Part 4 – Angel, Come Home
"It is little use to blame a dog for having fear. A dog has so many braveries that its few fears do not cancel them out."
-Lassie Come-Home (Eric Knight)
Two separate, entirely opposed and wholly unreasoned compulsions shook Castiel, right to the bones of the dog he'd become, to the center of who he was, what he was, and what he'd been. One imperative was to drive forward, to come upon the scene in a rush of muscle and fang, to seek out, to rend and destroy that which loomed now as a threat to the Winchesters. The other, equally strong, was to flee, and in this there was sense, for he had no power over the thing of terror which lay up slope by the road. Yet the part of him not estranged from thought or reason knew that neither was the wiser option that there was a third course against which both instinct and emotion violently rebelled that was essential and therefore must be taken.
Impulse warred impulse, and he might have stood paralyzed for minutes or hours, had Dean's own fear not been touched. Castiel's behavior told Dean that his family was in peril, and for him there could be only one answer to that: he must reach them, and he must defend them, though he knew not what the danger was or how best to confront it. Because Castiel was tethered to him by the hated but accepted leash, Castiel went with him, willingly or not.
Castiel's thoughts about his previous existence had started to become more remote, and while his ambition to see that the Winchesters remained alive and safe continued unchecked, his motivations for returning to what he had been were becoming ambiguous. However, while the mortal mind could not cope with the sheer volume of knowledge he had accumulated over his long existence, his memories on many things remained sharp, and his emotions about them clear.
And what he remembered of what lay up ahead was deep hurt. Not content to remain merely a bringer of hurt, it was instead the very embodiment of all that was pain, not only for Castiel but for everyone whom that fell thing of hurt had touched or spoken to. The sound of the terrible voice in his head had earlier driven him half to madness, such that he had for a moment forgotten place and being as the voice traced along the edges of subsurface wounds that still bled raw.
Dean knew nothing of the Angel dog's thoughts or memories, but he had not spent his life fighting monsters for nothing, and when instinct honed sharp from that lifetime of man versus everything warfare said him and his were in danger, he listened.
On sight, he understood. Words came out of Dean then that he had sworn his mother would never hear uttered from his mouth. Though he knew it was a useless gesture, Dean raised his pistol anyway. And heard a voice that was his own, yet didn't come from him, speak one sharp word, a name.
"Cassie."
At once Dean found himself confronted with a great wall of white which didn't at first make sense to him and so stopped him, as much because he was surprised and confused as because he felt threatened. At the same time, Cass whipped around from behind him and stood half in front of him, side pressed against his right leg, placing himself between Dean and the perceived danger, though it was immediately clear that he would have preferred to be literally anywhere else in that moment.
The exquisite whiteness which Dean had at first perceived as a wall was, in fact, a pair of massive wings, each of which was longer than the Impala and Mom's car parked end to end. The purity of the wings was such that they glowed like white embers under the starlight. At the slightest shiver of them, they stirred up a faint breeze, and Dean sensed that could become a gale with little more than a twitch of the flight muscles concealed beneath those painfully beautiful feathers.
What stunned him the most however was not the wings but what they were attached to. Or rather… who. Intellectually, Dean had known that there was another Castiel out there. And he had more than once seen a shifter wearing his own mug. You'd think he'd be used to it by now. But even though he'd known it was coming, it still hit like a punch across the jaw.
It was Cass. But Cass hadn't looked like this for years. The Fall, losing his Grace, being the vessel for Lucifer… Dean hadn't even noticed how much those things had aged his friend. But this Angel had never experienced those things. Wings aside, this Angel looked like the Castiel Dean had originally confronted in that barn what felt like a century ago. Younger, with less weight on his shoulders, and darker hair; but he was also colder, almost brittle in his bearing, blazing with inhuman power like a beacon. This Cass was also wearing something Dean mentally compared to a bathrobe, though it was actually a dusky caftan that had an opening at the back to make way for the impressive wings.
Yet it was the thing directly behind this otherworldly Castiel that had drawn such vehement cursing from Dean and transfixed his attention even more than the breathtaking span of wings. Because in addition to another Sam and another Dean, there was a second Angel, one Dean knew and hated with everything in him.
"Lucifer," Dean snarled, trying to spot Satan behind the unfurled wings of the other Castiel, which he realized were widely spread specifically to prevent him from doing just that.
"Dean," Sam broke in, "Take it easy. That's not our Lucifer."
Instinct fought reason. Dean struggled to comprehend the words, though in truth he didn't want to understand them, because they made the situation complicated. He preferred good old simple Us versus Them. He and his family had been looking for the alternate reality Castiel, alternate reality Dean, alternate reality Sam. But alternate reality Lucifer? Dean's mind hadn't been given time to process that, and the feel of Cass growling quietly against him seemed further proof that a threat existed.
A finger snap was all it would take to blow him, and in fact any of them, to atoms. Each new heart beat brought with it a bone-deep certainty that the snap would happen before the next.
"We're not here to fight," this came from the Other Sam, and was an even less welcome statement to Dean's way of thinking than his own Sam's remark had been, "We're here to fix what my brother broke before we go home. That's all."
