A/N - Here's part 2. Finished it at last. One more chapter after this one (and later some epilogues).
Dean knew instantly it wasn't going to work. Cas couldn't fly.
"CAS!" he screamed. He lunged at the bridge railing, instinctively reaching his hands up— one toward Cas, one toward Sam. Something yanked him back from the railing— a tight band around Dean's chest. Sarah. She'd wrapped her arms around Dean and was holding him back from toppling clean over the railing. Dean grabbed onto her hands where they were knotted around his midsection, and they both clung to each other as they watched the horrifying sight, Cas and Sam both dropping like stones from far, far above, seven hundred feet above or more, plummeting down toward the gigantic gaping jaws down below.
But wait — Cas was moving sideways. He wasn't dropping straight down! He had his wings out and he was angling his trajectory somehow, rocketing diagonally, aiming his dive to angle over to where Sam would fall.
And suddenly Dean remembered what Mac had actually said.
"I'm guessing you couldn't fly in this dimension, then, Eagle?" said Mac, laying out his tools for the titanium-pin-removal.
Cas nodded. "This human vessel is far too heavy. With no Heavenly power, these wings are not quite big enough for the weight of this vessel. Though... I have been wondering if could just glide a little bit? I don't know."
Mac considered that. "Possible. Or at least break a fall, maybe."
Possibly you could glide, Mac had said. Maybe you could break a fall, Mac had said.
"He can glide," screamed Dean, "He can glide, HE CAN GLIDE! GO, CAS, GO!" He was still hanging onto Sarah's arms while she screamed too, hollering by Dean's shoulder, "GET HIM, CAS, PLEASE, CAS, GET HIM!"
Sam plummeted downward and Cas shot over. They were still pretty high up, well above the level of the roadway. Amazingly, Cas was actually managing to angle himself very close to Sam's trajectory. Cas flared his wings to brake—
... But he couldn't steer. Not perfectly. Not well enough. Dean could see Cas zig-zagging unevenly as he approached the likely point of intersection. New tertials, Dean thought in despair.
Brand new, unusually short, tertials. Miles better than no tertials, obviously, but Cas had never had a chance to practice with them. His steering would still be off; his braking would be off.
And sure enough Cas was veering just a little far to the left... then a little too far to the right... Sam was hurtling down, Cas was trying to adjust as quickly as he could. Tucking the right wing in a little (veer to the right!), tucking the left wing to correct (veer to the left!). Trying to figure out his new steering capabilities in just two seconds.
It wasn't enough time. It was an impossible task. Cas came very close...
But he missed Sam by ten feet.
Fortunately, Cas had a nine-foot-long wing. And Sam had seen him coming. At the last second Sam reached out with his two cuffed hands, and grabbed the ends or two or three of Cas's longest black flight feathers. The very longest feathers on his left wing.
Of course it pulled Cas into a catastrophic dive himself. Cas even folded in both wings further, pulling Sam closer but going into a steep fall right with him. For a moment Dean thought he could see Cas's hands locking onto Sam's wrist bonds as they tumbled together like out-of-control skydivers. They lost another precious hundred feet locked together in the messy flailing fall, wings and legs sticking out in confusion, rolling in the air. Then both wings snapped open like great black-and-white banners, vividly outlined against the sunset sky. Dean and Sarah both gasped; Dean felt sure his heart would stop. And a moment later both wings began beating the air. Great powerful wingbeats as Cas fought desperately against Sam's added weight. Sam was below Cas now (it was hard to see what exactly was going on, but Sam's shackled wrists seem to be wrapped around Cas's shoulders now, Cas's arms tight around his waist). Cas began to slow the rate of fall. The falling slowed more, and more, as Cas's wings beat the air and brought them (somewhat) under control. By the time they reached the level of the bridge, Cas and Sam were sinking only slowly, and were sailing steadily toward the shoreline.
"Fuck gliding, that's FLYING!" Sarah screamed, jumping up and down now next to Dean, "YOU'RE FLYING! YOU'RE FLYING!"
Dean hollered, "FLY, CAS, FLY, FLY, FLY!" Whether it was "real" flight or just "gliding" Dean didn't know and didn't care, because it was working. Cas and Sam were still falling, but it was a much slower fall, a semi-controlled flapping descent rather like a hang-glider (if a hang-glider could flap). Cas was even managing to steer now (sort of), toward shore, both wings beating the air nonstop in great strong strokes, Sam just visible as a dark shape hanging down below Cas.
"FLY, YOU ANGEL! FLY!" Dean kept screaming. "FLY, CAS, FLY, CAS, FLY!"
"FLY, CASTIEL, FLY!" screamed Sarah. Then she pointed and said, "Oh, NO, NO—"
She was pointing at the elemental, and Dean realized it was watching Cas's progress with great interest.
It was tracking Cas with its great green eyes. Its head was turning to follow them.
As Cas and Sam started to near the shoreline, still maybe a hundred feet up, the elemental's head rose up out of the water behind them. It rose very far up, reaching up its long sinuous neck, as if eager to greet the little flapping creature that was coming down out of the sky to meet it.
Dean and Sarah could only watch this helplessly. Cas managed a jerky turn away from the elemental, but that just seemed to interest the elemental further. Its cat-like pupils went wide and dark as it focused on its prey.
The tremendous scaly head snaked over to them, till the great head was looming behind them, like a dinosaur about to snatch a dragonfly. Dean could only moan, "No," as the huge jaws opened, and the elemental reached out—
Cas did something. A sudden wing-tuck on one side, a quick side-slip, and he and Sam rolled sharply down and to the side. The elemental's jaws snapped shut on empty air. Cas's lower wing whipped open and beat the air as he righted himself (Flap when tilted, thought Dean numbly), and he went into a series of uneven zig-zags, and then he'd crossed over the shoreline. Still carrying Sam. They were over land now, not over saltwater anymore. The elemental stopped dead, as if it were reluctant to stretch its head out above solid ground. Instead it nosed down to the water and shoved a sudden wave of seawater at the shore with a single wave of its sinuous body. The wave must have been a good forty feet high, but Cas and Sam were still at least seventy feet up; the wave passed far under Sam's feet harmlessly. The water crashed back down toward the whirlpool, and Cas and Sam soared on, toward the trees on the hills by the bridge.
The elemental roared in displeasure and gave up on them, swinging its great head back toward the bridge.
Its huge head lifted up out of the water again till it was right at eye level.
