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And It ain't no use in turning on your light, babe
The light I never knowed
And it ain't no use in turning on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road.
“So, what’s going on here? You told me you’d inherited the place,” Dean adds, turning to Donna, “but not that you’d turn it into -”
He shrugs, a bit helplessly, as he gestures to the room around him - the gigantic kitchen, the children playing with dinosaur toys in front of the run-down fireplace (Gabriel feels him looking, as he always does, and he turns on his back to look back at him; one of the kids, a chubby little boy - Peter? - climbs on top of the mighty archangel, and Gabriel stretches back and pretends to be a ship, or something - he rolls from side to side, that is, and he does roaring, wavey sounds - Dean is still looking because it makes the child howl with laughter, no other reason), the Sharpie symbols on the cabinets (alpha is for ‘Loaded weapons inside, handle with care’, beta for ‘Explosives’, and gamma quite possibly for ‘When the fuck did everyone become so goddamn competent?’), the red wards (paint, not blood) on the windows and ceiling, and Alex’ Japanese syllabaries in a corner, next to the thick spiral notebook she uses to practice her calligraphy (“Bobby gave me these books, years ago. Said he wasn’t using them anymore, just put them in my car. It must have been a message, but a message of what - hard to say,” Jody had said quietly, when she’s seen Dean frown at them, and he’d just nodded, even though, well).
“You don’t like it?”
“Don’t be stupid, I love it,” says Dean, quickly, and it’s true - he’s been a hunter his whole life, and he’s never managed this - a home.
No, the only thing he ever managed to give Sammy was the Bunker, and even though it was comfortable and decent, this is so much different - Maybe it’s a women’s thing, he thinks, vaguely, as Krissy pokes him in the back and forces him to taste some kind of tomato sauce.
So apparently it’s time to eat again, even though it’s hard to say if this is supposed to be lunch or dinner. Clocks and watches don’t work anymore, and outside the weather never changes. Dark and cold all the way, and fuck you very much.
“I’m settling for good enough,” Krissy says, walking back to the pot. “I can’t cook, as they know perfectly well -”
“And I told you, Krissy, that demons and the Apocalypse are not an excuse not to help out,” says Donna, sweetly, and, again, Dean is just plain shocked by how normal this all seems.
Seems being the key word, of course.
They’re all on their best behaviour, even freaking Gabriel, because of the kids - there are four of them, aged two to five, all currently being tickled to death by an archangel of the Lord, and the unspoken agreement is to act normal around them.
Because, well, the previous night, or morning, or whatever the fuck it was - Dean had not been drunk enough to forget it, but he had been drunk enough to break down in front of Jody as she was trying to clean the wounds on his face and arms. His finest moment, that. Thank God for coffee, because next - next he’d had to repeat the whole damn thing to everyone else - they’d all been sitting at the big wooden table in the kitchen, clutching a varied assortment of mugs and glasses, as he filled them in on the events of the last two months. Or a highlighted version of it, anyway. The girls had been very quiet (Alex snapping on a plastic armband on her wrist from time to time) and had seemed the least fazed about the situation. Despite their traumatic upbringing, none of them was actually old enough to appreciate what dying really meant, Dean had thought, and when he’d shifted his gaze he’d seen Jody staring back at him with the exact same thought on her face.
As for Jody and Donna, they’d done their best to look serious and competent during their little chat, but Dean had seen enough people shatter from the inside out to know what was really going on.
And Gabriel - he’d remained right beside him the whole time, slurping his hot chocolate as if daring Dean to tell him to stop. Otherwise, he’d been silent through the entire monologue, listening as attentively as anyone else. Dean still didn’t know where he’d been all that time he was supposed to be dead, but wherever it was, he’d seemed just as out of the loop as everybody else.
No, Gabriel had spoken just the once, a simple, demure Yes to Donna’s murmured question (“Are you really him? The archangel?”).
So, yes, that had been it. Dean had apologized for dooming the world to hell, Claire had rolled her eyes, nobody had had any idea about what might have happened to Cas (Sam was never mentioned, not after Dean had explained about the scar on his forehead). Also, nobody had said anything about blame, which was far more than he deserved, though Jody had given him a very pointed look, a kind of Why the hell do you two always have to do everything alone look.
