Author's Note: Let me know what you think of how I wrote Dean's addiction to killing. And Ember/Cas fans, never fear, there's still some stuff to come…
I don't own Supernatural.
***Ember POV***
January 20, Morning
"You have a choice," Ember said to Claire.
"Fuck you."
"Either way, you have a choice. You can stay here at the bunker. You can stay with me in Conway Springs. Or, you can go to a group home. We'll look around for group homes, and you can find a better one than the one you were at before."
"And what will you do if I don't?" Claire asked.
"Find you again, pull you out, and give you the same choices."
"I'll disappear. I'll go off the grid."
"Cas is an angel. You can't hide from angels."
"You guys do," Claire pointed out.
"We know how," Ember said. "And you don't."
"So those are my choices?" Claire snapped. "The people who are responsible for what I've been through, or a group home that can have no fucking concept of what I've been through?"
Suddenly, Ember had an idea. Jodi. "Actually… there may be a third choice."
***Castiel POV***
January 22, Evening
"Thanks for taking care of Claire," Castiel told Ember when she teleported back to the bunker that evening.
"It was no problem," Ember said, shuffling her feet. It was the first conversation that had transpired between the two of them in months, a fact which Castiel was sure that Ember was also painfully aware. "She's settled at Jodi's. I think she's going to be okay there. She seemed to like it, anyway."
"Good," Castiel said awkwardly.
Sam seemed to catch the awkward tone of their conversation, and mercifully changed the subject. "I've never seen Dean like that," he said, sounding worried. "There have been a couple of times since he had the Mark where he seemed to enjoy killing a little too much, but never…"
"Never what?" asked Dean. Sam stood, surprised, as Dean walked in from the other room.
"Dean-…" Ember started.
"I know," said Dean. "You can say it. You're not wrong. I crossed the line. Guys, this thing's gotta go." He looked down at the Mark on his arm.
***Ember POV***
January 28, Evening
ONE WEEK LATER
Despite all of their research, the Winchesters, Ember, and Castiel had found nothing that would help Dean get rid of the Mark.
A week later, Charlie Bradbury returned from the land of OZ, where she reported the Wizard of OZ had performed a spell that allowed her to separate her good and evil sides. Her evil side had won the war for OZ single-handedly, but she needed Dean, Sam, and Ember's help to recombine her evil and good sides.
The three were successful, but not without a price. Dean punched Charlie twice in the face before Ember was able to get to him and stop him.
Dean had never punched a woman before, at least not one that wasn't a monster, and he took it fairly hard. "You can give the ring back," Dean told her the night after it happened.
"Not happening," Ember said. "I've finally gotten used to wearing it, and what it means. You're not getting it back."
"I don't want to hurt you," he said. "You've stopped me three times now when I would've killed, in the last two weeks alone. Metatron was right – I'm getting worse. How long until I hurt you, Ember?"
"I'm more durable than you give me credit for," she reminded him. "Dean, I'm stronger than you. The fact is that I have been stopping you, and I'm going to keep stopping you, for as long as I can, or as long as I need to. It's what Castiel - …"
"It's what Castiel what?" Dean asked sharply, whipping his head backward.
"It's what Castiel said would happen," Ember said sharply. She had been about to say "It's what Castiel wanted when we broke up," but she had caught herself. She suspected that Dean had known that Castiel had been her first choice, but they'd never discussed it. As she constantly reminded herself, Castiel had insisted that he didn't want her, and honestly her relationship with Dean was going very well aside from the "Mark of Cain" issue. He had never been a more loving partner or more helpful with the children than he was now. "Dean, if the situation were different, if it were me having difficulty battling my demon side, you'd say the same thing. We'll figure it out, we always do. I love you, with or without the Mark of Cain. And if the time comes when you can't control it anymore, or when you don't respond to me, or when I can't force you back, well then, we'll deal with it then."
***Dean POV***
February 4, Daytime
ONE WEEK LATER
Dean locked himself in the bunker for a week, researching the Mark of Cain. He understood few things about it, but more than anything he understood that the longer he went without killing, the stronger the urge became. He also knew that Metatron was right: each time he killed, the urge to kill again returned even more quickly. He had been cured of being a demon in mid-August. He had killed two werewolves in late October, just over two months later, and a shapeshifter in November. In December, his hand had begun to shake, and he had been desperate for another kill. When he killed two vampires, the Mark had been sated.
