A/N - Got the next part done - here you go. (And thanks to my wonderful beta MoniJune for her ridiculously fast turnarounds on short notice.)
Dean awoke late the next morning, still wrapped around the guitar, to find Sam shaking his shoulder.
"Uh," said Dean. His head was throbbing with the familiar pain of a hangover. It also turned out the guitar made a poor sleeping companion; he could feel the imprint of the strings on his cheek, and one leg had gone numb from where it had been curled around the edge of the guitar body.
Dean unwrapped his stiff fingers from the guitar neck, peering up at Sam. "What?" he grunted. "What time's it?"
"Eleven," said Sam. "Didn't want to wake you, but..." Sam's eyes flickered to the guitar, and Dean saw, for a moment, the exhaustion and pain in Sam's face.
Ah, little brother. I'm sorry. About everything.
Sam looked back at Dean's face. "Jason just texted," he said. "He's ten minutes away. With the car."
Dean looked at him for a moment.
Cas's car. Right.
He levered himself upward with a groan and lurched to his feet, still holding the guitar. A third of a bottle of whiskey, plus sleeping pills, wasn't really a good combination; as well as the nausea and headache, Dean also felt as if he were staggering through a thick fog.
First things first, though: Take care of the guitar. And the feather.
He drew the little feather out of the pocket of his rumpled shirt and set it on the bedside table (he'd pick the feather back up after his shower) and then he stared at it blankly for a moment before he could even remember what his next step was. Oh, right; the guitar. Dean wobbled his way over to the corner of the bedroom with the guitar, dragging a blanket behind him, Sam watching uncertainly from the doorway. Dean bent over, his head throbbing painfully, to make a little blanket-nest for the guitar, much like Cas's towel-nest upstairs. Gotta get a real case for it, Dean thought as he straightened up. Gotta keep it safe. Gotta make sure the guitar is safe. Not "because Cas would want it soon," anymore, but because...
Just because.
"There better be coffee," Dean told Sam, who was still hovering awkwardly in the doorway.
Sam nodded and said, "It's a few hours old, though. I'll make some more."
Dean gave him a tired nod. Time for a shower; time to start a new day, somehow.
Dean shuffled to his dresser to try to find some clean clothes. And a towel, maybe.
After a moment he realized Sam was still hovering in the doorway. Dean glanced at him, and Sam said, a little uncertain, "Should I... uh... make the two cups like usual... and put it in the thermos? I mean... " Sam hesitated. "You gonna go up the hill?"
Dean shook his head, looking away. Eleven o'clock; it was long past Vigils, long past Lauds, long past Terce. Dean had already missed nearly half the daily prayers.
But, of course, it really didn't matter anymore.
Just put one foot in front of the other, thought Dean. I got up. That was step one.
Step two. Shower. He glanced over at the feather again, and then shuffled past Sam toward the bathroom.
Sam gave him a soft clap on the shoulder as Dean went past, but didn't say anything.
What's there to say, anyway? thought Dean. I've wrecked my own life, I've probably wrecked Sam's, I friggin ENDED Cas's. And destroyed the whole damn world, apparently. What's there to say...
There was nothing to say. There was nothing that could be said. But Dean stopped in the hallway anyway, and looked back at Sam, who was walking away now, head down, back toward the kitchen — presumably to make a fresh pot of coffee for Dean. Sam's head was bowed, his shoulders slumped.
What's there to say, except... Sorry, Sam. Sorry you've had to waste all this time trying to take care of me. I'm not worth it, you know. You should've given up ages ago.
But he just won't give up.
"Hey, Sam," called Dean.
Sam stopped and turned only halfway around, looking over his shoulder at Dean. His expression was guarded.
"You make a pretty good big brother, you know," said Dean.
Sam gave a faint laugh, the corner of his mouth twitching up briefly — almost a smile, but not quite. It was something, at least. Sam's eyes lingered on Dean's face for a moment. Dean blinked at what he saw there, and then Sam turned away and headed off to the kitchen. Dean could still see the tiredness in Sam's long, slow stride, in his shuffling gait. Even when he'd been a little kid Dean had been able to read Sam's mood from the way he walked... and, right now, Sam's mood was not good. Dean watched him go, thinking.
Cas is gone.
And I'm good as gone.
But Sam... Sam's still here. And I'm dragging Sam down with me.
I ruined everything for Cas. I can't do the same for Sam too. Maybe I can at least save Sam. Give him back his life, at least.
Cut him free.
Dean was slugging back a mugful of hot coffee, still trying to fight his way through the sleeping-pill fog to at least a half-alert state, when a distant car horn blared from outside. Dean and Sam glanced at each other. Dean set his mug down, and without a word they left the kitchen and headed through the library, through the map-room, and up the curving iron staircase to the front door.
Dean blinked in the bright sunlight. It was late October now, and it was chilly outside. Chilly with bursts of wind, the sunlight shining through scudding clouds. And there in the sunlight was Cas's gold Continental.
The sight of it made Dean's breath catch in his throat. He knew perfectly well that Cas wasn't there, that the figure in the driver's seat would not be Castiel, but still... to see that gold car in front of the bunker like this, dusty from the road, a figure dimly visible in the driver's seat... a thousand memories leapt to mind. Cas pulling up to the bunker, Cas pulling away, Dean driving in the Continental with him, meeting up with Cas somewhere, looking for that gold car...
Dean always used to tease him about the car, of course.
I teased him about EVERYTHING, Dean thought suddenly. I teased him about every single thing.
What the hell was wrong with me?
The driver stepped out; sure enough, not Castiel at all, but some fresh-faced kid that Sam had met somewhere. Some skinny yahoo who looked barely out of grade school, not a wrinkle on his smooth face, a douche-tastic spiked haircut and a scruffy excuse for a two-day beard on his face. The kid started talking with Sam. Dean took a step closer to the car, reaching out one hand and resting it on the hood. The car was dusty from its road trip, and Dean drew a line in the dust with one finger, the bright gold color shining through.
He drew another line, parallel to the first; and drew a few other lines to connect them.
Soon the lines he was drawing had formed a feather shape.
"Uh... I said, hope you don't mind I take a peek around?"