The Other Dean grunted derisively. Evidently his double resented their presence here as much as Dean did. Dean kept his gun aimed at where he'd last seen Lucifer, behind the first Angel's wing.
"You can't hurt Angels with that," Sam, his Sam, persisted.
Dean glared at Sam for revealing their helplessness, and Sam gave him an 'oh like they don't already know' look right back. Grudgingly, Dean lowered his gun. The Other Castiel gradually pulled his wings in, folding them in direct response to the decreasing threat level. At a glimpse of Lucifer, Dean's reflexes started to bring his gun back into play, but he checked the response, noticing that the slight upward movement of the gun's muzzle, however brief, had caused the spread wings to shiver in place. They did not fold up entirely until he holstered his weapon. Like a bird's wings, they actually folded somewhat around the Angel instead of disappearing behind him, curving upward over his shoulders and coming to rest around his upper arms. The wings quivered tensely, as though the Angel did not trust that the need for them had passed.
"Great," the Other Sam said in evident relief, stepping away from the protection of the Angel, "Now, as I was saying… my brother can be very impulsive. Has a tendency to get carried away. And, when he's upset, he tends to take it out on whoever and whatever happens to get in his way."
The Other Sam turned narrowed eyes on his brother, while the Other Dean merely rolled his own and crossed his arms defensively. Both were dressed the same as the Angels, sans the opening at the back for wings, though the Other Dean wore black while the Other Sam wore a lighter gray. The Other Dean's hands disappeared into the sleeves of his garment when he crossed them
"I'd say carried away is an understatement," Dean growled, still eyeing Lucifer suspiciously.
"Dean," Mom cut in warningly, bringing into focus with a word the fact that provoking these people wasn't going to get them anywhere; certainly it wasn't going to help Cass.
Bristling inwardly at the unwanted reminder that they even needed help from these otherworldly dicks who had caused all the trouble to begin with, Dean nonetheless accepted it and said nothing further.
"And as I was saying," Sam said, seemingly reminding his own double, "The decision's not up to me."
"Decision?" Dean perked up, "What decision?"
"They want to fix Cass," Sam explained.
"Great. When can we get started?" Dean asked, ignoring the hesitant look in Sam's eyes.
"How about never?" the Other Dean suggested.
"Dean!" the Other Sam's rebuking tone sounded just like this reality's Sam, and Dean found himself stinging from a scolding he hadn't earned and which wasn't meant for him.
Well, it was meant for him, but not for him. It was all getting rapidly confusing.
"What?" the Other Dean asked defensively, "Just because this dick sicced his Angel on us-"
"Whoa, hey!" Dean interrupted, furious at the accusation, "I didn't sic anything on anyone!"
"Yeah, right," the Other Dean rolled his eyes, "Then what the hell was he doing out in the woods? Selling child model biscuits?"
"What?" Dean asked, decided he didn't want an explanation and rolled on, "How should I know? Probably he was lookin' for you ass clowns."
The Other Dean growled inarticulately, and the Other Castiel's wings spasmed partially open, then folded back down firmly, as though he had anticipated some cataclysm that hadn't come to pass. This seemed to be because the Other Sam had put a hand on his brother's arm to restrain him.
"What kind of Angel Master doesn't keep track of his Angel?" the Other Dean demanded angrily, having thought better of whatever he'd been about to say or do, and so saying something that patently made zero kinds of sense. The Other Sam looked markedly uncomfortably about his brother's remark, but Dean didn't know or care why.
"Angel Master?" Dean scoffed, "What the hell is an Angel Master?" he looked at Cass for explanation, then remembered that the Angel he usually looked to for answers with regards to celestial malarkey was currently a dog, and not the cool talking kind either.
The glance in the dog's direction told him that the dog -Cass- was engaged in other business in any case. Stiffly, legs braced as if in preparation for impact, every muscle taut and ready for action (though Dean was unsure if that action was to attack or flee), Cass locked gaze with that other, strange Lucifer, his growl so low it was inaudible, but Dean could feel it rattling in the dog's chest. Every hair was on end, the typically mostly upright ears were laid flat so that they disappeared entirely in the thick ruff.
"You mean you don't-" the Other Sam began, broke off with a shake of his head, while his brother did a double-take, "You don't… well but then how… I mean..." he didn't seem to know what he meant.
"Well," the Other Dean grumbled, a subconscious hand going to the necklace he wore, which was identical to the one Sam had given Dean for Christmas years ago, "I guess that explains the wings."
When the Other Dean touched the necklace, the Other Castiel's eyes flicked in his direction, landing briefly on the item. Dean knew binding magic when he saw it. He didn't know how it was even possible, but he did know with utter certainty that the Angel was bound to that necklace, and thus to that Other Dean, a prisoner and slave as surely as though he'd worn shackles.
Dean felt revulsion swelling up in him like bile, forgetting in that moment that he had this universe's Castiel tethered to him by a nylon leash and buckle collar. He also felt an internal warning, telling him that only fools bound Angels for long, and those fools and their lives were soon parted. More importantly, anyone in the vicinity of those fools might easily get sliced during the parting of the ways. He opted to say nothing about that, at least for the moment.