And then, just when Dean had thought the worst was, for the moment, over, and that he could maybe crawl upstairs, in a bedroom with clean sheets and a copy of Slaughterhouse 5 on the bedside table, a bedroom he didn’t deserve, not one bit, then the conversation had carried on. Because, well, despite having saved strangers’ lives for the better part of his own, Dean always forgot there was an actual world out there, so thank God someone still remembered that, and still cared enough.
“So, you accepted the Mark of Cain to defeat a Knight of Hell,” Krissy had said, counting on her fingers, “and you ended up killing her, and Cain himself. So good. But you also became sort of a demonic thing -” Claire had shot her a very dirty look, but Krissy had soldiered on, “- and killed a bunch of other people. This angel, Metatron, is now human, and running around with the Demon Tablet. Crowley is the King of Hell and he’s sort of okay -” she’d glanced at Dean, who’d nodded, if a bit reluctantly, “- but his mom is a right bitch, also a witch, and she has this Book of the Damned which can do pretty much everything. And when you undid the Mark of Cain, the Darkness was released, an ‘old, amoral force’ previously ‘beaten down in a terrible war by God and his archangels’. Did I get everything?”
“He also killed Death, so we don’t know what’s going on now,” Alex had said, her eyes shifting to Dean and then away again.
“We do, actually. Sort of, anyway,” Jody had said, and Dean had felt the beginnings of that I’m sure I don’t want to hear this feeling in his stomach.
“That thing on your forehead - that’s not a cross, is it? It’s a taw,” Claire had said. “An Hebrew T.”
“Very good, Claire. An ancient symbol of death.”
Gabriel had smiled and created more mini cupcakes for everyone, offering a pink-frosted one to Claire - he was being very weird around Claire, but, then again, he was being very weird around everybody, so -
“I think people marked with that thing are dead but can’t die,” Jody had said, startling everybody. “I’ve seen a guy who’d crashed his car - bits of lungs falling out of his chest, no body temperature to speak of, and yet he was alert and rational; he was talking to me. And he had that same symbol on his forehead.”
“You are right,” Gabriel had said. “Reapers are not qualified to decide on a soul's final resting place, and they are not very proactive. It’s highly likely most people will just stay alive indefinitely. Well, not ‘alive’, per se. If grievously injured, or terminally ill, they will be marked, and their bodies will start rotting. At that point most people go mad.”
“You’ve - you’ve seen this happening before?”
“Not exactly this, no - last time we had to fight the Darkness, humans were not around - but there are spells which mimic this effect. Very entertaining.”
“Thanks a lot. What about me, then? How long have I got?” Dean had asked, since nobody had seemed willing to.
“Oh, I put you on stasis,” Gabriel had replied, a bit too airily. “You’re not going anywhere until you sort out your mess, and we hardly have the time to pick up your body pieces as we march on to our glorious purpose.”
Dean has been replaying the whole conversation in his mind since he woke up, and now his eyes glaze over, just a bit, as he gets to the end of it for the fifteenth time - those terse reports on the radio saying exactly what you’d expect - the world is fucked all over, the army is out doing things, people are rioting in the big cities, the government has issued a very stern and loving warning (Everyone should just stay at home and smile in the darkness, everything is just peachy, we got this), and most religious leaders seem to blame the whole thing on same-sex marriage.
“So, is it good enough?” asks Krissy, in the tone of someone who’s asked this question before, and Dean tries to focus - he catches her eye, nods.
“What are you doing, then? Beside running a bed and breakfast for hunters and hunters-in-training?” he asks, his gaze flickering towards Peter, then away again.
“Well, it was never - this was only part of the plan, actually. Not something for hunters, but a halfway house for - you have no idea how hard it is to figure out demons and werewolves are actually real, Dean. And it’s even harder if -”
Dean can see the rest of the sentence in Jody’s eyes, and he knows she stopped for her own sake as much as his. Because, well, yes, so he’d been four, but he’d still known, pretty much at once, that that wasn’t just a fire. He’d tried to forget about the smell of sulphur stinking up the stairs, but he’d never quite managed to. And later, of course, seeing his daddy filling the trunk with blades and salt hadn’t helped.
