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vail_kagamiFandom: Supernatural
Beta:
minviendhaCharacters (overall): Dean, Castiel, Sam, plus a number of angels and demons
Rating (overall): NC-17
Warnings (overall): violence, torture, drug use, insanity, mentions of rape
Spoilers: Going AU during episode 5.18: Point of No Return. No spoilers for season six.
Words (this chapter): 8,566
Summary: A man wakes up in a ruined wasteland, without memories, without a name, without knowing the strange guy who claims he used to be an angel, or that he once had a little brother. All he knows is that the world is dying, everyone is lying to him and that somehow, somewhere, something went terribly wrong. Because someone said Yes when they should have said No, and someone else paid the price.
The days they spend in the cave offer a welcome break. Dean’s feet start hurting like a bitch the first morning he wakes up on the bed of furs, for the first time in his active memory truly rested. He slept like a stone (or a corpse) without waking up once, and the furs kept him warm through the night. Even after waking up he lingers under them, holding on to the cosy, thoughtless emptiness inside him for as long as he can. Eventually, nature’s call forces him to move and as soon as he stands, his feet tell him that they are finally fed up with all the walking.
He wonders if things have always been like this for him: having no problem to keep going with little rest, food and comfort for a long time, only to feel the strain as soon as he has a moment to recover. It seems to speak of a body well adjusted to a stressful life.
Logically, he’d assume that he could be rid of all pains and the suddenly crushing weight of exhaustion – or at least be able to ignore them once more – simply by hitting the road again this moment. But for now, as he stumbles out of the cave in search of a good place to relieve himself, Dean is willing to take the long road to recovery, and enjoy the thought of not having to be cold, tired and hungry for a few days.
Not having to fear for his life for once is also a welcome bonus. If asked, he couldn’t tell why, but he feels safer here than he did anywhere else, including the settlements with their company and their simple comforts.
Outside the cave he finds Castiel. The angel is sitting with his back to the entrance, but whether he’s watching the valley below or simply looking at it, Dean can’t tell.
He also doesn’t know if the fallen angel slept at all or if he kept watch all through the night while Dean rested, once again.
He looks less tired than he did before. Dean never really paid attention to what Castiel looked like except for ‘unkempt’ and ‘unshaven’, usually with a healthy dose of ‘unwashed’ – pretty much like Dean himself. But he sees the difference, notices the exhausted tension only now it’s… not gone, but lessened.
He never cared about Cas’ mental and physical state before because he was too busy alternately being frustrated with or angry at him and trying to figure out if he can trust him. Even now Dean doesn’t really care, because he’s too busy needing to piss.
Castiel doesn’t seem to care much about Dean either, at least not enough to spare him more than a glance in greeting. Dean doesn’t care right back, but he returns to his not-so-heavenly guide once he does his business and sits beside him so they can stare at the valley together.
It’s green. The grass looks healthy, and is sprinkled with flowers. Dean can’t see the forest they crossed to get to this place, but the trees that grow at the edges of the meadows are full of thick green leaves.
“It looks like summer,” Dean hears himself say. It doesn’t feel like it, though – it’s too cold, even here.
He wonders if any of those trees carry fruit.
Castiel doesn’t answer, but Dean is distracted anyway by the feeling of sadness, almost desperation, that washes over him. The world he sees doesn’t really exist anymore. It died long ago, and unlike him, it’ll never be resurrected.
“It’s hard to believe the world already ended when you see this,” Dean can’t help noting, maybe only to fill the silence with something other than the voices of distant birds that sing only here.
This time, Cas does answer. “There is no human being here but us,” he says.
-
The exhaustion never entirely vanishes from Castiel’s face; not after one night in a safe place, and not after four. The thin line around his mouth never disappears, but if that one is a sign of the stress of recent days or a permanent fixture, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps Dean only notices it because he never saw it in the face he can’t remember from so long ago.
They don’t speak much. Dean still has so many questions, so many doubts, but he doesn’t want to think about the things he’s lost and the guilt he seems to carry so he doesn’t ask. He still thinks about it. It’s impossible to stop. Sometimes, he almost misses the simplicity of walking, of listening for any sound, since it sometimes left him too exhausted to think.
Sometimes he wishes for the oblivion offered by a couple of strong drinks – craves it, actually, and that feels strange when by all rights he shouldn’t even know what alcohol is.
He dreams more now. Michael never comes to him, which might or might not be thanks to the sigils that protect this place, but his mind is never shy to fill his nights with pictures on its own.
He rarely remembers his dreams, though. He knows they are bad, wakes up with his heart racing and sometimes wet traces on his face that he’s forever going to deny. One night he’s filled with mindless terror, another with crushing grief when he opens his eyes and tries to remember where he is, forgetting for one moment that he doesn’t remember anything else. He supposes he might be dreaming of hell and can, absurdly, only hope it’s his own hell he’s dreaming of.
One time he wakes up in the watery light of early morning to see Castiel sitting at the foot of his makeshift bed, looking at him with his head crooked to the side, reminding Dean more than anything else of a bird. He leaves before Dean can say anything, but the idea that the angel could be watching him sleep every night is enough to thoroughly creep him out.
