The drive would have been incredibly silent and awkward if it weren't for the CDs that Sam had made for him. Classic rock ferried the hunter and the Angel up past Lake Michigan with hardly more than five words spared between them. It wasn't that Dean didn't like small talk, because he really didn't. It wasn't even that he felt uncomfortable about that morning (though it was still in the back of his mind)- it was just that he couldn't think of anything good to say.
He had toyed with the idea of playing twenty questions or some other stupid driving game, but he doubted that Castiel would have had much skill at it. Despite the promise of an almost guaranteed win, Dean couldn't find the will to offer.
It was a chilly afternoon though the sky was a clear watery blue that stretched on forever. Their shared lunch of freetos and beef jerky from a gas station could not easily be confused with satisfying, but it was filling. They ate while Dean drove, the cold water of the Great lakes dominating the view from the right side of the car.
"These are very…" Cas trailed off, his voice strangely loud after so long of not speaking.
Dean glanced over and saw the Angel looking curiously at the handful of freetos, a strange look on his face.
"They make my tongue itch." He finished slowly.
"Like allergic reaction itchy?" Dean felt the mild strains of worry building low in his stomach. Because really? Anaphylactic shock brought on by corn chips would just suck, not to mention be incredibly inconvenient.
Cas looked at him in confusion. "They make me thirsty," he clarified.
"Here," Dean passed over his cherry slurpie. "Salty, Cas. Not itchy. They're salty."
The Angel struggled with the straw for a moment before getting the hang of it, then he just look surprised and stared into the red slush for a heartbeat. "Salty." He repeated finally with a slow nod.
He did not give back the slurpie.
Dean let him have it. And Sam had always called him selfish. Ha.
"So…" He attempted to fill the silence. Even without Sam as a travelling companion to talk to as the miles dragged on endlessly, Dean ended up talking to himself. There was only so long he could go without hearing human speech, even if it was his own. "How do you get along with your brother?"
Cas took the straw from between his lips long enough to give Dean another one of his confused expressions. "Which one?"
"Gabriel?" Dean didn't know that there were more brothers lurking around somewhere. He tried to imagine them as strangely and slightly off beat family of Angels. Reunions would be weird.
"Gabriel." Cas repeated the name softly and scrunched up his nose a little. "He is my older brother and I would not speak ill of him." He chose his words carefully.
"He seemed to really like you." But Gabriel seemed to really like most people and things. He was just… peppy. It probably stemmed from the gratuitous amount of sugar he consumed.
"He is a friendly individual."
"I hear a 'but' in there."
"I did not say but." Cas informed him in his deadpan way.
And Dean smiled at that. He really was like talking to an alien sometimes. "He's a friendly individual, BUT…" He trailed off, waiting for the Angel to get the idea.
"Oh," he nodded after a strange pause. "But… he left under tense circumstances. He is still my brother, and I do not know how much I can trust him."
"Is that why you punched him in the face when you first woke up?"
Cas got quiet again and Dean almost started to repeat himself, assuming that the Angel had not heard him.
"Since I fell I have started to… feel… things. Things I am not used to."
Dean did not know what to say to that, but he thought back to the morning and having to uncomfortably explain the birds and bees. Cas had honestly seemed confused as to what his body was doing.
"The things he said to me… I felt anger. Anger at seeing him again after so many of your months, seeing him so well and happy when I had spent so long in misery. My actions surprised me. I had not intended to strike him."
And that was something Dean could fully understand. Many times in the rougher part of his teenage years he had suddenly found himself in the midst of a full knock out- drag down fight with his own brother, and if anybody asked why they were trying to kill each other… well, Dean still didn't have answers. He had just been angry.
"Those sorts of things happen, dude. It's just part of being human- being family." He quickly amended.
"Stop." Cas' voice was sharp and commanding.
It took Dean off guard and he closed his mouth with an audible click of teeth. He frowned, hands strangling the steering wheel as he tried to figure out where he went wrong. He really just was crap at these sorts of things.