The kid was talking to him. Jason. He was standing a couple feet away with a friendly smile, one hand in his pocket, one hand held out for a handshake. Dean wiped the feather away with a quick brush of his hand, looking him over. The kid looked practically just out of puberty.
"They letting high schoolers be hunters these days?" Dean said.
Jason's smile faded slightly. "I'm twenty-six," he said. "And, nice to meet you, too."
Twenty-six. Shades of Cole... Just another naive pup. Just a munchkin. Hell, even Sam was well into his thirties now.
Jason's hand had begun to sag a little. Sam was scowling at Dean from over Jason's shoulder, making weird gestures, and Dean finally remembered he was supposed to shake Jason's hand back. "Sorry, I'm a little distracted," he managed to say, grabbing Jason's hand in a quick shake. "Nice to meet you."
A look of near-relief came over Jason's face, the smile brightening again. "I've always heard about how you Winchesters had this place," he said, looking up at the bunker. "You guys are famous, you know. Back when I started, everyone was talking about, the Winchesters found one of the old hideouts."
Dean and Sam eyed each other in surprise; back when I started? It'd been that long since they found the bunker?
And word had got out?
"People've found a few others, you know," Jason went on, leaning one hand on the Continental's hood as he looked up at the bunker. (Dean had to fight down an impulse to slap him off of the car.) "People started looking for more of them once word got out that the one you'd found here was for real. And turns out there's others. There's one in Nova Scotia that's started up again, though it was mostly emptied out when they found it. My sister and I found one last year near Seattle, too, but it was mostly wrecked, just ashes."
"Your sister?" said Sam.
"I hunt with her," Jason said. His face tightened a little, and he added, "Usually. She hunts with me usually." Now he was drumming his fingers on the car hood. He cleared his throat and added, "She's... laid up right now. Just a broken foot though, nothing too bad." But the lines of tension were clear on his face.
Younger sister, Dean thought at once. It's a younger sister.
"She back with your folks then?" said Sam.
Jason paused a moment. "Folks are gone," he said, with artificial casualness. "Got taken by demons. Remember that year when there were demons all over suddenly? Back then." He rubbed one hand over his mouth. "Anyway she's got this theory there might be another bunker up in the North Woods somewhere, somewhere up around Minnesota. She thinks they were laid out geographically, like, not random. She thinks they're placed about every thousand miles. Also, we just heard there's one in Peru and one near Prague."
Dean said, "Where'd you hear all this?"
Jason shrugged. "Around. You know. The, um... " He glanced sidewards at Dean. "The, uh, newer... uh, the recent... there's a bunch of hunters that have been working on it."
Dean could almost see him bending over backwards to avoid saying "younger" hunters. The younger hunters have been working on it, was what Jason meant.
I look old to him, Dean realized. From Jason's perspective, Dean (and maybe even Sam) must look like one of those weathered old hunters who used to show up at the Roadhouse, back in the day. The quiet ones who would drink in the back, parked in a booth alone, their faces lined and haggard. Bitter and alone. The old, tired, worn-out hunters.
The ones on their last legs. The ones who usually disappeared a year or so later. Did you hear about old So-and-So, was the news that would go around later. He finally bit it... Got too slow. Lost it in the end to a regular ol' vengeful spirit.
Or: He quit the life, got to drinking...
Or: He lost his partner. Never was quite the same.
Too bad about old So-and-so, everybody would say. They'd raise a glass to the memory. Then, a few minutes later, the conversation always moved on. The old hunters faded away, and new ones took over. That was just the way it was.
Dean caught Sam's eye, and knew his thoughts were following a similar track.
Jason was looking up at the building again. He said, "There's been talk about trying to put the network back together again. The Men of Letters network. There's this guy in Texas who thinks he might have found a way to corral those blackness-balls, but he says everybody's gonna need to pitch in around the planet, apparently. Get coordinated, like we used to be. So... we're gonna try, at least. We gotta try, right?"
Sam and Dean looked at each other again. Hunters getting organized? Trying to keep the Darkness at bay?
They probably don't even know it was us that unleashed it, thought Dean.
Jason turned back to them and said, "Anyway, I know you guys live here and I don't want to pry, but I'd love to get a peek inside if you're both cool with that. And..." He slapped the car gently. "Glad I could bring this puppy back to you. Hey, um..." He began to look a little uncertain again, stuffing both hands in his pockets. "Hope you don't mind if I mention... I kinda picked up that it belonged to some friend of yours. Right? Friend who didn't make it? I saw all the blood. At that warehouse. Kinda put the clues together. I'd been following those same cases."
There was a little silence.
"Just wanted to say, sorry," said Jason.
Dean could only stare at the car.
Sam finally said, "Thanks."
Jason cleared his throat. "He must've liked a smooth ride, huh?" He patted the car. "Your friend? Liked that flying feeling?"
"What?" said Dean.
"Well, you know, an old Continental like this, you don't see those around all that much. Doesn't have a ton of power, but this was always the luxury car to beat all luxury cars, back in the '70s, wasn't it?" Jason shot Dean a grin. "Hell, the James Bond villains used 'em. James Bond himself, too! This was the Goldfinger car, remember? Anyway I been in it a long time now and it's like driving a big plush bed. Might need a bit of a tune-up, but it's smooth, easy to be in... like I said, not a lot of power but it's sorta like, well, like flying. You're just gliding along. You barely even know you're in a car. Not bad to sleep in, either. Uh... hope you don't mind. I spent last night in it."
"That's... okay," said Sam.
Dean, meanwhile, was staring at the car, remembering Cas's quiet, "I like it."
Because it felt like flying?
So it didn't have a ton of power. So what?
Maybe power wasn't what Cas really wanted, thought Dean.
Jason cleared his throat. "Hey, also, there was some stuff in the trunk. I left it all there like you asked, Sam. I didn't pry, I promise. I keep my word about stuff like that. And, um, also, sorry but I had to hotwire it. I didn't have the key."
"Yeah, the key got lost—" Sam began.
"I got the key," said Dean.
Sam blinked at him. "You do?"
"It's in my room," said Dean. "I got the key and his phone." Everything that had been in Cas's pockets, that night. Dean had cleaned and organized it all, and had put Cas's car key and Cas's phone in his room for safekeeping.
He'd even cleaned the terrible angel-blade and demon-blade. The angel-blade had belonged to Cas, after all; and it was buried with Cas, even now.
