HAVING A BALL
Chapter 14
"On-call angels? Who knew?" The quip slipped out reflexively, Dean half-surprised it had worked at all.
Castiel, however, did not look happy or even benevolent. "I am not your personal servant. You dare to summon me to fix one of your trivial human hunts –"
Dean gave a loud laugh, clearly surprising both Castiel and Sam – well at least it halted Sammy trying to glare him into spontaneous combustion for a few seconds – "Hello, could you contemplate checking your ego at the door for a sec'? I'm Dean Winchester, and I will need help hunting from some wet-behind-the-wings, been-out-of-the-game-for-two-thousand-years Sammy-lite nerd roughly a week past never. All you have do Cast-off, is protect the other angel." Stepping forward, Dean forcefully opened the rear door of the car and gestured with a wave of his hand at the tiny child nestled in his hipster.
Castiel opened his mouth then paused, a very satisfying expression of confusion clouding his face as his senses told him that the obliviously sleeping toddler simultaneously was and was not a real angel. "She - has Grace, but it's artificial…"
"Whatever." Dean shut the door. "All you have to do is nothing. Just stand here, don't move, and anything that isn't us comes to the car, kill it. Sam, shotguns." Going to the trunk, Dean popped the lid and tossed a 12-gauge to Sam, taking a second for himself, before closing the lid again and just walking away towards the main doors into the hotel, which they had firmly shut behind them after taking the precaution of find a spare set of keys behind the front desk.
Sam was beside him, the look of his face virtually apoplectic. He needed Sam sharp; his younger brother could pout when Pete and Co were restored. "Sulk later, Sam –"
"SulK!" It is very difficult to explode with rage yet keep your voice to a whisper and your body language contained, but Sam did a very credible job of the task. "Did you down a whole bottle of stupid and crazy pills when I wasn't looking?!"
Okay, so it looked like they were going to have a little nightcap of 'furious argument' after all. Dean also kept his voice lowered as they hovered outside the main entrance, though he suspected that Castiel, and any other angel who cared to, could hear a pin being dropped in Paraguay if they wished. "What would you suggest were the alternatives, Sam? Ask Bobby or Ellen to drive three hundred miles to get here in under an hour? Or have you been hiding Ruby's super-duper teleportation powers from me as well now? Castiel was the only option left."
"Oh yeah, and what if Castiel's pyromaniac pal shows up? Good ole 'let's flash fry every living thing in sight'?"
"I seriously doubt Uriel will be bothered enough to get off his cloud." Dean retorted – at least I can hope.
"And what if the thing that's doing this turns out to be a demon?"
"We got the dagger back, genius, remember? We can use that."
"Why should I?"
"Don't go there, Sam." Dean's own anger was front and central. "You know that using those powers is wrong."
"Why, because Castiel says so?"
"He's an angel!"
"So's Uriel!" Sam's face was almost beetroot with anger as he hissed at Dean. "Or so they claim. You see a glimpse of Castiel's supposed wings for all of two seconds but instantly come down all righteous wrath on me because Castiel – whom you've known for all of five seconds – tells you that me saving people by using my powers rather than killing them along with the demon courtesy of the dagger is bad?"
"Just spit it out, Sam. Say what you mean."
"Alright, tell me one thing, Dean. Would you have been so rapid in your rush to judgement and to sing from the 'Sam's a bad boy' rap sheet if the first angel you ever met had been Uriel and not Castiel?"
…
"That's what I thought."
"That's beside the point, Sam –"
"That is my point! Dean, you are the best hunter I've ever met, and there are a lot out there who believe the same thing. No matter how much I hated being a hunter myself I always felt that pride when I was able to say to veterans like Bobby and Jefferson that 'Yeah, I'm Dean Winchester's brother.'"
Dean didn't know what to say, and felt himself blushing. He'd never really been aware of being any better than hunters like Dad or Bobby or Pastor Jim or Caleb…
"…But all Castiel did was flick you a glimpse of wingtip like a Victorian maiden flashing a hint of stocking and you've jettisoned your scepticism and hunter intuition wholesale. Forget hook, line and sinker, you're swallowing whole fishing trawlers!"