Now it was the beginning of February, and the urge to kill had never been so strong. He thought about it all the time, and when Sam and Ember insisted he accompany them on a case, he was terrified. Still, he went along with them, because Sam was right: he couldn't shut himself inside forever.
Dean and Ember were only on the case a few hours before they managed to trace the disappearances back to a witch, who was turning worthless alcoholics in bars into teenagers to use as a food source (Dean included). "In the olden days, if a child went missing—ah, the young died all the time," she told Dean, Sam, and Ember. Now, though, with all your AMBER Alerts and your milk cartons, a person fillets one rugrat, and people get so angry. So, I improvise. I take adults no one will miss and give them back their youth."
Ember had been wonderful on this case. She had done her usual routine of going invisible and following Dean when he got captured and breaking him out, along with a girl named Tina that had been captured with him. At the last possible second, she had used her force powers to send guns back into Dean's and Sam's hands, allowing Sam to shoot the witch's henchman. The witch then realized where Ember was, however, and used her powers to attack Sam and Ember with some form of torture spell.
Without another choice, as both of them laid gagging on the floor, Dean ran over to the witch's henchman and squeezed the hex bag around his neck, turning himself back to his original age. Then he used the strength of Cain to push the witch into her own oven, killing her.
It was both good and bad. On the one hand, Dean almost wished he had stayed a teenager. That had been the original plan, because in his teenage form he did not have the Mark of Cain. He had needed the strength of a grown man, much less the strength of Cain, to push the witch into the oven, and so he had turned himself back. Still, he had made a kill, for the first time since the beginning of December, and so the mark was sated – for now.
***Ember POV***
February 21, Daytime
THREE WEEKS LATER
In mid-February, Dean explained to Ember that he had given up looking for a cure. She understood his reasons. She knew that spending time fruitlessly searching for a cure that would more than likely never reveal itself was making him anxious and frustrated, which fueled the Mark. In contrast, Dean wanted to devote his time to more "peaceful" activities which he enjoyed – eating food that was bad for him, drinking, having sex, hunting, and killing when it was necessary to help others. These activities seemed to center him, and so Ember supposed he was right.
It didn't mean she was giving up searching for a cure.
Dean tried to tell her she didn't have to. "I'm gonna fight it until I can't fight it anymore," Dean told her. "And when all is said and done… One of you will have to kill me, just like I've said before."
"And if you ever say that to me again," Ember told him, "I may just be the one to kill you, and I'll shoot you in your nads first and let you bleed out."
"That wouldn't be my first preference," he said irritably. Then, once again, he added, "You should really give the ring back. I mean, you don't want to be-…"
"Not happening," she said again.
"So what, then?" he asked irritably. "You want to stay and watch until the end? Because we both know where this is going."
Ember leveled him with a glare. "Did it ever occur to you that you're the second man this year that's tried to break up with me so that I don't have to watch when things get bad?"
Ember could see that she had shocked Dean. They had briefly discussed Ember's breakup with the angel on a few occasions, of course. Still, Ember was certain that in a corner of his mind, Dean still hoped that there had been additional reasons that Castiel had broken up with her, reasons which implied some amount of incompatibility.
"I'm damn sick and tired of men deciding what I can and can't stick around for," she continued viciously. "I thought you were going to be the one who let me help you, for once."
Dean opened his mouth in shock. He began to talk, but Ember cut him off again. "You notice, the guy that broke up with me so I wouldn't have to watch him die is still kicking. We saved the world, Dean Winchester. We stopped the Apocalypse. Twice. And we saved the world from the Leviathans. Don't give up on me yet. You can say that to me on Volcano Day, but it's not Volcano Day yet!"
Ember stormed off down the hallway, passing Sam on the way to the room she shared with Dean at the bunker. "She's right, you know," she heard him say.
***Dean POV***
April 1, Morning
ONE MONTH LATER
Keeping the Mark of Cain sated, without making any extra kills, was difficult enough, but he had managed okay for nearly a year now. Then, near the end of February, he was forced to kill Cain himself. After that, he knew it would get worse. "Dean… wielding the Blade against Cain himself, win or lose, you may never come back from that fight," Sam had said. And he had been right. Even though Dean had returned from the fight, the urge to kill was almost constant now, going away for mere weeks at a time between kills.
Fortunately, hunting had picked up recently. Over the past month, the vampire population in Utah had exploded, and he and Sam had spent days at a time in Utah attempting to keep it under control. There had also been a ghost case in Massachusetts and a new version of the kahn worm in North Carolina.
