out, but there's no way he's fighting his way out of here with a broken thumb, especially since their weapons are the next room over—
Yeah, they're boned. He looks at Claire, but she doesn't look back. Her braid is starting to unravel slightly, as though responding to the low humming that entered the room with the demon.
Crowley pulls up another chair and straddles it. "I was hoping for Moose," he says, "but you'll do. I have a few questions for you… numskulls."
Well, that explains the not-dead bit.
"As long as I get to be conscious," says Claire suddenly.
The other two look at her, and then Crowley looks back at Dean. He taps his head, raises his eyebrow in a question. Is she okay in there?
"Yes," says Claire.
"What?"
Dean looks back at her, wondering if there's a Galla demon in the room or something. Or if she's finally cracking, because— she looks at him, exasperated, and there's an almost Cas-like expression on her face that—
Oh.
Vessel can't fly through the walls.
Dean isn't sure if there's anything that can keep out waves-of-celestial-intent, not with all the cracks.
The angel raises Claire's eyebrow, and then turns back to Crowley. Once again, they lose any surprise advantage when the king of Hell gets to his feet, mouth half opening. Dean wonders what all the 'real faces' are that Cas and Crowley can see, how they can recognize each other in any vessel. But Crowley is recovering quickly— still standing, but relaxed. More with the contrapposto… and Dean has been researching gods way too much lately if he's started to think in art history terms. Their statues aren't at all accurate anyway.
"Your other body was more my type," Crowley says. "Although you might be more Dean's, now." He winks, and Dean doesn't like his expression, although that's not news.
Cas must not like it either, because he— she— easily pulls her hands out of the chains. Stands.
Crowley's blade appears in his hand.
"Good thing I never held with all that don't-hit-girls gender stereotyping," he says.
And then he moves forward.
Castiel dives out of the way, her shoulder hitting the ground as she rolls. Gets to her feet behind the demon, and then Dean's chains are falling as well.
"Knife," Cas says, in a voice that isn't Claire's.
And then Dean is running for the door. Room on the left, room on the left, don't be locked— but fortunately for him it's not locked because there is still a man in there writing something down and that's fine Dean can take him out with no weapons easy. He wishes for his makeshift blade from Purgatory, his gun, his anything. And then he doesn't have time because he's got his fist in the demon man's face, and they grapple for a second. But it's easy, easy.
Still got it.
Crowley hates fighting. Dean's managed to work that bit out in their previous encounters. He plays the politics. Gets friends that can do his messy work for him.
Dean figures that those friends will be there shorty.
Make that T-minus-two.
He grabs Ruby's knife in time to stab the one that has just reached him, but it's a few more moments of grappling before he can get Claire's bow and quiver as well. A few more punches, and one gets a good hit to his jaw before he figures out how to get said weapons on his back, and he's fucking Legolas, although the effect is slightly ruined by the fact that he has no idea how to shoot. It doesn't matter, though, because he's back in the other room.
Like he'd thought, Crowley is standing off to the side, watching Cas take on three demons like it's a Battle Royale that he's placed a bet on— a bet so small that he barely cares. And Dean just has time to appreciate a rather fantastic kung-fu move that takes one demon off its feet while its friend gets the smiting-forehead-treatment before they're on him. And he turns.
Tosses an empty vial to Cas, and then it's back in the flow. Ge'd told himself, during his varying R&Rs that he didn't miss this, but maybe— well, as long as he's holding his own, he isn't putting up too much of a fuss. This, he can do. He can punch and stab and swing. He can take an arrow and jam it into an arm, slowing the demon woman down enough that he can get the knife in her throat. He can watch Crowley out of the corner of his eye, wait for the other to make a move. He can take a fist to the head and come up smiling, spitting blood into a set of black eyes, and he is good.
It takes him a few moments to work his way over to Cas. Cas, who's burning out demons as fast as she can get Claire's hand on their foreheads. And Dean is absolutely sick for taking a moment to appreciate that yes, he can still definitely be attracted to women, but he'll continue this crisis later, when he's done slashing and shoving demons (possessed people, people that had lives before, people that had families, but they're probably dead already,) into the angel's welcoming arms.
And then there are nothing but empty meatsuits in between them and Crowley.