"Why, because I believe Castiel is an angel and because I agree with him that you using the powers you got from Azazel against other demons can only end very, very badly?"
"No, because you have this massive blind spot of gullibly accepting whatever Castiel tells you 'is' as, well, Gospel."
"So you're saying that Castiel is lying to me?"
"No, he's editing."
"Huh?"
"Okay, example one," sniped Sam, despite their continued whispering managing to inject full sarcasm into his tone, "your little Back to the Future trip. Have you asked Castiel to explain all the stuff he oh so conveniently left out?"
"What stuff?" Dean remembered all too well the anguish of not being able to prevent his grandparents' murders and the horror of Mom making that fateful deal with Azazel.
"For starters, one second Dad is trying to mediate a fight between Mary and her Dad, next thing he knows he's 'coming round' in Mary's arms on the blacktop with a humongous headache and no Daddy Campbell in sight. How did she explain away the gory murders of both her parents to a fiancé who knew they were alive and well an hour earlier? What about the Lawrence PD, and her own future father-in-law, since you said Grandpa Winchester was obviously alive in 1973. Then there's grand-uncle Ed. Mary must have been in sufficient contact with Edward Campbell and their hunter friends for him to know enough, or be scared enough, to junk avenging the murder of his brother and sister-in-law to them all staying under the radar so well that it took Azazel nearly 20 years to find him and the others."
"I don't know." Dean confessed reluctantly.
"And you never even thought to wonder what other potentially important facts have apparently slipped Castiel's celestial mind."
"That doesn't change the fact that using the powers Azazel infected you with to attack demons is not just wrong, but dangerous, and yes, Sam, crazy-and-stupid."
"Oh really? I repeat: says who?" retorted Sam. "And since we're on the subject, what about Missouri Moseley and Pamela Barnes."
"What about them?"
"Two powerful psychics, Dean. But Azazel never dripped his blood into their infant mouths. For all you – or I – know, I could have been born with this power –"
"Oh, so the superheroics are all your own work –"
"Think about it, Dean!" Sam urged, losing his snarling tone in his earnestness. "Azazel targeted people who had certain latent or low-level abilities, because he knew they would become a parent to stronger children. Azazel's plan was to use the psychic kids like a guy illegally hooking up his trailer to the grid to get cable and utilities for free. The guy can't do that if the power lines and telegraph poles aren't already there in the first place –"
"And you and the other kids had to have been born with some level of abilities already there for Azazel to have something to connect to." Dean realised; otherwise why didn't he bleed in my mouth and the other special kids' siblings' mouths to cover all the bases too?
"Exactly my point – yet you can't or won't see Castiel and company's rank hypocrisy. Talk about pots calling kettles!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean challenged.
"It means that I saw the wings too, Dean. I was treated to a close-up and personal view when Mr 'Mankind Are Mud Monkeys' got in my face and threatened to murder me."
Uriel had threatened to kill Sam…before his go around with Dean in that barn where, as Dean, Sam, Ruby and Anna had actually counted on him to do, Uriel had given Dean the 'We'll kill Sam or Anna, your call' routine?
Accurately interpreting his brother's expression, Sam snapped, "What do you think gave me the idea for you to 'let' Uriel coerce you into 'betraying' Anna in the first place? Or made me so sure he would use that 'Sam or Anna dies you choose' routine to 'break' you instead of physical torture or some other mind-game?"
"When?"
"November Second, 2008." Sam enunciated the words bitterly. "You may remember it was the day after we stopped Tweedle-Crazy and Tweedle-Crazier slaughtering one thousand two hundred fourteen people. I'm packing our gear when Uriel's suddenly sat on the couch. One second he's all commiserating about how hard it must be for me – the anniversary of my mother's murder, followed twenty-two years later on the same night by my fiancée's murder. Next second it's flaring wings and totally in my face with the fact that I was only alive because I was still useful, and the second I ceased being useful I'd be murdered. And don't you dare stand there and try and say he was just trying to frighten me into obeying that no-powers diktat."
