A/N -
This is another long one but it wouldn't break easily into 2 pieces, so here's the whole thing. (BTW there is a mention of "cows." If that's confusing - this fic was originally written for readers who had just finished Forgotten, and the cow reference is a callback to a Forgotten epilogue in which Cas mentioned to Sam that tornados sometimes carry cows to Antarctica.)
Anyway, it's Christmas Day, they've survived the snow-nado, and here we go:
Early the next morning — Christmas morning — Dean and Sam dug the Impala out and managed to get to town, through the just-plowed streets. They were both relieved to find the town mostly intact. (They'd both been pretty sure the tornado had missed the town, judging from the path it had been taking, but just the same it was awfully reassuring to see Lebanon still standing.)
The hardware store had opened up, despite the holiday, so that Lebanon's citizens could get the tools they needed to clean up from the tornado damage. The store employees informed Sam and Dean that nobody had died. Nobody was even hurt, and the damage was mostly restricted to a lot of broken windows.
A number of cows were missing, though.
Dean and Sam glanced at each other at that news, and then bought what they needed to start making repairs.
The next week passed in a flurry of work. Dean ended up learning far more about generator-repair than he'd ever really wanted to know; Sam got all the jumbled books retrieved from all the far corners of the bunker, though it would take ages to sort them out (for now he just piled them in huge stacks on the library tables); and Cas spent many long hours scrupulously sweeping and wiping every surface in the bunker, till all the millions of infinitesimal glass shards had finally been removed. And over the next days, Sam, Dean and Cas all developed a fair amount of skill at repairing glass and re-glazing windows.
Sam and Dean both eventually got used to being high up on a ladder by a window, asking Cas for a tool, and having the tool delivered a moment later by a gigantic shining wing.
It was nice to have so much physical work to do, actually. Good ol' manual labor. It gave them something to focus on.
Especially, it was nice to have something to focus on other than the elemental problem. Because once the euphoria of survival had started to fade, reality had started to set in: Not one but five elementals were cutting vast swaths of destruction across the continent.
Dean and Sam discussed it several times, but decided they couldn't do anything immediately. For one thing, they still had no idea where to go. Even in the case of that hurricane elemental, the one Cas that thought was being controlled from southern Florida... well, "southern Florida" was a pretty big target when you started thinking about planning a realistic battle strategy. Also they still had some gear to replace: Sam's pistol, various other weapons, some jackets and some other equipment had all gone missing in the storm.
But most of all, there was Cas.
They couldn't leave Cas till Mac came. Dr. Mac was due to fly in on the ninth of January, a Friday, and Sarah was coming too. (Dean had bought them both plane tickets to Lincoln, Nebraska). Mac had said he was prepared to take the pins out that Saturday if all looked well.
No way were Sam and Dean going to leave Cas alone for that. No way.
Plus, Dean was starting to develop a plan for how to bring Cas along to Florida— assuming Mac cleared Cas for travel. Dean was already working on the plan. But he needed a little more time.
One night that week, just before New Year's, Dean awoke to find Castiel sitting on the barstool in Dean's bedroom.
Little pressure points seemed to be moving slowly all over Dean's feet, and he finally realized it was Meg. She must have come in with Cas, and was walking all over Dean's feet now, looking for a place to settle down; it was this, actually, that had woken Dean up.
"Cas?" Dean called softly, to the dark Castiel-shape on the barstool. "Is that you? Is that Meg?"
"Oh," said Castiel softly. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to wake you. I forgot she followed me in."
"Something wrong, Cas?" Dean said, flipping the bedside light on.
"No, nothing wrong," said Cas. "Just thought I'd come in here and sit for a while. Just for a change of pace."
It turned out Cas just seemed to want to hang out a bit. Maybe chat a bit. So they chatted, about nothing much. About how the window repairs were going. About the movies they'd seen; turned out Cas had a number of thoughts about the fate of the misfit toys from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
Dean avoided any mention of wings, of feathers, or elementals. No point worrying Cas unnecessarily till Mac got here and they really saw how it was healing.
At last Dean said, "Probably time for you to get back to bed, huh? It's late. You need some sleep."
Cas nodded easily. He slid off the stool, picked up Meg, and left, with just a quiet "Goodnight, Dean," as he slipped out the door.
But a couple times after that, Dean woke to find Castiel back in his room in the middle of the night. Sometimes Cas wasn't even on the stool, but was just perching on the very edge of the corner of Dean's bed, a bit awkwardly, so that his broken wing could slant diagonally over the corner of the bed. And occasionally Dean heard footsteps in hallway in the night, and when he poked his head out the door he spotted Cas walking through the hallway to Sam's room, apparently to check on Sam as well. (Later Sam reported he'd had a long talk with Cas in the middle of the night about the flight capabilities of the flying monkeys from Oz.)
Dean realized it was much like how Cas used to visit Dean back when they'd first met. Back before the Apocalypse, Dean had sometimes woken to find Castiel standing in his room, or sitting on the edge of his bed. Eventually it had become clear that Cas had a habit of wanting to "watch over" Dean — and now, apparently, Sam too.
Some angel thing, Dean decided, when he woke once more in the night to realize his own door was closing, Cas apparently having just left. There was a faint meow from Meg, a rustle of feathers, and then Cas's soft footsteps padding down the hall to Sam's door.
Could Cas possibly still be thinking of himself as the Winchesters' guardian? Was he, perhaps, instinctively acting as a guardian angel, even now, after all this time?
Or did he just want some company? Some reassurance that he wasn't alone?