And silence, but only for a moment.
"So." Crowley looks down at the vial which, at some point during the fight, Cas has managed to fill with blood. The blood that's all over Claire's jeans and Dean's shoes and not on Crowley's still-perfect suit.
That should not be as annoying as it is.
"Word on the street is that you're looking for the angel tablet." Pause. "At least, that's what I'm told the word on the street is. I'm not a fan of streets myself. Filthy places." He brushes off his shirtfront, as if for emphasis.
They don't say anything. Just watch as the King of Hell moves closer, idly twirling his blade between his fingers .
Cas looks at Dean. Dean nods.
And they move.
Crowley moves faster.
He's locked down by his own wards, but he's still far faster than he should be. Maybe there's benefits to being the king, maybe his literary agent was a ninja in his spare time, because a moment later they're all standing still again. Just shifting places. Red Rover, Red Rover, send Crowley right over.
"Please. Let's not get violent." They're being eyed as though they're a particularly fascinating puzzle. "The rest of my loyal followers will be here shortly, of course," Crowley says. "Perhaps they'll do something about the smell while they're here."
Claire's face is flat, murderous, rigid, Cas, and it looks— slightly wrong. But Dean can't look much different, because Crowley is smiling a little.
"Please invite me to the wedding, squirrel," he says. "I'd be ever so offended if I was left off the guest list."
Cas kneels, presses the second vial to the neck of the demon at her feet.
Dean and Crowley watch, equally confused. Equally slow.
And then in one abrupt movement, she flings it at the sigil on the wall. Deadly accuracy, and it breaks, smearing it with dark blood. And then her hand is on Dean's arm, and they're standing in an office. Dean isn't sure where— it's empty, just a computer and a whiteboard and a framed photo in an 'I love you, Mommy' frame. In half a second, Cas has taken an Expo marker and is drawing a quick line of symbols on the board.
Dean sits down on the desk. Takes a deep breath, does a quick inventory of his injuries. There are no vitals punctured, so he counts it a win. Although the fact that he isn't sure how much longer he can breathe might be a sign of a broken rib, which is a bit less of a win.
"Where are we?"
"An old Roman Enterprises building." Cas turns. "Its demon warning system is still relatively intact, and it had a whiteboard. We'll be safe, for a few minutes."
"Oh."
Cool.
He's pretty sure he's about to collapse.
But then Cas is in front of him. Her hands too small as she pushes up his t-shirt. But then she places one glowing palm against his chest, and he sighs in some relief as a rib pops back into place.
Their eyes meet.
She's not a kid, she's not seventeen. She's Cas, the same Cas as a few hours ago, and Dean is definitely, definitely screwed if he's attracted to her now. Impossibly screwed. But it doesn't matter, because they have one blood down, and so he should be dead in a few days anyway.
Him and Cas both.
"Where's your other body?" he asks, having to look away because their faces are too close and Claire is still in there, dammit. Even if he can't see her.
"Back at the Men of Letters building."
"Is it— he— still going to be—" Dean gestures at his chest. Will you be able to go back?
Cas's hand is so soft as she touches his face, sealing his lip back together with her fingers, closing the cut by his ear. "Sam and Amelia should be able to keep it going, yes."
Dean wonders if they've been alternating CPR shifts for the last half hour. But then again, Jimmy had only been brain-dead, after Van Nuys. Maybe he doesn't need that much help.
"I'm sorry," he says. "Although in all fairness, it wasn't entirely my fault."
A smile flickers around her mouth.
And then, after a brief moment of hesitation, she presses Claire's lips against his forehead. Then another brief pause before she drops down to his lips.
Dean's hands go to her shoulders. "Claire?" he asks, because, morals and shit.
"Asleep." Cas hesitates a second, then presses her hands to his shoulders and jumps. Balancing her knees on the desk as she deepens the kiss. "She just screamed, and I quote, um, 'oh-em-eff-gee block me and then make out already, this sexual tension is ridiculous.'"
Dean has a sense that other things were said, but he doesn't question it because he's too distracted with the warm body pressed up against his, Cas and her Cas-ness, and letting her into his mouth. Letting her explore him with a new tongue, a new set of hormones, and an age of memories.