The demon-blade had been a more difficult decision. It was too valuable a weapon to discard, but Dean couldn't bear to handle it anymore. He'd eventually put it back in the Impala's trunk, hoping Sam might notice it there and might take to carrying it. Sam, of course, had never even known how it had been used that night.
Sam started to take Jason around on a bunker tour. Dean followed them inside. Almost immediately Jason went into raptures about the map-room. "A tracking table! Holy shit! It's totally intact!" he exclaimed, leaning over it. "Does it still work? It looks like — look, it still has power — holy shit, this is amazing—" Soon he was crawling around the table, studying some connections at its base, and a few moments after that he caught sight of the library shelving in the next room, and the telescope beyond that. The telescope that had always been parked against the far wall, unused and dusty.
"You still have the library?" he said, obviously astonished. "You've still got all the books? And a dimensional scope? Are you kidding me? Does the scope work?" He left the "tracking table" and made a beeline through the library toward the telescope at the back wall. Soon he was fiddling with the knobs on the side and peering through it. "Fuck, it works," he was muttering a second later. "Look, it even goes two steps either direction, not just one! You guys must have learned so much from this, huh? Becca's gonna love this. She's gonna glue herself to it for a month. I mean," he glanced up from the scope at Dean and Sam. "If she, uh... if she gets to see it, someday, I mean. Becca. My sister."
Dean and Sam glanced at each other yet again.
"Uh... we haven't used it much," said Sam.
"Seriously? You're kidding me," said Jason, staring through the scope and twiddling more knobs.
"Never even looked through that," muttered Sam in Dean's ear.
Dean nodded, and whispered back, "Never even occurred to me to wonder why there was a telescope down here in a basement."
New generation coming up, thought Dean, watching Jason extract himself from the "dimensional scope" and start nosing through the library books, making interested sounds as he scanned the titles.
Maybe I'm just one of the old guys now? thought Dean. Maybe I'm not even needed any more... Maybe I'm just in the way. Keeping all this stuff to myself? Hoarding it, even?
Maybe...
Maybe I'm not one of the good guys anymore.
Jason's puppy-like enthusiasm was a little overwhelming. Dean soon left Sam to finish giving Jason the tour, and headed back outside to deal with Cas's car.
He settled himself gingerly on the yellow leather seats, breathing in the familiar scent. The scent was part leather, part classic car... maybe a hint of mildew from a few months in storage (that would clear out soon enough)... a distinct smell of Cheetos (courtesy of Jason, Dean suspected)... and a faint other scent, too.
Hard to detect, hard to define. The faintest scent of an old tan coat... of the aftershave Dean had loaned to Cas when he'd first been learning how to shave... of a certain shampoo that Dean had given to Cas too...
And the faintest smell of feathers. Barely detectable. Almost gone.
Dean leaned his head on the steering wheel, trying to breathe it in, his eyes stinging.
After a minute, he swallowed and got to work. First he had to spend ten minutes fixing up the ignition wiring that Jason had hot-wired, re-attaching the wires where they were supposed to go and wrapping them carefully in electrical tape, so that Dean could use Cas's key to start the thing up properly. The engine caught with a grumpy sound, and Dean steered it inside the garage next to the Impala, wincing at the rough sound of the engine. Yeah, it needed a tune-up. And a wash, and a polish.
When Dean stepped out of the car he had to look away for a moment, caught by surprise at the sight of the Continental and Impala sitting together side-by-side. Surely, it seemed Cas must be here somewhere... Somewhere in the bunker. Somewhere nearby. The Continental was only parked next to the Impala like this when Cas was around.
Is this EVER going to stop? Dean wondered, gritting his teeth. Is EVERY damn thing going to keep hurting like this?
He shook his head, scowling at the cars. Time to get to work. There was a lot to do. The Continental needed a wash and a polish and a tune-up. And the Impala needed the dash repaired... and the radio fixed.
A minute later he was in the Impala, checking out the damage to the radio and the dashboard. "Sorry, Baby," he whispered, fingering the frayed wire ends of the busted radio. "Sorry 'bout that. I been a little crazy, I know. But I'll fix you up. All-new wiring..."
All-new wiring, he thought, and then it occurred to him: Perfect time to add a line-in jack.
A line-in, of course, allowed the driver to plug in an mp3 player. Sam had installed one once, years ago. Back when Sam had had to get by on his own without Dean. Back when Dean had been dead, and Sam had been hunting all on his own. Apparently Sam had needed some way to play his crappy music, when he'd been all alone.
The second Dean had got back he'd ripped the thing out.
Dean traced his fingers over the busted radio. Might be time to add that back in, he thought.
Dean eventually returned to the Continental, steeling himself this time for a search for any possessions of Cas's. There was nothing much in the glove compartment or the back seat. In the trunk, though, Dean found a bag of extra clothes that had sat in here mildewing for who knows how long.
Those jeans Dean had got him at the thrift store... Some old t-shirts Dean had loaned him once...
I'm not going to carry all this around like I did with the trenchcoat, Dean thought. I'm not. I'm not. But he patted the feather in his pocket, unconsciously, even as he stuffed the clothes out of sight in a corner of the trunk.
Behind the bag of laundry was a long thick roll of poster paper. Dean pulled it out carefully and tried to unroll it.
It turned out to be a lot of separate pieces of paper, big sheets of poster paper, all rolled up together. It was too big to get a clear look at here in the Continental's trunk, but Dean managed to get a peek at the edges of the sheets. Each was covered with more of Cas's strange diagrams, like the one on his pad of paper — charts of mysterious little symbols connected by lines and arrows. He tried to open the whole thing up to flip through the separate pages, but each one wanted to roll up again as soon as he let go of it, and soon a few had wriggled their way free and bounced to the ground. Dean managed at last to get one big page spread out, and he squinted at it in puzzlement.
The page was big, about three feet by two feet. It had a large central diagram consisting of a rough oval shape with several dozen mysterious little symbols scattered across it, all connected with a complex network of lines and arrows. The main diagram had been drawn carefully in pen; there were little penciled notes scribbled in next to each of the little symbols, and there was some sort of glyph written at the top.