"Dean, stop."
"Damn it, Cas, I didn't say anything that time."
"The vehicle, Dean! Stop!" The Angel didn't do yelling well, or maybe he did it too well, his real voice creeping into those words in a painfully loud rumble.
Dean's ears popped and he hastily changed over three lanes of traffic to pull onto the shoulder of the highway with a screech of tiers and gravel. Cas abandoned the slurpie, leaving the car and a cherry red mess behind.
The only thing around them were straggly pines, gravel, a bit of a drop off and one of the largest lakes in the world. Dean swore, grabbing his gun from under the seat and holding it close to his body, with the hope of hiding it from passing cars, as he barreled out his door and after the Angel who was disappearing through the copse of trees towards the waterfront.
"Cas, hold on." Dean's words were ripped from him into the lung chilling air, the bite of cold stinging his cheeks and making it hard to breathe. "Fuckin' wait up!"
He literally ran into Castiel as he rounded a particularly fat pine. They toppled and Dean managed to catch himself with a knee in the gravel and one hand gripping the tree's branches, the needles breaking and leaving a smear of sap on his fingers and palm.
"Damn it, Cas." He growled with what remained of his breath.
The Angel was face down in the loose rocks, arms awkwardly spayed out at his sides. Apparently Angels did not know how to catch themselves. Dean helped him to his feet, hiding a wince when he saw the rough cuts on the underside of his chin, little flashes of bright red already welling up and running sluggishly down his throat.
"Are you ok?"
"Can you feel that?" His voice was tight, though from excitement or pain, it was difficult to tell.
Dean almost said no without thinking, but he took in another too cold breath and tried to see if he could 'feel' anything.
There was a piercing wind coming off the lake, flying through him like he was nothing more substantial than a sheet of paper. His hand burned a little and his knee was throbbing dully, then there was the distant, but unrelenting ache of his ribs, head and foot.
The Sun was too far away, limning them in wan light, not enough to provide any warmth. The only heat Dean felt was coming from the Angel beside him, a sort of fevered, burning up feeling that ate at his side even with the inches separating them.
Dean felt many things, but none of them useful, none of them seemed to be what the Angel was looking for.
He shook his head slowly.
"I can feel it." And it was excitement, his eyes alight and his breaths catching in little bursts of condensation that were ripped away by the wind. "I can feel her."
"Her?" The last 'her' they had come across had flattened the Atlantic and flipped over his car. He settled his gun firmly between both hands, looking about for something to aim at.
"God, I can feel her." His words were no more than a whisper on the wind and Dean had a feeling that Cas was no longer talking to him.
And Dean finally saw it, started to hear it over the whine and rush of nature and distant cars. There was a streak of light somewhere in the troposphere and if he had not been staring desperately around for signs of danger, Dean would have missed it. It was a blur, a white and gold blip that was gaining speed. It hit a few yards away, landing with a cracking sound that shook the trees around them and Cas was running again.
Dean followed, he couldn't stop himself.
The first thing he saw in the small crater of dirt and stone was the blood. Good lord, there was a lot of blood. It had splattered the foliage and was pooling up around the limp, pale body in the center of the destruction.
It was another Angel.
Dean stopped short, his boots slipping a bit and he watched his own Angel scamper down to the fallen woman. She was clothed in white that would have put bleach commercials everywhere to shame- if it weren't for the dark red stains spreading hungrily over her. The blood matched her hair redder than red, her skin was the color of cream and the pike through her chest looked horrendously wrong- like a morbid sort of prop laid down as an afterthought to the scene set out for them. It was a black, twisted ugly thing, and just looking at it made Dean feel ill. Through the rip of her gown the flesh of her chest looked rotted and diseased where it touched the thick blade.
Cas was talking to her, his voice high and terrified as it tumbled over their strange angelic language.
It hurt somewhere deep in Dean's chest. He wanted to tell the man they were obviously too late, she was gone, but he couldn't force his mouth to make the words.