When he wakes up the next night, however, Cas is sleeping soundly and doesn’t even stir when Dean stumbles outside to throw up. He doesn’t in the end, but he comes close, and fears the moment when whatever he dreams of at night will begin to make sense to him.
When he doesn’t dream, his sleep is deep and healthy. His feet and muscles stop hurting after three days. The cans Cas has stored inside the cave could probably get them through an entire year. The food they offer isn’t tasty, but as it turns out the trees in the valley do carry fruits, and on the third day Castiel leaves for a few hours and comes back with a freshly killed boar. As food goes, this place is probably as close to paradise as this world can get anymore.
Dean wished for a place like this when they were walking. Now they are here, it only takes three days to drive him crazy. Because he can’t stop thinking no matter how much he wants to. So he thinks all the time about Michael and Lucifer, the decisions he made and the world he created, but never about his brother. Whenever his thoughts stray in that direction, he feels sick and nervous, like there’s an itch in his brain he can’t scratch and it makes him want to scream and punch things until he passes out and can’t think anymore. It’s like everything relating to his brother in his mind is covered in oil and he slips off whenever he tries to contemplate it. His thoughts refuse to focus.
And yet it’s always there, constantly in the back of his mind, less a thought than an awareness, leaving him restless and nearly desperate. It makes relaxing nearly impossible.
He doesn’t know if there is a possibility at all of ending this war without killing what is left of the world, or if there is anything useful they can do in general. But Dean knows he has to try. People are suffering, bad things are happening (because of him), and that means he can’t sit around and be generally better off than anyone else. Not if he could be out there and try to help and fight and make it better, chances or not.
Something inside him won’t let him. He suspects that this might be why he (they) spent all his life (their lives) on the road.
By the time it becomes unbearable, they have been in the cave for about a week, and Dean and Castiel haven’t had a conversation that runs deeper than what’s for dinner in almost as long. There’s still so much Dean wants to know about this world and his own history, but talking to Castiel is frustrating and exhausting and always leaves him feeling bad about himself. He finds he doesn’t really want to ask what happened to kill every human being in this area without leaving a trace because he fears he would find it a lot less peaceful and safe here if he knew. Most of all, though, he doesn’t want or think and talk about his brother but can’t seem to care about anything else.
He goes to Castiel on the sixth day of their stay, when nothing hurts anymore and he hasn’t been hungry or thirsty in a while and is getting used to not being cold at night. As usual, Cas is outside the cave where he prefers to be most of the time, tanning the skin of the boar he killed three days before. He looks up when Dean approaches, looking him over carefully as if searching for something – or finding something confirmed.
“We will leave tomorrow,” he says eventually. “We shouldn’t stay in one place for too long anyway.”
“You think Michael would come here if they knew where we are? Or Lucifer?”
“I think they know they don’t have to.”
He’s probably right. Whoever really wants to find them will, and angel-repelling symbols aren’t going to stop a determined archangel – or someone with a huge number of human followers. Worse – the many people and creatures who want to find them have better chances now Dean is with Castiel, creating something like a direct line to Michael. The two of them are only safe here, or anywhere, as long as they don’t linger long enough for everyone else to become impatient.
However, Dean is very certain that this is not the only reason why they have to keep moving. Castiel has to be going somewhere. He can’t imagine the fallen angel spent the last fifteen decades just running away, or that he plans to keep doing so until Dean drops dead from old age.
Provided he’s still aging and won’t end up like…
Mostly, Dean can’t imagine Cas not wanting to go and do something about all of this, if only because he can’t imagine himself not trying.
“Where are we going next?” he asks, and what he really means is, What are we going to do now?
Cas, for once, seems to understand that, if the long pause before he answers is anything to go by. Dean can practically see the internal battle on his face as he contemplates whether or not to tell him what he has in mind.
He steels himself for punching the angel in the face should he receive no better answer than “Kansas” or “Detroit” or something along those lines.
“We’re going to continue working towards the goal I have been aiming for since this war started,” Castiel finally says. “Find a way to kill Lucifer.”
And if that doesn’t sound promising!
“If you absolutely need a purpose,” Cas adds, and that takes away a little of the promise.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean has really begun to hate constantly having to ask this question.
“You shouldn’t get too exited about it,” Cas explains. “We – you, me, Sam and some others – have been trying to find a way to kill Lucifer ever since he was released from his prison. We failed to do so before we lost you, and even though Sam and I kept trying after that we never found anything useful. There were some promising leads but they all led nowhere. People died for nothing. I have continued looking for a way in the years I was alone.”
Dean realises where this is going, and it’s not exactly encouraging. “And you got nowhere with it.”
It annoys him that he can’t tell if the look Cas throws him is annoyed or amused.
“As you saw for yourself, Lucifer is still around.”
“All those years, and you don’t even have an idea? What exactly were you doing all the time?”
“Running,” Castiel reminds him. “And looking for a way to separate you from Michael.” If he wanted to shut Dean up, this was the way to go. After a few seconds, Castiel adds, as if to comfort him, “At least now I don’t need to waste time on that anymore.”
