Chapter Seven
Castiel knew that Dean was anxious. It was obvious in the tense set in his shoulders and the way he was clenching and unclenching his hands. He had been ever since Kevin had left them to go find Sam. It wasn't Kevin's absence that was stressing him, it was Sam's. It was understandable. Despite the fact Sam was with them still in some form, he had died, and Dean had been powerless to stop it. That translated as a failure to Dean, and now, armed with the knowledge of Sam's ghostly emotional volatility, Dean wanted him close more than ever.
"Sam will be fine," Castiel said quietly.
Dean nodded.
"He will," Mrs. Tran said, not looking up from her phone. "My Kevin will take care of him. Don't worry."
"I'm not worried."
She raised her eyes from her phone to give him an amused look. "Sure you're not."
Dean huffed and turned away.
"They're coming back," Castiel said. He could feel them approaching. It was like prickle on the back of his neck.
Dean brightened visibly and looked around for a glimpse of them. Rather than just appearing where they wanted to be, Sam and Kevin appeared to have walked back to the main room. The reason for that became obvious as they stepped into view. Kevin was towing Sam along by the sleeve of his shirt. Castiel had seen something like it before in his days as Steve, the Gas N Sip employee. In those instances, it had been a fractious toddler being dragged out of the store by its mother having been denied candy, but the expressions were the same as Sam and Kevin bore now, impatient and slightly amused for Kevin, and defeated and annoyed for Sam. Castiel had to swallow a laugh.
Sam rolled his eyes and smiled slightly. Castiel examined the smile carefully, wondering if it was for their benefit or for he really was feeling better than he had been. He found he could not tell. He knew Sam well, but he had not learned to decipher the slight shifts in Sam's expressions. There had been no need to learn them before. Sam had never hidden his emotions. He had worn them proudly for everyone to see. This new subterfuge was a recent development.
"So," Mrs. Tran said, stuffing her phone back into her purse, "you've caught up with your friends. It's time for us to go."
Kevin looked awkward. "About that…"
"No, Kevin!" she snapped.
He shook his head sadly. "I have to, Mom."
"No, you don't! You've done enough."
"Not yet," Kevin said. "I was talking to Sam and he made me see I have to do this. I have to help them."
"Me!" Sam squawked. "How did you get that out of what I said?"
Kevin laughed softly. "I read between the lines. It's about sacrifice, Sam. You do what you have to do."
Sam looked at him, wide-eyed and panicked, and Castiel wondered what they had spoken about that Sam was worried Kevin might reveal now. Dean was clearly wondering the same, as his gaze was snapping between Kevin and Sam and his brow was furrowed.
"You've sacrificed enough," Mrs. Tran said. "You've done enough."
Kevin sighed. "Mom, how do you see this ending for me? I stick around forever, eventually going vengeful?"
"You would never…" she started.
"It's not a choice thing," Kevin said, turning to Dean. "Is it?"
"No, it's really not. Sooner or later, everyone trapped in the veil will go vengeful. It might take decades or even centuries, but it will happen. And there's no way of dealing with them, as there's no way of making them move on with nowhere to move on to."
Sam's face was a mask, but Dean's clearly showed the pain of what he was saying. One day, if left in the veil long enough, Sam would become vengeful. It was a fact. It could take centuries for someone as informed and armed as Sam, long after his brother perished, but there would always be hunters, and one day Sam would become the thing they hunted.
"I've got to do this," Kevin said. "It's the only way for me and Sam and every other person out there to have peace. Heaven needs to be opened, and we're the only ones that can do it."
Mrs. Tran looked furious. Her glare rested on Dean, but to his credit, he didn't look uncomfortable. He stared right back. "None of us want this. Kevin is family, but in our family sometimes you have to be the one to step up to the plate and do what other people can't."
She took a deep, steadying breath and nodded. "Okay. But we're laying down some ground rules. Kevin, we're leaving. We need to find a hotel."
"There are plenty of rooms here," Dean said. "You're welcome to any of them."
She shook her head. "No. We're not staying here in this… freak show. I know what you'll do to him. Kevin will be working on that damned tablet day and night and it will drive him insane. We will come and help, but he will also rest."
Castiel opened his mouth, ready to point out the senselessness of her statement—ghosts didn't need rest—but Sam shook his head slightly, and so he stayed silent. It probably wasn't a good idea to antagonize the mother of the prophet.
Kevin gave a long-suffering sigh and nodded. "I guess I'll see you guys tomorrow."