“Anyway, Donna was supposed to just pop up during the holidays - it’s your house, after all - but then we found Gracie and Peter,” she adds, whispering the names so the children won’t hear, and, lowering her voice even further, she adds, “Their parents were killed by a witch and I just couldn’t bear - Gracie remembers something, see. The official report said - but never mind. Then Krissy and her friends showed up, and they found Hunter -”
“Hunter,” says Dean under his breath, sniggering a little.
“I know, I know, what can we do? Anyway, now there’s eleven of us, counting Claire and Sarah. Well, thirteen, I guess. You are staying, aren’t you?”
Dean is suddenly aware of Gabriel’s gaze upon him.
“I - yes, for now. Until we figure out what the next move is. Any news from other hunters?”
“So far, not much. Laura was in San Francisco, and according to government reports the city is under quarantine, for some reason, and Margaret sent a pigeon - everything is just the same there -”
“A pigeon?” asks Dean, and Jody grins.
“Margaret opened a house like this one right over the border - she gave me the idea, actually - and she devised this pigeon-based communication system - we teased her to the death about it, because she’s a proper end-of-the-world, technology-collapse nutter, except -”
“Except now she’s right,” finishes Donna, and that sobers everyone up.
“It’s not over yet,” says Dean, and he’s about to add something else, a joke, anything, when Gabriel flickers into existence right next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Someone’s coming,” he says, warningly, and he looks so fierce and serious that Dean can’t help himself.
“Really? What do your elf eyes see?”
Gabriel stares at him blankly, as does everyone else.
“Oh, come on! The Two Towers? Nothing?”
Just then, the house shakes.
“This is what happened yesterday,” says Claire, tersely, her hand moving to the knife she keeps strapped to her belt. “I think someone is trying to walk through the wards.”
“It can’t be,” says Gabriel, and then he’s gone.
“Does he do that a lot?”
“Not nearly enough,” says Dean, but his belated attempt at humour is lost because this place has turned into a frigging military academy, and everybody is already snapping to attention and running around in an alarmingly efficient way.
By the time Dean’s decided to run after Gabriel, Alex and Krissy have disappeared with the kids, Jody is lighting torches (there are seven of them, fixed against the wall, their wood handles criss-crossed with symbols) and Donna is preparing all sort of equipment on the kitchen table (old books, bags of salt, weapons). Claire is looking at him, waiting for instruction. Dean’s eyes hesitate on her - he looks her up and down, and then he shakes his head.
“You stay here,” he says, starting to walk away.
“Right,” she says, and she follows him.
“It could be dangerous,” Dean says, exasperated, a hand on the door handle.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
And Dean - Dean fails. Again. This is a child, someone he should protect, but it’s the end of the world out there, and Claire has to learn. Dean could die tomorrow - is dead already, actually - and someone has to take his place if he does. Even someone as young and innocent as Claire, if need be. Disgusted with himself, Dean nods.
“Be careful, is all.”
He opens the door and he starts running through the dry grass. He can see Gabriel at the top of the path, about a hundred feet away, can see very clearly, in fact, the fiery sword he carries across his back, and it looks like he’s actually reaching for the hilt -
“Wait!” he yells, and Gabriel stills his hand, but he doesn’t turn to look at Dean.
No, he’s looking at someone standing right in front of him, just outside the wards. An old man in a coat. He looks as normal as a person could possibly look - seriously, all that is missing is an ‘I’m an ordinary person, don’t shoot me’ sign taped to his forehead - which is why Dean is immediately suspicious. Well, that and the sudden performance of Gabriel as the Terminator, that is, because the archangel has not drawn his blade yet - actually, the blade itself has disappeared from view, but he still looks - charged, somehow. Dangerous, and on edge. There is such power crackling from him, in fact, that Dean decides, without even thinking about it, to stay a good ten feet from him.
