I hope everybody had a reasonably good Holy Pie Thursday. The Church of Castiel is nothing if not realistic, and recognises that it is not always possible to consume pie on Holy Pie Thursday. Wherever actual worship of pie is not feasible, it is just as acceptable to think admiringly about pie, perhaps offering up a brief thought of "I'd really like a piece of apricot pie just now", or "What a shame I don't have a piece of apple and blackberry pie to go with my coffee" or "It's a shame I can't eat pie for breakfast".
CHAPTER SEVEN
Pieces of roof tile, chunks of timber and a couple of unlucky pigeons rained down as the sound of the explosion died away. Warily, three heads poked out from behind a rusted truck.
"Balls," pronounced Bobby.
"Is that it?" queried Sam, watching in bemused disbelief as pieces of paper, fabric and the occasional shred of curtain drifted down more slowly. Jimi crawled out from under the junker where he'd taken shelter with his mother Rumsfeld and his sister Janis, and they began nosing back and forth across the scene.
Dean peered into the clearing cloud of dust and smoke. "Cas!" he called, clutching the coat he held anxiously, "Cas! Where the hell are you?"
"What the hell happened?" asked Sam in a bewildered tone.
"I guess the Leviathans put up a bit of a fight," Bobby grinned a little. "It aint bad enough you go rippin' holes in the fabric of reality, you go shovin' enormously powerful beings through it when they don't want to go, something like that is bound to create fireworks."
"You think he got them all back into Purgatory?" Sam went on. "All locked up again?"
"He closed the gateway," Bobby nodded, "He closed it, because if he hadn't, we would right now be knee-deep in escaping souls, and hungry angry not-nice Leviathans." He peered at the ground, bent down, and picked up his large, pointy red hat. It was splattered with dirt, and a little singed on one edge, but otherwise intact. "Well, whaddyaknow," he mused with a small smile, "It must be the willow reinforcement. I'll have to ask the Librarian to pass on my compliments to Mr Vernissage..." He looked thoughtful then reached inside it, and pulled out a small flask from inside the point. He opened it, sniffed, smiled widely and took a drink. "Ah, good ol' Mustrum, scumble from his home town..."
"Cas!" Dean continued to yell, "CAS! Come on, this isn't funny! Get your feathery ass back here now!"
"So... where is he?" asked Sam in a small voice.
They watched as Jimi scrabbled briefly at a pile of rubble, then extracted Oinker Stoinker the blue squeaky pig. He trotted around honking triumphantly. Bobby sighed. "I don't know, son. I want to hope that we'll find him upside down in the shrubbery, but the whole godding episode was taking a toll on him..."
"Come on, Cas!" demanded Dean, glaring at the sky, "Guys like you don't die on toilets!"
Sam looked confused. "You haven't got some quote thing happening in that strange brain of yours now, have you?" he asked his brother. Dean just glared at him.
Carefully, they began to pick through the damaged house, salvaging what they could. Bobby's antique porcelain teapot with the reproduction erotic Greek frieze motif had miraculously survived. A plate of cookies survived unscathed under an upturned bowl and a torn dishcloth. Beside it, a turquoise ceramic lamp base had crazed, and disintegrated when Sam touched it.
"Karen made that," Bobby noted, "In one of them crafts classes she liked to go and do."
Sam's face fell all the way to Kicked Puppy. "Oh, God, Bobby, I'm so sorry..."
"And I hated the damned thing from the moment she brought it home," Bobby continued, giving the pile of fragments a small satisifed kick, "Ugly as hell, and lopsided. I been lookin' for an excuse to get rid of it ever since. I guess every cloud has a silver lining."
Sam goggled at him. "Er, well, optimism is an admirable trait, but was it really worth having your house blow up just to get rid of a lamp?"
"It was a powerful ugly lamp," shrugged Bobby. "Aha! Now, this is important!" He pulled a peaked cap from a pile, and dusted it off. "Keep an eye out for any more of these. That goes for you too, Dean. Dean?"
Bobby and Sam turned to see Dean standing with his back to them, just staring at something.
"What is it, son?" asked Bobby. Dean remained silent. As they joined him, they could see what he was staring at.
In a small clearing in the debris sat the upstairs toilet bowl. It was cracked, it was scorched, and it was definitely unoccupied.
