Castiel looked up from his writing, sensing a change in his environment.
There was no guard at his door to stop him, so he examined the room where the other Nephilim had been kept. It was empty.
He emerged from the prison wing that had been his home for the last several months into a Heaven that was being manned by only a skeletal crew of angels.
The fight had begun. That much he'd expected. But Cas was confused by his status as the only prisoner other than the counterfeit Dean and Remiel—he and the other changed ones knew that they had transformed to such an extent that their old vessels were unusable, and they sensed no other new possibilities suitable for jamming an extra soul into. They'd discussed it many times since the scrutiny on them had diminished.
Effectively stuck in a Heaven that saw them as oddities, the six ensouled angels had been resigned to sit out the apocalypse in which their comrades in the Cause had taken over leadership.
How had they found suitable vessels? And why hadn't they taken Cas with them?
The soldier's training took over, as it had during previous battles. He didn't have the luxury to wonder and doubt. He had a role to play yet, Castiel thought, and his virtues smoothed over the churning of his soul.
He stepped up to one of the lookout points in heaven, where it was easiest to see what was going on there on Earth. Only designated angels were allowed access to these windows, and the guardians of the portal stepped up to block his path.
"I have a safe conduct from the Angel Raphael," Castiel said, brandishing the blank tablets he'd brought with him. "How can I very well keep the prophets motivating the humans if I can't see what's happening?"
The guards stepped back, evidently distracted by the gravity of the occasion and the fact that they had so much more to monitor than usual.
Castiel saw the masses of humans assembled in the peaks of the Bolivian mountains, the throngs of angels waiting invisibly for the instructions to attack, and imagined the demon hordes doing the same. He assumed that the members of the resistance had some way to identify each other, but he was not privy to that information. He couldn't even pick out the humans he knew best from the crowd.
His soul murmured darkly at him. Months ago he could discern his lover's whereabouts anywhere on earth. Dean had shown out brightly at him, and something in Castiel never failed to echo with hope. It must be their long separation, and his will to not even think about Dean lest Heaven's instruments trace their link to his mate. That must be why the angel couldn't feel his beloved anymore. A shadow had fallen where there was once a pure light, and Castiel's many psalms had been written by a heart calling out to a love that remained silent.
He thought back to the Dean who emerged from the ground a new man. The resurrected Dean grew straight and strong because he knew he must. Cas couldn't wait to see Dean's new birth as a Nephilim. What his virtues were like, if they spun in the same way his did. Castiel actually knew some jokes in Enochian. They would be able to share that again.
The Cause had been carrying out their plans with little input from him. They felt he had changed sides, with how vehemently he was rounding up the humans under Raphael's instructions. No matter. It was not the first time that Castiel had been marginalized by his brethren. He didn't need to explain himself. A soldier does what needs to be done. Some other order of angel takes care of the whys and wherefores.
They said his true mate was fine, and that's all he needed to know. Cas had faith. He chuckled thinking of his characterization of Grace as Tinkerbell. Grace had wafted through in that form once or twice but not said anything to anyone. Castiel took it as a sign that what was happening was going to happen that way.
All Castiel knew was that he was going to make sure Dean survived whatever small amount of fighting the Cause was not able to prevent. Raphael had been disappointed that the counterfeit Dean did not live up to their hopes and experimentations, but the lead angel seemed to have found the presence of two supposed lovers a fascinating sociological experiment to have around. Cas was not sure whether this amusement was enough to lift the Purgatory banishment on all the human mates of the Nephilim, however, and would never consent to his beloved being relegated to such a lawless afterlife.
It was strange how hard it was to keep himself from dwelling on dangers and worries. Before Cas could never understand why humans bothered themselves so over things that hadn't happened. Thank goodness we angels aren't made that way, he'd thought many times. We would be diverted from the true path by vain imaginings.
