Author's Note:

Warnings: PTSD. Disassociation.

12.

The magazine is empty before Sam stops. The gun clicks as it dry fires when he keeps pulling the trigger. Beyond the first bullet, there are four that pierce the skin of the vessel. Six total. Dean's 1911 holds seven rounds. His Taurus seventeen. Six rounds. He shot him six times.

Lucifer is a crippled mass before him, unable to move, wrapped around himself like he's in danger of losing pieces should he let go. Panting, heaving, blood pooling. He's not moving. Sam doesn't know if he can. He's twitching, like it's simply death throes.

He shot him.

He shot him.

His fingers slide off the edge of the counter, elbow ramming against the side before he can catch himself. His teeth grit as the ulnar nerve is pushed, sending a jolt of breathless pain through his arm to his shoulder.

Sam pants, shoving himself up again to hold his weight against his palm and wrist, pressed into the counter. He doesn't know what to do. The rage is fading, leaving in its wake a wide, sickening horror. You've never won a fight with him before, a soft voice warns in the back of his mind. Why would that change now?

He's braced, like this is some sort of joke. He's just waiting for the punchline. The punishment.

Nothing happens.

Lucifer moans in his throat, blood bubbling from his vessel's lips. It's black, with a yellow, foamy tinge.

Sam sips air in between his teeth to his hollow stomach. He needs...needs…he doesn't know. Doesn't understand. (He shot him.) Sam's gaze flicks up, catching sight of the wings. It reminds him of the vision. Of Cas.

He drops the gun onto the counter, not wanting to hold it anymore. It clatters loudly, and he winces.

He has to leave. Has to find Cas.

When he tries to move away from the counter, he nearly topples. His legs are weak, and his body limp. This isn't just exhaustion. Adrenaline has faded, leaving a deep, bone-aching terror in its place. Sam's eyes are pinned on the archangel. He can't pull them away. The world is tunneling, turning a faint, mystic gray, but he won't move.

This is, he thinks, panic. He's panicking, and he's not breathing because he's panicking, which means that his vision is tunneling as a result of that, and—he cannot breathe. Sam bites on the inside of his tongue and holds his breath. He tries to exhale slowly, but it feels like he can't hold onto the air. He knows how to deal with panic attacks. But the logic is proving a secondary concern when the forefront of his mind is screeching WHAT DID YOU DO!?

Sam thought, for the longest time, that being able to return some sort of pain to Lucifer would be a relief.

He's shaking. He's going to be sick.

A hazy figure steps into his line of sight, hands reaching for his shoulders. Sam flinches away, trying to move along the counter, but his legs take that moment to give entirely. He topples forward, only stopped from a brutal collision with the ground when hands grab his biceps and haul him back towards the wooden tables. He's forced onto one, and Sam has to focus to sit upright.

Other people filter in and out of his peripheral, but the first figure doesn't move out of his line of sight.

He doesn't know how long it takes him to realize that his forearms are being gripped, but he flexes out his fingers in agitation to the pain when he does. His vision is starting to clear, and Sam can see Lucifer being loaded onto some sort of gurney by what look vaguely like EMTs. They're shouting something about BP.

Sam chokes on a laugh.

His blood pressure is fine. It will always be fine.

Did he kill the vessel? Does he care?

"Sam?" His eyes pull back to the man in front of him. Dark hair, soulful eyes. He was in the interrogation room when Sam first came to. Daniel? Danver? There's the slightest edge of uneasiness on his expression, as if he's trying to make sense of something gruesome. "Sam, can you hear me?"

Sam's lips part, his voice croaky. "Uh, I…"

The pressure on his forearms releases some, enough that the nails no longer feel like they're piercing into his skin. Sam's gaze flicks down for a moment, and he realizes that maybe-Danver is gripping them. An attempt to ground him, he thinks. Clarity is slowly coming back to him, like he's sinking slowly in it.

"I shot him," Sam whispers. He doesn't know who he's confessing to. Himself? Maybe-Danver?

"We know." Maybe-Danver assures. He doesn't seem nearly as furious as he should. His head tips slightly, toward where the two agents who Sam forced to take him here fell. Sam feels sick at the memory of their twisted necks. Human bone shouldn't bend like that. "You deal with them, too?"

