Dean tried to get a proper grasp of his surroundings, crouching down in an attempt to feel the ground he walked on to no avail. There was no way to describe the texture – it wasn't smooth, coarse or dense in any way. It was like hard air but it wasn't hard exactly, just kind of there. Feeling the floor and figuring it out was not going to help him he rationalized before standing again. He didn't like this, the confusion the void surrounding him was.
Vaguely, Dean wondered if he was somehow blind. 'But that doesn't explain the floor.' Looking down at himself, it was hard to miss the almost luminescent quality his skin had taken, as if someone had taken all of the light from this place into him and the void left behind couldn't touch it. Fuck, this wasn't his area of expertise. Deciding that the best thing he could do was to get used to this place, Dean hesitantly held his arms ahead of himself as he began moving forward.
Balthazar had been trying to get in contact with Gabriel for hours, Castiel's state worsening with each passing second. The ex-Angel was blissfully unconscious, but by the look of the hand print they were far from in the clear. The print had blazed white light for a moment before the skin began to char and blacken, cracks like veins beneath the surface of his skin spreading gradually. Balthazar didn't know how it happened, Dean laying claim to the make-shift soul Castiel possessed, but clearly something terrible had happened in the past and Gabriel needed to get the Hell out of Dodge before something irreparable happened now.
The darkness was beginning to get to Dean, time becoming a foreign concept as he continued to walk forwards without end. As his body continued moving his mind began to wander from this place in some subconscious attempt to maintain his sanity. He had been with Castiel for two months and within such a short amount of time his entire life changed; now he was here, trapped in some kind of Hellish Halfway House that never ended. Would he die here, alone like he had always hoped and feared?
He found himself thinking about Sam again, his twenty-three year old Lawyer bound brother. He never got to tell him how sorry he was for pushing him away, something he would really regret if this was it.
What would Sammy have said if he sat him down and told him about everything? He'd probably call him a Jerk and tell him to stop joking around. If he showed him his wings, would he freak out? Knowing the nerd, he'd probably freak out and start spouting some nonsense from Harry Potter or some shit. They had Angels, right? Chuckling, he couldn't get the image of Sam's reaction to meeting Gabe out of his head. Oh, what he wouldn't give to see that.
Thinking of Gabe, his mind skipped over the smaller man entirely and made a beeline for Cass. They had come so far from that Thursday two months ago. That priest had opened his mind to another world and saved him in so many ways that he couldn't even begin to figure out how to thank him. He owed the nerdy man his life, his soul and his sanity. If someone had told him three months ago that he would sprout wings, fight monsters beside an Ex-Angel priest and bath with the man for the sake of cleanliness he probably would have murdered them. Yet here he was.
He wondered what Castiel would say to him dying, back in the past trying to save him for a change. Sure, they'd gotten close, but he always managed to surprise him. Would he be upset destroy the room they shared in some effort to get back at him for leaving him behind? Or would Castiel shut down, remaining stoic in his loss? Or would he even care? Dean allowed his arms to drop at his sides, his shoulders slumping as he stopped a moment to wallow in the feeling of loss he felt.
Through the curtain of black, Castiel saw Dean finally stop as his body began to slump in despair. He'd been trying to call out to him the instant he saw Dean, his voice hoarse from the effort. The curtain was like a wall between them, one that only Dean could not see through. He was at a loss of what to do, resting his right hand over the hand print while he leaned his head against the space between them.
"Dean."
Gabriel was more than a little disturbed by how easily the front desk had agreed to give him and Dean absolute privacy in the Honeymoon suite. Yeah, it's the 1980's but c'mon! There was no way anyone should find Gabriel and Dean as a couple. He gently laid the winged man down on the bed, careful not to further damage his wing. Gabe was just grateful that he had enough mojo left to glamor it. Seriously, it was supposed to be hard enough to get the room – it would have been impossible to do it with a man with wings.
Using the medical knowledge he could remember, he made quick work of setting Dean's bones and splinting them before he moved onto cleaning his cuts. Calculating in his head, he rationalized that it would take about a day and a half for him to heal completely and be restored to maximum capacity. He needed to return to the church, Dean would never forgive him if he failed to get the information they needed. Not that it mattered, but it would matter to Castiel and for Gabe that was enough.
Pulling out his Angelic blade, he made a routine sweep of the room, carving Angelic warding and Demon Traps to ensure the winged man's safety and his ability to return. Once complete, he set a glass of water on the bedside table, a note in case Dean woke up while he was gone (doubtful, but stranger things had happened) and he departed for the church in hopes that he wasn't too late.
Ruby was ecstatic that the advice that Alistair had given her worked. If things continued to go according to place, they could break through the walls of Heaven and snatch the Righteous Man's soul and be one step closer to breaking the first and most important seal. Sure would save them a Hell of a lot of time trying to figure out how to drag the poor bastard to Hell. What was four human years in comparison to fifty, eighty?
Now all that was left was to ensure Azazel tainted the little one in eight years, prepare him for the final seal. Briefly, she thought about the sorry excuse for an Angel that she had stolen bone fragments from. Here she'd thought they'd be tougher. Smiling at her own luck, she continued onwards into the deeper reaches of Hell, searching for the yellow eyed demon. She loved it when a plan came together.
Sam woke from yet another night terror of fire and darkness. He really needed to get some sleeping pills or something; his girlfriend pinned to the ceiling, bleeding and catching fire then, then the dreams of Dean broken and bleeding at his feet with wide wings twisted almost beyond recognition. What twenty-three year old dreams of this stuff? Wiping his brow and settling back into bed, he pulled Jess close as if to shield her from the terrible dreams as he fell into a dreamless sleep.
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This is the first and only Author's note in this story. I would like to thank you all for your wonderful reviews, your support and the fact that you even bothered to read this in the first place. You can thank HollyOakhill from deviantArt for the very existence of this story as well as the artwork that accompanies many of the chapters. Please, if you have the time to spare, do look through her gallery.
Now that Book One is concluded, for this is the last Chapter, I will strive to finish Book Two - Aurae Finis - sometime in the near future so that you may enjoy(?) that as well. Please take care and thank you again.
Sincerely,
AssbuttAnonymous