"We should go back," she says after a moment. Lips barely brushing his ear.
"Yeah."
But she still hesitates a moment before sliding off him.
"I'm, um, going to unblock Claire in about five seconds," she says.
"Oh." Pause. "So I shouldn't tell you what I'm going to do once you're back in your own body?"
He gets a grin and a head-tilt. "Probably not be wise."
"Damn."
Then she's reaching out again and foreheading him to another random field, and then another, and then they're outside the Hagia Sophia, and "I'm pretty sure they're off our tail now, Cas."
And then they're in a desert, and on an island, and he's pretty sure the angel is just trying to make him uncomfortable before they're back in front of the batcave door.
And even though he knows that it's fine, Dean's stomach still squeezes when he sees Jimmy Novak's empty body lying on the hard floor. Benny and Amelia are on either side of him. Benny's hand is on his pulse, and Deans starts to be worried, when he realizes that Amelia has just started chest compressions.
"There you are," Benny says. "Hurry it up, will you? My wrists are cramping up."
Cas just stares at the vacant body. And then in one smooth leap, she's gone over the railing. Lands in an Iron Man pose.
And as she walks, all the Cas seems to melt out of her. Her posture changes, shoulders slump, gait alters just a little.
Claire Novak kneels next to the body of her father.
Dean watches from above as Castiel gives her this moment, this closure. Lets her pick up the hand that used to be Jimmy's and hold it to her face. Whisper something that he will never hear. Lets her sit just for a moment, and look.
Lets her say goodbye.
And then she nods a little, and there's another hum in the room. And then it's Castiel's eyes that open, Castiel's back that curls up as he sits, he sits, and his eyes that hold Dean's for a moment before he turns back to Claire.
She hugs him tightly for a moment or two before slowly leaving the room.
It's at that point that Dean decides it's safe to descend.
He finds Dean in the kitchen, flipping pancakes.
"Having fun?"
"Loads. Want one with a smiley face in it? I know how to do smiley face pancakes, you know."
He's too tired for this. He also knows that Dean hadn't known how to make smiley face pancakes when Sam was growing up, which means that he probably learned for Ben. And he knows that he promised never to mention them again, that failed experiment in normal life, but he couldn't stop hoping— even though he know, logically, that Dean was never going to have been able to move beyond Castiel, even if he knew that Dean was never going to move beyond hunting… his brother had always been good with kids.
And Sam might have had some sort of fantasy about being an uncle, even an adopted one, of watching Dean and—
But that's not going to happen.
Christ.
"I'm not okay with this," he says, because it's always great to go straight to the point. He thinks so, anyway, although his head is hurting and some crucial information might be lost. "I hate this."
Dean turns off the burner. Faces him.
"So do I," he says.
And Sam knows it's true. Can see the sincerity bordering on tears in his brother's eyes. Knows that—
"It's killing me," he says. "That this is the— that this is the choice. But I— I'm not letting those sons of bitches get this earth."
"And you're not leaving Cas." Elephant in the room, might as well give it a pat and ask its name.
Dean looks down. "No," he says quietly. "I'm not leaving Cas."
"Yeah." Sam knows that. Sam had known that as he fought to keep the angel's vessel breathing, as he had had, somewhere in his mind, the thought that if Cas couldn't get back into him, maybe he'd be stuck, maybe he'd die, maybe he wouldn't be able to take Dean into Heaven and away from Sam. "So, how was it seeing Cas as Claire?"
"Cas wasn't Claire. Cas was Cas."
Yeah, smooth diversion, and probably the right answer from Dean. But—
"C'mon, man, it wasn't even a little weird?"
"Course it was a little weird. But it was still Cas."
The spatula is twirling into very interesting patterns. Sam watches it for a moment, mesmerized, before his brother goes back to the stove.
"You didn't come in to ask me about how I felt about Cas switching vessels."
"Nah." Sam looks at the floor. "I just— I don't like this, and I'm angry, and I'm angry at you, and the gods, and everything, and I think I might hate you a little bit."
Dean nods. Nods like he knows, and fuck, probably thinks he deserves it. Thinks he deserves his brother shitting on him for making decisions. Sam left. Sam has left Dean so many times, and still— Christ, he'd probably been expecting even more verbal abuse. Maybe even a few punches.