For an obscure, terrifying moment, he considers taking credit. As if Lucifer's presence is something to be guarded and kept safe. A problem only he and Cas have to deal with while they're kept here. But the Men of Letters know about angels, and Lucifer's safety is not his priority. He can burn.

"No." Sam says, and breathes out, "No." His chin tips up to indicate Lucifer behind maybe-Danver. "He did."

Lucifer's eyes are squeezed closed, oblivion of pain his only reality now, but Sam swears he sees his fingers curl in themselves at that, as if furious.

Sam feels cold.

Maybe-Danver's eyebrows climb his forehead. He glances once behind himself as if making sure he and Sam are thinking of the same person. When his eyes return, they're doubtful. Sam flexes his fingers out until he can grab hold of maybe-Danver's forearms around the black suit coat. He grips to hold his attention, maybe to keep himself from falling. "He's an angel."

Maybe-Danver's eyes narrow a fraction.

"Why do you think I shot him?" Sam asks. His species Sam could care less about. What he did is the catalyst that led to pulling the trigger. What he did to Cas.

Oh man. Cas.

"Hm." Maybe-Danver intones, tone devoid of his opinion or emotion. And that's it. No surprise. No betrayed look. Not even a consideration. A hum. "We'll look into it. For now, Mr. Winchester, I believe it's time you saw a doctor."

Sam coughs up a snort. A doctor? They'll play that game? What do they hope to achieve? Stockholm syndrome? "You don't believe me."

"I think you believe it."

Sam tightens his grip until maybe-Danver's hand flexes in pain. "You heal him, and he's going to kill you."

Maybe-Danver's face flickers for a moment, but he makes no move to stop the EMTs from leaving.

Sam blows air out between his teeth. He wants to fight him, force him to understand, but with Lucifer is crippled, he is, for once, a secondary concern. (No, no. He'll come back. He always comes back...) "I need to see Castiel."

Maybe-Danver's expression shudders, then closes off. Sam feels sick. Was he there? Did he watch while they did that to him? "I'm afraid that won't be possible at this time."

Sam's teeth grind in his irritation. "I need—"

"That won't be possible at this time, Mr. Winchester. Perhaps we can arrange for a later date." Maybe-Danver interrupts. He releases Sam's arms, but Sam doesn't return the favor.

He has to see Cas.

"I know what you did." Falls out of him before he can stop it.

Maybe-Danver stops, eyebrows drawing together before looks back at Sam. "How? Lady Bevell was adamant you remain in the dark."

Sam leans forward, forcing himself to seem more intimidating than he knows he must be. Pale, sickly, and well on his way to gaunt, he doubts he's much of a sight. "I know," Sam repeats like a threat, "what you did. So take me to Castiel, or God help you because nothing else will."

Maybe-Danver pulls his lower lip in, eyes flickering across the bloody scene. As far as he's aware, Sam just shot a man six times without motivation. Dean would have already knocked the man unconscious and begun to tear apart the facility. Something twists in his stomach at the thought of his brother.

Maybe-Danver sighs. "Get up."

Oh, thank God.

Sam fumbles to get to his feet, releasing maybe-Danver's arms. A stupid impulse. He has no reason to trust these people. Even less now. But he does anyway.

He sees the blurred movement from the corner of his eye, but his reflexes are shot. By the time he's twisting out of the way, maybe-Danver's taser is buried in his lower left ribcage. The pain is fiery and jolting. All-encompassing. He can't scream, but he needs to, has to get this built up energy out. His body shudders, jerking, twisting, falling. Maybe-Danver doesn't pull back.

Stop, stop, stop...

Sam tumbles toward the floor.

Cas...

000o000

"With all the cloak and daggers they put into this operation, you'd think they'd have better locks," Dean mutters, not exactly in complaint, but close, as he twists the lockpick inside of the cylinder, hearing the deadbolt give.

"You really complainin'?" Garth questions skeptically behind him.

"No," Dean concedes, rising to his feet and pushing the door open. It swings wide into a large living room. Homey is the first word that comes to mind. There's a single couch against the back wall with two tall lamps on either side, a coffee table filled with stacks of yellow folders, a small flatscreen TV perched on a bookshelf, and a handful of children's toys scattered across the room. A Lego tower is in the process of being built in one corner, well on it's way past two feet tall. Something in his chest pulls at the sight.

