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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): 7,749
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.
Masterpost
The sun is close to rising when they finally stop for a rest. Once again it’s a mostly intact house that gives them shelter for the night. This one has two storys and is stable enough for Dean and Castiel to take a room on the second floor, though Dean more than wishes they hadn’t. There’s still a carpet on the floor and mouldering wallpaper hangs off the walls. The frame of a bed stands in a corner, the skeleton of a computer under a desk and shelves have been nailed to the wall, containing books and other stuff, like candles and small figurines. Lovingly collected memorabilia.
Staying in empty ruins is easier.
The only window in the room is broken, but small. The soft wind doesn’t get inside at all and there’s no way to see them from the outside. It makes this place well protected by recent definition, but Dean has a hard time finding rest anyway. He takes over the first watch without a word while Cas curls up beside him, facing the wall. His breathing never turns to the deep, slow rhythm of sleep.
It’s silent here. Not only quiet, but utterly silent; the kind of silence that makes Cas’ breathing sound like a storm and Dean’s heartbeat like thunder. He imagines something lurking in the living room downstairs, creeping up the stairs without a sound, slowly getting closer and closer to the door of this room, hidden beneath the sound of Dean’s blood rushing through his veins. Over this thought, he nods off.
He wakes up in bright daylight – as bright as daylight gets anymore, anyway. His back and neck hurt and Cas is nowhere to be seen. Dean’s ass hurts as well, from having sat on the hard floor all night. With a soft groan he lets himself fall to the side and lie there for a while, allowing his stressed joints and muscles a moment of peace.
Castiel’s absence doesn’t bother him for a while, and when he becomes more aware and it does, he realises that there is a bunch of the small, sour tasting apples that have accompanied them through the last days on the desk, where the dust has been roughly brushed off. Cas probably went to gather more of those.
Eventually, Dean stretches and drags himself over to the desk to grab some apples for breakfast. He finds himself missing all the food they lost in order to steal books from the library. Canned pickles suddenly sound a lot more awesome than they ever did when he had to eat them.
While he eats, Dean’s eyes linger on the bookshelf. Part of it has collapsed, but most still looks like it must have when someone lived here, long ago. He fights the urge to go over and see what titles are left there, not wanting to know what kind of person it was that read those books, slept in that bed, used that computer.
In places, he can still make out the pattern of the wallpaper.
Now that light fills the room, Dean can see dark areas on the walls around the bed and desk. There has been a fire in this room, he realises. A fire big enough that it probably didn’t go out on its own. Someone must have extinguished it, fought to protect this house. It’s hard not to wonder what became of them.
When he looks out of the window, Dean sees the buildings around, the street leading out of town, and the dusty sky. Nothing else, and certainly no Cas. It’s a bit reckless of his friend to leave without a word and risk Dean worrying about him and going looking, which might lead to Cas coming back when Dean is away and leaving again to look for him, which might lead to them forever missing each other.
Or someone might come and abduct Dean in Castiel’s absence, though Dean doesn’t worry about that much. Not that he doesn’t think it could happen; he’s merely learned from experience that in a case like that Cas would be impressively useless.
He’d probably just leave Dean behind again. He has a talent for that, after all…
They’d walked until they reached the edge of town. Not daring to move along the empty, unprotected street over to the next one in a darkness that hinders the eyes of no creature but them, they were forced to find a house to stay in. Were he to look to the left, Dean would see the street go around a corner and on towards the house with the crosses, somewhere out of sight.
Cas could at least have left a note, Dean decides. There’s enough dust to write in, after all.
He turns away from the window and makes his way down the stairs. The ground floor is a lot darker because here all the windows have been barred shut. Someone survived the destruction of the city and lived here afterwards. He wonders why they never took care of the room upstairs – it would have offered better protection than the rooms on ground level.
Perhaps limiting their life to few rooms was easier and safer. Still, they should have barred the window, at least.
The furniture here is in better condition. There’s a couch that still invites sitting, a few chairs that look okay but turn out to be infected with the disease called time when Dean touches them. The table looks more stable, but even in the meagre light that falls through the cracks where boards are missing before the windows, Dean can tell that it isn’t custom made but has been created with rough materials by someone who didn’t understand much about table-making.
It’s hard to breathe, here. No matter what Dean does, the tightness in his chest doesn’t disappear. He wishes Cas were back already, so they could pack and go. They have no time to linger here, and he woke far too late into the day anyway.
Cas should have woken him and not wasted their time by being nowhere to be found.