Dean and Sarah scrambled back from the railing instinctively. A moment later Dean realized the elemental wasn't glaring at them personally, but, rather, at the bridge. Which actually wasn't all that much better, for a moment later its head whipped over to the first tower (far behind Dean and Sarah, fortunately), and its huge jaw snapped shut on an edge of the roadway. The whole bridge shook violently as huge chunks of asphalt snapped free of the suspension cables, splintering into big pieces that went crashing down into the whirlpool.
"GO, GO, GO!" shouted Dean, spinning around toward the van. Sarah was way ahead of him, already in the driver's seat throwing it into gear, and Dean jumped half on top of her, clinging to the door as he had before. The two-people-piling-into-one-driver's-seat routine seemed almost familiar now, and in less than a second they were racing at top speed toward the northern end of the bridge, Dean hanging onto the door again while Sarah drove.
Fortunately this end of the bridge was still holding together. But where were Cas and Sam now? Had they managed to land?
"WHERE ARE THEY?" hollered Sarah.
"I'M LOOKING!" yelled Dean, hoisting himself up on the VW's door as Sarah sped along, trying to peer over the left bridge railing. Soon he spotted them. Cas was almost at the trees. His wingbeats were much slower now, exhaustion clear in the increasing jerkiness and shallowness of every stroke of his wings, and soon he quit flapping entirely and went into a long, rapidly sinking glide. From this distance he looked almost like a little paper airplane, his lovely geometric wing pattern of black, white and grey standing out vividly against the trees.
There was one last flurry of exhausted flaps as they piled into a clump of bushy trees halfway up the hillside, and they dropped out of sight.
"They landed! Down by the left of the bridge," said Dean. "We gotta get to them. Might've been a rough landing. They might be hurt." He knew all too well that even a ten-foot-fall could still be fatal, if you landed badly.
Sarah nodded, still concentrating at steering the VW along at top speed. "Get in more," she said. "Take half the seat." She squished herself over to the center of the van as much as she could, and Dean managed to wedge one hip onto half the seat, hooking one arm around the back of the chair for extra security. Soon they passed the concrete buttresses that marked the far end of the bridge. Dean breathed a sigh of relief; they were over land now, not saltwater anymore. The elemental was still uncomfortably close, but it felt much better to be off the bridge and onto dry land.
"Look for side roads," Sarah said as they got past the cable buttresses. "And where's Calcariel?"
"Don't know," said Dean, twisting around (carefully) to look back. The PT Cruiser was still sitting in the middle of the bridge. Calcariel was nowhere in sight. (The elemental was still visible further back, now gnawing at the tower.)
"I don't see him," Dean reported, settling back down into his rather-precarious perch on the edge of the seat. "His car's still there."
"Calcariel's probably going to come after us again, isn't he? This isn't over, right?"
Dammit, thought Dean. She's right.
"I'm right, aren't I," said Sarah, and Dean could only nod.
Sarah took the first available side road to the left, which fortunately turned out to go meandering over the grassy hills directly toward the area where Cas and Sam had disappeared from view. There seemed to be nobody around; there were flashing lights visible further to the north, though, and the drone of helicopters from rather far away. But the cops seemed to have retreated well away from the bridge itself. As Sarah steered the VW along the little coastal road into the hills, Dean realized the radio announcer was beside himself with excitement, his voice tense and high:
"— mayor's urging everyone to stay calm, and keeps saying that this beast thing in our Bay is not Godzilla and is not a Hollywood monster and is not going to attack the city. We can only hope he's right. It sure does seem to dislike our bridge, but it seems not to have any legs, so hopefully it's not going to come strolling on up to land. So people, DON'T panic. Just stay put. All bridges have been closed, needless to say, and if you're thinking of making a run to the south, just give up, traffic is absolutely frozen still. Now, folks, the best explanation I've heard is that this unbelievable thing may be a plesiosaur, if you can believe it; that's those deep-sea dinosaur cousins from way back when. Apparently plesiosaurs never went extinct. Maybe it got driven from its deep-sea home by whatever earthquakes have also been producing all these waves. Now, further updates, all law enforcement personnel have pulled well back from the bridge for safety and even the news copters have been ordered to stay back, and the mayor is pretty much begging people to stay back from the bridge and away from the shore. But the copters did get some footage of the plesiosaur attacking some kind of unfortunate large bird that chose exactly this moment to fly across the water. Imagine what that bird thought! Hope it got away! And as for those two morons that drove onto the bridge, I can only think they're regretting their stupidity right about now. So, folks, again, just stay calm, and honestly in my opinion it's time to head on down to the Winchester and have a pint and wait for this whole thing to blow over. Stay right here for the latest updates—"
Dean gave a bark of laughter at the "Winchester" movie quote from Shaun Of The Dead. It seemed all too appropriate - for multiple reasons. He laughed again when Sarah pointed out a sign on the road, for apparently the road they were on headed to "Hawk Hill," of all the appropriate names.
"I'm taking that as a good sign," said Dean, and then to his surprise he started laughing. He said, "Good SIGN! Get it?"
Sarah rolled her eyes. "That was terrible, Dean." Just then they came to a fork in the road. One fork headed a bit downhill closer to the shore; one headed up into the hills.
"Take the lower fork. Cause we gotta... head on down to the Winchester!" Dean said, bursting into laughter again. "Well, Winchesters, actually, plural, cause Cas T.L.'s down there too."
"Do you always get like this when you're saving the world?"
"Yeah, pretty much always."
Sarah just shook her head, with a little snort, but she did take the the lower road.
Soon they came to a wide dirt hiking trail that seemed to head toward the trees where Cas and Sam had disappeared. Sarah pulled the van to a stop by a barricade of big grey boulders that blocked the trail from the road, and they both jumped out. Dean shoved his pistol in the back of his belt (just in case) as they ran past the boulders and began poking down a grassy hill that led down to the trees. Dean discovered, as he ran, that his ankle was blazing with pain (he'd completely forgotten to pay any attention to it while running around on the bridge), but he kept up as best he could.
Then they heard a voice.
Cas's voice. The most wonderful sound in the world. Cas was calling, "Sam? SAM? Where are you? Are you okay?"
And, the other most wonderful sound in the world, Sam's voice, calling back hoarsely, "Think so— I'm stuck in this bush— Can't stand up, my feet are still tied."
"SAM!" Dean called. "CAS!"
"DEAN! I'm over here!" called Sam back.
"I'm here too," called Cas. "Check on Sam— I had to drop him."
And then there was Cas, far over to their left by the boulders, staggering through a bunch of bushes. Alive. Beat up, bruised, scratched, both his wings drooping alarmingly, but alive.
