Chapter Text
The last of Dean’s drink charts a burning path down his throat. Warm library light plays off the facets of the antique glass.
Sam’s words from before drift back through his mind.
Well, you think he can handle a road trip like that?
At the time, Dean had been confident, but then came Abaddon and her army, complete with machine guns. Whatever Dean was considering serious before, in terms of demons, this is another level. Even Crowley, King of Hell, always went with subterfuge and mind games to try and get the upper hand, rather than this kind of dumb, brute power.
It works though, apparently, because Irv’s dead, and if it hadn’t been for Ezekiel, Sam would be equally dead (again) and Dean might not be any better off. As it is, he’s still nursing some cuts to the back of his scalp and neck from where Abaddon threw him through a window.
It’s easy for him to forget how fragile a human can be, with all the hits he takes and bounces back from, all the way to death itself, but right now? He sees it, like the crystalware in his hand: easy to shatter with even a little carelessness.
No matter how clever and how able Cas might be, there’s no way he’ll be cautious enough as a human -- not with the way things are now, not with Abaddon and her demonic militia, and not with vengeful angels hiding around corners. It’s entirely possible there isn’t any such thing as cautious enough.
Maybe he just wanted to believe that Cas wouldn’t need help. Maybe he’d been treating Cas like an adult to somehow internally compensate for the way he knows he’s treating Sam. However it had started, he’s now plagued with a kind of doubt that feels like he’s just charged through an unexpected cobweb.
Dean hovers in the doorway.
“I uh--” He starts.
Sam twists in his chair, expectant, at attention.
Dean hesitates.
Sam guesses, “You think we should go after Cas.”
“Got it in one.” He sets down his glass.
Sam makes a sound through his nose. Not a scoff, but scoff-adjacent. “What happened to Cas is a big boy? ”
“Yeah, well, normally I’d be behind him all the way, but all this… It’s just a lot, even for Cas. Hell, it was almost too much for us. ”
“You sure you’re not just trying to weasel out of research?”
And then it happens again. Dean hates this part, where Sam’s eyes flash blue-white and his spine turns to rebar. Something in the pit of his stomach lurches every time, like the drop on a roller coaster. Ezekiel seems benevolent enough, but the deal was made in haste and the stakes are too high to fully trust him. Dean would much rather have Sam alone in there.
And Sam would agree, if you gave him the choice, but you didn’t, says the thought that Dean swats away.
“I do not advise this course of action.” It’s Sam’s mouth, and Sam’s vocal cords, but somehow not Sam’s voice at all. Ezekiel sounds like the whole-other-thing that he is. It’s a good thing, ultimately -- a hard reminder of what’s really happening, even if it’s unsettling.
Dean sighs. “Of course not, because why should anything ever be easy? Fine, spill, what’s your beef? Would have thought you’d be on board here.”
“Do you not now believe Castiel to be a lightning rod for angelic wrath?”
“Well yeah, ” Dean justifies icily, leaning on a shelving unit. “Yeah, I do, that’s what’s eating me. This stuff with Abaddon, whatever shit the angels are planning, I feel like we’re being pulled in every direction at once. Last thing I need is Cas getting shivved while my back’s turned.”
Ezekiel doesn’t react, or at least he doesn’t appear to. It’s hard to know what’s really going on in there, since he hasn’t entirely gotten the hang of facial expressions, instead leaving Sam’s face coldly flat, or tensed in configurations that could be in the dictionary next to uncanny valley.
It seems natural to assume he hasn’t had a vessel in a long time, even before the fall. If that’s the case, Dean wonders why.
“I recognize this fact,” Ezekiel finally answers. “However, the truth remains that where Castiel is, other angels may follow. Do you want to repeat what happened in the hospital? I am not strong enough to fight them. His presence would be dangerous for me, and you, and Sam.”
“You know he stood up for you?” Dean points out. “Called you a good soldier.”
Ezekiel does nothing with Sam’s face, giving the distinct impression that he considers this a non-sequitur.
“Whatever,” Dean says. He doesn’t care about danger to himself, and Ezekiel can go kick rocks, but danger to Sam is enough for him to say, “Fine, I’ll go by myself.”
“Very well,” Ezekiel says with a single, curt nod of Sam’s head. “Intercept him to ascertain his safety if you insist, but do not bring him back here under any circumstances.”
“C’mon, man--”
“If he is here, I will consider my safety compromised, and I will leave. This is not negotiable.”
And then it’s over, before Dean can even argue back. Sam goes slack for a fraction of a second, like he’s been clubbed over the head, and then he’s back, animated, loose-limbed, human. “--Do you think we should head out right away or do you wanna get some shuteye first?”
Dean grits his teeth. Shit makes his head spin every time and now he has to hide his frustration, too. He readjusts. “Ain’t no we here, man. You’re still on the mend.”
“What? Cas is my friend too, you know. And the two of us can drive twice as long. Plus, it’s like you said, it’s turning into chaos out there, what if--”
“What if nothing, ” Dean stops him, more gruffly than maybe he needs to. “You almost got killed less than twenty four hours ago, and besides, someone’s gotta be here to make sure Kevin doesn’t try and bolt again. It’ll be fine. I’m just gonna go, find Cas, and…” Dean stops before he says bring him home . He knows Ezekiel’s listening, somewhere in there. “Find Cas. Promise I won’t get into any fights at recess.”
“Fine, fine, but if anything gets hinky, and I mean anything--”
“You’ll be the first to know. Now, before he covers any more distance, lemme get on the road.”
And he does, duffel bag in the back, highway peeling away beneath him, Creedence in his speakers. For a minute, Dean thinks he could pretend there’s no such things as angels and it could be any night in 2003, before he started all this crap.
Christ, when he puts it like that, it doesn’t even seem like it’s been that long since then. How does it feel like such an eternity?
It’s late, and there’s nobody out here. He floors it. If he was going after Sam, following the breadcrumbs would be practically second nature, but he doesn’t have a lifetime of codes and behavior patterns to use with Cas.
He has to do it the old-fashioned way.
Tracking down the pay phone Cas used gets him his first hit -- apparently the guy left a bit of an impression at the gas station. He flashes a fake badge and demands to see the surveillance footage, alarm burning bright inside him when it shows Cas being knocked unconscious and packed into a car like so much luggage. That worry only grows when a license plate search turns up an accident starring the very same vehicle, just outside of Breckenridge.
The accident report is beautiful, though: one woman found dead at the scene, and nobody else.
“Good job, buddy,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Now where’d you go after you lost your wheels?”
It’s a couple hours to the ski-resort town, which is, fortunately, just dinky enough that it’s not too tall an order to follow Cas’ steps (with the help of some people who saw him) to a laundromat, where he recovers a bloody trenchcoat and some more surveillance footage. He leaves the old suit behind, but shells out for the coat to be dry-cleaned while he pokes around the bus depot. Nothing there, so he tries a truck stop, and hits pay-dirt: a janitor saw Cas get a ride with some guy, and she even knows his name (sort of): “Big Otis”
“I don’t suppose you’d know where this... Big Otis... was headed, miss?” Dean asks, all professionalism, perfectly concealing his inner whoop of victory when she nods and tells him that of course she knows, he almost always drives the same route.
“He’s an alright guy, that Big Otis,” she says, which is also good to hear.
Coulda made a decent P.I. in a different life, he considers, when it turns out that he’s not that far behind after all. He loops back for the coat before he leaves town, folding it up and resting it in the trunk in a practiced movement that brings back acid-and-oil memories.
This won’t be like that, he promises himself.
The only problem is really that, if anything, it’s too easy. If anyone else is looking for Cas, it’ll be going just as smoothly for them. At every stop he’s made, he’s played the part of secret-agent-man, and emphasized the confidentiality of his investigation , urging people to tell no one else what they’ve told him. Still, he knows that the kinds of people (well, not people, not really) who might be on the same trail won’t hesitate to make them talk.
One thing he does know: getting information that way takes much more time than having it freely given. If his competition resorts to violence, then in a way, that’s to his advantage too, grisly as it is to consider.
All he can do now is drive fast, cross his fingers, and hope that the dicks-with-wings (now with 100% less wings) are as lacking in finesse as he imagines.
Getting into Big Otis’s truck is a terrifying leap of faith -- Castiel has to believe that this man is not possessed by a demon, not a vessel for an angel, not in the employ of any of the above, and, on top of all that, also not an asshole.
