-Summary: It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU
-A/Ns: Okay, phew, okay okay. So we had about what I was expecting (hoping for, really) in reviews! Other than a crap ton more of them, that is. You guys really blew it out of the park! We seemed to have about 75% excited, and those that aren't are of the *grumble, grumble, you make excellent points, but I don't like it* variety. Which I can work with ;)
-Chapter Warnings: We back track a minute and a half because we've got some freaking out to do, humans and angels alike. Meanwhile, Bobby's having a drink because house guests, and Sam's back to having visions. So, party all around, really.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
The Road So Far (This Time Around)
Season 2: Chapter 12
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Dean made it all of about six and a half seconds from Bobby's front door to the den before he lost every inch of that cool, calm, collected hunter he'd portrayed in the barn for the last hour while the rest of his family did their best not to wet their pants, or worse.
"What did we just do?" Dean paced Bobby's living room hard enough to leave track marks in the rug. The owner of the old house was just watching him from his desk chair, hat tossed on the cluttered surface and eyebrow raised disparagingly. "We just let the only chance we have against the Apocalypse fly away to have a friggin' panic attack!"
Dean kept moving, back and forth and back and forth, and Sam couldn't help but mutter under his breath about who was having the panic attack. Dean shot his brother a nasty glare (and gee wasn't it nice to see that with his health restored, Sassy Samantha was right back in the driver's seat) but otherwise didn't slow down for a second.
"We shoulda made him stay." The man from the future paused long enough to run his hands through his short hair, tugging at the poor strands with uncontained frustration. Worry, Sam identified, correctly. "No reason he couldn't think it through right here, damnit!"
Where they could keep an eye – and maybe a ring of holy oil – on him.
"He said he'd come back, Dean," Sam offered, trying for consolation but not fully getting away from annoyed younger brother. When Dean got like this there wasn't much anyone could do to talk him down from it. He needed action, and waiting around for their one shot against the end of the world to show back up with a yes or no wasn't really doing it for him.
"No, man, didn't you see him?" Dean shook his head. "He was freaking out."
Sam exchanged a helpless look with Bobby, who just shrugged. But with another, more pointed look from the youngest Winchester, the hunter cleared his throat. "His expression didn't really change. At all."
He deliberately ignored the look Sam sent his way that said 'Thanks. How incredibly helpful of you, Bobby.'
"Trust me; he was freaking out," Dean answered, looking like all he wanted to do was start pacing again but one look from the old hunter had him staying rooted in place. "He's gonna report it to heaven. That's it. We're all screwed."
"Dude," Sam cut him off before his brother could really get going. When green eyes turned on him for interrupting his building tirade, Sam just gave a little shrug of his shoulders as if to say 'nothing we can do about it now' and then followed the look up with the words, "There's nothing we can do about it now."
Dean narrowed his eyes at him.
"We just have to wait," Sam continued, oblivious to his brother as Dean added a newly minted bitchface to his mental counter (a special subset he entitled 'bitchshrugs'). "He said he'd come back, and I thought you said he's not much of a liar."
That managed to pull Dean out of wherever his head was (the location varied depending on whether you were asking Bobby or Sam), and he let his shoulders drop, some of the defensive tension easing out of his posture. "No, he's not."
"But is he gonna bring half of Heaven back with him when he comes?" Bobby asked. Dean tensed again and Sam shot him a glare, to which he just shrugged in a 'bite me, we oughta be prepared' way. "Wouldn't be a lie."
Dean went back to grumbling about being so screwed.
"So…. What? We're just going to sit here and freak out for the next-" Sam made a show of checking his watch. Three could play the drama game- "thirty nine minutes?"
His brother made a grumpy noise at that and headed for Bobby's liquor cabinet. "I need a drink."
When his sidelong and, admittedly, judgmental look went unnoticed by both men – Bobby barking at the boy to fetch a second glass – Sam just sighed and told Dean he might as well make it three.
