"Leviathans?" Dean barked. "Where?"
It was as if Cas's words sent an electric jolt through Dean, cutting through the swirling mess of emotion that finding Cas had set off in him. Considering how he'd already been reeling from his last conversation with his dad - It's not - and the wearing silence that had followed, he hadn't had high expectations for John's meeting Cas. But what he hadn't expected at all was for finding Cas to be more painful than losing him, and for his dad's resistance to have been the least upsetting part. I prayed to you, Cas, every night. I know. How long would he have let Dean search? The truth was that as much as Dean wanted to trust Cas, and although he would never admit it to his dad, his faith in the angel was shaken in a way it hadn't been since Cas had sold out to Crowley more than a year before. At least then Dean had been able to understand his reasons. Now, he couldn't fathom them.
So all in all he was glad to let his instincts take over, to let the pain and confusion fade into the background as the world around him sharpened, colors brightening and sounds growing louder as his heart beat more quickly in his chest. Even the persistent ache in his side from the ribs the wendigo had cracked seemed to lessen. His hand found his weapon automatically, and he was peripherally aware of John and Benny drawing theirs beside him. Cas, however, just stood tense and still as a trapped animal.
"That way," Cas pointed. Dean swung his head around to check but all he could see was forest. "Approaching. Come on." He took a few steps forward but stopped, a spasm of frustration crossing his face, when only Dean followed. He pivoted with his jaw clenched, eyes demanding explanation.
"How many?" John asked.
"Three." Cas's tone was clipped. "We don't have time for discussion."
"Four of us," John pointed out.
Cas's eyes met Dean's pleadingly, and Dean felt something unpleasant shift in his gut. Neither John nor Cas had actually made him choose between them so far, but if he had to...he had waited too long and come too far to leave Cas. But there was no way he was losing his dad again either. Especially not while things were still so screwed up between them, too.
"Can we even run from these things?" Benny asked. "I thought they were faster than your average critter."
"They are fast." Cas's voice was grave. After a second, though, he paused, his whole expression changing, his head tilting to the side and his brows drawing together. More than anything…he looked confused.
"What is it, Cas?" Dean asked.
"The leviathans are leaving," Cas said after a moment. He blinked, and murmuring the next words to himself as he ran a hand across his peach fuzz of a beard. "Why are they leaving?"
"Who gives a damn?" John asked.
Quick as lightning, Cas spun to face John, then covered the few feet between them so swiftly Dean could have blinked and missed it. He caught John by surprise, slamming him back against a tree and trapping him there with a forearm to his throat. As shocked as his dad, Dean stood and stared with his mouth halfway open.
"What are you?" Cas demanded, shoving his face toward John's.
"What am I?" John sounded more surprised than angry, but that was changing fast. Dean moved toward them, hoping to somehow get in between them. He'd been so worried about what John might try to do to Cas, he hadn't bothered to worry about the reverse. On top of that the scene was uncomfortably familiar. He recalled a brutal night in a dark alley years ago and how that had been the last he'd ever underestimated the angel's strength…or his patience. Dean edged forward and only hoped his dad didn't make the same mistake.
"Leviathans don't retreat," Cas stated, his face inches from John's. His voice was cold, however, and it was clear he was taking no pleasure in threatening Dean's father, nor was there a deep sense of anger and betrayal behind his words as there been that night in the alley. He was simply pinning John as if Dean's dad was a creature that needed containing. "The only thing that doesn't belong here is you. What are you? What do you want with Dean?"
Dean froze at the sound of his name. John didn't.
Instead, his frustration at being captive seemed to bubble over and he shot out a free fist, catching Cas in the gut with a roundhouse. The angel barely moved, shoving forward as John swung a knee up toward his groin and Dean grabbed both of them by the shoulder in a vain attempt to wrench them apart as they struggled. Neither paid him any mind. John kicked at Cas's knee but Cas braced himself, bending his leg forward so the blow landed ineffectually on his outer thigh, and shoved John backward. John's head snapped back against the tree but he only grunted and twisted forward, aiming to break Cas's grip with his weight, but Cas thwarted him again, grabbing his right wrist and slamming him back against the tree with one shoulder. Dean was sure Cas could tear John apart if he tried but the angel was apparently holding back. Which was more or less what inspired Dean to try to wedge himself in the space between them get his back to his dad, and shove Cas away. Then he could figure out what the hell was going on.
What he got instead was an errant elbow to the side—impossible to say whose—that under normal circumstances might have left him a little bruised and winded, but which connected instead with his hurt ribs and turned the persistent ache into a white hot spike of agony. He let go of both his dad and Cas to clutch at his side, face scrunching against the pain. His knees hit the ground and he shouted the first words that came to him through clenched teeth.
"Son of a bitch!"
When he opened his eyes Benny was standing at his side, one hand on his weapon, and John and Cas had separated and were both staring down at him with mixed bewilderment and concern.
"Dean, are you okay?" John asked with a last dirty glance at Cas, stepping toward him with one hand outstretched as if he meant to help him up or rest it on his shoulder, though he never quite made it that far. Benny bristled at him.
"He's injured," Cas noted, as if John hadn't noticed. "I'm sorry, Dean, I can't heal you here."
