So my new theory is that if I finish this I might actually concentrate on my NaNo. Besides, this is just going so well for me now that I have to get it done.
Love out to my reviewers again! They really make my day.
Chapter Fourteen: Week the Twenty-Third
Monday
Dean regards the women in the room with suspicion. It is twenty four hours since he found out that Castiel had been taken by the demon he once worked with in Hell, twenty four hours since he realised that if he had just been a little more willing to talk about what happened between him and Cas this whole situation could have worked out so much more differently. There is little point in dwelling on the whole issue, however, he needs to fix the mess that they are in now and that means having to work with these two, both of whom he does not trust even if it is for different reasons.
Gabriel he does not trust because she is Gabriel. The archangel who never so much as lifted a finger to help them the whole time they were trying to stop the apocalypse. Tara is another matter, Tara he used to trust, until she banged on their door in the middle of the night, stark naked, shivering and haggard looking. The story that she told them would have read like the deranged rambling of the unhinged, except that Dean has found that the deranged rambling of the unhinged quite often has a grain of truth in them. In this case, Tara knew that Castiel had been taken, that Chris was taken with him and when she told them how she came by this information, Dean was sorely tempted to reach for the silver bullets.
That was the moment that Gabriel stepped in, much to the hunter's chagrin, and demanded to know which moron's brilliant idea it had been to let Castiel get caught by a psychotic demon. If Dean had thought that it would do any good he would have punched the archangel right there and then. Given that he already knew what the result of that would be he managed to restrain himself. Dean was too frustrated to explain what happened, so Sam had given them a summary of what he knew. They are still planning how to rescue Castiel and Dean is chaffing at the delay, so far the only thing that they have agreed on is that the demon, Sawenna, is Gabriel's task. Eventually he goes outside, says that he needs some air, needs to clear his mind. What he actually needs is to get away from Sam, get away from Gabriel and get away from Tara.
Dean has never been good at waiting for things to happen, sure he waited twenty three years to get his revenge against the thing that killed his mother, but that was simply because Azazel went to ground and stayed out of reach. The same goes for everything that he has even gone up against. Right now he is waiting for his brother, an archangel and a kitsune, of all things, to decide that it is time to rescue Castiel from the worst demon he could fall into the clutches of.
"You're an idiot," Gabriel says from behind him, "you do realise that, right?" The archangel has colloquialisms down to a fine art, Dean thinks that it is from so long watching humans as closely as she has.
"Why's that?" He asks. He already knows where Cas is, Tara gave them the address so it is not much of a stretch to think that he could take the colt or the knife and head to the abandoned building and try to rescue Cas himself. That plan was one of the first ones rejected by the gathered party.
"My Father gave you a great gift, an opportunity, and you're letting it slip through your fingers." Gabriel tells him. "How long do you really think Castiel has left here? He's the one who found a Father who didn't want to be found, who stayed loyal when all others gave up hope and helped prevent an apocalypse that neither angel, demon or mankind were ready for. He was never going to be abandoned here for long."
"What do mean?" Dean asks and Gabriel shakes her head. "God's gonna take him back? Because Cas told me that he doesn't want to go back."
"Before this whole mess he probably didn't," Gabriel agrees and Dean notes that she is not in the least bit surprised or intimidated by the heated anger in his tone. "Can you give him a compelling reason to stay now, though? Is there something for him to stay for?" Gabriel asks before retreating. Dean watches her walk away for a moment with the distinct impression that there is something that he is missing. He puts it out of mind, he has a job to do and a fallen angel to save, an apology to make and then maybe, just maybe, he can set about figuring out a good reason for Castiel to stay, one that he will be able to say without freezing and without freaking out.
Much as he would like to use the colt to save Castiel, Dean is aware of the draw backs. One, it is noisy and will definitely draw attention, two, it has limited ammunition and Dean has no idea how many demons they will be up against. Fact of it all is that he is tired of waiting for Sam, Tara and Gabriel to agree on a plan, is painfully aware of the fact that the longer they leave it the worse off Cas will be and he has no desire to risk Castiel's life further by marching in with the three of them at his back. He cannot wait.
He knows that this is a trap, he knows it as well as he knows the fact that the fallen angel will not thank him for getting captured, but Dean has to try and save him anyway. He justifies it, as he pulls the knife from the trunk of the Impala, by telling himself that the demon, that Sawenna, will be expecting him to go and try to rescue the fallen angel with others in tow, because no one is stupid enough to go up against a demon of her level without back up. No one except Dean apparently.