"And you're still using your powers?" Dean felt the bile of real fear sting his throat – he had no real or effective way, yet, of protecting Sam from Uriel – or Castiel…or Alistair. "And you're making smart-ass 'stupid pill' remarks to me? Isn't that some pot on kettle action?"
"Maybe, but I'll tell you where the real hypocrisy comes in, Dean. Y'see I've lived through that useful-for-now speech before. Before Uriel regurgitated it, the last time I heard it was in that abandoned mining town before Jake Tulley used his Kabar knife to sever my spinal cord. Azazel played me the whole riff, only that time it was 'Dean is useful for now but he gets in my way once and I'll kill him'. Do you know how terrified I was every day that Azazel would manage to kill you and I wouldn't be able to stop it?"
"I didn't know that."
Sam raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, his expression changing from anger to weariness. "Look, Dean, my powers…still scare me probably more than they do you. And, okay, maybe Castiel is right when he says me using Azazel's fire to fight hellfire is going to end in tears. But I see no reason why I should kowtow to the divine party line when like George Orwell's animals looking from pig to man and back again, I look at Uriel and Azazel and see no discernable difference between psychotic angel getting his rocks off on mass murder and psychotic demon getting his rocks off on mass murder." Sucking in a much-needed breath he bluntly admitted, "Honestly, if I was forced to pick risking turning my back to Uriel or to Ruby, I know which one I'd pick –"
"And it wouldn't be the rep from the Choir Invisible, you've made that perfectly clear." Dean snapped; Sam's hand visibly tightened on the shotgun, and it occurred to Dean that both of them had had stupid pills if they were having a raging argument when they were both armed to the teeth.
"Oh really? Do you happen to remember telling me that if I wasn't your brother, you'd hunt me?" Sam charged.
"Yes." Dean didn't flinch, though inwardly he recoiled from the memory of his angry outburst.
"Well right back at yah, bro'. Remember when you told me about how Azazel taunted you, 'How sure are you that what you brought back is 100 percent pure Sam'? What do you think has been keeping me awake staring at the ceiling cracks night after night – I can practically feel that so not-cute red-hand brand Castiel slapped on your shoulder."
"You have no comprehension – "
"You were in Hell, Dean – and our little Celebrity Deathmatch with each other courtesy of the Siren demonstrated your wicked pain inflicting skills, pun intended. You were there for forty years according to your reckoning – and for the last ten of them you got off the rack and were helping Alistair torture people – was one of them Bela?!"
The air was still in Dean's lungs but they spontaneously seized up. The gorge rose in his throat as his head swam and he knew he was going to hurl…
Hands gripped his upper arms, holding him upright, digging in, hurting, but oh sweet thank you that physical pain was enough for him to regain control, shoving the contents of his belly back down where they belonged. He looked up into Sam's – Sammy's – anguished face, the sheen of moisture across his brother's eyes that Sam didn't bother to hide.
"Dean," Sam muttered his brother's name in an encompassing apology and request for forgiveness.
"I don't know if she – I can't – " Dean choked out the words – so many screams, so many faces, so much shame.
"Dean, it's alright, you didn't…she wasn't one of them," Sam whispered in self-loathing, clasping his brother's shoulders and feeling the tremors wracking him.
"You don't know that – " I don't know that.
"Dean, Ruby asked me how many people I thought held out against some no-name imp for three hours, or even three days, never mind thirty years against a monster like Alistair. Ruby said that Alistair was vicious but unimaginative, and she was right. I wish with all my heart that he had been stupid enough and unoriginal enough to try and use Bela against you, because if he had, he would never have broken you Dean, never."
"You don't know that," Dean whispered again.
Sam didn't flinch or look away from Dean's despairing eyes. They'd both gone past the point of no return in this confrontation. "Dean, I know you. We both know Bela Talbot wasn't the world's nicest person, but what she suffered as a child was monstrous, and she didn't deserve to suffer any further. I wish Alistair had played some riff about how he was keeping Bela all safe to be your virgin torture victim, because it would only have made you fight harder to resist him; you could never have hurt anyone that you knew, not even Bela. She couldn't have been one of the souls you attacked, you wouldn't have continued if it were her."
