Chapter Text
"he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;
he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth." --isaiah 53:7
Their father is back. A solid body; a familiar voice; a heart that beats against their own when they embrace. Wrinkles tied in clusters around the corners of his eyes; half-greying stubble dotted across both sides of his jaw. Hands holding their face s , the calluses of his palms aligning with the tremor of their chin s
He speaks and nothing bleeds.
He looks at them and nothing is black.
He stands there, and the world doesn’t tilt off its axis, doesn’t groan with the uneven balance.
Their father is back.
Suddenly all the bent angles are straightened out. All the fractures are sealed. He is the transplant they’ve been waiting for; he fits perfectly into the hollow carved out by time and tragedy. The hole in the tapestry is mended, the needle and thread dipping in and out in neat stitches.
It’s perfect. It’s whole.
It completely covers the giant abyss spawning underneath.
+
Castiel pushes the Bunker door open and then pauses on the landing. He stretches his shoulders back and releases some amalgamation of a sigh and an exhale. It’s been several long days with nothing to show for the artifact he’s been chasing–one that might be able to extract Michael from Dean’s mind without killing the Winchester. He has another potential lead to follow up in Oregon--a witch referred to him by Sergei--but the contact hasn’t responded yet. There’s a lull in the bustle and he has some extra time to spend here in the Bunker with his family. Being around them always recharges his spirit; it reinvigorates him with both the strength to keep fighting and the belief that they will succeed. Eventually. He’s been with Sam and Dean long enough to know that if they keep knocking on enough doors, eventually their fist is going to punch right through one.
He shifts the bag from one hand to the other and walks down the staircase. Usually by now one or both boys will have heard the front door clanging shut and come out to greet him. It seems unusually quiet; but then with Jack spending the weekend at Jody’s, and Mary leading the other Apocalypse World hunters on a vampire hunt, he’s not surprised by the hush in the normally busy front room. A little more breathing room would be welcome; he could use the time to finally catch up with Sam and Dean. They haven't found the space for many conversations in the past few weeks. He wants to make sure Dean is holding up well and that Sam isn’t overtaxing himself with training the new hunters.
By the time Castiel has put away his bag in the storage room he still hasn’t bumped into either of the boys. He senses people talking further in the Bunker and heads in the direction of the armory. As he enters the room he sees Sam and Dean standing around the table, looking over a spread of various angel blades, devil trap bullets, and knives.
And there’s someone else. He doesn’t recognize the older man, yet there’s a peculiar hue tinting his aura. Castiel can’t quite place it yet, but he feels like he should recognize it.
Before he can ask who the visitor is, all three men turn and see him. Their response is immediate; they each grab a weapon off the table--Sam and Dean taking angel blades, the older man with a gun--and move towards him menacingly.
“Who are you?” Dean barks. “And what are you doing here?”
“Who am I--who’s he?” Castiel points at the older man who’s been leveling him a lethal glare of vitriol.
“Their father,” the man says. Growls, really. “Who the hell are you?”
Castiel realizes why the man’s aura was calling to him. It has the telltale molted palette of resurrection, the kind that’s been dragged through time and history. “John Winchester?” Before he can ask another question he feels something hard against his collarbone and then he’s being shoved against the wall, blade to his throat, Dean’s bared teeth inches away from his face.
“Who and what are you?” Dean repeats.
“C-Castiel.” He nudges Dean’s elbow away. “What’s going on, why is your father here--how did you--”
The tip of the blade dips into Castiel’s throat, hard enough to start drawing droplets of blood. “I’m the one asking questions here,” Dean says. “What are you?”
“I’m an angel.” Castiel looks at Dean and then to Sam. “You know me, I live with you, I--”
“You live with an angel?” John practically snarls.
“We don’t.” Dean’s grip on the hilt of the blade tightens. “Or we didn’t know we did.”
“He must be a spy.” Sam steps closer. The blade in his hand is now aimed at Castiel too. “He got in here on his own, right? He must have infiltrated the Bunker, maybe by befriending one of the new hunters. Dammit, I should have been paying more attention to--”
“Sam. Dean.” Castiel raises his voice slightly. “What’s going on here? You know me, you’ve---” his throat suddenly goes dry. “Is this Michael?” If Michael is in control of Dean’s body again then it’s not just them that are in danger, but the rest of the world.
The word seems to have the opposite effect; instead of alleviating the situation, it only seems to exacerbate it. Sam takes a step back, still holding the blade out but pulling John away by the wrist. Dean’s expression pales slightly but the pressure on the blade under his throat doesn’t waver.
“So you’re one of Michael’s angels?” Dean says. “Is this his plan? Come into our home and spy on us like this?”