Dean ached to see Cas's very own handwriting, so much so that it took him several moments to realize he couldn't actually read any of the notes. He puzzled over them for a moment longer before he realized they must all be in Enochian.
He muttered out loud, "Cas, I can't figure this out. Couldn't you have written these notes in English like your others?"
He gritted his teeth a second later. He'd meant to stop talking to Cas. He really had.
He drew a long, slow breath. "Old habits die hard, buddy," he whispered quietly, rolling up all the poster-sheets together.
"Find anything?" said Sam, interrupting his thoughts. Dean flinched at the sudden noise, and turned to find Sam walking up the stairs that led to the bunker, Jason right on his heels.
"Maybe," said Dean, holding up the fat roll of posters. "Can't make head or tail of it, though."
"Well, Jason's about done," said Sam. He glanced over his shoulder at Jason. "You all set, dude? I can give you a ride to the bus station."
Jason had already started to veer toward the vintage cars and motorbikes in the back, and he turned back a little reluctantly. "Yeah. Guess I can't stare at all your stuff forever. Thanks for the look-see, and, yeah, the bus station'd be good."
Sam held out an envelope to him. Dean knew it contained three hundred bucks that he'd gotten yesterday— the biggest cash advance he'd been able to get from one of his last useable credit cards. "For your trouble," Sam said. "Gas money, bus fare, and something for your time."
Jason shook his head, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Pleasure just to get a peek at the place. Never thought I'd get a look. People said you two don't let strangers in."
Dean and Sam glanced at each other. Sam said, "Yeah, I... I guess we kind of keep to ourselves."
"Take it anyway," said Dean, nodding toward the envelope.
"I don't need—" Jason started to say.
"You're gonna need ammo, food, clothes," said Dean. "Right? Motel bills. Salt. Holy-oil. Gas. Your sister probably needs med supplies, right? Painkillers, crutches, sutures. Paying docs under the table now and then. All that stuff costs."
Jason looked at him.
"Take it," said Dean.
Jason nodded slowly and took the envelope, tucking it in his jacket. "Thanks," he said. "And. Look." He hesitated a moment, glancing around at the array of vintage cars again. "I know you guys always work alone. Everyone always says that, about you two: Don't go near the Winchesters, unless you wanna get fucked up, everyone says. But, look, if you ever..." He drew a breath, as if gathering up his courage. "If you ever feeling like... you know. Joining up? Letting a few others in? Not saying now, but, if you ever did, you could give me a ring. I wouldn't mind if..." He hesitated again, glancing back and forth from Sam to Dean, and at last blurted out, "Wouldn't mind if Becca had a safe place, to be honest. Somewhere to just hunker down and heal up, now and then. She's in this crappy motel right now, with the broken foot, and she's on crutches for a few weeks, and... Well. You know."
Sam glanced at Dean, an eyebrow raised. You know. They did know.
But Jason had it right; they'd always worked alone.
Don't go near the Winchesters, unless you wanna get fucked up.
But, keeping the whole bunker to themselves? Was it even fair?
Was it right?
A place to "hunker down and heal up..."
"We'll keep it in mind," said Dean.
Sam and Jason soon headed off to the Lebanon bus stop, taking one of the other cars. As they were about to leave, Sam gave Dean one of his trademark worried-and-exhausted looks. Dean knew what it meant, and said, "I'm gonna go shopping, Sammy. See ya in a few hours." Sam nodded, still obviously a little anxious, but he finally headed off with Jason.
And what Dean did was... go shopping. He went to Hastings and got the parts he'd need to fix the radio, for one thing. Oil, to give the Continental an oil change. And he got a few other things. Some wood... some supplies. A few other things too.
He didn't go up the hill at all that day. There seemed no point anymore.
Sam spent the whole afternoon and evening fussing over Cas's diagrams, even clearing some of the stacks of books off the library tables to spread out a few of the big sheets for closer study. Soon he was scribbling his own notes on a series of post-its, which he stuck all over the posters, trying to figure out some system in the various symbols and runes that Cas had used.
Dean, though, was still finding it almost unbearable to keep seeing Cas's careful handwriting on page after page. He kept thinking, over and over, of how Cas must have been working on these posters alone, working away up on the table in the attic, by himself. Without any help.
Trying to fix the world, on his own, without any help.
Dean also found himself continually biting his lip to keep from talking to Cas out loud, to ask what the diagrams were all about. The third time this happened, Dean stood from his chair abruptly and said, "Gonna go work on the cars."
Sam froze, hand pausing in mid-scribble on a post-it. He looked up at Dean sharply.
"Just gonna go work on the cars," Dean assured him. Well, and maybe a bit of woodshop work. No need to Sam to concern himself with details. "Gotta fix the radio," Dean added.
Sam gave him a searching look, but finally nodded. "You'll be okay?" he asked.
Dean shrugged. There wasn't really ever going to be an answer to that question.
Sam clearly knew that, for he let the question hang in the air unanswered, moving on with, "Never mind. Well... Don't go out without telling me, okay?"
Dean nodded. Sam gave a tiny sigh and added, "Hand me that Enochian dictionary on your way out, would you? I think a lot of these little symbols are Enochian."
Dean handed him the Enochian dictionary, and headed to the garage to get to work.
He worked all evening. On a lot of projects. He got the radio fixed, and the dash. And the tape player. He changed the Continental's oil, and washed both cars.
He added the line-in jack to the Impala.
Once again a whole day went by without a trip up the hill. Once again Dean sent himself to sleep with sleeping pills and whiskey. If there were any parrot dreams, the whiskey was drowning them out pretty well.
The next morning, as Dean made his creaky way through the kitchen, trying to wash away yet another hangover with yet another double dose of aspirin and coffee, Sam called to him from the library. "Dean!" Sam sounded much more awake than he should have been at this hour. "Dean, c'mere!"
Dean took a swig of coffee, hoping the headache would back off a little, as he shuffled into the library. He looked around, realizing, that the whole library seemed to have been taken over by the poster papers now. Sam was hunched over one of them, scribbling yet more notes on yet more post-its. He glanced up at Dean. He looked even more tired than usual, and had dark bags under his eyes, but he looked excited.
"You even get to sleep?" Dean asked.
