Supernatural and its associated characters belong to Eric Kripke (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)
Author's Note: My little space markers AND my italics haven't been working, so if ya notice that everything seems kind of run together and weird...it wasn't that way when I typed it. (the middle segment is supposed to be in italics. Everything else is not).
Warning: Contains mildly slashy thingamawhatsits. If you don't ship Dean/Cas (why would you be reading this if ya didn't?), I suggest you stop reading now.
Faith's skin is slick with perspiration, thick beads of scentless fluid rolling over her temples and down the bridge of her nose and pulling her shirt tight against the damp skin of her back, and she wonders what her ex would think if he saw her now. Adam was a jogger (an unfortunate side effect of dating a pre-med major; they were all health freaks) and he'd always begged her to pull her sorry self out of bed at five in the morning and explore the nearby park trails with him. She'd always said no, that wasn't her thing, thanks, but if he wanted to go out for a Starbucks or visit the closest anime bar, she was his girl.
"GO!" Sam's breath is hot on her neck and his fingers clamp down on her shoulders and force her forward. She's got a cramp in her side the size of Texas and her feet hurt, and all she really wants is to fall down and cry in the grass but she knows Sam won't let her and she hopes Cas won't either so she keeps moving. The parking lot is in sight now, faded orange pools on the rain-slick asphalt as fantastic as she's always imagined Heaven would be and she can vaguely make out the shape of Castiel sitting hunched in the Impala's passenger seat. Maybe it really is Heaven. Her Timberlands catch the edge of the parking lot and slide, the momentum driving Faith into the side of the car with a 'whuff' and Sam sees her slip and checks his own speed to avoid losing his balance. He skids gracefully across the hood, practiced fingers catching the driver's door and wrenching it open as Castiel pushes and pulls Faith into the backseat.
The doors lock solidly behind them. The hollow-eyed Wendigo pauses at the border between forest and civilization, breath fogging up the window closest to Faith's head and she sees four year old Molly Diamond lying on the floor of its cave, golden hair slick with blood and her Hannah Montana denim dress peeled away from the gaping hole in her stomach. The pulse of her faintly-beating heart, just barely visible past the gleaming white bone of her ribs, the last press of her shredded lungs... with a snort, the monster fades back into the trees. Faith can still feel it watching them as Sam floors it and the Impala screeches out of the parking lot and away from Mount Rainier's National Park.
Lucifer sits cross-legged outside the chalk sigil, rubbing his vessel's fingertips against the faintly glowing edge of an Archangel's Blade and watching them drip scarlet on the earth. He's desecrating one of the few things the angels have left of God and Michael cannot allow it; he pulls desperately on the chains fastening his hands together above his head, feels plaster and cement chips drift off the ceiling and settle on his hair, the bridge of his nose, his shoulders, nuclear fallout from a bomb that has yet to go off. "Now," Lucifer says crossly. "Don't go pulling the roof down. It took me ages to find a safe place to keep you."
"Brother-" Michael strains forward, his grace reaching for and coiling around the silver blade. It hums with the sickly sweetness of corruption and Michael knows it's too late to salvage it, that Lucifer's had his way with it as he's had his way with the human race. Their souls sing with the same decaying purity, thick with hopeless self-righteousness and sin...Dean Winchester swirls resentfully at the base of his neck, an undefinable tightness above the vertebrae and Michael wonders for the thousandth time if his other brethren have ever had as difficult a host. If they've ever fought for control of their own body, found their fingers twitching to the unheard beat of a favorite song, found their eyes slipping over empty angel faces in search of family or friends.
"Think it's finished?" His fallen brother closes his eyes as if he's listening, as though his ears can still pick up the rotten song of the once-holy weapon. Maybe they can. Lucifer is not the same base, powerless creature he was in the early years of the Fall, and Michael is not acquainted with his brother as he once was.
"I-."
"Hmm. Let's give it a whirl, shall we?"
