Hi all! I realized that I should probably provide some context to this story, some things that are available in the Ao3 tags but I failed to elucidate upon in the first chapter, so I'm putting this here and also up on the previous chapter.
This story is a collaboration between myself and the lovely MooseFeels (find her on Ao3 under that name!). It is a Hellblazer!AU, but mostly in the shape of the story and the feel of the world; you don't need any knowledge of the Hellblazer universe or series to understand what will take place here. We're modeling this story on that gritty, grimy, 90's British Invasion comic feel, and less so on the actual story of Hellblazer, although there will be elements present if you are familiar with that story that you might appreciate.
Thanks for reading, and we both hope that you enjoy the story!
It won't be in SoDo. Not anymore.
It's probably ditched the meatsuit altogether, once it got made. But there are always traces, always tracks, and besides, Castiel could really go for some pho, so he makes his way down south.
It's heading up on evening on a weekday so there's not a ton of people around. It's not summer, so there's no tourists, only pockets of people waiting at the bus stops and a few homeless guys waiting between shelter shifts. He winds his way down the streets, heading toward Little Saigon.
He goes a little further south than he needs to, though, to check out the PPH.
The fog is rolling in heavy today, and it seems to sit stubbornly right around the base of the building. Pacific Psychiatric Hospital, grounded and towering up the hill, surrounded by stiff-spined trees, imposing in its red-bricked glory, and oozing a sick sense of wrong.
Not always, but for a while, at least.
Castiel glares suspiciously up at the building, as though he could will it to give up its secrets through the power of his disapproval. It doesn't reveal anything.
Kevin noticed it first, actually. He'd gone up to the ID to hit the Goodwill and came back to Castiel's apartment shaking and shocky. Ten minutes of frankly out-of-character soothing from a very alarmed Castiel later, Kevin was able to finally tell him that there was something wrong with that creepy-ass hospital.
Problem was, you couldn't get into PPH on any kind of flimsy pretext, and there wasn't enough info to really warrant an investigation and potential trouble with the cops. Not when there was plenty of other shit in the Emerald City to keep him busy as fuck. So the PPH remained at the bottom of his list.
But it was still on his list.
Today the wrong was trickling out slowly, pooling around Castiel's ankles like the fog pooled around the base of the hospital. It prodded at him, teasingly, as though to say come and find me.
"Fuck whatever you are," Castiel said through gritted teeth as he pushed aside the shivers that tried to wrack his body.
His research had given little to go on. It was a pretty normal hospital, one of many in the city, just kind of auspiciously and eerily perched on top of a hill. He couldn't find leylines nearby that would give it any kind of malicious aura, or any unusual history—suspicious deaths, infamous patients, nothing. Hell, there isn't even anything underneath it. In Seattle. If anything, it's suspiciously normal in its construction.
Castiel whispers a warding against evil under his breath and the tingling around his feet dissipates—no, it retracts, quickly, like it's been burned.
Castiel smiles, sharp and humorless.
He peers up at the hospital one more time.
He gives it the bird as he stalks off, because fuck him if the fucking PPH is going to get in between him and his pho.
It's almost eight o'clock before the shit hits the fan.
It's been dark for a while now. There's starting to be a bite in the air, and Dean knows it's only going to get dark earlier and earlier now, which is kind of a bummer when you're working second shift. By December, he'll have maybe two hours between getting on shift and sunset. He prefers the longer days of summer. People are nicer in the daylight. They like cops more. They're less shifty.
But police work has to be done in the fall just like it does in the summer.
Charlie doesn't seem to mind as much. It's not a conversation they've had, but she's not really much for the sun even during bright summer days. Could have something to do with her being pale as a damn vampire, but Dean doesn't like to make assumptions.
She's a few feet away, giving an older woman directions back toward the waterfront. The little old lady thanks her and pats her on the forearm. Charlie smiles brightly and waves as she leaves.
Dean rejoins her, propping one hand on his radio hooked onto his belt. "The kind of police work Gilda's happy with," he says.
Charlie shoves him with her shoulder. "She worries."