“What’s going on here? Who are you?”
The old man smiles, and Gabriel - Gabriel fucking growls.
“Can’t you smell the stench on him? Your superpowers failing you?” he says, keeping his eyes on the old man. “I would have killed you already, Deceiver, were it not for your hostage.”
“Hostage?” asks Dean, and he automatically scans the surrounding area for a second person, or a car - all he can see is a box, an ordinary-looking cardboard box with faded writing on the top.
A box which is vibrating slightly, as if something really wants to get out of it.
“Release him, and at once,” hisses Gabriel, and, really, Dean has never seen him so angry, not even when he was confronting Lucifer.
“Professor!”
Claire has come to a halt next to Dean, and she impatiently swings her braid back as she looks, wide-eyed, from the friendly old man to the awe-inspiring archangel. Dean glances at her, bewildered, and does a double-take as Claire moves between him and Gabriel and fucking puts her hand on the archangel’s wrist, stilling him. And, yes, Dean is going to have to talk to her about this sudden angel fetish of hers, because hating the fuckers was way safer than this new Let’s hold hands and be friends campaign she’s got going.
“Hello, Claire.”
“Do you know this guy?”
“Yes, he - he comes to the library. He’s a teacher. Retired.”
“No he’s not. He’s the Antichrist.”
“He is what?”
Both of them turn towards at Gabriel, and then look at the old man again. Which, well, still appears to be an old man. Nothing more. Nothing scary.
“That’s hardly a polite way to put it,” the guy finally says, cool as you please. “I am on your side. I watched over Claire, I warned her about Lucifer.”
“What about Lucifer?” says Dean, frowning at Claire.
“I -”
Claire has never felt stupider in her entire life, because, well - she forgot. Or not forgot, exactly, but - of course the message was important, but it had been a message for Dean, and it had seemed wrong to - to discuss such a thing with Krissy and the others - and then Dean had showed up out of the blue, and he’d seemed so out of it already, and -
“He said Lucifer has risen,” she says, sheepishly.
“And you thought you wouldn’t share -” starts Dean, then catches himself, shakes his head. “Let’s do this later. Jesse, is that you?” he asks, turning back to the old man, and Gabriel actually hisses at him.
“You know this filth?”
“Oh, come on, he was a just kid. Turned Cas into a toy and disappeared.”
“He did - what?” says Claire, and Dean grins.
“An action figure. I kind of liked it, actually.”
“And that’s a shocker,” mutters Gabriel, acidly. “So old habits die hard, apparently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you ask him what’s in the box?”
“You can’t mean -”
“Is Cas in there?” asks Claire, her voice going up two full octaves, and now she looks mad enough to spit nails. “You pretended to be my friend, and all this time, you were - and you hurt Cas - what the fuck do you want from me?”
The man scratches his head, frowns.
“I told you, I was trying to protect you.”
As he takes a step towards them, Gabriel growls, and he stops mid-movement, raises his arms in a placating way.
"Claire, I -"
“I told you things!” shouts Claire. “About myself! I liked you! I thought you were nice!”
“Technically, you told me lies. Nothing you said was true.”
“I - that’s not the fucking point!”
The thing seems ready to turn into a proper catfight when Dean makes a mistake and tries to butt in.
“Claire, if that is Jesse, I’m sure he had a reason to-”
“Yeah, stick up for him, why don’t you? You lied to me for my entire life, as did your -” Claire points at the box, seems unable to come up with a bad enough word, makes a sound which is half laugh, half sob, and storms off.
“Claire!” shouts the man, taking another step forward, but Dean raises one hand, ready to come between him and Gabriel, who’s bypassed scary and is now looking downright murderous.
Which means Dean can’t think about Claire right now; his main task here is, must be, to control the bloody archangel, because he doesn’t want to have an explosion on his hands; at the same time, though, he’s evaluating Jesse (if that is indeed Jesse; but, then again, if Gabriel is sure) and the guy is just as unnerving as the child he remembers. Like he could hug them or smite them without even thinking about it, as if both things were one and the same.