A waste of time, huh? Not for the first time, Dean wonders if Cas ever really wanted him back or it he just tried for his brother’s sake. After all the angel told him, it’s obvious that he carries a grudge, and judging just by what he was told, Dean can see why he would. Yet he still doesn’t know the whole story, and he’s decided that a full-blown guilt trip will have to wait until he remembers everything and learns about his own motivations from his own point of view.
Or rather, something inside him seems to have decided that. Dean actually thinks that based on everything he knows a little more guilt would be in order. Not that he doesn’t feel bad about himself already, but it could be worse and maybe it should be worse. But the guilt won’t come and his mind won’t go there.
Perhaps because it knows that once the floodgates have been opened, nothing is going to save him from drowning.
And he’s left wondering once again if he even wants his memories back. Answers would be nice, not having to constantly doubt himself would be nice, and knowing who to trust would be awesome – but he’s beginning to fear that the price will be too high.
Well. Killing the Devil sounds like a plan, at least – even if an actual plan seems nowhere to be found here. It’s better than running around aimlessly for the rest of eternity, in any case, and who knows – maybe they’ll actually make it.
Dean imagines that a lot of people have tried before them, and obviously no one succeeded. He doesn’t exactly know why he and Cas should have better chances, but Cas used to be an angel and must have some insight other people don’t, and Dean used to be Michael’s vessel, which has to count for something.
Even if he has no idea for what. He’s trying to stay positive, here, since that’s a lot better than going at things with a ‘doesn’t matter, we’re going to fail anyway’ mindset.
“Please tell me you have an idea how to go at this that goes beyond asking random people if they happen to know how to kill Satan,” he says. “Because if that’s what you’ve been doing so far, you must have noticed by now that that doesn’t work so well.”
“I already know how to kill Lucifer,” Castiel tells him, causing Dean’s eyebrows to climb towards his hairline.
“Didn’t you just tell me you didn’t? If you know, what the fuck have you been waiting for?”
Cas stops what he is doing in order to throw Dean an impatient glance. “There are ways to kill angels, and of course I know them. An angel’s blade is an effective weapon against my kind. But only the blade of an archangel can kill another archangel.”
“Like Lucifer.” Dean nods his understanding. “And you don’t know where to get one.”
“That is one of the problems.”
“What about the other archangels? I know Michael isn’t too keen on ending this the easy way, but the others…”
“Raphael is on Michael’s side, without reservations,” Castiel interrupts him. “He will do things by the book – and he would kill me on sight should I approach him. And Gabriel has turned his back on heaven long before this war started. He doesn’t want to fight for either side. We have nothing to expect from him even if we could find him.”
“Great. And what’s the good news?”
“Even if we had a blade that could harm the devil,” Cas continues calmly, “I wouldn’t have a chance to get near enough to kill him. Neither would you, for that matter. Even if he weren’t so well protected, Lucifer is too powerful. Only Michael would have a chance to kill him.”
“It keeps getting better. So what’s the plan?”
Castiel sighs and Dean realises he doesn’t want to give any more information. Maybe because he has no plan. It seems impossible after two hundred years of having a chance to think about it, but one has to wonder. Cas doesn’t seem to be the organized type. (Dean wonders how Sam managed not to go crazy with him.)
“No plan, then? I see. I guess we’ll just run around and hope for a miracle then.” Dean turns around to get back into the cave, collect things he’ll need for the next several weeks, or months, or years, or however long this is going to take. To his surprise he finds that even with the prospect of going absolutely nowhere he can’t wait to start.
Maybe he doesn’t really believe Cas doesn’t have a plan.
Dean stops and turns back to his maybe-friend, who’s still doing exactly what he did before. Cas won’t finish this skin until tomorrow, he thinks. “Just tell me if there actually is a chance, however small, that we’ll kill the devil.”
Castiel sets down his tool, but he doesn’t look at Dean. “Yes,” he finally says. “We can do it. Because we have to.”
Dean leaves it at that, though it answers nothing. He doesn’t even know if killing Lucifer will actually help this world much. The biggest evil will be gone, sure, and any chance for Lucifer and Michael to eradicate the world in their epic bitch fight. But he doubts that the demons will simply all shut up and peacefully go back to hell. And maybe the angels will accept that the whole thing is over and fuck off to heaven. But Dean kind of suspects that if they manage to kill Lucifer after Michael refused to kill his brother for so long simply because he wanted to do it right, the damn archangel is going to be pissed. He seems like the kind of guy to carry a grudge.
He’s seen the devastation that came from Michael being merely impatient. He doesn’t want to know what remains of the world when he gets really angry.
So maybe they’ll have to kill Michael as well. And all angels and demons that remain, while they’re at it.
Maybe stagnation would be better. Keep things the way they are – the people are used to the situation, have learned to live with it, never knew anything else, and the situation sucks, but surely it’s still better than everyone dying.
And of course, that’s all a load of bullshit. A world that may go down in a blast but also has a chance for improvement, however slowly, is always better than a world that is guaranteed to always be terrible and will probably end in a blast one day anyway.
