Three Parts

There is a beginning.

It's heavy and weighted; a rumble and drone, gears clunking, pieces moving. Its the same beginning they've started a hundred times before. A story spans out before them, their story. The hunt. Always the same, and it will tick over as it always does to a middle and an end. The beginning should be sharp and fresh, should taste of promise and feel like rainfall. The beginning should not seem like an end.

Sam and Dean stare down at the corpse. It lies gentle and serene in the hazy dust, like the world seeks to cloak it from its brutal demise. From their flashlights, small footprints of light meander gently over it, highlighting bloody skin and waxen features. Sam sighs. The demon is dead, its spine and neck broken from the shattered wall it was obviously thrown through. But it was probably dead before that. Its eyes are burned out of its skull.

'Looks like your buddies have been here,' Dean says quietly to the sky. 'Got an exorcised demon at my feet, Cas. Whats going on?'

Sam doesn't bother looking up, he never does.

'Someone get bored and fancy a relaxing smite? Huh?' Dean drops his gaze, toes a nearby brick, sharp and sullen. Its almost spoken aloud, unholy words, but in the end neither brother need say it. Theres been no angels for nine months.

Sam says it anyway. 'Why suddenly angels?'

Dean responds with, 'why now?'

And neither of them have an answer.

When the other two demons appear, there is barely space for monotonous surprise. The beginning has drifted away without them even noticing. This is the middle. It holds no suspense. Two demons doing demon things, malicious and intent. This is the middle that feels a hundred words, when really it could be told in ten.

They insult and bargain, curse and barter. Winchesters. We don't want trouble. We don't know anything. We'll rip you apart. Just trying to survive. We didn't know. I'll peel your skin. We promise we didn't know. Don't want to fight. Don't want to kill you. We'll kill you!

Even while caught in the throws, Dean doesn't remember the fight. Its all clockwork and programmed. Move, step, punch, slice. If there is pain its unfelt, a footprint rather than a foot. The middle has no suspense, no fear, no heroes. You can't have a good middle when the beginning is already the end.

Dean finds Sam coughing on the floor. Next to him is a demon, blood pooling gently from its skull. Her skull. Hers... Because in death she's human again, and Dean hates the fact that he has to remind himself.

'Sam?' he shakes his brothers arm, starts hauling him up. 'Yep,' he soothes over his brothers moans. 'You got your ass kicked.'

'Crap,' Sam says and steadies himself on his own legs.

'You good?'

'Yeah. It dead?'

'You tell me, half its head's missing… Garth said there were three?'

Sam nods, sweeps the empty building with his eyes; and then, gentle as soft gripping bone, the end settles firmly upon them alongside the dust in the air. The end is bygone. The end is gray. The end is nothing but cinders and smoke, dry and creaking whispers of a story not worth telling. The demons are accounted for: one dead on arrival, the other two now taken care of. The hunt is over. The job is done. The end.

An aimless story split into three parts, all as hollow as each other.

The brothers clamber into the impala and allow empty seconds to tick past. When did their world become this? Become as faded as a shadow in the sun? Saving people, hunting things now tastes like dirt in their mouths. They've lost something, a great and powerful something they can't even name. Sometimes Sam thinks the angels took more than Castiel that day. He wonders if Dean thinks that too.

Under his breath, Dean mutters 'fucking demons,' although it is barely heard over the steady string of Sam's words. He slouches in his seat, fingers running absently over a feather they keep on the dashboard. A feather stained dark and as long as his arm.

'… demons dealt with. Didn't even need to use one of Kevin's bombs. We're gunna head back to base and look up angel activity. It's either that or witches but there's no other signs to suggest…'

The impala stretches and yawns before slinking off into the night. Thirty seconds later a figure lurches into the street; falters to a stop where the car had just been. It's limp and unguarded, its sorrow and hopelessness, its Castiel left behind.

Sam and Dean live in bleached dullness, heavy, thick and faint.

Castiel lives in pulses. He is choking tar and breathless light, colours that flare and spike, knots upon twisting knots that are all flurried and brave. He pushes forward. Pushes because something sharp and terrible inside him screams that he doesn't deserve the sanctity of death. He tries to be everything because its to easy to be nothing.

But for now, as he stands in the withered night, in the same spot where the impala sat only minutes before, he is only numbness that stretches on infinite. Empty. He shivers and stares at the road in front of him, with its cars and people and movement and noise, and none of it what he's looking for.

Muscles bunch and clench inside of him, static flares again. Dry and barren rivers are suddenly flooded with aching waters. A great injustice humans have to endure; that even when their minds go numb, their body will still suffer its pains. Castiel sways, but will not look away.

… wait...

This beginning had been a snap, sharp and crisp. A taste in the air akin to lightning building. A moment where movement, life and even breath had paused in their monotony and ceased to exist. A snap that carried echoes. Echoes that carried promise.

He'd seen it on the other side of the alley. Bathed in yellow light, shining silky in crystal black skin. It was waking and yawning, rumbling new life into the night. And, as in a dream, the impala had slunk forward over the roadside, purring happily. The impala. With Sam and Dean Winchester just visible inside. Sam and Dean. Dean and Sam.

