Chapter 2

The downpour is getting into the Impala.

Dean's got the back door hanging open to the night, and the only light is their own, bleeding out onto the slick black of the shoulder. He's pushing Castiel around, tugging the trenchcoat out of the way, because the interior lights have revealed a suspicious amount of not-mud and not-rainwater-either.

The angel stuns them by not just allowing but requesting the dressing of the jagged slice across his vessel's shoulder and collarbone- it's a bleeder- has them set a dislocated shoulder and barely flinches when it crunches into place. More worrisome is the gaping puncture just under his ribcage, scary deep but barely oozing and weirdly blackened.

He won't let Dean near it.

"Leave it" he rasps, and "...i'll recover," and finally, in a voice shivering with coiled power that makes Dean pull away, "DON'T."

Sam and Dean stare at him for a beat, frozen.

"Well, what the hell, Cas? What were you, jousting? What did this?"

"...just... give me some time, Dean." There's actual supplication in Castiel's voice, and suddenly the commanding timbre of five seconds ago must have been imagination. "Drive."

So Dean tosses the remaining supplies back into the trunk while Sam and a towel make a valiant but ultimately pretty pathetic effort to mop things up and as Dean is restarting the engine Castiel is still well past damp, huddling into the seat either unable or unwilling to mojo himself dry.

Dean drives. Castiel makes a vague choked noise when the Impala bumps back onto the road but subsides as the car settles into its pace, lapses into shivering.

Dean turns on the heater.

"...I can't properly name it with this voice." Castiel suddenly explains, a few miles on. "...ruiner of fate... firstborn of discord... a human might wrongly say dragon or chimera..." The angel has bunched up a generous section of trenchcoat in one fist and his voice falters as he presses it, white-knuckled, to his gut and holds it there. He blows out a low stream of air before continuing quietly.

"...ancient. Haven't heard of one in... millenia... might have been seraphs, once, or cherubim... biblical cherubim, not the low cherubs," he slurs "many wings...many faces..."

The monologue trails off into a barely audible cough that draws Sam's attention over the seat with his trademarked concerned look, but Castiel waves him off without having opened his eyes.

"I think this one had gone insane. That was favorable... I should have been obliterated."

"Yeah, you were born lucky, Cas." Dean drawls. "So where'd you go all Knight's Tale with big bad?"

The shadowed form in the backseat manages to emanate an unwavering stare.

"Okay... nevermind. How'd you kill it?"

"I don't presume it was killed. I left my sword in one of its faces and fled." Castiel opens his eyes and finds Sam's because Dean's are on the road. "This wound is likely poison to you, though possibly not entirely deadly."

"Well. Great news." Dean rumbles. "You gonna be okay?"

"...it was powerful, corrupt-" Castiel's breath catches as a tremor runs though him, and he curls deeper, pressing into the seat with a hiss. When he speaks again it is in a rough whisper "...but weakening. I should recover..." The angel coughs, gulps air and braces against the seat back with his free hand.

"Cas?"

"I'm fine" he maintains, and falls silent.

Occasionally, taillights flicker across the windshield in bloody rivulets.

.

at the edge of emptiness creeps the ruined face of glory fallen

gibbering and deranged, lost and forsaken

it is despair

darkness. cold.

sucking at what little matter reaches it, devouring and devouring unfeeling what it will never feel again

it is a void

it drifts at the edges of the stars and hates their warmth through its yearning

Here once was power and light incarnate, forged into glory from the ether and the voice that said Be.

Now it is a twisted and ravaging thing, the desolation between galaxies. It is become hatred. A gaping maw that loathes the light all the more for craving it.

When Castiel stumbles upon it, the amulet burns cold.

Castiel turns instantly to flee, to escape the slithering caress of its attention, and for a moment dares to hope-

but it is too late, one of its many faces (so many faces) turns, and sees, and Castiel is seized, wrenched back, struggling against the noisome grip of rotted power.

Struggles, but the thing drives clutching barbs of hatred through the angel's core. Paralyzes resistance into frigid agony.

The only end is to be devoured; crushed; torn asunder.

And yet it pauses, slavering, to regard its prey with its thousand leering eyes and Castiel feels its glee and its terror. Is engulfed in its mad cackling as it lingers fascinated and slowly, horribly traces the edge of one wing as if in reverence or reverie. Awaits, trembling, the transition of that touch to crushing, to rending.