And even if things remain crappy for mankind after the war is over, at least Dean’s brother will be safe then (and maybe that’s the most important thing of all). With Lucifer gone, no one has a reason to try and torture the kid into saying Yes anymore and he can finally come back to life and to Dean and maybe, maybe everything will be alright then. Dean feels like everything will be okay if only he’ll get his brother back. (Nothing will be okay if he doesn’t.)
His heart, inexplicably, beats a little faster when he roams through the cave to collect his things.
-
To Dean’s surprise, Castiel does manage to finish the skin he was working on, though why he bothered remains a mystery, since there are enough skins and furs to choose from already in the cave. There are even some simple clothes that don’t fit very well and don’t speak of great talent for sewing but offer an alternative to wearing the same set of clothes day in and day out. Both Dean and Castiel made use of the opportunity to wash what they were wearing on the journey during their break, which already confronted Dean with the need to test Cas’ self-made collection and declare it uncomfortable to wear. He’s not looking forward to doing so more often, but it beats the alternative of walking around naked every now and then.
They pack what is left of the boar, fill up their water bottles and as many cans as they can carry. Hidden weapons Castiel doesn’t have on offer in his cave, but their guns and Cas’ angel-killing sword will do, as long as they don’t run out of ammunition for the projectile weapons. Not that they have had to use them so far, but when they have to, Dean would like to know he doesn’t have to hold back due to supply shortage.
The one weapon Castiel adds to their collection is an obviously self-made but quite impressive looking bow and a bunch of arrows. It’ll help them hunt larger animals without giving their position away with the sound of a gunshot, he explains as he fastens the bow to his back. Dean refrains from making a comment about cupids, but it’s hard.
They roll everything they take with them into some skins and furs that shall keep them warm at night and bind then closed with the same rope they use to carry them comfortably.
“Where were you before you came to fetch me?” Dean asks when they are done and ready to go. The thought came to him when they were packing, because when Castiel came to him, he had nothing with him but the clothes he was wearing and his sword. Wherever he was, he must have dropped everything and left at once.
“I was in a city a few days’ march away from where I found you. Looking for supplies for the camp I intended to stay in for a while.”
Dean tries to imagine living like that, for centuries. “You really don’t like company, do you?”
“Getting involved with other people would have led to discovery sooner or later,” Castiel reminds him mildly. “At the very least it would have endangered those I dealt with.”
“So no sex, huh?” Dean doesn’t know why this is the first thing his mind jumps to. Perhaps it distracts him from how depressingly lonely Castiel’s life must have been. (Or perhaps the thought of centuries without sex really, really creeps him out.)
(He finds he’d kind of like to have sex again at one point. Just not necessarily with Cas.)
“Not for a very long time.” Something like a smile plays around the other’s lips. Apparently he considers this topic harmless enough to relax a little bit. “It wasn’t a difficult sacrifice to make. Before I fell, I never had sex at all.”
“Well, I never had sex either before I hit puberty, and yet I wouldn’t want to go without it for two hundred years,” Dean points out, though he suspects with a fallen angel things are a little bit different.
“I don’t think falling from grace can be compared to hitting puberty,” Cas confirms, despite his claim of being incapable of reading Dean’s mind.
“The parents of many a teenager would disagree with you.” Dean grins. “Seriously, you don’t miss it at all?”
“It was a nice way of spending the time,” Cas admits. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have participated in the act more than once. However, it was hardly addictive, and opportunities rarely presented themselves after we left the camp we had lived in for years. Even before Sam died, our life has been mostly nomadic.”
Dean nearly makes a comment about his little brother and his obvious lack of a sex life, but the sudden memory of what Michael had done to the kid shut him up. “Sounds exiting,” he says, somewhat lamely. “What did you do all day, if you weren’t wandering around?”
“We sought a way to separate you and Michael. It required a lot of travelling to get to various sources of information, but as you know, we never succeeded. There were some dead end traces, though, that kept us occupied. Also, we fought demons were we found them and angels where we had to. We avoided those were we could, though, because Sam had little way of defending himself from them. Sometimes we stayed at settlements for a while and helped the people there while we recovered our strength. We never stayed long.”
It sounds… incredibly bleak. “Guess that lifestyle doesn’t leave room for anything fun, huh?”
Castiel shoulders his bag and shoves his gun into the holster under his jacket after checking it over one more time with practiced movements. “We had good times, too,” he says softly, as if sensing Dean’s need for something positive in those days he had nothing to do with besides causing them and deciding to be nice for once. “There wasn’t always something to hunt, and sometimes we managed to avoid detection for a long time and were able to stay in one place long enough to rest. The other humans we stayed with from time to time offered some distraction as well if there was nothing for us to fight.”
So basically, they were taking some time off for themselves whenever lack of anything else to do forced it on them. It doesn’t really sound impressive, but at least they did get a chance to relax every now and then.
Dean should have left it at that, but as they wander down the slope and leave the cave that has been their home for the past week behind without another glance, he has to ask, because he has to know how rebels during the apocalypse spend their free time.
“What’s your idea of a good time? Besides sex, of course.” Dean suddenly wonders if Cas ever did it with his brother in all the time they were on their own and shudders internally. Cas never gave the impression of seeing his friend as anything but that but, well, desperate times and all that. “I mean, what did you two do if it was just you?” he clarifies further and really hopes the answer isn’t Sex.