"She'd worry less if it were you giving old ladies directions all day."
"Not untrue," Charlie sighs. "Hell, I'd be okay with that. Want to head south?"
Dean shrugs.
There's a stillness hanging over the city as they drive, one that Dean doesn't associate with the q word but rather with the impending absence of the q word. A sense of wait for it. An intake of breath, slow and deliberate.
He glances south, towards the PPH.
Sam never liked for him to talk about getting weird feelings. And Dean doesn't mean it in a premonition sort of way—just that he believes that everyone can sense when something bad's going to go down. Nothing special. Just...man, what's that word…
"The pheromone thing that's not a pheromone thing where fish know that there's danger when one of the school gets hurt," Dean says abruptly, snapping his fingers by Charlie's face.
Charlie gives him massive side-eye.
"They talked about it on the radio a couple days ago."
"Schreckstoff," Charlie answers, easy now like she wasn't staring at him like he'd grown another head two seconds ago.
"Schreckstoff," Dean repeats.
"You got the willies, Winchester? You're not picking it up from me."
"Nah, it's not that. I don't know. Probably just the change in the weather."
He glances south again.
Charlie shifts in her seat and he doesn't look over.
"Sam needs his time," she says. "That kid is never gonna stop needing you, and one day he'll be ready again."
"Four years," Dean mutters.
"He's got real good doctors there. They're all doing their best, and so is Sam."
Dean's knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel.
Charlie gets quiet.
"I need…" Dean begins.
"Yeah," Charlie says.
"I need us to not, right now."
"Yeah."
Dean sighs heavily.
"Look, Charlie, I know that—"
"Christ, Dean!"
Charlie's arm flies in front of Dean and grabs the steering wheel, jerking it to the right. Dean's eyes swim with the speed of the turn, and it's all he can do not to grab the wheel back, overcorrect, flip the car. As it is, the car jumps the curb on its right-side tires, and Dean slams on the brakes.
They come to a stop with a lurch, and Dean gasps in breath. He stares at the tree that coalesces in his vision, solid and spindly and inches from the front bumper.
"Oh, fuck," he breathes.
Charlie's already unbuckling, and she's out of the car before Dean's heart rate has slowed enough that he's convinced he's not about to have a cardiac episode. Once he can breathe, he throws his seatbelt off and follows her out. His legs are steadier than he'd expected, still less steady than he'd hoped.
Charlie's stopped in front of the car, and gestures for him to stop when he comes up behind her.
"Charlie, what the fuck—"
"Over there."
She points to the left, where there's a man twitching, twitching, before he goes still. Standing in the middle of the road, then walking to the opposite sidewalk. He stops just outside of the pool of light cast by the streetlight.
His head tilts to the side.
Dean shudders.
He puts his hand on his weapon and he takes a step forward before Charlie grabs him by the arm and steps in front of him.
"Behavioral crisis," Charlie murmurs. "We need to call for CIT backup."
Dean's fingers tighten around the grip of his pistol. The man still hasn't moved again, not since his head tilted. Behavioral crisis, hell. This is not something that the Crisis Intervention Team is gonna be able to manage.
"I don't think so," he says.
Charlie looks up at him sharply, her eyes narrowed.
"Dean. Come on. He's obviously either on something or in the middle of a mental health crisis. We have to call for CIT. You can't just engage this guy, he's gonna go apeshit."
"You gotta trust me, Charlie," Dean says, stepping out from around her grip. "I know what this is and the CIT can't handle it."
He goes one more step and his fingers unsnap the holster and Charlie walks in front of him, her arms crossed but her face pale.
"This is not worth your badge, or your life," she spits. "It's not worth you having to kill that man. Put your gun and your dick away and get back in the car until we can get CIT out here."
Dean grits his teeth and checks the guy out of the corner of his eye. Stillness. A weird stillness, getting weirder with every moment it continues.
"I need you to listen to me, Charlie—"
"I need you to get in the fucking car. He's disorderly at worst. Not. Worth it."