The middle hits hard and fast.

There is movement. Castiel is running, staggering, falling, panting, forcing his body to obey his will. And inside his head, for the first time since the angel's took him, he allows himself to prey. don'tleavedon'tleavedon'tleave. And he's angry. Shaking rage. Because he never allowed himself to prey before. Because prayer means faith and faith means hope. And Castiel never had any hope. And he's angry, so angry. Because listen to him! He's praying and he's hoping, don'tleavedon'tleave, and he's furious. He's furious because he already knows as he flings himself forward, already knows as he staggers down the alleyway, already knows as he stumbles into the street…

…that Sam and Dean are gone.

The end is inky black waters that swallow him whole; plunging him deep into unfathomable depths. This story had lasted no more than a few heartbeats. This story was over even before it had started to begin.

Castiel finally lowers his eyes.

Feels the numbness spread through him like poison.

But sometimes, just sometimes, a heartbeat is enough. A reminder small and terrified but a reminder none the less. Because there on the ground is something almost unfathomable. Glinting sharply in the light, directly in between his bare feet, is a coin.

Take this as a new beginning. To a story much longer than a heart can beat.

'This is Dean. Leave your name, number and nightmare at the tone.'

The slam of the phone back onto its receiver reverberates around the enclosed space. Castiel pants, tries to hold himself together. Everything behind him comes rushing back, pain and fatigue cling harder than breath. Everything before him crumbles away into desperation. He should have never allowed himself to hope.

The coin still sits heavy in his hand, saved from its futile purpose of calling an empty number. It's sharp metallic surface burns like salt upon his wounds, pushing its way past the blood and grime. His throat is molten. From somewhere deep inside a shudder licks icy tendrils up his spine. Castiel, barely holding on, decides this may be worse than the room.

He stares unseeing at the phone for a while and then squeezes his eyes together.

This needs to work, it has to work, he has to remember, its the most important thing. For a moment he doesn't even care where his thoughts go, doesn't care as they tear through the suppression, through the memories, through the things he swore he would never think about again. He needs to find the thing he forgot. A million suns flare and burn behind his eyes and Castiel can only clench his teeth as he pushes on. He's looking for another number. One he thinks he should know.

There.

Everything jolts, he reels and then retches. Somehow he has just enough sense to fall back out of the booth. Just enough sense to lower himself to the ground and force the nightmares back. One breath. One breath should be easy. One breath. Nothing should hurt this much.

Time is jostling away from him and he's cold and sick and hungry and tied. Castiel presses the heel of his hand into his forehead and screws his eyes shut until static colours suffocate his vision. But he has the number. And his heart is still beating.

Shaking fingers punch into the keys. Shaking hands clasp the hard, cold phone to his ear. He tries to ignore the pain, failing with every second that struggles by. Then, tiny and reedy through the cracked line, Sam's voice sinks gently into Castiel's broken world.

'Hello?'

And this time Castiel is ready.

'Sam,' he croaks.

'Yeah?'

Castiel means to say… something… he's supposed to say something. His mouth forms the answer 'it's me', but the words abandon him. He leans his forehead against the window of the booth. The icy glass sends a frozen needle through his brain, but Castiel barely notices. He's boneless. He's empty.

'Uh…hello?' Sam's voice queries.

He realises he should say more. His voice isn't his voice, its cracked and broken like the phone he's clinging numbly to.

'Don't leave,' he manages.

'… wh-?'

'I'm in the city. I saw you. Don't leave.'

He hears Sam breath hitch.

'I'm here,' he tries to be coherent, but his eyes sink closed and his other senses are dead. Somewhere in the background Dean's voice rings out, rising impatiently over the sound of the engine.

'I'm here,' he repeats.

'Cas?'

Theres the sound of tires screeching.

Twenty minutes outside of Cowley, the impala sits rumbling. There are burnt tire marks on the deserted highway where it skidded to a halt, long lines scar the asphalt. The world outside is frigid turmoil. The world inside is very much the same. Dean Winchester stares wild-eyed at his brother.

The disembodied voice struggles weakly through the phone.

'Yes.'

Sam raises a trembling hand to point.

'Turn around,' he chokes.

The impala is movement, it's sound, it's speed. It roars its anger at the barren world and claws at the road in hellbent fury. It's everything. It's Dean. It's Sam. And it screams through the dust barely ahead of their own emotions. Dean grits his teeth, grips the wheel, growls in frustration that they can't go faster. Sam is words, complete babble and nonsense. He spills over himself, down into the phone, promises of we're coming, we're coming ring over and over…

Even though its long been silent on the other end.

This chapter was meant to be VERY different, I struggled a bit with it (hence the delay, sorry!) but I think I'm happy with how it turned out. The phone call was one of the first scenes I wrote and for a while I thought I'd have to cut it. Glad I didn't. And hope it doesn't disappoint!

As always, THANK YOU for your fantastic encouragement. It means so much to me, it really does.
I'm gunna attempt to get another chapter up soon, to make up for my slowness.