Note: So the beginning is taking much longer than I'd anticipated. Yes, I know, you're all just tired of waiting for the second main star of the show to make his grand appearance. But you DO know that Cas's signature just-rolled-out-of-bed look takes hours to perfect, right? Or just a romp with Dean behind the scenes – and they're not minute men. He'll be here soon! Just… a little scarce in this chapter.
Act III: Stumped
"Look, I just need a tiny detail about 'Patient X'," a haggard-looking woman begged, "my deadline's in three hours, and my boss is on my ass about this guy. Who is he? Just how is he mutated? Is it contagious? Is it true about the wings-"
"The patient doesn't have wings," the nurse behind the counter corrected, "I can only tell you already-published information: Doe was accepted into our hospital yesterday at 6:03pm, bleeding severely from two points on the back. We can't release confidential patient information-"
"But there have been reports by witnesses that the guy appeared out of thin air, bleeding and emitting light," a bespectacled man interrupted from behind the woman, his visitor's tag labeling him another journalist. "If he's just another Doe shot off the streets there wouldn't be so many guards in this hospital-"
"-unless he's worth hiding. Tell me, is he more X-Men or Angel-"
Two tall nurses in scrubs and surgical masks slipped by the nurse station, keeping their eyes on their coffee and watches, gliding by the harassed nightshift nurses and desperate journalists. They walked by the scrutiny of a few guards, all of whom looking equally as delighted to be stuck on the graveyard shift at 3am on a Friday morning.
"Well, they're not too far off the mark," the shorter nurse muttered. "But it's kinda like naming a dog 'Cat', or a cow 'Horse'. Why would you name a vampire 'Angel'?"
Sam rolled his hazel eyes over his blue cotton mask, ignored his brother's comment and doggedly continued his reinforcement. "Look, I know he's turned up in a hospital before, but what are the chances that it'll happen again? We can't count on God bouncing Cas back every time he dies like some cosmic yoyo-"
"I know," Dean griped, scanning the numbers on the doors they passed in the brightly-lit, sterile hall. "But if he's in here, I'm not walking out without him."
"And I'm not telling you to," Sam said agreeably, slowing down as they neared their number, "I'm just telling you not to get your hopes up. Winchester curse, remember?"
"Well aren't you a bedpan of sunshine," Dean muttered as he swung open the door to room 347. He nodded to the nurse dressed identically to them zoning out in the seat by the window. "Hey, you're on break," he said in a casual tone, holding the coffee aloft in one hand, "we're covering for you."
The nurse nodded gratefully, grabbed the coffee, and was about to slouch past them when Sam spoke what Dean had been wondering: "hey, uh, what's with the-?"
The nurse's eyes darted back into the room, at the window and at the white tiles beneath their feet in the doorway. "Oh, yeah. Doe wouldn't let us help until those symbols were down. Second she was done with the tape and salt she KO'd. Probably new-age Wiccan or something," he said dismissively, saying the last bit over his shoulder as he walked down the hall towards the nurse's station.
She?
A look passed between Dean and Sam. Then they stepped over the devil's trap sketched in masking tape on the gleaming floor, locking the door behind them.
The dim hospital room was standard, with white tiles, carefully neutral walls, a floor lamp, and a single curtained-off bed. Judging by the shadow cast on the curtains, the patient seemed to be sound asleep with their hands curiously propped up in the air. Dean pulled off his mask and swiftly approached, while Sam followed cautiously, drawing the gun stuck in his waistband. A quiet crunch beneath their feet announced the ring of salt poured around the hospital bed.
Sam blinked and drew his pistol, sure he'd seen a flicker behind the curtains. He lay the nose of the gun by the curtain, aiming for the approximate location of the patient's head. He knew his brother was hopeful – but when were they ever lucky? He watched Dean steel himself and slowly draw the powder blue fabric aside.
"Cas…?"
