Chapter 35 Neither Fish Nor Fowl
The motel room was clean but shabby, the carpet thin and knotty under their feet, the fabric of the upholstery and the linen threadbare. Dean looked mistrustfully at the wobbling chairs and uneven table and sat on the edge of the bed.
Meg was sleeping on the other bed. Castiel stood by the window, staring out at the gathering nightfall. Sam was in the bathroom, slathering the healing paste over the multi-coloured hues of his shoulder and willing it to heal faster.
"Why'd you lie to us, Cas?" Dean asked the angel.
For a moment, he thought Cas wouldn't answer, then he turned to him, the dark blue eyes a little lost.
"I don't know," he said, shifting a shoulder in an uncertain shrug. "I was afraid of too many knowing about the tablet, I suppose, afraid that it would be exposed."
"Exposed," Dean repeated. "By us."
Cas sighed. "You had the demon tablet and lost it, Dean. Is it so unreasonable?"
"Yes." Dean looked away. "No."
He wasn't sure. Wasn't sure that Cas was telling the truth now. Wasn't sure it wasn't a reasonable line of action to take. Just wasn't damned sure of anything.
"I'm sorry, Dean," Cas said, walking to the kitchen counter and leaning against it. "I know that … given our history … you must find it impossible to trust me now. I know that your trust has been abused too many times."
The apologetic and conciliatory tone of the angel's voice was going to fuck him up more than he could handle right now, he thought, looking away.
"Don't palm me off with that 'you're too precious for this world' shit, you sonofabitch," he said to Cas. "Are you setting us up here?"
"No," Cas said, relieved that that, at least, was the truth. "I'm not."
Sam came out of the bathroom, his face set as he ignored the pain and pulled on his jacket. "Dark yet?"
Dean nodded and stood up. "Wake Meg, we're going."
"So, this is it?" Meg asked, looking around as they walked from the car down to the river and the entrance to the building. "Basement?"
"And beyond," Castiel said, feeling eyes on him. He could no longer tell if they were real, and outside of him, or the eyes he could feel inside all the time.
Dean stopped by the doors. "Alright, Cas and I'll head inside and get our Indiana Jones on," he said, shifting his grip on the pair of shovels in his hand. "Sam, you stay out here with Meg, ward and lay down traps around every possible entrance."
"What?" Sam's head snapped around to look at his brother.
"We got this," Dean said, pulling the knife from his belt.
"What are you talking about, Dean, I'm not letting you go in there alone," Sam said, his gaze brushing over the angel as he stared at his brother.
"He won't be alone," Cas said mildly.
"That's not what I mean," Sam said impatiently. "Meg can hang here, watch our backs."
"Oh what, so now you trust Meg?" Dean asked derisively.
Meg looked at him, offended. "Hey, I got you this far –"
"Shut up, Meg," the brothers said in unison.
"Dean –"
"Sam," Dean cut him off, his voice a little louder. "Stop, okay? Just stop. I can hear the fucking coughing, I can see where you've been spitting up blood. Stop lying to me."
"Dean, I'm fine –"
"No, you're not," Dean said. "We don't know what's in there, and you almost let a demon get the best of you before. You're not fine."
"What happened to trusting me, Dean?"
Dean's face hardened. "The deal was off the second you started lying about being fucking fine! You haven't been fine since the first trial, that's why I called Cas."
Meg's brows rose. "Trial?"
"Shut up, Meg!" Dean and Sam said together again, and she bit back the next question.
"Dean," Sam said, checking the defensive anger that was rising, aware that it would only make his brother dig his heels in harder. "I'm telling you, I'm okay!"
"No, you're not," Castiel said unwillingly, turning to look at him. "Sam, you are damaged in ways even I can't heal."
Sam swallowed, fighting down the sudden urge to cough, the sudden fear that filled him.
Dean looked from the angel to his brother. That was worse, he thought. Cas could heal anything. Why not his brother?
"Dean's right," the angel continued. "You should stay here and protect Meg."
Meg snorted derisively. "Protect me from what?"
Castiel looked down at her. "From the demon who wants to rip you into little pieces and chew them up."
Meg remembered Crowley. For some reason, the four of them standing there together, she'd felt safe again. More than safe, she acknowledged reluctantly.
"Alright, we'll be back," Dean said, looking at Sam. Cas walked past him and Dean held out the knife, hilt first.
Meg's eyes widened a little as she saw Sam's internal debate. Something had really done a number on the trust between the brothers, she realised. More than their usual level of conflict. And the rage that had filled Sam, when she'd met him first, that was still there.
Sam took the knife and Dean turned away, following the angel into the building.
Dean caught up with Cas as he was pushing through the half-rotted door leading to the basement. He lifted the flashlight and took point, lengthening his stride slightly to draw ahead of the angel.
"Hey, what did you mean back there, about Sam?" he asked, not wanting to ask, having to anyway.
"It's difficult to explain," Cas said absently, his gaze scanning over the walls and floor for weaknesses in the fabric of the building's component materials. "There's something on the sub-molecular levels, some fundamental change that I can't discern properly. There's a problem with his electro-magnetic fields –"
Dean sighed. "Okay, bottom-line it for me, Spock. Is it lethal?"
"I don't know," Cas said with a shrug. "Wait."
He stopped in front of a section of wall. Dean moved the flashlight over the blocks that had been mortared together. They were a different size and shape to the rest of the wall, he realised. Had someone else been here before them?
"There's something behind here," Cas said, laying his hands along the wall. "Can you smell it?"
Dean nodded. A faint vagrant air brushed by him, carrying the distinctive and unpleasantly familiar odour of brimstone.