It is rapidly beginning to seem that once all of those categories are excised, there aren’t a lot of people left, and most of them apparently drive large vehicles..
“You look like a guy who’s got a lot of good stories,” assesses Big Otis, a copper-skinned man with a gentle voice who lives up to his moniker in every possible way. “Tell me some, and you can ride with me. My podcast was gettin’ old anyway.”
Castiel isn’t sure he can tell those stories in a particularly compelling way, but as a price for a ride goes, it’s not bad, and he does his best. When it becomes clear that Big Otis is either very credulous or truly desperate for entertainment, Castiel begins to edit less, and his stories go over better and better.
His best lands him at the depot on the other end of Big Otis’s route, watching a gray and hazy Omaha dawn. The wood-print vinyl booth seat in the diner reminds him of a church pew. As long as he drinks his coffee and business is quiet, no one will bother him. He can take his time to figure out what to do next.
Sanctuary, indeed.
It’s the best seat in the house, in the corner, up against a large glass window where he can listen to fat raindrops drum on the pane like impatient fingers. He half-watches the trucks come and go in their inscrutable rhythm, trying to soothe himself with the rumble of engines and the hiss of air brakes.
He’s spent much of his existence in places by himself, but this feels like a different thing altogether -- not the comfortable, unbothered solace that an angel might find in a glacial cave or a windswept desert, but an entirely new-to-Castiel kind of alone, a precarious kind, like walking a tightrope without a net.
Most importantly, he tries to keep himself from adding up the impossible weight of the wrong he has done, because every time his mind goes down that road it starts to get overwhelming. It’s harder to fight those thoughts now than before. He’s hungry, he’s exhausted, his head aches, and his feet seem like they might sprout their own mouths and scream from all the walking he did before his ride in the truck. If those things weren’t enough, the twin phantom pains that chase along behind him are acting up again, hot and twisting.
With his resistance fading, the snowball of guilt and shame threatens to flatten him.
Hael weighs especially heavily at the moment -- it ended so differently than he hoped. Despite his new humanity, he still feels as though he’s hacking off a limb every time he kills an angel, which seems particularly cruel, as though he is being asked to carry the worst of both worlds.
And he can’t even help Sam -- he keeps coming back to that. Everything that’s happened, and he can’t even help Sam.
It’s fortunate an angel like Ezekiel found Dean first. His own failure will sting a little less, then.
He considers Ezekiel, and how he would never have wound up in this situation to begin with. Despite the Winchesters’ known aversion to the heavenly host, he imagines that Dean and Sam and Ezekiel will likely be getting along fairly well. After all, even Dean said that his first impression was that Ezekiel was cool.
They have a lot in common, he reasons: honor, courage, loyalty, and a certain tendency that if you tell them something is dangerous, they’re twice as likely to take that route to the goal.
Heroic, that’s the word. Not underhanded (and yet still uselessly gullible, as Metatron must have known) the way Castiel has somehow become.
Sure, Ezekiel is a little by-the-book at times, but he’ll learn quick. Sam and Dean are good teachers, he thinks, jealousy gnawing up through his ribcage.
It’s pitiful. He’s pitiful, and doubly so for the way his imagination gets carried away with pointless things. That’s new. He could think creatively before, if pressed, but now his imagination just does things, vivid and overpowering, entirely without his consent.
He’s sour enough about it that when the same damn black car he always feels like he’s seeing in his peripheral vision pulls up out front of the diner, he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. His elbows prop him up on the table as he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.
It’s nice, the slight ebb of his headache that it brings. One more cup of coffee, he decides in the popping darkness behind his eyelids, he’s got enough for that. Caffeine is cheaper than food and does an excellent job distracting him from hunger.
When he opens his eyes again under the fluorescent lights, he has to blink sparkling spots from his vision.
He’s not alone at the table.
As if having materialized from nothing, Dean is there in his Fed suit, looking over a laminated menu with an obviously-staged casual air. For a fraction of a second Castiel is convinced that this, too, is a conjuration of his exhaustion and loneliness, but no: as skilled as his newly human imagination seems to be, this is almost certainly beyond its limits.
“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says with great trepidation, schooling his expression into neutrality as he feels suddenly like something’s fallen out from beneath him and he might cry. He’d much rather not.