"But I also know that we don't have any other options." He'd practiced this in his head, but it sounds weird. "I know that— I don't understand what's going on between you and Cas—" and he doesn't want to understand, at all, "—but I know that…" he gestures, hoping that it conveys some sort of meaning. Galla demon he is not. "I don't want… you know I don't really hate you. I know I don't really hate you. I hate—"
"That these are our lives." Dean nods a couple times. Still doesn't meet his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. I— I mean it, Sammy. I'd never— if there was another way, you know I'd take it. Don't think for a second that this isn't killing me, Sammy."
Yeah, he's going to back out of this one, stat. He's already done the thing where he looked at his brother and counted down the months, days, minutes, hours until he'd be gone. Until he'd have to bury him and— but at least then he'd had hope. At least then he'd had Ruby, and last options, and that naive hope that maybe after everything they'd be okay, that they deserved some good karma, that maybe Dean wouldn't go to Hell because he was Dean and maybe he could be above the laws of Hell and crossroads deals.
"Don't let it," he says finally. "Don't let it, Dean. Because this isn't goodbye, alright? I'm— I'm going to live, and then I'm going to find you, and we'll go get beers at the Roadhouse." There shouldn't be this many tears in a smile. "Before he had to go and save your ass, I told Cas that if he hurt you I'd set all the dead people we knew on him. We know a freaking army, man."
The response had been was something to the effect of If I cause harm to Dean, there won't be enough of me for them to find, and Sam had said that he wasn't talking about the physical, and Castiel had said that he knew. All in that cold, detached kind of way that Dean can read emotion in so well. Sam doesn't understand it. There's a language in there, a language he can't speak. .
Dean still has that slightly curious, slightly mortified look. "Sam, we're not— you don't tell him shit like that, okay?"
Sam smirks. "You're not what? Not walking funny the other morning?"
"Shut up."
"Deeeaan—"
He gets a pancake in his face.
And then he's laughing and they're both laughing and he knows, he knows that any second he's going to start crying, and he's going to hold onto Dean and try and refuse to let go, like he's a freaking nine year old again. He knows that in a few minutes someone is going to pick them up off the floor and send them to go and read up on that summoning, and he doesn't know if it'll be Garth or Claire or Benny or anyone, and he knows that his world is falling apart, but in this second, he laughs.
"You know," Dean says, "painting Devil's Traps and shit on the ceiling has gotten harder in my old age."
"For Chrissakes." The next thing Dean knows, there's a hand around his neck, and Claire is climbing up him like he's a fucking jungle gym before making a jump for some cracks in the wall. A few very brilliant parkour moves later, she's lying on her back, draped over two pipes that really shouldn't have held her weight. And Dean takes the fifth or sixth opportunity to check her out, and be relieved at the lack of attraction there. (He may or may not have done a careful character inventory: Scarlett Johansson was attractive, the voluptuous Asian lovelies were still attractive, and so what if it's the end of times? It was always good to have a strong sense of self.)
Claire reaches out a hand. "Spray paint?"
Sam throws her some. It lands on her stomach, and Dean turns. "Right," he says. "We should have gotten Michelangelo on our team earlier."
"Michelangelo didn't actually paint lying on his back, Dean."
"Shut it, Sasquatch."
This is too normal, and it hurts, because of how forced it all sounds. Dean sticks to painting as many symbols as he can remember— although it looks like there are more than there are, due to the number of mistakes. It's not his fault— his spray paint is faulty. "Looks a bit like that barn," he says after a moment, because the silence is even worse than anything else. The hissing from all the cans makes it sound like they're taking a communal piss. "Remember, Cas?"
"I remember that nothing worked," Cas says. He does something angelic to his paint instead of just shaking it like everybody else, and Dean grins.
"Always be prepared." After all, it's unlikely that Naomi will bring an army of demons, but just in case.
"You're never prepared."
"Be that as it may. Put that line a little to the left, Don. Hey, is there a banish-all-angels-except-for-Cas sign?"
"Naw, I doubt there's a special clause for angels that you're f—" Dean scowls, and Benny changes tracks. "—friends with."