It was difficult to focus with his new soul, but Castiel believed he'd already proved that a warrior with a soul could accomplish much. He fingered it like an instrument, this longing that was drawing him to Dean. Where was he? Some carefully hidden place in him was delirious, thinking he saw his lover's face peeping out from the crowds below. Not the false face that had been tormenting him recently, but his real face, the features a fluid miracle. Hello, yes, he said to a set of shoulders, to a hand, a foot, from the window. Yes it is me, Dean, Let's leave this conflict that is not ours. Let's show them how it's done. He couldn't feel Dean yet, but he was sure he would soon.
"Are they going to show up already?" Darla asked, frowning onscreen from her hideout at Bobby's place.
"They're here, I can see them, but even your fancy camera equipment can't see on the other plane," Dean said, trying to pass off his nervousness.
"How many of them are there?" Bobby asked for the hundredth time.
"A lot," Dean said. More angels in one place than he'd ever seen, that was for sure. He almost wished he couldn't see all of the muscle heaven had assembled for this fight. Dean didn't feel scared. Something this big, all his training as a fighter had kicked in a couple weeks ago when he and the Five began ferrying people from other continents to the signaled spot in South America. Even the newspapers had gotten wind of this cult gathering in Bolivia, and there were people on the 6 o'clock news theorizing it was like a modern day Woodstock or cautioning that the scene was going to turn ugly because none of the pilgrims seemed to agree on what had drawn them there.
"How many of the angels are marked for the resistance?" Adonis whispered in his ear in Greek. They'd had a lot of time to devote to his lessons, Dean thought, leaning into the hand that rubbed his shoulders. He had no reason to be jealous of the Five going off to rejoin their mates in some secret spot. He had this. He had someone.
"I'd say about a quarter or more, but it's hard to tell. There's more of them than I can see," Dean said, running his hand through his lover's hair. "Remember, I'm not quite as tall as a regular angel on that plane, so it's hard to get the lay of the land."
"Any word from Balthazar?" Bobby called out, fiddling with the display screen from within their tent. Darla and the other geeks associated with the Cause had them hooked up, Dean had to admit. Solar batteries powering wireless camera feeds from all over the likely battle spots, sending real-time feedback through the server at Bobby's place and across the world to sympathizers ready to add their own spells to the ones loosed by the members of the Cause on-site.
"Nope. I hear fourth-hand he's out there somewhere, but that's it." Dean fingered Crowley's severed head, cloaked by a spell at the moment, which they were supposed to unveil any minute for the benefit of the demons. Bobby had been right months ago when he observed that without Balthazar they'd be hurting. Dean missed knowing that there was an angel he could trust. Now he looked invisibly at throngs of angels and they were a little unnerving. Who knows what motivated them to begin the process of destroying the world, starting today?
One thing Dean could see clearly was how many resistance fighters were in Bolivia. All treated with the silver incense burner, they stood out clearly to both his human and angelic eyes, dotting the multitudes with spots of hope.
"Any minute now, simmer down," he said in Mongolian to the Khan. The ghostly general had taken up more or less full-time residence in him a couple days ago, and Dean was dealing with a much more bossy inhabiting spirit than he was accustomed to.
"Your Mongol wants to start the fight?" Adonis asked him. "My spirit is being a little annoying as well." He stroked Dean's arm. "If I didn't know better I'd say she suddenly didn't approve of you."
"Look," Bobby beckoned them into the tent. "That dark spot. It's Hell making the first move." He got on the phone with Sam where he was staked out on the other side of town with their Native garrison. "They're coming at you from the Northeast, Sam, a big wave of possessed folk."
"Any sign of Lucifer?"
"Not yet."
Dean stepped out in front of his troops, with Adonis close behind. He called one of the other hunters and the rest of his garrison was patched in so they could hear each other over the growing din. "All right people, listen up!" he yelled. "Sam's doing his thing to trip up the demons, but some are sure to head this way. Keep your cool and save your strength for the angels. You'll hear the code word when the Five and I show ourselves. That's when the real fight will begin."
Even to the uninitiated observer, the hunters stood out pretty clearly from the rest of the crowd because they weren't praying or singing or calling on any number of prophets that seemed to have sprung up recently. Together, Dean and the Khan led their warriors out of the way from this deluge of crazy people crying for their Lord.