“Jesse,” he says, trying to silence the sudden surge of panic in his chest, going instead for his best Brad Pitt voice, “what’s in the box, then?”
“Insurance,” Jesse says, frowning at him. He hesitates, moves a bit to the side to watch Claire walk away, and suddenly he looks childishly sad. “I want to help you, Dean, but I knew showing up unexpected and empty-handed was going to be - lethal, probably. I remember what company you keep.”
Gabriel actually snarls at that, and the whole thing is so over the top Dean has to roll his eyes.
“You,” he says to the archangel, “calm down. And you,” he continues, talking to Jesse, “explain.”
“Can I come in first?”
“Come on, kid, work with me here. Give me a reason to invite you in.”
Jesse looks at him seriously and sort of nods.
“Okay. Let’s start over, then. Is Cas all right?”
Jesse nods again.
“I haven’t hurt the angel in any way. I needed a bargaining chip, and I went to find one. I could sense him, actually, because he was calling out for you.”
Dean looks dubiously at the box, which shakes again (the thing can’t be more than fifteen inches large, how the hell -?), then glances at Gabriel.
“He’s telling the truth,” the archangel says, and the glare of impending doom disappears from his face for a second, replaced by his customary amused smirk.
Dean feels a huge weight coming off his shoulders. He hadn’t even been aware of this heavy-as-bricks load of worry perched on him, gnawing away at his insides, but now it’s gone, he discovers that breathing is actually much easier than what he’s used to. Because, well, Cas is alive. Cas is right here.
“I’ve been away, for a long time,” says Jesse. “And then I came back. And yesterday, when the Darkness rose, Lucifer rose with it. I felt it happen, felt my powers come back. You could have killed once, Dean, and you didn’t. I owe you for that. Let me help you now.”
Dean hesitates.
Cas would not be happy. He’d warned them about this, once before, that Jesse’s abilities are tied to Lucifer’s, and that he would become the most powerful being in the world, stronger than any angel, if given the chance, and then -
On the other hand, if Lucifer is free, they need all the help they can get.
“Release him,” he says.
“Promise me you won’t allow them to kill me.”
Gabriel makes a small movement next to him, refusal and disappointment, and Dean ignores him.
“Can we limit your strength in some way?” he asks Jesse. “I believe you mean well, but I don’t like the idea of you losing control inside the house. There’s kids in there.”
“He could brand himself. Only thing that would work,” says Gabriel, before Jesse can answer. “And I’m guessing he won’t do it.”
Jesse rolls his eyes, a weird gesture on his grown-up, slightly lined face.
“If you’re talking about the Tetragrammaton Curse, yes, I am willing to do that. If you swear, that is, on your Father’s will and word, that you will not harm me in any way and that you will release me from the Curse after you are convinced I want to fight on Dean’s side.”
“After I am convinced you want to fight on Dean’s side,” repeats Gabriel, “and only in a situation of imminent danger.”
They stare at each other for a long moment - Dean tries to look like he knows what they’re talking about - and then Jesse nods and extends his hand.
Gabriel sort of shrugs - there is a flash of light - and next, there is a long, golden feather on Jesse’s palm. Jesse looks down at it a bit dubiously.
“Gold? I was expecting pink,” Dean quips. “Come on, then, just get it over with.”
Jesse closes his fingers around the feather, and both he and Gabriel wince slightly, as if this hurts. Dean looks from one to the other and finally starts to cotton up. That feather is separated from Gabriel’s body only because they are on this - this plane of existence, as Cas would say, because an angel’s being is always one and indivisible; things visible and invisible, created by Him and for Him. And so, as the holy and unholy connect - of course they both look pained. They were never meant to be this close to one another. This is plain wrong.
Jesse looks particularly disturbed, the shadow of pain clear as day on his face, and even if Dean sort of understands what’s going on, it’s still borderline weird, because all Jesse is doing is holding a feather in his hand.
A golden feather. From an actual archangel.
Well, after all, he is the Antichrist, thinks Dean, and for a second he doubts his judgement - Cas wanted this kid dead -
But then Jesse breathes in, firmly, rolls up his left sleeve, and starts writing on his own skin with the tip of the feather, slowly, with neat little strokes.
