Chapter Text
(DAY 8)
They’re fucked. Like, really, really fucked.
Dean’s got his brother’s forearm clasped in one hand and the steering wheel in his other, and in his rearviews he can see the heavy black smoke roiling through the air as if it were alive and sentient. The only thing between them and their imminent doom is the sleek black shell of the Impala, and while she’s gotten them out of quite a few scrapes in the past, he doesn’t think she’s quite up for this one. At least he gets to die in his car, the way he’s always wanted to. By the looks of it, she’s gonna be his coffin.
He isn’t ready to die, not with the Mark off his arm, not with his family waiting for him – Jody and Donna and Claire and Cas –
Fuck, he thinks, I didn’t get to tell Cas, and the thick black dark is on them and in them and Dean is choking, he’s being buried alive – there’s dirt in his ears and eyes and mouth, wet and muddy, and he’s got to dig up, dig out, kick out of his coffin and reach the surface, but he claws and claws and he’s getting nowhere, there’s nothing, he’s underground and his lungs are filling with cold peat he’s dying he’s going to die –
The pressure is relieved all at once and he flails upward, hands raking at nothing, half-blind in the artificial white light. There’s something propping him up – cushions, he realizes, and he leans away from them, his arms wrapped securely around his midsection, charting the fierce rise and fall of his chest as he steals great, gulping lungfuls of air. He feels utterly wrong in his skin, dirty and caged-in, and if he could he’d shed it like a snake, get it the hell off.
“I got you out as soon as I could,” Cas says grimly by the side of his head, and Dean jumps, squints around. “There was a – distraction, but it’s taken care of.”
“Sam,” Dean croaks.
“He’s fine – he woke up earlier, and now he’s asleep. You should do the same.”
He’s tired, but sleep is unfathomable. If he sleeps, he knows, he’ll only get sent back to that place, the earth crushing in on him, consuming him, and right now he doesn’t think he could bear it. Maybe it makes him weak, maybe it makes him a child, but after that – he can’t.
His eyes have mostly adjusted to the light and now the blurry, tan shape beside him has resolved itself into Cas’ trenchcoat. Before he really knows what he’s doing he’s reaching out and gathering up a handful of fabric, not pulling or tugging but simply holding on.
Castiel hesitates, unsure, and then rests his hand, so excruciatingly gently, on Dean’s shoulder. “Dean. You are safe,” he says.
He is, maybe, but the rest of the world – .
“How do we – how,” Dean says. He’s close to tears, the frustrations and failures of the past few weeks overwhelmingly unfixable, everything gone so goddamn wrong. “What are we supposed to – ?”
“I don’t know,” Cas says. “I don’t – and I didn’t mean to, I didn’t – .”
“Cas,” Dean says. “I know. It’s okay.”
It isn’t, not really, and it probably won’t be for a while. But for the first time in a long time, Dean isn’t stifled with rage, blind with the need to kill, and he savors it, embraces the quiet, calm still in his head. He isn’t happy, certainly isn’t complacent – he’s gonna fight this thing for all he’s worth, once they’ve got the means – but he isn’t angry with Castiel. Which is probably why he finds it so easy to yank him down by his lapels, cup a hand around the back of his neck, and crush their mouths together.
Cas’ lips are dry and slack and Dean tries to soothe them with his tongue, runs it slow and sensual across the bridge of his mouth, not demanding or pushing, and Cas – Cas isn’t moving.
Dean pulls away, hands sliding back, and Cas stays there, frozen, his eyes huge and shocked. Neither of them blink or breathe and it’s Dean who breaks the silence with a bout of stupid, nervous laughter.
“Well, shit,” he says. “Shit. Sorry, man, I – . Guess that cat’s outta the bag, huh?”
He’s trying to keep it together, stay casual, but inside his guts are churning with frantic horror. He’s ruined them. Everything they’ve gone through together, everything they’ve done, and he had to go and kiss his best friend. Fuck. He’s the worst fucking idiot in the world.
“Dean,” Cas says, touching two fingers to his lips.
“How ‘bout we forget this ever happened? Write it off as, I dunno, head trauma due to the whole black murder cloud experience – ”
“Dean. Look at me,” Cas says, tipping up his chin, and when their eyes meet Cas’ are wide and blown dark with wonder. “I could not forget,” he says, dipping down dangerously close, their faces a hair’s-breadth away. “I would not want to forget.”
It’s Cas who closes the distance, Cas who brings his hand up to curl at the nape of Dean’s neck. He kisses like a starving man, tongue and teeth and desperate, hungry lips, no finesse but all the passion in the world, a thousand words trapped in the awed touch of his mouth.
As much as he hates it Dean has to break away to breathe, and Cas goes right on kissing a wet path along and then under his jaw, down his neck, and if Dean didn’t know any better – because who’d worship a thing like him – he’d call it worshipful. Cas kisses and licks and Dean squirms, fists his hands right back in Cas’ trenchcoat and holds on for dear life.
“I never thought,” Cas says, the low buzz of his voice vibrating up and down Dean’s skin. “I never knew – .”