“Play cards,” Cas offers. He doesn’t shrug, but Dean can hear the shrug in his voice. “Talk. Read.”
It doesn’t sound terribly exiting, but then, their lives were exiting enough. They probably were grateful for every boring day.
And then Cas just has to add, “If Sam was well enough for any of that.” And that’s why Dean should have left well enough alone. Leave it to a goddamn angel to constantly remind him that his little brother has been so messed up by torture and addictions that he didn’t get a moment of peace even if no one was currently out to skin him alive.
For a moment anger washes over Dean, so deep it takes his breath away. Suddenly, he wants to punch and throttle Castiel and yell at him for not protecting Sam from all that, and at the same time he hates himself with a passion he didn’t think possible because that would have been his job, and he didn’t do it, he fucking didn’t.
The moment passes and the hate is gone as quickly as it came, leaving Dean to wonder if it had ever been there in the first place.
(“As long as I’m around, nothing bad’s gonna happen to you.”)
He stays half a step behind Castiel and doesn’t say anything else until they stop for the night.
-
They don’t leave the area the way they came, but they walk more or less in the general direction of the forest they crossed to reach this place, only a little more east. It makes Dean wonder how much further this strangely alive and empty place continues in the other direction. He imagines it stretching on forever and doesn’t understand why the thought makes him shiver.
They have to pass through a forest again to get back to the dust and devastation of the world they left behind. Maybe it’s the same forest – it seems to serve as a natural border between one world and the other. But it appears to be not as thick in this place and contains more rocks. The narrow river Dean and Castiel were following all the way from the cave continues between the trees and soon becomes invisible inside the green, as if the forest were eating it.
They reach the first trees when the sun behind the eternal shroud of clouds is just beginning to set. It’s too early for setting camp for the night, but Dean remembers Castiel insistence’s of crossing the forest before nightfall on their way in and doesn’t complain. Just looking at those trees gives him the creeps, and he doesn’t even know why.
Before, on their travels, they both used to be too exhausted to do anything once they stopped for the night. But after days of resting and not that long a walk, Dean is far from tired and filled with a nervous energy that might by fuelled by his desire to distract himself from the evil territory merely a stone’s throw away.
“I don’t suppose you have a card game with you now?” he asks while Cas settles on his spread furs and spectacularly fails to act like he isn’t watching the trees.
To Dean’s considerable surprise, he does carry a stack of cards with him. They are old and damaged and obviously self-made. Whoever drew the markings and pictures on them wasn’t a great artist, and they lack colour, but they do their job.
They also leave Dean wondering how many solitary games Cas has invented in the past dozen decades.
-
Just like the first time they did it, nothing at all happens to them inside the forest. It doesn’t even take as long as Dean thought it would – they make it to the other side in less than two hours, which means they probably could have gone the day before and be out before nightfall. But obviously, Cas didn’t want to take the risk. Dean doesn’t have it in him to mind.
Impatient as he’s been to leave, Dean finds himself missing the cave and the security it offered in the first night outside, when he can’t sleep for every noise he hears freaking him out. Not even Castiel keeping vigil beside him makes him feel any better. He is almost glad when it’s his turn to take over watch, since then his nervousness actually becomes useful.
Cas either slept like a corpse, or pretended to be a corpse while listening to every noise just as Dean was.
Or he listened to every noise while pretending to be a corpse so whatever might come after them would attack Dean first. You never know. Angels are sneaky like that.
Once they make it to the other side, it feels like they just came back to the real world. Dean wonders if there is something wrong with seeing it like that. He supposes that, coming from a world not destroyed and having missed practically all of the way down, he should think of this world as a nightmare and set the pretty (if dead) world they just left as the norm. He doesn’t, though. Perhaps his world has simply always been crappy and this just feels kind of fitting.
It’s still a shock, coming back. It isn’t like he’s forgotten the destruction, the empty ruins, but even his memory couldn’t compete with the real thing. In the end it’s less like he wakes from a dream and more like he’s forcefully pulled from a dream by a bucket of cold water on his face to find that the house is on fire.
So they make their way across yet another devastated plain full of rubble in search of a fire extinguisher.
Dean doesn’t even know what state they’re in. Somehow, he doubts it’s still Georgia. It’s funny – in a way that’s giving him a headache – that he can name every single state of the Unites States and most major cities, could find them on a map without having to search if any map still existed, but has absolutely no recollection of ever having been in any of them.
They went mostly west after leaving the remains of Atlanta, so now they’re probably in Alabama. Dean grimaces. He never liked Alabama, and that’s probably to do with something bad happening at an impressionable time in his life that still bothers him even if he’s forgotten all about it. Isn’t it typical that his memory is randomly selective like this? He can’t remember the name of his favourite song, or what his father looked like, but by God, he knows that he doesn’t like Alabama.
Well. In the hours and hours spend walking through a land alternating nothing and nothing with dirt, Dean finds it confirmed that Alabama kind of sucks.
If this even is Alabama. He could be wrong about that after all. But if it is Alabama, then the ruins of the city that show up as outlines in front of the darkening sky near the end of their second day after crossing the forest might be Montgomery.