There are more rooms down here. The living-and-dining room blends into a small kitchen where two cups are still standing beside a powerless refrigerator, as if waiting for their owners to come home. The refrigerator is filled with boxes, used as storage after becoming useless for anything else. There are bowls and baskets standing around, but whatever they contained has turned to earth long ago.
Spiders sit in the corners and don’t care much when Dean passes. The floorboards creak as he walks on them – he needn’t have worried about anything creeping closer at night; this house wouldn’t let them.
What used to be a small bathroom has turned into a black hole full of insects and small things that scatter away in the dark, and Dean closes the door as soon as he opens it.
There are two more doors on the ground floor. One leads outside to the backyard – the small glass windows in the upper part are still whole and allow light to fall into the room, filtered by the dirt that painted them brownish with time. The other door leads to another bedroom. Dust whirls up when the door opens with a loud creak and dances in rays of pale light.
The room is little bigger than the one upstairs, so there’s not much space left beside the king-sized double bed inside. The bars before the windows are mostly gone, though they seem to have been destroyed by nature and time rather than by other forces. The large gaps allow enough light to fall in for Dean to make out everything: the dirty carpet, the half-rotten sheets on the bed, the open closet. Traces of animals in the dust.
There are bones lying around the bed, on the floor. Not many, but enough for him to tell that these are human remains. Some are on the bed, too – Dean finds half a skull lying between the folds of what used to be a quilt. Another has rolled under the bed – or been dragged there. Whoever these people used to be, animals took care of them many, many years ago.
Dean feels like he’s disturbing them by standing in the room that became their tomb, even though he knows better than anyone that the dead don’t care. Not if they are truly gone, and these two, they moved on long ago, just like all the other ones killed in the war.
(With so many violent deaths, Dean has been surprised that no one seems to have lingered here. This world truly offers nothing to stay for, not even for ghosts.)
But he’s the one who killed them, and here he stands, feeling slightly upset about the life they were forced to live after the catastrophe reduced their home to rotting walls and bars before the windows.
It’s here, in the house of people who didn’t die with the city but lived on to grieve and suffer and hate the one responsible for this that it hits Dean. He did this. Everything these people went through, every loss, all the desperation they must have felt is his fault. And whatever he tried to tell himself about having had no other choice, about the alternative having been even worse is a load if bullshit. Because he gave Michael the power to do this in order to stop Lucifer, but Lucifer never needed to be stopped. Dean’s goddamn brother never gave in and all this, all this wouldn’t have had to happen.
Dean might not have pulled the trigger, but he’s the one who handed over the gun and the guilt is the same.
The dust that got into Dean’s throat, his lungs, begins to choke him. He needs to get out. With a weak cough and a hand at his throat he turns away, feels blindly for the door to the backyard.
The air is no clearer there. Dean stumbles forward over patches of dead grass and finally comes to a halt near the wall that once separated this ground from the neighbour’s.
The neighbour’s house is gone. Cas is standing in the middle of the small yard, a blurred shape through the water in Dean’s eyes. Doesn’t seem to care that Dean’s choking. Dean doesn’t really care himself. The lack of air sits like a lump in his throat but his mind is busy elsewhere.
There is a wooden cross right before Dean, brittle and splintering. A single name has been carved into it, and beneath it numbers that have long since been eaten by weather and sand.
Dean throws up beside it. There’s almost nothing in his stomach, but he keeps on heaving long after the last of his sparse breakfast has splattered onto the ground.
When he finally looks up, gasping for air and with tears running down his face, Castiel is still standing in the yard, holding a knife in one hand and the skinned body of some small creature in the other. His hands are red, but he’s not working anymore. Just stands there, looking at Dean with that blank stare that would have made Dean want to punch him on any other day and now only makes him want to cry harder.
Eventually, Cas places knife and carcass on the ground and comes over to where Dean is kneeling between grave and vomit. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice even and calm. Interested, not worried.
“Everything’s wrong!” Dean yells. Yelling isn’t smart, anyone might hear him. Doesn’t matter, since his voice comes out croaking anyway. It would have to be louder for the information to get into Castiel’s head. “Everything! Oh God.” Dean retches again. “Oh God. It’s all gone.”
Castiel says nothing. He reaches out, however, when Dean stumbles to his feet and keeps him from falling down again.
Dean jerks his arm away and stumbles backwards against the wall. “Fuck off, Cas,” he growls, hoarsely. “How can you even stand to be near me?”