"I'm…fine," Dean gasped automatically, then stared up at them, one hand on his side, still winded. His ribs throbbed but the blinding agony had passed. "Now will you two...just...stop whatever you're doing?" he gritted, then recalled it had been Cas who'd charged his father. He straightened but remained on his knees, ignoring the pain that spasmed across his ribs, and looked up at the angel questioningly, echoing his dad's earlier question without thinking. "I mean, what the hell, Cas?"
Cas's gaze was intense, but it seemed Dean's re-injury had been enough to distract him from the task of pinioning John. "Dean, in all my time here I have never seen nor heard of leviathans retreating when their prey was so near. Nor in all the time before this."
"So?" John demanded. Wincing, he stretched the fingers of the wrist Cas had grabbed, then reached back and touched his head where the angel's brute force had slammed it into the tree. His fingers came away bloody but to Dean, who had seen his dad in all manner of pain, his grimace looked more annoyed than anything.
"Leviathans fear almost nothing," Cas told them, turning his head to gaze at each of them solemnly. He stopped when he was looking down at Dean. "If they are retreating from him, then either he is not John Winchester or there are powerful forces at work here that I do not understand. You are likely in grave danger."
John snorted. "Then we're in danger. What's new." With one last tender prod at the back of his skull, John let his hand fall and also appealed to Dean. "You know me, son. Hell, when Yellow Eyes took me you figured it out in hours, and that bastard knew me. Knew all of us. We been at this a week now. Tell him."
Dean nodded, trying to sort through the information Cas and his dad were throwing at him. Obviously, something strange was going on, but was there really a chance Dad wasn't Dad? It was true that he'd known his father well, and at one time, had probably known him better than anyone in the world. But a lot of time had passed since then, and what they'd both been through - it would have changed anyone.
Still, Dean could remember how Dad had always made him feel, desperate for approval and terrified of his rejection, but accepting it all the same as if he'd deserved it all along…and as much as he hated himself for it, this John awoke the same emotions in him. The same thrill that he was doing right when Dad smiled at him and the same sinking in his chest when Dad even looked at him wrong. No one else could cut that deeply with so much ease, or with so little apparent understanding of how much his approval meant to Dean. That had been Yellow Eyes' mistake, after all—treating Dean like a son when he should have treated him like a soldier or an incompetent child. If this wasn't Dad...it was a damn good impression.
"It's him," Dean said. John met his eyes briefly and nodded, which somehow hurt more, though of course there was no way John knew what had really tipped the scales. Dean looked back to Cas. "It's gotta be."
"Very well," Cas said. He sounded unconvinced, but Dean caught a flicker in Cas's eyes of the trust the angel had placed in him—whether rightly or wrongly—since he'd rebelled against Heaven to join Dean in fighting the good fight however many years ago. "But this is not good news."
Not wanting to have any more of this conversation from his knees, Dean began to push himself up, brushing off Benny's helping hands when the vampire tried to grab his upper arm to steady him. By the time he made it to his feet his ribs were throbbing again, and he held his arm gingerly over the ache. He didn't like how vulnerable it made him look, but he supposed by this point all of them had seen him laid bare in one way or another, so there was little point in hiding it.
"'Course it isn't," John sighed.
Dean scrubbed a hand across his face, trying to make sure he understood. "You think that because my dad's got levi repellent something's protecting him."
"Exactly." Cas nodded, then regarded John, his eyes still narrowed with suspicion. "You said you've been here five years."
"That's what Dean tells me," John said, reaching up to dab at the back of his head again and wincing before adding sardonically, "Days've blurred together on my end."
"Have you encountered leviathans before?" Cas asked.
"Seen 'em, stayed away," John said. "They never came after me."
"They should have," Cas said seriously. "You are a human in a land of monsters. Without me to draw them away they should have descended upon you the minute you arrived. They'd have done so to Dean as well if I hadn't kept them one step ahead. Can you think of any reason you'd be protected?"
"Protected?" John snorted. "Look, but I've been fighting for my life since I climbed out of Hell. If I'm protected someone's doing a piss poor job of it."
"Still alive, aren't ya?" Benny asked.
"I'm alive 'cause I can fight," John said dangerously.
"Cas has a point," Dean cut in quickly. "I mean, if Cas's the only reason I haven't been dealing with leviathans solo this whole time, and those ones back there were running from you…could be you've got some anti-levi mojo you don't know about. I've seen stranger."
"So what does this mean?" John asked, directing the question at no one in particular.
"It could mean a lot of things," Cas said.
"Any of 'em not terrible?" Dean asked.
Cas shook his head. "It's doubful."
"Of course it is," John said again.
Cas shrugged as if to say, what do you want me to do, and to Dean's surprise the corner of John's mouth turned up in return.
"Well, I can think of one good thing about it," Benny said. "We got ourselves a leviathan-free path outta here. I say we take it while we can."
Dean nodded slightly at Benny. He remembered suddenly that, before any of this crap had happened, all the vampire wanted to do was to get out of here and Dean had been the key to his escape hatch. He certainly hadn't signed up for this, and it was a testament to how good a friend he'd become that he was still going along with it without protest. "We'll manage," he said.
"That's right," John said, "we'll manage."
And as they started down the path, Benny taking the lead while John, Dean, and Cas trailed behind, Dean just hoped to god it was true.