"Step back," Cas told him, and he backed to the opposite wall, starting as he hit a fire hose reel.
The angel closed his eyes and changed the frequency of the waves of energy inside the blocks and the mortar, making them discordant, the protons and neutrons and electrons dancing apart now, faster and faster. A crack appeared beneath Cas' hand, zig-zagging across the face of the wall as the stone collapsed internally, its nature altered from a solid matrix to the individual elements.
Dean lifted his arm over his face as the cracks multiplied and spread, and the blocks just began disintegrating, falling inwards and out into the hallway, stone dust and small fragments rising in the narrow corridor, a growing hole appearing in the wall.
Didn't need those, he thought, setting the shovels down against the wall behind him. Cas walked through the hole and he followed him, the flashlight beam flickering over a narrow tunnel, the walls crudely carved from the soft rock beneath the building, and leading to a set of stairs that went down into the earth.
Meg shook up the spray can of paint and drew a perfect circle on the concrete apron outside the door. "I took how many bullets for you guys, and you didn't even look for me?"
She straightened up and looked at Sam. "Not once?"
Sam looked back at her. It had honestly never even occurred to him to look for Meg. He'd had more than enough things to do when Crowley had left with Kevin.
"My hero," Meg said mockingly.
She looked at the door and drew out the Enochian wards carefully. "What's with all this 'trial' and being damaged crap?"
Sam finished his sigil and turned to her. "Look, no offence, but you haven't exactly been the most trustworthy person in our lives, Meg."
"You're not going to tell me," she said as he turned back to the wall. "Seriously! How am I not Team Sam?"
He glanced back at her, face screwing up a little at the comment.
"Fine," she said, looking back over what she'd done. "Whatever it is, are you okay with dying over it?"
There was still no response from Sam and she decided she needed to crank up the pressure just a teensy little bit.
"You don't want to say, fine, but remember, I spent time in that walking corpse of yours," she told him. "I know all your sad little thoughts and feelings."
Sam looked at her. "That's creepy."
She laughed a little, at herself. "Yeah, isn't it? You want to know what I remember, Sam? Deep down, in the parts of you that you never let see the light of day, you want to live a long, normal life away from creepy old things like me."
"Yeah, I do," he said bluntly, and she hid her surprise at his honesty.
"I spent last year with – someone, and I know now that – it's actually possible."
Meg tilted her head to one side as she studied him. "You knew that before, Sam."
He shook his head. "No. I thought it was, and then they killed Jess and I realised we'd never be free."
"All that Azazel and Lucifer stuff is over now, Sam," Meg said softly. "You've been free to walk off the battlefield for a while."
"It didn't feel like that," he said. "Until –"
"Until?" Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, thinking over all that she knew of him, about him, from the inside out. "Until Deano was gone as well? Oh my, you actually lost your brother too?"
Sam looked away, his jaw tightening. "Why don't we just wait quietly?"
Meg smiled as he walked stiffly past her to paint another symbol on the wall. "So … you spent the last year living in normal. With a chick?"
Sam didn't answer and she walked a little past him to see his face. "What was her name?"
The hiss of the spray paint filled the silence between them.
"Come on, you don't even trust me with a name?" she tried again. "Cut me, do I not bleed, Sam?"
He turned around and looked down at her. "Don't push at me, Meg."
"So … Dean went AWOL and some chick actually got you off hunting, huh?"
His lips thinned out as he saw the mix of pain and enjoyment in her eyes. She tormented as easily as breathing, but there was more there now, a genuine curiosity … perhaps. Or something deeper than that … a yearning for something she would never know?
"That's one rare and unusual creature," she continued, more gently. "Tell me, Sammy, how'd you meet this unicorn?"
"Stand back, Dean," Cas said as he looked at the door set into the rock. "The air will be noxious."
Dean flashed the light behind him and walked back to the foot of the uneven stone stairs, hyperventilating to fill his blood with oxygen as the angel broke through the ancient locks on the door carved from the rock. It opened and the stale air, evil-smelling and poisonous, was drawn past him as he held his breath, up the stairs and out by the draughts from above. He thought they might be sixty or seventy feet below ground level. He was surprised that the place hadn't been flooded out when the river had overflowed. There was no sign of water incursion here.
Cas turned back to him, nodding. "It's better."
Walking to the doorway, Dean looked inside, the flashlight beam moving slowly over the walls and the floor and the low stone ceiling, looking for anything that might be a booby-trap or something worse, designed to kill him when he took his first step inside. Nothing leapt out at him when he tossed a small rock into the room, feeling absurdly like Indiana Jones in that moment.
"Think we're good," he murmured to the angel beside him as he stepped into the room.
It was dark but the flashlight's beam showed him the torches, held in metal sconces around the walls. He walked to the nearest and pulled out his lighter, flicking it on and touching the flame to the top of the bone-dry wood. It burst into fire, giving off a mildly familiar scent, oil of some kind, he thought. Going to the next, he lit that one, and crossed the room to the other side, lighting two more there.
Then he turned back to look around. Perhaps forty feet by forty, the room had been hewn from the rock and lined with blocks and columns of stone, the floor smoothed, set with broad stone pavers, the joins filled with centuries of sand and dirt. Several chests, built of stone and timber, stood against the walls and in the centre a square stone block held a peculiarly shaped box, with a ridged pyramidical top. He looked at the objects, all coated with a fine, grey dust, inches thick, curiously giving them the same bland look as the Morton woman's scale model of the town. He wondered where to start looking.
"I found it," Cas said to Naomi. She turned to look at him, her storm-wrack eyes widening.
"Tell Winchester that the crypt is empty, then you can come back –" she said quickly.