For a second, Dean saw a shadowy, rumpled nest of thin cotton on the gurney topped with dark hair. A patch of pale skin was exposed in the center of the nest, bared between arms set in casts bent at the elbow, sticking up from the sheets. He felt the tight knots in his neck start to loosen, the heady clouds of elation and relief starting to rush. Flesh and bones heal, whereas being banished eternally in Purgatory was terminal. But something was off – the arms were far too short, and placed far too high on the body; the casts were rumpled, wrapped crudely – it looked almost as if they were fuzzy, with the tips of the casts matted with dark, coagulated blood –
Then the details suddenly pieced together in a horrifying moment, just as he heard Sam gasp behind him. Dean watched in almost detached shock as a bright drop of scarlet blood ran down from a hacked stump, dribbling a scarlet thread through the soft downy feathers by the bone, until it glided down a long, white wing feather and stained the pale shoulder blade below.
The next moment was a blur of movement and his pulse roaring in his ears as he leapt to the head of the gurney on his knees, shouting, "Cas! Cas?" You have to be okay, you have to tell me that those raw skewers speared in your back are not your holy flappers – you've never even had wings –! He was distantly aware of shaking Cas's shoulder as Sam said something in the background, watching the short, dark hair flop in his friend's closed eyes –
They suddenly snapped open, and Dean felt the shoulder he was grasping flex an instant before his head was snapped back by a small, strong hand. Finger nails dug into his scalp and temples. "Castiel? No - who are you?"
"Let him go," Sam said somewhere to Dean's side, all business. The order was punctuated with the metallic cocking of his gun.
"Answer me!" The hand holding his skull started to tremble, then glow with dim flickers of blue-white light.
Shit. This is gonna go nuclear. "Hold on!" Dean shouted, holding up a hand to both of them blindly. "He's gone! But we got his SOS, and the number traced to this room in this hospital."
There was a beat of silence.
"Show me."
Dean cautiously reached a hand into his pocket and handed his phone over to the abnormally-strong patient. It gave him enough time to sort out both the bitter and sweet realisation that this wasn't his best friend; that Dean hadn't found him, but also had not found him with the raw, sawn remains of what had to be the remnants of once-whole wings.
The image of Cas - not the all-powerful and solidly-reassuring soldier of the lord, but the husk of hubris with the openly vulnerable face - flitted through his mind. Dean gritted and forced himself back to the present, concentrating on the smoking gun holding his highly-combustible melon.
"What are your names?" The tone belied mercy, but the grip tightened on Dean's head like a vice.
"Hey, I'm Dean Winchester. That's my brother, Sam. And as far as handshakes go, this is just awesome," Dean said dryly.
A note of suspicion crept into the high-pitched voice. "Prove it. Show me the scars you bear from when my brother pulled you from Perdition – or I will smite you with the last of my grace, hunters." The title was spat out, acidic.
Dean made note of the pitch, then rolled up the sleeves of his scrubs to the tops of his shoulders, baring the handprint-shaped scars. No matter how many times he was brought back to life or healed, the handprints had always remained wrapped around his shoulders.
Seconds stretched. He could hear each of their breaths, how Sam was uneasily shifting his weight. Then a long, drawn-out sigh punctuated the silence. "Fuck."
"Why is that the usual reaction we get now?" Dean muttered to Sam, and he could see Sam twitching his foot like he wanted to reach over and kick him.
The grip slackened and Dean pulled away, lurching to his feet while Sam tugged the floor lamp into the opening in the curtains, turning the salt-lined area around the gurney into a makeshift interrogation room of sorts. A slender woman in her mid-twenties glared up at them as she sat up from lying on her belly, the hospital gown slit open to allow the mutations on her back to stick out comfortably. The light glistened off the beads of sweat trailing from her short, dark hair as pain twisted her pale face. Her eyes flickered between grey and electric blue in time with the blue-white sparks lancing in tiny lightning bolts from the stumps of her useless wings. She looked a bit like a wounded bird, hostile about being grounded.
"I call for Castiel, and his apes show up," she muttered bitterly, "typical."
Dean shrugged it off. They'd been called worse. "So that SOS was yours."
The angel shuddered, and crossed her arms on the gurney, looking more like a sick girl trying to keep her act together than an almighty soldier of the Lord. "I sent it to Castiel. It found you instead, thanks to his grace in your scars; probably while you were physically touching your phone," she replied flatly.