If anyone notices the Impala rumble into life, no one comes out to of the motel room to try and stop him, Sam does not call to find out where he is going and Gabriel does not pop in. Some part of Dean finds that suspicious, it is silenced by the larger part of him that is entirely focussed on getting Cas back, getting him out of danger so that the hunter can find a way to make things right again even if he only has three weeks left. He wonders if there is a way to get Castiel to stay, because as much as he is freaked out by the way that he feels, he does not want to think about life without the angel.
He parks about three blocks away from the abandoned apartment block, as much as he loves his car he knows that she is loud and distinctive, parking three blocks away and walking the rest means that he may still be able to keep something of the element of surprise. Dean is not certain whether or not the demons are on high alert, knows that even though there is only one guarding the entrance there could be dozens just inside the door. Still, it is a simple matter to walk up behind the demon on guard, cover his mouth and slam the knife between his ribs and into his heart. Ordinarily Dean would spare a thought for the man he may once of been, but tonight his thoughts are too heavily on Castiel. He makes his way inside as silently as he can.
"You know, Dean," a familiar female voice says, "I knew you weren't the brightest, but I still can't quite believe that you came on your own."
Tuesday.
Castiel props himself against a wall that has most definitely seen better days, touches long fingers to the lump at the base of his skull and the other to his abdomen, frowning at the damp feeling there. Chris stopped screaming three hours ago and the fallen angel does not know if that means that he has finally passed out, Sawenna has lost interest, or the kitsune has died. Morbidly, he hopes that it is the latter.
He shifts again, shrinking more into the corner of the room as they open the door to his prison. Ordinarily he would make a bid for freedom, except that he is in pain, a result of his last foolish escape attempt and even though he knows that he should get out and get away, he cannot leave Chris to that fate, cannot leave the kitsune in her hands. Besides, Castiel has to believe that Dean will come for him, with his brother and friends at his back, because if he does not hold on to that hope, then he does not believe that he will make it through this relatively unscathed.
As it turns out, Dean does come, it is simply not in the manner that Castiel had expected. Where the fallen angel had been hoping for Dean to charge in guns blazing and smart mouthed comments galore, he is simply tossed in the room with little ceremony, Sawenna looking down on him as he struggles, dazed, to his feet. This is the Dean that Castiel is most familiar with, in a way, the one that is defiant right up until the very last moment. The one who knows that the odds are stacked against him, but will fight until his very last breath. She smirks and gestures, flinging Dean against the wall with a casual flip of her hand, a gesture that she has made more than once in Castiel's direction and he can tell by the way that Dean slides down the wall like a rag doll that this is not the first time that she has done this to the hunter. Then she walks away and Castiel is alone with an unconscious hunter and his thoughts.
He manages to half stumble and half drag himself to Dean's side, feeling something else tear and give and once more his hand feels something sticky and warm coming through his t-shirt, when he takes his hand away it is wet with blood and he wipes it on the dark, stained material of his jeans. Over the last couple of days he has come to the conclusion that, as powerful as she is, Sawenna has few followers, few that she can trust enough to let into her sanctuary, which is why he and Dean are in a room together now. He hopes that somehow they can turn this to their advantage, even as he grabs Dean's shoulder and shakes it, hard, in an attempt to rouse him.
Dean regains consciousness quickly, much to Castiel's relief, and though he grumbles about a headache and the bruises that he will have in the morning, he is far more concerned with the former angel's condition. For the first time since his fall, or push, Castiel wishes that Dean would take less interest in him and more interest in his own health. For nearly two hours he successfully hides his own injuries, successfully hides the punishment she inflicted upon him for trying to escape, until he moves too sharply again, gasps and almost falls as Dean reaches to catch him and this time the thick red of his blood coats Dean's hands.
"What did she do?" He demands as Castiel is lowered gently to rest against the wall once more, breathing shallow and pained as he wonders whether his injuries will ever truly heal. "Cas, what the hell did she do?"
He tries to play it off as nothing, tries to act like it is nothing more than a little nick and he will be fine once it heals over, he is acutely aware of the fact that Dean knows that he is lying. After a long moment of avoiding Dean's gaze, they finally make eye contact and for the first time in weeks, there is nothing intimidating in Dean's eyes, just a gentle fear that is all for Castiel and has nothing to do with anything else, a plea for trust where the hunter knows that he has done a great many things to hurt his friend and Castiel cannot turn that down, he just shuts his eyes and tips his head back against the wall as Dean carefully lifts the t-shirt so that he can see the damage she has inflicted.