"Made a breakthrough," Sam said, ignoring the question. "A bunch of breakthroughs, I think." He stood, stretched a knot out of his neck, and waved one arm expansively at the pages of paper, which were spread out everywhere, taking all over every inch of the library tables and even the map-table in the next room. "At first I thought it was sigils or something," Sam said. "Maybe a series of spells to do, in order, or a series of sigils to draw. But they're not spells. Or sigils." He paused and announced, lowering his voice dramatically, "They're maps."
"What?" said Dean, walking a little closer. "Maps? Maps of what?"
"Maps of realms!" said Sam. "Well... I think. I'm pretty sure this one's a map of Earth—" Sam pointed to one of the diagrams, and then pointed to three others, saying, "That one's Heaven. That's Hell. That's Purgatory."
Dean squinted at the diagrams.
They all had the same general format he'd noticed yesterday: a big piece of paper with a large oval shape sketched in, the oval sprinkled with several dozen tiny symbols, all connected with lines and arrows. Now that all the poster papers were spread out he saw that several of them had additional little mini-diagrams clustered around the edges, like extra border decorations.
"He's got them all labeled at the top, see?" said Sam. "Those marks at the top of each page are Enochian runes, and I finally translated four of them. These four. These four runes mean Earth, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory." Sam looked triumphant. "Also, I think the diagram in his little notebook was an early draft of the Earth one, by the way. I think he expanded it later and then started making the others. Earth, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory! Though..." Here Sam gestured, less confidently, at the other huge papers spread around on the nearby tables. "I don't know about all the others yet. I think it's a bunch of other realms I couldn't figure out the names of. The runes aren't phonetic; they're more like little pictographs, so I have no idea what those others are. Six other realms, though, I think."
"Six other realms?" said Dean, a little startled.
"Yep," said Sam, nodding, with his hands on his hips. "There's ten total and I figured out four. I guess the others must be Oz and fairyland and... who knows what else." He gestured around at the whole set of posters again. "But it's ten realms, all in all. He even numbered them one through ten. He made Heaven number one."
Dean actually managed to summon up a lopsided little grin at that; it was sweet, somehow, to realize Cas had still been thinking that Heaven was the best realm. Realm number one!
"Of course he did," Dean said, shaking his head at the thought. "Of course Heaven's number one. And, let me guess, Hell's number ten?"
"Actually, no," said Sam, shaking his head with a puzzled chuckle. "Hell's number six. Heaven's number one, but Earth is number four, Purgatory's five and Hell's six."
Dean frowned. It wasn't too weird to think there were some realms between Earth and Heaven — Limbo, maybe? Some sort of almost-Heaven? But... what were seven, eight, nine and ten?
"What could possibly be worse than Hell?" Dean asked. But even as he said the words, a fragment of the conversation with the orishas came to mind. Something Oshossi had said. He'd said he would search "within Purgatory and Hell and the farther realms."
The farther realms, Oshossi had said.
Realms seven, eight, nine and ten?
Dean frowned down at the mysterious maps. "Oshossi mentioned 'farther' realms," he said. "Like, realms beyond Hell, maybe?"
Sam nodded. "I remembered that too. But who knows what they are."
"Okay," said Dean. "Ten realms. Maps, great. Maps of... what? Is the Crown marked anywhere?"
Sam shook his head. "Not that I can tell. But I still haven't figured out a lot of these symbols. But... About the symbols. I think I know what they're marking."
Sam leaned over the mystifyingly vague "Earth" map again. It didn't really look at all like Earth - it had no continents marked, and no latitude or longitude lines. It just had an oval with a bunch of Cas's strange little symbols, some connected with lines or arrows. Each had a careful dot marking its exact position, and was labeled with a mystifying little rune-like symbol drawn precisely in black ink. And also a tiny notation in pencil.
"Always a symbol rune in ink, and a note in pencil, did you notice?" said Sam.
"Yeah, I saw that yesterday," said Dean, tracing his finger over some of the little symbols. One was a trident, one a set of teardrops, one a star.
"Yup," agreed Sam, pointing out a few more. "Trident, teardrops, circle with a dot, P-shape, this funny looking H, male sign, female sign... I started making a list but it's dozens of them. But, among them are the runes for Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. And, look at the penciled notes! There's only three of those, and I cracked them last night. Each penciled note is always one of three things: Enochian for "Open," Enochian for "Closed" or the Enochian version of a question mark. Cas wrote that next to every little symbol: Open, Closed, or question mark. Dean... I'm thinking it's gates."
"Gates," said Dean slowly, frowning down at the little symbols. "Right. He had that thing in his notes about 'gates' being opened or closed. Wait... are you thinking... Gates like the gate to Hell? Gates like... connection to other realms?"
Sam nodded vigorously. "Exactly. Gates that are open or closed."
"Cas said in his notes that most of them were closed," Dean said. "Closed gates isn't very helpful."
"Yeah, but, Dean... " Sam drew a breath. "I wondered if these might really be Elegua's roads."
Now that was a thought. Especially because...
"Elegua opened all the roads," said Dean.
Sam grinned at him. "Exactly. Oshossi said Elegua was going to open all the roads. Roads between the realms. And, Dean, I feel like the orishas were actually trying to help us. As best they could, I mean."
"Pretty damn unhelpful," Dean muttered.
"They tried," Sam pointed out. "They were trying to help us. Marcos told me later, they don't mean to be cryptic; they really were trying to help as best they could. And, Oshossi said Elegua opened the roads, but he never said that Elegua closed them again. So... what if Elegua left the roads open? For us to use?"
Sam paused a moment to let that sink in, and then added, "We ought to at least check. Also, Dean, there's something else. I never got a chance to tell you. Marcos said his own orisha spoke to him that night, an orisha named Shango. I looked him up— he's sort of a Zeus figure, like, king orisha, orisha of the fire and thunder and the sun and other stuff. Anyway Shango told him that we have to go 'into the fire'."
"Into the fire," Dean repeated, looking up at Sam.
"Yeah," Sam said.
"Well, that's cryptic as hell."
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "But, like Marcos said—"
"They don't mean to be cryptic," Dean finished with a sigh. "Right. But what the hell does 'into the fire' even mean?"
"Well... I don't know..." said Sam, but then his eye fell to the map of Earth, and he stared. "Oh..." he breathed, his attention caught by something. "Oh. I was looking at it wrong."