Nothing appears, no writing, no blood, not even light.
“That’s it?” asks Dean, when Jesse rolls his sleeve back down and the feather in his fingers flickers out of existence.
“That’s it.”
“Then -”
“Come in,” says Gabriel, his voice a bit hoarse, and the old man steps through the wards.
As Dean is watching him, he sees him changing - sees the skin of his face melt and stretch, his hair grow longer and darker, his clothes molt against his body. The whole thing is done and over in a second. In this new body, Jesse looks a lot more like the Jesse Dean remembered - same big brown eyes, same half dimple, fainter now, because the kid is not a kid anymore - he must be, what, nineteen?
“What happened?”
“There is a disillusionment spell woven within the wards,” says Gabriel, and adds, with a touch of impatient superiority, “Couldn’t you tell?”
“I can tell now,” mutters Jesse, looking down at the archangel warily.
“Is this your actual age?” asks Dean.
“Age is an illusion. A metaphor of sort. But, yes. I guess.”
“Okay then.”
Dean is suddenly restless. He looks from one man to the other, notes the careful distance they keep between them. Except for that, though, except for Jesse’s clenched jaw and Gabriel’s somber eyes, there is no open aggression between them. Gabriel’s sword has disappeared, and Jesse looks young and harmless, a kid like any other. Everything seems fine, and yet Dean feels - he doesn’t know what he feels.
“I’ll escort him back to the house,” says Gabriel out of the blue, glancing at Dean in a fond, exasperated way. “You think you can manage my brother on your own?”
“I - yes.”
Without another word, the archangel makes a sweeping, extravagant gesture, inviting Jesse to precede him, and Jesse smiles at Dean, a bit guiltily, and then does as he’s told.
And Dean is left alone. He looks at the figures walking back to the house - Gabriel, the silhouette of his wings barely visible in the darkness, glinting a little, in and out of focus, and Jesse, one step ahead, Jesse who looks young and ordinary, even too ordinary, in a way - the green hoodie a bit too big on him, his shoulders still too narrow to make him really striking, and yet there is already that grace in his step, a confident, I’m a man now prancing, and let’s face it, kid’s entitled to it. He had to grow up fast, and, as far as Dean knows, he’s done a good job of it - hasn’t killed anybody, or become the king of anything.
Yet, says a voice in Dean’s head, and it adds, And also: as far as you know.
The main door opens, and Jody appears on the threshold, her arms crossed on her chest. It’s such an Ellen pose that Dean feels a lump in his throat. He keeps watching until he sees her welcoming Jesse into the house, smiling at him, smiling even at freaking Gabriel, and the easy familiarity of her smile makes Dean decide this is it for the day - that’s all he can take. Because, well, Jody is doing all of this because of him. She trusted Alex because of him, and she trusted Claire because of him - had, in the end, to quit her job to look after all the kids he'd sent her way. And Dean doesn’t know much about Alex, but she seems all right. All better, borderline normal. And even Claire is okay. Terrible taste in movies, of course, though possibly improving now, and a right mouth on her, but she’s a nice kid. But Jody ended up allowing Gabriel into the house, fucking Gabriel, and who knows whose side is he even on? Dean didn’t see his final fight with Lucifer. He doesn’t know what happened; all he knows is that Gabriel walked into it with the precise knowledge he wasn’t walking out again. And is this enough to trust him?
And now, now Jesse is in there, the Antichrist; the Deceiver. Jesse is in there with the only people left in the world Dean still cares about. He was let inside the wards, he is going to be offered shelter, Donna is probably showing him to a room right bloody now, just because Dean said so.
Because this is what it all comes down to, isn’t it? Dean says things, and people do it. People trust him. People have trusted Dean ever since he was four and he was given custody of his baby brother’s life - and people are wrong. His dad had trusted him to look after Sam - and Sam -
Dean stands perfectly still; he looks at the house, following the movement of the torches behind the curtains (an uncertain, flickering light) as someone puts them out one by one. He looks at those lights, at the dim profiles of people filtered by the thick white linen, and he tries to silence his mind, to breathe in and out without drowning.