Then something surprising happened. She opened her eyes and started coughing blood like water, it running thick and too dark down her face. She was trying to speak, tears in her eyes as she looked at the other Angel who was attempting to pull her into his lap. One long fingered hand reached out, almost high enough to touch one of the arms encircling her, but then she shuttered and her eyes closed again.
Dean had seen death, many more times in his life than he would care to count. It had a very specific feel to it, a look and a smell that was unquestionable, once you knew it, it never left you, no matter how much you wish it would. He knew this part. He had seen it happen with the other fallen Angels he had found.
He scrambled down the small crater, grabbing Castiel and roughly pulling him away from the other Angel. Cas made a bad sound, something wild and broken torn from his throat and he fought against the man trying to help him.
"Cas, we need to get down." Already he could feel her death growing. It started with a light, something pure and blinding that you could sense more than see, building like a gale, bearing down like a wave.
And Cas was yelling at him, but it wasn't in English, so the words were lost. Dean couldn't pull him away more than a few feet, there just wasn't time. He fell to into a crouch, tugging the Angel down with him and holding him tight, hiding his own face in the hunch of Cas' shoulders while he pressed the man's face into his chest.
The Angel's death rattle struck them like a train, cracking full force against the pair and pushing them down into the gravel, sliding them away, leaving a trench of stone and dirt in their wake. Even with his eyes closed tight and hidden, the world turned white like a nova. It hurt, and not just from the rocks flung against them like hail. It was the pressure of a sonic boom, fueled by a heart wrenching pain and misery so deep seated that last time it had hit Dean he had found himself in a depressed funk for almost a week afterwards.
When the world stopped shaking and Dean could move again, he looked up, losing his grip and blinking wildly up at the sky, the sting of tears on his face. Cas was not moving other than a fine tremor running up and down his spine. Dean smoothed hands over him, like you would with a spooked horse, whispering soft things that he did not know if the other man could even hear. He risked looking over his shoulder where the woman had fallen. All that was left were sooty burns, roughly in the shape and outline that one would expect from and Angel, the marks from her wings marring the landscape in a twelve foot span around her body, the shadow of individual feathers still visible against the pale stones. No blood was left, even most of the strange weapon that had struck her down had burnt up in the blast. The shaft was no more than a memory, the blade lying twisted and foul in the center of the burn scar.
"Come on, Cas." Dean slowly climbed to his feet, shaking and not at all ok. "We can't stay here."
The Angel either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, preferring to stay crouched amidst the gravel, hugging himself and making soft, aborted sounds. Dean pulled him to his feet, letting him crumble against his shoulder as they staggered back to the car.
They sat in the little Mustang, not saying a word, the rush of the other cars shaking them slightly as the displaced air of their passing pressed on them. Cas had grown silent, adopting a thousand yard stare, his eyes red and angry with unshed emotion and Dean would have started the engine and driven far from this place if he could pull himself together.
The dead Angel's grief was still burning through him like a frost, icy pangs clinging to his insides, so cold it almost felt hot, numbing him and destroying little bits of warmth he once held dear. It would pass, even the memory would fade and dim with time, but right now if was raw. It was similar to how he had felt when John had died, that destructive and devastating pain that felt like it could never heal. But this wasn't his; it belonged to the Angel who had passed on to where ever heavenly creatures go when they die.
It didn't make it feel any less real and personal.
He took in a breath that almost sounded like a sob and chided himself, closing his eyes tight and counting to ten, trying to shove off the parasitical emotions.
"I felt her." Cas' voice was as rough as ever, distant and flat.
Dean nodded, not trusting his voice as he struggled to just take in deep even breaths.
"I felt her inside of me. God… I can still smell her. I don't want this. I can't- this is too much." And the words of his prayer broke and fell into a separate language that Dean could only guess at.
They sat like that for hours. Castiel praying without pause or answer and Dean silently falling apart beside him.