"About those wings-" Dean began, then cut himself off, "No, on second thought, I don't care. You said you came to fix Cass, so get to the fixing part."
The Other Sam looked decidedly uncomfortable, while the Other Dean merely looked annoyed to still be here. Glancing at his brother, Dean noticed that his Sam wore an expression that matched that of the Other Sam. He realized there was some piece of information he was clearly missing.
"What's the problem?" Dean asked.
After a moment of uneasily shifting his weight, the Other Sam said, "Technically, it was Cassie who turned your Angel into a dog. But-"
"But he can't turn the bitch back without my say-so," the Other Dean interrupted, "And I see no reason whatsoever that I should say so. I neutralized a threat, a rogue Angel no less from the sound of things. I ain't about to sign off on turnin' that loose nuke..." he faltered, before concluding, "Loose."
"Now look here, you son-of-a-bitch!" Dean snarled, rapidly growing to hate himself and stepping forward to see if he couldn't punch some sense into that smug face, but he'd barely moved a step when the Other Castiel -Cassie, they kept calling him- popped his wings open again and flapped them once with such vehemence that a rush of wind knocked Sam and Mom back against the cars, and knocked Dean flat on his can.
"Take it easy, Cassie," Lucifer spoke for the first time, and the sound of his voice sent Cass (who had managed to keep his feet) into paroxysms of that bark-roaring thing he did, "He's right to be angry."
"What would you know of it?" The Other Castiel turned his head to look sidelong at Lucifer, speaking over the sounds of the raging Angel dog, "You weren't there. This Angel threatened violence towards Dean," his wings extended above him for a moment, and Dean was distressingly reminded of the threatening hood of a cobra. But then they slowly settled back into their customary folded position as he concluded, "Even you in your perversion could not condone such behavior."
"Violence?" Mom exclaimed breathlessly, and Cass fell mercifully in apparent response to a voice he found preferable to Lucifer's or his doppelganger's, "What do you call what you just did?"
The Other Castiel turned to her with that look of kind of spacey curiosity that Cass used to get, "None of you were hurt. Surely you did not expect me to stand by and do nothing to dispel the threat leveled against my Master?"
Dean looked for any sign that the Angel had been reluctant to come to his Master's defense, that it was a requirement of that which bound him but was otherwise against his will. He saw no such indication.
However, with a tilt of his head, Cass decided to weigh in.
"Yes, I know I turned you into a dog first," The Other Castiel said, "But that hardly justifies-" he broke off, evidently interrupted, then continued in obvious irritation, his feathers puffing out, "What do you mean why did I do it? My Master willed it, so of course I-" he broke off again, and when he spoke once more it was evidently in answer to a question, "Well because he hates dogs, obviously. Since I can't kill, turning you into a creature he detests was the next best thing."
"What do you mean you can't kill?' Sam latched onto this detail, trying desperately to find his footing in the situation, which seemed in danger of flying to pieces one way or another.
The Other Sam supplied the answer, "Of course Cassie can't kill anyone, no Mastered Angel can," as if he were teaching schoolchildren, he continued, "God gave us the Angels to help us, but their powers had to have limits. To keep them in check, he bound them to Earthly items that they can't touch themselves and can only escape from if they have a human Master to let them out, and He made it so that they must show their wings in order that we can always recognize them. To keep us in check, He forbade them from killing at our command, and gave them freedom to turn the winds against us."
"Wait… so… your Angels are genies? Like… Aladdin's lamp genies?" Sam asked incredulously, "Three wishes but no killing or love spells genies?"
The Other Sam shook his head, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
It occurred to Dean that this Other Sam was looking at them a little bit as if they were wild animals. The look had come into his eyes slowly, one exchanged sentence at a time, but with increasing sharpness. Having regained his feet, Dean was frantic to regain some sense of internal balance, so he decided to return to the last comment made by the Other Castiel.
"The next best thing to killing is… this?" he gestured at Cass.
"Where we're from, it's not that uncommon to eat dogs," the Other Sam remarked.
"Oh, so Angels can't kill people, they just make them into someone else's dinner?" Dean snapped.
"Every living creature is potential food for something else," the Other Castiel said in that annoyingly familiar tone of reason that Dean knew so well, "That's how the world, any world, works."
"So why not just turn Cass into a can of soup and get it over with?" Dean fumed.
"Well a can of soup isn't alive, for one thing-" the Other Castiel began sensibly.
This time the interruption was Sam, "Can we focus, please?!"
"Yeah, what's the hold up on fixing Cass?" Dean demanded, remembering the important thread and yanking on it.
"I can't fix him unless my Master wills it," the Other Castiel said flatly.
"And I don't," the Other Dean offered with a smug grin that made Dean want to kick him in the teeth.
"But I do," the Other Sam chimed in, with a shake of his head, "Only... I'm not Cassie's Master."
The pieces flew together, and they made a hideous picture.
Dean felt himself recoil even before the Other Lucifer spoke the dreaded words, "He's mine."