Because Sam - Sammy died. And went to Hell. He lost his soul, he got addicted to demon blood. He tried and failed to live a normal life - he gave up a perfectly nice woman, a goddamn dog, because Dean asked him to.
Dean had one job, and he fucked it up.
And yet people continue to trust him, to believe he knows what he’s doing, that he has a solution for everything, even if he’s always - always the one to fucking make a mess of things in the first place.
If only he’d died in that fucking hospital, when he was supposed to - the healer and his Reaper could have saved that other girl, and she deserved to live, she did, surely way more than he did, and if only Sam had let him die, none of it would have happened. Dad would still be alive, Sam wouldn’t have been tricked into breaking the final seal - the world would have been what it had always been - a chaotic jumble of broken bits and pieces, with the occasional werewolf fucking things up - and not, not the gory battlefield it has become since - not this place where everyone’s lives are basically doomed, day and again, because Dean Winchester likes being alive and is too selfish or proud to know when to give up.
And because of him, because of him, there are armies of demons now, and the fucking angelic Host - he unleashed them all - Knights of Hell, archangels, Leviathans, the goddamn Devil, and now this Darkness thing - he did this..
Dean brings a hand to his face and angrily rubs the tears away. He’d forgotten about his wounds, and the roughness of his gesture gets them open again, dozens of tiny cuts on his forehead and cheeks and chin. They sting like mad, which is actually good, because Dean is grounded by the pain of it. Because, well, there is a job to do, and someone has to do it.
Thank God he’s not alone in this. Thank God Cas is alive and well.
Well, thank the Antichrist, quips his twelve-year old self in his brain, but Dean refuses to even crack a smile.
With a deep breath, he turns his back on the lighted-up house and steps through the wards. The box is still moving, as if whatever is inside is trying to get out. With a bit of trepidation, Dean opens the lid and finds -
A kitten.
A kitten with huge blue eyes.
“I’ll be damned,” says Dean, collapsing to his knees on the grass, and he starts to laugh.
The kitten retreats in the corner and hisses, his black and white fur standing up in a really non-threatening way.
“Whoa, calm down. There’s no way you can scare anyone looking like that. In fact, you’re downright adorable, man.”
Dean extends his hand, lets it hover in mid-air for a second, suddenly double-guessing himself - if this were a real kitten, he’d just grab him under his belly, or by his neck, but this is Cas - won't it be weird to - then decides he’s being an idiot and lowers his fingers on the kitten’s fur.
Which is soft and all shades of addicting and plain purrfect.
Goddammit.
As Dean closes his fingers around the kitten’s belly (it’s so tiny, his whole hand fits seamlessly around its body), the kitten starts to hiss again - actually turns around in his hand, because Dean is being very careful, and his fingers are loose, and -
“Ouch! Stop that!”
There are approximately two seconds in which Dean can wonder if the kitten is even Cas, and not a random animal, or another creature in disguise - why on earth would Cas bite him? - and then the kitten manages to wriggle free and run, if a bit wobblily, towards the house.
“Wait, it’s -”
Dean is still on his knees, and can’t get up, because as the kitten approaches the wards, they flare up, a huge wall of pink light, and they seem to pulse in recognition - there is a wave of - of affection, almost - and then Cas stumbles right through the barrier, and the transition is flawless and graceful, a wondrous sight - paws growing into legs, the tiny body exploding in the usual overlarge trenchcoat, the black fur turning into Cas’ slightly windblown air.
When the wards close on him and disappear, Cas sort of shrugs, and Dean sees the shadow of his wings for a split second, and here is something else he can feel guilty about, because, unlike Gabriel’s wings, Cas’ wings are broken, burned down to blackish stumps. He still moves them, a bit gingerly, as if stretching them, and then they’re gone and he’s just a man again. His holy tax accountant.
Also a man who walks away from him without even looking back.
“Cas?” calls Dean, and he’s about to stand up when Cas turns to look at him, and there is such - such pain and self-hatred in his eyes that Dean remains frozen on his knees.