Dean shifted next to him, trying to see what he was staring at.
"The teardrops," said Sam, pointing to the little 'teardrops' symbol they'd both noticed earlier. Three little teardrops, clustered side-by-side. "It's not teardrops... it's..."
"Flames," said Dean. "It's flames. It's a fire. It's a gate to fire."
"A gate into the fire," said Sam. "Cas's notation here says it's closed, but..."
"But Elegua's opened the gate," finished Dean.
They stared at the little teardrop symbol for a while, but soon realized that even if it waspotentially a "fire" symbol, right here on the strange map of Earth, they still couldn't figure out where, precisely, that location actually was. There were no latitude or longitude markings — no way match up the symbols on Cas's odd Earth-map to any actual location on the real Earth.
They both spent the next few minutes staring at the map. Dean slugged down the rest of his coffee, and went to make another pot, bringing some back for Sam.
The solution, when it came, was embarrassingly easy. Sam almost jumped in his seat, blurted out, "Oh, shit, I'm so tired, I should have seen this right away! This mark here —" He stabbed his finger on a certain symbol way over on the right of the map. "This is the Hell symbol. So this marks a Hell , we know where that is!"
Dean caught his meaning immediately. "The one in Wyoming?"
"Yep. That damn Hell's Gate. We know the coordinates and everything." Sam sighed. "But one gate isn't enough for us to figure out the scale of this map. We need another gate. I mean, we need another gate with a known location— "
Dean grabbed the map and pulled it over toward him, so fast he almost ripped it. "What's the symbol for Purgatory?" he said.
Sam glanced at him. "This one," said Sam, pointing at another symbol that was way over on the left.
"That gate's in Maine," said Dean. "And I know exactly where. Cause I used it." It all came clear, and Dean said, "North America's split, at the edges of the map. The map's centered on the Middle East, I bet you anything. Centered on the Garden of Eden or something, I bet. C'mon—" He grabbed the Earth map and almost ran over to the map-table.
After an inordinate amount of arguing about scale, different kinds of map projections, the precise locations of the Maine gate to Purgatory and the Wyoming gate to Hell, and then a long series of latitude and longitude calculations, Sam finally managed to figure out the likely latitude and longitude of the "fire" gate marked on Cas's Earth map.
"The answer is—" said Sam, hunkered now over the calculator app on his phone, "Write this down— Latitude of the fire gate is, forty-one, twenty-four, thirty north." Dean scribbled the numbers on a post-it as Sam tapped out a few more calculations and said, "And, the longitude is one-twenty-two, eleven, forty west. More or less. It might be off a bit; I don't know how precise Cas's dots are."
"One-twenty-two degrees is pretty far west," Dean remarked, holding the post-it out to Sam. "West coast, probably."
"Yeah, west coast," said Sam, grabbing the post-it and swiveling to his computer, which was perched nearby on one of the side counters in the map-room. He started punching the numbers directly into Google as Dean watched over his shoulder. Sam said, "Forty-one north... Halfway up the coast or so. So it's probably northern California, you think?" They both had a pretty good feel for lat-long numbers after so many years criss-crossing the country.
It only took Sam a few moments to type it in: 41°24'30"N, 122°11'40"W. He hit Enter, and Google instantly showed them a map with a little red pin marking the location (one of Google's handiest features, Dean had always thought). They both squinted at it.
It seemed to be a dead-end road in the middle of a field of gray.
"Wilderness," Dean said. "Go to the big map. And zoom out." Sam nodded— he was already clicking over to Google Maps. He zoomed out a couple times and they both stared.
The red pin sat squarely atop Mount Shasta, California.
"Mount Shasta," said Sam, straightening up slowly. "Mount Shasta. That sorta makes sense."
"Aren't there some legends about that mountain?" said Dean.
Sam nodded slowly. "Ton of 'em. Local Indians said it's where..." He hesitated. "Where the spirit of the upper world came down to Earth. Where God came down to Earth, in other words."
They both looked at it a little longer. "Into the fire," said Dean. "Okay, then. Pack your bags, Sammy boy. We leave in the morning."
It had come together shockingly fast. Thank you, Cas, thought Dean, as they started preparing. Should've known you'd have plotted a path for us. Should've known you'd point the way.
Cas, though, had had the handicap of thinking most of the gates were closed; who knew what complex route he'd been planning. But if Elegua had indeed opened the gates, then Dean and Sam, it seemed, might have the luxury of hopping "into the fire" immediately, in one jump.
Not that going "into the fire" seemed all that safe a thing to do.
But it was the only lead they had.
They spent the rest of the morning trying to think out what to pack. Packing for an unknown trek of unknown duration through an unknown realm, for a trip that either could be a complete red herring or an instant death sentence, wasn't really that easy. In the end they defaulted to just what they usually brought on regular road trips: some food, some water, some weapons, and a change of clothes. The rest was in the lap of the gods.
Or the hands of Fate, perhaps.
Dean headed up the hill, at last, that day just after noon.
Sam came along. Dean had kind of thought to do this himself, but Sam, who was supposed to be off sorting their final selection of gear into two backpacks, had somehow realized what Dean was up to. He'd appeared out of nowhere just when Dean had been about to sneak out of the bunker and head across the meadow.
"I'm helping," Sam announced, in a don't-argue-with-me tone of voice. Dean took one look at the mulish look in his eyes and just nodded.
God knows he deserves it, thought Dean, turning to lead the way across the meadow. He deserves it more than I do.
So together the two of them lugged Dean's gardening tools, and the two hundred flower bulbs, up to the top of the hill. Sam carried the crocus bulbs, and some narrow little spades; Dean brought the sack of daffodil bulbs, and a pack containing a few other things. Among the "few other things" were some additional flower bulbs he had just a few of: hyacinths and tulips, in a brown paper sack.
They were both panting when they got up to the top, but they got right to work. Apart from a bit of initial discussions about where to plant the bulbs and how deep, they barely spoke.
Dig a hole, put three or four bulbs in it, orient them roots-down. Replace the earth, pat it down. Repeat. Repeat again. On and on. Two hundred and some bulbs took a while.
They worked in silence.