-o-o-o-
Castiel intended to seek a location that embodied the solace and silence he so desperately needed, perhaps a secluded forest lake or the top of a mountain. Nepal was truly one of his father's many masterpieces, and Everest its crowning glory. It would be a worthy spot to commune with the Almighty and seek His guidance. But Castiel never made it. A single powerful flap of his wings sent him soaring above Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a flash of bright colors against dark greens brought him straight back to the ground. He was barely conscious of the change in course, finding himself standing quiet suddenly in a front of an empty playground, silent and peaceful beneath the bright moon.
After a moment of contemplation, listening to the echoes of children at play, four legged animals in the fields and trees, parents talking – all the life that this park had seen for many years – the angel sat down on a bench and stared at the vacant, colorful structures. There was a reason Castiel's favorite memory of Arthur Staten's heaven was the park near his childhood home. This was not the same park, and even if it was there would be many years difference, but it carried with it the same beauty and life that Castiel had found so calming when he' first stumbled upon the autistic man's personal paradise.
Castiel closed his eyes and listened for the bright, happy souls that had touched this place. He let them calm the chaos just barely at bay beneath his borrowed skin. As their light soothed his thoughts in tandem with his grace, and he turned his focus inward to contemplate Dean Winchester's words.
God would have an answer for this. It was too big, too much, for Him not to have a say, to not have been the orchestrator of it all. If Heaven was acting against His will, then surely God would do something. If this was His chosen path – pitting two humans against the Apocalypse raised, in part, by his own children, with Castiel as their only support – well, as insane and desperate and improbable as such a plan would be, Castiel would oblige. Had to oblige.
But how was he to know if Heaven was acting against His will without God's guidance? Had the End not been written in stone, by His hand, millennia ago? He had only the word of a human whose opinion of God left very much to be desired, and a future version of himself he barely recognized. Less than barely. Could not recognize.
"Oh, that's a load of horse shit and you know it."
Castiel closed his eyes and resisted the very human urge to groan. When he opened them again, his brother was still standing in front of him, despite the fact that he was most certainly not, because he was dead.
"Go away, Balthazar. You're not real."
"Real to you," came the biting, English lilt, followed by a shrug as though the angel had no cares in the world. Which he didn't, because he no longer walked it. "Come on, you were just wishing I was alive so you could talk this thing through. And here I am!"
Castiel ignored the flourish in his brother's gesturing. He hesitated, reluctant to take up the offer to console in a hallucination of his own making. It sounded like a terrible idea. An insane notion. But he'd only be talking to himself, right?
"What would you do?" he asked before he could stop himself, and Balthazar's eyebrows went up.
"If I was in your shoes? Run the hell away." The angel threw his thumb over his shoulder for emphasis, despite Castiel's eyes narrowing on him. "I'd skedaddle right out of that mess while I still could. Front row seats to the apocalypse, and with a couple of hairless apes for sidekicks? Yeah, think I'd pass."
This time, Castiel did not bother to hide the groan, though he wasn't quite sure he'd done it right. It was a weird noise, rumbling through his larynx, but the release of it felt good, so he supposed that was why humans did it.
"You are not helping," he groused at his brother, resting his head in his hands, elbows propped up on his spread knees.
"You don't need my help, Cassie." Balthazar shrugged one shouldered, leaning his hip against the back of the bench and crossing his arms lazily. "Because I'm not you."
Castiel sighed and picked his head up to stare pleadingly at his brother. He knew where Balthazar was leading him, and it was someplace he did not want to go. Because his brother was right. He already knew the answer to this question. "What would I do?"
Balthazar snorted softly, pinning Castiel with a look. "Be a complete, noble idiot, like you always are. You'd rush head first into this, because it's the 'right thing to do.' Or, you know, something along those ridiculous lines."
"How do I know it's right?" the angel whispered, staring down at his hands, perched atop his legs. The thought of Heaven turning its back on the world, trying to end millions of lives, hurt deeply, down where his heart would lie were he human. "How can it possibly be right?"