“Dean.” Cas steps closer again, his voice suddenly urgent. “Did you remember?”
“Fuck you! No, I didn’t. I just finally fucking got it!” Dean feels like hitting his head against the wall and does so before the thought even registers. He wishes he could knock himself out, but Cas grabs him and pulls him away from the bricks. Leaving smears of rabbit blood on his shirt.
“Stop it!” the angel says sharply. Orders it. Dean wants to laugh. He looks up, at the ruins around him and he sky, the fucking invisible sky. Imagines this world full of people, full of shops and parks and kids walking their dogs. Tries to imagine them all dying, instantly or slowly, completely helpless. Wiped out on a whim. But it’s too much. His mind capitulates before this guilt.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” Dean cries. “Just go away, Cas. What do you even drag me along for? What good could I possibly do for anyone?” The last words he yells, his voice finally as strong as he wants it to be. “This is all my fault! Because I was wrong about everything. And it wasn’t worth it!”
Castiel breathes out sharply, something between a snort and a sigh. “It wasn’t,” he confirms.
“Forget Lucifer,” Dean mutters, turning away. He wishes Cas would just fucking leave him alone already. “I’m the worst thing that ever happened to this world.”
“You’re just a man;” Cas says, though Dean doesn’t know if that’s supposed to be comforting, or if the angel thinks he’s giving himself too much credit.
“I destroyed the world!” Dean shouts back. “And maybe-”
Maybe he knew this was going to happen. Maybe he didn’t fucking care. Maybe he was so absorbed in his own pain that he couldn’t even look this far.
Maybe Dean’s conviction that he did what seemed best at the time was just a delusion because he didn’t want to face the fact that he was just that much of a selfish bastard. He thought he had to protect the world from Lucifer? That would make more sense if he’d waited until the world actually needed to be protected from Lucifer.
Dean’s brother never gave in, and it’s hard to believe Dean ever really thought he would. Not if they were as close as Castiel told him.
“No one stopped me,” Dean mutters.
“We tried.” Cas sounds gentler now, or perhaps he’s just quieter because he’s so far away. Dean feels like he’s falling. He doesn’t care what Cas says – it’s all wrapped in cotton anyway. “We spent years and years trying to stop Michael.”
“Not Michael. Me. Should never have let me say yes.”
Then Dean remembers that they tried to stop him. Locked him up and all. Good plan. Only his stupid idiot of a brother who didn’t even manage to say yes to the devil had to go and let him out again, due to some misguided belief Dean would somehow be better than he was. The guy was obviously an idiot, because if he’d really known Dean he would have known what a worthless piece of scum he is.
Should have let him rot in that basement.
“Just fucking leave already!” Dean is hardly aware of the tears on his face and doesn’t care. “You don’t need me anyway. If you take me along, I’ll jut fuck it up again.” He sinks to the ground and wraps his arms around his knees, muttering, “Just leave me here for the demons to find.”
“You are being irrational,” Cas tells him. “Come inside.”
“You’re the one who’s irrational. This is your chance to get rid of me. Go on, take it!”
“Dean,” Cas says. “I don’t want to get rid of you. And I’m not leaving you when I waited so long to get you back. Let’s get inside and we will talk.” He takes Dean’s arm and pulls him to his feet. Dean lets it happen, feeling lightheaded and strangely disoriented. Moments later he is inside the house with no recollection of how he got there.
The empty rooms offer no consolation.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” he says, sounding like a child even to his own ears. “Please. I don’t want to be here.”
“This house offers shelter. There’s no point in going somewhere else.”
“Not here,” Dean insists. “Let’s just move on.”
“A minute ago you wanted me to leave you here,” Cas points out. A cool, dry palm is pressed against Dean’s forehead, then the angel says, “You’re not well. We’ll rest here for a while.”
“No!” The suffocating feeling is back. Dean needs to get out. He tries, but Cas holds him back. And everything is spinning around him, sucking the thoughts right out of his head.
When he finds himself again, the light has changed. He looks around in confusion and sees empty walls, a bare floor. Like a construction side, a building not yet moved into. Dean feels too drained to be confused. His head hurts.
His arms are trembling as he pushes himself up. He’s lying on the floor, cushioned by a collection of furs and old, stained blankets. The books they used to carry around inside the furs are sitting in three small stacks beside him. Castiel is sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, an open book in his lap. He’s looking at Dean.
“You’re sick,” he informs him. “I decided to let you sleep.”
Dean looks around again. He still doesn’t recognize the room. “Where are we?”