Instead, it dabbles torturously at the edges of shredded grace, drawn to that light which repulses it.

When it relinquishes its grasp for a moment Castiel coils up the last dredges of failing strength and readies the sword of heaven.

When it strikes again, Castiel replies with every remaining scrap of power.

...it is barely enough

In a dusty hotel near Ellensburg on what should be the dry side of the mountains, Dean half carries their divine guest through the doorway while Sam slings most of the gear.

There's a hide-a-bed and mostly because of the angel gripping his shoulder, Dean takes it with a 'dibs' and a sloppily tossed knapsack that slides to the carpet as soon as it hits the couch.

The back of his mind vaguely registers the thump, the dark green of the carpet. There's a kitchenette that is only a microwave on top of a mini-fridge; a dingy chair; a rattling air conditioner under the window that needs turning off.

"Here." Sam hands over a plastic bottle of water as he straightens from getting feathers settled atop the far bed. "Courtesy of Crescent Motel, apparently."

And so the label says.

"High class." For us. "Thanks. Cas?"

The angel doesn't pause his current pursuit of repacking the loose edges of his trenchcoat into his midsection, but focuses glittering blue on Dean and the proffered bottle, then gives a negative jerk of the head and stills as his eyes go all distant again.

Almost dead.

But when that thought- dead- makes the back of his throat constrict, just a little, the blue eyes seem to flare and focus briefly on his own, and he almost starts. Has to shake it off, motion unrealized, pretend he doesn't feel like his mind had been read and acknowledged.

"...okay. So nothing at all we can do?" Dean gruffs, but the angel isn't talking so he turns to Sam with a gesture of irrated helplessness.

"Call Bobby?" Sam offers.

Dean dips his head to the left by way of response and digs for his cell phone, while Sam stoops to study glassy eyes.

The speed-dial tones are just blipping when the stillness snaps.

Impossibly strong fingers seize Sam's arm; his yelp of surprise is matched by Castiel's sudden gasp, the contortion of his shoulders and spine.

"I shouldn't have come here." Castiel pronounces, and the whites of his eyes are flashing. "Too bright."

Which he seems to think is self-explanatory, because there's a frozen split second before he blurs and the rush of wings brushes even Dean's face though his back is turned, and suddenly Sam is thrown shouting against the other bed and the spot where Cas was is just a settling coverlet and Dean is whirling, phone forgotten, as if he could catch either angel or brother or both.

He can do neither. But Sammy is fine, staring up at him incredulous, and even as he registers Sam okay, his brain reminds him that somewhere to his right had just been a ringing thud.

Dean looks over just in time to see Cas slide to his knees, one hand braced against the far wall. Like a damn fish that tried to flop away but couldn't get up enough juice to jump ship.

"Dammit Cas..." He approaches, hesitant to touch, "One of these days, with this stuff..."

But Castiel's gaze, when it turns to him, is altogether present.

"It isn't safe for you, my being here."

Dean freezes, slows, opens his hands.

"Okay... what made you decide that just now?" The angel is pushing on the wall, trying to regain his feet while also holding in the black place in his coat, but slides back with a ragged exhale. Dean steps closer, slowly, talking to a jumper. "Everything was hunky-dory ten minutes ago."

Castiel seems to gather himself for a great effort, and when his gaze turns to Dean's it is the shade of deep water and storming skies. I regret it says, and I am hunted, and I must, and it is more alone than anything Dean has felt outside of Hell, yet fiercer than anything in it.

It might make his heart break if he let it, but he has no more room for broken hearts.

Or damn martyr angels.

So he turns up the snarl in his voice.

"Look, you decided to show up." Dean edges closer. "And if something could track you here? Well, damage done. So maybe instead of fluttering off, again, and screwing us here, say something useful."

There's a long moment of just staring, and Dean thinks maybe he somehow pushed something too far because he feels himself wanting to draw back and he grimaces in anticipation of the fluttering of wings... but then he sees the tremor run in the angel's limbs and if he hasn't won, then the game has been thrown to him.

"Sigils." Cas finally rasps, letting his weight fall entirely into the wall, except that Dean is there to catch some of it.