Finally, near the beginning of March, things slowed down. "How did you sleep?" Sam asked on the morning of the first day of April.
He'd had a horrible nightmare, and he had woke himself up screaming, but he wasn't going to tell Sam that. "Like a drunk baby. What have we got?"
"Uh, nothing," Sam said.
"Really?"
"Yeah," Sam said. "I mean, uh, no weird deaths, no demon signs. There's a Kitsune working some truck stops outside of Boise, but Rudy's on it, so . . ."
"All right," Dean said. "So, uh, snow day. I say we get drunk and shoot crap."
"Yeah, except we do that every day. Actually, I was thinking about seeing a movie."
"Yeah, that could be cool," agreed Dean.
"It's a French movie."
"You mean like nudie French?"
"Even better. It's about a mime that's secretly a cockroach," said Sam.
"I-I don't get it."
"Dude, The New York Times said -…"
"Who cares?" Dean interjected.
"All right, well . . . It's playing in Wichita, so I might not be back till morning," said Sam.
"Well, I trust you. Make good choices."
"Right," said Sam. "You know, I mean . . . I don't have to go alone . . ."
"It's fine," said Dean. "Besides, I could use a little "me" time."
"All right," said Sam. "Stay out of my room."
"Totally," Dean said.
Next, he called Ember. "Hey, what are you doing today?"
He was met with silence. Finally, she said somewhat irritably, "I'm working, Dean."
"But you make your own schedule now!"
"Yeah, I can rearrange my schedule around hunts," said Ember. "Is something wrong? I thought you wrapped up that case in Utah, and Sam told me last night there's been nothing in the papers since. Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," said Dean reluctantly. "I was just wondering if I should stop in for a surprise visit."
"You know I'd love that," said Ember, "but I'm afraid I won't have much time to spend with you. I'm booked today… but Aidan's got that wrestling tournament tomorrow evening. You'll still be in town for that, right?"
"Yeah," said Dean dejectedly. "Wouldn't miss it."
He wondered if Rudy needed help with the kitsune.
***Ember POV***
April 1, Morning
"Thanks for coming, Cas," said Sam. Sam had been at Ember's for a good hour already, but Castiel had just arrived. Both of them had parked their cars in Ember's two-car garage, in case Dean happened to make the surprise visit he had been threatening that morning. Ember ignored the way her heart leapt when Castiel got out of his car.
"Of course," Castiel said. "Where's Dean?"
Ember and Sam looked at each other. "This is about Dean," said Sam.
Ember hated lying to Dean about what they were doing, but she also knew that this adventure fell under the category of things that they needed to tell Dean about afterwards, if they ever told him at all. Ember knew that Dean wanted to stop searching for a way to remove the Mark. She also knew, however, that if the shoe had been on the other foot and it had been her or Sam with the Mark of Cain, Dean would go full-speed ahead with their plan, without having the reservations she had now. There was a small voice inside her head reminding her that she had been angry with Dean for this very thing – making decisions about another persons' fate without telling them. Still, another voice argued, she, Sam, and Castiel were attempting to save Dean from a horrible fate from which he refused to save himself. It wasn't like they were removing his memories against his will, for example, or foiling someone's chances at Heaven by tricking them into being possessed by an angel.
"He's getting worse," Sam said. "Cas, we've gone through every other option possible. We've got to talk about -…"
"Don't say it," Castiel said.
"Do you think I want this?" Sam snapped. "I'm not a fan of it, either. But if we want to get rid of the Mark . . . I'm just saying, Charlie's gone radio silent; everything else we've tried has been a dead end. So . . ."
"So I'll drive."
-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-
The plan had been to speak with Metatron again, but that didn't work out as well as the small group had hoped. The angels refused to allow Castiel entrance to Heaven. "We both know the only way Metatron helps you is if he's free," said Hannah, who was currently leading Heaven. "And I can't let the Scribe out of his cell. Not again. He's too dangerous."
So the group went to Plan B. "Bobby can get him out," Sam said.
"Sam, that's the dumbest idea-…"
"Do you have a better one?" asked Sam.
"No, but he's in Heaven, and he's happy, and Metatron will be guarded, won't he?" Ember looked at Castiel. "What do you think about this?"