Eventually it stopped happening, and Sam reported that he hadn't been woken up in a while either. But Dean wondered, now and then, if Castiel might still be visiting them at night, patrolling diligently and watching over them both, and had simply gotten better at not waking them up.
Finally every window had been repaired, and the bunker was spic and span again, the heat and electricity on. There had only been one thing they really couldn't fix: Sam and Dean just couldn't figure out what to do about the map-table. The gorgeous map on the top was totally shattered, and replacing that would involve a custom-cut, custom-painted glass job that was beyond their abilities. Finally Dean decided to just cover it up with wood for now.
It got a little more involved than he'd planned, and he ended up making quite a nice pine tabletop, fitted to the shape of the table. Just as a stop-gap solution, really, but Dean did a fairly careful job with it anyway, and when it was finally finished, Sam helped him put it in place, Cas watching from the side.
It fit perfectly on top of the shattered glass. Of course it was just plain, light-colored wood, with nothing like the retro-cool style of the classic old world map, but it would do.
"Hey, that looks all right, doesn't it?" said Dean. "Not bad for a stopgap!"
He felt pretty pleased with how it looked. Then Cas walked over to the table, touched it lightly, pulled a black Sharpie out of his pocket, took the cap off, and started drawing on Dean's brand-new pine table-top with the Sharpie. Drawing a big black squiggly line.
It happened so fast that Dean just stood there blinking, too confused to stop him. Sam said "CAS! What are you doing!" But it was too late, the big squiggly line was already done. Cas had ruined Dean's tabletop! And then Cas added another squiggly line.
And one more squiggly line, and suddenly it was the outline of North America.
Cas said, "I thought I'd put the map back on it." He took a step to his right and started another squiggly line. This one looked like just a messy circle at first, but it soon resolved into a perfect outline of Australia.
Sam and Dean stood there gaping as Castiel drew a perfect map of the world right onto Dean's tabletop. Freehand. With such precision it looked as if he were tracing from an invisible satellite photo that only he could see. Cas was moving fast, too; in just a few minutes he'd sketched in all the major continents.
"Thought it might be a useful reference," said Cas mildly, as he started adding the bigger islands — Madagascar, the UK, New Zealand, Cuba, and more, all rapidly sketched in, perfectly shaped and perfectly placed. He peppered the seas with precisely placed smaller dots for places like Hawaii and the Bahamas. Everything in perfect position. He switched to a blue pen to add some major lakes, and then started putting little upside-down V's to represent the Alps and Himalayas, saying, "That's about what it looks like from above...Well, with the usual problems of fitting it on a two-dimensional surface, but, close enough." He finished the Alps in about twenty seconds and moved to the Rockies, saying, "Of course, the continents keep shifting round but this was about my last view of it all. And I admit I haven't bothered to keep very close track of the political boundaries; they just change so rapidly. But this is what the continents look like from above."
He stepped back and took a look.
The map was perfection.
It was a work of art.
"Cas," said Sam slowly, "I didn't know you could draw."
"Can't everybody?" said Castiel, looking up.
"Not like that, Cas," said Dean. He exchanged a bemused glance with Sam.
"But you just draw what it looks like," said Cas, puzzled. "It's easy." He paused a moment in thought, and then shrugged, looking back down at the map. He started drawing in little sea-serpents in the open-ocean parts, saying, "I thought I'd add in some of the known elementals. Just for reference as you start to plan for your trip."
"Sea serpents?" said Dean, startled. He leaned in for a closer look. Cas switched to a finer-point Sharpie to delicately add in a filigree of scales on the tail of a gigantic sea-serpent that he'd just added by the California coast.
"Elementals, yes," said Cas, working away.
Sam said, sounding equally startled, "Sea serpents are ... elementals?"
"Marine elementals," said Cas, pulling out a green pen to add two large green eyes to the serpent. "A sea serpent is the usual physical form of a marine elemental— an elemental that lives in salt water. And I think this one here, the one I'm drawing now, is probably the one that's been affecting the western coast." Cas paused, and said, "I've seen it a few times before, right here. It's quite large."
"Oh, that's great," said Dean. "'Quite large.' Just great."
Cas finished that elemental, and added a few more. Finally he straightened up and turned to look at Sam and Dean.
"You need to start planning your strategy," he said.
Dean and Sam looked at each other.
Cas was right. The repairs were all done; Mac and Sarah would arrive in just a few days. It was time to start getting some kind of elemental-strategy together. Some kind of battle plan.
"Thing is, Cas," said Sam, "We don't even know where to go. How do we even find out where each 'cowboy' is? We just have no idea where to go."
"Then let's get to work," said Castiel, "and figure it out."
Over the next couple days, Cas and Sam worked together on plotting all known elemental activity on a series of large maps. Cas whipped off another set of stunning maps, these ones of North America only, as pencil overlays on thin tracing paper that could be laid across the permanent map on the wood table. One overlay had all the hurricane tracks and windstorms, another with all the water activity, and third for the fires. It took only a day to get all the maps done, Sam reading out the locations of all known elemental-damage to Cas, and Cas unerringly plotting it all on the maps.
The next day they mostly just sat around staring at the maps glumly.
It was pretty obvious where each elemental was being controlled from. The paths of destruction were clumped in certain areas, as Cas had noticed for the hurricanes. But there was still the same problem they'd noticed with the hurricanes: each of the "clumps" was just too damn huge to know where to go. Hundreds of miles wide, in some cases.
How could they find a single "cowboy," an elemental-controller, within a several-hundred-mile-wide region?
"If we got close enough," said Dean, "maybe we could use that spinning thing that you gave us in Wyoming." Cas had given them a special silver crucifix that, when held suspended from a silver chain, spun counter-clockwise if it was in the presence of "evil intent." It was still in the glovebox of the Impala.