Cas shook his head, cutting her off. "It's warded against angels."
"But you can come back –"
"Crowley's demons are still in town. We're running out of time," Cas interrupted her. "What should I do?"
Naomi looked at him. "Handle it!"
"Dean," Cas said, pointing to the other side of the room. "That's it."
Dean turned to look at the carved box sitting on a low chest. "How do you know?"
"It's the only thing in here warded against angels," Cas told him, an edge to his voice.
Walking over to the box, Dean looked down at it. The sigils and carvings were familiar.
"Lucifer was an angel," he said. "He couldn't touch this either?"
"Safer that way," Cas suggested. "Move it to the altar, you'll have more light."
Dean picked up the box, surprised a little at the weight. Under the dust, it could've been stone or wood. He was glad it was wood. The angel was right, he had more light here. He could see the lock that held the lid closed. Picking up a long, wickedly sharp knife from the stone table, he slid it under the lid, levering it upwards and hearing the lock break apart under the pressure.
He lifted the lid, and saw the chunk of stone that rested inside, glancing up at Cas with a slight, one-sided smile. "Winner, winner, chicken dinner."
"Good," Cas said, relief filling him that the tablet was finally safe. The relief seemed to be outside of himself, but it was too strong to question. "Hand it to me and I'll take it to Heaven."
Dean looked at him, his fingers unconsciously curling tighter around the stone in his hands as the nerves at the back of his neck began to twitch and prickle uncomfortably. "No. We'll take it to Kevin, so he can translate it."
"Right." Cas nodded without missing a beat. "Of course, I'll take it to him right away." He looked down at the stone. "No time to waste."
The prickling sensation got stronger. "Well, he's not that far," he said, with an attempt at a smile. "I've been meaning to go check on him … bring him some supplies."
Castiel looked at him in frustration. If the demons get their hands on the angel tablet, they'll kill us all – they will destroy Heaven! Naomi's voice cut sharply through the doubt he felt. Dean was wary. He'd been too eager, stirring the man's instincts. Instincts the angel knew were razor-sharp, honed by a lifetime of danger.
I can reason with Dean, he told himself, told Naomi. He's a good man.
Kill him.
"I can re-supply the prophet, Dean," he said walking around the altar toward him.
"You know, why don't Sam and I take it to him?" Dean said, moving around the altar slightly to keep it between them as the angel approached him. "And you can get back to your mission. Finding the other half of the demon tablet … that is the priority, isn't it?"
Fuck, he thought, watching the remnants of the angel's helpful expression fall away, leaving only an expressionless chill in Cas' eyes.
"I can't let you take that, Dean," Cas said quietly.
"Can't? Or won't?" he asked the angel to buy a little more thinking time. He was fucking well hamstrung here, he knew, the tablet too heavy to hold one-handed, too damned important to put down and what would that gain anyway? He'd been one-on-one with Cas before. Nerdy little guy had the punch of a falling tree and a jaw like iron. He'd broken all the knuckles of his hand trying to take him.
"Both," Castiel said.
Dean walked back toward him, looking down at the stone he held. He lifted his gaze as he stopped in front of Castiel.
"How did you get out of Purgatory, Cas?"
"There has to be another way," Castiel said to the red-haired angel desperately.
"You've done this a thousand times, Castiel," Naomi insisted. "Kill him. Then take the tablet and bring it home, where it belongs."
Kill him. His friend. The human being who had changed everything he'd ever thought or believed, who'd shown him what it meant to be truly committed to something, to truly believe that right … and good … had to triumph over evil even if the cost was everything, the man who'd trapped an archangel with him, faced off the devil, forgiven him, called to him and prayed to him for help when he would ask no one else.
"Just tell me how you got out of Purgatory," Dean said, looking at him. "Be honest with me, for the first time since you've been back, and this is yours."
Cas took another step toward him, and the angel sword slid from his sleeve to drop into his hand.
Dean looked down at the slight sound, and he felt that much-patched together and seamed trust that he'd held for the angel dissolve at the sight of the short, slender blade.
"Cas," he said, meeting the angel's cold eyes. "Cas, I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but if you're in there and you can hear me, you don't have to do this!"
The angel walked toward him.
"There's one part I don't understand," Meg said, looking up at Sam. "You hit a dog … and stopped? Why?"
Sam's gaze cut away from her as he tried to wrap his head around the question. "That whole story … and that's your takeaway?"
"No," she said earnestly. "I heard the rest … you fell in love with a unicorn. It was beautiful, then sad, then sadder. I laughed, I cried. I puked in my mouth, a little."
Sam looked at the wall, tipping his head back. When would he learn that the monsters weren't suitable confidants? When would he get that simple fact that demons had lost their souls?
Meg watched him. "And honestly? I kind of get it," she said unwillingly.
He heard the change in her tone and looked at her. "Really?"
For a moment, that tough-don't-give-a-damn-sarcastic-laugh-at-pain façade dropped from her vessel's face and he saw again the bone-deep yearning he'd glimpsed before, underlaid with a sorrow that seemed so human he almost couldn't believe it. Her eyes cut away from him, brighter than they should've been in the light of the streetlights behind them and he saw her mouth tighten.
Then it was gone, and she focussed abruptly, her eyes narrowing as her gaze shifted past him. "We've got company."
Sam looked around and saw the demons walking toward them. "Back."
Castiel swung the sword and Dean lifted the rock to block the blow without thinking. When the blade edge touched the stone, light exploded from it, the reverberations from the hit racing through Dean's fingers and hands, into his wrists and up his arms to the shoulder, a tingling flush of power as if he'd touched a high voltage line for a micro-second.