It’s not Michael speaking, that’s Dean for sure. It must be something else. Castiel glances around frantically, his eyes landing on the man who claims to be their father. “How did John get here? If Michael brought him back I can assure you that he means to do you harm by it. That might not even be your father--”
“Oh, we didn’t need your boss’ help for this,” Dean smirks. “We got him back all on our own. He’s our dad, for real. Our family. And you’re trying to take that away. Did you really think we’d let you play us like that?”
“I’m not--Sam, Dean, you know this isn’t right. Stop and think.” He doesn’t dare budge, not with two blades still poised to run through him, but he searches their eyes for any trace of what might have happened. The mark of a sigil or spell. Or the lingering residue of sulfur or grace. “You know me. And your father is supposed to be dead.”
“We’re all supposed to be dead.” Sam comes forward again, hair falling over his darkened eyes. “But we come back. We got our mom back, and now our dad. This is the way it’s meant to be, and you aren’t going to tear us apart.” He brings the end of the blade closer, up along Castiel’s side. The sharp end slits the fabric of his coat, and then Sam stops the blade to rest under his heart. “Because you’ll be dead.”
Castiel’s entire body goes numb. “Don’t,” he exhales. “I’m not your enemy. Sam. You know me. I’m part of your family.”
Sam snorts in disbelief and then turns back to discuss with the others. “Family, did you hear this guy?”--“Been undercover too deep.”--“Like we’d fall for that.” -- “We should just get rid of him-why’s he even still here?”-- “Because Michael, duh.” --“Yeah, he must have information.”
Castiel eyes the three of them carefully, calculating his chances of successfully escaping in this distracted moment. He needs to get out of here and go somewhere else to try and figure out what kind of magic or curse they’re under.
“And we’ll make sure to get it out of him,” Dean adds, and then suddenly they’re pressed around Castiel at every side. John jerks his arms back and Sam reignites his grip on the blade and Dean shoves his knee into Castiel’s back until he moves. They force him to walk out of the armory and down the hall. He knows where they’re headed even before the dungeon door comes into sight. He’s been talking all the way down, reiterating that he isn’t a spy, or one of Michael’s angels--in fact he’s barely any kind of angel these days--but as they throw him into the metal chair and strap cuffs around his wrists he starts repeating himself even faster, as if the velocity of his words can save him.
“Sam, Dean, you know me, you--” Dean slams the hilt of the blade against his mouth. Blood rushes to fill his cheeks and when he opens his mouth to defend himself again all that comes out is bubbling red.
“Yeah,” Dean grins proudly, nodding at Sam who’s standing by the wall. There’s a slice across Sam’s palm and a painted sigil on the wall that Castiel recognizes instantly . “Your fancy angel powers are on the down-low now. You won’t be getting out of here any time soon. Not until we know what we want to.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“We’ll see about that.” The light bulb hanging above John’s head illuminates the swarming hatred in his eyes. “In my experience all monsters crack in the same place.” He motions at Dean. “Make sure it’s legs are bound too. We don’t want any chance of it getting away.”
As Dean bends over, pulling the ropes around Castiel’s legs so tightly his skin burns, Castiel tries again. “Dean, just stop and think. I’m not a stranger, I’m---” he pauses, searching for the right words; the one line to pierce through what cursed haze they're under and make them remember him. “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”
“Yeah?” Dean straightens up, half a grin one side of his face. “Thanks for that.” His arm hangs loosely by his side and then it moves in a flash of silver.
Agony rips up Castiel’s grace, igniting from the lower left side of his jaw and burning up to the right corner of his hairline. Dean just--Dean. Dean slashed him across the face with the angel blade. His left eye was in the path of the cut and is now severed, making the Winchester’s looming figure an imposing glitch that lingers only for a moment before it disappears into the darkness.
Castiel slumps forward, head bowed, gasping through the searing pain, praying for mercy to no one at all.
+
“Here.” Dean sets an uncapped beer bottle in front of Sam, who gives it a perfunctory look of interest. “Mom should be here soon. I didn’t tell her, by the way. Thought it might be a nice surprise.”
When Sam gives him a distracted nod Dean pauses. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Look, I love that Dad’s back, okay, don’t get me wrong. I mean, Mom and Dad and us--this is something we’ve always dreamed of.”
“Yeah, since we were kids.”
“Since you were a kid,” Sam corrects him. “I don’t even have a memory of our family being together, this is…something that’s really only ever existed in my imagination.”
“But…?” Dean prompts.
“But we never get just good news, Dean! It always comes with something bad, something trying to take away what we have.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That Castiel guy. Who knows how long he’s been coming in and out of the Bunker, pretending to be a hunter and gathering information on us?”
Dean drops his legs over the bench and sits down across from Sam. “He’s just one angel, Sam. Once we figure out what he knows about Michael’s plans we can just get rid of him. Besides, he’s locked up securely down there. He can’t hurt us anymore.”
Sam shakes his head stubbornly. “Dean, he asked you about being in Hell. He knows more about us than he should. The new hunters, they don’t even know that about you.”