“In a house near the one we stayed in before.”
“Why did we move?”
Castiel crooks his head to the side. “The other place seemed to upset you. I thought maybe you’d feel better here.”
Frowning, Dean tries to think back, but his thoughts jumble at the attempt. He feels slightly sick. “What happened?”
“You passed out. Don’t you remember?”
“Not much. I... Oh God.”
He does remember. The guilt, the self-loathing and shame, the overwhelming wish to die. Dean remembers, but it’s different now. Distant. As if his mind has gotten used to it and decided to move on.
What remains is still bad enough to make him bury his face in his hands. He remains sitting like that until gentle hands take hold of his shoulders and push him back down.
After that, Dean supposes he must have fallen asleep again, though it can’t have been long. The light hasn’t changed much. From his position on the floor he can’t see much through the window, but the sky has brightened a little. By his estimation, it’s late morning.
When he woke up in the other house it was already noon, so he must have been out the entire night.
Castiel hands him water and food. At some point he roasted the rabbits he caught. Dean doesn’t feel like eating, but does so anyway. Afterwards he lies back down and listens as Cas tells him about the man he used to be. About how he fought to stop the apocalypse from happening. About how he took responsibility for the entire planet and stood against heaven and hell, no matter how much he’d already been suffering. About how impressed Castiel was, how he inspired the angel to pick a side and think for himself instead of simply following orders.
According to Cas, Dean used to be the strongest, person who ever lived, standing up for what he believed in, no matter how hard and painful it was. It’s a long shot from the things he told Dean before.
Maybe he should be sick more often.
“Your bedside manners aren’t that bad,” he declares in the evening, when he wakes up after another nap to Castiel cleaning his face of sweat with a cloth.
“I have had a lot of practice.”
Right. “Seems you actually do know how to make someone feel better instead of worse. Too bad it isn’t working. ‘Cause, you know, I keep remembering that there’s a reason why you wanted to make me feel bad until now, so all that praise doesn’t really ring true.”
Dean is actually feeling better now, physically. All these thoughts have been in his head all day, but until now he’s been too numb and miserable for much emotional involvement.
“It’s the truth.”
“Oh, so then you were lying to me before?” Dean’s voice drops like acid. It’s beginning to come back to him just how much of a worthless piece of shit he is, and the last thing he wants is someone telling him otherwise out of pity.
“That was the truth as well. I found that in many cases truth is a matter of perspective.” Castiel sits back and fold his legs under his body. He doesn’t give the impression of intending to leave Dean alone anytime soon. “The fact that I am… embittered about the path you have chosen doesn’t erase the fact that you were the first person to see more in me than a weapon of heaven – to teach me that I could be more. And my bitterness is also grounded in my own guilt over being unable to protect you from your own choices. Had I been a better friend to you, you might not have been driven to Michael. As I said before, at that time, you felt like you had no other choice.”
Too quick to forgive Dean now he’s running a risk of losing him. It doesn’t sit well, and all the words ring hollow. Perhaps Cas has been lying to Dean every time he made excuses for his choices, tried to soften the blow of his failure right after dealing it.
Perhaps he’s been lying to Dean about everything, all the time. Dean has been all too happy to believe him when he was told he had no choice, that he meant well, that he was manipulated into doing what he did, that he never meant to hurt anyone. If they’ve really been as close once as Castiel wants to make him believe, the angel would know what to tell him to steer him exactly where he wants him to go.
Suddenly, absurdly, Dean finds himself wishing Michael was here.
He doesn’t dwell on the notion. Instead, he rolls over to face the wall. “Okay,” he mumbles. “Whatever.” He closes his eyes and pretends to sleep.
-
They stay in the house for another day. There’s nowhere they have to be at the moment, and Cas seems to feel safe here, which is ironic enough. He insists on staying put until Dean is back on his feet and uses the time to go through the books. Every time Dean wakes from his slumber, Cas is sitting beside him, reading, sometimes marking pages. There are three stacks around him: “unread” and what Dean would like to call “useful” and “not useful”, but what he suspects is actually “useless” and “slightly less useless”. Only at night does Cas take a break, but that’s probably only due to the lack of light.
In the morning, Dean starts as well. To him, there are two basic piles: “English” and “everything else”. And some where he isn’t that sure on first sight. Not all of the books are from the time before the world ended and everything went out of print. There are handwritten copies among them, and while Dean appreciates the work put into them, he wishes those people would have paid more attention to making their letters clearly distinguishable.