The Devil rises smoothly to his feet and crosses the chalk sigil, blistered face bright with wicked amusement and Michael only has a moment to note the smooth backward flex of his arm before the Archangel's Blade plunges into his stomach and he's screaming with two voices because the razor's edge is shredding flesh and grace and human soul. Dean is a frantic whirl in his chest, his skull, and the blood of his body is glowing with its angelic equal and Lucifer slowly drags the knife up, nicking the uppermost curve of his ribs. Vital organs Michael doesn't really need but was hoping to save for Dean rupture, muscle and skin and the necessary layer of fat splitting and peeling around the blade and the sheer agony makes his mouth taste raw and bloody.
"Vade Satan, inventor er magister omnis fallaciae! Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae Tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate, laqueo, deceptione et nequitia,
omnis fallaciae, libera nos, Domine..."
"Michael, Michael." Lucifer's voice is rough and low, his eyes flickering between Crowley's scarlet, Azazel's jaundiced yellow, Lilith's veiny white, and the natural, powder blue of his vessel. "Didn't your daddy ever teach you not to swear?"
The blade slashes across his throat, once, and Michael feels Dean's breath, his lifeblood, hot against his chin and the tiny soul quivers and draws smooth edges ripped by Satan's blade into its warmly pulsing center. He is done fighting.
The angel would say something to coax him out, to force him on, but he can't find enough space in Dean's ruined body to do anything but scream.
Castiel pushes his hands over the thick, leather-bound book, creased and cracked from decades of use. There's been one in every room Sam buys, each varying in size and shape and color and age but all inevitably ending up in the trunk of the Impala or the little box in Bobby Singer's attic he set aside for just this purpose. He never even reads them, not anymore; he finds no consolation in the words of the ancient prophets, passed down (they may have even been in his hands once) to a people who weren't really listening. Not really. They sang their worship songs to the ceiling of their churches, whispered verses to the things they feared most in the hopes that it would frighten them away...but where were Dean's songs? Where were Dean's verses? What could he have said or done that would've protected him from an Angel of the Lord?
By night on my bed I sought him who my soul loveth; I sought him, but found him not. He touches the tiny print with trembling fingers, surprised that his idle wanderings through his Father's teachings have brought him to this. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go...
"Cas?" Faith walks out of the bathroom, hair hidden inside a towel wrap neither he nor Sam can quite comprehend. "D'you wanna go out, or something?"
"Go out."
"Yeah, silly. For food." Her bright smile doesn't smooth away the purpling flesh under her eyes, the slick red dash of a cut on her cheekbone. He wishes she'd go away. He wishes she'd find a better life for herself. He wishes he could stand to send her home. "Well?"
"I don't eat," he says numbly. The smile quivers, and he sees for an instant that which his Grace used to be able to tell him; Faith is scared. Faith is tired, Faith is angry, Faith is lonely, Faith is homesick, Faith is hopelessly and irrevocably in love... he balks at the last. Love. "I-"
"Dean would want you to eat," she says firmly. "I bet you didn't starve yourself when he was around."
"Faith...my body doesn't require-"
She slides the towel away from her hair; it's longer than it was when they first met, and it looks like a living shadow curled around the soft wings of her shoulderblades. Castiel is suddenly struck with the urge to touch, the way he used to when Dean was sleeping and his mind was swirling with Hell and pain and the angel could wipe it away with one finger. He remembers tracing the smooth lines of Dean Winchester's face, trying to understand why it was humans judged each other on this collection of color and bones and flesh stretched tight over the brittle frame. He frowns and places his hands underneath him, effectively crushing the temptation. But I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go...
"Cas?" Faith asks quietly, staring at her reflection in the age-spotted vanity. All traces of teasing and good humor have vanished from her face, her tired, ancient eyes. "Have you ever been in love?"
"...I couldn't say," he replies. "I don't experience things the way humans do."
But even as he tells her, his heart aches for green eyes and bright smiles and Golden Oldies and he knows he's lying.
Sorry this one was shorter, it's more of a filler chapter until I can get to the good stuff. And by good stuff I mean plenty of Winchester whumpage... :)
And DAMN, it's been a long time since I worked on this...lo siento, chicas/chicos! FF hates me, won't let me do those nifty ***** anymore...*sigh* Sucks to be me. Haha!
Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please!