Or any other big city in that state.
Dean doesn’t get to find out that day. They find a long stretch of even ground that turns out to be a street hidden under dust and dirt, but the one crippled road sign they come across is unreadable. And even if they find anyone inside the city, Dean somewhat doubts that anyone still remembers its name.
Okay, so Pam knew where Chicago was. But then, that’s not in Alabama.
“Hey, Cas,” he asks as they settle down for the night in the questionable shelter of a stretch of ragged and broken road. “Has my world always been crappy? Not like this, just, you know. Did it suck?”
Cas snorts softly. “Yes, it did.” He unfolds the boar skin in which he keeps the dried meat. “It wasn’t all bad, though,” he adds as he hands Dean a slice.
They haven’t been holding back on the meat so far. The cold weather is doing them a favour in this regard, but even with these low temperatures the meat won’t stay edible forever and there is no point in trying to stretch the supplies only to end up throwing away half of it.
For once, Dean simply accepts Cas’ words and the food and they eat in silence, at least one of them thinking ruefully about the days after their supplies of expiring food have run out and they have to get back to being hungry almost all the time.
-
There are strange dreams that night. Nothing that has him waking up in a cold sweat, but strange none the less. Unsettling, maybe, but probably not even that.
Dean gets the feeling sometimes that he isn’t very good with words.
“I dreamt of zombies tonight,” he informs Cas the next morning, when they start their march toward the city. “They were attacking me. But I wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t a nightmare.”
“A memory, I guess,” Castiel says with a shrug, entirely unimpressed. “Or something based on memories anyway.” He looks to at Dean when Dean doesn’t answer for a while. “You used to fight zombies,” he adds helpfully.
“Yeah, I gathered.”
Another sleep-related thought comes to Dean an hour later, when the outskirts of the city stubbornly refuse to get any closer. He has been dreaming a lot lately, but it has all just been dreams. No archangel ever bothered to visit them since he met the devil in Atlanta.
He mentions it to Cas and Cas only shrugs again. “Maybe Michael doesn’t have anything to say to you at the moment.”
“You don’t think maybe he can’t find me?”
“I honestly hope he can’t. But he doesn’t need to know where you physically are to get in contact. I suppose his silence has reasons. But those reasons don’t necessarily need to have anything to do with us.”
Dean thinks he understands – Michael has a war to lead, after all, and even if he’s been denied his final battle so far, there are still demons to fight, traitors to find, and maybe he’s discovered a city somewhere that hasn’t been levelled yet…
…well, that is unlikely, at least.
This city is done for, in any case. The reach the first ruins around midday – just piles of rubble, half-buried in sand. A lone bird fleeing from a ruin as they pass is the only sign of life they see all day.
Night comes upon them before they make it through the outer layer. At least this place offers more opportunities for hiding, though as he sits in the abandoned leftovers of a house with only Cas’ even breathing for company, Dean has well justified concerns about that shelter collapsing on top of them.
He wonders what Michael would say if his perfect vessel was smashed by the ruins of a city that wouldn’t be in ruins if Michael hadn’t destroyed it in the first place. And along with Dean the only guy who could tell them where the soul of Lucifer’s vessel is. It would probably be quite inconvenient.
Dean would have taken comfort in the thought had the house actually collapsed on them. Though he thinks the Keeper of Lucifer’s Vessel might not have appreciated it as much.
Just thinking of Cas that way makes Dean’s heart rate pick up speed. Which is pretty ridiculous, but he can help it as little as he can explain it. Cas is the only connection he has to his brother. And the thought of seeing his brother again fills Dean with as much anticipation as dread.
The more he thinks about it, the more he fears meeting the guy. And yet he finds himself yearning for that moment with everything he is.
They don’t get buried that night. Dean lets Cas sleep through it, wakes him in the first light of morning and hardly has the patience to wait through breakfast. Ever since they left the cave, he’s been restless, and it only seems to be getting worse. He wants to get wherever they are going and start working on kicking Lucifer in the ass.
Cas doesn’t seem to be suffering from the same kind of impatience, but then he’s had a lot of opportunity to hone his patience. Dean joins him for the morning meal, mostly because he’d feel silly pacing up and down like a child while the ex-angel eats his dried meat and berries. Besides, he knows he’ll regret it if he doesn’t eat anything, even if he isn’t hungry right now, but he does it without appetite or enthusiasm.
On top of his impatience, their travelling food already starts to get on his nerves. Chewing unhappily on a piece of half-dried fruit, Dean finds himself longing for something hot and greasy.
Due to his impatience, Dean actually ends up walking a few feet ahead of Cas down the dusty road instead of following behind him as usual. It’s not very practical considering Dean has no idea where they are going, but as long as there’s only one road to take, he feels pretty confident in his ability to pick the right one.
Eventually, though, he has to wait for Cas to catch up and show him the way. Unfortunately, Cas doesn’t seem to know it either.
“We have to go East,” he says, a little helplessly. “I think.”
Dean looks up at the sky, which as always presents itself as a uniform shroud of clouds. The sun doesn’t even offer a hint of its position. “Helpful.”
Instead of answering, Cas picks a street that is relatively clear and maybe even leads East. After a few minutes, they come across a building that has inconveniently collapsed all over the street, blocking it.
“I thought you knew where we’re going,” Dean hisses impatiently as they walk back the way they came until they find another path going in their general direction.
“I know where we want to end up,” Castiel corrects him. “Not how to get there.”
“Wow. Anybody tell you lately that you’re useless?”
“No. As I said, you haven’t been around for a while.” Castiel scowls at him.
“You’d think you have had enough time to memorize a few ways.”
Cas only rolls his eyes. “There are very many cities around, Dean,” he says. “Do you honestly believe I know every road to take in each of them? Not to mention that their paths are not exactly stable.”
Dean takes a deep breath. It tastes of dust and nearly makes his cough. “You have been here before, right? I mean, we are going somewhere in particular, aren’t we?”
“We are. And I have been here before. It was more than one hundred and eighty years ago, with Sam.”
“Ah,” Dean says. “Okay.” He finds a promising opening between two buildings and aims for it. It’s not a street, but some incredible force cleared a way straight through a block, and Dean isn’t picky. “What were you doing here? Also looking for a way to kill the devil?”
“No, at that time we were looking for a way to get Michael out of your body, preferably without destroying your mind.” Castiel eyes the walls around them as if expecting them to attack any moment. The way they look, they might, too. “We didn’t find one.”
“Really? That comes as a shock.”
“There is a very large settlement nearby. The largest I know. It developed from a camp of hunters that survived the initial battles. They are now in the possession of the largest still existing collection of books on angels, demons and other supernatural creatures,” Cas explains, for once without Dean having to ask first. “We contributed some of our own, from the library of an old friend.”
“You think they have the information we need?”
“No,” Cas answers openly. “But it’s a place to start.”
Well, that sounded promising. “So, how do we get there if you don’t remember the way? This city seems to be pretty large.”
“We’ll find it,” Cas promises, for whatever that’s worth. And then he adds, “If it still exists.”
It just keeps getting better.
-
Once they were so deep into the city that they were completely surrounded by buildings wherever they looked, Dean hoped they would make it to their destination within a matter of hours. Well, he hoped for minutes actually, but even Dean could tell that that was unlikely.
Of course, at that point he also thought that Castiel knew where they were going. At this point, he’s going to be happy if they make it anywhere within the week.
That he had to lower his expectation, however, doesn’t mean that he’s any less impatient. And that he has no hope of getting satisfied soon only means that he’s in a very bad mood.
Doesn’t help that Cas isn’t exactly fuelling his hope of gaining any useful knowledge at their destination.
A part of him still hopes Cas was kidding when he said that.
All the detours they have to take on the way through the city remind Dean unpleasantly of their way through the dead town in the valley. It’s hard to believe that was not even two weeks ago.
At least they don’t have to hurry to get out of this city before nightfall. Which is good, because another night passes while they are looking for the right way. Dean is tired, but too agitated to sleep. Cas doesn’t speak much to him, because Dean keeps snapping at him at any opportunity. And rightfully so. Dean is pretty certain he’s seen that particular pile of rubble for the fourth time now.
At least there don’t seem to be any demons around. Cas hasn’t given out alarm signals once since they left the cave, and when Dean asks him about it, he points out that the world is big, and there are only so many demons topside to be annoying. The chances of accidentally walking into one far from the usual routes are small.
“But if the biggest settlement on the continent is around here somewhere, I’d have thought there’d be a lot of demons in this area,” Dean argues.
“And do what? Get killed? Like I said, it started as a hunter community. A lot of other people moved to the camp, seeking protection. Even now, there are more hunters in that place than anywhere else. The settlement doesn’t have anything so important the demons would risk getting near there to get it.”
“And they’re not going to come looking for us here?”
“Why would they do that? They don’t know what we are planning.”
“Yeah, but… killing the devil, that’s not so original a plan during the apocalypse that it would be a stretch for them to figure it out.”
Cas doesn’t answer, which Dean interprets as him not having considered this so far. Which is kind of hard to believe.
“I’d be more worried about the angels,” Cas eventually says. “The place is warded against them too, but we have to get there first. However…”
“However?”
“I don’t think they are going to come for us.”
“Because they want us to lead them to my brother’s soul?”
Cas nods. “But if they lost us, they might find us again while we’re here, and we’d be back under their observation.” He stops, looks around, and eventually picks a road so full of rubble it’s nearly impassable. “We should try to get into the rings of wards as quickly as possible.”
“Fantastic.” Dean rolls his eye. “Would be great if you could remember the way, then.”
-
Contrary to Dean’s fears, they don’t have to sleep another night in the ruins far from the community. Just as darkness falls, Cas sees the first row of Enochian symbols, and after that it gets a lot easier. As before, the symbols remain invisible to Dean’s eyes, and a part of him suspect that they aren’t even there and everyone is secretly making fun of him.
Which brings another memory back. “Is it only angels who can see Enochian symbols?” he asks.
Castile’s answer comes after a couple of seconds. “No,” he says, sounding distracted. “A lot of non-human entities can see them. Demons, to name one example.”
