Chapter Four: Angels Are Douchebags
For Eli, that was the moment that everything stopped being routine, and started being shitty.
They rushed inside. Eli stopped, stunned, only peripherally aware of Dean pushing Sam's gun down and shouting: "Sam, Sam, wait! It's Castiel. The angel." Dean paused, looking to the corner. "Him, I don't know."
Eli glanced at the other man with a sinking feeling in her gut. Oh, great. Just what she needed. More insults and thinly veiled threats. Fuck. She shrank to the back, shoulders instinctively rising, curling into herself.
Castiel looked hard at Dean, flickered his blue eyes to Eli for just a moment, then finally locked gazes with Sam.
"Hello, Sam," he said in his rough voice, seemingly oblivious to the wonder in Sam's eyes.
"Oh my God," he stuttered, nearly tripping over himself as he approached the angel. His face flushed when he realized his mistake. " Er - uh - I didn't mean to - sorry. It's an honor, really, I - I've heard a lot about you."
He held out his hand, and for a long moment, Castiel just stared at it. Finally Eli hissed, "Shake it!"
Castiel slowly put his hand into Sam's, as if unsure of what exactly was going on. Sam shook it enthusiastically.
"And I, you, Sam Winchester," he intoned solemnly. "The boy with the demon blood. Glad to see you've ceased your extracurricular activities."
"Let's keep it that way," the other angel said in a clipped voice. He was facing the window, dark and imposing with his broad shoulders and bald head.
"Yeah, okay, chuckles," Dean snapped defensively, stepping ever so slightly in front of his little brother, his hands balled into fists and jaw jutting out like a prizefighter.
Finally Castiel turned to her. "Elijah Grant," he said, his tone the same but with the slightest softening of the rough edges. "It is good to see you're doing your job."
Eli blinked, hard, at the sight of those wide blue eyes and characteristically furrowed brow. Suddenly, stupidly, she felt like crying, but she didn't know why. "Hey, Castiel," she croaked out.
"Not very well, though," the other angel said, turning, a thunderous frown on his face. "Not that I am surprised."
Eli bit her tongue. "Uriel," she said curtly, trying to stem the shaking in her hands He was just as she remembered him, a face of stone and granite, with that fleeting, discomforting aura of disgust pulsing from him like a sickness. "How lovely of you to visit."
"Wait a minute," Dean said, holding up his hands and turning to stare at Eli. "First of all, you know these guys? And second, your name is Elijah?"
"My parents thought they were having a boy, okay?" she muttered defensively.
"We don't have time for this," Castiel said. "The raising of Samhain, have you stopped it?"
"Why?" Dean asked petulantly. Castiel shot him an exasperated look, which for him meant a slight narrowing of the eyes. Eli was amazed at how well she could read his slight, near invisible expressions, like he was shouting out how he felt but no one else could hear.
He asked if Dean had located – killed – the witch. This took an inordinately long time, Castiel's precise questions punctuated by Dean's belligerent answers. Eli bit the tip of her thumb worriedly as she watched the two bicker.
She snapped to attention as Castiel moved to the bed and picked up a hex bag.
"Apparently the witch knows who you are too. This was inside the wall of your room. If we hadn't found it, surely one or," his eyes flashed to Eli for a fraction of a second, "all of you would be dead. Do you know where the witch is now?"
Dean and Sam shared a glance.
"We're working on it," Dean replied.
Castiel's voice was carefully flat and low. "That's unfortunate."
"What do you care?" Dean asked suspiciously. Castiel shot him a piercing look.
"The raising of Samhain is one of the 66 seals."
Eli bit her thumbnail again, worrying at the ragged edge with her teeth, her mind working fast. The 66 seals. Everything in her screamed that they must not be broken; even her very blood hummed with the knowledge. It was a physical push, this desire to stop the seals from breaking. It was part of her job, of course, to help the brothers stop the rising of Lucifer and the apocalypse, but it was more than that. It was deeper. Her thoughts flashed back to that night six years ago, the night that Bobby Singer saved her. She thought of the demon, and the pain, and the light, and the words, and she shuddered.
"…need to leave this town immediately." Castiel's voice reached her as if she was underwater, and Eli jerked to attention again.
"Why?" Dean asked, truly confused, and Eli's mouth twisted as she stared at Uriel, who broke his expressionless mask for just a moment to smirk at her.
Castiel's voice held none of the glee she saw in Uriel's face. "Because we're about to destroy it."
Eli could see something crack in Dean, another hairline fissure across his already damaged mental state. He went toe-to-toe with the angel, shouting, and every time that Castiel responded with his implacable logic it merely seemed to set him off more. He was acting reckless, like he wanted to be smited, to provoke some kind of real response from the stoic angels. He wanted anger, the blood and violence of real human emotion, not the centered, superior calm of heaven.
It was foolish, Eli thought, curling one hand around the other pressing them into her chest as if to still the frantic beating of her heart, to anthropomorphize them simply because they looked human. She meant this for herself as much as for Dean. Six years of training, and she still wanted him to be something that he was not.
"Lucifer cannot rise." Castiel's voice had suddenly become slower, clearer, the voice of someone trying to teach advanced Latin to a three-year-old. "He does and hell rises with him. Is that something that you're willing to risk?"