The worst part, the damndest part of the thing is that she's right. For right now. The guy's not doing anything, he's just standing there after he finished twitching, and it's just that Dean knows that he's nothing that fucking CIT can fix with some meds and an involuntary psych referral. It's just that Dean knows that if this guy gets into the hospital, it's going to mean dead nurses.
The coolness of his gun beneath his fingers is usually a reassurance to him in situations like this, situations that might escalate. If he has to, he can take care of himself. He can protect himself and Charlie can protect herself. But the man's head is moving now, turning towards him, and it's languid and sinuous, and he wonders if his gun will do a goddamned thing this time.
He doesn't refasten the holster snap. He doesn't take his hand off of his weapon. But he pushes past Charlie, who is hissing at him to think about his job and to think about Sam, for fuck's sake, but he ignores her.
"Hey, buddy!" he shouts, and the guy doesn't really react, not much. Not like some poor idiot who's on a bad trip would. Not like a guy in the middle of some mental breakdown would. He just tilts his head back somewhat, like he's peering down at Dean down his nose.
Dean slips his gun out just enough to have a good hold on the grip.
"SPD," he calls, his voice clear and as calm as he can manage. "Just want to talk. You need some help there, pal?"
The guy looks at him then, dead-on, eye-to-eye and it's the shadows, it's got to be the shadows, but his eyes look completely black.
Dean clicks the safety off.
"Oh yes, officer," the guy says, and Dean freezes.
He interacts with a lot of people who are not at their best on this beat. Lots of coke, lots of booze, lots of everything. Lots of brain chemistry that should have them on a totally different set of chemicals. He very, very rarely hears the kind of clarity and diction he hears now.
"I need help."
Dean's world narrows into a very fine focus. The guy is moving towards him now.
Dean draws his gun.
"Stay back," he shouts.
His finger is steady on the trigger but that's only years of practice keeping it that way. This guy, he's wrong, there's something wrong about him in that way and Dean wants salt and iron but all he has is his police-issue side arm. He hopes that holding it like this, like he might use it, because he might use it, will be enough that he won't have to.
The guy keeps coming.
"You said you'd help me, officer," the guy simpers. "Is that the kind of hospitality the SPD offers? Come on. I need help."
Charlie's beside him, all of a sudden, her weapon drawn, too.
"We need you to keep your distance, sir," she calls. Her voice is steady and even and everything that Dean isn't feeling right now, and he breathes a little easier for her solidity. "Show us your hands."
The guy does.
Then one flicks towards them, and Charlie is launched back against the car, landing with a crash and a cry of pain.
She is launched. She flies against it. In his sharp glance to her Dean sees crimson on the pavement and he knows she's bleeding, knows she's hurt, and there's nothing logical or explicable about what just happened but Charlie is on the ground and he is the only thing between this guy and either a second swipe at Charlie or the general public.
"Charlie!" Dean shouts, then turns back to the guy—the assailant, now. "Stop right there! Get on the fucking ground!"
"I was complying, officer," the assailant says. "She asked for my hands."
He's under a streetlight now. And his eyes are still black. And Charlie is laying crumpled against the car, hugging her leg to her in a way that does not spell backup.
"I said get on the fucking ground! I will shoot you!"
The assailant fucking laughs.
Dean's world is now his target, his weapon, and his trigger finger.
He fires three shots, precisely aimed, clustered right over the assailant's heart.
When the world expands again, the assailant is standing under the streetlight, examining his ruined clothes like one might after spilling something at a restaurant.
He won't admit until later how much it scares him. How cold his blood runs, how he feels the edges of his vision go dark like it's him bleeding out on the old brick street instead of this—whatever he is.
He won't question until later why he doesn't call for backup, why instead when the assailant turns around and starts to dart through the buildings, he barrels after him.
He does question, close to immediately, how in the fuck he didn't notice the civilian just standing there.
Castiel's in a weird part of town. It's all a weird part of town: hell, it's Seattle. Someone told him once they built the current city on top of the old city— just constructed the streets and the buildings right on top of what used to be there. Place like that is gonna be weird. Not in that cute, affected Keep Portland Weird kind of weird; actual weird. Dangerous weird. Kind of place with energy that will sustain it when the college kids go and the computers leave and the microbreweries pack up and go too. Kind of energy that kept it here after the war. Kind of energy that will keep this city here until Earth shuts the door; packs up and leaves.