Toni Bevell doesn't have an address listed to her name. In fact, as far as the internet is concerned, she's a figment of Crowley's imagination. But paranoid the Men of Letters may be, and skilled at covering their tracks, it isn't a perfect science. Crowley's resources are almost unlimited, and pulling up a pseudonym wasn't that difficult for him, or Dean, once given a little more background. As much as Dean doesn't want to rely on him, he'd started to run out of options. Even with Crowley's assistance, it still took days.

Three weeks since Amara came and went, stretched out gluttonously into a fourth before he and Garth clambered into a plane to meet Crowley in London, England.

They have Bevell's name. They had a number, of which proved to be a bust. The address and owner were registered to some elderly grandmother who collects garden gnomes and knits—whole nine yards into cliché. Apparently this was a last-ditch effort of rebellion by Crowley's main informant, a recent hell-arrival, one Dr. Elli Saris, taken before her ten years were complete.

(Dean remembers the first few weeks in hell. He'd have been willing to play those games out of spite, too. But she'll be just as dead as he was given enough time. It's inevitable. A truth. I lost track of how many souls...)

Despite all this, he does know that a child was registered to Bevell's fake name. He just didn't take the claims that seriously. It seemed like the type of setup to make her seem more normal. Create a fake ID, add a child. Apparently that's about the only part of her life on the computer that isn't fictitious.

"Hm." Garth intones behind him, seeming almost pleasantly surprised. What was he expecting? The heads of her enemies pinned to the walls? "Little smaller than I thought it'd be. You think her bosses don't pay well?"

"Her salary is fine." Crowley reassures to Dean's left. "Frankly, I think they pay too much. This is central London."

Dean takes a step into the room, ignoring the two, pulling out his 1911. He scrapes his shoe along the edge of the fine line of salt next to the doorway, breaking it, and flicks his gaze up, looking for a devil's trap. When none obvious present themselves, he bites hard on the inside of his lower lip and nods once to Crowley. There isn't a rug for it to be hidden beneath. Apparently, Bevell believes in her anonymity a little too much.

He and Garth take point into the apartment, with the demon trailing behind them.

It's probably a good—but unintentional—thing that they managed to do the B&E in the middle of school hours. He'd rather not hold a kid hostage to make a point to Bevell. He would, for Sam and Cas, but not happily. The toys in the main room suggest they can't be older than six.

Garth immediately goes for the folders on the coffee table. Dean ignores them. Forgive him if he doesn't think the location of the Men of Letters London base is something that's laying out on a table for all to see. For all the effort that the Men of Letters have put into vanishing their existence and employees, it seems like it would sort of defy the point.

Dean moves out of the living room, towards the back of the apartment. The kitchen is large—at least, compared to some apartments he's seen. It has a full oven, dishwasher, and all. It looks lived in. Stains on the countertop and table, dishes in desperate need of completion. A bread loaf half eaten and another growing fuzz side-by-side the fruit bowl.

Dean allows his eyes to linger on the MacBook sitting on the table, then he moves further back into the apartment. In the hall, he passes the kid's room, a bathroom, and a hall closet that has more towels than two people could ever reasonably need, then finally lands in Bevell's room. There's still two other rooms, both with closed doors. One is probably an office, which Dean will check after the bedroom.

Small, slightly cramped, and stacked with paperwork. Have the Men of Letters never heard of a Word document? Or a flashdrive? Google drive? Who on earth still does this much paperwork?

Turning on the safety, Dean stuffs his gun back inside his waistband and moves for the desk. He starts rifling through some of the folders, flipping up pages. It takes him a second to realize what the information on the pages is. It looks like scrambled gibberish, but it's actually mission reports. He stops on one with lines circled orange highlighter and notes on the margins with pen. It's a werewolf hunt filed out in awkward English:

Subject enters London in docks. Left. We attempt chase. Subject does not catch. We talk with others. They help. We manage to capture wolf. Silver hatchet to remove head proves effective. We bury body.

Silver hatchet? Huh. Not something he or Sam have tried. They normally have a gun in hand. He returns the paper to its proper place and starts looking for dates. The wolf hunt is listed as January of 2012, and it's not close enough to today's date to be remotely helpful. He flips through folders, 2012, 2013, 2015…

"Huh."

