If you guys don't get who the brothers are after this one, I will throw myself out the window because I obviously have terrible writing.
One Wing in the Fire (5)
"What is underneath Astaroth's gasmask?"
Amon looked up from where he was busily prodding at a piece of volcanic glass with his scepter, slowly twisting it into a new shape. At the moment, it just looked like a misshapen horse with too many legs.
"What?" The Demon Lord asked.
"What is underneath Astaroth's gasmask?" Castiel repeated.
It was genuine curiosity, a question he'd been wondering at since he had first met the demon brothers. But it had taken Castiel almost a year to work up the courage to start asking questions.
A year of captivity in the castle.
A year belonging to Amon and Astaroth.
He had been silent for most of that year, especially after the episode with his wings, only speaking up when there was dire need to. Whether he spoke or was silent didn't seem to matter much to either Demon Lord but since Castiel had begun to ask questions, Astaroth had been a tad warmer to him and Amon was less likely to start shouting at him.
It was a year to the day that Castiel had been taken away from Alastor and brought to the castle. He didn't know how long in total he had been in Hell but it hardly seemed to matter anymore. The demon taint on his Grace had spread and there was so much of it now that there was no going back. His wings had gone from gray to black over the course of the year, the feathers now a sleek ebony that gleamed like the obsidian rock formations around the castle.
"What's under…Astaroth's mask?" Amon repeated, "You're seriously asking that?"
"Yes." Castiel responded, slightly confused. Of course he was asking that, "I have never seen him remove it, I was simply curious."
"So why don't you ask him?" Amon asked slyly.
Castiel didn't answer.
"Aha! You are scared to ask him!" Amon proclaimed and went back to prodding the volcanic glass in front of him. They were in the Obsidian Garden, spending the day outside of the castle because Astaroth was having another cataclysmic fight with Ruby and it was best to stay out of their way when the two got into a spat.
"He is the Demon Lord of Fear." Castiel said flatly, frowning a little, "I think I have the right to be afraid of him."
Amon simply chuckled and did not look up from his work. The misshapen horse was now beginning to look more like a dragon. Castiel sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pulling a strand down to inspect it in an almost habitual manner. That had begun to change too; his hair had once been like gold, bright blonde strands of sunlight. Now it had begun to turn brown, darkening slightly every day.
"It's a mouth." Amon said suddenly and Castiel looked at him. The Demon Lord was scowling, poking even harder at the volcanic glass to get it to do what he wanted.
"What?" Castiel was unsure whether Amon was talking about the statue or was answering his question.
"Underneath Ashy's gasmask, it's a mouth." Ah, the question then.
"I suspected that." Castiel tried to keep the exasperation from his voice. He wanted to follow up with more questions—what kind of mouth? Is it full of teeth? Why does he keep it covered if it is just a mouth?—but he had learned quickly that pushing Amon was a dangerous thing if he was not in the mood. And Castiel had not yet learned to read the Demon Lord quite that accurately.
"Astaroth's the Demon Lord or Fear and Chaos, right?" A rhetorical question but Castiel nodded anyway, "So usually his creepy ass eyes are enough to scare the pants off some poor soul—no pun intended. But sometimes he has to bring out the big guns. Ah!" Amon stepped back from his work, tilted his head to the side to inspect it, frowned, and began prodding it again, "That's when he takes his mask off. There's this…stuff that comes out of his mouth, like smoke or something, and if you inhale it you get stuck in your worse nightmares until Ashy decides to pull you out."
"You've seen it?" Castiel asked in a low voice, suddenly even more terrified of Astaroth than before.
"He tried it on me once." Asmon said and his tone was so flat that Castiel knew this was not a memory the demon liked remembering.
"I'm sorry." Castiel said.
"What?" Amon lowered his scepter, turning his green eyes on the former angel. There was confusion there. The end of the Demon Lord's arrow-tipped tail curled in on itself in his wonderment.
"I…I said I was sorry."
"For what?"
"For…" Castiel paused, brow furrowing slightly because he was not really sure what he had apologized for, "I am sorry that your brother would do something like that to you."
"It didn't work." Amon muttered, turning back to his work. It was definitely starting to look like a dragon now, "We were arguing, we used to do that all the time. I think it was about Ruby because I hate that bitch. Whatever it was about, we were arguing and the whole castle was shaking and nobody wanted to come near us. It ended up in a full blown fist-fight and then Astaroth took off his mask." The Demon Lord shrugged one shoulder, tail curling in even further, "It didn't effect me, probably because we're both Lords of Hell or something, but the fact that he tried it on me…" Amon shook his head and kept speaking, as though he wasn't even aware of what he was saying.
But Castiel's attention had been drawn to something else. Amon's soul. The human spark he had been monitoring over the course of the year was pulsing. It was pushing its way through the fire, desperately trying to get to the surface, reaching for the light it still saw in Castiel's tainted Grace.
"…and he apologized to me for weeks afterwards and wouldn't go anywhere near Ruby for a while like that made it better. He's my brother, you know, he's Sam, and I'm supposed to take care of him but when he's an idiot I just can't—."
Castiel jerked and stared at Amon, "Sam?"
"What?" The Demon Lord blinked and he stared back as Castiel, "What about him?"
"You said…you called him…" A strange, gleeful sort of wonder bubbled up in Castiel. Hope, he realized, and quickly tried to quell it because hope was not something for him to feel, not yet.
Amon continued to stare at him in a confused manner, "Cas, you all right?"
Castiel fought to find something to say, to keep this moment, because if he could hold on to it then maybe it would be enough to pull more of Amon's human soul out. It might even be enough to get him to remember his human life completely.
"Sam." Castiel said again, carefully, treading on eggshells, "Your brother, Sam."
The green glow of Amon's eyes had dimmed and Castiel swore they looked more human, "Sam…" The Demon Lord muttered, "Sammy…"
There was a loud crack and the dragon statue split down the middle, the volcanic glass shattering against the hard cobblestone of the path. Both angel and demon jumped and looked around at it for a moment before turning back to each other.
"What were you saying about Astaroth?" Amon asked as if nothing had transpired.
Castiel felt crushed. The human part of Amon's soul had vanished again, buried in hellfire and steel barbed wire.
"Nothing…" The former angel murmured quietly, "Just that his…choice of companionship is rather silly."
Amon let out a burst of laughter and kicked the broken obsidian out of his way, "Yeah, well, try telling him that. I've been saying that to his face for years!"
The Demon Lord continued to chatter, walking down the path of the Gardens, Castiel following obediently in his wake, eyes on the ground. Amon had remembered, for an instant, Astaroth's human name.
Closer, the human soul had been closer to the surface.
Castiel just needed more time. He hoped it wouldn't take until he was completely a demon to make the two brothers remember who they really were.