Cas felt the same power travel back through the sword into his vessel, shocking him to stillness for a moment as his eyes slitted against the brightness.
"This isn't right," he told Naomi, pacing agitatedly around the shining room.
"Do you realise what that tablet can do for us?" Naomi demanded. The conditioning should be holding more strongly than this, there should've been no doubts, no uncertainty in the angel's mind. "For Heaven?"
"I won't hurt Dean," Cas said suddenly, stopping and staring at her. He couldn't. Not again.
"Yes," she said, her voice dropping. "You will. You are."
The schism split then, dividing him into two. And he saw the purpose of the conflict in the orders. To fracture him from his vessel. So that another could control it. So that another could use it to act through him. He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes in pain. He needed to get back, back into the other half of him, before he killed his friend.
"Cas! Fight this!" Dean shouted at him, backing away. "This is not you! FIGHT IT!"
In the crypt under the ground, the angel that looked like Castiel and held a part of his celestial song at least, raised the sword again, swinging it hard at the man. It hit the stone and Castiel dropped to his knees in the room of reflections, the pain flaring, an agonising supernova in his mind, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, his senses transmitted from Jimmy's body to his mind, unable to reach past the smooth and shining wall to get back there, back to the rest of himself.
He stared at Naomi. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?"
"Just relax, Castiel," she said pityingly. "Let your vessel do what you know, deep down, is the right thing."
Dean looked at him as he turned away, his head dropping.
"What have you done to me, Naomi?" Cas muttered.
"Who's Naomi?" Dean said loudly, wondering if he could get through – if he was getting through.
"What have I done to you?" Naomi yelled at him, her hands curling into fists. "Have you any idea of what it's like out there? There's blood … everywhere! And it's on your hands! After everything you did, to us … to Heaven. I fixed you, Castiel, I've put in failsafes so that you cannot betray us again," she said furiously. "I fixed you!"
"Cas!" Dean stepped to him, putting his hand on the angel's shoulder. Castiel lifted his head, snapping around to look at the man beside him. His arm swung out, hitting Dean across the chest, the power of it lifting him off his feet and throwing him across the crypt to hit the wall above the chest. He fell to the ground, feeling the creak and grinding of fractured ribs, a dull throb at the back of his head, the nauseating disorientation of a really good hit to the head.
'How many?" Sam asked Meg in a low voice, seeing the movement in the darkness.
"Four – no, five," she said, shifting her grip on the angel sword.
The first three rushed them and Sam moved sideways, drawing two of them after him, aware that his shoulder felt stiff and he couldn't compensate for it, would have to fight through that unresponsiveness.
Meg swung the sword, ducking under the demon's reach, blocking its attempt to stab her with the length of metal pipe it held and driving the sword smoothly in and under the ribs. She was peripherally aware of Sam, seeing him go down to one knee as the demon hit his right shoulder with the pipe, striking precisely over the existing injury, but she didn't have time to get to him. Spinning low, she stabbed backward, feeling the sword tip punch through the abdomen of a demon behind her, yanking it out as she rolled forward and slashed with a long sideways cut across the backs of the knees of the demon that sprang over her. It screamed in rage or pain, she wasn't interested which, and fell face down and she drove the sword into its back, rolling to her feet at the same time.
Sam had killed one demon, but his right arm was hanging loose by his side and the second demon had a long length of metal pipe, jabbing it at him and driving him back. She was running and then jumping, her knee striking the demon's arm and chest, knocking it down to the ground and following the thrust of the sword in through its ribs with her own weight.
Sam staggered backward as Meg appeared from nowhere, watching the brilliant fiery light as it flickered and died in the man under her. She got up, pulling the sword free and turned to him. From deep within the building there was a crash of thunder and they both spun around.
Dean rolled over and put his free hand on the ground, pushing hard to get his knees under him, the weight of the tablet pulling him to one side as his rib ends grated against each other. He glanced around the room, unable to see the angel and shifted the stone against his side, heading for the doorway.
Cas was in front of him. He stopped and tightened his grip on the stone. The angel's stare was almost lifeless and the thought flicked through his mind that he'd seen Cas like this before. Before he'd killed Alfie.
There wasn't going to be any getting around him, he knew. He'd have to go through. The jab wasn't telegraphed at all, but the angel intercepted it anyway, hand closing around his fist like a vice, and Castiel twisted his arm along the fulcrum of the joints. He heard the crunch at the same time as pain flooded his nervous system, wrist and elbow joints both shattered, twisted past their limits, the shoulder joint popping out of its socket and the stretched and torn muscles bleeding under the skin.
Dean let go of the rock-enclosed tablet as he was forced backward and down, and the outer covering smashed on the concrete floor, freeing the harder stone within. Inside the crypt, there was a crash of thunder and a brilliant bolt of argentine light and every torch was blown out, pitching them into a dimness lit only by the flickers of blue-white light that crawled from the tablet, across the floor and around the surfaces of the walls and ceiling.
Castiel swung his fist, and Dean's head snapped back from the blow, his skull ringing with the force, old fracture lines from past injuries opening and widening. He could feel blood trickling down his skin, the sensation featherlight compared to the depth of pain along the side of his head.
The second blow was harder, and he realised that he was going to lose his vision as spots danced in front of his eyes and a grey mist gathered at the edges. The automaton in front of him wasn't Cas, he thought incoherently. Wasn't the angel, at least, not all of him.
Not him, so push hard, get through, he told himself, rocking back onto his knees and looking up at the angel. Get through any way you can.
"You want it?" he challenged, watching the angel's head turn to look at the tablet. "Take it! But you're going to have to kill me first."
