You know that thing, when you had an idea for months... and just when you reach the part of the story where you want to write it in, you realize there's no way it could fit T_T.
Chapter 39
For a few seconds, it was like being trapped in a frozen picture. Nobody was moving, barely daring to even breathe. Magic and blood kept flowing out of the djinn's corpse, and it was only when the red smell hit Dean's nose that all his hunter instincts were finally kicked into overdrive. Drawing out his gun, he shot the shedim in the middle of the chest.
Not like it did much. That particular oily wave washed over it, just like it had done the first time after it killed Asmodeus, and a new face and body showed up. A sickly thin chick with brittle chestnut hair, looking no older than a teenager, and very recognizable rope marks on her neck. It wasn't hard to figure out how exactly that demon vessel had died.
"Ouch, that hurts," Legion smirked mockingly, brushing her chest. "Oh, but look what I've found! I was only after the kitty, but some of my welcome party members are here as well. The little bird and one of the hunters, a real feast laid out just for me."
"You really should shut up and sign in for one of those AA therapy group, lady." As per usual, Dean attempted to gain time running his mouth.
"Now, why would you say that?" the evil spawn pouted, probably wanting to look cute and failing.
"You talk about wanting to eat these kids, when you obviously don't need it. Yet you crave it, am I right? Anything you crave so desperately but don't actually need is the very definition of an addiction. You're a lousy addict."
"Meanie, you're hurting my feelings!... Wait, I don't think I have those," she laughed at her own joke. "Ok, maybe I'm not actually hungry, but take my word for it: your human KFC cannot compare to fried demon miasma slices. But I'm having a really, really difficult time finding those tasty snacks around."
"Who's this?" Eileen finally asked, her gun also in her hands but not firing, seeing as Dean's shot had done nothing.
Her partner was barely on her field of vision, so she wasn't sure of the given answer.
"Legion?" she repeated, remembering a couple of conversations she had with Sam and Jessica over video call. "The shedim thing?"
"How rude, miss! I'm not a thing!" she huffed in feigned offense, and without a second thought she sent the huntress flying against a wall.
"Eileen!" Dean shouted, firing two more times just to keep the shedim busy for a few vital seconds while it changed forms again. "Jack, Jesse! Take the patients and fly them away somewhere safe!"
While Castiel ran towards the huntress to check on her, and before the kids could follow the given order, Legion resurfaced in a new suit. Quite literally, this time: a polished man with a crispy-clean tailored suit and grease-combed hair, that looked like the perfect poster boy for a Wall Street agent.
That's not going to work, Jack. If we leave them, they're going to die.
The nephilim didn't need to look at his friend to know how true that was. There was only one thing they could do to help, and it was the opposite of what the hunter had ordered. Jack lashed out a wave of energy towards the shedim.
"You want to play with me, angel boy?" Legion taunted him, swirling around and dodging the attack effortlessly.
Facing the nephilim, he lost track of the cambion for a mere instant. Jesse appeared behind him, his eyes glowing yellow, and trapped him in a neck-lock with his arms. He knew that his apparent upper hand wouldn't last more than a couple of seconds, but that was more than enough.
"Hasana ma patĕt Jacke, Legione ur emì!"
Jack jumped near just in time, being engulfed in a grey storm-like cloud along with his friend and enemy. When the fog cleared, they all had vanished.
"Chuckdammit!" the Winchester cursed loudly, kicking the wheel of an empty gurney. "Now what?"
Castiel was tending to Eileen, who was sitting on the floor with a minor bleeding on her head and a concussion.
"They must have a plan, Dean. Let's have some faith in them."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
They didn't have a plan. They had only wanted to drag the shedim away from the people who were more vulnerable than themselves.
The three of them landed tumbling in a pile of sand; or better said, a dune. Jesse's spell had apparently transported them to a desert somewhere in the planet, where the sun was about to set in the horizon line and the light was getting dim. Jack reacted pretty fast, but the cambion could barely move.
"Now that was uncalled for, you naughty brats," Legion snarled, readjusting his necktie and looking pissed off for once. "The shoes that this pathetic vessel was wearing when I absorbed him weren't designed for sand."
Then he did something, who knew what, but an almost imperceptible spark surrounded the edge of said shoes, and then the shedim wasn't shuffling anymore. He walked as steadfast as on a concrete sidewalk.
"Talking about an unfair advantage," Jack snorted, getting up on shaky legs and readying his next blasting attack.