It didn't seem this weird when he lived out on the island with Mother and Father and his brothers. It all seemed so...so normal. Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if he'd just shut the fuck up, if he hadn't been bucking for the fight or for blood.
Who would he be? Some accountant with a wife and a kid? Who would Gabriel be?
Who would Michael have been?
He rounds a corner, it's there.
That feeling that's been in his teeth like someone's been tugging at his molars with a cord fifty feet away, that hangnail sensation, that— fuck, it's like feeling a photic sneeze threaten in his sinuses. That feeling explodes over him, and he knows he's on the right track. On the right street, at the very least.
And then he sees the guy. He sees the way reality crackles around the guy, like small lightning. He sees the look in his eye, the hold of his body.
Anyone can see a possession from the eyes, but Castiel knows it from the shape of the shoulders. It's like looking at a big cat, coiled tensely before leaping toward prey.
"What's your name?" he murmurs. It doesn't react. Can't hear him from there. Might not even know he's looking yet. He steps forward, and then he hears an incredible noise.
He walks a little more forward.
"Give me your name," he says.
A guy comes around a corner— a cop in uniform.
Castiel hangs back.
Cop approaches— moves forward with his gun in hand. Castiel's can't see his face from this distance or this angle, but his body expression is taut in the way that only a young guy's body can be taut. Proud. Thinks he's a damn sight more powerful than he actually is.
Castiel can hear the vibration of his voice but he can't make out what he's saying. He can hear the tone, the shape of it. Stern and sharp but desperate. Trying to get him to back off. He's angry, but not at the guy here. No, this is different. And this is dangerous.
Castiel hangs back.
Woman comes around the corner, too. Red hair, inches shorter than her partner and the demon. Her gun is drawn, too.
Castiel doesn't really hear the voice, so much. He hears the way it wounds the air around it and tries to tear into the people nearby. The voice of the thing is an invitation for more of its ilk. Makes Castiel want to take a hot shower.
And then it charges them.
It's sudden. It's brief, and then the woman is on the ground and cop is shouting and the demon keeps at it— keeps needling at him.
Three shots, pop pop pop, and Castiel doesn't have to be close to guess the look of horror that's definitely coming over the young cop's face as the demon laughs it off.
And then the demon is running and the cop looks at the partner and then the cop is running and fuck.
Castiel darts forward, toward the guy, and he tackles him, pressing him into the wall, actually getting a look at him for the first time. He grabs the jackass's shirt in big handfuls, hearing the way the seams rip at the shoulders.
"What the fuck is your problem?" he shouts at him, thrusting him up against a wall. "Do you think this is a game?"
Jackass looks at him with a heavily furrowed brow, his shoulders bunching around his head as Castiel presses him against the wall. He looks down the alley where the demon went, and tries to shrug out of Castiel's grip. "Get the fuck off me," he growls.
"Get the fuck out of here," Castiel retorts.
Jackass stares at him, wide-eyed, the adrenaline all but tangible in the pulse near Castiel's hands, taken aback by his lack of obedience. "I'm police," he starts.
Castiel slams him against the wall again. "Do you think he gives a granular fuck if you're a cop?"
"He's breaking the law!" Jackass shouts at him.
"He's outside your jurisdiction, then!" Castiel replies. "Go home! Fuck off! This isn't some sort of fucking—" He lets go of him. He glares at him.
"It's assault on an officer, he hurt my partner—"
Castiel gestures sharply: my fucking point. "Right, so fuck off. She needs help— missed her fucking artery but barely."
Jackass looks at him, and Castiel finally sees the fire in him that probably makes him an alright cop. He sees him gather his bluster, getting ready to tear Cas a new one, when Castiel really screws with him and walks away.