And there was Sam too! Much closer, just below the trail, trying to struggle to his knees in a thicket of scratchy-looking bushes. He seemed unable to get to his feet at all, and he, too, looked bloody, bruised, and pretty torn up. But— alive.
Sarah let out a soft little "There's Sam," and bolted like an arrow straight over to Sam, flinging herself right at him (and right into what looked like a very scratchy bush). Sam actually fell over completely as she wrapped her arms around him. A second later her nurse-mode had taken over and she was checking him over rapidly and saying, "No broken bones. No head or neck or back injury even, this is fantastic. Okay, Dean, help me get his hands and feet free." Dean limped over as quickly as he could (Cas was at least on his feet, and was waving for Dean to help with Sam), and in a moment they'd got Sam's feet free, and then his wrists.
The second Sam got both arms free he sat up and grabbed Dean, wrapping both arms around him. Sarah'd already gotten her hug in, of course, and she faded back a little now, sitting back on her heels as if to give them a bit of space. Wiping her eyes discreetly as she did so.
There seemed no need to even say anything; Dean and Sam just held on to each other.
Dean thought, I know we gotta get going. But man, I know now how Sam felt when he gave me that Mystery Spot hug.
"You're not frozen out in space," Sam said at last.
"Nope," said Dean. "And you're not a bunch of burned bones in a forest."
"Nope," said Sam, with a little gasp of a laugh.
They clung to each other a second longer. Finally Dean took a breath, and added, "Do not ever let go again."
"Not planning on it," said Sam. "Didn't let go this time, did I?"
Dean pulled back and gave him a close look. Sam looked awful. Covered with scratches and bruises, thin and worn. "You really okay?" asked Dean.
Sam nodded. "Strained my wrists quite a bit hanging onto Cas, I think, and my knee's tweaked too, but I'm all right. Check on Cas, would you? He veered over here to drop me in this bush, but that meant that he went head-on into the trees over there. He's been scrambling around trying to climb down from the trees. I was trying to get over to him but I couldn't friggin' stand up with my feet tied."
Dean needed no further encouragement, and limped hurriedly over to Cas, who had met a patch of such thick shrubs that he'd had to bushwhack his way back up to the trail boulders before coming back down to Sam. Dean met him as he staggered out onto the trail by the boulders
"Cas, you flew, you flew, you wonderful angel," said Dean, grabbing him tight.
"Not very well," said Cas, leaning on him heavily. He was gasping for breath.
"WELL ENOUGH, jeez, Cas!" Dean shifted his hold to wrap both arms around the wings and said, "You flew, Cas, you flew!" But Cas flinched as Dean tightened his hold, and Dean suddenly realizing the wings were not in their normal folded position. Dean pulled back and saw that both wings were drooping badly, the left wing so much that it was dragging on the ground.
"Oh, crap, are your wings okay?" Dean said, running a hand along the strong muscled part at the left wing's leading edge. He felt heat radiating out from the muscle and bone underneath, even through the little feathers. "Ah, Cas, oh no—" said Dean, his stomach clenching in worry. "Your wing—?" He checked the tertials, but found they were all still there.
"It's not... broken," said Cas, between gasps of air. He made an effort to fold the wing in, but it twitched up only briefly and then drooped back to the ground again. Cas said, "And the tertials... worked! Tertials worked. My wing's just... worn out, I think. Strained a little. Sam's okay? I had to... drop him... in a bush... at the end... he's okay?" He was still heaving great gulps of air.
"He's good, don't worry. Whoa there, Cas. Breathe. Breathe," Dean said, for Cas was shaking like a leaf, his whole body trembling from exhaustion. He seemed as out-of-breath if he'd just run a world-record hundred-meter dash. (Perhaps climbing down from trees and then scrambling at top speed up a hill through thick shrubs hadn't been the best way to recover from his first-ever desperate flight from an elemental.) "Lean over a sec," said Dean, patting his shoulder, "Put your hands on your knees and breathe. There you go."
"Where's Calcariel?" Cas, leaning over obediently and gasping for breath, while still trying to look around at the landscape for Calcariel.
"We don't know," said Dean. "Maybe still on the bridge?"
"We have to... be on guard," said Cas, trying to look around further. Dean followed his lead, glancing all around. Sam and Sarah looked okay; Sam was actually on his feet now and Sarah was helping him out of the bush. But a great shape moving in the distance soon caught Dean's and Cas's attention.
The elemental.
It was visible through the trees even from here, way out in the strait, because its head was still lifted high, its green scaly neck glowing almost red now in the last light of sunset. The bridge's evening lights seemed to have somehow survived all the shaking, for the bridge was all lit up now and the elemental seemed highly interested in this; it was sniffing its way along the semi-shattered roadway now, carefully biting, and shattering, each streetlight in turn, as if thinking that if it tested enough of them, it might find one that tasted good.
The bridge seemed to still be holding the elemental's attention pretty well for now, but the beast still looked all too close, and all too big. And the whirlpool was still roaring. Dean said, "Cas, we gotta move, the elemental could snatch us right up."
"It can't reach over land," Cas said, his breathing finally getting a little steadier. He straightened up a bit, still studying the elemental, and added, "Not any further than it can send a wave. And its wave height is still limited. Calcariel's the danger." He straightened up further, saying, "Dean, we still have to stop him. For good. Where is he?"
"Right behind you," said a deep, resonant voice, from just up the path toward the cars.
They spun around, Cas nearly stumbling over his own wing, and there was Calcariel, strolling down the path toward them. His PT Cruiser was visible up in the parking area, right next to the VW; they hadn't heard it approaching above the roar of the whirlpool. Calcariel was in a new human vessel, of course, a vessel Dean had never seen before, but there was absolutely no doubt it was Calcariel: another tall, bleached-blond vessel; another perfectly pressed pinstripe suit, with a little red handkerchief poking neatly out of his breast pocket. He'd even found another fedora. And this time the vessel had a neatly trimmed triangular blond goatee and a trim little mustache.
"Wow," said Dean, "You look like even more of a douche than before. Which is saying something."
Calcariel just raised one eyebrow and muttered, "Typical," raising one hand casually, and of course Dean and Cas immediately found themselves unable to move.
Dean spotted one more addition to Calcariel's outfit. Around his neck hung an elaborate silver chain, and suspended from the chain was a silver medallion chased with runes; and fastened in the middle of the medallion, with loops of silver wire was a big glass vial of water. There was something glinting green deep inside it. A scale. A green scale.
Calcarial was stroking it the medallion gently with one hand.