“That’s true.” Dean draws his eyebrows together. His fingers unconsciously clench around the beer bottle. “I don’t think--are you saying that–”
“--he’s been inside our heads? Maybe.” Sam’s mouth twists in disgust at the thought. “I don’t know how though, considering all the warding in the Bunker. But yeah that’s what I’m afraid of--”
The sound of the Bunker door opening interrupts him and the wafting notes of Mary’s voice pulls both of their attention away.
“She’s here.” Dean shoots a warning look back at Sam. “Don’t mention the Castiel problem to Mom, okay? We can handle it on our own.”
Sam nods. “Yeah, I can do some research later, too.” His expression shifts, the concern fading as an eagerness lights up his eyes. “Let’s go introduce Dad to her.”
+
Mary gets the call just as she and Maggie are cleaning their machetes after their successful vampire hunt. The headless bodies of the blood-sucking family lie sprawled among the blood-soaked hay of the abandoned barn. They’ll take them out and burn them later; right now Maggie looks like she needs an energy boost and some water. Mary is about to reach into her pocket and give her one of her favorite granola bars when her phone rings. It’s Dean, telling her to come back to the Bunker as soon as she can, although he doesn’t say why.
Mary helps pile the bodies for burning first. Maggie nibbles on the granola bar, the crackling flames dancing over her flushed face. She passes Mary a can of Sprite from one of the other hunters’ backpacks and Mary sips it slowly as the smell of seared flesh rises with a black plume above them.
When there’s nothing remaining of the fanged monsters but a mound of whispering ash Mary walks back to her car. Maggie is going to lead the other hunters up north to where there’s been reports of a shape-shifter. Mary suggested all of them returning to the Bunker, but Maggie wanted to keep hunting. She has that spark in her eyes of boundless energy and youth that Mary misses in herself. The rest of the hunters rally around Maggie; her quiet confidence inspires them, and Mary trusts her leadership enough to let her continue hunting.
On the drive back to the Bunker Mary starts to miss her boys. It doesn’t make sense, seeing as she’s headed towards, not away from them. Somehow knowing that she’s about to see them again reminds her of how little time they’ve actually been able to spend together. If it isn’t something cosmic separating them--like an alternate world or an archangel from an alternate world--then it’s the daily bustle of hunts and being on the road that makes their moments spent as a family short and scattered. She misses being able to talk to them about their day; to see them laugh over some television program that they insist isn’t their favorite despite knowing all the characters’ names by heart, or complain about each other’s cooking while asking for seconds.
The Bunker is quiet when she walks down the stairs. She expects Sam and Dean to be in the front room, waiting for her, and when they come barreling around the corner from the kitchen it gives her a start and she jumps back.
“Sorry,” Sam says, a timid smile crossing his face. “We didn’t mean to startle you.”
Mary pats his arm gently and then pulls him in for a hug. He towers over her, of course; they both do, but they’re still her children, and she misses holding them. “It’s fine. So, what happened? Is everything alright?”
“More than alright.” Dean pulls away from her embrace, eyes bright with unexpected joy. He gestures towards the adjacent room. “We’ve got someone here we thought you’d want to meet.”
She sees the shadow cross the floor before the person. Her eyes fall to watch the gray shape cross the stone tiles and then she looks up to see whose body is attached to the feet that are walking towards her. She recognizes the man instantly; he is old and ageless all at once, and she is a young wife in love and she runs to him like the few feet across the tiled floor are a petal-strewn aisle. When she kisses him he tastes like heaven, the heaven she remembers where Sam and Dean were small enough to sit on her knees. His arms slip around the small of her waist; his breath against her own fits just right, the way a scar belongs over a wound.
“Mary.” He buries his face in her hair. “My beautiful girl.”
She can’t remember the last time someone called her beautiful. She becomes bashful, blushing a color she can’t hide, and tucks her body against his. Her cheek is flattened against his chest and she listens to a heartbeat that echoes with life, life, life.
She forgets to ask how and why. She remembers, later. Later, when they’re seated around the kitchen table, and so Dean shows her the pearl while Sam rambles about his theory of how the spell works. And John. John says nothing, just looks at her with a gaze so soft it might crumble.
She knows what he’s thinking. She can’t quite believe it either. She’s not in Heaven. She’s on Earth, but heaven is real and here in the kitchen of her home.
+
Castiel sits under a canopy of darkness. He’s stopped trying to break free of his cuffs; the more he tugged the deeper they cut into his wrists until the ends of his sleeves were soaked in blood. Instead he devotes energy into healing the slash across his face. With the sigils in the room his grace is reduced down to a mere trickle. He’s starting to feel what humans would call a migraine as he tries to force his energy towards the gaping wound. If he can heal his mangled eye and stop the precious little grace he has from bleeding out, then he can renew his efforts towards getting himself out of here.