He learned this as a teenager. Nothing takes the wind out of these guys' sails like just walking away from them. And if the guy has an authoritarian bent (what pig doesn't), this'll probably fuck him up nice. It's not enough that this jackass thinks he has authority here, it's that he thinks he has more authority than Castiel. Castiel is Mister Authority when it comes to this shit. Hard pressed to find more authoritative fucks in this place than him.
He's just rounded the corner when he hears the cop begin to sputter, and Castiel smirks. He ducks his hand into his coat and fishes out a cigarette. Slips it into his mouth and lights it quickly, sucks it right down. He'll need to be done with it before he goes into the hotel, and god knows when this shit'll all be done and he can afford to dodge out and grab another.
Let the cops come and clean up once it just looks like a drug overdose, when it's just lives and not fucking souls.
He jogs toward where the demon went— a thing like that is playing. Wants to get caught; wants to get found. It's not interested in getting lost; that's not the way these things work. It wants to crow. Wants to show off, prove he's a big man.
Castiel barely has to jog a mile before he finds the thing, poised under a streetlight. It looks gleeful.
"Little angel, far from home," it intones. It speaks the rough, rocky tones of Enochian. The sound brings goosebumps across Castiel's arms. It says something he doesn't quite catch— he only really knows the insults and the words for banishments. He hears the shape of the word for little though. And pitiful.
"Give me your name," he says. The streetlight pops.
It snickers again.
Castiel begins to pray.
There is a terror of sound. Suddenly the street sound empty and dark; like a cave in the very bowels of nowhere. Of no place. It does not stop and it does not change. The sound is. The sound is terrible.
Castiel feels the enochian rumble of banishment fall from his lips, unbidden, unrequested. Natural. Easy. As easy as this thing is for him, written down deep into his blood at this point.
The figure before him collapses. The lights around him flicker back on.
He pulls a stick of chalk out of his pocket and draws a circle around the light. At the top and bottom of it, he draws two little lines, attaching it to the earth. It won't contain the guy when he wakes up, but it'll stop the evicted tenant from coming back in while Castiel makes a phone call.
He walks two blocks over, to a payphone, and calls 911. An ambulance will show up in a few and find the guy, who by all accounts just blacked out. And maybe the cops will find him. Maybe they won't.
Castiel hopes they don't. Guy's had a shit day as it is.
The uneasy feeling ebbs a little bit, but it doesn't go away.
He stands there, in the city, in the dark, until he hears the ambulance, and then the voices of people stumbling away from a restaurant.
His stomach growls.
"Pho," he says, remembering.
Like on cue, his phone buzzes in his pocket.
See, the problem is that his fucking bosses want to know who was it?
Dean sits in the waiting room of the ER with his CO. Gilda's in the room with Charlie. He's not family, so they didn't let him in.
Gilda had rushed into the ER, and Dean had flinched when he saw her. He didn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't Gilda coming up to him and dropping down to a crouch in front of him, one hand on his knee and the other on his face.
"She's going to be okay," Gilda said firmly, like she could make it so just by saying it. Gilda's like that. Unshakeable. She's eerie with it. "Are you okay?"
Dean hadn't trusted himself to speak, not in the face of the unexpected gentleness, so he just nodded. Gilda smiled wearily, pressed some kind of sweet pastry he'd probably make fun of under other circumstances into the palm of his hand, and swept away with a nurse to where Charlie was.
That just left him and Lt. Benjamin Lafitte—Benny when they were off the clock. And Benny is extremely fucking patient.
"I don't fucking know," Dean mutters. The clock on the wall is driving him insane. "I don't, Boss. Thought it was just—Charlie, she thought it was some skell, you know? Behavioral crisis."
"You disagreed," Benny says.
"A feeling," Dean replies. "Just—an instinct."
Benny waits.
Benny's a big guy— broad not just through the shoulders but through the whole body of him. His arms are crossed over his chest. His gaze is level.
Dean sighs heavily, scrubbing his face with his hands. "Look, Boss, I gave the best description I could. It wasn't somebody we knew. I'd never seen him around before."
"You said Bradbury thought the suspect was in the middle of a behavioral crisis," Benny says, and Dean feels his stomach clench. "She didn't recommend calling CIT?"