"Because Heaven's been wrong for a long time, brother." Balthazar wasn't looking at him, eyes off in the distance, past the empty playground. Castiel raised his gaze to watch his imagined brother, and the sadness in his face matched Castiel's own. The angel did not know if that, too, was his mind projecting his own sorrow, or an accurate memory of his brother. "We just didn't want to admit it."
Castiel stared at his brother, dawning horror stretching across Jimmy Novak's human features in ways that angelic faces never did. Were never supposed to. He whispered, the astonishment lost in the soft noise, "That's why you knew how to leave."
The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't are ask it. Didn't want to ask it.
Would you have?
The look on Balthasar's face was answer enough, as though he knew well the question Castiel refused to ask. Maybe he did, because he was only in his head, so he knew it all. Worse, that meant it was Castiel himself putting that guilty, regretful, but not sorry look on his brother's face. Castiel had known all along, he just hadn't been willing to see it. He'd chosen ignorance and ran away as surely as his brother had been planning to.
He closed his eyes and could not decide which was more painful: the betrayal of one of his closest kin or his own blindness.
"Go away, Balthazar." When Castiel finally looked up again, the imaginary angel was gone. He honestly did not know if it made him feel better or worse.
What else had he turned a blind eye to?
'Father?' Castiel shut his eyes and sought revelation, but not from Heaven. He desperately pushed aside the sinking feeling in his grace – a feeling entirely new to him – that he would not get an answer. The certainty in that dread frightened him more than anything else had this day, and it was turning out to be a very long day.
'Father, please, I need your guidance.'
Castiel sent prayer after prayer, seeking direction. Was this God's plan for him? To assist in the derailment of the Apocalypse? Or was he being led astray by the humans and his own doubt. He was not without that, sinful as he was to admit it. But it had no place in his life, in a soldier's life, in the life of a Warrior of God, and to embrace it would be to disobey.
The angel waited for an answer, any answer. He waited. And waited.
"Castiel?" The voice that answered back was soft, hesitant, internal, and far too familiar to be the voice of God. Castiel turned inward, to the soul of his vessel tucked safely in a corner of his mind's body, now very much awake and aware. The angel did not respond, but he let the human know he was listening. "If you need someone to talk to-"
Jimmy faltered, and made a noise Castiel recognized as self-deprecating. "I know I must seem small compared to all this – what could one human possibly offer an angel in advice – but… if you need someone to talk to, I'm here. I'll- I'll listen."
The offer was flawed, tentative, and Castiel could sense Jimmy's regret in offering almost instantly. Not out of insincerity, however, but self-flagellation. James Novak was a good man; all he wanted to do was help others, to be of service, to God, to the world, to his family, and Castiel found deep honor in the man's soul, no doubt what had led him to say 'yes' in the first place.
"I will return you to your family as soon as I am able," Castiel promised instead, unsure of where the solemn vow had come from, but not bothering to deny it. What would be the point? He intended to keep that promise, despite how difficult finding another vessel would be.
If he even intended to stay on Earth, that was.
"Thank you," Jimmy breathed out in a relieved rush. "I miss them. I always felt my life was missing a bigger purpose, but I- this- seeing Claire all grown up and h-hearing what she'll go through without me-" Jimmy was struggling to finish his thoughts, cutting himself off abruptly one sentence after the next. Castiel understood the feeling. The human took a deep breath, trying to calm the edge of hysteria that had crept into his voice. Castiel understood that too. "They are my purpose. They were all along, and I need- I… I would like to go home to them."
Jimmy silenced himself once more, easily worked back up to an emotional state that wasn't going to benefit the angel he was currently playing host (and apparently counselor) to. This wasn't the time for hysteria, nor did he want Castiel to think so little of him. "But that's not why I offered."
Castiel was silent a moment as well, marveling at the strength and kindness of this human, and in no way thinking the little of him he feared. "I don't know what to do."
