Grand Theft Vessel
A Supernatural Fanfic
GTV: Wonder Twin Powers- Activate!
Dean wonders if this is what it feels like to be tossed around by a hurricane. He wonders how many people survive it, and if there's something about being born in Kansas that causes a predisposition to being tornado'd, but at least Dorothy had a fucking house to shield her and super-boy's squeeze had a truck. Dean doesn't have anything, not even his own meat to cover him from the onslaught.. and yet all he can think is that if Sam where here, the geek, he could probably recite statistics, dates, and maybe even case studies.
The thought doesn't last long, ripped up and away as it is by the sheer strength of whatever it is that makes an angel an angel. It isn't just Grace, creation energy, because if it was Anna would never have been able to remember being part of the God Squad. She wouldn't have been able to throw people across the room during her don't-make-me-he's-mad-at-me tantrum in the panic room.
There's power, Dean always knew Castiel was powerful so nothing new there, but the Hunter had never gotten the sense of age that soaks him to his core. Castiel is old, thousands of years of experience, and yet Dean somehow knows he is young.
It makes him wonder how old Micheal is, how much stronger, right before the hurricane pulls him apart, exposing his soul, and he can't think at all.
Taking Jimmy as a vessel was nothing like taking Dean. If Castiel had the experience, he would have compared Jimmy to be like slipping on a formally tailed suit. He moved in, pushing everything else aside, including Jimmy, to fill it up. Though the body fit, Castiel's own power had knocked aside James Novak's soul leaving it compact and sectioned off, barely more than terrified whispers of a man who's greatest trial had been whether or not his proposal at work would be accepted.
Claire had been different, yet similar. The young girl hadn't fit as well, not enough time to mature, but when he possessed her body he still pushed her to the side. Angel grace filled veins thick with mourning for the loss of her father, missing for months, and the stubborn willingness to do whatever it took to protect her family.
Dean is something else entirely.
"I'm an Angel of the Lord."
Flashes of color. A whirlwind of possibilities.
He put up the Great Wall of Sam between you, and the things you don't remember.
"The electrocution triggered a heart attack. Pretty massive, I'm afraid."
Dean was crafted, Chosen, to be Micheal's vessel. A weapon generations in the making, Dean Winchester had been marked since birth for hardship and trials. Castiel knew this when he went with his garrison to retrieve the Righteous Man, forged into a sword for heaven in the fires of hell, but he hadn't considered... hadn't thought...
"Pit stop to Mount Doom?"
You think I'm behind this? Please. I'm the Costner to your Houston. I'm here to save your ass.
"Yeah, maybe that, but I don't say things like "feisty little wildcat". And her name wasn't Starla."
Dean had died. Not once. Not twice.
It's the perfect antidote to that absinthe.
"Well, it's just getting old. Like the wiring, you know? We've got flickering lights almost hourly."
Tell, ah, Raphael to bite me.
Hundreds of times, Dean's soul had shuffled off its mortal coil, and each time it had been put back. Over and over again the process had happened, different fractions of the supernatural world vying for Winchester blood, and things like that leave remnants. Fragments of grace mixed in with echos of Death all clinging to a human soul battered and bruised but unbelievably powerful.
"It's you, chucklehead. You're the Michael sword."
Why you buying up human souls, anyway?
And Castiel got it, why they took living, inhabited vessels even as the upsurge of power threatened to carry him away. Dean wasn't just a vessel through which Micheal could channel his own God given power. When combined with an angel's grace, Dean's soul generated it. Before, with Jimmy and Claire, their own souls had done the same but on a scale so small he hadn't even noticed. Their souls had been like water wheels on a river of grace.
Dean felt more like a nuclear reactor, and Castiel didn't have the slightest clue on how to handle it. The whole world, worlds, are spread out before him flashing past the window. Pasts, presents, and futures. Castiel has never had so much power at his disposal before.
It is... intimidating, frightening, because... what if he messes up? What is he supposed to do with it all?
He knows from Dean's memories, as fragmented as they currently are, that the sick feeling below his abdomen if what they call a punch to the gut. He's seen the possibilities. He doesn't like them.
There was cool -comfortingly familiar?- leather at his back. Castiel opened his -Dean's- eyes. Pale white light is streaming in through the window, there's a glare, and a chill in the air. It's cold, but Castiel only notices it a vague way as though he's looking at a display out of the corner of his eyes.
But it sparks of something in his mind, and for a moment Castiel can remember the feel of soft wool on his hands and a slushy expanse of white as breathe fogs in his face. There's two people in the distance, dressed for the weather but not near as layered as he is, arguing playfully.
"It's colder than a witch's tit out here." A gruff, male voice grumbles, sound carried by a stark wind.
The female hisses. "John!"
There is a sense of surprised warmth in his chest, of Dean, and Castiel hesitantly closes their eyes and probes carefully into his essence. Dean hadn't been much older than three when that memory took place. He hadn't recalled it since. The snow-day had been replaced by the exciting news: "Mommy's making you a baby brother!"
Swallowing, because Jimmy's emotions had always been distant like a firefly's light compared to this, Castiel sits up and takes in their surroundings. He had been completely overwhelmed by the power rush when he entered Dean, it had been all he could do not to accidentally blow the little town they had formerly been in off the map. As it was, well, if time was fluid space was like rice-paper, and Cas vaguely recalled breaking a couple of dimensional walls during his admittedly less-than-graceful (Was that a pun?) ascension.
A cursory check told him that, yes, the Impala was okay, and isn't that the important thing?
The cold, serious thrill that curled around the back of his mind assured him it is.
Something tapped against the door, a soft scraping that caused Castiel to wince inwardly. He shifted over to the driver's seat. There was nothing but white as far as he could see, but his other senses, far stronger than they had been in his previous vessels, detected a source of warmth just outside.
He rolled down the window, and looked down.
Big, black eyes stared up at him as a pink tongue flashed out. "Hello, Bear." A thrill of surprised and happy excitement. "Where is your mother?"
The baby bear whuffed, breath coming out in a steam that fogged up the Impala's door, where a set of scratches had been made against the paint. Almost before he knew what he was doing, Cas narrowed his eyes at the scratches and watched as the paint seemed to stretch and cover them up as if they never were.
The bear continued to stare at him, nose twitching.
Castiel reaches out, digs his -their- fingers into the thick white fur of the Polar Bear, and gives a small smile. It won't last, this peace, because he knows he set off all kinds of alarms. The power is pulsing just under his skin, enough to take out a small country or build one, and he didn't exactly cover his tracks. There's a moving mound of white heading in his direction.
He should go.
Sliding back into the driver's seat, Castiel grips the wheel and takes a deep, unneeded breath. If he doesn't manage to do it right, there's a 45% chance he'll end up half buried in rock, floating at sea, or possibly in space.
With the Impala.
Subconciously, he pats the dashboard lovingly and turns the key. Do or do not. There is no try.
The two polar bears look at the indention four wheels had made in the snow.