Some of the books have been printed, but obviously by primitive means. There are crooked pages, some types have been set wrong, and the pages are not numbered. Dean settles with a volume for a while that is rather slim compared to some others and quite interesting once he gets into it. Reading it is easy because he feels like he already knew most of what the book tells him and only needs a few words to bring the memory back to the surface.
The book is called Angels (Facts, Dangers and Protections) Volume II by Robert Singer and leaves Dean wishing they had found the first volume as well.
It doesn’t tell him anything about how to kill Lucifer, though. The devil isn’t mentioned in this one; it’s a general description about angels, their strengths and weaknesses, how to ward against them and what, contrary to common lore, doesn’t work. References back to the first volume indicate that that one deals with the whole vessel business and also introduced the most important players. Dean wonders if it mentions Castiel at all. He’s certain there’s something about Lucifer in that book. And about Michael.
He can only speculate on what someone who didn’t know him had to say about him and his consent.
The next book Dean picks up is a lot thicker and completely useless. All the information it offers on angels is basically what can also be found in the bible, or in a conversation with an especially gullible priest. No mention on them being self-centred sons of bitches without a hint of decency or mercy inside them. And Lucifer – well, Lucifer is evil and temptation and has to be fought by everyone through living an upstanding, faithful and virtuous life, yadda, yadda. Dean tosses the book aside after scanning a couple of pages, just glad that he won’t have to carry it around any longer.
It’s a pity they can’t risk making a fire, else he would have proposed burning the thing for warmth.
Eventually he ends up with the narrow, leather-bound volume he first picked up. Recalling that he saw something about Lucifer inside when he flipped through it in the library, he starts at the beginning. It’s not very thick.
It becomes clear quickly that he was wrong: He thought it was someone’s journal, but the way it is written involves many explanations for outsiders and not a single personal detail. Also, it looks like the author made an effort to write in clear, readable letters – Dean can tell because every now and then he (or she) got carried away and the handwriting deteriorated to something barely recognizable. He can still read it with surprising ease.
Whoever has written this knew his angels. There is detailed information on angels in general, about what they can do to a person, about how they would lie and seduce. The author wrote about angels appearing in their vessels’ dreams in the form of loved ones to talk them into giving their consent, how they would offer support in times of desperation and always present themselves as the best possible option.
He also warns about the consequences of letting an angel take over – not just the general consequence of putting the plutonium into a nuclear weapon, but also what happens to the vessel. The vessel will lose all touch with humanity, Dean learns. The angel they let in doesn’t care about their friends and families, will smite them along with everyone else if it seems convenient. There is no way of controlling what happens once the angel is inside – who hands their body over to an agent of heaven does so completely, and often forever. Once an angel has found a perfect vessel, they rarely let it go. Consent means goodbye forever. The vessels might just as well kill themselves, but if by happenstance they are let go one day, it might be to a world where everyone they knew and loved is long since gone.
And the more powerful the angel, the worse the state of the discarded vessel. Lesser angels can leave their vessels traumatized and broken. Higher angels often leave them human vegetables, their minds burned out by the power that filled them.
Altogether, Dean seems to have gotten off lucky. (He doesn’t feel lucky, though.)
There’s even a chapter dedicated to Lucifer and his vessels. The vessels he takes as replacement for the one he can’t have. Since he’s long since burned through the few vessels that were even a little bit suitable for him, he has resorted to taking anyone who would have him. The author warns of his seduction, warns not to listen to his promises, draws a disgusting picture of bodies that decay while still alive, rotting as the power inside them eats their flesh. It makes Dean think of the boy Lucifer was occupying when they met. The unknown author knew what he was writing about.
Dean checks the first page and the last, but there is no name to this very interesting book.
“This one looks promising,” he tells the room in general while flipping back to the page he’s been reading and then onwards, looking for the right words to catch his eyes. They don’t come. “Doesn’t seem to tell us how to kill an archangel, though.”
“Give it to me,” Cas tells him. Dean hands the book over without comment – maybe Cas can find something inside that he missed in his brief exploration.
Dean turns his attention to the next book. When after a few minutes he looks up, Cas is still sitting there with the book in his hand, tracing the lines of words with his fingertips. Dean can tell from the movement of his eyes that he’s not reading – he’s just looking at the book, and the expression on his face is of infinite sadness.
Dean doesn’t ask. He swallows, though, as if it meant something to him.