He didn't even know what Dean Winchester was asking of him.
"It sounded like they were asking you to be on their side," Jimmy answered the fear Castiel had not voiced aloud, though he supposed he didn't need to, not when sharing this body. Perhaps he ought to tighten his control over his thoughts and emotions, though he didn't see how that would help this conversation. After, however.
"Their side against who?" The angel replied back as miserable as the human had ever heard him. "Heaven? How can I possibly choose a human I barely know over my own brothers? My home. My Father."
"Well," Jimmy tried to sound reasonable, tried to forget that it was an incredibly powerful and ancient celestial being he was talking through a problem, and instead thought of it like any other conversation he'd held with his young, confused daughter as she continued learning about the world. "Do you think Dean's telling the truth?"
He knew he was. He just didn't understand how he knew, and that scared him.
"What would you do if it is the truth?" Jimmy asked, feeling Castiel's surety more than hearing any response.
"Stop Heaven." The answer came immediately, and Castiel closed his eyes against the truth of it. He was learning much about himself that he had chosen to ignore for so long. There was no point going back now. "If they are acting on their own, in the name of God but against His will, then they must be stopped. Thousands of innocents will die."
It was the least satisfactory answer he had ever come to. Castiel felt no closer to resolution or action than he had before he'd been asked it. Before he'd answered the summons. Before he and Balthazar had left Heaven. Before everything had changed.
"Castiel, can I ask you a question?" Jimmy's voice was back to being hesitant, and the angel suddenly dreaded whatever his inquiry was. "You…You may not like answering it."
Regardless, he inclined his head in the affirmative, though Jimmy could not see it, but he didn't need to.
"What if… If this is God's plan, and Heaven is following it…" The human faltered, and Castiel had the oddest urge to lick his lips and rub his hands together. "Thousands of people are still going to die. Would you do nothing then? If- if it was part of the Plan?"
Ice flooded Castiel from head to foot, straight through his grace like a lance, up into his wings like freezing lightning. He couldn't breathe.
No, he thinks. It can't be. No.
Because the answer to Jimmy's question came readily. Easily. Everything leading up to this point, to that question, was nothing compared to the horror filling his borrowed bones, icing over his body until he could feel nothing but the cold. For the first time in his life, Castiel knew true fear, and he hadn't had to leave the park bench to feel it.
'Love them. Love them as I love them,' God had commanded, voice rich with pride as he surveyed the heavenly host and, beyond, his newest creations. 'Guide them as their Shepherds, for they are now your Flock.'
Castiel had obeyed his beloved Father's orders, and he had done so sincerely. He saw the beauty and wonder in all his Father's creations, and had been earnest in his watch over them. He had loved humanity, and the birds in all their colors, and the four legged beasts of the plains and the jungles and the mountains. He loved the plants and the trees, the flowers pollenated by bee and butterfly. He loved it all.
If God commanded the Apocalypse now, what was Castiel to obey? He could not do both. He could not love and destroy. One command or the other, he would disobey.
He couldn't breathe. He was drowning in the ice.
Was this a test? If so, what was the correct answer? Was he to be the good soldier? Or a good son.
He couldn't breathe.
"Have you ever heard 'the Charge of the Light Brigade'?" The question broke through his panic, if only because he had to think so hard to parse it. It was a non-sequitur, irrelevant, and Castiel was busy experiencing his first panic attack.
"It's a poem," Jimmy continued without a response from the angel, "about six hundred soldiers who charged into a battle they knew they couldn't win."
Castiel still couldn't breathe.
"Their leader messed up. There was a miscommunication, and I think some of them had to know it, but they went anyways." Jimmy had first read that poem years and years ago in high school. An impassioned catholic school teacher had drilled a message of courage and honor and tragedy into her students that year. It was one of those offhand things Jimmy never really forgot, perhaps because it had so clearly aligned with his own faith and his own doubts. "The poem talks about honoring those soldiers, for charging on even when they knew following that command would get them killed."