Dean had to fight against a wave of exhaustion, and real despair, at the realization that the struggle still wasn't over. They'd come all this way and fought so hard, and Cas had actually flown, and they'd actually saved Sam, and they were all so friggin' exhausted... and yet here was Calcariel. Effortlessly waving that hand at them so arrogantly. Immobilizing them helplessly, just as he had at the wildfire.
Totally in charge.
It wasn't over. It wasn't close to over. Calcariel was still here, the elemental was still here too, Calcariel had easily bound them all to immobility. Despite all their struggle, they'd just delayed the inevitable by a few minutes.
No fair, Dean thought. It's just no fair.
But life was never fair, was it? Especially the Winchester life.
Dean thought, Well... at least I can hold Cas's hand after all at the end, right? So he groped for Cas's hand and grabbed on tight.
And then he realized he'd just moved his own hand.
They weren't totally immobilized! It had felt a bit like pushing through molasses, but Dean was still able to move his hand! He caught Cas's eye, and squeezed his hand, and saw a puzzled look come over Cas's face. Cas had just realized the same thing.
Cas squeezed Dean's hand back. Cas could move too. A little, at least.
Calcariel, for his part, wasn't even looking at them any more. Dean felt a flicker of hope as Calcariel went strolling on past, apparently unaware that Dean and Cas weren't totally frozen. Calcariel was focusing on Sam instead, saying, "You. Sacrifice. Your role has yet to be played. Though there has been an unfortunate delay due to Castiel here, I won't hold that against you. Your death can still have meaning. We will try again."
Dean dropped Cas's hand and started slowly inching his own hand around toward the pistol at the back of his pants. It was definitely hard to move, but with effort he could push his hand aong. Beside him, he felt Cas's arm do a slight shake, and knew that Cas now had his angel-blade in his hand.
Then Dean felt the icy touch of a blade on his neck and another all-too-familar voice said, "You boys really need to check behind you more often. Sloppy, I tell you, very sloppy. And you call yourselves professionals? Though... I suppose you were frozen still, technically, so I'll overlook it just this one time. Cas, I wouldn't move that blade of yours an inch if I were you."
Crowley.
Crowley was standing just behind Dean, and was holding an angel-blade to Dean's neck.
Crowley pulled Dean's pistol out of the back of his belt, and said "Drop the blade," to Cas. Calcariel had turned to watch the exchange, completely unsurprised.
Cas gave Dean an infinitely sad look, and dropped the blade. Calcariel made a dismissive gesture, and the blade flew off into the air, sailing off into the hills far below.
"I could have taken your blade, Castiel, for myself," said Calcariel. He had his other hand splayed back toward Sam and Sarah, and seemed to be able to hold them still, at least. He went on, to Castiel, "In fact I'd rather like to kill you with your own blade, which would have a certain poetic justice. But..." He twitched one arm and his own blade was suddenly in his right hand. "I prefer not to use blades that have been touched by mortal cripples. Just a matter of personal hygiene, you understand. Hello, Crowley. You're late."
"Crowley," Dean spat, twisting his head around a couple inches to glare at Crowley. Of course. "Crowley. The original piece of shit. I should have known you were working with him."
"You should have remembered one thing, Dean," said Crowley cheerfully. "From one piece of shit to another: Quadruple crosses are much more fun than triple crosses!"
Calcariel rolled his eyes. "Enough chatter. You're very late. The sacrifice was nearly wasted. Your transportation spell nearly didn't even work!"
The red smoke. Of course. Red smoke. That had been a Crowley spell.
Crowley shrugged. "Got held up in traffic. Sorry if the spell was dicey— hard to keep up my usual high standards with elementals around. And also, you know how doing a spell over moving water is tricky business for us demons, after all. But, things are looking up, Calcariel! Sure, I guess you might have missed the actual sunset moment, but what's a few minutes among friends? Or among grudging colleagues, at least."
"That particular minute," said Calcariel icily, "was the minute when power transfer to the elemental is by far the greatest,. You know, power transfer being the entire point of this enterprise."
"Yes, but," said Crowley, waving his free hand around at everybody. "Now you can could have four sacrifices! Look at all these extras that have suddenly shown up! You've still got your original sacrifice Sam, and his limping brother Dean here, only slightly damaged, and our favorite drunken-paper-airplane-impersonater Castiel, and also, um..." Crowley frowned at Sarah. "Who are you, anyway?"
Dean could hear Sam's frustrated sigh even from here, some ten paces away. Crowley was about to learn Sarah's name, at last, despite all Sam's attempts to keep her out of it.
"I'm the medical team," Sarah said flatly. "Got all my supplies in my pockets here." She'd positioned herself smack in front of Sam and though Sam had clearly been trying to move her aside at the moment when they'd both been frozen still, Sarah hadn't budged.
She seemed unimpressed by Crowley. In fact she was crossing her arms in front of her body.
A slight flicker of surprise ran over Sam's face. And Dean realized Sarah had just moved her arms too.
Sarah wasn't frozen either, and Dean was willing to bet Sam could move a little too. Maybe they did have a chance.
"So you're the medical team!" Crowley was saying, from just behind Dean, his blade still firmly at Dean's neck. Crowley slipped into an unctuous flirtatious tone, as he said, "Intelligent as well as beautiful! You know, Calcariel, I've been thinking, I might need a medical team of my own actually... three sacrifices might be enough, I think?"
"Are you the King of Hell?" Sarah asked.
"Why, yes!" Crowley said, beaming. "You've heard of me, have you? Yes, Calcariel, really I think just three sacrifices."
"If you're supposed to be the King of Hell, why can't you step over paint?" Sarah said. "I've been wondering."
Crowley went silent for a moment.
Dean felt the blade tighten slightly on his neck.
Crowley cleared his throat and said, "We don't talk about that." Then he added briskly, "Actually, four sacrifices would be best, Calcariel. You've got 'em all under control now, you've got rid of Cas's blade and I got Dean's pistol, and you can take it from here. I've done my part: you asked me for help with the transport spell up to the tower, and you asked me to help corral these four, and that's the end of my deal. I'm tired of dealing with these guys. Done my bit, I tell you." He removed the blade from Dean's throat and strolled over to sit on one of the big boulders.
Calcariel just sighed at Crowley, and said, "All right. You can leave. Now. You four. Back up onto the bridge now. I'll loosen your feet enough for you to walk, but I'll keep your hands bound, so don't try anything. And step lively, I'd like to get us out there soon."
He gestured with his own angel-blade back up toward the road.
"You're walking us back there?" said Dean, unsure that he'd heard right. "It must be over a mile just to get to that first tower! It'll take half an hour!"