"The angels can't content themselves with fighting over vessels for long," Adonis hissed in his ear. They watched a cloud of dark smoke try to wrestle its way into a woman who alternately spewed obscenities and recited psalms. "They're going to show themselves to the human eye any moment and people are going to flip out."
Dean relayed the warning to his hunters and asked Bobby for a sense of how things looked from their cameras' birds-eye view.
Was this the way you're supposed to feel when something you've prepared a long time for actually happens? some part of his mind kept asking. Because Dean felt nothing. He was going through the motions, yanked in the direction he was needed by the Khan. The general was taking over his faculty of speech at times, encouraging his fighters to hold firm until he gave the signal, reassuring them that everything was going according to plan while mass possession rippled over the land. Surges of magic rained down upon these unfortunate people, called down on the spot by their global Cause network.
"How you holding up, Sammie?" Dean said in the Navajo that came naturally between him and his brother now. "Any sign from our secret weapon?"
That was how they referred to the other gods they'd gotten so familiar with, the Navajo spirits they were banking on showing up, though Cecil refused to commit either way.
"Haven't seen any of those guys, yet, but we're getting plenty of action," Sam hollered. "I've got to keep my circle secure, man, so I can't talk, but my people are holding up pretty well."
"Keep it up, Naʼídígishí," Dean said to Little Brother. A couple of his people had had to take out some possessed folks who were streaking around like banshees, and he spent the next few minutes mouthing the words the Khan used to stave off everyone's anxiousness to begin fighting in earnest.
"Aaaah!"
The sound rose up out of every non-possessed human's throat. It was a recognition of something each person, no matter what their background, instinctually knew to be true:
Giants walked the land.
Actually, the angels swooped over the crowds as the enormous, light-filled, winged creatures they were.
"Can you see that?" Dean asked Adonis.
"I saw it all right. That's what you look like?" the Greek asked, his face wearing the awe that had spread quickly across the crowd.
"A little smaller, but yeah." Dean watched the possessed people set themselves upon the vessel attached to one of the angels.
"And He rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind," Adonis was saying. "Except it looks like scripture got it backwards, and the angel rides on the human."
"There's Lucifer, coming out of the west," Dean called. The fallen angel had surprised him by not showing himself earlier. But there he was. His evident discomfort in his human vessel, and his squeamishness about being pressed in by the human throngs, made him move gingerly, staying to the angelic plane, mostly.
The angels were appearing all over the landscape and Dean could feel the warrior inside him preparing for the charge, when the human throng gave a sudden shift. Dean could clearly see the confusion in a couple of angel's faces. This was not part of their plan, so he assumed it was something the angelic resistance was doing.
"What's happening?" he heard Bobby's voice.
"Dunno. Everybody hold your position. I repeat. Hold your position." Dean was trying to home in on the Enochian the angels were speaking, but there was a dizzying number of voices.
"He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters," Adonis grabbed I arm. "That's what they're saying, 'He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me.'"
"What language is that?" Dean asked as a bunch of people almost flattened them running by. "No way all these people speak English."
"I heard it in Greek, actually, but this sort of thing has been documented before in ancient times, " Adonis was saying excitedly. "Each person hears the prophesy in the language they know best."
They watched a huge sector of the crowd move as one, speak as one, along with equally confused demons and angels. They all must be thinking the same thing—the chances of controlling that many people are practically nil, even for a trained army, and these were just poor souls who'd drunk the wrong Kool-aid.
Dean felt the Khan faltering within him. This religious stuff was way outside the comfort zone of both the living and ghost warrior.
"What do we do?" he asked Adonis. This must be the reason he had his own personal Bible expert on hand. What was up with the Five, that he hadn't heard from them yet? This was a good time for the big reveal, while the angels were confused.
"We've had a couple of the troops join the holy rollers," one of Dean's hunters shouted through the phone.