Castiel could not yet see the human's point. Did he not have two conflicting commands? He could not love humanity and be the one to open the doors to its destruction in the same breath. He couldn't.
"It wasn't about orders, or blind faith. It was about honor. Dying for a cause worth fighting for, I suppose." Jimmy almost laughed at how unfair it was for him to say that. He was going home; Castiel was not. "Faith is a choice; I've learned that much. That's why blind faith and following orders without question, just because they're orders and you're a soldier, can be so dangerous. You open yourself up to corruption."
The angel had two choices in front of him, and the decision had to be his and his alone. God wasn't testing him, of that Jimmy was certain. He was only waiting for His son to make up his mind.
"Pick the cause worth dying for, Castiel, and you won't have made the wrong choice."
Castiel opened his eyes and had his answer.
-o-o-o-
"We gonna talk about you having a chunk o' angel in yer chest?" Bobby was well into that glass of whiskey, and had waited for Dean to match him finger for finger before bringing it up. The kid flushed a little (and Bobby couldn't help but think 'nailed it') and finished half of what was left in the glass with one gulp.
"What's there to talk about?" Dean asked, voice agitated and body language purely on the defensive. "It's fine, Bobby."
"Having some supernatural thing's soul in you ain't exactly what I'd call fine, boy," Bobby chided back, watching the kid wince and wondering if it was the disapproval or the fact he'd called the angel a thing. Or maybe it was how much like John Winchester he knew he sounded. He wasn't taking it back, though. Dean might be fine with this, and hell, he could even be right about it (though Bobby had his doubts), but he wasn't getting away with it until he explained why exactly they shouldn't be freaking out.
"I trust him, alright?" Dean sent a glare Bobby's way, daring him to argue with that. "It's Cas, and I trust him, so it's fine."
Bobby didn't bother saying just how not-Dean it was for him to be trusting something so blatantly inhuman. He knew that a lot changed between now and when his boy was from; a lot more grey had started showing up in a world that was usually black and white. Still, seemed kind of stupid to him to go carrying around an angel battery in yer chest without at least putting up a fight about it. Or getting more information on the darn thing. Like were there gonna be consequences to that chunk of power riding shotgun in a human soul? Cuz it sure sounded like the kind of thing that would have consequences.
"Besides," Dean grumbled into his glass as Bobby sent a look Sam's way that his younger brother returned in full, "the grace hasn't done anything to hurt me in the last six months. Why start now?"
In fact, he was pretty sure Cas had saved him a couple of times, or at least acted as an early warning system. He hadn't realized it, but now that he knew something was up with his chest, it was pretty obvious that it ached anytime they were near demons, for starters. And Cas had pulled him out of the Baku's dream in time to save Bobby when Meg showed early.
So, yeah, it could stay right where it was, thank you very much.
"Except to detonate a bomb that almost killed you," Sam countered a little acidly, pulling Dean back to the present conversation.
"Please," he rebuffed, downing a hefty gulp of his whiskey, "that was a defense against a demon soul-searching me. It's not like that's a common thing."
"Unless they're trying to blow you up," Bobby added, most unhelpfully. Dean glared at him.
"And kill themselves in the process? This thing almost took Azazel out." He patted his chest, pretty proud of Castiel's little temper tantrum. Served that yellow-eyed bastard right.
"And you with it," Sammy muttered, eyes dark as he remembered begging his brother to just breath.
Dean continuing talking like he hadn't heard him. "No demon's going to go after a bomb at ground zero and blow themselves to kingdom come."
"You've obviously never heard of a kamikaze attack," his genius brother snarked, shaking his head from his seat on the old couch, whiskey relatively untouched, though he took a pretty healthy sip from it now. Bobby huffed something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh and agreement. Which was just doubly insulting.