Eli had had enough.
"Now wait a goddamn minute," she snapped, stepping forward, and both of the angels flinched at the blasphemy. "There are over 600 seals. Only 66 need to be broken."
"So?" Uriel growled, looking at her like he smelled something rotten.
"So I call bullshit on this whole 'we must smite the town' thing. If this seal doesn't break Lilith will just break another to make up for it."
Uriel didn't move, but he somehow seemed closer, the almost electrical energy around him heating the air and making the hair on Eli's arms rise like she had just stuck her finger in a socket. "Don't speak of things you know nothing about, Abomination."
"Uriel," Castiel reprimanded.
"Again with the name calling." Eli smiled, but there was no mirth in it. "Took a long time, though. I think you're showing restraint in your old age."
"So you're saying that we shouldn't care?" Castiel asked quietly, diverting her attention from the dark angel currently smoldering with rage. Eli immediately changed her tone into something gentler.
"No , I'm not saying that. Of course I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we should try to stop this, but we shouldn't smite the entire fucking town on the gamble that A: We might fail and that B: Stopping this one seal would drastically alter Lilith's plan. She's got 600 seals to choose from, Castiel. You think she's going to care that she lost one?"
Sam stepped forward. "We can stop it," he pleaded, looking back and forth between the two angels. "We'll stop this witch before she summons anyone. Your seal won't be broken and no one has to die."
Uriel literally growled. "We're wasting time with these mud monkeys and that thing." He looked like he wanted to spit at Eli. Castiel sighed, turning back the trio.
"I'm sorry, but we have our orders." He looked at Eli as he said it, and she turned her face away.
"No, you can't do this," Sam sputtered frantically. "You're angels, I mean aren't you supposed to - You're supposed to show mercy." He was nearly pleading. Eli's heart went out to him, his young face that had seen too much, all arms and legs like a colt yet to grow into its body, his voice cracking with disbelief and heartbreak.
"Says who?" Uriel said, the smugness returning to his voice.
"Oh shut it, you unbelievable douche," Eli snapped at him without thinking.
"Watch your tongue when you speak to me, Abomination," he warned. "Or even his will won't protect you."
"We have no choice," Castiel said to Sam and Dean, ignoring Eli and Uriel as if he had seen all of this before.
"Of course you have a choice, I mean, come on!" Dean threw up his hands. "You've never questioned a crap order, huh? What are you, just a couple of hammers?"
Tempers flared again, until Castiel finally snapped, with something approaching human emotion: "Tell me something Dean, when your father gave you an order, didn't you obey?"
There was a pause in which everyone stared first at the angel, then at Dean. Eli shook her head sadly. "Low blow, Castiel," she murmured, and when his eyes met hers they were a little pained.
Dean sank into himself for one brief moment, but then shook it off with a visible twitch of the shoulders, squared his shoulders and spoke. "Well, sorry boys, looks like the plans have changed."
"You think you can stop us?" The dark planes of Uriel's face were crinkled with disgust, his mouth twisted somewhere between a frown and a sneer, as if he was torn between the ridiculousness of the attempt and outrage that anyone would try such a thing.
Dean took a deep breath, walked over, and stood nose to nose with the angel, the edges of his beat-up leather jacket brushing the lapels of Uriel's immaculate suit.
"No," he started, his voice low and determined, every inch the hero. "But if you're gonna smite this whole town, then you're gonna have to smite us with it, because we are not leaving. See, you went to the trouble of busting me out of hell, and sticking a freaking bodyguard on my ass, I figure I'm worth something to the man upstairs. So you wanna waste me, go ahead, see how he digs that."
The look on Uriel's face changed to pure fury, his voice a crackling snarl. "I will drag you out of here myself."
Dean had the audacity to smirk. "Yeah, but you'll have to kill me, then we're back to the same problem. I mean, come on, you're gonna wipe out a whole town for one little witch. Sounds to me like you're compensating for something."
Eli let out a snort. She liked this hunter, she really did. She could see what Bobby saw in him: Arrogance, yes, but threaded subtly with iron determination and a completely selfless heart.
Dean stepped back and turned to Castiel. "We can do this," he promised earnestly. "We will find that witch and we will stop the summoning."
"Castiel!" Uriel exclaimed, moving as if to grip Dean and pull him out of there by sheer force. "I will not let these peop- "
"Enough!" Castiel held up his hand and stopped Uriel in his tracks, and something akin to pride warmed Eli's insides as she stared at the blue-eyed angel. He gave Dean a hard, appraising look. "I suggest you move quickly."
Eli let out a low sigh of relief; they had been given a reprieve. "Come on," she muttered, shooting one last glance at Castiel. His eyes met hers for a moment, and he nodded.
When they were gone Uriel let out a groan of frustration. "That bitch doesn't deserve the chance we are giving her. She should be praising our names, not acting like some foulmouthed c- -"
"It is a good thing, then," Castiel rasped, standing very still and tilting his head like a bird, his hands slipping easily into the pockets of his trench coat, "that it is not up to you."
The two angels stared at each other for one tense second, until Uriel jerked his head to the side and vanished. Castiel lingered just long enough to hear Dean's outraged shout of "Astronaut!" before he too disappeared and the room stood empty.