"Not a bad idea, actually," said Castiel, "But that's a short-range tool. You'd have to get to within less than a mile for that to work."
It was Dean who finally spotted something, later that night, as Sam and Cas were listening to the news and adding in the latest hurricane track.
"The Bahamas has been lucky, huh," Dean said. "Look, every single hurricane that zoomed past Florida has dodged the Bahamas." He leaned in a little closer, adding, "Folks on this island here must be counting their lucky stars." He tapped one little island in particular that had been missed by every single hurricane.
Sam and Cas looked at him, and stared down at the map, studying the Bahamas. The Bahamas, of course, were the little group of islands just off of southern Florida, right in the likely control-region for the hurricane elemental. On the map, hurricane tracks veered all around the little Bahamas islands, but none had hit the Bahamas head on. In fact it seemed to be the only spot in all of the eastern seaboard that hadn't been hit.
Looking closer, it was apparent that there was almost a bubble of non-hurricane that was centered directly on the northern part of the Bahamas. Centered on one little island in particular.
"That's Great Abaco Island," said Cas.
Sam pulled his laptop out and typed in a few things. "Ha," he said a minute later, "The media's noticed it too. They're calling it the Lucky Island, or the Hurricane-Proof Island. The folks there swear it's because God blessed them."
"Not God," said Castiel, rather darkly. "Someone else."
"The hurricane cowboy?" said Dean.
Cas said nothing for a moment, looking down at the map. Then he leaned over to study at the air-elemental activity further west on the continent: the blizzards, snow-nadoes, and windstorms. The elemental that had nearly destroyed the bunker.
There was a clear clump of activity from that elemental in the Midwest and Rockies, all the storms clustered together in the middle of the continent. (Their own Christmas-Eve snow-nado track was marked in red pencil.) Yet in the middle of all the storm-tracks that Cas had drawn, there was, again, one little bubble of space where he hadn't drawn anything. A bubble right in the middle of all the destruction, that hadn't been hit by a single storm. The empty bubble was centered near Fort Collins, Colorado.
"Dean," said Cas. "You may have noticed something important. It may be that the elemental-controllers—"
"Cowboys," said Dean.
"Yes, the cowboys— it may be that they prefer not to actually be hit directly by tornadoes or blizzards or hurricanes."
Dean snorted and said, "I can kind of understand that."
Cas went on, "So they steer their elementals all around them, but the elemental never actually hits the cowboy's home base directly. Dean, this might really be useful. We might be able to pinpoint each cowboy's location by looking for these bubbles of inactivity."
They got back to work, now looking for "bubbles of inactivity", and very soon the pattern had come clear. Great Abaco Island and Fort Collins had both been spared by their respective air elementals. The Mississippi River had similarly avoided flooding one precise little spot near Memphis, Tennessee. And the freakishly gigantic, tsunami-like waves from the Pacific Ocean, which had been pummeling almost the entire west coast, had mysteriously avoided hitting Point Reyes National Seashore, right by San Francisco. In fact Point Reyes was the only coastal park that had managed to stay open through all the storms.
They'd pinned down four out of five. The fifth, the fire elemental, was hardest to get a handle on. The fires had been hitting very erratically, somewhat paralleling the path of the Pacific Ocean elemental, hopscotching up and down the coast through northern California, Oregon, and Washington State. But there just wasn't enough information on it yet to draw a good map.
Sam stuck some pieces of red tape on Cas's main map on the pine table-top, at the exact center of each of the four "bubbles of inactivity", and they then they took the overlays off and looked at the five points marked in red. Great Abaco Island. Fort Collins. Western Tennessee. Point Reyes.
Cas said, "You should set out immediately."
"We will. Early next week," said Dean. Mac was due to visit this very weekend. And Sarah too. "Once Mac's gone."
"You should set out now," said Cas. He added, quietly, "People are dying, Dean. And, from a broader perspective— if this Elemental Queen succeeds in taking over this whole continent, surely that's only the beginning. This is only going to escalate further."
Dean considered that, and gave a little half-nod, saying in partial concession, "We'll pack and get our gear together and get ready. But we're not leaving before Mac checks out your wing, Cas, and that's final. We'll get ready, and then we'll see what Mac says and then we'll hit the road. Okay?"
Cas nodded slowly. He looked over at the map, and said, "Well, at least you know where to go now. I believe that's the most I can do for you." He paused a moment, and looked down at the colored pencils in his hand, that he'd been using on the tracing-paper. He set them down on the table, his fingers resting gently on them for a moment.
He looked a little pensive, and Dean had the uneasy sensation that Cas was almost laying down his last weapons, as he put down the colored pencils. As if he felt he'd done all he could, and could do nothing more.
But all Cas said was, "I'll go set out the plates for dinner."
Sam and Dean glanced at each other as Cas walked away.
"You don't want to tell him that we're gonna try to bring him along?" Sam asked softly.
Dean shook his head and whispered, "Gotta wait and see what Mac says. What if he needs another surgery or something? I don't want to get his hopes up till we know for sure exactly what the deal is with his wing. But..." He paused a moment, thinking. "You know that idea I had? I'm going to go make a couple phone calls, right now. Line up a few options. Just in case."
Finally it was Friday, January 9th. Mac and Sarah were both due to arrive in early evening. It had been six weeks to the day from that awful Friday after Thanksgiving, when Ziphius had stolen Sam and Dean away to Zion.
And tomorrow, Saturday, it would be precisely six weeks since Ziphius had broken Cas's wing. And six weeks from his midnight surgery.