“Not even with your – ah – angel vision?”
“You know I wouldn’t do that, Dean,” Cas says, and then he latches down on Dean’s neck with his teeth and lips and sucks hard.
Dean yelps and grabs at his hair out of reflex – and God it’s soft, thick and sleek between his fingers, and his tugging turns to petting. Cas pulls off and Dean pokes at him, fakes indignation.
“Dude,” he complains, rubbing his neck. “That necessary?”
Cas gives him a worried look. “Was that not – okay? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable – .”
“Nah, it’s fine. Jeez. Took me by surprise, is all.”
“Good,” Cas says. “Because I want to kiss every inch of you.”
Dean feels heat rise to his cheeks. If anyone else’d said that to him he’dve kicked ‘em off and gone his separate way, but this is Cas – weird, dorky, intense Cas – and he’s always been the exception, maybe even before he understood why. What he’d forgive Cas – God, it scares him, even now.
He can’t find the words or the strength to vocalize this, so instead he goes in for another kiss, forcing Cas to slow down this time and savor the brush and slide of their mouths together. Cas’ face is stubbly and rough – hell, he’s stubbly and rough himself; the last few days haven’t been easy – but he likes it, appreciates the reminder that it’s Cas he’s kissing, Cas who is making him shiver and sigh and melt. He’s hard – and shit, just from a few touches, what Cas does to him – but this, the two of them together, it’s only peripherally about sex. For months the Mark had driven him onward with a punishing push for sex and death and food that fell to ash in his mouth, and now that he’s got a handle on his head, now that he can say no, it’s novel enough that he’s content to sit back and abstain. His desire is a quiet calm ache, nothing like the burning, throbbing need of the Mark, and he can sit back and ignore it, kiss Cas and not shake with the need to own him.
Cas blinks at him, sends him a slow, sweet smile, full of affection and trust, and Dean feels his heart swell, strokes Cas’ familiar cheek with the backs of his knuckles. It’s lame and girly but right about now all he wants to do is hold Cas close, feel the warmth of his skin and bury his face in his hair.
Fuck it. They’ve been through hell and probably they’re still gonna die. He can allow himself this.
“C’mere,” he says, and pulls Cas onto the bed, pushes at his chest until they’re lying side-by-side, draws them up close together so that they’re touching all over. He’d like to get that stupid trenchcoat off, feel the shape of Cas’ solid body, but he finds that he’s too exhausted to do much more than run his hands in lazy circles over Cas’ back, his limbs heavy with fatigue, his head sinking into the pillows. Cas brushes a kiss onto his forehead and against his will his eyelids flutter downward, vision going blurry once again.
“Sleep,” Cas says, lips moving against his cheek, and he does, falling down and down into safe comfortable oblivion, rest without thought, his angel sitting vigil at his side.
(DAY 7)
Sam wakes up feeling antsy, dehydrated, and generally miserable. He’s sore all over, the sort of familiar rawness that comes from getting flung around into walls, though recently he’s gone through nothing of the sort – just the darkness roiling over him like a thick soup, and then the blind, scrabbling fear, the touch of Lucifer’s cold hand against his cheek –
He shudders. He’s pretty sure, logically speaking, that Lucifer wasn’t actually there, that the whole thing had been a product of his battered, traumatized mind, the thing playing off his weaknesses and trapping him inside them, but it’d felt real enough, awful enough, that he’s still shaking off the aftereffects. If it weren’t for Cas, that would’ve been it – he’dve been trapped in there forever, the freezing, burning cold of the Cage constricting down on him, his every nerve peeled bare – but it wasn’t, and Cas was there, and Jesus Christ he’s got to get over it.
It would’ve been no more than justice, anyway, if he’d gone under and stayed there. He hadn’t been the one to break this particular seal, not directly, but his hand was in it as much as Cas’ was. He’d kept the book; he’d gotten Charlie killed. He’d pressured Cas to finish the ritual.
He’d convinced his brother to kill Death.
All he can do is try and make up for it, the way he’s been trying almost his entire life. Nothing but mistake after mistake for years and he’s never going to set the balance straight now, his missteps too heavy on his shoulders to allow him forgiveness, room to breathe. He has survived and survived and at every turn, every opportunity, he’s done the wrong goddamn thing – .
At least Dean is still alive. That, he thinks, is not a mistake.
He heaves his sorry carcass out of bed and heads toward the kitchen with the intent of making coffee and stops, startled, halfway down the hallway. The mouth to the main area of the bunker’s painted in flickering orange-red, flashing in and out on the low white ceiling.
Fire, his mind supplies, and he’s ready to run for it, get his brother and salvage what he can – but no, there’s no smoke, no heat, the color too bright and artificial for a flame, and his yell for Dean dies a silent death in his throat. Instead, he goes to investigate, and the view into the main room forces a new, biting fear into his chest.
He remembers, not so long ago, opening the door from the outside and finding Kevin with his crossbow in the middle of the floor down below, lit on all sides by urgent blinking alarms, the flashing, whirring lights. It’s much the same now, only sans Kevin, the insistent red and yellow bulbs glinting off the mess of buttons and exposed wires on the weird, extraneous control panels they’d never quite gotten around to understanding. Charlie could figure it out, he thinks, and his heart aches. Charlie could dismantle it and build a whole new, doubly efficient version – but Charlie isn’t here, and this is Sam’s problem, now.
The center octagonal table is likewise flashing red all over, the map on its surface choked with hundreds upon thousands of tiny, red dots, all blinking in concert. When Sam gets close enough to peer at it curiously he sees that a great deal of Canada and nearly half the United States has been greyed out, the pearly, translucent material of the tabletop gone cloudy and opaque, like someone had added a drop of ink to it.
“God,” Sam says, leaning in close, his fingertip tracing around the shadowed spaces. He’s wary of touching them directly, as if they might bleed out of the table and tangle around his body, take him back to that dark, cold place.
He knows what this is. He knows what this means. The map makes it look manageable – small, orderly cutouts, their boundaries neat and clean – but he knows there are people trapped in there, confused and afraid and alone, and Sam can’t – he’d done this, he’d done this and he hasn’t got a solution – .
The one saving grace to the whole thing is that the grey areas don’t seem to be expanding. Maybe the map hasn’t caught up yet, maybe it’s dead wrong, but if it’s working the way it’s supposed to, the fog has stopped advancing for the moment. It isn’t a relief – there’s too much gone wrong for relief, for celebration – but it’s better than what it could’ve been. Better than he’d expected.
The red marks, those are another story entirely. Once, they’d indicated angels, and now – he isn’t sure. They are clustered in groups or pinned in solitude, shifting around highways or remaining still. One or two are moving steadily across the ocean, like they’re tracking the movements of a boat, or a plane. Sam can’t parse it.
There’s the sound of socks padding on tile and when Sam’s head snaps up to see, Dean’s at the cusp of the room in his dead-guy-robe and boxers. Behind him Cas hovers protectively, his arm outstretched and ready, as if Dean’s an invalid in danger of toppling over. His worry’s unfounded, though, because Dean looks comparatively well-rested, his mouth curved in a soft, fond smile, his eyes lazy and glazed-over with sleep. He’s lost all the manic tension he’d been carrying around with the mark, the constant ready flex of his forearms, and Sam’s so glad to see it he could cry. He still moves with all the grace of the predator he’s proved himself to be but as he lopes into the room there’s a carefree looseness to his limbs that Sam’s missed desperately.
“Hey, Sammy,” he says, his voice fond. “What’re you doin’ up?”
“Uh,” Sam says. He has to slow down his brain and rewind, because that was not the greeting he’d been expecting. “Not – tired anymore? I guess?”
That’s not really true at all but Dean nods sagely, wandering down toward the table with Cas stuck to his back.
“Whatcha looking at?” he says, bending over the map, and huh – there’s a vibrant green-and-purple hickey spilled out over his neck that certainly wasn’t there the day before. Unless he’d snuck a friend into the bunker while Sam was passed out half-dead in his bed, unless the darkness had a penchant for teenage necking, the list of culprits is narrowed down considerably.
Well then, Sam thinks. Okay.
He’d never been sure if Cas’ longing looks and personal space issues had been an angel thing or a Cas thing or a I’m-head-over-heels-for-Dean thing, but this solidifies that, then. His brother had been more of a sure bet, what with the mooning over Cas’ trenchcoat and the desperate unfailing loyalty he usually only granted blood relations, but he was so goddamn entrenched in his Dad’s antiquated ideal of manliness that Sam was sure he wouldn’t be able to come out and admit there were feelings of any kind between the two of them.
Inevitable is not the word he’dve used. Maybe, unlikely. Or, doubtful. But here they are, Dean sporting a hickey the size of Texas and Cas sneaking glances like Dean’s the sun and stars and moon all rolled into one guy-shaped package, and Sam’s left feeling kind of – . Well. Kind of mixed up, is all.
“Hello?” Dean says. “Earth to Major Sam – ”
Sam coughs. “Yeah, what? Sorry? Um, the map, right?”
“Ye-e-es,” Dean says, drawing out the word between his teeth. “You understand any of this, space captain?”
“You’re hilarious, really,” Sam says, and it’s like they’re brothers again, natural stupid banter bridging between them, Dean’s self-congratulating smirk and his own mock-serious pout.
He feels immediately guilty for feeling glad about it. People are being tortured – because of him, because of his actions – and he’s thankful that he can repair his relationship with his brother?
“Right, yeah,” he says, when he sees Dean’s smile start to fade around the edges. “I was thinking, uh, this whole section’s where the black smoke’s rolled in – ” he points, here and there, still refraining from touching – “and the red stuff, I dunno – .”
“Better not be any freakin’ angels,” Dean mutters. “How come the fart cloud ain’t moving?”
Sam doesn’t bother to protest his brother’s terminology, knowing that – much like the Jefferson Starships and the Batcave – it’s already a lost cause. “I dunno, I was wondering – .”
“Let me check,” Cas breaks in, and he squeezes his eyes shut, takes a huge, grounding breath through his nose. His hand squeezes tighter and tighter around Dean’s arm, knuckles turning white, but Dean stays still and quiet, lets him work through whatever the hell it is he’s doing. When his eyes fly open seconds later he slumps sideways and Dean hardly even has to move to steady him, the two of them falling into place next to each other like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Sam feels another surge of – something – and he chokes it down. “Cas,” he says. “What is it – ? What did you see?”
“The darkness,” Cas pants. “It’s stopped spreading.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s – hovering. Trapped.”
“Trapped? Like – it's being held back?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t – it’s difficult to look at.”
“Hey,” Dean says. He strokes a piece of wayward hair off Cas’ forehead, and Sam pretends not to notice. “That’s okay. If you can't do it - you don't have to.”
“And all the other stuff?” Sam says, anxious to know the damage. “The red parts – ?”
“Monsters,” Cas says, and Sam and Dean share identical glances of confusion. “They’re all monsters.”
They break for coffee. To Cas, it can only ever taste like molecules, atoms and electrons buzzing dry and tasteless on his tongue, but he takes a cup for politeness’ sake – no coffee, no sugar, none of the hazelnut syrup Dean teases his brother for enjoying so much. He likes the smell, in any case, as it reminds him of late nights and cold mornings over small-town newspapers, roadtrips encroaching through the night and beyond, all the small human breakfast habits that were once unfamiliar and are now, through observation and participation both, comfortable ritual. He lets the cup steam under his nose and watches Dean through the glaze.
He is beautiful even in the grim fluorescent light of the kitchen, his soul glowing golden in and around him, bright as a star and just as strong. Not even yesterday the Mark had been wound through it red and thready, its light pulsing new and fierce, desperately hungry – and yet the difference is not so drastic, Dean holding onto himself through it all with his commendable will. Castiel cannot lie: he still found it beautiful, as he is wont to find near anything Dean does beautiful, the sure arc of his body in motion and the cruel artistry of his violence.
Now, though, he can brush against Dean’s soul and not feel it sting, not feel it snap out at him. He passes his fingers through it, his elbows, his wrists, and it goes to him gladly, buttery-soft and warm as a sunbeam, and he savors the touch, stays as near as he dares. Before Dean might have reprimanded him of the extreme closeness, as he had when they’d first met, but now – . Cas reaches for him and reaches for him and Dean allows it, even welcomes it, and it’s so much more than he ever hoped for.
He is still unbelieving. He plays the moment over and over again in his mind’s eye, even as he speaks of other things; that initial, terrifying kiss, Dean pulling away with his apology, he himself struck blind and dumb; and then the second, when Dean had accepted him, drawn him in at last, and they’d burned bright together. He’d accepted his place at Dean’s side, close but not so close, but then Dean had turned it all on its head. All his millennia of experience, all the fish he hasn’t stepped on, and Dean Winchester can still manage to take him by surprise.
He has loved Dean so long, and so deeply, that he can hardly imagine himself otherwise. He had never treasured his memories so much as after he’d met Dean. Knowing had meant more. Staying had meant more. Everything had been augmented and tinged with desperation because suddenly there’d been Dean at the epicenter of it all, Dean to fight for – and, by proxy, his entire world, humanity and family and divergence, familiar to him now as the freckles on Dean’s back.
And now – he can touch. It’s a miracle of life and breath and love and he can touch. Even with Sam keeping watch across the room they have gravitated together, shoulders brushing, Dean’s hand feather-light at Cas’ wrist. They’ve always been drawn to each other and this, Cas thinks, the actualization of their partnership, is a relief, a blessing, water after a drought.
Juxtaposed against the decaying world, they shine all the brighter. He would like to feel guilty, but he does not. He helped cast the spell, he unbound the darkness, but for this – for Dean free of the mark, placid and newly, clumsily gentle – it is worth it.
His priorities are – unconventional, but not wrong. Couldn’t be wrong, with the way he’s feeling.
Dean takes a sip of his coffee and makes a face, his eyebrows jumping upwards. “Oh,” he says. “This is – good.”
“Yes?” Cas ventures. Dean’s wonder is marvelous to see, but for all accounts, misplaced. “It’s the same coffee you usually purchase – the store-brand, with the green label – though I suppose, since you seek it out regularly, it must have some quality – ”
“Nah, I mean – man, never mind, you dork,” Dean says. He’s exasperated, but fondly so, and Cas basks in his attention like a cat in the sun. His eyes are drawn to Dean’s mouth, his lips – the fine indents at the crease of his smile – . He is aware that it would not be appropriate, given their audience, but he would very much like to kiss Dean right now.
Sam sets his mug down on the counter and the sound is too loud in the small kitchen. Dean looks away, over to his brother, and the moment is broken.
“Cas,” Sam says, coughing a little. “Talk to us about the monsters. Are they from Purgatory? Are they part of the – the thing?”
“Fart cloud,” Dean insists.
“I don’t know,” Cas says, perturbed. “I’ve never – I’m not sure.”
The creatures are alien to him, newly forged and wrong, their origins muddied and uncertain. He can feel them clamoring in the back of his mind, uncountable slimy mewling things clogging the air and water with their filthy, unnatural bodies, and they are real but not, and he isn’t sure how to put it into words. He feels like he should know this, perhaps once had, but the information is inaccessible to him as he is now.
“They are borrowing the bodies of those trapped in the cloud,” he tries. “Not their humanity, but their – physical forms – ”
“But we ain’t talking classic zombies here, are we,” Dean says.
“No, we aren’t. I expect we’ll see – hybrids, and half-breeds, much like we did with the Mother of All.”
“But in the bodies of – actual people?” Sam says.
“Something like that,” Cas says. “I don’t – I can’t articulate it, I don’t know – I’m sorry, I – ”
“Nah, hey, you did good,” Dean says. He huffs a dull, unhappy laugh. “Guess that’s it then, huh? We just gotta – dive in.”
Sam gives a grim nod. “Not much else we can do.”
“I hate this,” Dean admits, and Sam turns to stare at him like he’s got a second head. “Feels like we’re always cleaning up something.”
“This isn’t forever,” Cas says.
God have mercy, may it not be forever.
(DAY 5)
John Winchester wakes up with a splitting headache, a mouthful of dirt, and eight dollars in cash. He’s wearing his Sunday best – that is, jeans that only have maybe two or three minor holes around the knees, and a button-down with no major bloodstains – and, from what he can see, he’s free of broken bones and gunshot wounds and other debilitating injuries of the sort one expects when they come to inside a goddamn dumpster. Not half a minute ago he was playing a hand of poker with and losing to his beautiful wife and now he’s got wet coffee grounds soaking into the ass of his pants and a halo of chicken nuggets around his head.
He doesn’t know what’s going on but he sure as hell doesn’t like it. He figures, this point, he’s deserved his rest, after all the bullshit he’s been through. He did his time in Hell, fought one war abroad and a whole different one on his own soil, slogged through mud and blood and rain for no reason other than that he felt it was right and now he’s been denied eternal bliss yet again. Heaven was supposed to be his final destination, his reward for a hard job done mostly okay, but instead he’s been torn from his wife and all else that’s holy and tossed – wherever this is.
Jesus Christ, this goddamn dumpster stinks.
He isn’t eager to spend a whole lot more time in it but he also doesn’t want to spring out and make himself the obvious target for whatever’s waiting out there, so he shucks off the stale burger buns decorating his shoulders, rises into a crouch, and uses a handy piece of cardboard to nudge open the lid without exposing anything of his own.
Nothing happens. He wiggles the cardboard around a little, gives it a minute. Still, nothing.
Finally, he peeks out himself, blinking in the harsh line of sunlight. It’s, what, midday – ‘round twelve hundred hours, looks like – and there isn’t a single cloud in the sky. He can see asphalt and the hood of a dinged-up shit-brown car, gleaming dully in the heat, and not a whole lot else.
He doesn’t much like the idea of abandoning his dumpster-cum-foxhole but he isn’t getting much from inside it so he flings the lid open and rolls out like an amateur, tearing his pants on a sharp jag of dumpster lid on the way down. He lands half on his stomach and half on his forearm, gritty, sandy parking lot digging into his bare skin. He’s damn lucky there doesn’t seem to be anything that wants to kill him hanging around, because it’dve been a stellar opportunity for it.
He stands, dumpster at his back. He’s landed – apparated? appeared? – outside a fast food restaurant with smudged, greasy windows and a corrugated roof. It’s standing slightly apart from a strip of several similar flat-roofed, brownstone stores, all sharing a large parking lot that opens out into a busy freeway.
He isn’t alone. Nearby there’s a young mother who’s shooting nervous, perturbed glances over her shoulder as she hustles her two kids into her minivan, and further down the way are other shoppers with strollers and fancy department store paper bags. Several of them, he notes, are wearing surgical masks, and he wonders if he’s wandered into an epidemic.
They don’t look like much of a threat, but he’s not about to let down his guard. Evil comes in all shapes. And right now – he doesn’t know for sure, doesn’t know much at all – but he might have a target on his back. Something resurrected him. Something took him out of his Heaven and back into this world, and he’s sure they’re tracking him now. Coming back from the dead, that doesn’t just happen. Hell, it doesn’t ever happen, in his experience. There has to be a reason behind it – something big. Something powerful – so much so that he won’t be able to take it down on his own. He needs to talk to someone that can help.
He stomps into the restaurant. “Hey,” he says to the girl behind the counter, who’s making a face like she’s bitten into a sardine. “This place got a phone I could use?”
It does. He trades his cash for change and goes to work on the sticky, oily buttons. He shakes off his sudden excited anticipation as leftover adrenaline from his rude awakening.
It’s purely business, is his reasoning. There’s something he has to kill, and his family – together, as a team – are the people to do it. It has nothing to do with the Sam-and-Dean shaped hole in his chest where his children ought to be and everything to do with efficiency.
But Dean’s primary cell phone number goes nowhere, as do his secondary and tertiary ones, and Sam’s emergency family-only cell is out too. Ditto for Bobby’s phones, and the Roadhouse main line. He can’t remember Ellen’s cell number off the top of his head, but she’s probably gone and changed the damn thing too, way his luck’s been going so far. She’d most likely hang up on him anyway, even if he did get through.
He slams the phone into the receiver. Goddamn idiots swapping their phones around, making his job that much harder. He’d kept the same number through most his cell-phone-having life for the sake of incidents just like these. Sam, meanwhile, he was always chasing after the latest, shiniest gadget like a horse after a carrot, and where was the sense in that – .
“’Scuse me,” someone says behind him. “You finished here?”
John glares over his shoulder at the intruder, a short, scrawny guy with a sharp nose and a snotty, holier-than-thou smirk. The potential consequences of punching out some random civilian in the middle of a crowded restaurant slightly outweigh the visceral satisfaction so John decides, narrowly, that he’d be better off abstaining.
“Yeah, I’m done,” he grunts, and turns, intending to cut off the conversation.
The little guy pops his gum. “Good,” he says, “’cuz you sure aren’t gonna find your sons like that.”
“The fuck did you say?” John snarls. His hand goes to the small of his back where he usually keeps a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants but right, mysterious arrival via dumpster, so he’s got nothing but his own two fists and, if he wants to get creative, a phonebook on a chain. “What are you,” he says, readying himself to shove past and run, if need be. “What the fuck’d you do to my family?”
“Jeez, nice to meet you too,” it says, chewing noisily. “They’re fine. Ish. So relax. I’m here to help, you big, paranoid lug.”
“To help?” John says, and finds himself trusting the thing even less. “You come looking for me? How’d you find me?”
“How do you think,” it says, and rolls its eyes. “Winchesters, I swear to Dad.”
“You,” John realizes, and in the place fear ought to be, a flash flood of anger sweeps through him, hot and sharp.“You’re the one who brought me back.”
He’d had the dreamless peace of death, a permanent retirement in the house he’d once thought he’d raise his children in, his own slice of peaceful, unchanging landscape. Most of all he’d had Mary, beautiful, patient, loving Mary, and the promise of a quiet eternity to spend with her – and then this miserable thing stuck its clammy hands into his home and wrenched everything away like it had the goddamn right, and now it’s standing here telling him it was going to help. He clenches and unclenches his fists.
“Give the man a prize!” it says. “You’re welcome, by the way – resurrection isn’t easy work. Usually you go through the Big Man, but since He’s on vaycay, I had to do it on my own dime.”
“Put me back,” John says quietly. He’s shaking with anger.
“No can do, kid – not yet. You think I went through all that just to send you back again? No chance. Buck up, ‘cuz we got a whole lot to do.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” John says. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for this.”
“Neither did I,” it snaps. “You think I wanna babysit your ass? You’re the last person I’d want to hang out with – near the bottom of the list, at least. But I don’t get a choice, and neither do you. There’s a shitstorm coming round the corner, and I hate to say it, but the world needs you back. Sam and Dean need you back.”
Hearing his son’s names spoken out loud sends a flare of protective heat racing up his spine, and he steps forward and lifts his chin, lets himself loom. “The hell do you mean, the world?” he says. “What do my sons have to do with your bullshit? You told me they were safe – ”
“They are. I wasn’t lying – they’re peachy keen, they’ve got all their bits where they ought to be, but when the shit hits the fan – well. Without your help, who knows. I’m trying to tell you – this is bigger than just you, it’s bigger than your family – ”
John finds he doesn’t much give a shit. “Call them,” he demands. “Right now. I’m not going anywhere until you get them on the goddamn phone.”
“What, seriously? Je-sus. You’re a recalcitrant sonuvabitch, you know that? You’re lucky I’m so patient. But if that’s what it’ll take – .”
It whips out a phone from thin air and starts to poke at its screen. John adds matter out of nothing onto the list of creature traits that he’s been silently compiling, alongside resurrection and fucking annoying. It is not, so far, a helpful list.
“Contacts… aaaand – hey, here we go. If he doesn’t pick up, I’m not leaving a voicemail – well, howdy, Dean-o!” it says, and John leans forward, inclines his ear toward the phone. “Howsit hanging? Hopefully toward Cas, am I right?”
“’Scuse me?” someone says at the other end. “Who is this? How’d you get this number?”
It – could be Dean? John can’t tell. The gruff, curt voice coming over the line sounds only peripherally like the son he’d raised and it’s driving him crazy, not knowing him from Adam, when back before his death he’d been able to pick Dean’s voice out of a stadium-full of people.
“It’s me!” it says. “Your good-ol’ brother in law, Gabe!”
“…Who?”
It could be any random Midwestern guy posing as his son but, also, maybe if the kid’s voice dropped several octaves, maybe if he gargled a bowl of nails, he might come out the other end sounding like this. Jesus, how long has it been? What if he’d come into a point in the future where his son, somehow, was older than he was when he’d died –
The thing – Gabe – makes a face. “C’mon – Gabriel, remember? Fast times at Elysian Fields? The slow-dancing alien thing? Don’t tell me you can’t remember the slow-dancing alien thing.”
Maybe-Dean’s voice immediately ratchets up ten decibels. “Gabriel? You motherfucker, where have you been – ”
“Woah, woah – not helping, bud. I’m here with your Dad – ”
“My what – ?”
“ – and he wants to chat with your or something, I don’t know, he’s not listening to me. Maybe you can talk some sense into him, huh?”
“Gabriel,” maybe-Dean says, after a pregnant pause. “Get over here right the fuck now.”
“Okay, but, howabout we – ”
Dean hangs up.
“Oh well,” Gabe says, tossing the phone over his shoulder. “Guess we’ll hafta drop by, then, huh?”
“The fuck was that? He didn’t sound too glad to hear from you,” John says, backing up as much as the phone booth allows. “You aren’t working together.”
“Okay, not per se,” Gabe says. “But they’ll be glad to see you anyway. Believe me.”
“I don’t,” John says.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, who cares,” Gabe says, and pokes him in the forehead.
His stomach goes inside out. I am dead, John thinks, and he’s mostly relived, if a little disappointed that he hadn’t been able to meet his sons – except it’s not Heaven he’s seeing, but a large, unlit room, tall-ceilinged and windowless.
“What the hell,” John says, wobbling. It feels like the floor’s shifting underneath his feet. “The fuck did you just do?”
“Suck it up, big guy. ‘S just a little metaphysical flight.”
“Flight,” John says. Sure. Whatever. Add it to the goddamn shitty list.
Directly in front of them is a long, pale table, its face marked with a browning map of the world, and each landmass is dotted all over with thick clusters of tiny red light, all blinking urgently. John sees the heavy blacked-out country-shaped blots, and though he doesn’t know what it means, it gives him an ominous feeling in his gut.
“Where – ” he begins to say, but then there are heavy, running footsteps, and a shape – broad and bulky all over, wide-legged – comes barreling at them out of the red-tinged dark.
“What the fuck have you done,” it says, and then the light hits its face and there’s no doubt about it – that’s John’s eldest son all right, filled-out and worn around the edges but still bearing the same delicate features he always has, Mary’s long eyelashes and slender nose, her cute freckles, all of it together just this side of pretty. He has a facefull of prickly stubble, a stubby silver sword in his right hand, and a look in his eyes like he intends to rip Gabe in half.
“Well, hello to you too – ” Gabe starts to say, and Dean strikes like a snake, practiced and sinuous, his odd sword sliding up under Gabe’s chin before any of them can blink. He is assured and unfaltering and – dangerous, John thinks, with a stir of pride. That’s his boy.
“You come skulking back after how many years – after Cas, after Purgatory, after goddamn Metatron – and you think we’re gonna welcome you back with open arms?” Dean growls, and John has no idea what the hell he’s talking about but his anger is palpable. “‘Hey, man, good to see you, thanks for disappearing on us?’ Fuck you.”
“Didn’t realize you missed me so much, sweetheart,” Gabe says. “I’m flattered.”
“We needed you. We could’ve used you.”
“Aw, you had it all under control. It all worked out, right?”
“Oh, yeah, it worked out great. You know what’s been going on lately? You understand what bullshit’s been raining down on our heads – ?”
“Yeah, actually, I do,” Gabe says. “And honestly? Seems to me like a break glass in case of emergency situation, so – I broke the glass.”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Gabriel says, nodding over at John, “to torture the metaphor a little further – now we’ve got a weapon on our hands.”
“A weapon?” John says, like it matters what Gabe wants to call him.
For the first time, Dean looks over. His hands wobble.
“Dad?” he says, and for a moment he almost sounds like a kid again, twelve years old and shaking John awake after a hard night spent on the sofa, glass of water tucked up against his chest. And then –
“I apologize for the wait,” someone says right in John’s ear.
John’s fist goes swinging without any input from his brain. Muscle memory and impulse, something there where there hadn’t been before, so of course he’s gonna try and catch it with a roundhouse. He puts his full body behind the blow, twisting his waist and stepping into it the way he’s been trained to do.
It’s a lot like hitting a steel door, except with less give. John hears several somethings pop, can feel the ligaments in his hand rearranging themselves into new and unpleasant shapes, and somewhere over the pain, far, far away and fading fast, he’s vaguely worried that he’s ruined his hand for life.
“Motherfuck,” he chokes out, staggering backwards. The latest arrival to their party gives him a cool, assessing look, like he’s a curious bug.
“Your father has broken his hand on my face,” it observes in a voice like a goddamn cheese grater.
“Cas,” Dean says. “Thank fucking Christ. We got a situation here.”
Cas, John is pretty sure, is a girls’ name. He tries to focus on this instead of the grainy, throbbing pain in his hand. He needs to keep his mind clear, in case – God, in case of a thousand unpredictable things, all of this so far out of his depth he’s got no hope of breaking the surface, and there’s no way he can carry himself through a fight now, even if he knew how to kill these things –
But Cas, thankfully, doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge for whatever superficial damage John might have managed to do to his spotless cheekbone, his attention held completely by the being trapped beneath Dean’s sword. “Is that – ” he says, staring.
“Heya, Cassie,” Gabe says. He gives a cheeky little wave.
“Gabriel,” Cas breathes, something like awe in his voice. “Brother.”
Brothers, John thinks, as Cas takes a few small steps forward, his arm halfway outstretched, like a broken wing. They’re the same breed, then, whatever they are, the same sort of steel-skinned, teleporting, irritating monster. This particular one, though, came at Dean’s call, like a trained dog. He wonders what the hell kind of stupid trouble his sons have gotten up to in order to have something like this on a leash.
“You were dead,” Cas says. “Your wings were burnt up – I saw it.”
“Archangel, baby,” Gabriel says, and winks. “We work in mysterious ways.”
That cuts right through John’s pain-addled brain. “Archangel?” he says. “They’re not real. That’s not – you’re not an archangel.”
“Hell yeah I am,” Gabriel says. “How else could I have dug you up? Or – hey, here, look. I’ll heal your hand for you. Ta-da! Done. Bam. Archangel.”
His hand, as promised, abruptly stops feeling like it had been run over by an eight-wheeler. He flexes it, makes a fist, mimes pulling a trigger. Everything seems to be in working order.
But that’s not proof. Lots of things can do healing magic. For instance –
“You’re a witch,” John says.
“What, are we in Salem now? I’m no witch, but I’ve ridden a broomstick or two in my time, if you know what I’m sayin’ – ”
“This is incredibly asinine,” Cas says, and in the dim, red light around him, shadowy wings coalesce and flex, rising out crooked from his shoulders. They are threadbare and patchy, nearly bald of feathers in several places, but they are, without a doubt, wings.
John takes a step back and nearly trips over the table. “Uh,” he says.
“I am Castiel, angel of the Lord,” Cas says. “That being is the Archangel Gabriel, and you are John Winchester, who stood steadfast in Hell, Heaven, and Earth, son of and heir to the Men of Letters, member of the bloodline of Michael, father to the Righteous Man.”
Those words, in that order, do not make any goddamn sense to John. “What the fuck,” he blurts, entirely at a loss, and Dean starts and looks over, like he’d forgotten he was there at all. John can’t blame him, since if what Castiel’s got to say is to be believed, he’s got a goddamn archangel pinned under his blade. The idea makes John a little nauseous.
“Cas,” Dean says, quietly, and shakes his head as if he’s dislodging water from his ears. His voice takes on a gruffer, more commanding tone. “Cas – is he real?”
The wings slide back. Castiel tilts his head. “Yes, Dean. That is indeed your father’s soul. He’s human.”
“That’s right!” Gabe says. “I brought him back! Me. Gabe. Your new very bestest buddy.”
Dean takes a huge, shuddering breath, his chin tipping up, the sword falling slack at his side. He looks for a moment like he’s at war with himself, his knuckles ghostly white and straining, eyes flashing with bottled-up emotion, pain and fear and betrayal but also stark, honest hope, fragments of tentative relief, all of it confused and murky and colored with animosity.
“Dad,” he says finally, voice thick.
“Hey, kiddo,” John says. “Good to see you.”
“Yeah,” Dean says, giving a tight, conflicted smile, “you too.”
Neither of them move. John isn’t the hugging type, and neither is Dean – he used to be, back when he was in elementary school, far more clingy and needy and tactile than any boy child should be, but John’d been able to iron that out of him, thank God – so it’s not like either of them would want to put on a display.
He isn’t disappointed. Not even a tiny bit. No big deal. That kind of thing was always more Sam’s style, anyway, and it was ridiculous when he did it, too.
Speaking of which.
“Where’s your brother?” John asks.
Dean makes a face. “Out. He’s fine. Gabe – why? How’s he s’pposed to get us out of this mess?”
“What mess?” John snaps, pissed at being shrugged off, pissed at the lack of respect, pissed at the cavalier answer when he’s being dead fucking serious. He’s restrained himself heroically throughout this entire goddamn nonsensical conversation, all this bullshit cryptic angelic idiocy, and he is sick and fucking tired of being ignored. “What are you talking about? I want a goddamn explanation, or – ”
“Woah, re-lax,” Gabriel says. He’s smirking, like the whole thing’s fucking funny to him, and John wants nothing more than to drive his fist into his face, hand-breaking bulletproof cheekbones or no. “We were getting there, buddy. Holdjer horses.”
“Fuck you,” John says. “I didn’t get pulled down to listen to you ramble. I need answers – ”
“The world is ending,” Gabriel says, shrugging. “Again. And I’m thinking we’re gonna need all the help we can get to save it. That means you, bucko.”