-
It’s in the evening that Dean comes across something useful. The book that gives him the information isn’t Angels, Volume I, but it was written by the same author, and it makes Dean wish they had a lot more works by the guy. At least his books were written after the apocalypse started, not a long time before like most of the others, when no one had ever seen an angel and even those who believed they existed had to fall back on unreliable sources, tainted by religious beliefs and hopeless faith.
The book in question isn’t even mainly about angels. It’s about demons, and Dean isn’t quite certain how it got into his little collection. Probably because he didn’t really pay attention and just stole anything that mentioned angels in general or Lucifer in particular.
Or maybe it was Cas who added it to the collection. Dean doesn’t remember and most certainly doesn’t care. He has the book now, and the book tells him something about demons that don’t want Lucifer and would love to see him dead.
Cas mentioned before that not every demon is loyal to the devil but Dean never paid it much attention beyond the realisation that there are at least three groups to beware of. And even that didn’t really matter in the face of the fact that they generally couldn’t trust anyone.
But this book tells him that not only do these demons want the devil gone, they are also actively fighting to achieve their goal. Because apparently, Satan doesn’t like his own creations so very much, and they’d rather rule the world themselves instead of being his slaves and facing extinction as soon as he doesn’t need them anymore.
“So, these other demons, those that don’t want Lucifer,” Dean starts. “What about them? They must have come up with something, right? At least they must have an idea.”
Castiel’s expression is dark enough to count as a harbinger of the falling night. “No.”
“How do you know?”
“No, Dean, we will not go to them,” Cas clarifies. “We will not ask them. We will not work with them.”
Dean sets down the book. “Okay, I get it. You don’t like them. Neither do I – hell, I don’t even remember them and I already hate them. And I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with them. But if – just theoretically! – if they had a way of ganking Satan, shouldn’t we consider it? Would you rather let this war go on forever because of your principles? I’m not saying we should become friends with them.”
“Stop thinking in this direction. It’s a waste of your mental capabilities.”
“Just think-”
“We will not go anywhere near them,” Cas snaps. “And you know why? Because they would tear you apart the moment they saw you! They don’t love Lucifer, they fear Michael just as much. They will do anything to keep him out of his destined vessel, not to mention the fact that he killed many of them wearing your face. They don’t like you very much, Dean.”
“If they want Lucifer dead as badly as we do, they might listen to reason.”
“They’re demons, Dean! Reason will tell them to destroy you. It’ll bring Michael a small disadvantage, but mostly it will be very satisfying for them to watch you suffer.”
“Maybe we can use that to our advantage,” Dean muses. He can’t say he likes the thought, but it’s there and refuses to go away. “We can make a deal. I mean, I can make a deal. They help me, and in return...” He takes a deep breath, realising he doesn’t like the idea at all. “They get me.”
Castiel stares at him as if he lost his mind.
“I know demons are hardly trustworthy. But through a deal we could bind them to their word. And if they will torture me to death for it… Well.” It’s hard to keep looking at Castiel, but Dean does so anyway. So the angel realises he means this. “I guess that’s what I deserve.”
There’s silence following his words. Not a good silence. In the end, Cas takes a deep breath before answering – the kind of deep breath that tells Dean that his reply would have been vastly different if he’d given it before that breath.
“Putting aside that this is the most idiotic plan I have ever heard,” the fallen angel says, “what makes you so insistent that I hand you over to the enemy after fighting so long to get you back? What they’d do to you,” he continues before Dean can say anything, “is beyond what you can imagine. If you still had your memories of hell, you wouldn’t even think to propose this. And while there are beings who would deserve that torture, you are not amongst them. I wouldn’t allow you to do that, even if I hadn’t vowed to Sam that I would protect you. Even if it wasn’t utterly pointless.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are demons, Dean. Even if they were to defeat Lucifer, they are hardly aiming for peaceful coexistence with the human race. The moment Lucifer and his followers are gone and the angels returned to heaven, they will come out of hiding and take this world as theirs.”
“That’s why I want to bind them to a deal.”
“You’d only make it worse if you did that,” Cas snaps. “They wouldn’t be stopping at just torturing you. When I got you out of hell all those years ago, you were on the verge of becoming a demon yourself. They would complete that process. Because only if you stop being you will you become useless as a vessel to Michael.”
Dean opens his mouth for a reply and snaps it shut again. He simply doesn’t know what to say, since he doesn’t want to give up this idea, doesn’t want to take the easy way out this time. And he’d be willing to take the torture.
But becoming a demon? Becoming something else, something that has all his memories but enjoys killing and maiming? That is worse than being an archangel’s vessel, even if he wouldn’t be nearly as powerful and the potential for destruction not nearly as total.