"Stop arguing," said Calcariel, his voice dark. "Start walking."
"No," said Dean. "I'm done. I'm worn out. I'm fed up with the whole elemental-sacrifice thing, I'm fed up with you and your plans, I am friggin' worn out. If you're going to sacrifice us, then you can damn well FLY US THERE. No way am I walking to be sacrificed. Fly us there or kill us right now." Maybe that last bit was a little reckless, but Dean had truly had enough.
Calcariel hesitated.
He said, gesturing up to the road again, "WALK. I'm warning you."
"No," said Dean. "Fly us."
"He can't," said Cas, staring at Calcariel.
Calcariel's eyes flicked to Cas.
"What?" said Sam. "What do you mean he can't?" Even Crowley, who was now sitting over on the boulder inspecting his nails, perked up and started paying attention.
"He can't fly," said Cas. "Can you. Calcariel."
Calcariel was silent.
"What, did he damage his wings in the fall?" said Dean. "Bunches of angels did."
"Not Calcariel," said Castiel. "Calcariel had fully feathered wings back in Wyoming, remember? And he's been through a molt since then, too. He wasn't hurt in the fall. He should be able to fly. But he can't."
"I can fly," said Calcariel, his face a little wooden. "I can fly fine. I just... want you to walk because... it will... teach you a lesson. Now..." He gestured again at the road. "Walk. I command you." He cleared his throat, and said, "I command you!"
But the command sounded weirdly uncertain, and Cas said, his voice slow, "You had to use a spell to transport Sam and yourself to the top of the tower."
Again Calcariel was strangely silent.
Castiel went on, "You drove Sam all that way to the bridge, instead of flying him. You had to make a deal with Crowley just for that spell to get up on top of the tower. And... why did it take you so many minutes to get here just now, Calcariel? I'd been climbing down from the tree and hiking through these bushes for quite a few minutes before you showed up." Cas's head tilted, his eyes narrowing, clearly figuring it out as he spoke. "You had to walk down the stairs in the tower, didn't you? And then...you drove over here? And parked your car and walked down the path?"
"I... like the stairs," said Calcariel. "And the door was stuck." He cleared his throat. "I enjoy... that car."
Dean had to snort at that (nobody in their right mind could enjoy a PT Cruiser, in Dean's opinion. Though, then again, Calcariel was not in his right mind). Cas went on, "But it goes much further back than today, doesn't it? You didn't bother to fly out to the Bahamas to help Beloniel. Even though you knew he needed backup, even though you knew he was dealing with incompetent demons yet again, even though you knew we were coming. You left him to deal with us alone! And you didn't bother to fly to the Mississippi, either; you were trying to manage that elemental remotely, with that man."
"Skype calls," Dean remembered. He added, only now realizing how odd it was, "He was trying to manage an elemental remotely with skype calls."
"Exactly," said Cas.
"Be quiet," Calcariel ordered. He flicked a hand at Cas, and Cas staggered, and his mouth snapped closed for a moment.
But a moment later Cas seemed to recover. He still couldn't seem to move his feet much, but soon he was able to talk again. "You can't fly," he said, rubbing his jaw; his hand seemed free to move too.
"I said, BE QUIET!" snapped Calcariel. He seemed to be losing his temper.
"When Ziphius broke my wing," went on Castiel, "She said her superior had ordered her to."
This seemed to touch a nerve. "DON'T YOU TALK ABOUT ZIPHIUS!" roared Calcariel, suddenly enraged, and in one quick motion he flung his blade right at Castiel. But Cas had another blade (as was his way, these days), and since his arm was free, Cas parried Calcariel's blade aside easily.
Cas said his voice dropping in pitch, resonant and strong, "Calcariel. Ziphius's last words were that she was only following orders."
He let that sink in, staring at Calcariel.
Calcariel blinked, and looked at the ground.
Castiel said "Those were her very last words. She died because she was following orders from 'her superior.' She said her superior was the one who decided my wings should be broken. Her superior decided that, not her. And that superior was you, Calcariel. Why did you care so much about destroying my wings? Why not just have her kill me? You'd have triumphed easily if she'd just stabbed me dead right away. And... Calcariel... why weren't you there to help her? Why didn't you just fly to Zion to help her carry out your orders?"
"Will you be QUIET!" growled Calcariel
"Tell me, Calcariel," said Cas, his head tilting further, an almost curious look coming over his face. "Were your wings broken too? Or are you... tertialled, perhaps? Like me?"
"NO!" roared Calcariel, the new vessel's face twisted in fury now, the pale face growing red with rage, the blond hair disarrayed. "NO! I'M NOT LIKE YOU! I'M NOT TERTIALLED! I'M NOT A CRIPPLE! I'M NOT LIKE YOU!"
"Then what's wrong with your wings?" said Castiel, his eyes narrowing.
"I DON'T HAVE TO TELL YOU A DAMN THING, YOU MISERABLE LITTLE TERTIALLED CRIPPLE!"
"Oh, yes you do," put in Sam. Calcariel shot a vicious glare at him, but Sam said, "Sacrifices deserve to know the reason they're being sacrificed. You must have told me that a million times. It's your own code of honor. You went on and on and on about it. You wouldn't shut up about it! So if you're going to sacrifice Castiel, and if you broke his wing as part of that, he deserves to know why."
Calcariel stared at Sam for a long moment.
Then he lifted his chin, and nodded, and said, "Very well."
He looked back over at Cas. There was a crack of thunder, and suddenly Calcariel's wings were flaring wide.
As wide as they could, that is.
It looked like he had just half a wing on each side.
Dean stared at the wings in confusion, trying to figure out what had happened to them, and soon he realized that Calcariel was missing most of the primaries on each wing. In fact, the whole outer half of the wing, the part beyond the alulas, seemed to have been reduced to just a twisted, ruined mass of scar tissue just a foot long or so. A few of the innermost primaries were still there, but all the rest seemed to be nothing but tiny blackened little stubs.
"Ew," said Crowley.
The secondaries and tertials were all there, though. All black. With faint brown bars visible through the black in places, and little dashes of a deep blue here and there.
"Oh, Calcariel," said Castiel softly. "Oh. You've been..." He swallowed. "You've been pinioned."
Calcariel's face seemed to break at these words. He managed to gasp out, his voice suddenly much weaker, "It's your fault. Castiel. Your fault. Everything that has gone wrong, everything, is your fault."