"Says the boy with wings," Legion replied, disappearing in a blink before Jack's move could reach him, and reappearing right behind him. "You're strong, little bird, but too slow and predictable. Allow me to take my turn."
Gripping tight the nephilim's nape with a steely hand, the shedim discharged a fulminous ray of electricity through the boy's nervous system right to its very core. Jack felt on his knees, his eyes rolling back and his body spasming due to the possible millions of watts shoved into him.
"But you, kitty?" Legion turned his attention to Jesse, who had only raised half of his body on his elbows. "This is the second time you used a magic that doesn't belong to you against me. Do you even know what that is doing to you?"
Jesse was breathing harshly, attempting to back-crawl away from the monster and raking his brain for a saving spell, consequences be damned. His lungs felt like on fire, but he was pretty sure that the dry air and sand from the desert had little to do with it. His eyes were probably yellow again, if the curiosity that he saw reflected in the shedim's ones was anything to go by. But Legion's apparent interest didn't last long, shrugging at his lack of answer and refocusing on the cambion's edible qualities.
Right when he was about to jump the kid, another energy blast pushed him from behind, causing him to land a few metres away.
"Jesse, don't let him get you!" Jack begged, almost sobbing from the mere effort of raising his trembling arm.
Sorry, Jack. The teenager apologized, not for the first time grateful for their telepathic bond. I feel torn all over, it's hard even to breathe. You escape if you have the chance, please. Legion only wants me.
"You misbehaving children are really getting on my nerves," Legion turned back to them, but once more blinking away when the nephilim lashed out at him, this time reappearing on his knees right behind Jesse, grabbing his hair with a fist and yanking at it. "Why don't you try it again now, birdie? Come on, I dare you! Before I take a bite of this tender flesh."
Jack gulped, afraid and not knowing what to do. There was no way he would escape and leave his friend to his death, but... not like he could attack Legion either. Being so close, he would hurt Jesse too, not even counting how unreliable was his body right now due to the shedim's attack. And the time was ticking.
What to do? Oh, what to do?!
A sudden flash illuminated the almost-night sky. Just for the briefest of seconds, it was bright and clear like under the midday sun. There was a sound of wings, and then another voice.
"You foolish morons are getting a real bad case of Winchester's idiocy!"
Six stunning golden wings opened like a fan behind Legion, right before a celestial hand clamped on his skull and made him feel all the power of divine wrath. Light shone like lasers out of his eyes, forcing him to release his grip on the cambion boy.
"... Gabriel?" Jack spoke flabbergasted, hurrying to help his friend away of the other two entities. "What are you doing here?"
"How could I not come? You're broadcasting your distress call all over angel-radio! Can't imagine how frenetic your daddy must be right now. So do me a favour and get out the way? I'll play with this abomination for a while."
No need to be told twice. Jack grabbed Jesse's shoulder and flew away, leaving the archangel to deal alone with the shedim.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A few hours later, back in Dr. Saadi's basement, the group was almost ready to leave. Dean and Eileen had already disposed of the djinn's corpse in the nearer woods that grew on the outskirts of Seabrook, while Castiel had guided Jack into releasing his electricity in the town's local generator. The villagers would have an extra pillow of watts for several weeks onward.
The only thing that remained was to explain the situation to the djinn's recently reawaken last patients, which took a while until they understood their new reality... or better said, their return to the true one.
"What the hell have you done?" the old man, Ralph Tennyson, barked at them with a hoarse voice. "Who gave you the right? I signed the paper, I wasn't supposed to be awake ever again. I was going to die happy!"
"Mr. Tennyson..." Castiel tried to talk to him.
"Shut up! You, you damned..." The man was starting to tear up in his ire. "You don't understand what... In my dreamland, they were there. They were all there! My beloved Elise, who I lost to leukaemia. My older sister. And little Jonas, he... he was about to graduate from high school. But now, here? I have nothing left. You have robbed me of the only happiness that I could still reach!"
After that, Jack had delivered the despairing man to a social shelter a couple of towns away, where hopefully they would take care of him until his date with death. The young woman, gratefully, was more positive about her new circumstances.