Adonis grabbed his hand and Dean felt the Khan rearing up, impatient, from within. "The way these god-contests usually work is that people's worldviews are at stake. What began this fight was something beautiful—you and the others experiencing love instead of a dry hierarchy. We stand for a gentler vision of the universe, wouldn't you say?"
He took the phone from Dean and began reciting,
"I have loved the habitation of Your house,
And the place where Your glory dwells,"
Adonis smirked a little as his hand caressed his lover. He continued:
"How lovely is Your tabernacle,
O Lord of hosts!"
The ruckus from a thousand voices and trampling feet fell away. There was only Dean and Adonis, pressing close together, the truth of what they had found together shining out of their joined bodies.
"My soul longs, yes, even faints
For the courts of the Lord;
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."
Dean was so lost in the moment he didn't hear any of the voices squawking at him on the line that the crowd was descending upon his location. He didn't see the angels on their plane staring right at him with a cold kind of wonder.
He only came back to his full awareness when the hands ripped Adonis from his arms.
"Wait! What are you doing?" Dean cried, but Genghis Khan wrested his body and mind from the sudden anguish saturating him, and he was pushed back into his role as the general of the Cause.
For the next unknown series of minutes, Dean was not in control of any part of himself. If he was, he would have streaked after his lover and beaten in the skull of every person who dared separate them. It was a good thing the Mongolian in charge had come back from the dead with this very battle in mind, because the Khan was slashing away at all the enraged cult followers who were trying to rip his throat out, paying them very little attention because the real battle was beginning with the angels.
"My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise.
My heart was hot within me; While I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue," some part of Dean's mind heard the crowds say.
"For their heart was not steadfast with Him, Nor were they faithful in His covenant.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down With darkness under His feet," the angry cult was saying.
From his post at a window of Heaven, Castiel's stylus flew across another tablet. How could Dean have betrayed him in this way? He must have bonded with another, that was the only explanation for why the sympathy between them had been broken.
He could sense the guards moving towards him from where they had been patrolling elsewhere in Heaven.
"I hate the double-minded, But I love Your law."
"I have wounded them, So that they could not rise; They have fallen under my feet.
For You have armed me with strength for the battle; You have subdued under me those who rose up against me.
Then I beat them as fine as the dust before the wind; I cast them out like dirt in the streets.
You have delivered me from the strivings of the people; You have made me the head of the nations; A people I have not known shall serve me.
As soon as they hear of me they obey me; The foreigners submit to me."
Castiel could see that strange man, that interloper who had lately been pawing at his mate's flesh, this unholy one was being borne aloft on the arms of the people who had become accustomed to heeding his words over the past several months.
His stylus was poised as he considered what type of death was most fitting for this filthy creature who had sullied his love, when the guards ripped the tablet from his hands and he was thrust into a dungeon.
"Oooohhh!"
Everyone stopped. Demons, humans, angels. Everyone looked as one to the magnificent creatures that had suddenly appeared, six in all.
The Nephilim.
Even the Khan was thrown off his stride. Two souls, two angelic forms, joined together made for a profusion of wings and light that no one from any realm was able to ignore.
Dean easily picked out the Five joined with their mates; Lester, Rosa, Gerald, Mike and Peter were the same faces he had gotten to know so well, but they were entirely different as part of this strange and lovely life form they made when attached to their other halves. They swooped through the sky and over the masses, letting the full impact of their newness hit everyone.
But Dean couldn't take his eyes off the brightest and most unexpected appearance: that of Balthazar, with a man he'd never seen before. He almost didn't recognize Balthazar because he looked so good. And for some reason Balthazar didn't acknowledge his ritual greeting with any more than a slight nod in his direction.
Together, Balthazar and his mate approached the angelic armies. They raised their hands, and chaos broke out between the angels loyal to Raphael versus the ones loyal to the resistance. Dean saw several individuals switch sides rather suddenly, and then he was able to pick out Raphael's face. He thought of the image Castiel had transmitted to him long ago, of Rapahel as a petulant toddler in a party hat, and he almost smiled.