Cas frowns down at the chalk in his hand. "I think that was intended as humor."
"It wasn't very good." Dean bites his lip as Cas draws yet another chalk circle. Apparently being an angel comes with the ability to draw perfect circles, which Dean thinks is kind of a lame superpower. But, whatever. He's drawn them all over the room, inside each other but not touching— it would give anyone with trypophobia a panic attack, but once they trace it with holy oil, they'll definitely catch her in one. Dean just hopes it's one of the smaller ones. "Are we, uh, good to—"
"Sam has the ritual."
Claire bounces back down towards the floor, swinging through the pipes. Nearly knocks over Amelia and the milk carton of holy oil. She's just in time, her feet hitting ground just as Sam lights the first bit of moss.
It's not a kink, or anything, but Dean will never get tired of Castiel speaking Enochian. The bouncing rhythm, words that he doesn't understand— but he's spent half his life shouting exorcisms he doesn't quite understand, so that's normal. It just sounds pretty— and isn't it weird that words can sound pretty? That names are pretty, that people like the sounds of different words?
Humanity, language. It's all ridiculous. Ridiculous and kind of wonderful.
And then Cas says the last word, and it's out of dreamland and back to— the flapping of wings. Less like Cas's and more— a swish, maybe. A falcon flying overhead, a vulture coming down. Amelia and Cas both drop their lighters at the same time.
The circle that Naomi has landed in is bigger than Dean had hoped for, but they can't have everything.
He isn't quite sure what he'd expected— something a little more Helena Bonham Carter, a little less Amanda Tapping. But she's also the quintessential (and that word he didn't learn from Bela) angel, with the suit and the perfect hair and the face like something smells bad.
"Castiel." She looks from face to face. "You brought all of your pets?"
Assbutt, mud monkeys, cockroach, pets? "Angels suck at insults," Dean says lightly. "You controlling, sadistic, power-hungry, goddamn fucking little shit-assed manipulative bitch who isn't worthy of the—" Dean has more, but Cas puts a hand on his arm. So he contents himself to meet Naomi's glare, daring her to make a crack about him being well trained. About him bending over— can she see it on him? Can she see Cas on him?
With the way her lip is curling, it doesn't seem that unlikely.
"So." She looks at them, somehow seeming as though she is not the one trapped. More at ease than the rest of them. "Where's the tablet?"
Sam takes a step forward. "What?"
"I assume you wanted to trade the tablet for a place in heaven when you die."
That wasn't what they wanted and she knows it, but she also knows how it will throw them, because Sammy isn't going to Hell. He isn't. Tablet or no tablet, and Dean doesn't realize he's moving until he's standing in front of his little brother, his little brother who is both taller and bigger than him, his little brother who he might never see again if they go through with this, who does not deserve to go to Hell. Dean won't let him.
Sam swats Dean out of the way. "No," he hisses into his ear. "She's playing games."
But—
"No, Dean. No deals."
It's barely a whisper, but Naomi might be able to hear. Cas can hear, or at least tell, by the way he is looking at them. Eyes looking almost demonic in the firelight, and Dean falls back, takes his place in the circle.
Garth scratches his nose.
Dean hadn't wanted him there. Dean had wanted him to stay with the Trans. But Dean isn't really on a streak of getting what he wants, as evidenced by Cas's voice.
"We will not trade," he says. "But we need your blood."
Dean had opted for the surprise attack. Make her think they're going for the kill and they might be able to sneak off some blood. But Cas had insisted on explaining, on giving her a chance. Since Cas himself had been given so many second chances. ("This is how I'm different from two years ago," he'd said, and Dean couldn't deny him that. Could only tell him that he seemed to be growing a Doctor Complex. But then Amelia had reminded him how many times the Doctor had committed genocide, and it wasn't funny anymore. If it ever was funny— Dean's sense of humor has been mangled beyond all repair. He's always relied on Sam to tell him when things aren't funny, and he isn't sure how he's thinking of that at a time like this, and he's also not sure how he's going to be able to leave Sammy when they get the blood, how he's going to be able to let his brother down like—)
"Heaven is going to be under siege," Castiel says, drawing himself up. "You won't win."