"I had so many dreams of competing in the Olympics..." Subebe sighed wistfully, caressing her knees. "But I was so depressed after the accident, thinking that I had lost my whole life because of a drunkard. But in my dreamland, that never happened. I kept training, I kept running... I won several golds, you know?" she laughed lightly through the tears. "I was already in my fifties, I had a stadium in my birth city named after me! I got to live my dream, maybe that's the reason I... I think that this time, I can deal with it. I don't care if nothing was real for the rest of the world. It was real for me, and that's enough."
"Miss Ngabake," Eileen took her hand between hers. "Never let anyone tell you that you can't do something. I know how that feels. Just keep pushing and prove them wrong, and then shove it in their faces!"
With just a tiny bit of mind control, the ex-runner appeared as a long-staying patient in the local hospital. She was assigned under the care of a certain dark-haired nurse who, disappointingly, was none the wiser about the sudden disappearance of their coroner.
When everything was ready for their departure, Dean convinced Eileen to tag along and visit them for a few days, mentioning that Jessica wouldn't forgive them if the huntress returned to Ireland without even saying hello; the real reason, though, was that the Winchester didn't want to be alone in the car with his angel after the dreamland fiasco. The hurt was too bad to deal with it for the moment.
"I know that you don't like flying, but are you sure you don't want to come with Jack and me?" Jesse had asked, fidgeting in the spot. "That's two whole days off the road."
"Sorry kid, but I'm not facing Julia's fury in your stead," Dean smirked, knowing very well what this was about.
"Oh, c'mon... Couldn't we keep this Legion thing a little secret between us, just for once? Please?"
"And risk getting my ass on a mother's bad side? No chance."
So the boys went back to the bunker on their own and informed the rest of the inhabitants about everything that happened. Sam and Jessica were delighted to hear about Eileen's impending visit, but the cambion noticed the mood was cold and tense between them, and wondered what could have happened. Julia almost suffocated her son in a hug, her delicate frame trembling while she sobbed quietly in Jesse's arms.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Not long after, during dinner, all the lightbulbs in the bunker suddenly exploded. Kaia was immediately on guard, about to manifest her spear, but Sam calmly awaited the arrival of an archangel. It wasn't until Gabriel showed up, hurt and battered, that the hunter actually reacted and ran to his aid.
"Master Gabriel!" Emma exclaimed, quite shocked. "What happened to you?"
"What a very good question," Sam agreed, taking the archangel's left arm over his shoulders and directing him to a chair in the library.
Some of his hair ends were burnt. Two vicious gashes on his cheek, and what looked like a nasty bite on his neck with many more indentations than a human mouth should leave. One of his sclera was a weird, murky dark green. But the worst was his other arm: shirt fabric ripped at the shoulder, exposing a limb that was pretty much charred up to the elbow. The very nails looked about to fall off at any moment.
"Gabriel, what the...?"
"I know, I know. You and your cherished bulbs," Gabriel snorted, snapping the fingers of his other hand and remaking them. "No need to go all Deano on me."
"No! What about you?" Sam grunted, stepping aside when Alex arrived with the first-aid kit. "Jesse told us that you fought with the shedim."
"Despite telling you time and time again that I wouldn't risk my ass for you. Am I not the best?"
Sam bitchfaced grumpily, but some of his concern dissipated. The archangel couldn't be in that bad of a condition if he was still sassing around.
"Hey girl, thanks for the attention, but this is not something you can heal with some peroxide and a gauze."
"Why aren't you healing yourself?" Claire asked. "How did you get that burn in the first place?"
"For starters, even archangels get tired sometimes, ok?" Gabriel grunted in annoyance, flexing his charred fingers. "I was smiting the hell out of Legion, but after the first few hundreds my vessel began to accuse the wastage. With the other hand occupied in defending myself, there wasn't a lot I could do."
He directed a foul look towards the nephilim and the cambion, who got the message loud and clear, and lowered their heads in shame. They were, undeniably, a lot stronger than the archangel could ever be, and still they had been helpless against the shedim. It wasn't a matter of power, but of skill.
"Is there anything we could do for you?" Adam asked.
"No need for that," a voice and a fiery sound crept on them from the war room.
Haughty and all-encompassing presence as always, Kali walked slowly towards the library, her heels clicking on the floor. Everyone parted to the sides in a very Red Sea-esque way, clearing the path to the wounded celestial messenger. The unexpected appearances of both the goddess and the archangel left Sam wondering if the bunker wards might actually be faulty, since evidently it was no hard task for supernatural beings to slip in.