"She did," Dean admits. "I didn't think it was a behavioral crisis, sir. I had a bad feeling."
"So you engaged."
"I called him, said I was SPD, asked if he needed help. He approached, and wouldn't stop approaching when I told him to. I drew my weapon. Boss, I've already told you all of this."
"You not calling CIT might have ended up with Bradbury in that bed," Benny says—no. Lt. Lafitte says. His eyes are hard and his jaw is set. "And you haven't explained to me how this perp—this asshole that Bradbury thought was some junkie—managed to get past you to throw her across the street and against your fucking squad car."
"He was...he was strong, sir. I don't know what to tell you."
"And you called for backup and attended to your partner."
Dean swallows.
"Yes, sir."
"Then when did he grab you?"
Dean contains his flinch.
"Sir?"
Lt. Lafitte grabs his uniform shirt and sticks his fingers into the tear in his right shoulder seam. "The perp must've gotten his hands on you. Or did you tear your own shirt? Wailing and gnashing your teeth wasn't good enough?"
Dean doesn't pull away. That hadn't been part of his report. But with Lafitte breathing down his neck like this, he doesn't have a lot of choice.
"A civilian," Dean says. "Grabbed me. I was going after the suspect and this guy tackles me, grabs me, says that it's out of my jurisdiction."
"Out of your—who the fuck was he?" Lafitte demands, releasing him.
Dean shakes his head.
"I don't know. He held me there and then he walked away. I would've gone after him—but Charlie, she was bleeding. I knew it was bad. I couldn't leave her."
"You're telling me you let the suspect and the guy who interfered with your pursuit of the suspect, you let them both go, easy as that."
Dean sets his jaw. "I had Charlie to think about, sir."
Lafitte watches him through narrow eyes.
"You're not telling me everything, Winchester. You ought to reconsider that, or I'll have you on desk duty for the rest of your fucking life. You discharged your weapon tonight and I don't have shit to show for that, not even blood. When Bradbury wakes up, you better hope she substantiates your story."
Dean nods. He doesn't have any fight in him, nothing to come at his CO with, because he fucked up. He engaged with that perp when Charlie told him not to, and now she's in a fucking hospital bed because of it.
"Yes, sir," he says, quiet.
Lafitte blows out an aggravated breath, and he stands up.
"Sir?" Dean says.
Lafitte glares.
"They haven't found him yet?"
"What, your mystery superpowered unsub? No, Winchester, they haven't found him."
Dean nods. "Do you need me down at the station?"
"Like hell." Lafitte's eyes soften a little, and he shakes his head. "Go the fuck to sleep, Winchester. There's plenty of time tomorrow for me to shake this shit out of you."
Benny's a transplant to the Northwest like Dean is; he's from a parish in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana. Bayou kinda guy. His accent isn't as apparent as it was when Dean first met him, but it's still there sometimes, especially when he's angry or frustrated. He's a good guy. Brews beer in his basement and listens to loud zydeco. Takes care of his officers as much as he can, as long as they haven't fucked up too bad.
Dean hopes he hasn't fucked up too bad.
An hour later, the nurse comes out and says Charlie can see him. She's stabilized, she's going to be okay. Her leg's not even broken, just banged up real good, and there's a nasty gash close to but not across her femoral artery.
Just like the guy said. Dean ignores a little tremor that goes down his spine at that. He'd just gotten a better look at Charlie than Dean had, somehow. That's all. This is not the freaky part of this happening; this isn't the part that has his rosary wrapped so tight around his fist that the beads are biting into his knuckles, leaving little red indentations.
Gilda squeezes his shoulder and he smiles at her, smiles at Charlie, says something that's flippant but not quite flippant enough to fool either of them. It's okay. Once he sees Charlie's eyes open and rolling at him, once he hears her voice tell him to stop being an idiot and that it wasn't his fault, he can go.
He can leave, and find the soon to be very sorry asshole who hurt his partner. And, if he's lucky, the asshole who'd let him get away in the first place.