“I am the best, ” Dean says with a wide, victorious grin. He smacks the menu against the table. “I’m actually the best.”
Castiel doesn’t know exactly what he’s meant to say to that, so he softens his control and lets his face do what it wants, which is to furrow his eyebrows in confusion.
“Come on, give me some credit, dude. You dropped me one line from Colorado and I tracked you all the way here and found you before any of those flapping assholes got a piece of you? Face it.” Dean spreads his arms wide, palms to the sky. “I’m the world’s greatest detective. I’m Batman.”
“I don’t understand. Why? Is something wrong? And… how?”
“Is something wrong? ” Dean repeats, half-mocking. “What isn’t nineteen kinds of wrong? Anyway I was about to flirt with the waitress until I got some intel on Big Otis and the scruffy hitchhiker. You shoulda moved on sooner, I could have gotten her number.”
Castiel looks down at the pattern of the tabletop. Nineteen kinds of wrong, largely on his own shoulders, the way he figures it.
“Cut that out,” Dean says, sliding the menu across. “Your pity party is harshing my victory buzz.”
“You shouldn’t be here, you have so many things to worry about.”
“Yeah, I do, and this is one of ‘em. I think what you’re trying to say is thank you Dean, for watching my back and also for the greasy breakfast you’re about to buy me.”
Castiel finally identifies the emotion that’s twanging down his spine (he had never realized just how physical so many human emotions were) and making his limbs feel heavy: relief. He is relieved. Ashamed and guilty also, but both of those are being knocked down by the sweet, insistent press of relief.
“Yes,” Castiel says, “thank you.”
Some part of him that he kept carefully silent until now, he realizes, actually considered the possibility that he might never see Dean again, only putting words to it now that he can be certain it will not be so.
“So?” Dean taps the menu. “Anything you want, as long as it’s unhealthy.”
Castiel feels, then, like he has been given wealth beyond imagining and has to laugh to stop, again, from tearing up.
Dean summons the waitress, who seems openly more at ease with Castiel now that he’s accompanied by a substantially less homeless-looking person. She takes their orders, and Castiel listens, half-numb, to Dean’s recitation of his trip while they wait.
They eat in near-silence at first, both too hungry from their respective journeys (Castiel because he had no money, Dean because he had no time) to focus on anything but a hot meal.
“This is very kind of you,” Castiel says, around a mouthful of toast, “but I can’t… you must know I’m… I can’t help you, or Sam. I can’t do anything.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said cut it out,” Dean’s voice goes dark, halfway to a snarl, a curtain of chilliness falling in front of his face. And then, before Castiel answers: “It wasn’t cute before -- before purgatory, when you were playing crazy or whatever -- and it ain’t cute now. You know the rules. You break shit, you fix shit. You don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself.”
“That’s what I was trying to--” Castiel takes a steadying breath. He bristles a little at the hypocrisy, but knows better than to point out the frequency with which Dean fails to follow his own rules. “When I wanted to help Hael, the angel I told you about, I thought--”
“You thought what? That you’d sing A Whole New World together and she’d realize wings were the friends we made along the way? Christ, it’s like… I mean, what were you thinking? You’re too smart to act this dumb. And it was way too easy to find you. You can’t be this sloppy now that you’re not a walking nuke.” Dean spears a french fry with his fork and sounds uncannily like his father as he mutters, “Next thing I’ll find out all your passwords are password.”
“I don’t… own anything that requires a password,” Castiel says quietly, unsure of how else to respond.
Something about that apparently makes an unexpected impact, because after a long moment of tense silence, Dean’s shoulders drop and he lets out a breath that sounds like it weighs a thousand pounds.
“Okay,” Dean says, “Okay. Look. I guess I’m a little... on edge. I haven’t slept in… ah shit, look at you, you don’t wanna hear me bitch about that.”
“That bad?” Castiel’s mouth twitches up at the corner. He hasn’t been spending a lot of time in front of mirrors.
“Have you seen you? You look more like you were riding on the top of that truck than inside it.”
Castiel recognizes that while this is an insult on its face, Dean means it with affection. “I feel as though all I do is respond to needs. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion. I assume at some point I’ll start finding the time for grooming, but…” A dark laugh slithers out of him. “You called me a baby in a trench coat. Now I don’t even have that .”