"You have no idea what we're capable of. We pulled you out of Purgatory. I fixed you."
Cas looks at Dean for a moment. "I wasn't broken."
"Please. We had so much planned for you… still have planned for you. Just because you're hiding from us doesn't mean our wiring still isn't in your head. Go back to Heaven, and we could make you tear Dean apart."
And Dean swallows, because they could—
"Normally, we'd practice." She knows she has a captive audience, she knows they know that she's playing for time, but the horror has settled heavy. Holding Dean's down, and he's suffocating under it, under the image. "A thousand Deans. You'd kill him, over and over, so that when the time came, you'd do it quickly and without hesitation. Now, though, it'll only be more painful for you both."
"Um." Cas studies his blade in the firelight. "You put a lot of power and energy into dragging me from Purgatory, trying to control me, trying to manipulate me. I'd been dead for a year. Forgive me, but you must be… um, very short on angels. And loyalty, since you have to control us like robots to get us to—"
A large gob of angelic spit crosses the fire and lands at his feet. "You're disgusting, Castiel. You presume— you, who rolls around in the dirt, the mud. You make me sick."
Cas doesn't flinch. "I shall take advice well from one who has had to mindfuck people to get them to carry out basic orders."
Dean has heard Castiel call Raphael a little bitch, but this still surprises him. Even though he knows what filth can come out of that mouth.
"It's the only way," Sam says. "You— you can't win, Naomi, but you could still keep them from winning."
"I'll laugh as you burn," Naomi tells him.
And it's go time.
Sam has never fought an angel. Just that mental prize fight with Lucifer— screaming up through his own mind, working desperately to move his hands.
He'd hoped that experience would give him an edge.
It doesn't.
He lands on singed shoes, and it's only because of Claire's diversion that he doesn't get his neck snapped the moment he enters the ring. A fifteen-foot wide circle of Holy Fire.
"Welcome to Thunderdome, bitch," he mutters.
For someone who doesn't have a weapon, Naomi is doing well. She and Claire aren't even touching each other, despite the deadliness of the fight. Claire's knife is nothing but flashes.
Sam moves. Gets a nick on her elbow, but he can't get enough blood to collect. Just a smear on his fingers. He'd have dropped the flask, anyway, because he's ducking.
Benny vaults over his back.
Twisting, turning.
Sam has never understood Dean's love of the fight. He can do it, of course. He can take people down and, fuck, sometimes he enjoys it. But he's never had the constant desire for motion, and it's been a long time since he's judged himself on who he can beat up. It's never been purely instinct, not like it is with Dean. He'll hit, he'll swing, he'll kick and bite and once or twice, although he'll never admit it, he's even bitten and pulled hair.
But it's never been a relief, like it is for Dean.
It's never been a dance, like it is for Inanna.
It's just survival, and getting to the next minute. It's hoping he'll be able to eat French toast later and all the things he'll never have.
It's three on one, but Naomi is slipping between them.
It's like trying to catch smoke.
And then it's like trying to dodge the knife that Amelia just threw. And it's a good throw, but all they get is a knife in holy fire, and Benny loses what little advantage he might have had— loses it again when Garth decides to join the party.
It's not elegant, it's not beautiful, it's not a dance.
It's Naomi spinning, hands moving, and the fact that Sam is reasonably sure that both his nose and one of his ribs are broken. It's Claire's yelp as her feet get too near the fire. It's Garth, throwing himself in front of Benny.
The knife burns brighter. The edges are turning red.
"Sam!" Dean yells.
And Sam understands. He waits for his next opening. And then he's rolling forward, reaching into the fire.
It takes two tries to not drop the scorched handle. But then he's up and turning and Naomi darts away from him, but Claire is in front of her, knife out, and Sam has tunnel vision now. There's nothing but the burning feeling in his hand, that he's forcing away, and then he's diving forwards and it doesn't pierce the skin, not at first, but it's hot enough and holy-oiled enough that the angel hisses. Turns, hand raised, staggering a little.
And then Benny's teeth are in her neck.