Cas was doing a pretty pathetic job hiding his nervousness. All that day he kept walking back and forth all around the bunker, flicking his right wing open and shut almost constantly, in some sort of nervous little wing-tic. Whenever the wing wasn't flicking, it was folded up very tightly.
Dean finally announced, "Cas, you better make some cookies. Sarah and Mac might be hungry when they get here." He pushed Cas off to the kitchen. And strode off to the library to drink some whiskey.
Next morning, Dean and Sam headed off to pick up Mac and Sarah in Lincoln, Nebraska. Then they made a quick swing by the vet school (the University of Nebraska, and its vet school, were in Lincoln) to pick up some equipment that Mac had somehow arranged to borrow, and finally they headed back to the bunker.
Dean and Sam had long ago concluded they'd have to let Mac see the bunker. It was always a little worrisome bringing new people in, but it couldn't be helped, and of course Mac was deeply involved by now. But when they opened the door and ushered Mac in, he wasn't spooked in the least; he was just delighted.
"Wow!" Mac said. He came trotting down the stairs, tugging Sarah along behind him with a hand on one of her arms. "Sarah, I know you said this place was cool but you didn't say how cool. Jake—" (he had been calling Dean "Jake" ever since they'd picked him up at the airport. Dean had tried to correct him three times and had finally realized he was doing it on purpose.) "Jake, that is an extremely cool map! Whoa, check out the telescope, do you ever use it?"
Mac went trotting right through the library, dragging Sarah along and headed right for the telescope, when Cas came into the library carrying a plate of cookies, with his right wing half-opened at his side.
Mac stopped dead and stared at him.
Sarah said with a grin, "He's looking a lot better than the last time you saw him, isn't he?"
"My god, Eagle," said Mac to Cas. "You're looking a hell of a lot better."
Cas said, "I'm feeling better, too. Thank you. It's a pleasure to finally get to meet you properly."
Castiel held out his hand, and after another moment of stunned silence, Mac took a step closer and shook his hand. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off Cas's right wing.
"Cookie?" said Castiel, holding out the plate of cookies in his other hand.
Mac was still just staring at him.
"They're chocolate chip," said Cas.
"Ah. Okay," said Mac at last, taking a cookie slowly and then completely forgetting to eat it. (Sarah seemed to have no such problem, grabbing two cookies and downing them instantly.)
"Forgive me for staring," said Mac finally, making a visible effort to get back in gear. "To be honest I was sort of starting to think I'd imagined the whole thing. Even though I've been checking in with Sarah every day. But, uh. Wow. Wings. I didn't imagine any of it, did I?" He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the right wing, especially when Cas lifted it up a little bit and flared it out slightly. Dean realized it must be the first time Mac had seen Cas moving the wing voluntarily.
Mac was clearly riveted by the wing, which seemed to be particularly shining and glorious just at the moment, the golden lights of the library gleaming off of it. "Your wing," said Mac, "Wow. It's... It's..."
Cas glanced over at the wing, frowning a bit. "It's a little frayed— is that what you mean? And dusty. I know. To be honest, I've had some trouble preening." He actually looked a little embarrassed.
"Actually 'frayed' was not the word I had in mind." said Mac. "More like 'mindblowing.' Okay, anyway..." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, let's get a look at that other wing."
They got the luggage in and set up Mac's borrowed equipment, which included a portable x-ray machine on a wheeled cart that Mac had managed to borrow from the large-animal clinic at the vet school.
But first Mac got Cas to sit down in his movie-chair for a full exam of the wing. Sam and Sarah got the bandages off, and Mac took a look.
Mac spent a few minutes in maddening silence, peering at everything closely.
Dean looked over at Cas's face. Cas looked slightly rigid, a bit still maybe. He was quiet, just staring at the floor, but Dean noticed he had never seen Cas's right wing folded so tightly. It was pressed almost flat to his back, so close to his spine that it was actually starting to bump the other wing. Sam and Sarah even had to pull it back a little to get it out of the way, so that Mac could get a clearer look at the bandaged wing.
Mac took his time saying anything. Sarah looked calm and professional, but Sam was biting his lip and Dean felt like he was about to explode. But Mac just checked the incision silently, and the titanium pins and screws, palpating everything all over, feeing the joints, and occasionally asking Cas if anything hurt.
"Good job here, Eagle," said Mac at last. "This is actually looking very good, from the outside anyway." Dean heaved a sigh, and shot a big smile at Cas, who glanced up at him a bit nervously, his right wing still folded pretty tight. Mac went on, "Incisions are fully healed, swelling's down, and you weren't flinching at all on palpation, which is a good sign. Okay, let me get the x-ray set up and then we'll see how it looks on the inside."
It took a little time to get the x-ray machine all set up. There seemed to be lots of attachments and wires. Partway through the setup, Mac paused and asked, "I borrowed a couple of lead aprons, but if any of you get a lot of radiation exposure, you shouldn't be in the room when we actually start doing the x-rays. How much radiation exposure have you all had? Sarah, you've been a nurse for how long?"
Sarah said, "Nine years. So, some occupational exposure, yeah. Starting when I was twenty basically, when I started nursing school."
"You should clear out of the room then," said Mac. "How about the rest of you?"
"I've had a few," said Sam. "We tend to get a lot of broken bones. Like, several a year."
"Ton of broken bones," agreed Dean, nodding. "We end up in emergency rooms maybe four times a year? Or so? Just little bones, though."
Mac was giving Dean kind of weird look when Castiel piped up with, "I'm exposed to cosmic radiation quite a lot when I'm flying around the Earth. And I used to go to Mars now and then, back when it looked like life might be starting up there. That's a high-radiation trip. That was a while ago though."