He trailed up the stairs after his mother, looking every inch the reluctant toddler. As the door slammed closed behind them, Sam turned to Dean. "You need sleep, too."
Dean bristled. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not, Dean," Castiel said. "You haven't slept since the night we arrived here after New York." Where he'd been cured and had proceeded to watch his brother die. "And that wasn't natural sleep."
Dean grumbled. "Yeah, thanks to you."
"So you need sleep, too," Castiel continued.
Dean still looked reluctant. Sam nodded to himself, seeming to divine something from his silence.
"It's okay, Dean. Me and Cas can keep ourselves amused. And it's not like I can go anywhere while that's round your neck."
Finally, Dean nodded. "Okay. I guess I'll talk to you tomorrow." He couldn't say see, as it would be some time before he could do that. He plodded out of the room, towards the halls where their sleep quarters lay.
Sam watched him go with an unnamable expression on his face and then he turned to Castiel and smiled. "Well, Cas, the night is young. What are we going to do?"
Kevin's mom drove back into town in stony silence, with her hands gripping the steering wheel tight and her mouth pressed into a thin line. She was simmering at a level of pissed Kevin hadn't seen in a long time, and the explosion was imminent.
Kevin tried to ignore her in favor of thinking over what had happened in the past few hours.
He'd known, as soon as he's heard the news that Hell was shut up tight, that he had to see Sam and Dean again. Then he'd heard the news about Sam, and that need had been even greater. He had been alone as a ghost in the early days, confused and scared and able to do nothing but watch things fall apart. There were some in the veil that helped, but they were few and far between and pretty busy to boot—there were so many struggling in the veil. Kevin did what he could to help, but it was chaos. He'd knew he could help Sam though and Dean by default. He hadn't known angels could see ghosts, so he had been prepared to see Sam and Dean through the initial stages of communication. When he'd realized Castiel could do that for them, he'd felt a little bereft of use, but then, in true Winchester fashion, they'd found something else for him to do.
The tablet.
Kevin had honestly thought he was done with his whole mission from God since his death. He wasn't complaining. No one was forcing him to help, but he was a little frustrated that he was going back to hauling the prophet load. How he was feeling was apparently nothing to what was going on for his mom. She had never been happy with the responsibility forced on him, and now he was going back to it, after it cost her a year of her life spent captive, had to feel like a betrayal. He tried to gather his thoughts, to make a solid argument in favor of helping them, but it all came up weak and defensive. He couldn't tell her what had really persuaded him—Sam's determination to help Dean—as she would likely throw that at Dean in retribution and Dean didn't need to hear that anymore than Sam needed it.
They pulled up in front of a nice looking two-story house with the name Granny's Bed and Breakfast painted onto a sign on the lawn. Kevin knew, even without stepping inside, that it would be full of lace doilies and flowery wallpaper. His mother would love it. He could have made a case for a Super 8 but since he was already making a case for them uprooting everything for him to be a prophet again, he figured he should pick his battles.
They pulled onto the drive and his mom climbed out of the car. Kevin stayed a few moments, just enjoying the break in tension, before climbing out.
His mother was inside, dealing with a matronly looking woman in a floral dress with all the shape of a two-man tent. Kevin flickered out of view and went inside.
"I need two queens?" his mother asked.
Kevin rolled his eyes. He wasn't going to need a bed because… Hello, ghost! Telling her that would make no difference though. She still changed his sheets every week, though he hadn't slept in that bed since the night before his SATs.
"The Violet room," the woman said. "Right up the stairs and to your left."
His mother took back her credit card and they made their way up the stairs. As soon as the door closed behind them, Kevin came back into view just in time for her to spin around and glare at him. "Okay, Kevin," she said in a tone of forced calm, "tell me why you feel you have to do this."
"Other than for the obvious reasons, like saving the world?" Kevin asked, and received a scowl in return. "Because it's the right thing to do."
"Right for who?"
"Right for me," Kevin said impatiently. "Okay, even if I defy the odds and don't go vengeful, I'll still be stuck here forever. That's no life, Mom. I know you want better for me, I want better for me, but it's too late for that. I'm dead, and there's no changing that." She winced and Kevin laid a hand on her arm as he went on. "This is for me as much as Sam and everyone else. I need to move on, and you need to let me."
Tears swam in her eyes and Kevin felt a hollow pit form in his stomach. He would have preferred an explosion. He hated to see his mother cry. He hated that it was him that she was crying over. He'd only ever wanted to make her proud, but thanks to some divine judgment, he'd been made a prophet, and the tears had started that same week.