"My poor little dove," Kali spoke in a sad voice, gently taking Gabriel's chin on her fingers and forcing him to look up. "What have you gotten yourself into? Didn't I order you to be careful?"
"I was," the archangel swallowed, nervous. "As much as I could, I promise."
"Obviously it wasn't enough," Kali lamented, letting go of his face. "I'm truly sorry, Gabriel, but you've been fooling around for too long."
"No! Kali, wait...!"
He pleaded to no avail. With a mere flick of her wrist, a fiery thread was made visible, attached to her fingers and around his neck like a collar. The thread was consumed and extinguished in the blink of an eye. Immediately, a golden light surrounded the archangel, the totality of his grace once more running free.
"I can't allow you to keep risking yourself like that, Gabriel," the goddess spoke sternly. "You're not my slave anymore. Return to Heaven, where you belong."
All his wounds were healed, but somehow, the archangel seemed to be in more pain now than he had been a minute ago.
"Where do you keep your coffee machine?" Kali asked to nobody in particular. "I'd like to rest for a while before returning to my pantheon, please."
Always the gracious hostess, Jessica accompanied the Indian to the kitchen, leaving the others to care for the clearly heartbroken man. Kali sat on one of the metallic stools, her hands crossed under her chin and ignoring the plate of cookies that the blonde had placed in front of her. Behind her, waiting out the coffee machine for a fresh pot, Jessica couldn't help but gaze at the goddess from time to time.
"I can almost feel your curiosity piercing through my skull," Kali complained without needing to look back. "If there's anything you want to ask, just go ahead."
"Sorry!" Jessica blurted out, picking two clean mugs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. It's only that..."
"Only what?"
"Haa..." she sighed deeply, serving the hot coffee and sitting face to face to the goddess. "I'm probably sticking my nose in things that I don't comprehend, but... Gabriel looked so sad. I'm not that close to him, but whatever you did, it hurt him deeply. I think he must love you very much," she finished in a quiet voice.
Kali's fiery eyes focused on the blonde, and for a couple of seconds, Jessica feared she was about to meet her second death. But eventually, the Indian relaxed her posture and sipped the coffee.
"Humans have it easy," she spoke in a murmur. "You love one-on-one. Sometimes feelings are reciprocated and sometimes they're not, there are heartbreaks as much as there's joy. But for a goddess, it's a lot more complicated."
"How so?"
"I live off my followers' feelings. Through their prayers, they offer them to me: their hopes, their fears, their wants and wishes; all of their devotion that I must answer to. They are thousands, but I'm only one. I cannot gift my heart to a single being, even if it's an archangel."
Jessica's heart clenched in empathy and sorrow, as she understood what the goddess was pointing at.
"I see," she whispered. "But... but even if you can't, I'm sure Gabriel would still offer you his heart."
"Yes, he would," Kali nodded. "And if I accepted it, he would be left with nothing."
For a while, the women drank their coffee in companionable silence, until the ruckus of loud voices called their attention back to the main area of the bunker. Jessica got up but Kali didn't, and the human guessed to take this as a farewell.
"YOU DID WHAT?!"
"Geez, Sammich! No need to make me deaf with your chicken screeches."
"Dammit, Gabriel!" Sam was shouting when Jessica returned to the library. "We've been breaking our brains for months, trying to find a way to deal with Legion, and all this time it would have been as simple as throwing it into one of your pocket worlds?"
"You flatter me, handsome," Gabriel smirked flirtatiously. "But you're wrong from side to side. This I did? It was only an emergency patch because I couldn't keep going without heavily risking my vessel's state. It's not permanent, not by a long shot. In fact, I don't think it will take the shedim more than a few days to figure out how to break it down and escape."
"But I thought that whole complicated rituals were needed in order to cross from one world to another," Kevin commented. "Don't even know how many hours I spent deciphering them from the tablets."
Gabriel's eyeroll was massive. Humans and their inaccurate use of their own language words, really.
"You use terms like universe, world, dimension, reality... etc. interchangeably, but they're certainly not the same. Universe? There's only one, the one big space that generated when Daddy and Auntie came out of the Empty. Worlds are every one of the dollhouses God created to play with. Dimensions are the different rooms: Heaven in the attic, Hell in the basement, Purgatory... uh, in the backyard? So every dollhouse gets its own. Now imagine that there's a mirror in those rooms: the reflection is what I play with and decorate to my own design, but it's all a circus trick. I don't create worlds, I'm not my dad."