"What happened to you?" Sam asked sympathetically, completely buying into the helpless-bird act, "how did-"
A disorienting POP and a flash of light blinded them. Dean flung up his fists defensively as he blinked the green-purple afterimage away in the sudden darkness. The lamp bulb stuttered sparks from its blown head, strobe-lighting the gurney; the machines lining the headboard were going haywire. But he couldn't focus on anything but the breath-taking light show in front of him. Threads of burning blue-white light threaded erratically from the angel's stumps, as if she were the center of an 80's plasma globe. The air crackled as the lazy lightning arced around the curtains, burning smoking trails through the fabric. Her eyes were alien, flickering blue beacons, focusing between him and his brother.
"As you can see, I don't have much time left in this vessel," the angel said wryly above the noise of the machines. Anything they were going to say was cut off by a harsh, strangulated laugh tapering off into laboured panting. Her eyes flared through the tips of her sweat-drenched hair, boring into them as she confessed, "I'm leaking out of it."
"You're leak-?"
"-If you're still on Castiel's side, you have to find him," she interrupted, a note of pleading in her command. "Tell him to warn whoever is left that we are being hunted and slaughtered. Not just by abominations anymore – humans."
Sam cast a worried glance at the closed hospital door and tucked his gun back in his waistband under his scrubs. "All the angels we've met didn't have wings, at least not when they were in their vessels," he said as he looked at what remained of hers curiously, bordering on accusation, "so if you are an angel, what happened to you?"
A pulse of light flared, and they both shielded their faces from it. Iron vices squeezed Dean's wrists as she seized him. Tiny white lines of fires raked over the exposed skin of their arms, and the faint whiff of singed meat wafted in the air.
"They burned me into this vessel," she snarled, eyes now flaring white as grace pulsed like a Tesla coil from her back, "then they trapped my grace in these wings and –"
A series of loud thumps interrupted her from the door. "Open up! We've got the crash cart!"
The machines continued to shriek, flashing red. He couldn't shake the grip, couldn't even freakin' look away - her eyes were as bright as the winter morning sun - she didn't seem to be paying attention to anything anymore, but to implore him almost desperately, "find him. Please. He was a god once – he can do something –"
Cas's fate was on the tip of Dean's tongue when the light in the angel's burning eyes stuttered, then faded to flat, matte grey. He somehow caught her as she suddenly slackened over the side of the gurney, feeble sparks of white-blue electricity twisting from the hacked stumps on her back.
There was a rustle of movement, then dim light illuminated the gurney from the window. Sam had withdrawn the curtains.
She lay curled on her side, suddenly small. Her eyes were closed, face eerily slack and vacant in unconsciousness.
"Is she-?" Sam asked.
Dean felt for her pulse on her throat. "Still alive."
"Dean, what do we do? We can't just leave her-"
"And how the hell are we supposed to get her past the army of doctors outside the door?"
"Fine. We'll come back-"
They shut up as the wings of the KO'd angel seemed to glow the customary blue-white of grace for a moment. Then, quickly, one by one the feathers fizzled out, until nothing was left but a smooth expanse of creamy skin over her unmarred shoulder blades.
The host stirred, blinking open sleepy eyes, casting a confused look around her head at the noisily excited machines, then focusing on Dean. "Who are-?"
The door slammed open, and a harassed medical team wheeled their equipment in as another nurse flicked on the lights. Dean and Sam moved aside for them, taking the opportunity to head for the door as the doctors focused on the bewildered girl tangled in the sweaty sheets. Dean chanced one last glance behind him before they ducked out the door, holding her eyes with his enough to register their colour.
They were brown.
Streetlights flashed by, then flicked off as the dawn rose quietly beyond the windows the Impala, heralded by birds as they drove further into farmlands. The hospital and their ditched scrubs were a couple hours of driving behind them, the events of their long day rendering them quiet and pensive for much of it. Sam was slumped against the passenger window, his shaggy hair curtaining his eyes and his mouth set in that line that meant that he was pretending to sleep but was really mulling over the day. Dean was more or less making himself enjoy the simple pleasure of driving from point A to point B – no complications, no monsters, no drama…
"We should help them," Sam muttered, breath fogging the window.