Castiel looked back down at him, his expression unchanged.
"Come on, you coward, do it!" he snarled. "Do it!"
The angel's fist hit him along the jaw and he heard the break, inside his head, falling back and yanked forward by the angel's grip on his broken arm, a groan forcing its way out through his teeth as agony sheeted through him.
He didn't see the next one, just felt the weight of it against his cheek, along the eye socket, starbursts against the blackness and a great rolling wave freezing up his muscles, making them twitch and jump.
Castiel crouched in front of Naomi, looking up at her, his face pale with shock. "Please …"
"End this, Castiel!" she commanded him and down in the crypt, his vessel obeyed, the connection between them thin and growing thinner.
"Cas …" Dean spat out a mouthful of blood, feeling it coursing down the back of his throat, its coppery taste coating his tongue and filling his nose. He looked up at the angel, seeing him flat and dimensionless, one eye already swollen closed, the other trying to focus. "This isn't you … c'mon, this isn't you …"
"Bring me the tablet," Naomi leaned close to him, the spittle flying from her lips with the force of her order.
There was nothing solid left in the side of his face, Dean thought, feeling the bones move and shift under the last blow. The eye socket was smashed, and he thought that the bone fragments would probably work back in time. Very little time. Everything hurt, a sea of pain, a morass of nerves shrieking at him with all that was wrong, all that was broken. He would pass out soon, he knew. And then Cas would kill him.
He'd wanted to believe that the angel had come back okay. That what had happened in the past could stay in the past and he could have his friend back. Christ, he'd lost them all, one after another. Why was it too much to fucking ask for one friend. Just one. Nothing could ever go back. Nothing ever stayed the same. That wish, that endless, helpless hope killed him over and over again.
"Cas … Cas," he said, sucking down a mouthful of air along with a throatful of blood. "Cas …"
His eye focussed and he saw the glint from the sword's edge as Castiel lifted it. No. No, come on, he still had work to do, still had to close the gates of Hell, protect Sammy while his brother did that, still had to see the fucking Grand Canyon, Hefner's ranch … shit, still had to figure out so much stuff, he wasn't ready to goddamn well die yet.
He wanted to live.
"I know you can hear me," he said, the words coming out mushy through a broken mouth. He was swaying on his knees, held upright only by the angel's grip on his shattered right arm. "Cas … it's me …we're family …"
Were they? He wondered suddenly. Were they still the brothers in arms they'd started out as? Did angels care about people … ever? Anna had come back from a tour in Heaven conditioned to kill. What did they do to them up there?
"We need you," he said, swallowing as his blood bubbled in his airway. "Cas, please …"
"You have to choose, Castiel," Naomi said, as the angel in front of her stared unseeingly through her. The connection was thin, she could control the vessel but the mind within it, that mind was here and she still needed him, still needed him to be a soldier, even once the Winchesters were dead. "Us? Or them?"
"Cas," Dean gasped out, the grey mists closing at the edges of his sight, each beat of his heart fluxing the pain stronger and brighter and sharper through him. He was dying. The realisation wasn't surprising, exactly. But he didn't want to.
Castiel dropped the sword and his fingers uncurled from their grip on Dean's arm. He watched as Dean crumpled, bent protectively over the limb, his fading consciousness shocked into returning with the fierce and excruciating pain that shot up his arm when he hit the ground.
The connection between the vessel and the angel was gone, and he turned away from the man in front of him, knowing he was dying, finding little of interest in the thought. The tablet lay on the ground next to him, and he bent slowly, reaching out for it.
When he touched the stone, he felt it. It filled him with all the things he'd forgotten, all the reasons he'd once had for believing. Light speared out from the undecipherable markings, brightening and brightening as he straightened up. White light. Filling the crypt. Filling the room of reflections. Filling the angel.
The connection was restored. Instantly. Perfectly. And the constructs that had been jerry-rigged into his mind … Naomi's failsafes, he thought, very distantly … they were swept aside and burned up as if they'd never existed. What remained was … Castiel. And only him.
Dean closed his eye, a deep groan reverberating in his chest as he lifted his arm to shield them from the light.
Naomi spun away, as light flared in the room and vanished, the angel with it. Leaving her alone.
Cas looked down at the tablet.
He remembered everything. With a cool, clear clarity that he hadn't felt since before he'd been commanded by an archangel to do God's work and raise a soul from the depths of Hell. He remembered faith and obedience. He remembered rebellion and doubt. He remembered feeling lost and alone. He remembered the warmth of the casual affection that the man in front of him had bestowed. He remembered his fear and his certainty and his yearning for a father that seemed to have abandoned them all. He remembered pride. And betrayal. And the look in Dean's eyes when he'd finally accepted that the angel had lied. Had lied to him. And he remembered dying and being resurrected, again and again. He remembered wanting to hide and the moment when he'd decided to stop running. He remembered his acts of unholy wrath and the contrition, his feeling that he could never be forgiven for what he'd done and what he'd felt. He remembered his penance.
What he couldn't do was feel it. Any of it.
"Cas …"
He looked down at Dean again.
Dying.
That he could prevent. He reached out and Dean flinched away from him, and he felt. The man was afraid of him. Afraid that he was going to kill him. Afraid that Castiel was a stranger.
"No … Cas. Cas!" Dean turned away, his uninjured arm lifted in a pitiful attempt to stop the next blow. Cas ignored it, laying his fingers along the side of Dean's face and neck, feeling the energy of the universe slip through him, as easily as water through the mesh of a net, from him into the man arched back in pain before him.
Every cell knew how it should be. Every single one knew where it belonged. He asked them to return to their correct state, to their correct places. And so it was.