Then the Khan overwhelmed his awareness with everything he needed to do to stay alive. He brandished his sword against the loyalist angels, with some of the demonic hordes falling into line behind him, each glimmering with the sign that they were part of the Cause.
The rest of the demons were throwing in their lot with one or another of the factions form the Heavenly Host, obviously sensing that a regime change might be imminent.
Dean slashed and shouted and did a little swooping of his own now that the cat was out of the bag. He saw for the first time how many tens of thousands of people had been lured to this spot. For what? They didn't even know what they were fighting for.
He wasn't sure either. If Genghis Khan weren't there moving his limbs, Dean would've hung back and tried to figure out why he was there, himself.
He felt oddly lonely as the only Nephilim without a mate. Without Adonis by his side, as he had been constantly in recent weeks, Dean felt the loss of Cas stab at him with a vengeance. He should have been one of the magnificent ones, the multi-winged beasts that were the dawn of a new age. Instead he felt small, as he was in comparison to the real angels. The Khan goaded him to take another reconnaissance flight over the battlefield. It was impossible to tell who was winning, if winning was even what they were playing at. But he was certainly not looking at the worst-case scenarios he'd played out with Sam and Bobby on their darker evenings.
"How did you get out?" Zachariah was suddenly before him. "You look—not like yourself," the angel said, looking him up and down with that rude gaze of his.
"I kind of like being a redhead," Dean said innocently, as if his bodily changes were the most notable. "Oh, you mean the whole angelic body thing." It was a petty conversation to be having at this moment, but the Khan appeared to be indulging him. "Not too bad for a piece of ass," he said, giving a lazy thrust to his sword. Let that teach the angels who thought people were pieces of meat.
"A piece of ass that almost turned the course of battle," Zachariah said, giving a perfunctory block with his weapon.
"What do you mean?" Dean asked. "You're still harping on me cockblocking an archangel?"
"I mean that I don't know what you're playing at, messing around with all and sundry, but Cas isn't taking it lying down," Zachariah gave him one of his lascivious smiles. "You should know him by now—our Castiel is loyal to a fault and expects the same in return. However you got out of that dungeon, I suggest you stay gone, because he's going to find a way to exact vengeance."
Dean watched the Khan perform the movements required of him for swordplay while his mind kept getting stuck on the way to arriving at a thought. "Cas. You mean, Cas, he's—"
"Your enemy for all eternity, most likely," Zachariah grinned. "I thought he was too far gone to understand the gossip going around heaven about his shenanigans with Remiel, but I think it's safe to say he knows and it's over, friend."
The angel dropped his sword suddenly and the Khan was moving Dean's arm to a brutal thrust when he heard the uproar going on behind him.
"What in God's name have your little ragtag bunch done?" Zachariah gasped.
Changing Woman was tilting her head at Zachariah. "Are you coming?" she said to Dean in Navajo.
In a moment they had joined Sam and all the deities they had encountered so many times before in their battles that had never managed to cross over into this one. Spider Woman, the Sun, Coyote and all the rest appeared resplendent before the battle-weary troops. Now, every human, demon and angel stood very still and watched. Dean wondered briefly if his Native friends felt remotely clued in, because in everyone else's books they were completely off script.
Dean was so thrown by the news that Castiel was still alive that he could feel the warrior inside of him cursing up a storm in Mongolian at the shock that was weighting his limbs.
Sam was another story entirely. "Here are my trophies," he said in Navajo to the assembled spirits. He had quite an impressive assemblage of bits of angel wing and cloths smeared with demon blood.
"You have fought well, my son," said Changing Woman.
Everyone looked at Dean. "I've been a little busy fighting. I didn't keep any trophies," Dean hissed to his brother.
"What did you do with Crowley's head?"
"Oh, I forgot about that. Hold on a minute." Dean used his angelic abilities to streak back to the tent and retrieve the head. "Here is my trophy," he said, placing it before his father the Sun, who was a man dressed in brilliant white buckskin.
The Sun accepted the offering and turned back to Sam. "Which are the ones who will be going to the Next World, Naayééʼ Neizghání,?"