Dean inclines his head at Crowley's voice behind him. When the demon doesn't append, Dean leaves his fingers between two folders and twists his upper body around to face him. Crowley is holding some sort of long, thin black-red thing. It kind of looks like an angel sword. His grip on it is obviously careful, fingers just gently brushing the tip, but Dean can still see healing skin from where it was cut.

"What's that?" Dean asks. It looks out of place in the clean apartment. Also weirdly familiar, almost as if he's seen it in a dream somewhere.

Crowley's eyebrows raise to his hairline. "You're joking."

Dean barely resists the urge to roll his eyes in annoyance. "No."

"I forget how hopelessly little you know about angels," Crowley says in degradation. He seems darkly amused, as if Dean's ignorance is entertaining.

"Crowley."

"This, my poorly informed friend, is an angel feather. One of the primaries if I had to guess."

A feather? Really? Aren't angel feathers supposed to be like...white? And light? Fluffy? Dean stares at it. The light flickers off of it like a piece of metal, but it's oddly absorbed as well, giving off the appearance of slight translucence. The edge is tipped red almost as if it was painted that way, but the patchy job of it makes him think it was burned.

But he knows this feather. His fingers release the folders, and he turns to face Crowley properly. "Cas," he whispers.

Crowley looks down at the feather, then up at Dean, eyebrows raised. "I know how I know that. How do you know that?"

That's a good question. He...doesn't know. He's never seen one of Cas's wings in his life. Beyond the silhouette on occasion, Dean's never been privy to that honor. So how on earth does he know what Cas's feathers look like? How does it seem more and more familiar the longer he looks at it? He's not—

I raised you from perdition, whispers through his head like a threat. It's been years since he thought about the barn, and Cas striding inside, radiating power and a sense of other that felt so off at the time. And—

Oh.

Oh.

Dean doesn't have distinct memories of his rescue from the Pit, but the further the distance between then and now, the more things have started to filter in. Blurry images. Hazy words in Enchocian.

I have seen them, he realizes, I know them because I saw them there.

He doesn't remember walking across the room, but the next thing he knows, Dean's reaching for the feather. His fingers brush the sharp edge, painful to the touch, but vague, like pinching a cactus between two fingers. The feather doesn't bed easily beneath his grip, hard like a blade.

Crowley wordlessly lets him take it. For all it looks like it should weigh a few pounds, Dean doubts it's heavier than a few ounces at most. Maybe even less than his phone. His lips pull down in a frown. This shouldn't be here. It should be with Cas.

He didn't even know Cas still had feathers post Metatron, and feels a little guilty he hadn't thought to ask. He'd sort of assumed that the angel's losing their wings meant that everything was gone. Bone, muscle, ligaments. Cas never mentioned it to him. Dean didn't ask.

"What...what…" Dean's words feel strange, as if he can't figure out what he's trying to say. "Why is this here? If this is Cas's, why isn't it with him?"

It's part of his wings. What remains of them, anyway.

Dean is struck with the private, selfish desire to see them.

"That is the five hundred dollar question, Squirrel." Crowley agrees. "Do you know how difficult it is to get an angel feather?"

No. He doesn't. All the spells or rituals they've used haven't needed them. Angels hadn't been to earth for centuries before the Apocalypse. Humans learned to accommodate, he guesses. Beyond spells, he doesn't even know what you could use them for. Maybe to impale things.

"Your blank face speaks enough for you. You've known Castiel for how many years? How do you know nothing?"

"We don't know nothing," Dean corrects, irritated. It just...hasn't...there hasn't been a lot of information on them. The Men of Letters profess to know a lot, but it's pretty obvious if they'd gathered their scattered references together, they'd have enough actual lore for about fifteen pages, if that. Everything beyond that is random bits of truth scattered among myth. Cas always had relevant information when they needed it.

"Obviously," Crowley's voice is dry, his head shifting slightly towards the doorway as if he hears something. "I'm curious what they did to take that."

"We have a video. Would you like to watch?"

Dean flicks the feather out like a knife, his other slicing down the middle as he tears it away to go for his 1911. He hisses as the blood pools, but refuses to let it be a distraction, gaze pulling up towards the doorway.

There, gun clutched in two steady hands toward them, is a pajama-clad, bedheaded Bevell.

Author's Note:

Prompt: Broken trust.