Do you really believe that, Sammy, or are you trying to convince yourself as much as me? What would you say if I admitted that I have no idea if one of my victims was Bela, but sometimes in the swirling rush of screaming faces, I think that one of them might have been Ruby…
Sam ploughed on, right here and right now unable to take much more of their mutual evisceration, of either self or each other, but needing to make his point. "Every day last year I used to look in the mirror and tell myself that Gordon Walker was deranged and wrong about me. Think about it Dean, you were desperate to keep me away from other hunters because you were afraid they'd pick the 'fanatical psychopath camp' of opinion about me. But how many hunters do you think wouldn't be locking and loading if they knew that you had been resurrected after four months' dead and yanked out of Hell no less by a supposed angel? That's not even counting any of them who came to a decision after spending just five minutes of quality time in something like Uriel's company."
"So now you worry Gordon Walker was right about both of us?" the reflux acid still stung Dean's throat, making his voice hoarse.
"Aren't you?" Sam challenged. "How would you have expected me – or someone like Dad – to react on finding out that you routinely consort with winged homicidal maniacs? You're living in a glasshouse and heaving boulders at me? I know exactly what Ruby is Dean, and I make sure I never forget it for a second. What's your excuse?"
"Layla Rourke," shot back Dean softly, feeling a twinge of satisfaction at momentarily silencing Sam's tirade. "Like she said, real faith remains, even when the miracle doesn't happen. I thought you of all people would understand that, Sam."
And finally the last residue of that self-righteous angry mask crumbled away from the edges of Sam's face, leaving the more gentle features of his baby brother, as Sam made a soft choking sound that he clearly meant to be a laugh, but was perilously close to a strangled sob.
"Not anymore." Sam squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his fingers over them wearily, which only made his bloodshot sclera worse, looking at Dean with that soft appeal that had always been there – you're my big brother Dean, make it better – as he spoke with bitter weariness. "I stopped praying - to anything -the day Uriel claimed that what I've spent my whole life praying to was happy to annihilate over 1200 innocent people rather than bother to lift a celestial finger and directly stop Samhain. That doesn't even count how I saw Uriel and Castiel treat Anna, who had done nothing but start thinking for herself – free will as a crime only exists in places like Nazi Germany and Communist countries and nations ruled by Muslim terrorists – if that's heaven…." He gave a shake of his head as if to clear it. "I guess Layla could have taught me a thing or two about genuine Faith as well, 'cause she don't live here anymore, and she hasn't left a forwarding address."
Dean said nothing; there was nothing to say. In the corny but appropriate lyrics of Bon Jovi, two hearts are breaking even tonight.
He wished he could give Sam back his faith in there being Real Meaning To It All; he wished he could demolish every justification Sam had claimed for continuing to use the powers that may or may not have been acquired from Azazel. He wished he could take on the burden of fear Sam lived under; he wished he couldn't remember what he'd done in Hell and he wished he could trust that Bela Talbot hadn't been one of his victims and remember if Ruby had. He wished he could offload the burden of future choices that Castiel had warned him lay heavy across his own shoulders in the coming months. He wished that Sam didn't share his bed and his body with a demon more nights than not, and above all he wished that little Lillith would have the demonic equivalent of a massive coronary caused by debauched living and do the universe a huge favour by not being in it anymore.
Yeah, and I wish I'd been able to stay in Morning Hill back in Indiana, making more Winchester babies with Lisa and coaching Ben for Little League at the outrageously expensive prep school I sent him to after winning the Publishers Clearing House lottery. Dean managed to suppress an inappropriate snort of self-derision just in time. Yeah, and he'd like to have a unicorn as a pet and have pixies do the gardening while he was at it.
He had no answers, or help, to give either Sam or himself right now, so he asked simply, "So what do you want to do?"
"What do I want? It'd take years…what I'll settle for here and now is to kill whatever did this to these nice people, restore them to being nice people, and then finish our favour for Bobby like he asked us to - without sight nor sound of Castiel, Uriel, Ruby, Anna, Alistair or the damned Tooth Fairy." Sam reeled off.
Continued in Chapter 15…
© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers