Chapter Three – The Third Terrace: The Wrathful
"What shall we do to one who'd injure us
if one who loves us earns our condemnation?"
~Canto XV, lines 104-105
"I don't care what you're comfortable with," Dean snarled to the vampire's umpteenth only-slightly-veiled suggestion to leave Castiel behind. "We agreed to—"
"—find the angel. Find the angel," Benny repeated. "Well, mission accomplished, chief. But it doesn't seem like your little feathered friend here is interested in hopping on the gravy train out of Monster Land, and seeing as how all he's doing by tagging along is painting a bull's-eye on our backs, I say—"
"He's coming," Dean said through gritted teeth. He threw a challenging glare to the angel, who just pressed his lips together and said nothing. "Good. Glad that's settled. Let's get the fuck out of here before more leviathan show up and try to make us into chunky soup."
Several hours – and several kills – later, Dean hiked at the back of the group, steely-eyed and jittery from unspent rage. He could feel the angry tension in his muscles ratchet up a notch every time he glanced ahead at the back of his angel friend, trudging silently in front of him. Eventually, when Cas sighed heavily for what seemed, to Dean, like the millionth time that day, the hunter couldn't stop the fury from boiling up from his gut and out of his throat.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Cas?" he shouted.
Benny whipped around to face Dean with a raised eyebrow. Castiel, on the other hand, just spun slowly and stared back at the hunter with a resigned expression that said he'd been expecting this conversation for days now, which only fueled Dean's anger.
"First you fucking ditch me in the middle of the night and high-tail away as if your ass is on fire, and now that I've actually found you, you suggest leaving at every God-damned opportunity and act like you're going to bolt the second I take my eyes off you. I want some fucking answers."
Castiel sighed again and Dean couldn't help clenching his fists around his weapons.
"I told you, Dean," the angel said meekly, "I was trying to keep you from being hurt."
The hunter laughed, a harsh exhalation that sounded like sandpaper on his deep voice. "Keep me from being hurt? Are you shitting me?"
The angel's brow furrowed, unsure of how to answer that question, but he needn't have bothered, as the elder Winchester steamed on, his hands gesturing sharply under Castiel's nose with his Purgatory-made weapon.
"Let's recap, shall we? You spend a year lying to me; you make a deal with Crowley;" Castiel tried to interject, but Dean ignored him, "you almost get killed undoing your deal with Crowley; I spend seven months thinking you're dead; then you're back and you don't know who you are; then you do and you're crazy; then you're crazy but you're not fighting; then you're crazy but you are fighting because, God damn it, I said cursed or not I want you on my fucking team."
Dean's eyes practically spit flames of wrath and Castiel just stood there, letting the hunter rage at him.
" 'Cursed or not,' Cas; that's what I said. We're family, you jack ass. We deal with this shit together because that's what family does. And I thought you got it; you volunteered to help even when you knew I wouldn't force you, so I thought that you understood."
He watched as the angel's face pinched in regret and sorrow, but Dean didn't have it in him to soften his tone.
"And then the first chance you get, the instant we touch down in this literally-God-forsaken-place, what do you do? You fucking ditch me. Again. For the greater good," he finishes, his voice laden with razor-edged sarcasm.
It wasn't anger, Dean knew, but sorrow and shame that caused his friend's resolve to break, caused the angel to drop his gaze to the ground and mumble, "I was trying to protect you."
"And when exactly has that line of reasoning ever fucking worked for any of us? You say you did it for me, to protect me, but that's bullshit, Cas. Just like it was bullshit when Dad sold his soul for me, just like it was bullshit when I did it for Sammy. Because if you had stopped to think for one second about how I would feel about it —" Dean growled through a break in his voice, "—you'd have known that I wouldn't have wanted you to leave me. We handle. This shit. Together. And there I was, scared shitless not just for myself but thinking my best friend was out there terrified and crazy and in danger. It fucking broke me just thinking that you might need me and I couldn't get to you."
Tears welled in Dean's eyes and his voice gave way from the callous barks of anger into a cool, severe undertone.
"I prayed to you, Cas. I never prayed to anyone or anything before I met you, but damn it, I prayed every moment I could get my head together, and you just … ignored me."
"I didn't," Cas whispered, a dry rasp. "I heard you."
"And you don't see how that's worse? You knew I was out there doing nothing but killing and praying and trying to get to you, and you just left me to the wolves. Thank fuck Benny came along because it's the only way I could rest enough not to fucking die, and we took apart Purgatory piece by piece to find you … and it's like that means nothing to you because all you want to do is give up. How do you expect me to feel about that, Cas? You say you did this to keep me from getting hurt? Well, how the fuck do you think you did on that one?"
Castiel's eyes searched the other man's face. Dean watched the normally blank appearance pinch into the tiny minutia of his friend's facial expressions that Dean had learned to interpret over the last four years: pain, sorrow, shame, guilt, misery.
"I'm sorry," was all the angel could manage to will from his lips.
Dean waited, incredulous, for some more fulfilling explanation and got none.
"Fuck you," he growled before turning his back to the brooding angel and silent vampire, stomping away into the undergrowth.
Darkness of Hell and of a night deprived
of every planet, under meager skies,
as overcast by clouds as sky can be,
had never served to veil my eyes so thickly
nor covered them with such rough-textured stuff
as smoke that wrapped us there in Purgatory;
my eyes could not endure remaining open;
~ Canto XVI, lines 1-7
It had all been so uncomplicated, back when Castiel's garrison had first been charged with raising Dean Winchester from Hell. Not that he had thought that the act itself would be easy, per se, but that everything had been so much more concrete and straight-forward back then. At least, Castiel had thought it that way. Storm the gates of Hell, brave the savagery set forth in front of them. Fight, yes; die, perhaps. But battle for good, for God, for the Righteous Man who needed to be saved. It was an honor that Castiel had been chosen as the one to rescue Dean; Samael, the general of the garrison and Castiel's ultimate superior, was expected to lead and rally the troops, make way for one of the lower officers to carry out the task. Castiel was by no means the next angel in the garrison's chain of command – a Captain, true, but there were still a few angels who outranked him – and yet it was he who had been chosen.
"The Word from on High," Samael had said. "It is your duty, Castiel. Your privilege. You will save Dean Winchester from Hell."
And that was as complex as it had been to him then. An honor and privilege, one of such glory that few other angels had ever had the chance to achieve, and he had been chosen for the task. It hadn't even occurred to Castiel to be afraid of Hell, afraid of failure or death. They were fighting for God, so he thought. For right and righteousness. Even the horrifying reality of what Hell was, what Hell really meant, did not diminish for Castiel that the plan, the job, was simple: storm Hell, save Dean Winchester. What would come after this task had never even crossed his mind at the time. Sitting against a tree surrounded by the unquiet darkness of Purgatory, Castiel could still picture the grotesque, deformed abominations that guarded the gates, lining the corpse-strewn hallways of the Pit; he could still hear the snarls of the twisted beasts that fought him and wails of the tormented creatures bent and broken by torture. He remembered being shaken to the very core of his Grace with the horror of it all and the way that his whole being had trembled with vile sickness and frail pity when his hands first touched the tattered remains of Dean's soul, now cracked at the edges perhaps but complete and housed in the man sleeping a few feet away. Even accounting for all the atrocities he'd seen then, Castiel believed that he would rather storm the gates of Hell every day for the rest of eternity than continue to suffer the onslaught of his own weakness and futility in Purgatory.
His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned back against the tree that towered above the two of them, reaching out with his Grace to scan for enemies and finding only the lingering, cold presence of the vampire, stalking in ever-widening circles around their tiny encampment. Though the two of them had exchanged no words as Dean settled in for the night, Castiel was grateful that the vampire seemed to understand the angel's need to stay with his friend, watch over him as he slept even though the hunter certainly would extend the angel neither speech nor kindness. Another piece of Castiel's penance; another item on a list that never seemed to stop growing.
Castiel cast his eyes toward the man sleeping on the hard ground a few feet away from him. Dean had given him one steely glare a few hours ago when they'd first made camp, then resolutely turned his back to the angel and settled himself at the base of a neighboring tree, bone machete in one hand, demon knife in the other, propped up in a sitting position as if readying himself for an attack. As soon as the hunter's head had dropped forward in sleep, chin to chest, Castiel had roused himself and moved on soundless feet, gently removing the weapons from Dean's hands and laying them on the ground within easy reach; he'd used his gentlest grip to ease the man down flat on the ground, pillowing his trench coat beneath Dean's head. Castiel had been tempted to seat himself beside his friend but feared angry retribution or stubborn refusal to return to sleep should the hunter wake in the middle of the night and see him there, so Castiel forced himself to be content to watch over Dean from the tree a few yards away as the man's muscles spasmed and his face twitched in sleep.
The small but worrying paroxysms had not lessened over the course of the last hour, and Castiel had begun to rule out the possibility of a nightmare and fear the likelihood that his friend was in pain from some injury that he was too stubborn to mention because of the self-imposed silence between them. Padding over to where Dean lay curled in on himself, Castiel placed two gentle fingers on his friend's temple. Letting his eyes flutter shut, Castiel reached out with his Grace, delving into his friend's body to try to find the source of the pain. The angel jerked back in surprise. It was as if every organ in his friend's body gave a simultaneous low, pained moan, all echoing the same word: "alcohol". His brows drew together in confusion before the situation became clear. Over the years of their acquaintance, Castiel had witnessed Dean consume more liquor and beer than non-alcoholic drinks; given that he was a being that had a nearly limitless tolerance for these substances, it never occurred to him that months of extended absence from addictive substances would clearly have an adverse if not dangerous affect on a man who imbibed with stunning regularity.
With trembling fingers, Castiel reached out again to touch his friend's forehead, now noticeably clammier with perspiration. The bodily assessment that raced into his mind was both calming and disturbing: the damage done to various organs was substantial yet within Castiel's ability to heal, but the symptoms of withdrawal were beyond his capabilities; Castiel could muster his weak Grace and remove the imminent health risk, but he wouldn't be able to stop the man from shuddering and moaning in want of drink. Even if Castiel did heal the internal damage, it would weaken his Grace enough that he wouldn't be able to use any of his angelic powers for the next several days at least, so if Dean suffered any further damage at the hands of the near-constant combat they encountered, Castiel would be helpless to prevent his friend's suffering.
What to do, then? Heal his friend now and halt the terrible march of internal damage so that he may sleep comfortably, even though Castiel couldn't save him from the nights full of quakes? Save his Grace's power on the assumption that he may have to heal a future injury? Either way, his friend would suffer because Castiel was weak and could not be all that Dean needed him to be. Because despite years of lessons to teach him otherwise, Castiel kept making mistakes whose costs were always paid out by the person who deserved it the least.
A sudden fit of rage pushed the muscles in Castiel's legs into stiffness, rocketing him up from the ground to pace in a tight, futile circle around his sleeping friend. Would Castiel always end up being so feeble? Could he never receive a kindness from the universe to allow him to protect the one person he most cared for? Could he stand the weight of the penance heaped upon him for his misdeeds? Why must he always be doomed to be just within reach of what Dean requires but never quite strong enough to give it to him?
Castiel struck out in fury, his fists pummeling the nearest object, which happened to be the rough bark of a maple tree. The knotted and scarred trunk did not bend under his attack, of course, but Castiel did not cease his assault even when he heard the popping cracks of bones breaking in his hands. He let out a single furious howl of anguish and frustration, earning him a low moan from a few feet away. The angel rushed back to his friend's side, bending over to watch the hunter's eyes trace restlessly back and forth beneath his eyelids. Another moan. That decided Castiel's actions for him. Reaching out with two bent, bloody fingers, Castiel focused on willing his Grace into Dean's body and repairing the damage. The hunter stiffened for a moment, then collapsed back to the ground. The tense muscles in the hunter's forehead relaxed as Dean slipped into a deeper slumber.
"I'm sorry, Dean," Castiel whispered as he settled himself on the ground next to the elder Winchester's head. Whatever his friend might say if he woke up, the angel now refused to leave his side.
"I'm sorry," he said again, because it was the only thing to say.
The angel reclined against the tree trunk, simmering in his futile wrath, his only company being the pain of traces of his Grace slowly knitting his finger bones back together through the long hours of darkness yet to come.
Kill! Kill! I saw him now, weighed down by death,
sink to the ground, although his eyes were bent
always on Heaven: they were Heaven's gates,
Praying to his high Lord, despite the torture,
to pardon those who were his persecutors;
his look was such that it unlocked compassion."
~ Canto XV, lines 108-114
Dean may not have been able to see it – still stewing, as the hunter was, in his days-long fury against the third member of their company – but Benny didn't miss the signs of fatigue that had begun to eke out in the angel. Whenever fights were over and the world around them calmed for a moment, the vampire glimpsed slumping shoulders, dipping of head and neck, which bespoke exhaustion and bleakness. The first time he'd seen it, Benny couldn't help but think that the jumped-up jack ass had brought it on himself, but the longer time went by, the less apt he was to judge. He'd seen the look before, that expression of weariness of someone just barely holding it together. The angel was a self-righteous ass, no doubt about it, but there was something more going on there that Benny just couldn't wrinkle out, but he was certain it had everything to do with Dean and why the hunter's sudden renewed vigor just happened to correspond with the angel's slow collapse.
It didn't occur to the vampire just how much the angel was giving up until nightfall, three days after the fight that had caused Dean to lose his head in anger. Benny had set out on his usual rounds guarding wherever they made camp that night, not just for Dean's safety but to remove himself from the presence of that insufferable angel. Something about the night just smelled wrong, felt wrong, though, so the vampire had elected not to widen his parole as usual, circling just out of sight in the scrub near the place Dean laid sleeping, looking for the monsters that might sniff out the tasty human bait. The longer he prowled, the more he expected to see Dean tussling with some creature that had managed to give him the slip and dash into the clearing. What he most certainly had not expected to see, however, was the angel on his knees next to the sleeping hunter, rocking back and forth and … well, he just plain looked to be sobbing. Benny moved in closer for a better look.
Through a bend in the trees not far away, Benny managed to get near enough to hear the stream of words and he finally figured out that the angel wasn't crying, he was praying. The words that rumbled out of the angel's mouth were gibberish to Benny, but the gesture was unmistakable; the leaner man wavered on his knees with tears welling in his eyes, casting his eyes upwards to the sky and clearly begging for something. Only when the vampire managed to sift out Dean's name from the stream of sounds did it become obvious what the angel was praying for. Every time the hunter twitched in his sleep, the angel's voice became a little louder, a little more desperate in his prayer. The angel would pause in his recitations just long enough to press a hand to the hunter's head, healing whatever ailed the man and unmistakably draining himself a little more each time he did. As jaded as Benny was towards "Hot Wings", he couldn't help but feel a pull in his heart at the sight of it.
He'd heard broken men before, witnessed what desperation and soul-deep sorrow sounded like when a man pleaded for the life of the person he loved. Once a man got to that level of desperation, there wasn't a single thing on God's green Earth that he wouldn't sacrifice to save a loved one; Benny knew that better than anyone. And Benny had once-upon-a-time been the recipient of many of those prayers for mercy; as the years went on, he'd granted more and more of them because he couldn't stand the ruthless bloodshed that only brought more despair. So when he heard this angel praying for Dean's life with what sounded like the last remains of his heart, the vampire decided that maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe the angel had been worthy of Dean's devotion all this time.
Benny stalked along, hacking away at the undergrowth as he and the hunter sparred about his former drinking habits. Despite the general pull of camaraderie that the vampire had gained for Dean, he couldn't help but be riled at his new friend's rough-edged pessimism. With an internal chuckle, Benny realized it was also part of what he liked about the man, but his temper clicked into place every time Dean groused out another one of his arrogant assumptions that Benny was just another dyed-in-the-wool killing machine like all the other beasties he'd hacked apart over the years.
"—the hell you know about the value of life?" he heard the hunter grumble. "You're a vampire."
Benny smirked a bit against his annoyance. "And I think we both know which of our kinds kills more humans."
"Statistically speaking," the angel piped up in his usual low rumble, "that would be your—"
"Yes, thank you, Cas," Dean said in a flat voice.
Benny grinned a bit. First words he'd said to the angel in days. Maybe it wasn't a kiss-and-make-up apology, but it was a start. Benny bandied back and forth with Dean about his blood habits a few minutes more, unable to restrain his exasperation at the hunter for his flat refusal to believe that a vampire might actually put any stock whatsoever in human life. Finally, he couldn't take the human venting his spleen any longer and growled out a sharp reply.
"What does it matter what you believe," he snapped, more harshly than he meant to, "when you got your head so far up your own ass you don't even see we're already done for. Angel knows it. We are never going to make it with him next to us, glowing like a beacon."
The hunter's jaw was set in a firm, unyielding line. "Do I need to remind you of our deal? Of what you committed to?"
"He is gonna get us killed!" Benny spat.
Dean's form became rigid and Benny wanted to kick himself. He'd been wondering idly whether or not the emotional upheaval that the angel suffered each night was part of what made him such a beast magnet during the day – maybe angels in distress sent out some sort of supernatural shockwave? – but he hadn't really had a chance to mention it to Hot Wings and he certainly hadn't meant to spit it out in front of Dean. Benny opened his mouth – though whether he meant to argue or backtrack and apologize, he couldn't be quite sure – but he never got the chance.
Too late, Benny noticed the angel's head sweeping the skyline like a retriever with the scent of a duck taking wing. "We may get to test that theory …."
Dean's body locked into combat stance. "More monsters?"
"Leviathan," the angel responded with restrained panic. Benny fought the urge to curse.
All of the turmoil of the past week melted away as the hunter cast a worried glance at his friend. "Why don't you blip outta here?"
"I can't," the angel said hurriedly. "They're too close. Run."
The next few minutes passed in a hazy blur of flight and tensed muscles readying for combat. A shower of dirt ahead of them and the sick slurp of black ooze announced the touch-down of leviathan number one at the head of their group, causing Dean to dodge to one side, which unfortunately cut the hunter off from help. Benny whirled around just in time to see that the angel had underestimated the leviathans' speed and assumed that they would come at the group from the rear, so he had taken off in the wrong direction. Benny swore to himself, but felt a mild stroke of relief as he heard the hacking slice that accompanied Dean's swift stroke of decapitation on the first monster. A quick glance back showed him that Castiel hadn't been so lucky.
The angel had been knocked to the ground in his kerfuffle with the female leviathan, but she'd been arrogant enough to discount Benny as a potential threat. Hefting his weapon, the vampire figured that he owed it to the bastard – and maybe to Dean as well – to save his angelic hide. A swift stroke of his arm and the female's head toppled to the ground. Benny nearly chuckled at the look of surprise that graced the angel's face as he lowered his weapon and offered him a hand up off the ground. A moment passed between the two of them as Dean bent to wipe his blade on the male leviathan's suit. The angel didn't speak and neither did Benny, but the angel's steady blue-eyed gaze seemed to impart something to him, and Benny just nodded. It wasn't an apology, exactly, not from either of them. But it was good enough.
Benny chuckled to himself a bit. Maybe the maiden aunt deserved just a little bit of peace after all.
A/N - Samael, the angel that I chose as the leader of Castiel's garrison, is an actual seraph referenced in Jewish lore and was chosen for a very specific reason. In the Talmud, Samael is referred to as "the angel of death". He is less of a grim reaper – in the sense of an angel sent to ferry the soul from the living world to Hell – as he is the minister of death: he is an archangel who administers death to the human by judging them with a sword placed over his/her head and placing a drop of gall on their tongue which causes death. In corresponding Roman Catholic lore, Samael is seen as the negative/Hell-bound counterpart to the archangel Michael, who not only leads the armies of the Heavenly Host but ferries worthy souls to Heaven. As such, given that Supernatural canon lore has Michael established as the ultimate leader of the Host and the chosen warrior of the End of Days, I felt it appropriate that Samael, his Talmudic/Biblical counterpart, would be his number two in the chain of command and the leader of Castiel's garrison chosen to wage war on Hell and raise Dean. It's a little detail, I realize, but half of what I loved about SPN was these little gems of "real" lore. If you ever want a huge, gabbling fangirl lecture from me, ask me about Castiel's origins from the lore surrounding the archangel Cassiel. ^_^