"I did not do this to you," said Castiel, speaking very clearly. "I did not. It was Mr. Magma, wasn't it. He burned you too badly... he burned to the bone, didn't he; destroyed the feather roots entirely? Is that what happened— Ah, Calcariel, I'm sorry—"
"He wouldn't have done that if you hadn't been there! It was YOUR FAULT!" cried Calcariel. He took a shaky breath and folded his pathetic wings tightly behind his back, obviously struggling to get himself under control, and then he hissed, "Everything is always your fault, Castiel, everything. For SIXTY-FIVE MILLION YEARS you have been ruining all my plans. ALL of them. Just you, Castiel, always you—"
He was stalking closer to Castiel now, leaving the line of boulders. He moved one hand toward the ground, and his own blade, the one Cas had parried aside, sprang into his hand again. His other hand was still splayed out toward Sarah, Sam, and Dean, and though he may have been low on power before, in his rage his power seemed to have strengthened slightly, and he was somehow able to keep them all completely still.
Crowley, who'd been sitting a few paces behind Calcariel on his boulder, stood slowly, yawned, stretched his arms overhead, said, "This is dragging on a bit," and stepped behind the boulder.
"It is ALWAYS you, Castiel," said Calcariel, taking one more step. "You have ruined EVERYTHING I've ever done! IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"
"Why does he always get the credit?," said Crowley, stepping back out from behind the boulder with the flaming sledgehammer in one hand. Swinging the sledgehammer in a tremendous arc right at Calcariel's crippled wings, Crowley said, "I've ruined lots of your plans!"
Calcariel saw the motion out of the corner of his eye and jerked to the side. Crowley missed, and a moment later he was flying through the air at a tree, as Calcariel spread one hand at him with a roar of rage, turning all his attention on him. But that meant Calcariel's immobilization of the others had briefly weakened. Dean struggled to do something but realized he had no weapon; he only managed to do a totally useless step in Calcariel's direction, when a gunshot split the air.
It was Sam, firing his own pistol, the one he'd managed to slip out of Sarah's pocket, while Sarah had been standing there in front of him, her arms folded carefully to hide what Sam had been doing. Sam had actually braced his arm on her shoulder, and it was a perfect shot. The glass vial shattered, a burst of salt water spraying out of it.
"Been wanting to do that for months," growled Sam.
Calcariel was flung backwards and to the ground by the blow. He dropped his blade and reflexively brought up both hands to immobilize everybody again, and then sat there on the ground in shock, staring down at the shattered vial.
Everyone just stared in silence.
A large round green scale dropped delicately out of the remains of the vial, rolled off the edge of Calcariel's pinstriped jacket, and fell to the ground. Calcariel looked at it in shock.
Out in the Golden Gate, the elemental gave a tremendous deep roar like a foghorn.
Crowley picked himself up from the ground some distance away. Dusting himself off meticulously, he said, "See, this is a perfect example! I've ruined plenty of your plans, more than Castiel here has - it's just that I get other people to do it for me! You just haven't been paying attention! Like, Castiel may have killed Ziphius but I'm the one who kept him alive long enough to do so, didn't I? And right now, Sam here did the shot but it's me that weakened you enough so that Sam could move his hands. Because, y'know, that little transport spell I gave you had a, um, an ingredient I may have forgotten to tell you about." He coughed into his hand, looking a little embarrassed. "So I, um, might have used somebody's alula-feather when creating that spell. That is, um, the spell might have, um, worked by draining the power of the owner of that feather." He laced his hands behind his back, rocked on his toes a bit, and said, "It might have been a white feather with brown barring. Castiel gave it to me. I didn't ask whose it was."
Calcariel was just gaping up at him, and Crowley said, rolling his eyes, "Do I have to spell it out? YOUR feather, Calcariel."
"But... how... Castiel had MY FEATHER? HOW?"
"Hey, not my problem, is it? I needed a feather, he had a feather, I made a deal, the end. Not my fault if you leave your alula-feathers lying all over the place."
Calcariel was still just staring at him. Crowley said with a sigh, spreading his hands innocently, "Don't give me that look! You know perfectly well demon magic doesn't work over running water, you KNOW that, and with that whirlpool that was a heck of a lot of running water. Just ask Dean here, he drove me clear over a river once because of that little, tiny, eentsy little problem that we demons have. I needed an angel feather to do the spell you wanted done over running water! Anyway, that's probably why you're having some trouble now keeping everybody perfectly still. I wonder if you might find you're not able to enslave any more elementals, either. Don't really know." He turned as if to walk away, and then turned back to say, "Also, just B-T-W, this isn't even the first elemental of yours I've helped free. I freed the lightning one all by myself! Betrayed Ziphius, freed the lightning elemental, saved Cas's life, stole the hammer. Didn't anybody fill you in on that?"
Calcariel was still just staring at him.
"Oh, did nobody tell you," said Crowley, blinking innocently. "What a pity that with Ziphius dead, nobody thought to tell you about how exactly she'd died. I could've told you the whole thing. If you'd asked. Sam, Dean, you guys, have you been keeping Calcariel in the dark about my role in killing Ziphius, and freeing that elemental, and saving Castiel's life?" Crowley sighed. "No wonder I never get any credit."
Calcariel grabbed his blade and scrambled to his feet, still staring at Crowley.
"You traitor," he hissed. "You... demon."
Crowley said, his voice darkening, "Calcariel. I fulfilled my contract to the letter. It's your own fault if you didn't ask me what happened in Zion or how I was powering the transportation spell. Besides, it was all spelled out in Clause One Hundred Forty-Three. Guess you didn't read the fine print, huh?" Then he said to Dean, with a broad smile and a big wink, "Though, Dean. You might just now be detecting: QUINTUPLE-crosses are actually my absolute favorite." He leaned down and picked up the sledgehammer. Its aura of holy fire had at last gone out, doused in the spray of elemental water. "Ah, shucks, will you look at that, I've gone and ruined my favorite museum piece," said Crowley sadly. "This was my best piece. I had a potential buyer, too."
A tremendous roar broke the stunned silence; it was the elemental again. A moment later the elemental's vast head rose up in the bay, stretching up hundreds of feet. It began scanning the bridge, scanning the sea, scanning the shoreline all around, its eyes shining in the twilight.
It was hunting for its missing scale. Dean felt certain.
"I think maybe you've pissed it off," Crowley commented.
"TRAITOR! EVIL, EVIL DEMON! I WILL SACRIFICE YOU AS WELL!" roared Calcariel. He flung out one hand again and once again Crowley went flying.
"Ow," Crowley said in complaint, picking himself up at the base of the tree.
"You've lost, Calcariel," said Castiel, lifting his blade slightly. "Give up. It's over. You've lost this elemental, you'll never be able to enslave another, and you're too weak to defeat us all. You've lost."