At the other man's gasp of horror, Castiel knows what he has seen. The former angel knows that Dean has seen the mockery of a devil's trap that has been carved into his flesh and he wants to crawl into the brick and plaster from the shame of it all. The shame that he could not stop a demon from cutting into him, the shame that he could not attempt to escape this prison without being caught and tortured. Not even Dean's whispered threats and hissed profanities can make Castiel feel any better. Still, he knows that if they are going to make it out of this, if he is going to live through his last three weeks on this earth, he will need to pull himself together. Which he does, with a little difficulty, he finds that part of him that has been locked deeper and deeper away since he was sent to this world as his punishment, he calls on the part of him that he can hide behind, the strong facade that he maintained at all times as an angel.
"When this is over, Cas," Dean says as he settles next to him, "you and I need to have a little chat." Castiel nods, though he suspects that he knows what this will be about, thinks that this will have to do with the fight that they had and the foolishness behind his actions in staying out after dark. It is almost tempting to tell Dean that he only has three weeks left here anyway, but he does not. All too soon the opportunity for speech is lost again as fresh masculine wails make their way through the building.
Castiel shudders and glances at Dean, sees the way that his eyes seem to stare at nothing and the fists at his sides and knows that the hunter is thinking of Hell. Which is exactly what Castiel is thinking of too and without thinking he drops one bloodstained hand down to rest on the fist next to him, barely notices the shift of the man sat next to him into the scant comfort that he offers with that gesture.
Castiel knows that if Dean is here with him, then Sam cannot be far behind, hopes that this is part of a greater plan though has a suspicion that it is simply the result of a poorly thought out scheme on Dean's part. Either way, he knows that by tomorrow Sam will be here and he will either be free, or too dead to care one way or the other. He settles back, closes his eyes, and tries to turn his mind away from the screaming. He cannot and there is little comfort to be found, even knowing that Dean is sat beside him and that help has to be on the way because right now, all he really wants, is for the screaming to stop, one way or the other.
Wednesday.
Sometimes, Sam really hates his brother. Mostly it is times like this, where Dean has run off and done something that can only be classified as really stupid and others it is simply because that is what siblings do on occasions where one gets too much for the other. Gabriel, on the other hand, seems to think that this is just fine and that Dean is far better off where he is. Sam disagrees with that, but there is nothing more that they can do.
Tara went into the building to take a look around almost an hour ago, the advantages of being able to turn into a small fox, Sam supposes, the demons did not even look at her twice. Now, however, Sam is worried that she has gotten herself captured simply because of her single minded desire to get her brother back. In a way, he understands that, as Gabriel surely must, but he worries that her narrow minded plans will ultimately prove to be the death of Dean and Castiel.
When she trots out she has the Impala's keys and the demon killing knife in her jaws, and she is finding it far more difficult to get out than she did to get in for that very reason, Gabriel, however, takes care of the guards at the door and she drops the knife at Sam's feet when she reaches him. The younger hunter averts his eyes as she shifts from fox to human, finds the process more than a little stomach turning even though she explained to both of them that it is less like shapeshifting and more like spirit moulding. Sam supposes that explains the legends about them being fox spirits, but does not comment.
"Chris is dead," Tara's voice is hollow when she speaks. "Bitch cut out his hands and feet, but I don't think she bothered with the sigils like you said she would." Sam nods, eyes sympathetic, face a careful mask as he waits impatiently for her to finish. "Looks like Dean got some good shots in before she got her hands on him, though, she's only got about eight other demons in there."
"Did you find Dean and Cas?" Sam asks, now focussing on his own task as Gabriel turns her attention from somewhere disinterested and internal to the kitsune stood naked in front of them.
"I found them, they're locked in a room on the fourth floor. At least one of them is hurt, though I couldn't tell which one." She gives Sam a long look. "This is suicide." She points out and Sam has to agree, even with an archangel on their side, nine demons are not going to be a walk in the park, add to it the simple fact that one of them is supposed to be the next Lillith and he thinks that this could turn into the kind of blood bath that Dean must have been hoping to avoid by sneaking in on his own.
"Leave Sawenna to me," Gabriel says, attention so wholly on Sam that the younger man thinks she must have been listening into his thoughts the whole time. "You focus on getting our brothers out of there." She smiles, the same soft sort of smile that Castiel used to give people before he fell, the one that says she knows she should smile, but is not sure why, then she holds out her hand. Sam takes it in his and they shake. "This will likely be the last time that I see you, Sam Winchester," she tells him, "you did well." She moves away a little, like she is giving herself space to stretch wings Sam cannot see. "One last thing, tell your brother to stop hiding and just do it." Sam frowns, wants to ask what Gabriel means, but she is gone and he and Tara have to turn their attention to the not so abandoned building.