A smattering of daffodils went right over Cas's body. Crocuses at his feet. The tulips and hyacinths went around the grave marker, right at Cas's head. Dean had gotten those at the last second, on the spur of the moment, while standing in a long check-out line with the sacks of daffodil and crocus bulbs at the Home Depot in Nebraska. There'd been a little chart of "flower meanings" propped up near the cash register, one of those printouts from The Old Farmer's Almanac, and entries for tulips and hyacinths had caught Dean's eye. He'd left the line to grab a few, even though he then had to stand in line all over again.
The rest of the daffodils and crocuses, dozens and dozens of them, went all around the grave, all over the rest of the little hilltop clearing.
It didn't look like much right now, of course; just a bare hilltop covered in dead leaves. Also, the flower bulbs that they were planting turned out to be pretty unimpressive. Dean rolled one around in his hands, eyeing it; it seemed just a papery brown blob, cool and dry and inert. It seemed impossible that it could be alive, and just sleeping; it seemed impossible to believe that it would one day give rise to something beautiful.
Gotta have faith, Dean thought, setting it at the base of the hole he'd just dug. He put two other bulbs with it, orienting them all carefully with the root end down, and patted dirt down over them. Gotta have faith that they'll grow.
Not that I'll ever see them.
Once they were done, Dean pulled out one more thing from the bag he'd lugged up here. This was what he'd been working on it last night in the woodshop, after he'd finished with the cars.
"Better wings," he said briefly to Sam. Dean still felt a little bad that he hadn't had time to arrange a stone marker. (He had a fair number of skills under his belt, but DIY stone-carving wasn't one of them, and he hadn't had much time.) But he'd wanted to at least improve the wooden wings. He pulled the old gravemarker out and flung it aside, and then held the new one in his hands and studied it critically, Sam silent beside him.
"The wings are more symmetrical, huh?" he said to Sam.
"It's great," said Sam softly.
"I used that book," said Dean. "Patterned it after the illustrations. Tried to get the dimensions right and all." He drew a finger over the wooden carving lightly; he'd even tried to put in the right number of feathers per wing, this time. And the two alulas, on each wing.
He'd painted the wings black, too. "I don't know what color his feathers are," Dean said. He forced himself to correct the verb. "Were. I mean. Were."
Sam made no comment.
"But, the feather I have is black, anyway," said Dean.
The wings were attached to an upright piece that had a bit of room for a name under the wings. Just enough room for a few words. At the last second Dean had gotten unduly worried about what words to put there — even though he knew it really shouldn't matter in the least, somehow it did still matter. "Castiel" or "Cassiel" was one major question, of course. And should there be something else? Maybe "Archangel?" Or should it "Seraph"? Or maybe "Soldier of God?" Or maybe something goopy and high-falutin' like "He gave everything for humanity?"
Dean had gotten nearly paralyzed with these decisions. In the end it just read:
CAS
...under two beautiful black wings stretching up toward the sky.
Dean dug a neat hole for it at the head of the grave, and anchored it firmly in the dirt.
They looked at it in silence. Sam finally cleared his throat. "We should probably head on down," he said. "We've got a long drive tomorrow. I still got some stuff to pack."
"Yeah," said Dean, turning away. "Sure. Let's go."
But Dean came back up at midnight. By himself.
He'd snuck out, after waiting till Sam had fallen asleep.
The moon was bright, and Dean didn't even need his flashlight. He walked up the path half by memory, half by moonlight. He was carrying a brand-new hard-shell guitar case in one hand — the last purchase he'd made on his shopping trip.
Once he got up to the grave, he settled himself on the folding chair, popped the case open and pulled out the guitar. He'd tuned it earlier that evening, but the strings had tightened in the frigid air and all the notes had gone sharp. Dean took a moment to tune it again. Then he said:
"Castiel, Castiel, Castiel."
He cleared his throat.
"Guess this is my last trip up here. Sam thinks we're taking off tomorrow morning, and I know he's thinking we'll probably never make it back. He's even made some weird plan to get the bunker key to Jason if we don't come back." Dean paused and cleared his throat. "Truth is I'm taking off tonight, on my own, in the Continental; he just doesn't know. Cause... it is pretty sure to be a one-way trip, you know? And, I still want Sam to have a chance here. You and me, we didn't have a chance, you know?... But Sam still has a chance."
He gave the guitar a light strum. "I'm gonna try to find the Crown," he said. He chuckled a little. "Fool's errand, I know. I'm heading to that gate on Mount Shasta. To go into the fire and try to find the damn Crown and see if I can figure out what to do about the Darkness. I know it's probably just a wild goose chase. But, I gotta try to put this right if I can. It was my fault. It wasn't you and Sam's fault, you know. It was my fault. And... thing is, Cas..." He paused. "If I do find the Crown, it's supposed to cause 'destruction,' right? That's what Oshossi said. If I die there, it's supposed to annihilate human souls, right? So... that's the other reason I don't want Sam to come along. And... if I succeed, great. If not... well... then I go poof. And, thing is, that sounds really good to me. Perfect solution, really." He took a breath. "No Heaven, which I know I wouldn't even go to, but even if I did, they'd probably make me see some fake version of you... which would be, just, pretty horrible, actually, to know it wasn't really you. And I would know, you know. And... much more likely... no Hell." He paused a moment, and said softly, "No Hell where I'd be torturing you again."
Dean was silent a long moment. He looked up at the moon. "No nothing. It sounds pretty good. Cause, honestly, Cas, if you just went poof... then I want to follow you. I want to go poof, too."
He touched the guitar lightly, settling his left hand around the neck. "But I thought I'd sing for you one more time. I know you're probably not hearing this... but..."
A soft strum.
"I know you've never heard any of this," Dean said slowly. "You haven't heard anything I've said, all along. None of these prayers. Have you."
Another soft strum.
"But, well. Just the same... Here's your songs. I still can't play all of them but here's the ones I know."
He played all the songs he could, stumbling through them as best he could.
"Morning Has Broken."
"Puff The Magic Dragon."
"Rocky Mountain High," of course.
"Cry Me A River."
"Where Have All The Flowers Gone."
"I'll Fly Away."
Every song he knew. It took almost an hour. It got colder, and Dean had to stop and re-tune several times, but he went through every song he could. By memory, the chord transitions and the lyrics all stored away in his head.