"No!"
"You might be able to hold two of us, maybe," said Cas, taking a slow, dragging step forward, "Perhaps three. But, I'll bet, not four. Not completely. And the elemental is freed. You've lost. Surrender."
"I can't have lost," said Calcariel, backing up slowly down the path now, as Castiel advanced, pushing his feet forward toward Calcariel step by step, slowly raising his blade. Calcariel said, "I cannot lose. I cannot... It cannot be! I will triumph in the end. My cause is just! I am purifying the world! As God intended!"
"God never intended a tsunami to destroy all mankind," said Castiel, shaking his head almost sadly. "Nor a magma explosion. Nor a wall of fire. You have always been in the wrong; you just can't imagine it to be so."
"No!" Calcariel spat, "It is I who have been in the right, and you who have always been in the wrong! I am the one who is good! You are the one who is evil!"
Sarah interrupted, "Then why does this always spin faster whenever you get closer to us?"
She held up the little crucifix.
Calcariel stared at her, and then looked at the little cross in her hand. It was whipping around, counterclockwise. Cas stopped too, glancing back to the cross in puzzlement, as Sarah began to walk steadily toward Calcariel, just as Cas had been doing, step by slow step. Sarah said, as she slowly pressed her way forward, "Just look at it." Sam staggered after her, saying, "Sarah!" and Dean cringed to see her drawing Calcariel's attention like to herself that (Calcariel, after all, not only seemed out of his mind with rage, but also was holding an angel-blade).
But Sarah seemed unafraid, and Dean remembered she had once had three days alone with Calcariel herself.
"You told me once," said Sarah, "Well, several times actually— you told me A LOT of times— that your cause was just and right. But then... why is this crucifix spinning?"
As she passed Castiel and neared Calcariel, the cross only spun faster. And faster.
All the air seemed to go out of Calcariel. "That's not a sanctified cross," he said slowly, staring at it spinning.
Cas said, "Yes it is. It was sanctified by the old Babylonian method, too."
"You must have done it wrong."
"I did it perfectly. But you can check it if you like," said Cas. He grabbed the cross out of Sarah's hand and tossed it right to Calcariel. Calcariel caught it a little clumsily, held it still in his palm, and inspected it.
Cas said, "You can feel that it is truly sanctified. Can't you. You can feel it. "
Calcariel didn't answer. Slowly he dangled the cross from his hand. It began whipping counterclockwise again.
"It can't be," said Calcariel slowly. "This can't be. Because that would mean..."
Dean put in, "It would mean you'd been wrong all along?"
There was a long pause, as Calcariel gazed blankly at the little spinning crucifix.
Sam said, "It would mean your whole plan was always wrong?"
Sarah said, "More than wrong. Evil, in fact."
And Cas said, "And it would mean Ziphius's death is, in large part, on your hands."
"Ouch," said Crowley. "Good one, Cas." Cas glared at him.
Calcariel stared at the cross for what seemed an endless moment, while everyone else stood silent.
"Hate to burst the bubble here," said Crowley, walking closer. "But it's spinning because of me. I'm the most evil one here, not Calcariel. See, it'll go faster still when I hold it." He walked right up to Calcariel and took the crucifix right out of Calcariel's numb hands, and walked a few feet away.
The crucifix slowed. It was still spinning counterclockwise, but it had slowed.
"Hey, wait," said Crowley. He walked a little further away and the crucifix slowed further. He shook it in annoyance. "Is this thing broken? That can't be right. I'm the most evil one. I'm always the most evil one."
"No..." muttered Calcariel, watching as Crowley walked slowly back to Calcariel. The cross sped up again.
Crowley hesitated a moment. Looking around at the others, he cleared his throat and said, looking a bit awkward, "So... how about we all just keep this to ourselves? Mum's the word, hey? Because, honestly, if word gets out that an angel beat me on the crucifix test, I'm never going to live it down."
"How can I be more evil than him," Calcariel said woodenly.
"Because you should know better," said Dean. "Crowley's just a bug."
"Hey," said Crowley, aggrieved.
"Because our job, the angels' very purpose," said Castiel, "was to protect creation, not destroy it. Crowley never had an assignment from God. He never broke a vow, never broke a promise. We did. We angels had an assignment, explicitly, to protect creation, and protect humankind. And we took a vow, and we made a promise." Cas took a breath, and said, "Calcariel — if anyone knows what it's like to make a terrible mistake, an evil mistake that seems impossible to recover from, it's me, I can promise you that. Calcariel, it's not too late for you. You can redeem yourself, I truly believe so. If you wish. But you would have to devote yourself anew to the protection of all humankind, and the mortal world they live in. Are you willing to do that?"
Calcariel stared at the little cross for a while longer. He gazed up at the darkening sky.
"Calcariel," said Castiel earnestly, glancing down at his blade. "I don't want to have to use this. The mortal earth is beautiful. If you could only see—"
"QUIET," Calcariel barked. His face twisted. "If it is truly God's will that this planet continue as it is... then it is God who is wrong. I am right. I KNOW that I am right."
He lifted his blade.
"Calcariel, I warn you—" said Cas, lifting his own blade in turn.
But Calcariel was paying no attention to Cas anymore. He stared at the cross a moment longer (it had accelerated) and tossed the cross to the ground, and spat on it. Then he spread his ruined wings once again. Without a word he flicked his blade around and sliced all the tertials off his own wings. Cas gasped, but Calcariel didn't even flinch; he sliced off all his tertials, all of them, in two swift strokes. First the left, then the right, till the tertials lay scattered on the ground.
A silvery-white light began tricklng out of the severed stubs. It was all that was left of Calcariel's power, draining away.
Calcariel tossed his blade to the ground. "Keep your planet," he said to Castiel, his lip curling in a sneer. He pulled the silver medallion off his neck and flung it to the dusty trail too, on top of the severed tertials and the crucifix and the green scale. "Keep your filthy rats. Keep your ducks, your idiotic mice, your mud-monkeys, your stench and your filth, your miserable painful sad lives. And your pathetic emotions! Keep them all! Keep your guilt and grief and sorrow, your loneliness and pain. Keep your useless dead god, Castiel, and you know he is useless, you know he is dead, and you know he never valued this planet more than a speck of sand. Keep your shit. Keep your stink. Because you do stink, Castiel, you stink like a mortal, you're as pathetic as the rest of them. Keep it all, wallow in it till the sun eats this planet alive, keep it all, grovel in the filth, you and your mud-monkeys. I wash my hands of all of you."