And she's yanking, pulling away, and Sam can only hear the distant yell, the distant order to run. And he's rolling through the fire, and the pain is coming back, but there's no time and he tries to rock himself around so that he can see. See the vampire, spitting into Dean's jar, choking on holy blood. Claire dragging Garth to safety. Naomi rubbing her neck, murder and desperation on her face.
And then there's no one but Amelia, hair frizzy, lit up by the firelight in a halo. Reaching for him, face stretched with panic.
"Sam," she says. "Sam, you're on fire."
And then there's Don, his knight-with-shining-bucket, dumping water all over him.
Right.
He starts to get up, when he's hit by another wave, and he has to spit some of the weird-tasting pond scum out of his mouth. "Was that really necessary, Dean?"
Dean shrugs. "You were on fire, Katniss."
It takes a few minutes to reconvene. To make sure all the blood samples are stashed in Cas's coat, to make sure that Sam and Claire and Benny and Garth don't have any fatal injuries, to make sure that—
"Cas." Dean swallows. "She was lying."
"You shouldn't—"
"Cas." Dean puts his hand on the angel's shoulder. Gripped you tight. "I trust you."
And he knows that the Angel will understand how much that means, that he's only recently started trusting Sam again, that there's no one left alive that he'd ever— but there's too much emotion on Cas's face, and Dean can't look at that, so he leans forward. Kisses him gently, to hell with everyone around.
"If this were a bad movie," Cas says, "that's all it would take to fix everything in my head."
"Please." Dean grins. "You haven't given me a chance." And out of nowhere, he remembers what that Ghostfacer— Ted? Ned? Ed?— had said on their Pilot. Something about Gayness saving the day. It's so distant, like all his pre-Hell memories, yet perfectly clear at the same time. Alastair had been keen on having him remember as much as possible, so as not to let time slip away. Not let him turn into nothing like the others. Every day, he could still see Sammy's face, hear the sound of his dad instilling in him various values that John so rarely kept to himself. He remembered the smell of thunderstorms and the sound of laughter, and all the reasons why he shouldn't pick up the knife, not ever.
Just to make it worse when he finally did. Because he could remember the failures, too. (That stab was for Sammy going to Stanford, that scream was for the time Dean had to drag his dad's drunk, passed out body into the hotel elevator.)
"We'll be okay," he says. "Shall we, um—"
Sam looks at him, though the blood on his face and the burns and the blackened coat. "Now— but—" he bites his lip. "It's too soon, we need— we need to be prepared, and have a map, and I need some aloe, and—"
Dean closes his eyes.
Sammy.
He pulls his little brother into a hug, carefully avoiding the burned spots. He hasn't done that so much— coming back from the dead seems to be a pre-hug requirement. It had been different when they were younger. He has a faint memory of carrying a toddler Sam over the mud, because the little princess hadn't wanted to muck up his Spider Man shoes— Sam, as a five year old, Sam, when he started third grade for the fifth or sixth time, Sam growing steadily taller until Dean couldn't tuck him under his chin anymore.
Until he became old and bitter around twelve or thirteen, and hugs became sporadic and manly at best.
Dean tries to make up for that now. He's always assumed that Sam didn't crave contact like he did, since he'd never gotten into fights and one-nighters. He'd always assumed— but Sammy holds him back, and Dean doesn't know if he'll ever be able to pull away.
He isn't crying. Winchesters have never been good at crying in front of anyone else. They have shit to do, they have people to save and things to hunt. And Dean wants, more than anything, to stop time. Right here, fire and injuries and Naomi be damned.
"Take care of yourself, Sammy," he says. "Don't… don't let me see you for a good long time, yeah?"
Sam's Adam's apple drops as he swallows.
"You, too. You— don't miss." This time. "Tell— tell Bobby and Dad and Ellen—"
"I will." Dean nods a few more times than necessary. "I'll find them, I'll get them all together so you— when you—"
"Yeah. Okay."
Dean takes a step back. Claps Don and Amelia on the shoulders. "Stay safe."
Right.
Okay.
He doesn't look at Naomi, or the crackling fire. Doesn't take his eyes off his Sammy as he blindly reaches for Cas. Feels the familiar fabric of the trench coat under his fingers.
"Beam me up, Scotty," he says.
Sam flashes him a Live Long and Prosper sign.
Dean tries to smile.