There was a little pause. Everybody looked at him.
Cas added, "Well, not as a human, obviously. And usually I just stay in the etheric plane."
"Ri-ight," said Mac. "Of course. Of course. Okay, um, sit over here, Eagle. The rest of you, I'll tell you when to leave."
Cas got settled on his movie-chair and Dr. Mac fiddled with the x-ray machine for a moment. Mac had an odd look on his face, and suddenly he looked up and said, bursting with curiosity that he was completely unable to contain, "I'm sorry, Eagle, I just have to ask, what the hell is the 'etheric plane'?"
"Oh," said Cas, looking a little surprised that Mac didn't know. "It's the dimension next to this one. It's full of ether; hence the name. " Everybody looked at him again, and Cas straightened up a little and began to launch in on one of his professor-type lectures. As Mac continued slowly setting things up, obviously highly distracted by what Cas was telling him, Cas said, "You can think of this dimension and the etheric plane as adjacent pages of paper in a book. There are three dimensions right in a row, actually, right next to each other, like three pages of paper pressed together: the ghostly plane, where souls go right after death and where they sometimes become trapped; then this Earthly dimension, where we're standing now; and then the etheric plane, which angels use to travel in. And you can sometimes see one from another. You can see the Earthly dimension quite well from the etheric plane, but not vice versa."
Mac's hands were moving more and more slowly, and he had rather a blank look on his face now, but Cas just went on, "Anyway, angels usually keep their wings in the etheric plane. When we fly, what actually happens is, the wings pull the vessel— the human body— into the etheric plane. From Earth it looks like we become invisible, but we've just moved to the etheric plane. And then we fly from one place to another in the etheric plane. Flying through the ether. Then when we get to where we want to be, we drop the vessel back down into the Earthly dimension, and from your perspective it looks like we become visible again. It's simple, really."
Mac had ground to a complete halt and was staring at Cas now, holding a couple of x-ray attachments in his hand.
"Simple," said Sarah, with a faint laugh.
"So," said Mac, "Sorry but this is just incredibly interesting— um— just one more question if you don't mind— um— why don't you just fly in this dimension? Why go to all that trouble?"
"It's easier to fly there. The ether supports the wings a bit better. Also gravity is less, obviously, because you're slightly removed from the Earth. You still see the Earth but it affects you less."
"Right," said Mac. "Gravity's less. Obviously."
"Otherwise my wing-loading would be insufficient," said Cas. "Obviously."
"Obviously," said Mac yet again. "The wing-loading. I was wondering about that." Mac shook his head, and stared down at the x-ray attachment in his hands as if he'd entirely forgotten what he was doing.
"Wing-loading?" asked Sam.
Mac looked up and said, "That part I actually did understand. Wing-loading is the body weight divided by the surface area of wing. Basically, are the wings big enough to support the body. I'm guessing you couldn't fly in this dimension, then, Eagle?"
Cas nodded. "This human vessel is far too heavy. If I used my power," — here he hesitated, stopped, and restarted with, "If I had some power, Heavenly power I mean, I could fly with these wings right here on Earth. But with no Heavenly power, if I have to rely just on ordinary physics that is, these wings are not quite big enough for the weight of this vessel."
"But they're huge!" said Dean.
Cas and Mac both gave him a sort of "you-don't-know-about-wingloading-do-you" look.
Mac explained, "They are indeed huge. But a human body is very heavy compared to a bird body."
Cas added, "Though... I have been wondering if could just glide a little bit? I don't know." He looked uncertain. And his right wing had tightened up again.
Mac considered that. "Possible. Or at least break a fall, maybe." He gave a little sigh, and murmured, "This is so fascinating..."
"Fascinating, Captain," said Dean. "Look, we're all fascinated, and I hate to break the mood, but it's actually getting kind of late and we might have to do the x-rays sometime this month.""
"Right, right. Sorry," said Mac, shaking himself back into action. "You're right, we've got limited time. It's just... wow. Angel wings. Okay, we're almost in business, folks."
Mac finally kicked everybody else out of the library (with a "Heigh ho, heigh ho, away from x-ray you go!"). He took all of Cas's x-rays by himself.
Mac called them all back in fifteen minutes later. He was peering at some x-ray images digitally displayed on the computer monitor. Cas had gone back into his glum worried state, sitting very quietly in his chair staring at the floor.
Again there was a rather tense minute of silence while they waited for Mac's verdict.
Then, to Dean's absolute delight, Dr. Mac said, "This is healing fantastically. Look at all that mineralization! Eagle, take a look." Cas's eyes opened wide and he sprang up out of the chair and hurried around to the monitor. Dean, Sam and Sarah all crowded around behind him, and Mac pointed out Cas's wingbone on the x-ray.
It looked perfect. Solid white, all in one piece, no fragments at all. The only clue that it had ever been broken was the series of titanium pins and screws sticking into it.
"This is really good, Eagle," Mac said. He sounded very happy. "See here, see how clean and white everything is. It's really remineralized incredibly well."
Cas said, "My... wing's... healing?" He sounded amazed.
"You bet your angel-booty it is," said Mac, "You know what, this actually looks to me like it's healing up on a bird schedule. Great apes often need more than six weeks for a fracture like this to fully heal; but birds have faster metabolism and can usually heal up a fracture in just three or four weeks. I bet you're healing on bird time."
"Hear that, Eagle?" Dean said with a grin, nudging Cas. "Bird time! You're doing great!" Cas was staring open-mouthed at the screen.