Leaning back, Cas looked down at him. "So sorry, Dean."
Dean dragged in a breath. It came easily and painlessly, filling his lungs, his chest rising and falling effortlessly. He looked at his arm, the memory of seeing it bent and twisted and broken at every angle still there, but the arm straight and whole.
"What the hell just happened?" he asked the angel.
"I believe they're playing my song," Crowley said from behind them, as the echoes of the thunder rolled away.
Meg and Sam turned and moved together to clear ground. Crowley leaned up against the side of the building, looking around casually.
"Love what you've done with the place," the King of Hell remarked. "You really think all that –" He gestured at the painted walls. " – is going to keep me out, forever?"
"At least long enough for Dean and Cas to get the tablet and get out," Sam said, trying to ignore the weakness that seemed to fill his right side.
"Castiel," Crowley repeated disenchantedly. "So that's who's been poking my boys …and not in a sexy way."
Sam met the demon's gaze steadily, the corner of his mouth lifting very slightly.
Crowley stared back. "I've got a bone to pick with you, Moose. After what you did to my poor dog."
Meg felt a shiver run up her spine at the threat in Crowley's voice. He was attached to the hellhounds. More so than anything else, she thought. He'd certainly want to gut Sam if the youngest Winchester had killed a hound.
"Are you going to talk us to death, or get down to it already?" she asked mockingly, drawing his attention.
"There's my whore," Crowley said, looking at her. "I'm not here for my dearly departed, though. I'm here for the stone with the funny scribbles on it."
"That's not going to happen," Sam said, straightening a little more.
Crowley's gaze slid back to him. "Love it when you get all manly and tough," he said, his expression derisive. "Touches me right where my bathing suit goes."
He drew the angel sword from the slim sheath at his hip and Meg turned to Sam.
"Go," she told him, her voice holding a whiplash of command. "Save your brother and … my unicorn."
Sam turned and ran for the door as Crowley stepped closer to Meg.
"Timon and Pumbaa, tell you their big plan?" Crowley said, walking past her. "Did they share that little chestnut with you?"
Meg's hand tightened around the hilt of the sword as she turned slowly to face him. This is it, kiddo. No pizza deliveries, no furniture moving, just an opportunity to get some long-awaited payback from the demon who'd claimed the throne of Hell. He wasn't one of the Fallen. He was an ordinary demon, made from a human soul. He would die on the point of the angelic sword she held, regal powers or not.
"They mean to close the gates of Hell, sweetheart," Crowley said, raising his voice slightly for effect. "They mean to kill me. And all the demons. You included."
Meg snorted in delight. "You had me at 'kill you', Crowley."
He nodded, looking away, and the sword hissed as he turned back to her, arm swinging fast, the edges gleaming in the streetlights.
She was waiting for it, and she skittered backwards, changing direction fast when he overbalanced, too sure of the hit, her sword's edge cutting through his suit and scoring along his side. He was too quick for her to penetrate deeply and she spun away, dropping and rolling clear as he snarled in pain at the light slice.
"Bloody Savile Row suit and you've cut it to ribbons," he snapped, looking at the gaping hole.
"Will you shut up," Meg said, her voice utterly bored. "I would die happily if it meant I didn't have to listen any more of your fatuous, immature observations about the state of anything."
It wasn't hard to enrage Crowley, she knew. He had an Alaska-sized chip on his shoulder about a lot of things, enough insecurity to make the Winchesters look well-adjusted and he was surprisingly touchy about his appearance. But he was vindictive and he was stronger, faster and more skilled than she was with the weapon he carried. It wasn't a safe game to play with him.
"Oh you'll die, darling," he told her, the black glint in his eyes telling her she'd struck gold with the remark. "It won't be happily, of course. Or quickly. Or easily. But you'll die."
He lunged for her and she stumbled over the loose footing behind her, twisting frantically aside as she fell, feeling his hand brush through her hair and catch a handful. She threw herself to one side, her scalp ripping as her hair remained his grip, blood trickling down her neck.
"I'll take you a handful at time, Meg," Crowley promised her, opening his fingers and shaking the long, blonde strands from his palm.
"Honestly, Crowley," she said, glancing behind her to make sure there was nothing that could trip her up again. "You were happy when you handled all the crossroads deals."
"I was," Crowley agreed readily. "Born to sell, really."
"Why a shot at the title then?"
"Ambition, Meg," he told her dryly. "Something you never dreamed of, with your Lucifer fixation. The downfall of many."
He feinted to the right and she dodged left, backpedalling hard as he shifted his weight and his fist flew into her face, her nose breaking under it. Dropping at his feet, she swung one straight leg hard, and he fell as his legs were swept from under him, her angel's sword driving deep through his thigh and red-gold light pulsed around it. He rolled fast and she only just pulled the sword out before he could roll on top of it.
"You fucking little bitch," he said, getting awkwardly to his feet, sweat beaded his forehead as he shifted his weight from the injured leg.
"Ah," she said, forcing herself to speak without gasping. "Sweet nothings from the tailor from Scotland. I'll pass."
He closed faster than she could believe, one hand gripping the front of her jacket and holding her tight, the other curled around the sword's hilt and slamming into her ribs, and her jaw, in quick succession, before she could lift the blade in her hand. He thrust her backwards and she twisted away, narrowly missing the protruding pipe that he'd no doubt intended to spit her on.
"Feeling tired yet, Meg?"
"Not even close," she said, registering the flex of her ribs as she took a breath. It wasn't bad enough to slow her down.