The sound of the door hinges creaking makes his muscles tighten, body braced against the spine of the chair. He’s been held captive enough times to recognize what sounds signal the return of danger, and what sounds precede the return of his captors. But he’s not being held by some hateful angel or god or demon. He is at home, his home, and the person coming towards him is someone he loves.
This is my home, my home, my home, he repeats in his mind as Dean approaches. He doesn’t want to be afraid. He tells himself that he isn’t.
Dean stops a few feet away from him. The angel blade twirls between his fingers. “You’ve got, uh, something in your eye,” he quips. John emerges from behind him and Dean silently passes him the angel blade and then retreats to the side, like he’s paved the way for the main attraction to enter.
Castiel doesn’t look at John. His gaze is fixed on Dean’s soul, the ember lines he can see beyond the physical plane. He needs to be sure that this is truly Dean, and not some doppelganger, not some shifter or version of him from another world. The gentle blends of Dean’s soul, the luminescent colors of his scars and sutures, are the same as they’ve always been.
It really is him.
And yet it isn’t, because Dean is watching him the way someone studies a caged tiger. John has started slowly circling around Castiel in that familiar motion that the seraph has seen Sam and Dean do before to a captive demon or monster. The careful, deliberate stride, the movement behind the head where the eyes can’t reach, it’s all part of intimidating a prisoner. To remind them who is in control of the narrative; whose watchful eye they are under; who holds their life in their hands.
This is my home.
It’s starting to sound like a dirge.
“For a Michael lap dog you sure do know a lot about us,” Dean leans against the wall, arms folded. “When did you first get assigned your little Mission Impossible?”
“I’m not Michael’s. I know you, Dean. And you know me. You just don’t remember right now, maybe it’s a spell but--” he leans towards him “--if you stop to think you’ll know something’s wrong. Just listen to me, please.”
“Stop talking to my son.” John seizes the back of his shirt collar and yanks him back. “You’re not the one asking the questions here. I am.” He leans over his shoulder, angling the blade down and popping a button off Castiel’s shirt. “I’m told that these are angel blades. What are they, made of angels?”
From the corner Dean chuckles at his father’s comment. The sound stings Castiel’s ears.
“John. I’m not your enemy.” Castiel doesn’t know the father Winchester, not enough to tell if his behavior is being influenced by the spell or his natural hunter instincts. “I mean your family no harm.”
John’s response is to position the end of the blade against Castiel’s navel, holding it there firmly enough for blood to start pooling around the tip. “Don’t let him kill me,” Castiel breathes, redirecting his attention towards Dean. “Let me explain. Please.”
“Kill you? It’s too soon for that.” John drags the blade up Castiel’s chest, splitting skin and grace inch by inch. Pain spikes through his vessel and form, and he curls his toes against the sole of his shoes, trying to restrain himself from gasping aloud. “That’s a mercy you don’t get until we find out what we want to.”
The blade stops below his collarbone and then John lowers it down to his waistline and starts carving its ascent again. His grace burns white hot, flaring against his ribcage, and Castiel bites through his tongue to stop himself from crying out. Blood splatters the white eaves of his shirt and he thinks of Malachi. Theo. Ephraim. Jonah. Amara. Lucifer. Zachariah. Metatron.
Dean and his father are not his tormentors. They aren’t his enemies. Except Dean is just standing there, watching John cut into Castiel with a pleased expression on his face. The way a child might look satisfied when their father fixes something that was broken.
The blade breaks his flesh again and again, forming long, bloody stripes up his chest. The pain builds like a terrible choir until he can’t hold it in anymore.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Castiel finally bursts out. “Please, Dean, tell him to stop.”
John lifts the blade away and then moves around to face Castiel, keeping one hand on his left shoulder like an iron claw. “Don’t talk to my son. I don’t want you to get into their heads anymore than you already have. God knows how long you’ve been here, contaminating my family. ” He steps away, the darkness curtaining his face. “But believe me, I’m going to find out. Everything.”
“Dean, I would never get inside your head without your--”
“Stop--” John reemerges, face flushed with fury, “--saying his name.” He reaches over to the storage shelf behind him and pulls out a long chain. The metal links rattle as he strides over to Castiel and slams it against his lips, forcing his teeth open and then wrapping the chain around his mouth. Castiel thrashes his head violently, trying to shake it off, but John snaps a lock around the links, securing the chain in place.
“There.” Dean nods at Castiel, grinning. “Don’t go anywhere.” He follows his father as they walk away; when Dean opens the door and a triangle of light beams in, along with the sound of a new voice.
Mary.
Castiel strains against the chain in his mouth, pushing until the metal split his gums; pushing until he feels the lining of his cheek tearing open.
Mary.
Not a sound emerges from him. The triangle of light evaporates and the door slams shut.