"This is the outcome I was hoping for," said Mac. "This is really good." He studied the x-ray for a long moment more, and then he made Cas sit down, and started to bandage the wing again. Mac went on, "I'm only bandaging it to keep the pins from getting bumped overnight. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to take those pins out tomorrow morning. That means another surgery, but a more minor one; I think we can get this done with you just under local anesthesia, with just the wing numbed, rather than fully under. And I brought all the stuff I thought I might need. Eagle—" Mac leaned around to look at Cas's face. "You on board with this?"
Cas nodded eagerly.
Oh my god, thought Dean. It's a HAPPY-Puppy look.
He'd never seen that look on Cas's face before. Ever.
Mac nodded back. "Then it's a go. Jake, Sam, Sarah, let's get everything laid out — probably your kitchen would be best, Jake, where we can boil things if we need to. We'll do it on that low kitchen table tomorrow. But. Eagle. One more thing." Mac leaned over to look at Cas again. "I need to warn you. You'll still need to move it very gently for six more weeks at least. No flapping. Absolutely no flapping. You could strain a ligament or even tear it if you stretch it too hard, too fast. Got to take it gentle. Got it?"
"No flapping, yes, I understand," said Cas, nodding again.
They began setting up for tomorrow's surgery.
It was a pretty quick surgery this time; it only took about half an hour, with Cas's wing numbed and Cas just given a mild sedative. (Dean was a little sorry that he wouldn't get to chat with loopy-Cas again, but life had these little disappointments, didn't it?) The whole thing was done without cutting into Cas's wing at all. Mac un-bolted all the exterior hardware and then took some time carefully removing each little pin from its position in the bone, but he never had to cut anything. It went smoothly, and all that was left was a series of little holes through Cas's skin where the pins had gone. Sarah dressed each of the little holes with antibiotic ointment, put a tidy band-aid over each one, and gave strict instructions to Cas (and Sam, and Dean) about keeping the tiny wounds clean and watching for signs of infection. And that was that.
The bone was healed! The pins were out! Of course, the wing still had some healing to do. The little holes where the pins had been, deep in the bone, would have to "mineralize". And there was a whole patch of exposed skin, almost like a section of arm, where the fluffy little overlying feathers had been removed. Not to mention the missing tertials, which of course would have to be completely regrown. And Cas still hadn't tried to move the wing. Actually Cas hadn't even gotten a good look at it yet.
But the bone was healed. That had to be good news, right?
By afternoon Cas had got some feeling back in his wing as the local anesthetic wore off. Mac gave him some painkillers (apparently, unscrewing titanium pins right out of a bone did have its downside, no matter how gently it was done). By evening Cas reported he was able to move the wing a little bit, so Mac had him stand up in front of a big mirror (Sam and Dean had wheeled one from the back bedrooms into the library) for one last checkup to assess how the wing was working.
"There now, try and open it," said Mac. "Gently now. Very gently. I'll warn you, it may not have much range of motion yet. Now, go ahead, open it up."
Cas looked hesitantly over at his wing.
"Open up the wing, Eagle," said Mac again.
"I'm trying," said Cas. "It won't open."
"Okay. Relax, let me open it for you a bit."
Mac carefully took hold of the wing and opened it a tiny bit, just unfolding it an inch or so. Cas gasped.
"Is it sore?" asked Mac.
"Yes," said Cas. He was gritting his teeth.
"Where exactly?"
"The... the joints. And... here." Oddly enough Cas gestured to his chest, not the wing at all; he even rubbed the front of his shoulder, right by his collarbone.
Mac's eyebrows went up. "Fascinating," he said yet again. "Extremely interesting. Your pecs may be connected to your wings. That's actually the same muscle that birds use, and that spot you're rubbing is, I'm going to guess, the major wing tendon. Which is just so completely cool. But anyway, the bone's not hurting?"
"Uh... no," said Cas, who seemed a little confused to hear that his wing-tendon was "completely cool."
"It's normal for your joints and tendons to feel sore at first, as long as the bone itself isn't hurting. Try again now."
Cas closed his eyes and gritted his teeth again, and at last the wing slowly opened... a few inches, then a few more. Very slowly. It got only a third of the way open and then Cas took a sharp breath and bit his lip. The wing stopped there.
"Okay, that's great," said Mac.
"It's barely opening at all," said Cas, looking over at the wing with obvious worry.
"That's actually pretty far," said Mac mildly. "Remember what I said before, about how it would probably have a reduced range of motion. In fact wings often get constricted like this after a few weeks of immobilization. The tendons shorten up. But this is pretty good."
"It's not opening enough," insisted Cas. "I can't fly if I can't get it fully open!"
He was beginning to sound distressed, his voice tight, and Sarah leaned in and said, "Cas, I bet it'll open more eventually. You may have to be patient."
"She's right, Eagle. It'll take a while," said Mac. "That turkey vulture whose wing we fixed, last year? Roger's been working with him every morning— Roger trained him to open his wings just before he gets fed, so the vulture kind of gets a little wing-stretching every morning. It's been slow, over a year now actually, but there's steady improvement. He can get it almost the whole way open now."
Cas looked at him sharply.
"Can he fly?" asked Cas.
Mac paused. "Well," he said. "My prediction is that—"
"Can the turkey vulture fly?" Cas interrupted him.
A moment of silence.
Mac confessed, "Not yet. But I'm hopeful."
Cas stared at him a moment, and looked back at his wing.
"Hey," said Dean. "Cas. You have to remember something. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and take a guess that you're probably smarter than the average turkey vulture. You're going to be able to work on this more than the vulture can."