"Okay, look," Dean interrupted the both of them before they could get started any further. "Low-level demons are almost always about saving their own skin. And you don't use a general in a kamikaze attack. I do read, you know."
"You watch World War II movies," Sam bit back, though he didn't argue the rest of Dean's point.
"Same thing. Aren't they all based on books anyway?" He fetched the bottle of whiskey off Bobby's desk, pouring himself another finger despite having not finished what was in there already. "My point is, it's fine."
Whether Sam stopped arguing because he knew a lost cause when he saw one or he was hoping to keep his brother at least somewhat sober for when Castiel returned, the discussion concerning the grace sitting pretty in Dean's chest ended there.
-o-o-o-
The search for another vessel would not be easy. Jimmy's soul had called the loudest as soon as Castiel had reached out for one, and the vessel's particular bloodline seemed a good match to the angel's grace.
Several of Adam and Eve's decedents had been chosen by God to be blessed by angels, to cleanse them of their parent's sin after Cain committed the first murder and it became apparent that something had to be done. It was not a purifying ritual, although each of the angels sent from Heaven were more than capable of doing so. God had not sought to rid humanity of the consequences of their ancestor's choices, but there was a balance to be maintained, he'd said. Or something like it, since the words had come through the Gardner and the Scribe, rather than God himself.
From there, those children, bearing traces of angelic grace in their purified veins, gave birth to the bloodlines able to host a heavenly body. Each of those descendants reacted differently to an angel's grace. Some bloodlines were more attuned to particular celestial wavelengths and the different Spheres of Power than others. James Novak's heritage – that of the son, Ishmael – was clearly such a line for Castiel.
That was as good a place to start as any. At least it was a place, Castiel figured. He would seek out Jimmy's blood relatives and hope that one of them, by the work of a miracle, would fit Dean's strict criteria. Castiel was painfully aware how unlikely that was, and certainly not within the hour deadline he had inadvertently set for himself before learning Dean's final request. He would likely have to return to the Winchesters in his current vessel and complete his search after he delivered his answer.
It was with some surprise, then, that the first blood tie Castiel was able to locate was not only capable of hosting an angel, but was also braindead in a hospital in Waimea: the result of a drunken driving incident that had killed both her parents and her fiancé less than a month ago. Her remaining kin, a great aunt and three distant cousins, had flown to the island to sort the aftermath of the tragedy. They were no longer able to cover the cost of care or continue the extended period away from their jobs and families, and were now discussing terminating life support with the attending physician.
Castiel could hardly believe it.
Jimmy had no surviving parents, nor grandparents; his mother and father had passed while he was in his adolescent years, and he was an only child. So Castiel had had to start further back. The bloodlines were as seared into his mind as the names of the prophets or the history of Man, and so he knew that Ishmael's blood has passed to Jimmy through his father, Gregory Novak, who had no full-blooded siblings, only a half sister who did not carry the line. Jimmy's grandmother, Anabelle, had eight siblings for Castiel to track down. The first, Jimmy's deceased great aunt, had three daughters, all with children and grandchildren of their own now. The angel proceeded with the oldest, which took him to the island of Kauai, where Melanie Novak had gone to school, met and married an island native, and started a family there. The couple had two children, a son who passed at a young age from a childhood disease, and a daughter, whose hospital room Castiel currently stood in.
Angela Anne Garrett was Jimmy Novak's second cousin. Despite the diluted blood between them, the familial resemblance was still present, at least to the angel's trained eye. He could see it in their bone structure and in their blood. Jimmy's great grandmother must have had very persistent genes.
Castiel hesitated as he reached out to the small, withering soul within the dying body. This woman met each of Dean's demands, an impossible improbability that could be none other than his Father's hand at play. This was the path he was supposed to be on. It must be.
As long as Angela Garret said yes.