“They would use you for their battles and you would join them willingly,” Castiel tells him. “And it would accomplish nothing but exchanging one hell with another.”
“But it’s something!” There’s anger in Dean’s voice, as well as desperation. “You don’t have any clue how to go about killing the devil, and I don’t think there’ll be anything really useful in these books. You know that as well as me! What did you hope to accomplish with this, anyway? Keep us busy? Replace the hopeless task of separating me from Michael with another hopeless task? Is this some kind of hobby for you?” There’s really no point in getting angry with Cas, but Dean can’t help himself. This is all so pointless, and Cas is lying to him and fighting against any attempt of Dean’s to actually come up with something useful. “It’s like you don’t even want to really try. What harm can come from at least thinking about this? Those demons are the only ones with the same goal as us and the only ones who might have found something we didn’t. If we give it some thought…”
“They don’t have anything,” Castiel insists. “I assure you of it. They are too cowardly to actively go against Lucifer themselves. And Lucifer knows their names. He’s hunting for them. So their numbers are by now very small, and there is little connection between them. Gathering in one place would attract attention. They would sooner betray each other than effectively work together. Nowadays, they do their best to stay out of sight and hope to survive long enough until the whole thing is over.”
“And yet you are convinced they would go out of their way to torture me into becoming one of them.”
Castiel’s sigh sounds irritated, as if the angel can’t see why this isn’t obvious. “They’d drag you into their own little hidden corner of hell, Dean. Dragging a soul into hell is ridiculously easy if someone makes a deal for it. And after you’re a demon, they would send you out, full of fresh hatred and the desire for blood and pain, and have you kill as many fallen angels and demons on Lucifer’s side as possible before someone takes you out. You would make a powerful demon.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’re Michael’s vessel. Had he been given the time to turn you completely, you would have easily matched and then surpassed Alistair in power.”
Dean doesn’t know who Alistair is; the name sends shivers down his spine, though. He doesn’t ask.
What he does ask is, “How come you know so much about those demons?”
Castiel sighs again, but less irritated this time. “We got the same idea as you, once. Thought they might know a way to get to Michael. You and Sam had met their leader, a demon named Crowley, before. He had provided you with a gun that could kill anything and send you after the devil.” He raises his hand before Dean can get his hopes up. “It turned out the gun doesn’t work on Lucifer. Ever since then, Crowley has been in hiding. He blames you two for the fate that waits for him should he ever get caught. But Sam was willing to take the risk. He was powerful enough to exorcise a demon like Crowley without effort, so we felt safe enough.”
“But you weren’t?”
“Oh, we were, at first. Or so it seemed. Most demons were too scared to even get close to us. Crowley met us, told us about certain exorcisms that can banish angels without killing the vessel. It seemed plausible enough – Alistair had once nearly succeeded in exorcising me. Crowley taught them to us without much fuss, which should have made us suspicious. But he would profit from Michael losing you as well, so we thought mutual interest would prevent his betrayal – or at least postpone it until we accomplished our goal.”
“He betrayed you? How? The ritual didn’t work?”
“We never made it that far.” Castiel sounds bitter now. “Sam went alone. Didn’t trust Crowley after all, in the end, I suppose. I was asleep and didn’t notice. I needed a long time to get used to the need for sleep.” It sounds like an excuse. Or maybe it’s just an explanation. “I followed when I woke, but it was too late. Crowley’s lackeys had already ambushed Sam. Those demons came to the conclusion that rather than take a risk and aim for a permanent solution that might backfire, they would play it safe and be satisfied with keeping Lucifer from ever possessing his true vessel.”
“What did they do? Drag him to hell? Try to turn him into a demon?”
Castiel shakes his head. “They couldn’t, not without a deal. At that time, Sam still went to heaven when he died. No, they only tried to keep his body out of reach. They put Sam into a block of concrete along with some hex-bags that would hide his position, decorated the block with angel-repelling symbols and threw it into the ocean.” The corner of Cas’ mouth twitches. “Sam was alive when they closed him in.”