Sam nodded and put in, "If the vulture's stretching his wing once a day, well, you can do two or three times, right? Ten times. Whatever. You can really focus on it."
Cas considered that, and gave a grudging nod. But he still looked pretty worried.
"In fact," said Mac, "Look in the mirror here. I think it's actually more open than you're thinking. You can't fully see it from your angle. Come over here to the mirror." Cas glanced at him, and walked over to the mirror and spread the wing, gritting his teeth again, opening it as far as it would go. A third of the way open. Just barely open enough to see all the flight feathers.
"See, Cas?" said Sarah. "That's really pretty good."
Cas didn't reply.
Cas was staring at his half-open wing in the mirror.
"Cas?" said Sarah again. But Cas didn't seem to be listening.
Slowly he turned around, till his back was to the mirror, his head craned over his shoulder, obviously trying to get a look at the back side of the wing.
His face had gone pale.
"Cas?" said Dean. "You okay?" Mac and Sarah moved in swiftly and grabbed his arms. They tried to walk him back to his chair, but Cas resisted, still staring in the mirror.
"Cas?" said Dean again, "What is it?"
Cas murmured, still looking in the mirror, "They're all gone... "
"What's all gone?" asked Sam.
"The tertials," said Cas. "All the tertials. All of them..." He shook free of Mac and Sarah, shifting around, trying to look at the wing from different angles. He even felt under his wing with one arm. Dean watched as Cas ran his hand along the bottom edge of the wing, where the tertials had been, and saw him freeze as his fingers found the sharp little stubs of the cut-off tertials.
Cas ran his hand slowly along all the little stubs.
He closed his eyes.
Mac looked pretty grim. "I had to cut them off. I'm really sorry, Eagle. It didn't occur to me no one had told you." He shot a dark glance at Dean and Sam, and then said, to Cas, "How big of a problem is this?"
Cas was obviously struggling to regain his composure. He took a few more breaths, and said, "I knew... I knew a few were gone. I just didn't realize it was... all of them."
"There's no way the bone would have healed otherwise," said Mac sadly. "I couldn't get the pins and the external fixator arranged around them, and also they were really pulling the bone-pieces around pretty badly. Just the weight of the feathers alone was pulling the bone-pieces out of position." Mac hesitated, looking at Castiel. "I tried not to cut them, but I couldn't see another solution. Eagle... please tell me angels can grow new feathers."
Cas took another breath, and swallowed. He finally managed to tear his eyes away from the mirror, and he folded the wing up. At last he said, "Yes. Um. Of course. Angels do grow new feathers."
Mac looked very relieved. "Oh, so you do molt, then? You'll molt in new tertials?"
Cas hesitated a moment before answering.
Finally Cas said, "Angels generally molt all the flight feathers once a year. Primaries, secondaries, and, yes, tertials."
"Primaries?" asked Dean. "Secondaries?"
Mac explained, "Primaries are the flight feathers on the outer third of the wing. These ones." He pointed to the longest flight feathers, the tremendous long black ones, on the outer part of Cas's wing. Mac went on, "Secondaries are the flight feathers in the middle of the wing, this section of really sturdy straight flight feathers here in the middle, these white ones. And tertials are the inner third. A mix of white-and-grey, in his case. In birds, tertials do... well, some lift, mostly; I'm not sure what they do in angels. Eagle? Are the tertials important? They seemed awfully strong when I cut them. I was worried, but couldn't find any other way. Do they have some special function?"
"Oh... some lift... like in birds," said Cas. "It's... not a problem."
It's a problem, thought Dean.
Dean asked, "If you molt once a year, then how come you never mentioned it?"
Cas hesitated yet again, and then said, "I didn't think you'd be interested. And it's... it's trivial, really. It's not a big deal."
It's a big deal, thought Dean.
But whatever it was, he would have to worm it out of Cas later.
"Okay, Eagle, it sounds like you only have to go without the tertials for a little while then, right? And then you'll regrow them?" asked Mac. He still looked worried.
Cas looked at him. And for the first time in several minutes, he seemed to notice how worried Dr. Mac was.
Cas lifted his chin.
"I'll be fine," said Cas to Dr. Mac. "I was just startled. Don't worry about it. Doctor, you saved my life, and you put my wing back together. I'm very grateful." Cas looked much calmer now, and he said, "The tertials are... a minor issue."
"Oh, thank god," said Mac with feeling. "You had me worried there."
Cas smiled at him, and said, "It just took me by surprise. I'm really very grateful."
He even shook Mac's hand again, and thanked him again. Mac looked very relieved.
Dean was about ninety-five percent sure it was an act, on Castiel's part. But it was a pretty good act.
Dean tried to ask Cas about it later, but Cas just repeated what he'd said to Dr. Mac; angels molt their tertials every year; he'd just been taken by surprise; it wasn't a problem. Dean still had his suspicions, but didn't get a chance to quiz Cas about it further, for they had to have a big group dinner next, and then Mac sent Cas off to bed, giving everyone else strict instructions that Cas not be disturbed.
Sarah and Mac spent much of the evening touring the bunker, Sarah showing Mac around while Sam and Dean chimed in with the tornado story. Then they sat and talked over physical therapy ideas for Cas (Sarah and Mac both had a lot of ideas; Sam took reams of notes).
Predictably, Mac was fascinated by all the science-related stuff — the back lab, and the telescope. And when they got back into the library, which still had the stacks and stacks of jumbled books all over the table, Mac made a beeline for a book he'd spotted at the bottom of a stack.
"Check this out, Sarah. Some sort of a joke textbook?" he said, pulling it out and showing the title to her.
