Dean grimaced. He felt hungover. Only, this hangover seemed to be concentrated on his right arm. Groggily, he opened his eyes and stared down at the unfamiliar scar covering the Mark. What the hell?
Blinking himself back to full awareness, Dean looked around.
Ah. The dungeon. Right.
Sam and Cas were each sitting on a chair just beyond the outer ring of the iron Devil's Trap, both staring off into space. Hm. Maybe it was boring waiting to force unwanted blood into a guy.
Dean stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders, causing the metal collar to scrape uncomfortably against his collarbone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam snap out of his stare and tap Cas's arm to alert him.
"Dean? You okay?"
Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Then he remembered he was chained like a dog in a windowless pit essentially being force-fed poison and rolled them anyway. "Oh yeah, I'm golden," he said, his tone dripping with heavy sarcasm.
"Don't worry, Dean. Just over six hours and you'll be you again."
Dean glared at Sam. His smile failed to hide his doubt and anxiety. "Will I now? Just like last time, huh, Sam?"
"No. Not like last time. This cure's different."
"I can see that," Dean said in mock astonishment, nodding towards the scar that stung and burned on his skin. "You drew on me."
"It'll contain the Mark. Stop it ... affecting you."
What? Contain the Mark? Dean swallowed against the sudden wave of anxiety. Was that what he was feeling? That strange, disconnected, incomplete sensation as though he had forgotten something crucial? Was the Mark truly cut off from him?
Hiding his worry with a confident smirk, Dean leant his head back and looked at his brother. "Well, now, Sam. Look at you, calm and sure. Research finally pay off, did it?"
"Kinda."
"Kinda? Yeah, no, that's not cryptic at all. How 'bout you angelface?" he said brightly, turning his attention to Cas. "You tell him how to make the nasty Mark go bye-bye?"
Cas's expression remained cool but his eyes showed his anger. "No."
Dean leant forward slightly, inviting the angel to elaborate. He didn't. "Well, that's really informative, thanks, Cas." Cas clenched his jaw.
Eager to buy himself time to figure a way out of the iron Devil's Trap – not to mention the collar and too-tight ropes – Dean looked around the dungeon. He had to admit, it looked different from this point of view. More intimidating. He could feel the warding pressing against him like a hand hovering over his skin. Suppressing a shiver, his eyes fell on Cas.
"Tell me, Cas," he began conversationally. "Were your wings always black or is it just these new ones didn't come in angel blue?"
Sam's head snapped around to look at Cas. "Your wings are black?" he asked.
"Yes. Does that surprise you?"
"No, well ... It's just I always assumed angels had white wings."
Cas and Dean chuckled in unison. Sam glanced between them, and for a moment it was almost like the old days, teem free will joking in some motel room.
Dean gave himself a firm mental shake. These were not his friends. These were his captors.
"No, Sam. Every angel's wings are as unique as their face. Their true face, that is. Mine have always been mostly black with flecks of what you'd probably call chestnut brown. Although," he continued, glancing behind him to the tips of the enormous wings Sam couldn't see, "these wings you gave me have white-tipped primary feathers." He smiled at Sam. "I think they look quite nice this way."
"Hold on, hold on," Dean interrupted. "What do you mean 'new wings Sam gave you'? Since when is Sam Cameron McCarthy?"
"Who?" Sam asked, puzzled.
Dean opened his mouth to answer scathingly, but Cas beat him to it.
"Morgan Freeman's character in Dolphin Tale. He plays a prostheticist. I think the demon's implying –"
"'The demon'? What, I don't get a name now?"
Cas turned his cold glare on Dean. "No."
"Hey, Featherboy, if there's something you wanna say –"
"Stop!" Sam barked, taking a step between them. "We don't want to make this harder than it already is," he said in a low voice, mostly to Cas. "Just ... let him make his jokes."
He turned to Dean. "Yeah, I got Cas new wings, using an old – a really old – ritual Death told me about."
"Death?"
"Yep. He's been very helpful."
"Death?" Dean said again, even more skeptically.
"Yep."
"Death wanted Cas, former vengeful god Cas, to be juiced up again?"
Sam shrugged. "It was part of the deal."
Dean leant forward. "What deal?"
"He told me how to cure you – and Cas. In return, I help him out with something."
"'Something'? What 'something'?"
"That's not important right now."
Irritated by the whole answer-leads-to-more-unanswered-questions direction the conversation had taken, Dean lapsed into brooding silence, trying to ignore the dull throbbing burn on his arm.
A few sullen minutes later, Sam broke the silence. "Can you really see Cas's true face?" he asked Dean, glancing between him and Cas.
"Well, yeah, when I do this." Dean blinked and looked back at Sam through black eyes.
He bristled slightly under Dean's gaze. "What does he look like?"
Dean turned his black eyes on the angel. The same shifting blue-white light coursed and swirled through Cas as it had done in Maalik, but Cas's light was brighter, more vibrant. It hurt Dean's eyes to look at him for too long. The features Dean could discern were finer than Maalik's, maybe a bit more even, too. Dean supposed, as far as angels went, Cas probably wasn't the most hideous in Heaven. He answered truthfully, "Ugly as balls."
Sam made a noise somewhere between a cough and a snort of laughter while Cas looked somehow both offended and disinterested.
"Ugly?"
"Hella ugly," Dean emphasized.
"But he's an angel! They're all meant to be, I dunno, beautiful, right?" He turned to Cas for confirmation.
"We're more frightening than beautiful to humans, but you're right: there's a reason we have always been depicted as attractive creatures."
"And fat babies?" Dean asked in a deadpan voice.
"That image suits cherubs well enough," Cas retorted. He turned to Sam. "He considers me ugly because he's a demon and I'm an angel and we're hard-wired to hate each other, no matter the physical appearance of our vessels. That's why he" – he jerked his head toward Dean – "looks nothing short of sickening to me."
"Right back atcha, Feathers."
Sam looked uncertainly between them. "You have a demon's face," he muttered quietly to Dean.
"Well ... yeah. I thought that'd be kinda obvious. Came with the eyes."
"I just ... hadn't realised."
Dean snorted, shifting his weight slightly, trying to twist his right arm enough to press the burning brand into the slightly cooler arm of the chair. He couldn't. "Nice one, Sherlock. You've only been chasing me, for what, a year? That's not embarrassing at all."
Sam gave Dean a withering look just as his watched beeped shrilly. He glanced down at it, then gestured to Cas. "Hour's up."
Without another word, Cas snatched up his syringe and drew a measure of swirling Grace into it, then stepped toward Dean.
Dean's breathing quickened as the angel came closer. He tried futilely to retreat away from the oncoming needle, back into the chair, but it was hopeless. The needle pierced his skin and the Grace poured into his veins like molten magma. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Dean growled, screwing his eyes tight shut as he waited for the burning to stop. Eventually it did lessen, but he could still feel it push through his blood like thick oil.
He gave his head a tight shake and looked up in time to see Sam step forward, holding a smaller syringe filled with blood.
"Aw, come on!" he complained as Sam set the point to his arm and pressed firmly on the plunger. "Aaaargh!"
The blood felt like acid. Dean looked down to the tiny dot of red where the needle had been and was surprised not to see steam curling up from the puncture. His blood sizzled as Sam's confessed taint chased the Grace through his veins. Dean grunted, panting as the sizzling, too, faded into a more manageable background throb.
He heard Sam speak somewhere above him.
"Three."
Dean closed his eyes and let out a long, monotonous groan. This was gonna suck.