-o-o-o-
Sam had just finished his glass (not nearly enough to get him buzzed, but seeing as both Bobby and Dean were well into their second helpings and someone had to be in their fully right and cognizant mind when Cas came back…), setting it down on the floor beside the couch, when the headache hit. It started as a dull ache, building pressure behind his zygomatic arch and spreading behind his eye and up to his brow. It was like a sinus headache, the kind that builds up over time until your head felt like a giant balloon, or that throbbing pressure that sometimes came with large weather changes. Only, unlike those, which were drawn out, this thing moved quickly.
One second Sam was rubbing at his cheek and brow to try and relieve that mounting ache, the next he was doubled over on the sofa, slipping onto the floor, grabbing at his head as it exploded in pain, like someone had driven a spike straight through his skull. He heard his brother and Bobby both shout for him, felt their hands on his shoulders and the hardwood floor beneath his knees. Then he wasn't in the house anymore.
It was dark, and it hurt, and despite the lack of any real source of light or definition, everything still came in blurry flashes that Sam struggled to discern. He was in a cave, of some sort, though the walls around him swam and settled and flickered in a nauseating pattern.
The more he strained to see, the more he tried to discern, the worse his vision – and the pain - became. Sam ground his teeth through the agony and forced himself to relax into it. To let that last speck of demon blood rule his veins. Everything still blurred at the edges and his solidity within the dreamscape kept flickering in and out, but the room did clear enough for him to focus.
It wasn't a cave, but some sort of dark, cavernous structure. Huge stone pillars supported the ceiling, and the walls were made of blocks of reddish brown stone. The light was incredibly dim, and Sam couldn't actually identify a source, but he could make out the shapes of great stone sarcophagus lining the walls of the large, open room and a circular staircase of the same brick that descended both up and down, disappearing into the darkness.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
Sam spun at the voice, the familiar, ugly sound that sent a shiver traveling down his spine to pool as dread and fear deep in his gut. Azazel was standing only a few feet away, eyes shining yellow in the darkness. He wasn't looking at Sam, though.
There was another person in the tomb, standing in front of a large, square entryway with huge metal hinges hanging empty and useless, bolted into the walls. The wooden doors they once clung to were long since lost to time, the last bits of which scattered the threshold, petrified from years in the undisturbed dark. Sam couldn't see much beyond the large entrance, but what he could see was both incredible and terrible. An impressive ramp gave way to a city below, in an expansive darkness that held no stars in the sky and could only be some great cavern far underground. Half standing walls were all that was left of the buildings, half covered in waves of sand that had built up over what could only be centuries of dust and settlement. The city was in ruins, and Sam had the great and awful feeling that it wasn't just time that had caused such destruction and decay.
"Not all in the city deserved this fate."
Sam's attention was brought away from the dreadful and yet incredible sight to the person standing in the doorway. It was a woman, her short stature, long dark hair, and curvy figure giving that away just as surely as her voice. Sam chanced a glance back to Azazel, who was grinning at the unknown woman. The hunter took a moment, hesitating only a little at the adrenaline and healthy dose of fear, to wave his arm in front of the yellow eyed demon. Azazel didn't so much as shift his gaze.
Full vision then, Sam thought, and he was just walking through it. That was good. He really, really didn't want to be this close to the demon now, or ever again.
"Exceptions should have been made," the mystery woman was speaking again, tone full of spite and bitterness. Behind her, behind them both, Azazel snorted.
"Exceptions were made."
"More than a man and his family!" the woman snapped, and Sam could practically feel the anger radiating off of her in waves, despite not really being there. Curious now, despite the thrum of fear racing through his body and urging caution, the hunter tried to move around her while still keeping his distance. However, no matter how he tried to round her body or creep into the large doorway, he never could see her face. It was as though she turned with him, even as her bare feet never moved on the stone, and he didn't get more than the same view of the back of her head.
Sam glanced back at Azazel, then her. He must be seeing this through the demon's eyes, despite his very three dimensional presence in the room with them. Azazel could not see her face, and so Sam could not see her face. Or, so he guessed; he wasn't exactly an expert at vision walking. It would explain the weird, dulled lighting without a source. Demons probably had night vision.
