15.27 In the Rain
It was a dark and stormy night when Cas finally woke up. It took the better part of a week, and it rained the entire time. A heavy, relentless, driving rain that had already flooded out parts of the state fell from foul grey-brown skies. Dean wondered if it was Heaven mourning their fallen soldier, or if he'd suddenly developed some sort of psychic mutant power, like Storm from the X-Men where the weather was subject to his moods. He wondered if he was going to have to learn to control those, too, on top of everything else. He wondered if he'd have to wear a cape because that would be decidedly uncool.
He wondered what had happened, if Cas' falling had anything to do with every monster in the country going into hiding. He'd wondered if Raphael had won.
Sam summoned Balthazar two days earlier, but Dean hadn't been up for his particular brand of smarmy and had opted to remain with Cas. Not that he ever strayed very far from his bedside. The thought of Cas waking up alone after whatever happened upstairs made Dean a little queasy.
Balthazar hadn't come.
"Do you think he fell, too?" Sam asked. "Or maybe he's dead? They are in the middle of a war up there."
"Or maybe he just got tired of you calling him all the time and found a way to block the spell," Dean snapped.
Sam glared but settled for watching Dean watch Castiel, like if he wasn't careful Dean might spontaneously become a statue where he sat. It made Dean fidgety.
Then the doorbell rang. Strange looks were exchanged, because Bobby rarely had visitors, and the ones he did were not usually of the knocking or doorbell-ringing variety. Bobby had gone to town anyway. He'd told Dean they were getting low on booze, but Dean had heard him tell Sam that he had to get out because Brooding, Sullen Dean was making his teeth hurt.
When they didn't respond, the caller began pounding on the door. Sam shrugged and left to answer it. Dean heard the front door creak open, and he certainly didn't miss his brother's surprised exclamation.
"Balthazar?"
"Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me Castiel is here."
Sam must have replied in the affirmative because next Dean knew there were two sets of footsteps racing up the stairs. Dean stood, unconsciously placing himself between the two angels.
Balthazar froze in the doorway, sopping wet and dressed like he'd raided a lumberjack's clothesline. Or Bobby's hamper.
"Nice of you to turn up," Dean greeted coolly.
"Yes, well, you hitchhike across half the country and see how quickly you get where you're going."
"So you—" Sam began.
"Fell. Yes. Only I don't have a pet human tying me to this God-forsaken planet, and landed in the middle of Fuck-Me Nowhere, Washington."
Without invitation, Balthazar shoved past Dean and knelt at Castiel's side. Only the unashamed sadness on his perennially irritated face stilled the snide remark lingering on Dean's tongue.
"Oh, Cassie," he whispered, "look what he did to you."
Dean suddenly felt like a brand new kind of douche. Balthazar may have treated them like gnats at a barbeque, but he was Castiel's brother, and Dean knew all about that kind of crap.
"Wait," Dean said after Balthazar's words had processed. He'd always just kind of assumed, well, he didn't know what he'd assumed, but never that Castiel had been forced to fall. "Are you saying someone did this to Cas? Was it that dick, Raphael? I swear I'm going to set his ass on fire."
"As amusing as your impotent rage is under normal circumstances, I believe we have more pressing matters."
Sam put a hand up in a placating gesture and shot Dean his Shut the Hell Up look. "Listen, Balthazar, we just want to know what happened. It's been three weeks without a single hunt anywhere in the country, and now we've got two fallen angels in our house, one of them unconscious. If we knew what was going on, maybe we could help."
Balthazar laughed, short and bitter as if he were saying 'And what can you do?' before snapping his jaw shut. He wasn't any more powerful than either of them, and it rankled.
"We were ambushed – betrayed, most likely, though there wasn't much time for inquiries."
"And?" Dean snapped.
"And Castiel was captured." Balthazar swallowed. "It would seem the lessons of hospitality were somewhat lost upon Raphael."