Castiel looked arrested. "Actually, the plan has merit," Castiel said. "There really aren't a lot of angels guarding Heaven. They don't have a lot of break-outs. If Bobby can make his way down to the gate, he can open the entrance for me, and then we can break Metatron out together. The prison is actually fairly close to the entrance. But I don't see how we can get word to Bobby if-…"
"I've got an idea about that," said Sam.
-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-
Four hours later, in the darkness, the group was huddled around the table of a psychic, Oliver Price. "Have you got anything that belonged to the deceased?"
"Yes," said Sam. "Right here." He reverently pulled Bobby's hat out of his bag and placed it on the table. Ember's heart dropped. Was she really about to talk to her father again? She missed him so much…
"Good," said Price. "Now shut up and hold hands. Amate spiritus obscure, Te quaerimus. Te oramus, nobiscum colloquere, apud nos circita."
They held hands and concentrated. Suddenly, they heard as if from far away the tune to an old Kenny Rogers song.
You gotta know when to hold em…
"Bobby?" Sam said. "Bobby, can you hear me? Bobby, we need your help."
And then, Bobby spoke, and Ember's heart turned over. "Sam?" Bobby asked.
-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-SPN-
Seven hours later, Ember waited with Sam in front of the door to Heaven. The door to Heaven was, ironically, a playground. Ember had been here with Castiel a few times, but it had been nearly a year ago.
Ember had decided a long time ago that she widely preferred being a part of an adventure than waiting by the sidelines until it was over, and this was no exception. She wished she'd been able to talk to Bobby more, too, but it wasn't safe. They'd managed to give him the information he would need to open the door, and then they'd only had a second to say a brief good-bye. It was just enough to remind Ember exactly how much she missed her father.
Suddenly, a white light erupted out of the sandbox, and Metatron came stumbling out with Castiel.
"Sam-tastic!" Metatron said loudly. "And if it isn't Castiel's little hell-raiser!" Castiel's mouth formed a snarl.
"Miss me? Oh, smell that? That smells like freedom. Well, let's go. I call shotgun!"
"You don't get to make demands, Metatron," said Castiel. "You're not in charge here."
"Oh, I'm afraid I am," said Metatron. "I know about the Mark. I have your Grace. I make the rules. It's called leverage, boys. Learn it, live it, love it."
Castiel looked at Sam and Ember, who nodded. "Do it," said Ember. Castiel pulled out his angel blade and sliced Metatron's throat open. A white light came out of Metatron into a little glass jar. Somehow, it seemed gruesome to Ember. Was that how it happened to Castiel? Castiel healed Metatron's throat, and then Sam shot him in the leg.
"Ow!" screamed Metatron. "OW!" Ember smiled.
"We have your Grace, Metatron," said Castiel. "You're mortal now. So you will answer our questions, or Sam will, um . . . What's the phrase? Blow your frickin brains out. It's called leverage, Metatron." The words sounded foreign from Castiel, whom Ember had loved so intimately, and who had always been so kind. She saw now, for the first time, the angel who had led battles and killed thousands.
"Learn it, live it, love it," said Sam. "How do we get rid of the Mark?"
Metatron looked terrified. "I-I don't know." Sam aimed the gun at Metatron's head, and Ember began to squeeze his throat with her force powers. "I don't know! No, I-it's old magic . . . God-level magic! Or Lucifer level, but you can't ask him, exactly, can you?"
"What about the tablets?" Castiel asked in his deep, gravely voice.
"No, Th-there's . . . there's nothing in them about the Mark."
"So when you said "The river ends at the source," that was-…"
"I was just making up crap, trying to buy time till I could screw you over," said Metatron.
"No," said Sam, horrified.
"Fuck you," said Ember.
"What?!" Metatron said. "It worked before."
"He's telling the truth," said Castiel. "Shoot him."
Sam aimed the gun at Metatron's head. "No, no!" Metatron screamed at Castiel. "No! Your Grace! I wasn't lying about that. There's still some left. I'll take you to it."
Sam and Ember both looked at Castiel. "It's your call, Cas," said Sam.
"I'll go with him," Castiel said, stepping to the side so Metaron, who was tied up, couldn't hear him.. "You two stay here and try to help Dean."
Ember nodded. "Cas… I hope you find it. Just… make sure to get Metatron back, okay?"
Castiel nodded. "Are you going to tell Dean?"
"Probably," Ember admitted. "I don't like to keep secrets from him. Metatron doesn't have his Grace, so… as long as he doesn't get his hands on yours, he shouldn't be able to do too much damage."