"No. What we should do is take a break. The world needs to cut us some freaking slack," Dean griped, glaring over the steering wheel at the violently rural landscape whipping past. "We ganked Dick - what – two days ago. Forty-eight hours. I need a vacation, goddamnit."
"But you remember what Cas said," Sam continued, straightening up in his seat, "that heaven was empty of angels, and if there were any still alive then they were in hiding. She's gotta be one of the remaining survivors after the leviathans tried to commit genocide. And now they're being hunted-"
"Yeah, I don't buy that. Why would hunters want an angel's wings?" Dean said dismissively. "It's probably another monster mash. They can duke it out, they can kill each other off."
"That's the thing, we don't have enough information," Sam persisted, "if there are humans out there who can force an angel into a vessel and trap their grace in physical wings, then hack them off, we need to find out why and how they're doing it. You know we're gonna end up on this case sooner or later anyway."
Dean continued to focus solely on the white lines zipping by on the black asphalt of the highway, remembering the angel's desperation. It occurred to him that they had never learned her name.
Sam looked out the windshield, avoiding Dean's eyes as he said quietly, "I think we owe it to Cas."
The strumming of a guitar riff rang from Dean's pocket, saving him from feeling like he should both agree with and condemn the statement. There was acceptance in his brother's tone, too loud in the purring car. Sam was flying through the five stages of acceptance with his hippy Zen when Cas hadn't even sacrificed himself two days ago-
Dean cut that train of thought and grabbed the phone, driving one-handed as he put it to his ear. "Hel-?"
"SAM?! DEAN-"
"Whoa, crank down the volume!" Dean shouted into the receiver as he pulled the car over on to the gravelly shoulder. He switched the call to speaker as Sam shot him an inquiring look. "Who the hell is this?"
"It's Chuck and your friend just ditched this screaming kid here and what the fuck is going on?!"
Between Chuck's yells there did seem to be more screams and shouts going on in the background, although it was hard to tell with the poor quality of the cheap phone's microphone. Sam's eyebrows were hiking up to his hairline and Dean could feel his own taking the same express as they both focused on the phone clenched in his hand.
"Wait, it looks like he wants to – ouch -"
"DEAN? SAM?"
They shared a confused look at the new speaker on the phone, who had seemingly snatched it out of Chuck's hand. But the bursts of hyperventilation on the speaker keyed Dean's memory. "…Kevin?"
"Oh my God, it's you! I thought he was going to keep me there-"
"Okay, just slow down Kevin, and breathe." Dean instructed, unable to stop the beginnings of an incredulous smile from tugging his lips, mirroring Sam's exuberant fist-pump in the car. "Where are you right now? Are you safe?"
"I – I don't know, that crazy angel just dropped me off at this guy's house-"
"Crazy ang- you mean Cas? Castiel?" Sam interrupted, frozen with his fist in the air. "He's alive?"
"Yes, but-"
"Wait, everyone just hold on for a second," Dean ordered. "Kevin, switch the phone on to speaker. Don't worry about Chuck, he's harmless. ("Hey!") Now, tell us what happened from the beginning. What happened to you at SucroCorp?"
Kevin seemed to take a breath and slowed down his words, "I think just after that leviathan exploded at SucroCorp, Castiel grabbed me and teleported us or something to this gold room. Then he went off somewhere after locking me inside, and he didn't come back until five minutes ago, saying that he'd be taking me back to Earth but someplace safe. And he told me to tell you guys not to call him unless it's an emergency, and even then to think twice."
Stunned silence reigned after Kevin delivered the last of his instructions on both sides of the call. The only sound was the thrum of the Impala's engine. Sam seemed to be working through stages of disbelief, while Dean kind of froze, unwilling to examine the shit storm of emotions flying around inside his mind. Flashes of Dick Roman, Bobby, the flightless angel's face, and Cas's own flew, distorted as if in funhouse mirrors, through his mind, sweeping tides of confused emotions together into a snarled mess.
He grasped on the most familiar: pissed-off.
"Fuck that, we're calling."