"Was Cas— was he tortured?" Sam asked.
The look on Balthazar's face was enough, and Dean's head spun.
"How long?"
"Dean—"
"How long was he—" down there, he almost said. There was something about angel-on-angel torture that was freaking disturbing. "How long did Raphael have him?"
Balthazar looked… remorseful, which wasn't even something Dean knew Balthazar could pull off, and it only made the sick feeling in Dean's gut that much worse.
"Too long."
"How long is too long?" Dean insisted.
"Have you any idea how vast Heaven is, you feeble-minded swamp rat? We got to Castiel as quickly as we could. I fell trying to rescue him, so don't you dare accuse me of—"
"No one's accusing you of anything, are we, Dean. Dean?" Sam interrupted.
Dean gritted his teeth, but let it go. "Of course not."
Balthazar sighed. "About two weeks, by your standards; though time passes differently upstairs."
Dean didn't want to know if it was faster or slower because two weeks was too much. Two minutes was too much, and he'd been sitting here in Bobby's house complaining that there weren't any creepy-crawlies to kill while Cas was upstairs getting ripped to pieces by his own brother.
"So, why did you-?" Sam stuttered. "I mean, what happened to—?"
"You mean: what am I doing here?" Balthazar drawled.
Sam tilted his head to the side and kind of half-shrugged. "Pretty much."
"Ingenious plan, really. Extracting information from Castiel was only part of it. He was bait. Raphael used him to lure as many of us rebels onto home-turf as possible, then ripped all our graces out."
"He can do that?" Dean said. "He should not be able to do that."
"You're preaching to the choir, sweetheart," Balthazar replied. "As your Southerners say."
"But how?" Sam asked.
"A spell. And not a very angelic one. I've never seen sigils like that before, and spells are my stock-and-trade."
"But what about Cas?" Sam said. "He's been unconscious for a week now, and short of bringing him to a hospital we've done everything we can."
Balthazar was silent for a long time, only occasionally breaking it to mumble to himself. Dean shot Sam a What the Hell look, and saw the same sentiment mirrored in his brother's eyes. At last, Balthazar made a funny, discontented sound in the back of his throat.
"What?" Dean said, not bothering to mask his eagerness. "Do you have something?"
"I may," Balthazar hedged. "But there's a pretty good chance you won't like it."
"Why not?" Sam asked.
"I'll do it," Dean said.
"Dean, we don't even know what it is."
"Doesn't matter. I'll do it." It was the least he could do. Hell, at least there was something to do.
"Dean—"
"I'm doing it. End of discussion, Sammy."
Sam stared long and hard at Dean, but Dean didn't back down.
"All right." Sam turned to Balthazar. "What do you need?"
Balthazar rattled off a list of ingredients to which Dean hardly paid any attention. Sam would get everything ready.
"And make sure you get something the rain won't wash away, because we'll probably need to do it outside. The sigil is a bit large."
"Okay, I'll see what I can do."
Sam left without another word, obviously still annoyed with Dean for being reckless.
Balthazar moved from his spot at Castiel's bedside and put himself directly in Dean's line of sight and stood there until Dean looked him in the eye. The effect of Balthazar's presence was somewhat diminished, though Dean could not honestly say if it was the fact that he hadn't any more juice or the ridiculous get-up he was sporting. The words that came out his mouth, though, were what kicked Dean in the stomach.
"Do you love him?"
"What?"
"Do you love him? I mean really love him, because if you don't I'm not sure this will work."
Dean swallowed hard. "How do you mean?"
"It may sound like something out of a Harry Potter book, but love is the most powerful force in the universe. It heals everything. One has only to find the proper application."
Dean just stared at Balthazar, because he'd rather eat his boots than answer him, one way or the other. He didn't want to know what the answer was, and wondered if I need you and I love you were even sort of the same thing.