So much for that. As of now, Dean knows as much about Jena, the psycho-chick from hell, as he did before. She’s not human. Duh.
For a long time they walk in silence. Cas keeps looking left and right as if searching for something, obviously orienting himself on the invisibly marks.
“Shouldn’t we wait for someone to come and let us in?” Dean wants to know when his companion shows no sign of slowing down even hours after crossing the first wards.
“We don’t need to.”
“Last time we did.”
“That was courtesy.”
Dean stops short then, not believing what he heard. But Cas just keeps on walking as if he didn’t even notice, and so Dean has no choice but to run after him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I can cross most wards. I told you that. Some are difficult, but I’ve fallen too far to be stopped by almost all protections against angels anymore.” Deans wonders if he detects a hint of regret in Castiel’s voice. He isn’t sure. He’s not sure if there is anything at all. “Back in the day it used to be harder, but I discovered it’s barely a problem now. It seems I was able to fall further, after all.”
At the end he sounds almost amused. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Reading Cas is hard, maybe because no matter what he says, he isn’t, and never will be, human.
“So, when we went to that other camp…”
“I didn’t know how they would react if we just showed up. So I decided to introduce myself properly. You and Sam always told me you would appreciate me knocking on the door more often.”
Dean has no idea what he’s talking about. “But the wards. Last time you were disturbing them, causing the others to come. Don’t you think the people here might be a little pissed once they realise an angel is walking straight into their camp? And they might not be of the ‘Ask first, shoot later’ kind.”
“The symbols won’t notice,” Cas tells him, still sounding distant and distracted. “I’m not telling them.”
“Wait a minute” Dean isn’t sure he got this right. “You’re telling me you only let their alarms ring last time because you wanted them to know we were coming?”
“I was knocking.”
Dean remembers a long time of standing around on aching feet, waiting for the descendants of Cas’ old comrades to show up. He’s not sure he’s amused.
But he supposes the people wouldn’t have reacted too well to two strangers just walking into their camp. They were quite suspicious, and hardy any of them remembered what Cas looks like. Which might have made it the right decision then, but that also means they might be making a mistake now. Because he can’t imagine the people they are going to meet now to react much better, even if they don’t realise that Cas Used To Be An Angel. This whole world isn’t a good host.
But Cas doesn’t worry about it. When Dean asks, he is informed that the community they are aiming for is used to visitors from elsewhere. Trade still happens, here.
“They have farming, but the last time we were here, it wasn’t enough to sustain so many people. They trade with other settlements.”
“Then how come we haven’t seen anyone for ages?” Dean is overcome with the image of finding absolutely nothing, or worse, a graveyard. It’s been so long since Cas was here. Anything could have happened.
“Because we are using a back route.” Since they couldn’t find the main route, obviously. “And you have to consider that many visitors in these days mean five a week or ten a month.” Cas stops suddenly, a frown falling over his face before he walks on. “I would have expected to run into a patrol by now, though. They used to control the area all the time, not merely relying on the wards.”
“Maybe we’re still too far away?” Dean offers without much hope.
“Maybe,” Cas agrees. But he doesn’t sound too hopeful either.
NEXT
Mr. Blue Sky
Date: 2012-01-21 06:45 pm (UTC)And hey, can't blame Dean for wishing he could get drunk. I kind of wish I could, and I'm only reading about it.
Re: Mr. Blue Sky
Date: 2012-01-21 06:54 pm (UTC)Glad you're still enjoying this! Cas is fun to write in this story.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 01:45 am (UTC)Castiel doesn’t seem to care much about Dean either, at least not enough to spare him more than a glance in greeting.
Pfft. Pretty much par for the course, Dean. Admittedly, without a memory, there's only so much to be expected, but it hardly excuses him after he gets his memory back, because yeah, it's not like the angel risked life and limb (again) to come and save your sorry hide (again) while being on the lam for a couple hundred years protecting your brother (who you screwed over), so.
Ah well. Emotional immaturity being what it is.
“I was in a city a few days’ march away from where I found you. Looking for supplies for the camp I intended to stay in for a while.”
A few days march. I love that line; spoken like a soldier.
Or he listened to every noise while pretending to be a corpse so whatever might come after them would attack Dean first. You never know. Angels are sneaky like that.
To what end, you petulant little brat? I mean, seriously, what purpose would it serve Cas, aside to have to carry your wounded ass? Oi.
Dean is in serious dick-mode in this chapter. It probably would take the patience of 200 years to deal with him. Even so, I liked your imagery as it went along, and I liked the world-building going on here. I still wonder about the forest; I don't recall it ever being explained, but it's another of those wonderfully creepy details that makes a shiver crawl up my spine.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-25 09:12 pm (UTC):D In Dean's defence, he probably didn't really think Cas would sacrifice him, he was just being morbid and pissed.
...or so I believe. It's been a while since I wrote it, after all.
I still wonder about the forest; I don't recall it ever being explained, but it's another of those wonderfully creepy details that makes a shiver crawl up my spine.
It's never explained. I find that many creepy element lose a lot of their creepiness once their nature is revealed, so I didn't. Nothing is scarier than the unknown. If I ever wrote a horror story the monster would never get a face.