The sword scored across her face, leaving a shallow furrow from the corner of her mouth to her eyebrow and she stumbled away from him, trying to ride the blows he rained down on her. The kick hit her in the ribs, at the back, the same side as the previous one, and the ends of the ribs bent inwards, sending a deep, stabbing pain through her lungs as she fell to the ground.
"This … Naomi … has been controlling you since she got you out of Purgatory?" Dean asked Castiel. It explained a lot of what had gone since the angel had come out of Purgatory, but at the same time it was setting off every alarm he had about what was happening in Heaven.
"Yes," Cas said, looking down at the tablet.
"What broke the connection?" Dean asked, uneasy with the confusion on Cas' face.
"I don't know," he said. "This … perhaps. There was a wall … in my mind."
He looked at Dean. "I couldn't break through it. When I picked this up, it vanished. Just disappeared. And I came back to here, back to myself."
"What'd she do to you?"
"She built things, I think. Planted false memories and false ideas," Cas said slowly. "I'm not sure how … but when I disobeyed, there was a split, and she could take over."
Dean looked down at the tablet in the angel's hands. With angels like that around, were they any safer than with the demons? Had God provided instructions for humanity to close Heaven as well? In case of general craziness?
Cas saw the direction of his gaze and his fingers tightened on the stone. "I just know that I have to protect this tablet now."
"From Naomi," Dean said warily. He didn't know the angel who was standing in front of him, he realised. Didn't know what he could trust and what he couldn't. Didn't know if this Castiel cared at all about him.
"Yes." Castiel hesitated and looked back at him. "And from you."
"From me? What are you talking about –" Dean stopped as the angel disappeared, the flutter of his wings loud in the small, enclosed space.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, looking around the room. What the hell had Cas meant? That they were a danger to Heaven? Or that they would want to use the tablet to shut Heaven off from this plane, as they would do with Hell?
"Cas?" He took a step forward. The angel was gone and he knew it. "Cas, godammit!"
"Dean?" Sam burst through the doorway, looking around. "Dean, where's Cas?"
"He's gone," Dean said shortly. "Meg?"
Sam shook his head. "We gotta go … now."
Dean followed Sam up the curving, narrow stairs, stopping as Sam hesitated beside the side door. It was a few feet to the car but both of them looked at the fight thirty yards away, in front of the main door. Even in the washed-out, greyish light of the streetlamps, they could see that Meg was staggering, covered in blood.
"We should help her," Sam said very softly.
Dean shook his head. "With what? You want to take on Crowley, give him a chance to take one or both of us hostage and force Cas into handing over the tablet?"
"But –"
Dean watched Meg go down, roll over fast and struggle to her knees again, her eyes fixed on Crowley. She was buying them time, he knew. Time to get out. To get away. If they wasted her efforts …
"Go," he told his brother. "Now."
Crowley walked to her, reaching down and grasping a handful of her jacket and shirt and hauling her to her feet in front of him.
"I could beat on you for eternity," he said in a low voice to her.
"Take all the time you – want – you – pig," she said, swallowing the blood that kept running down the back of her throat.
The squeak of the Impala's doors caught her attention and she looked past him to the car, forcing a smile as she saw his expression.
"No Cas in the back seat." Her voice bubbled slightly. "Your stone is long gone."
He was still looking over his shoulder at the car. She didn't know where she found the strength to lift the sword, lift it and drive it into his arm, but she did, and he screamed as the wound lit up their faces in red and gold. Her eyes cut to the car, and she saw their faces, both of them looking back at her as she pulled the sword from Crowley's arm. His sword drove into her chest and the heat and fire and pain and blood burned up inside of her, incinerating the twisted and blackened remains of her soul. Peace, she thought as she disappeared.
Crowley dragged the sword out of her meatsuit and let her fall, and the Impala's tyres poured smoke as Dean stepped on the gas. The car shot out of the building's yard, squealing as it made the first corner.
He watched it go, and turned back to the building. Lucifer's crypts, he thought. The fallen angel still had the power to send an icy shard of fear through him, even as he tried to mock the melodramatic grandeur that Lucifer had surrounded himself with. Angels were too powerful. That's all it was, he told himself.
Sam had missed a window and he was inside, skirting the traps that Dean or possibly Castiel had made, on their way in. In a rush, and that's what you get. He inched his way around a trap that almost, but not quite, filled a doorway to the basement.
The hole in the wall and the staircase were a surprise. He wondered vaguely what had hidden them back in the days before people had been here. The crypt was not empty. There were things of interest in it. But the stone was gone. And it would be in Heaven by now, he realised, safe beyond his ability to retrieve it.
He looked up as he sensed a displacement of air.
"Naomi." He walked slowly around the room toward her. "Fancy meeting you here. Haven't seen you in a … dark …age."
She looked at him impatiently, standing beyond the threshold.
"Love the haircut." Crowley stopped by the altar and smiled at her.
She smiled back reluctantly. "How's the shoulder?"
"Just a flesh wound," Crowley said, glancing down at it. He still couldn't believe he'd let the little whore get the drop on him and force him into killing her with a single blow. She'd been clever, Meg had. He could admit to that. He looked at the angel.
"Now, I don't have the tablet, and if you're here … neither do you," Crowley said conversationally. "Which means that your Castiel is in the wind with our prize. If I didn't know you better, I'd say you're losing your touch."
Naomi smiled condescendingly at him. "Castiel isn't 'in the wind', Crowley. He's doing exactly what he's supposed to do. Protecting the tablet."
"Even from you?" Crowley guessed, his mouth curving up as he saw the smugness fade from her face. "Easy, love. If you remember our time in Spain the way I do, you know … I'm a lover, not a fighter."