The woman is now back in the body of a fox and though Sam is dubious about the usefulness of her in this form, Tara has assured him that this is the only way that she is going to be able to fight. They make their way in and Sam's annoyance that Gabriel did not zap all three of them inside lessens when he realises that the arrival of an archangel has drawn much of the attention away from the corridors. Tara leads him to where Castiel and Dean have been locked away.
The sounds of a struggle reach their ears before they round the corner and when the door comes into sight it is open with no sign of demon guards. A quiet growl from Tara alerts Sam to the fact that the struggle is coming from that same room, and that the demons are still in the vicinity. At the sound of Dean's voice raised in defiance and desperation, Sam takes the short distance at a run, pausing long in the door long enough to take in the situation and then slams the knife into the neck of the demon holding his brother.
Dean stumbles into Sam as the, now dead, demon releases him and the younger Winchester sees a streak of brown flash past as Tara buries her teeth into the wrist of the one that has Castiel on the ground. Sam can see that the fallen angel is bleeding from somewhere, that he must have been for the last few days on and off and that whatever the demon has been doing to him has been reopening the wounds. The demon shakes the kitsune off, slamming her across the room and into the wall with a sickening crunch and Sam watches in horror as her body involuntarily shifts in death from fox to woman.
His attention is so drawn to Tara that he flinches when he hears the shot from the colt, is not even surprised that Dean had the presence of mind enough to pull the weapon from the back of his jeans while Sam was distracted. Then Dean has let the gun fall from his fingers and is heaving the demon off Castiel's prone form, checking for pulse and breathing and all the while telling the fallen angel to wake up and open his eyes, that it is all over and he can fix this. Sam wonders if this is what Dean was like when he died.
"Dean, we have to go, let me take him," they heave Castiel to his feet between them and the angel groans, eyes fluttering as he begins to wake, struggling to keep his feet under.
"No, I'll take him, you just make sure you kill any of those sons of bitches that come our way." His brother orders and when Sam thinks about it he is the only one who is in any condition to do any fighting. So he helps Dean get Castiel on his feet enough to get moving and then walks ahead of them as they stumble out of the building.
By some twist of fate, although Sam suspects that it is something more to do with Gabriel than anything, they do not encounter a single demon on their way back to the car and that is something that Sam will always be grateful for. Without the demons on their tail, it is a far simpler matter to get the two of them in the car than Sam had envisioned, though he is surprised when Dean gets into the back to hold Castiel while letting Sam drive back to the motel.
It is less of a surprise when Sam sees the cuts across the fallen angel's abdomen, sees the way that Dean tends to them even though he has injuries of his own to deal with and he has to fight to get his brother to sit back and let him take care of it all. Silently he promises himself that if Dean does not wake up and notice what is right there for everyone to see, Sam is going to kill him himself, because having to watch you brother pine away for a love he does not want to admit to is not the way that Sam wants to spend the rest of his life.
Thursday.
Dealing with a demon like Sawenna is hard work and though Gabriel had an entire cohort of her brothers and sisters to help her, a fact that she is never going to tell the Winchesters, she is exhausted. She had decided to use the very fact that both brothers and Castiel had wound up in the same town as the demon that has caused Dean so much strife to her advantage in the hope that the very danger the demon would be towards them would push the two to admit how they both feel.
Her Father disagrees, not that this is a surprise at all. After successfully locking Sawenna back in Hell until whatever time in the future that mankind, demons and angels are all ready for the apocalypse, and in truth Gabriel does not really care when that will be as long as she can avoid taking part in it as much as possible, Gabriel had reported to her Father and been reprimanded for allowing her brother to fall into such danger. Not wanting to have to deal with Michael and Raphael's questioning about Castiel's progress, Gabriel had left to check on the Winchesters and her brother.
That Dean has a concussion is no great surprise, that Sam got out of it all unscathed is not either, though the way that Castiel has been treated is, though if Gabriel were to think about on it, really it should not be. Such injuries are a concern, not because Castiel will not heal, he will in time, but because her brother has less than three weeks until he has to go back to Heaven and Gabriel wants this resolved before the time is up so that Michael and Raphael stay off her back.
She interferes, though she knows that she should not, enters the room while they all sleep and lets a little healing grace spread through him. She may never get rid of the scars, and really they need to be there to remind the pair of them how close they came to losing one another, but she can make it so that there is less pain, so that they wounds will take less time to heal. Then she kneels next to Dean, whispers to him, tells him that he needs to stop dancing and start acting.
A brief press of her fingers to his forehead and the hunter is in a deep enough sleep that he will not wake until morning. Gabriel sincerely hopes that it will be at least thirty years until she sees Castiel again.
I feel happy, should I feel happy?
Artemis