"Don't take it out on me, little lady," the demon replied with utter indifference, shrugging his borrowed shoulders. "I didn't do the deed."
The way her head jerked to the side suggested she was seething, biting back whatever fierce retort was on her tongue as she refused to so much as look at him. Sam couldn't help but glance between the two of them again. What was this?
They continued their disparaging conversation, mostly exchanging useless shots at one another that Sam wasn't really paying attention to. Instead, he tried to take in as much of the building he was in as possible, and the city outside. Anything to clue him into where he was and what Azazel could possibly be doing here, but there just wasn't much to go on. Some of the tombs were inscribed with a language Sam didn't recognize, but he did his best to commit it to memory. The city beyond the doors, what he could see of it from the raised position of the structure they were currently in, was old. Really old. The buildings that were still standing looked mud-built, but they were so far deteriorated that Sam wasn't even sure. The ruins disappeared in rolling hills of sand and dirt, quickly disappearing into the darkness of the secluded world this place existed in.
"-and this Sam Winchester, he is important?"
Sam's head snapped around at the sound of his name coming from the woman. She still had her back to him and Azazel, hands crossed over her chest, staring out into the ruined city.
"You could say that." Behind him, the demon smirked. "We have a very special task for him. If he survives long enough to fulfil it."
"This is why you came for me?"
There was something stiff about her words. Both of their words, actually, and Sam realized quite suddenly that they weren't speaking English. He didn't know what they were speaking, but Azazel's lips didn't match the understanding Sam had, and he realized that as surely as he was staring at this woman through the demon's eyes, he was hearing the conversation through him as well.
"I hear guiding lost kids is sort of your thing."
Sam immediately filed that away, glancing back at the mystery guest as he tried to reason who – or what – she could be. She clearly wasn't human. Although she looked the part in a pair of skinny jeans and a black tank top – that still had the tag on it, Sam realized after a moment, staring at the little white slip of cardstock peeking out of shirt's arm-line – her bare feet and unearthly presence suggested otherwise. Plus, he was pretty sure there hadn't been anything human in this place in a long, long time. At least, nothing living.
Whatever she was, she gave an indignant snort at the demon's words, tossing long, badly tangled locks over her shoulder with a shrug. "Where is it you hear these things?"
It definitely wasn't English, whatever they were speaking. Sam tried to place the verb and noun placement, the lack of descriptors, but it wasn't enough to go on. And every time he tried to focus his head pulsed like it might explode on him if he didn't stop. Besides, he didn't know how much was true translation and how much was Azazel's interpretation of the language.
But if he could figure out what they were speaking and the writing on the sarcophagi, perhaps he could identify at least the country this city used to belong to. Along with its deities and monsters.
"We are not alone."
The hunter snapped to attention as the conversation abruptly shifted. Fear flooded his system with adrenaline and a fight of flight reflex as the woman's head jerked to the side and he got the first impression of a cheek and a blazing green eye, locked sidelong right on him.
"Someone is watching us."
Sam sat up in Bobby Singer's living room with a huge gasp, clutching at his pounding skull and eyes that he would gladly claw out of his head if it would end the stabbing pain behind them. His brother was on him immediately, surrogate father at his side with a glass of water, but Sam couldn't get those glowing eyes out of his head.
He'd seen them before, only he had thought it was a withdrawal-fueled hallucination.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
-A/Ns: Sorry to cut if off there, folks. Like the last one, this chapter grew well into the twenties in page count and I had to split it up again. I gotta stop writing such long chapters if I'm ever gonna get ahead of the posting curve, aaaah!
-Up Next: Cas meets Angela Anne Garrett and tries to talk her out of being his vessel, for reasons neither he, nor the voice of Balthazar in his head, entirely get. Guilt is a weird thing. They're working on it, though. Jimmy offers another helping hand, and Dean gets his first taste of how screwed he really is.