It was slow going, but they were able to make their way gingerly up what was left of the stairs. The upper storey was wrecked, walls blown out, ceilings collapsed. The bathroom had been the epicentre; the only indication that it had once been a bathroom was an empty toilet roll core. There was no sign of Castiel.
"Balls," muttered Bobby sadly.
"Come on," Sam said, gently putting a hand on Dean's shoulder as his big brother stared at the small cardboard cylinder with tear-filled eyes. "Somebody is bound to have heard that. The Widow Witherspoon is a terrible stickybeak, and she'll be notifying the Sheriff, the Fire Brigade, the SPCA, the Mayor, the anti-terrorism hotline, the local paper and Oprah as we speak. We gotta get out there and look like traumatised civilians." Looking at Dean, Sam decided that his brother wouldn't need to act very hard.
They made their way back to clear ground to wait for the inevitable arrival of emergency services. Dean sat on the ground, still clutching the trench coat and the cardboard roll, as Jimi nudged him, and honked consolingly on Oinker Stoinker.
"At least we got transport," Sam pointed to the Impala, which sat, miraculously restored to her pre-wreck glory, outside the blast radius. "He fixed your car for you."
"He fixed my car," Dean repeated hollowly, hugging the toilet roll centre to his chest, "He fixed my car, and let himself get blown up."
"The idjit clearly spent too much time hangin' around with disreputable company," Bobby joked weakly, with a surreptitious sniff, "And picked up bad habits, such as a lunatic disregard for his own wellbein'. Wonder who he learned that from."
"It's... " Dean gulped. "It's not fair."
"It never is," Sam sat next to his brother, and put a brotherly arm around his shoulder. "In this job, it never is."
"Yeah, he was a dick, but he learned how not to be a dick," Dean stated. "Unlike all those other dicks, who were totally dicks."
"He sure did," Sam agreed. "He learned how to totally not be a dick."
"And he screwed up, but he just wanted to help," Dean went on, bottom lip trembling.
"Who hasn't?" Sam added.
"And he never learned about Personal Space," lamented Dean. "He was so determined to learn about Personal Space."
"He never stopped trying," smiled Sam. "I thought it was kind of... endearing."
"He should've eaten more pie, Sam!" Dean wailed, "I should've shown him more about pie! Made sure that he really experienced the joy of pie! Why didn't I get him to eat more pie? How could I let him go without making sure he knew all about pie!"
"I think he understood, Dean," Sam consoled, talking around the lump forming in his own throat, "I think he knew that you, as his friend, wanted to share important things with him."
"And... and... and... he never got laid!" A single tear made its way down Dean's face. "He died a virgin! I never got him laid! What sort of a friend does that, Sam? What sort of a friend lets somebody die without even making sure they get to do the horizontal tango at least once?" He took a deep, shuddering breath. "And now every time I see a toilet, I'll be reminded of what a terrible friend I was to him!"
"That was his choice, Dean," Sam tried to comfort his distressed big brother, "Remember, the whole Free Will thing? By deciding not to get laid, he made a choice, he exercised free will. He learned that from you. You were the one that convinced him, showed him that it was okay to think, okay to doubt, and okay to say no, and not do something just because it's what somebody else wanted. And what he learned from you was more important to him than sex, Dean! More important than sex! That's how awesome a friend you were to Cas."
Dean drew a shaky breath, and for a moment Sam wondered if Dean was getting close to breaking the 'no chick-flick moments' rule when they all heard a strange, distant noise.
aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa
Bobby looked around. "What the hell is that?"
aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa
The Winchesters stood. "Is it a siren?" wondered Sam.
aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa
"Where's it coming from?" asked Dean.
AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA
Jimi woofed cheerfully, and turned his muzzle to the sky. They all looked up.
AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA
"Y'know, takin' a few steps back might be a real good idea just about now," announced Bobby, doing so. The Winchesters followed suit.
AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA
With a whistle of wind and a flailing of limbs, a tangled form dropped from the air with the aerodynamic efficiency of a brick, and fell to the ground between them with a definite thud.
AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA... "Ow."
They gaped in disbelief as the inelegantly sprawled figure slowly, painfully climbed to its feet, attempted to adjust its dishevelled clothing, and regarded them gravely.
"I apologise if my re-entry startled you. Hello Dean. Are you all right?"
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