"I'm sorry, Mom," he said softly. "But this is what I've got to do."
He should have known it would be more complicated than arriving the next morning and sitting down to work on the tablet.
At Kevin's wheedling insistence, they'd stopped to get donuts for Dean in the ride to the bunker. Kevin had her get a bunch, as he wasn't sure if Castiel ate. It was a little miserable to watch other people eating and not be able to join them, but Kevin figured Sam wouldn't mind, as it would mean Dean was eating, and he'd seen how much Sam had worried over things like his brother's dietary choices. True, donuts weren't exactly balanced, but they were food, and Dean had looked like he needed it the day before.
When they got inside and Dean had made a grab for the donuts only to be instructed to "get a plate and quit drooling", by Kevin's mom, the ghost and angel contingent of their group gathered by the table and Kevin prepared himself to work.
"So, tablet," he said. "Where is it?"
"About that" Castiel said. "It has been broken."
That wasn't a problem. The leviathan and demon tablets had each been broken at some point. It was just a case of snapping the pieces together and watching the heavenly mojo seal them again. "Okay," Kevin said. "Let me see the damage."
Sam smirked as Castiel retrieved a hemp sack from the sideboard and emptied it onto the table. Kevin's heart sank as he saw it. This tablet wasn't broken, it was smashed to smithereens.
"Seriously?" he said, looking at Dean. "I thought you guys wanted help translating the tablet, not doing a heavenly jigsaw puzzle."
"Can you not do it?" Castiel asked impatiently. Maybe if it had been Dean or Sam that had asked, he would have responded with a smart-ass remark, but the last time he'd pissed Castiel off, the angel had grabbed him by the throat and lectured him on his duty. He might be a ghost now, but that was no excuse for pissing off an angel of the lord. He merely shrugged.
"Of course he can do it," his mother said, her tone practically dripping with maternal pride. "You grab the superglue and my boy will get to work.
Kevin sighed and picked up the largest shard of the tablet. His eyes skimmed the ragged edge and he searched through the debris for another piece that would match.
"How did it get broken?" his mother asked.
"Metatron was using it to tap into its power," Castiel said. "I had to break the connection, so I smashed it."
His mother nodded, looking amused. "You're rather violent for an angel, aren't you?"
"I am a soldier of God," Castiel said stiffly. "That requires a certain amount of violence."
Sam chuckled and met Kevin's eye. Kevin grinned and turned his attention back to the tablet. Sam was apparently having a good day, which was awesome as far as he was concerned, as Kevin had a proposal for Sam. He'd been rereading one of Edlund's books the night before while his mother slept, Hell House, and he'd discovered something about Sam and Dean that he couldn't believe he'd never realized before in all their time of knowing him: they were masters at pranks. While it was true things were serious, and there was work for them to do, there were so many hours in a day when you were a ghost and keeping things light was important to stop you going off the deep end. He had spent the night thinking of all the things he and Sam could use their incorporeal selves for, and screwing with Dean (and maybe Castiel) was top of that list.
As the last piece of the tablet fell into place almost thirty-minutes later, Kevin looked up and smiled. "Done."
"Didn't I tell you he'd do it," his mother said in the tone she used to reserve for boasting about test scores to the neighbors. "That's my Kevin."
"Nice one," Dean said enthusiastically.
"Well done," Castiel said dryly. "Now, translate."
Kevin raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I'm going to need a pen and some paper and…" He checked the time. "About six months."
"Seriously?" Dean asked, looking disheartened.
Kevin wondered idly if they all had amnesia. How else could you explain the fact they seemed to have forgotten that it took half a year to translate half a tablet, and that had been a cakewalk in comparison. It was like Metatron didn't want the tablet to be read by anyone when he'd written it, which, now whe came to think about it… Go figure.
"No, Dean," Sam said, his acerbic tone tempered by the amusement in his eyes. "Give him ten minutes and he'll be done."
"Really, Sammy, sarcasm?" Dean said with a quirked brow.
"Well you were being stupid," Sam said defensively. "He's going to need time and space to do this, and since you're the one that was determined to bring him into it, you can be in charge of delivering."
Kevin nodded and grinned. "Still, it won't be so bad. At least this time I won't need pee breaks."
So… Poor Kevin's back to hauling the prophet load and Sam is a toddler. Good times.
Hope you enjoyed. Until next time…
Clowns or Midgets xxx