He found, quite soon, that when his throat choked up, which it started doing pretty frequently, he could always still keep strumming. Often he had to stop singing, but he could always keep strumming.
Eventually the last note of "I'll Fly Away," rang off into the silence.
Dean took a long breath, listening to a night wind sighing softly through the treetops.
"I like your songs, Cas," he said. "I always did."
He loosened the strings carefully — he knew the guitar wouldn't be played again for quite some time, if ever, and he'd read that it was important to loosen a guitar's strings partway if you were putting it in storage. So Dean loosened all the strings, and set the guitar gently in the brand-new case. Dean had invested in a good case, a sturdy hard-shell with a thick velvet lining and strong brass clasps, and he'd put all Cas's song sheets in the bottom. They fit pretty well there, under the guitar. There was also a little sack of silica desiccant, and a bag of little cedar chips with some protection runes on it, to keep the guitar dry and free from mildew.
It was a good case. The case was probably worth more than the guitar, actually. But it was worth it, to keep the Cas's guitar safe, and his songs, through unknown years of storage down in the bunker's basement.
Dean flipped the clasps shut.
"Couple last things," he said, standing from the chair and hefting the case in one hand. "I got you a better gravemarker. A little better, at least. I tried to get the wings right this time. It's still not stone, but I realized, stone wears away too... everything wears away in the end, huh? So, it's just wood, but, it's got a polyurethane coating so I think it might last a couple years, anyway." Dean scuffed one foot over one of the patches of freshly turned earth. "And also, Sam and I planted some flowers. I was thinking, maybe Sam was right about you liking flowers? He said you liked flowers, earlier." Dean gave a little laugh. "I thought he was nuts but later I got to thinking... he knew you pretty well, didn't he? Maybe better than I did, to be honest. And I thought, maybe he's right? I mean, you liked those bees and all... so..." Dean shrugged his shoulders. "So I got you some flowers. They're just bulbs but they're supposed to grow in the spring. Hundred bulbs for thirty bucks. Seemed like a deal so I got a couple bags. Daffodils and crocuses. Sam and I just planted them all. Doesn't look like much now, but if you come back in the spring when they're blooming—
Dean's voice choked off suddenly. The word "blooming" seemed to clog in his throat.
He swallowed and took a couple breaths. "In the spring," he went on doggedly, "They're supposed to grow into daffodils and crocuses. And a couple of tulips and some damn thing called a hyacinth. I didn't know what kind of flowers you might like but the pictures on the bags were pretty, and I thought, I don't know, I thought you might like 'em."
Dean stared down at the roughened earth, thinking, Cas is never going to see the flowers.
Dean's voice degenerated further as he tried to keep talking. "The flowers'll be pretty, Cas, they'll be real pretty. The daffodils'll be yellow. The crocuses are suppose to be a mix, blue and yellow and white and purple. The tulips are red... The daffodils and crocuses, I got them cause I could get so many, to be honest, but the tulips, and the hyacinths, I got a few of those on purpose, cause..."
Dean stopped.
Tulip, red: Declaration of love.
Hyacinth: Constancy of love.
"Wish you could see 'em.," Dean soldiered on. "If you could be here in the spring, you'd, you'd, you'd see... the flowers'll be pretty, they'll be all over, a whole bunch of 'em, so.. Ah, shit." Dean pressed one hand to his forehead, trying to fight back the uneven hitches that were jolting his breath. His voice went about two pitches higher than usual as he swore a few more times. "Shit. Fuck, Cas. Dammit."
The flowers weren't the important part. The flowers didn't even matter.
"A fucking tulip bulb doesn't do a damn thing, does it," Dean whispered, gripping his forehead tightly now. "I'm so fucking sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Cas, if I could turn back time I would. If I could undo everything... If I could just get you back, dammit, Cas... I would do anything. I'd have sold my soul. I swear, Cas, I'd have sold my soul again, and I tried to, I tried, I'd have sold my soul for you."
He dragged the back of his jacket sleeve roughly over his eyes. His arm slowed as he did this, and he stood there a moment with one forearm over his face, eyes buried in his sleeve, hs other hand clamped tightly onto the guitar case.
"I should've told you," Dean whispered, his face still hidden in his jacket sleeve. "I never did. Fuck, I shoulda told you, I shoulda told you, fuck, dammit, I'm so damn sorry, shoulda told you." He lowered his arm at last, staring down at the little black wings, nearly invisible in the night. "I shoulda told you I loved you. I shoulda told you; I shoulda done something about it, I was just such a fucking coward... I would give anything to have told you. I would give anything if I could tell you now, anything to just tell you that one thing, Cas: I did love you."
He touched the feather in his pocket and added, "I still do."
It was a long couple minutes before Dean moved again. At last he drew a long breath.
"All right, angel," he whispered. "I guess that's it for us, huh?"
He looked around one last time, at the little gravemarker and the dark hill. It was time to say goodbye, of course, and Dean had even intended to say exactly that — "Goodbye, Cas," — but now Dean found his old No goodbyes rule kicking in.
The words Goodbye, Cas simply wouldn't come.
Instead Dean found himself saying, "I still got your feather."
He raised one hand to his pocket to pat the feather again, and said, "And I'm gonna keep it. If you don't mind."
Dean turned and left.
He walked down the hill for the last time, leaving the little grave on the hill. He left behind the folding chair, the planks, the string, the backpack still neatly sealed away in its trash bag, and the new gravemarker and the old. He walked away from the quiet hill where two hundred sleeping daffodils and crocuses would someday bloom. Yellow and white and blue and purple, they would bloom, when springtime came. Purple hyacinth and red tulip, all of them, they would bloom. Dean pictured it in his mind, as he walked away. The flowers would all bloom, come spring; they'd bloom quietly, silently, opening their lovely colors to the world. They'd sway in the wind here on the hill; they'd drink up the soft rains, and they'd shine in the sun, up here under the wide sky. Castiel would never see them, and neither would Dean, but the flowers would bloom just the same.
A/N -
Up next: Into the fire, at last.
And where oh where did the parrot go? Please stay tuned.
Next chapter Fri or Sat. It might be short but there will at least be something.
As always, please drop me a note if you liked anything about this. These days especially, I love to hear from you. Sorry again for my lack of replies recently - I'm still having to limit laptop typing-time. But please know I read and cherish every comment.