“Dude, I will punch you if you keep this up. Anyway, about that, I…” Dean pauses, like he’s suddenly embarrassed, looking everywhere but Cas’ face, “I… got it back for you. The coat. I didn’t get the rest of your crap, though. You’re going to be at the mercy of my fashion sense for awhile, and you’ll probably need a belt--ah c’mon, stop that. Don’t go all little orphan Annie on me.”
It takes a second to realize that what Dean’s telling him to stop doing is smiling, which only makes him smile more. “Dean--” he begins, but is quickly cut off.
“Shut up and finish your food so we can get outta here and I can get some sleep.”
So he does. The ride to the motel is quiet, Castiel too busy enjoying the near-electric joy of being safe in the car at all to talk. The motel itself is apparently terrible, but compared to where he’s been snatching little bits of sleep until now, it might as well be a palace.
Dean offers Cas the first shower (and tosses him some clean clothes) somewhere in the middle of complaining about everything -- the stains on the walls and carpet, the musty smell, the bed-springs, the orange-and-brown color scheme. Castiel doesn’t remember him being this picky before he had the bunker to go home to.
Under the warm water spray, with the old pipes screeching in the walls, Castiel gets some intuitive sense that now, here, it is safe to let his deferred tears fall.
Still, he smiles all the while.
Dean digs around in his duffel for the fifth of Jim Beam he left there, wrapped in a t-shirt. When he finds it, it’s a lot closer to empty than he was expecting. He upends it and finishes the dregs, not bothering with a glass, before he dials Sam.
“What’s up,” says Sam, in that relaxed voice he gets after he runs, or stretches or something. It’s still morning, so neither of those things are all that unlikely. Sam really is feeling better, and for a minute, Dean’s sure everything he did is worth it, lies and all. “How goes the search?”
“Good, I found him, listen, is there a case around here by any chance?” Dean asks, dropping Cas’ shoes next to the bed by the far wall, taking the one closer to the door for himself.
There’s a pause, and for a second Dean is terrified it’s going to be Ezekiel who responds, but then Sam finally says, “Uh… what?”
“I think we should do a case. Me and Cas.”
Sam laughs shallowly. “Seriously, are you okay? One minute Cas is fine on his own, the next you gotta speed off and find him, first you’re just gonna pick him up and now you want to work a case. You’re being weird, even for--Wait, what do you mean, around here? Where’d you find him?”
“We’re in Omaha.” Dean regrets this truth as soon as it’s out of his mouth. He should have lied and said he was farther out.
“Dude, you’re practically in the backyard. Why don’t you just bring Cas home? We can take him along on something together, after he gets settled in.”
Yes, Dean thinks, that does sound both sensible and pleasant. It’s a pity that what he actually says has to be a completely different thing.
“He’s just, uh--” Dean knows that if he makes up stupid excuses long enough, Sam will figure out that he’s being stubborn and give in whether he believes a word of it or not, so he tosses out a half-lie without putting that much effort into it. “He’s really wigged out right now. I think if we did something useful, he might feel better. Like he’s part of the team still.”
“You do know that not everyone uses stabbing as a coping mechanism?”
“Then do it for me. Indulge my need to stab,” Dean insists. What he actually needs is about three or four days to figure out what the hell he’s going to do with Cas without raising any red flags, and if they’re on a case, it’ll be easy to buy that time. “Or better yet, assume I’m right for five seconds of your life. There’s gotta be a ghost or something somewhere in the midwest, right?”
Sam sighs so hard Dean has to hold the phone away from his ear. There’s some typing noises, and then: “Uhhh--I don’t know, maybe? Yeah, I guess I found something that looks fishy, if you’re that desperate. You’ll tell me what this is really about eventually, right?”
“Just text me what you got.”
“It’s all the way in North Dakota.”
“You are the worst salesman in the universe, I already said I’ll take it.” What is it, eight hours there? Another nine back to Kansas? He could drag that out to a couple days each way, if he really has to. Plenty of time to hatch a plan. He thinks clearer behind the wheel anyway.
“Fine, fine. Just… be safe, okay? Don’t push Cas too hard. There’s other hunters in the area, so if you need help, or to back out--”
“Yep, gotcha, bye.” Dean hangs up the phone (without giving Sam a chance to say anything else motherly) just as the bathroom door belches steam into the room, probably feeding additional moisture to the happy black mold colony underneath the wallpaper. “Cas! Good timing, we got a case.”