“Cas - are you okay, man?”
The angel remains silent, clenches his hands into fists, and Dean tries a different angle.
“How did you get through the wards, then? Thought you had to be invited in?”
“Claire made them,” answers Cas, flatly. “They are strong because she unknowingly infused them with angelic Grace - with my Grace, or what she still possesses of it.”
There is a moment of uneasy silence.
“Well, I’m happy to see you,” says Dean in the end, his eyes dropping to one side, and he licks his lips, a nervous gesture.
“I am not. Happy to see you,” replies Cas, and his voice has moved beyond broken glass and sandpaper; it now speaks of storms and rusty knives in long-forgotten scabbards; it is eerie, unsettling, and, above all, completely indifferent.
I don’t serve Man, and I certainly don’t serve you, is what Dean hears, and it goes directly through his guts like a skinning knife.
“I -”
“Look around you, Dean,” adds Cas, opening his arms to encompass all of it - the dark sky, the yellowed grass, the ominous silence.
Dean sees, again, a shadow of wings behind his outstretched arms; sees the crackling of - of pure, raw power flickering at Cas’ fingertips in blue-white tendrils, and he unconsciously sits back on his heels, trying to get farther away from it.
“We can fix it,” he whispers. “It’ll be okay. We’ve faced worse.”
“We can’t ‘fix it’, Dean,” Cas replies, shaping angry quotation marks with his sparkling fingers, leaving trails of light behind them - there and gone in the blink of an eye. “It cannot be fixed. We are facing the end of all things, and it was I who brought it about.”
“You didn’t -”
“I did,” says Cas, his voice dropping even lower; he’s looking less and less human by the second. “I begged Crowley for the ingredients, I was in the room when the spell went down. I stood by and watched as Rowena murdered an innocent, and I knew in my heart it was wrong. I knew such powerful magic would have terrible consequences. And yet I let it happen.”
“Sam -”
“Sam is human. It is only natural that he would try and do anything to save the only family he has left. I am immortal and eternal, Dean. I should have known better, and yet -”
And Dean is feeling cold all over and is desperate to ask, to force that Why out of his mouth - he’d told Sam to let it go, he’d asked Cas to kill him - of course that book was bad news, and Charlie had died for it - but as he raises his eyes to Cas again, the expression on the angel’s face makes even that single word wither and die on his lips.
“I did it so you would live,” says Cas, his blue eyes on Dean, and somehow, inside Dean, inside his very soul. “My love for you destroyed the world.”
He remains silent for a very long moment, and Dean feels as if time itself has stopped around them - everything is so very still and quiet in the unnatural half-darkness - Cas’ words hit him like a punch, and all Dean can do is ignore them, and hope, against all hope, that Cas won’t say anything else, won’t -
“My rebellion was just. I still believe that. My brothers had lost their way. They had to be stopped. But I now understand why they warned me off spending too long a time on earth. Why they insisted that humans were dangerous. That you were dangerous.”
Cas is still looking down at him and yet not at him, as if he’s reviewing everything Dean has been and will ever be, all the other lives he could have had and not had if he’d chosen a different path, and Dean feels himself becoming both hot and cold under the intense scrutiny, starts shaking without even noticing it.
“I am a seraph, Dean Winchester, son of John. My powers are almost boundless, but my judgement is not without fault. And you are that fault. When it comes between choosing you and choosing everything else, I have always chosen you. In doing so, I have doomed this earth, and all that lives on it.”
Cas’ eyes shift away from Dean. He seems to hesitate, but then relaxes his hands - the tiny flames around his fingers flicker and die - and he breathes in and out, very deliberately and deeply, before speaking again.
“My brothers were right. Angels were never meant to feel. Love is dangerous. Hence, I can love you no more.”
Without another word, Cas turns away and starts walking towards the house, an incongruously impressive figure, his trenchcoat and broken wings and wild hair standing out starkly against the floodlit house. It is as if, in walking away, Cas is taking with him the only warmth left in the world, and Dean is left kneeling in the cold grass, shivering and alone.