"Bobby's got a barn at the back of the property. It's still all graffitied from the last time we used it, but the floor's clear. Draw me the sigil, and I'll get started."
Apparently, that was answer enough for Balthazar, because, for the first time since Dean met him, there were no scathing insults or annoyed rants. He just drew the sigil and turned back to his brother.
.
"What, like Sleeping Beauty?"
Sam snorted.
"The kiss seals the deal – okay, poor turn of phrase," Balthazar added hurriedly after taking one look at Sam's horrified face. "Think of it as… turning the key in that ridiculous car of yours."
"Hey!"
"You can build her from the ground up, over and over again, but until you turn the key, she's just a shiny piece of metal."
Dean wasn't big on metaphors, but he got it. They could do the spell until they were blue in the face, but unless Dean kissed Cas it would just be a waste of ingredients. And blood. Dean had already given a fair bit of it, and if he had to give any more he'd probably faint.
Sam looked at Dean and Dean shrugged. "Dude dragged me out of Hell. I'm pretty sure I can summon the courage to kiss him."
"You have to mean it, Dean," Balthazar said. "The damage Raphael caused is extensive, and without his Grace, Castiel is now wholly dependent up you figuring your shit out. He will. Not. Wake. Up if you don't mean it."
Dean definitely was not looking at Sam now, but he stared down that smarmy, British asshat, daring him to doubt his conviction. Because Dean had done a lot of thinking while he was painting up Bobby's barn, and even if I need you and I love you weren't exactly the same thing, whichever it was the funny tight feeling in his chest was stuck on would most definitely be enough. It had to be, he willed it to be, and Dean Winchester had made a lot of things happen by force of will alone.
He could do this. He could.
"Just call me Prince Phillip."
.
Dean carried Castiel to the barn through the pouring rain. The weather had turned from steady rain to thunderstorms as soon as the sun set, the almost constant flashes of lightning illuminating the way far more effectively than the flashlights Bobby and Balthazar carried. Sam had his arms filled with a trash-bag-wrapped box of spell supplies, and while they walked, Dean tried to think more about the incantations and the knifework he was about to attempt and not how Castiel probably weighed one-fifty, soaking wet, which he was. The former angel – the human, Dean reminded himself – had consumed little more than a few bowls of force-fed broth over the last week, and Jimmy Novak's naturally lean frame had dwindled down to scrawny.
If this didn't work, there was a good chance Cas would die; his frail human body would eventually fail him, even with medical treatment should they seek it, and Dean would be forced to bury another loved one.
Thunder crashed as the thought crossed his mind, and Dean stumbled as though he'd been struck a physical blow.
Fuck incantations; Dean spent the rest of the walk trying to breathe properly.
Dean laid Cas down in the middle of the sigil he'd spent half the afternoon drawing and knelt beside him. Sam, Bobby, and Balthazar went about setting everything up. Dean tried to make his hands stop shaking. When the others were finished, they stepped out of the circle and waited for Dean to begin.
He was grateful he'd drawn the sigils on his and Cas' palms with permanent marker, because between the tightness in his chest and trying to remember the words of the spell, Dean didn't think he'd have been able to complete the designs properly.
When he finished speaking, Dean laced their fingers together, palm to palm, and, with a deep breath, leaned forward and pressed his lips to Cas'. It was a chaste kiss, fitting for this fucked up version of the fairy tale, but Dean had never meant anything more in his entire life. There was a painful rush of all sorts of nameless, girly feelings, and when long fingers suddenly squeezed his, Dean thought he might actually cry.
Dean pulled back in time to see Cas' eyelids flutter open. He stared at Dean for a moment, obviously confused.
"Dean?"
Dean grinned and clapped a bloody hand to Cas' neck, his thumb brushing against the other man's jawline before he could stop himself.
"Welcome back, man," he said, his voice tight. "How'd you feel?"
Cas furrowed his brow. "I… I'm hungry."
Dean laughed. He felt like he could fly.