The timing is actually a bit weird, with Dean having found Cas at the diner mid-morning, breakfast eaten like dinner. At the motel, they’ve been behaving entirely as though it were evening. Cas barely manages to stay awake while Dean recites what he knows about Sam’s maybe-probably-case (making it sound terribly urgent and important, so of course they have to do it, but not so urgent they couldn’t sleep first) and he is absolutely out cold by the time Dean gets out of his own shower.
That’s how they wind up both passed out by 2 PM like a couple of shift workers. Dean stirs once just after sunset, realizes Cas is still down, and doesn’t have the heart to shake him out of what is quite possibly his first rest in a real bed (even a seedy one) since he landed. Instead, he drops back off as well, getting an extra few luxurious hours, for once dreamless and perfect.
The second time he breaks the surface, he forgets where he is, and then he realizes what woke him -- Cas’ sleep is clearly not quite so peaceful. His breathing is uneven and his face is twisted, twitching. He flings one arm half-bonelessly out ahead of him with a miserable croaking sound that probably wants to be a scream.
Dean can see it like some kind of astral projection: a silvery image of himself, standing up, moving to the bed by the wall where Cas is clearly wrapped in a nightmare. Imaginary-Dean takes Cas’ (human) hand and squeezes it, gently waking him with a soft hey, it’s alright, I’m here. Cas, then (freshly showered, wearing Dean’s own clothes) flutters open his eyes and looks at him with gratitude and--
And nothing, because none of that happens.
In reality, he sits frozen on the edge of his own bed while the scene plays out in his head, and then when it’s done, he flips on the light in the room and then flips it off again, and when Cas startles awake, he says, “Whoops, sorry, forgot you were there.”
They’re on the road half an hour later, setting out in the middle of the night.
“How do you deal with it?” Cas asks, after an indeterminate time staring out the window. “Nightmares, I mean. They’re terrible.”
“No choice,” Dean says, feeling his jaw tighten. “Gotta sleep sometime. Booze helps. So does killing stuff.”
“Helps you… not have nightmares?” This clearly doesn’t compute.
“Helps you sleep whether you want to or not.”
“And the… non- alcoholics who don’t kill things? How do they cope?”
Dean can feel Cas’ eyes on the side of his face, can pick up the silent plea for a reason to be optimistic.
It’s just too bad he can’t provide one.
“Most people -- healthy, regular people -- don’t…” Dean pauses uncomfortably, and then says, “They don't have ‘em that much, once they grow up. Or they do, but they’re not that bad. We’re different.”
“We?”
“Me. Sam. Now you. You’re in the same boat as us. You’ve seen shit. Done shit. Your head’s got nastier stuff to throw at you than losing a tooth or walking around in your underwear. If you can make it stop, let me know how you do it.”
That laser gaze turns away from Dean, back out the window.
Abruptly, Dean adds, “Anyway don’t ask questions like that, like this is forever or something. We’re gonna get your grace back, and none of that’s gonna matter anyway. You won’t have to worry about this human crap anymore.”
Cas mutters something, but he’s turned away and the music is fairly loud and Dean doesn’t catch it.
When he asks what, Cas snipes, “I said I don’t deserve it,” and then his mouth clicks shut and he turns away again, hard-jawed in his silence.
Maybe Dean just has to accept that there’s nothing he can say that will stop this self-loathing tide. He can feel that Cas is tensed for another scolding, and that makes him feel like shit in turn. In order to avoid saying the wrong thing and making things worse, he grits his teeth and says nothing.
Wishek, North Dakota, where three people have been found dead with leaves stuffed into their mouths and throats, is a straight shot up route 29 for most of the drive. That means that when the cloudless dawn finally comes, the sun spills over the serrated edge of the cornfields and golden light floods into the passenger side window.
Dean complains about the angle of it, how it blinds him, and insists on a pit stop at the rest area up ahead where he can wait half an hour or so until it’s less annoying.
He doesn’t tell Cas that it lights him up like an old painting of an angel, halo and all.
He throws that on the mile-high compost heap of unsaid things, to rot away with the rest, until it’s all black soil.