He spread his ruined wings one last time.
A line from Schmidt-Nielsen flashed through Dean's mind:
"There is a form of angelic self-exile termed "tertialing" in which the angel severs the tertials of both wings and then embarks on one last (uncontrolled) departure... Such angels are never heard from again."
Calcariel's ragged wings gave one strong wingbeat.
Apparently he still had just enough power, and just enough primaries and secondaries left, to take off one last time, even in the Earthly dimension. He did just the one wingbeat, and shot at once over the water into the western sky with astonishing speed, bleeding out the last of his power in a silver trail as he went.
The elemental snapped at Calcariel as he shot past. But Calcariel was going so fast he already seemed just a blur of silver light. (A meteor, thought Dean, A comet.) Once again the elemental's jaws closed on nothing but air, and it roared in rage. In moments was nothing left of Calcariel but a long faint trail of light, like a trail left by a shooting star, slanting out over the water, over the whirlpool, out toward the western horizon, and out into space.
He was aimed pretty close to the setting sun, Dean realized.
The elemental turned its scaly nose to the sky and howled in frustration. It bellowed once; it bellowed again. It swung its vast head toward the shore again, eyeing the little group of people suspiciously.
It growled. It started to thrash its long body, building up a wave.
Dean snapped out of his trance and grabbed the green scale. "HERE!" he yelled. "TAKE IT! WE'RE THE ONES THAT FREED YOU! PLEASE DON'T HURT US!" He whipped the scale at it like a tiny frisbee. It was a pretty good throw, and the little green scale flew out into the air over the treetops toward the water. The elemental met it with a huge wave, riding the wave forward and reaching up to snatch the little glinting scale in its jaws. The wave came nowhere near where Dean and everybody else were standing, but they all breathed a sigh of relief as the water sank back down.
But then the elemental roared again.
"It's still angry," said Castiel. "We should leave."
"But you gave it the scale back! And Sam and me freed it!" said Sarah.
"Water elementals are moody," Dean informed her grimly, and they all started to run further up the hill, back toward the cars as they watched the elemental howl again and again, thrashing around in its whirlpool. It snapped once more in frustration at Calcariel's fading light-trail. And then it spun in rage and attacked the bridge.
Dean, and everybody, froze still at the sight. The elemental clashed its great jaws shut on the southern tower. No more play now, no more curiosity; it was enraged, and it wrenched the entire seven-hundred-foot tower off its base with one seemingly effortless twist of its long neck. All the remaining lights on the bridge flickered and went out as the entire Golden Gate Bridge seemed to disintegrate at once, the remaining pieces of the roadway crumbling to pieces instantly, crashing to the water in huge rectangular pieces, the cables swaying wildly. The elemental yanked hard on the fallen tower and pulled it right into the whirlpool, the cables snapped tight, the northern tower bent visibly with a tremendous screeching groan, and both concrete buttresses at the southern end exploded with a deafening noise like two massive bombs. BOOM, BOOM, one after another. Next the elemental attacked the twisted northern tower, its vast body coiling right around the remnants of the bridge now, twisting till the cables pulled free of the northern end too. BOOM, BOOM! The cables were free at both ends. The northern tower leaned over and toppled slowly, in an immense groaning crash.
The entire bridge was lying in the water: two twisted towers poking half up out of the water, still joined by the vast cables. The elemental began to munch on one tower almost thoughtfully.
Then it noticed the long red cables. They were trailing in the water now like miniature sea serpents, coiling around in the whirlpool.
Each cable was more than two miles long.
The elemental gave a little snort. Its head seemed to perk up; its eyes brightened, glowing visibly in the twilight.
It picked up a loop of cable on its nose, and another loop. Soon it was cavorting around the long cables, twining them around its body in apparent delight. The whirlpool began to fade, and slowly it flattened out and died entirely, as the elemental twisted and rolled with the red cables.
Eventually the elemental picked up one twisted tower in its mouth, and hoisted the other on a loop of its back. It turned and swam serenely out to the sea, the two red cables trailing by its side, snorting happily like a dog with a new chew toy— or, maybe, a dog with a couple of new, small, friends.
It headed straight out to sea, sinking lower and lower as it went. Soon it had vanished completely under the surface, taking the entire Golden Gate Bridge with it. A wake at the surface followed its path out for a few moments longer, and then even the wake disappeared.
The entire Pacific Ocean was mirror-calm, as far as the eye could see.
The golden moon rose serenely over a quiet, peaceful San Francisco Bay.
A/N -
And that is the end of Calcariel and his quest to purify the world. The "First Flight" of the title refers to Castiel's wobbly, but successful, flight; but the "Final Flight" refers to Calcariel's flight, not Castiel's.
All throughout Flight there were clues scattered that Calcariel had something seriously wrong with his wings. Some of you assumed this was just because of the Fall, but we learned in Forgotten that his wings were fine (cause we saw his wings briefly). The damage to his wings dates back, rather, to the Mr. Magma scene in Forgotten. I had in mind then (while writing Forgotten) that Calcariel would survive BUT WITH RUINED WINGS, wings that never healed. And that he would try to ruin Castiel's wings too, in revenge.
In the end Castiel could have killed him. But Cas gave him a chance to redeem himself (this seemed like a Cas thing to do)... but Calcariel threw it away. Ah, Calcariel... there is a real tragedy to his story: his conviction that he was doing the right thing, his terribly ruined wings, the loss of his friend Ziphius. But he brought it on himself. And he chose his own fate in the end.
Calcariel's feather color: He was originally described (in Forgotten) with all-white wings. That's ALMOST true... the full truth, which only became clear to me later as I learned more about angel feather color, is he had white wings WITH BROWN BARRING and bits of BLUE. (You may remember when Castiel finds Calcariel's alula-feather later, it was a white feather with brown barring.) What does brown barring mean? What does blue mean? Look back at Chapter 20, the Gray and the Black, to find out, and you'll get a tiny little clue as to Calcariel's character, and also why it is that he was so distressed with the condition of the mortal world.
There will be one more "official" chapter, which I hope to have ready by next weekend, mostly winding down from this Calcariel conclusion. (And yes, Sam and Cas will finally get a chance to talk!) Since Halloween's this Friday, I might not get it done till Saturday or Sunday. And - there will be at least two epilogues. I've been going back and forth between making the epilogues "official chapters" but I think they work better framed as epilogues. So, you can think of that as "one more chapter" or "three more chapters", whichever makes you happy. :)
Please let me know if you liked this! And let me know if there was an image or idea that you especially liked. :)