Sam dragged a hand over his face. As interesting as it was whatever the hell Gabriel was talking about, he wasn't in the mood for a lesson on semantics.
"Is that a standard ability for angels?" Kaia asked. "I knew about the time-travelling, but if these pocket realities are a thing, couldn't the remaining angels in Heaven take turns making them?"
"Perhaps?" Sam snorted. "That damned Zachariah was pretty much able to trap me and my brother in a reality of his own."
"Yeah, only because he was supported by two other archangels... oops."
Gabriel's look of deer-in-the-headlights was too suspicious to ignore, and he knew it. He leaned back on the chair, head hanging, a tired sigh escaping his mouth. He could as well admit his blunder, not like it was that much of a secret.
"The trick... I read it somewhere. Or better said, I learned it from someone who read it somewhere."
"Who? Where?"
"A prophet of the past. We were good friends, but he never knew that I was me, of course. He passed to history by the name of Hermes Trismegistos."
A surprised, awed exhalation surged from Jessica's throat, attracting everyone's attention.
"I studied him in philosophy," she explained. "Hermes Trismegistos, the wiseman three times great. So he was a prophet? But he was a pagan of Egyptian origin."
"Prophets are enlightened people, my lady. It doesn't matter where they are born or what they believe in."
"So this Hermes told you how to create pocket realities?" Alex inquired. "How did he know? I don't think there are DIY manuals for that."
The archangel drummed his fingers nervously on the table.
"Isn't it obvious? He was a prophet, so he read it in a tablet."
"Not true," Kevin shook his head negatively. "I've translated most of all three of them, and there's nothing about something like that."
"Oh, did you really?" Gabriel sniggered, showing back a slice of his trickster persona, knowing he was about to drop a bomb. "Maybe you should take a look at the Reaper Tablet then, kid."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Two days later, everyone arrived back at the bunker and things were tense. The three returned people soon noticed that something bad had happened between the usually loving and adorable couple, but didn't comment on it. While Jessica took Eileen to the room that had been prepared for her, Sam, not knowing that something wrong had also transpired between his brother and the seraph, attempted to tease them about the djinn.
"So, how was it inside Cas' mind, Dean? Full of kittens, bees and nude yous?"
"It was nasty," the older hunter spat, directing a harsh look at the dreamer in question. "The most fucking disgusting thing I ever saw."
The grin dropped instantly from Sam's face and a frown appeared instead. That wasn't Dean's teasable tone, that was Dean's I'll-stab-you-in-the-face tone.
"Dean..." Castiel called out to him.
"Don't wanna hear it," the hunter rebuked, leaving for a shower.
Sam looked at his winged friend, a silent question on his face.
"Cas, what happened?"
"I am afraid that I have let Dean down once again, Sam," the angel answered in a pained voice. "I have hurt him."
Curiosity was eating at him, but somehow, the younger Winchester felt that it would be too intimate to ask what could have been so terrible in Castiel's dreamland to make his brother react like this. He just hoped that it wouldn't take long for them to fix it, after all the time it had taken them to get together, because he so didn't miss all the pining fest he had to endure for years.
Late after dinner, when Sam was about to close the book he had been reading and go to bed, Dean came into the library with a couple of beers. He handed one to him and sat on the opposite side of the table.
"So," he started. "Some changes around here, uh?"
"Yeah, a few. Patience went back to Jody's," Sam explained, opening his bottle. "She was very polite talking about it to me, but she wasn't pleased. Wanted to go back to school before she lost too many classes. Since you dropped off Jacob with Cole even before retrieving his anunnaki key, and with Claire still hunting around whenever she wants... I had no arguments to convince her to stay here with everyone else."
"Well, the girl took on a wraith by herself before she even knew about things that go bump in the night, and living with Jody... I think she'll be fine. What about Jess?"
"What about Cas?" Sam replied.
"Touché."
They were quiet for a while, drinking their beers and wallowing in their personal issues, until Sam's phone rang.
"Who's calling you this late in the night?"
"Unknown number," Sam frowned in confusion, picking it. "Hello?"
"... Sam?" a sniffling greeted him. "Oh, Sam! Thank God you're still on this number."
A series of sobs and uneven breaths were heard on the line. The person calling was undoubtedly crying.
"How did you get this number? Who's this?"
"It's me, Becky," the person wept. "Becky Rosen."
Thanks for reading and reviewing!