"What do you want, you cockroach?" she snapped at him. The assignation in Madrid had started out as business. She didn't care to remember the rest.
His low laughter echoed quietly around the room. "Ah, pressed the right button there, didn't I? Maybe … we can make a deal." He turned away from her. "Before this gets truly bollocksed."
He stopped, looking around the dust-filled room casually. "I mean, I must have something that you want?"
There was no response and he turned to look at the doorway. It was empty. "Tart stole my move."
I-80 W Missouri
Sam thought over everything that Dean had told him. "So, what happened? Cas touched the tablet and it reset him to his factory settings or something?"
"He thought so," Dean said tersely. "I don't know. And I don't care. All I know is that he is off the reservation with a heavenly WMD."
In his brother's voice, Sam could hear an edge that hadn't been there since Dean had gotten out of Purgatory. An edge that he knew was the pressure cooker on in Dean again. It wasn't just Cas' defection or the loss of the angel tablet. It wasn't just that his brother had, again, lost a friend.
"Listen, man, I can't take any more lies," Dean said, his fingers curling tighter around the wheel as he glanced at Sam. "From anyone."
Sam met his look and understood what he was saying. He should've told him, he thought. Not let it get this far, this bad.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I should've told you."
Dean straightened a little and Sam realised that it'd been a while since he'd apologised to Dean. Apologised for doing something he'd known would worry his brother, known would probably make him crazy.
"I just wanted to believe I was okay … I don't know," he tried to explain that feeling. He'd wanted to believe that it wasn't happening to him, and that was familiar. Was he still running from himself?
"Well, you heard what Cas said," Dean said, fear thrumming under the words, lacing his voice. "That first trial hurt you in ways that he can't heal."
Dean looked back at the road. "Sammy, I need you to be honest with me from here on out, man."
"You're right," Sam agreed readily. "And I will be."
For a second, he sensed a loosening in his brother. The skin over his knuckles returned to pink, not the white they'd been a moment ago.
"Listen," Dean said, sucking in a deeper breath as he stared at the road. "So long as we've got each other's backs, we can get through anything, Sam. Always have been able to … and we always will be able to."
"Yeah, I know." Sam looked out the window. "But it goes both ways, Dean. It has to."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I'll be honest with you. I won't lie. I won't pretend that things aren't happening when they are. But you have to do the same thing," he said slowly. "If you're dying inside because of something, you have to tell me. Even if there's nothing anyone can do about it. Because if you don't, it eats at you and I don't know what the hell is happening."
Dean was silent for a while and Sam wondered if he was going to accept that condition, or if they'd fall back into the old habits, as they'd done a hundred times before.
"That's … fair," his brother said finally, nodding. "I can probably do that."
"Okay."
"Okay then."
The silence that filled the car was not exactly easy, but not really demanding, Dean decided. Another truce. He reached out and turned on the radio, not wanting to start that little arrangement this minute.
He could try, he guessed. It took him a long time to get the crap in his head organised enough to tell anyone about it. Took him a long time to understand what had been broken and why. The anger was dissipating. It would come back, he knew, when he thought about Cas again. Or Benny. Or any of the others he'd tried to lean on and had had to let go.
He could trust Sam to a certain extent. Perhaps enough, perhaps not. He couldn't predict that. He didn't think that he would find anyone else. Not to trust. Not to lean on. Not to … believe in, he thought, brows drawing together slightly as he looked for the definition of what it was he wanted. He didn't know. He was alive. Sam was alive. Kevin was working his ass off, hopefully. They had a job and … and Cas had disappeared, with a tablet of God, and there was no telling what the sonofabitch was going to do.
He healed you.
Yeah, he had. Beaten him practically to the point of death then made it all right again. But it wasn't right. For him it was a long, long way from being right. He thought Cas had a made a choice. Not Heaven and not him, not humanity. Cas was walking his own road now. And there was no room for friends on that road.
He wanted to go back and that was never going to happen. All his best times were back. He shrugged inwardly at the thought. All his worst times were back as well. That was the nature of it, everything was back.
At least Meg was free of it all now. No Heaven but no Hell either. Just nothingness? He didn't know. He hoped that whatever had happened to her, it was at least missing the misery that seemed to dog them all.
The bus was almost empty, most of the seats unoccupied. Castiel looked down at the tablet in his hands, his fingers caressing the engraved symbols. It had saved him, he thought absently. He would save it.
No one would find him. He knew how to be invisible and untraceable. He'd spent almost two thousand years on this little planet, watching humanity, invisible and utterly without a connection of any sort. He could do it again. He would do it again to keep the tablet safe.
Feeling had returned to him. In thin trickling threads and barely noticeable impulses. It would get stronger, he thought, if he remained with people. He knew how to interact with them now. The temptations to talk, to listen, to hear … they would be great. And then there was always the chance he would want to talk to one person. And he couldn't let that happen.
He'd left Dean with the impression that he'd chosen the tablet over his friendship and the fate of humanity. He'd seen the fresh pain of betrayal in the man's eyes as he'd watched that absorbed. It was poor repayment for the loyalty and everything he'd learned from him. He wasn't sure how much damage he'd done with that decision. Perhaps, some day, he would be able to find out, make amends. Probably not, he told himself prosaically. Dean was stronger than he believed, stronger than he imagined. He would have to learn that for himself. No one could tell him.
The road stretched out ahead of the bus and disappeared behind them and they followed it around the curving hills, a train line below, and beyond that, a river, sparkling in the cold fall sunshine, following the same line through the mountains.
He would hide and watch. He would keep the tablet out of everyone's reach. He would give the Winchesters the time to close the gates of Hell. And he would remember.