“Okay, I get it! Dean explodes. He gets up, starts to pace. “Your friend was awesome and he had to go through a lot, and it’s all my fault. Fine. I feel appropriately guilty about it. But please stop telling me about it like it should influence everything I do. If you want to base every decision you make on him, fine, but I won’t do that. I can’t do it. Because, to be absolutely honest, I don’t care.” Dean takes a deep breath, while Cas stares at him as if his human had just grown a second head. He doesn’t seem to know what to say, but that’s okay because Dean isn’t finished yet. “I just don’t care,” he says, calmer and with great emphasis, so Cas will get it. “I don’t remember him. I don’t even want to remember him. So maybe once he meant a lot to me, but now he doesn’t. And yeah, what happened to him was terrible, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and I’m sorry it all happened because of me, I really am. But in the end his fate doesn’t bother me any more than that of any other human who suffered and died here. Less, even – your tale about the people Lucifer and his demons crucified over there? That once affected me much more than anything you ever told me about your poor, brave companion. So please just stop, okay? It’s beginning to get on my nerves.”
It feels good, having said that (except in all the ways it didn’t). Dean needed to get that out, seriously, because all this talk of this guy he didn’t know was driving him crazy. And sure, this wasn’t the most diplomatic way to say it, but if Cas had spoken one more word about his friend as if Dean was an even worse person for not remembering him, he would have grabbed his gun and seen how much was left of Cas’ immortality. In this regard, the fallen angel has gotten off lightly, all things considered. And Dean isn’t sorry, even though he knows Cas will be unbearable now and they’ll probably have a fight, and Cas might throw things at him he doesn’t want to hear.
He still can’t bring himself to regret it. Because it’s all true, and it had to be said.
Though, he has to admit, to Cas it must have come out of nowhere. Dean doesn’t really know himself where that came from.
He only knows that it is good. If it means shutting Cas up about this forever, Dean is more than willing to accept some hurt feelings.
“Your brother,” Cas says. He doesn’t sound angry – it’s Dean’s anger that flares up.
“Yeah, I fucking know that. And I just told you that it doesn’t matter!”
“Your brother,” Cas repeats, unfazed. “What’s his name?”
Dean stares at him, still angry, while he tries to figure out what his friend is talking about. “What the fuck, Cas?”
“Your brother has a name, Dean. I merely want you to say it.”
Dean snaps? “Why? ‘This some kind of sick game for you?”
“No.”
“Then why the hell do you want me to say his name?”
“Because you never do.” Castiel finally, finally gets to his feet again so he can look into Dean’s eyes as he says, “In all this time, you have avoided saying his name. You call him your brother as if it meant nothing, or you speak of my friend. I merely want you to say it.”
Dean did say it, at least once. He still remembers the taste of the word on his tongue. “I did say it.”
“Say it again. That is all I ask. I will let it go after that.”
This is idiotic. Silly and childish. Dean says so, but Castiel insists. So Dean will play his game. He’ll say the stupid name if it’ll grant him peace. He’ll spit it into Cas’ face and if he’s lucky, his dear angel will choke on it.
So Dean stares into Cas’ face and his lips don’t move. He wants to say the damn name, but he doesn’t. Seconds pass, turn into minutes in Dean’s mind.
It’s just a single, short, simple word. (Three letters, six actually, but no one ever says it like that. Five letters for Dean.) But no matter how much Dean wants to say it, something inside him refuses to. He tries to say it in his mind but the name slips from his thoughts, over and over again.
And all the time he’s glaring at Cas, unmoving, like an angry child that refuses to play the game with someone else’s rules. “What are you trying to get from this?” he hisses. “Is this some kind of power game? You get a kick out of making me say something idiotic just because you can?”
“It’s just a question,” Cas says, softer than before. “What’s your brother’s name, Dean?”
“Adam.” Dean spits the name out with something between a grin and a snarl. A stubborn child deliberately giving the wrong answer, just to piss the other off. “There you have it. My brother.”
“The other one.”
“What does it matter? They’re both dead.” With that, Dean turns away and walks over to the window. The conversation is over for him. Still, he wants to throw the other name over his shoulder, just to prove to Cas that whatever he’s thinking, it’s wrong. And stupid. Dean can say the name.
But he doesn’t.
NEXT
Note: By the time the next chapter should be posted following the estabished pattern, i.e. Friday in two weeks, I will still be on vacation in a hotel (probably) without internet. Therefore, chapter 10 will be up a week later than usual.
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Date: 2011-07-16 02:52 am (UTC)I'm starting to think that if Dean says Sam's name, he will really start to remember things and Dean's not ready for that yet. I hope he does start to remember soon. He really is lost without Sam.
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Date: 2011-07-16 12:53 pm (UTC)Thanks for the comment! I'm happy you're enjoying this!
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Date: 2014-02-26 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-17 07:26 am (UTC)