She read out loud: "An Introduction to the Biology of Werewolves and Other Metamorphosing Creatures. Seriously?"
Mac flipped it open. "Wait," he said, paging through it. "Is this for real?"
Dean peered over Mac's shoulder at the book. "Probably," said Dean. "Put it this way, there's a lot of species out there that I'm pretty sure you don't have in your zoo. And there's all kind of crazy science books here that we haven't catalogued yet."
"I've been trying to catalog this library for years," put in Sam, bringing over another stack of jumbled science books. "But it's huge. I gotta admit I never got to the science section. I've mostly been working through the history and mythological lore."
"Told you you'd love the library, didn't I?" said Sarah to Mac. "I was kind of busy with Cas when I was here but I found some great stuff. Every bunch of books has something amazing—" (she pulled out another book from the stack Sam was holding) "Like, check this out, 'The Nutritional Needs of Vampires and Vampire-Bats.' You could spend a lifetime going through this library."
"And whoa, check out this one here," said Mac, grabbing another from Sam's stack as Sam set it on the table. Mac read from the spine: "The Anatomy of Chimeras: Minotaurs, Griffins and their Kin... Oh man." He flipped through both books a little, and said to Sam and Dean, "Do you two mind if I look through these a bit more? I've never seen anything like this. My god, check this out... The number of species!" He'd already burrowed into the chimera book, muttering "This is extremely cool," the book spread open in one hand, while Sarah grinned at him from across the table.
Dean and Sam had to smile, too, at how mesmerized Mac seemed to be by a pile of weird old biology books. Sam pushed a chair over to Mac and said, "Take a seat." Mac sank down slowly, already lost inThe Anatomy of Chimeras, as Dean added, "Sorry it's all a total mess right now. The tornado totally ripped the library apart and we haven't had a chance to get it sorted out. Here, you know what, why don't you have a drink while you go through them?" Dean went over to the bar and poured out a few glasses of whiskey.
"Let's put 'em in order!" said Mac. He set down The Anatomy of Chimeras and was started flipping through some of the other science books. Sarah joined in too, clearly in her element, saying, "How about, botany here, weird species here, alchemy books over here..." as she rapidly sorted them into neat little stacks.
"Yes..." murmured Mac, "I'll just sort these out, put 'em in order." Though already it seemed like Sarah was doing the sorting, and Mac was more doing the sitting-and-reading. Mac went on, "Then we get to look at them, Jake, and you get your books sorted. It's the least we can do."
Sam laughed at that, and said, "You don't have to do a damn thing, Mac. You saved Cas."
Mac looked up at him.
He set down The Anatomy of Chimeras and said to Sam, "Treating your friend Castiel has been the greatest privilege of my life."
Mac swiveled a bit to look at Dean too. He said, "Sam. Dean." He'd suddenly gone all serious, which seemed to also involve switching to Dean's real name. "You might have noticed, my bedside manner isn't the greatest. Actually it's nonexistent." Sarah, standing beside him, rolled her eyes, but Mac said, glancing up at her, "It's true, Sarah. Because, all my other patients are wild animals, and they're always trying to kill me and none of them can talk anyway, so my usual bedside manner is to wrestle my patient to a standstill and muzzle him." He turned back to Sam and Dean. "What I'm getting at is, I don't really have any practice at all at breaking bad news gently and cheering patients up and and giving them hope. I could see that Castiel was rattled by those missing feathers for some reason, and also by the wing not opening. I'm sorry I had to tell him about the vulture not flying, but he asked, and he deserves the truth. And he doesn't even know the worst of it." Mac was silent a moment, and then he said, "The truth is that it's not just the vulture. The truth is... virtually all big birds that have injuries like this will never fly again. But Dean, Sam, can you both please convey to him, he's not a bird. Dean, what you said was exactly right: he can think. He can plan, he can work, and most of all he can do physical therapy, and you guys can help him. And he's a whole different species anyway! What I mean is, he definitely shouldn't give up. So... can you keep him going? Give him some hope, maybe?"
"We're on it," said Sam.
"Sam and I both. We'll keep him going," Dean added.
"On that note—" said Sam, passing around the glasses of whiskey. Mac raised his glass.
"To our imperial eagle," said Mac. "May he fly again."
They all clinked glasses, and took very big swigs.
A/N -
I know I know, the tertials still aren't explained! I ran out of room. That's coming in the next chapter.
Please let me know if you are liking this! (And if you REALLY want to make my day, tell me a scene you liked. Bless those of you who tell me something like that every time, you keep me going!) More soon.
Flight readers - you probably have already picked out the major changes. A couple that I thought were kind of interesting, that become apparent in this chapter, are: (1) gestures of affection between Dean and Cas can easily been broadened to include Dean, Cas, AND SAM. This turned out to work better than eliminating the gestures of affection entirely! Instead I found I can simply add Sam in and it immediately shifts gears to be more "affectionate family feelings" than hints of romance. In this chapter, this is why I chose to have Cas visit Sam as well as Dean in his nightly wanderings, rather than having no nightly wanderings at all. (2) Similarly - you probably can already see what Sarah's new trajectory is going to be in this fic. What do you think? You probably can see the potential: TFW stays nonromantic, but Sarah can still be heavily involved in the Winchesters' lives, and a certain other character now gets to be involved with the Winchester family as well. Again I was searching for a way to keep all the affection in there, but simply shifting gears so that it becomes family-affection rather than romantic affection. In other words, than excluding a character from a given interaction, I'm finding I can simply add other characters in. Hope it works; it's certainly an interesting writing process.
Hope you are enjoying this! Drop me a line if you are! I love to hear from you. :)