Sam considered for only a moment. "We should consult with the Holy Ones," he said, and called for Balthazar to join them.
Dean's head was moving slowly. They'd rehearsed this a hundred times. He was Naayééʼ Neizghání, Older Brother. Why was everybody focusing on Sam?
He watched Balthazar approach with the strange man who was his mate, and the two gave a respectful bow to the Navajo spirits before them. "You're asking for volunteers to go to another plane? I thought your myths worked like ours, in that humans messed things up and were sent out of one plane and into another," Baltahazar said as if he spoke Navajo every day.
"Sometimes, but in others of our myths, the troublemakers are taken to a new place so that everyone else can live in peace," Changing Woman said.
"In that case, Lucifer and Raphael would be the obvious choice, what do you think?" Balthazar looked at Dean full-face for the first time that day.
"Let any of their die-hard minions volunteer to go with them, if they're going to just start up with the same bullshit when their leaders ascend," the Khan said in Mongolian through Dean's mouth, and everyone laughed.
Dean wrested control of his own mouth back from his inhabiting spirit. "Where's Adonis? What's happened to him?" he demanded.
Sam and Balthazar exchanged a look laden with meaning over his head. "I was hoping one of our visitors could escort him home," the angel said gently but firmly.
From that point forward, for the rest of that long, tumultuous day, Dean's will was completely subsumed by the Khan's. The emotional mess he was on the inside was closed over by the Mongolian's iron will. While Raphael and Lucifer—both completely off their stride—were brought before the visiting Navajo gods, Sam told him where Adonis had been hidden from the crowds and the Khan forced him to retrieve his lover without a word.
"What's happening?" a beaten and dirty Adonis asked him over and over, but the Khan didn't slacken his grip on the reins enough for him to answer.
"Will you see that he gets home safely?" Sam asked of Changing Woman. "We're going to have to ask you to make another trip for the other one."
"What other one?" Adonis protested. "There's someone else from my timeline here?"
"Your Dean is safe," Balthazar said. "We'll deliver him shortly, but it's important that you leave now. Your timeline needs you."
"You're going to keep getting hit with the hand of fate as long as you're here, Adonis. Your fate wants you somewhere else," Sam chimed in.
Dean wasn't even allowed to hug Adonis goodbye before Changing Woman scooped him up in her arms to lead him back to his home reality. At the same time, Raphael and Lucifer (with a conspicuous lack of hangers-on) were led by Coyote to their mutual exile.
"What do you think their new reality will be like?" Sam asked him.
But the Khan didn't trust to let Dean answer. It's just as well; he would have probably started bawling and disgraced their Navajo friends.
The battle over, Dean hoped he could have a minute to himself to process all the revelations of the day, but Balthazar steered him away from earth.
"I'm afraid you have one more prophesy to fulfill," he said. "You're the one who's supposed to storm heaven, and your double has fulfilled his part admirably, from what I hear, so set him free why don't you?"
Dean's heart had been stretched and stomped on several times that day, but maybe the most difficult thing was seeing Balthazar's deep affection for this man Dean had never heard of, as the strange man said goodbye to him in some other language.
"We won't be long," he understood Balthazar to say.
The angel led Dean to the section of heaven where his double was being held. "Damn, I thought you'd never get here," the Other Dean said. "Where's Adonis? Is he okay?"
"He's there waiting for you," a guilt-stricken Dean replied. He had to endure the other man's questions about his quasi-angelic state as he flew the two of them down to earth, where Changing Woman was waiting for them in Bolivia.
"I'm really sorry—" Dean began, not knowing how to tell his double he'd been in a relationship with his boyfriend.
"Don't worry about it. I actually learned a lot while I was locked up in heaven, stuff that may make the difference for my apocalypse."
From the Visiting Dean's blithe manner, he could tell his double had no idea what had been going on while they thought he was dead.
"Good luck," was all he could think of to say.
The Khan forced him back to their tent, and the last thing Dean remembered was Sam saying, "Hey there, Little Brother," before he passed out.