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So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive
But it’s not. It’s not enough.
Dean keeps staring at Gabriel and gets more and more panicked, because this is not working, this will not work, this is something he can’t get past; it’s just too big. He will slip up, he’s already slipping up and when he does –
He considered killing you himself, only two days ago, as you know. And he'll soon understand, if he hasn't already, that he's not capable of it. Never will be. And at that point –
And Dean knew, he knew back when he was sixteen and that girl had bullshitted him about being secretly lonely and sad, he’d known she was right. He’d know, even back then, that his life was going to be unusual (short; also bloody, and mostly unhappy). He’d been okay with that, because he hadn’t known, he’d just – he’d been too young, maybe, to realise how much he could still lose. After Cassie’s pitying look, he’d steered clear of that, for starters. He’d considered insisting, of course, bloody proving to her that he wasn’t a deluded drunk, that he was actually telling the truth, but then his gaze had moved from her face (her beautiful eyes; her worried, slightly fed up expression) to the house behind her (newly painted walls, flowery curtain, and not a weed in sight), and he’d just nodded, walked away. Because staying and telling Cassie would have meant getting something like that, and then, one day, losing it (Sam had tried; and Sam had come home one day to find his girlfriend burning to death on the ceiling). So, yes, Dean had given up on that, but he’d still been a fool – because even without the house, and the wife, and the kids and the damn dog – there was still a lot he could lose. And he’d lost it, all of it. He’d lost his family, he’d lost his friends, he’d lost people he hadn’t even known he could love so damn much, people who’d managed to lead a perfectly happy life before meeting him (Charlie shaking her long hair out of her knight’s helmet - What’s up bitches? – the feeling of her slight body against his own as she hugged him tight; and the look on Kevin’s face – the gratifying mix of relief and affection as he stared up at him from behind that damn crossbow; and Jo looking at him, then resting her head on her mother’s shoulder; Ellen saying, her face wet with tears, her voice perfectly steady, I said go. And, Dean? Don’t miss – but Dean had missed, of course he’d missed, and then -). So when he’d waken up in that field (the upside-down Impala, the seedy Mexican place, Gabriel staring up at the dark sky) Dean had actually felt – relieved, in a way. Because there it was. Now everything was just gone. The world had ended. His brother was dead. Cas was dead. It had all happened. It was all over. This was it, the most pain he was ever going to feel in his life. There could be nothing worse. Rock fucking bottom.
Instead, well.
And it’s good, in a way (in every way), all of it: the possibility to get Sam back, and that Cas has survived, that Cas does, in fact, love him back (I never said I didn’t), and even if he loves Dean back in some weird angel way, as Raguel said, even if they can't be together, not now, not ever, well, it doesn't matter: Cas loves him, and Dean will still take it. So, yes, of course it’s all good - but at the same time it hurts so much Dean can’t breathe. Because he’s okay with losing it all – hell, his own life has never been worth much, anyway – but he won’t allow, he can’t allow, Cas to die for him. Not again, and not like this. Cas is just too - too different (the white-blue flames shimmer in his memory: he’s never seen something so beautiful in his entire life), too big (good and honest and just plain -). And fuck the god thing, fuck the Sam thing – Cas has never done anything wrong. He's saved Dean from Hell when he was told to, and his life has been torn to pieces as a result, because Dean is arrogant and stubborn and selfish and if Cas should kill himself – because of him – because –
May I? says a voice inside his head, and Dean almost jumps out of his skin.
He blinks, sees he’s still in the creepy white room, that he’s still staring at Gabriel, except Gabriel is now staring back. He looks mildly concerned, and Dean has no idea what he’s talking about, but he nods. What the hell.
For a split second, nothing happens.
And then Dean almost stumbles as the world seems to expand and then shrink around him. The white room is still there, as is Gabriel, he looks very focused, an actual archangel for once, and not a trickster god at all, but at the same time everything is gone, and there is only a sort of warm darkness pressing down against his face, on every few inches of naked skin (his face, his hands). It is most definitely an illusion, a trick of some sort, and Dean should be wary of it, but he really isn’t. He wonders, fleetingly, if he’s experiencing what being dead is actually like (not this bullshit he has going on now, not Hell, not Heaven: just death) and then feels the beginning of something else –
Sammy, aged four, stuffing his face with his first real birthday cake – a chocolate thing Dean had baked in Bobby’s kitchen (Sammy lying dead on a dirty bed, his eyes wide and staring; Sammy falling back into the abyss, the stench of sulphur and flames thickening the air around them); himself and Dad fishing, the lake eerie and quiet (Dad yelling at him, because Dean had fucked up, again, Dean had -); Cassie leaning in to kiss him for the first time, the bar sliding out of focus around them (Cassie rolling her eyes, Cassie saying, in a cold voice, I thought you were different; I thought you were a decent guy); Ben turning back to look at him, and then running up to him, hugging him tightly (Ben staring at him in panicked horror, his own mother pressing a knife against his neck); and Cas, Cas sleeping in the back of the Impala, Cas allowing himself to be hugged on that river bank, Cas smiling at him, a bit sadly, Cas saying, That’s not true (Cas staring back at him in that ridiculous purple hoodie, his face splitting right down the middle with sorrowful confusion as Dean loomed over him – You can’t stay).
- a dull, persistent ache deep inside his soul, a huge mess of guilt and regret –
“Stop it,” says Cas’ voice, somewhere to his right.
“I’m just trying to be helpful. It’s not my fault if your boyfriend’s such a mess.”
“He’s not - he's not a mess.”
“Well, he doesn’t have a single happy memory.”
“That’s not true.”
“You try then. Every single thing I’m finding turns to –”
Gabriel’s voice fades out as Cas’ fingers touch Dean’s cheek.
Immediately, the cacophony of images fades to black, and then the black resolves itself into white walls, as Dean becomes aware of the room around him once more. Cas also shifts into focus, a bit distantly and vaguely, because Cas is now standing in front of Dean (the first button of his shirt unmade, as usual, and his tie a bit askew, as usual) and Dean sort of lets go, lets himself see and not see (Cas’ blue eyes start to flicker, turn into tiny flames); he leans into Cas’ touch, because this is Cas, and he trusts him – because he always -
- ten seconds pass, or perhaps ten minutes, or the life of a whole galaxy, before Dean begins to notice a – a noise, perhaps, though it’s most unlike a noise, more of a feeling, a wave of something reverberating throughout his whole body, pressing upon his skin; a measured, slow beating. Dean breathes in and out, slowly, deeply. He feels content, happy, even, in a way he hasn’t felt in years.
“His mother’s heartbeat?” asks Gabriel, in exasperation.
“Dean?” Cas calls, and Dean’s vision clears; again, everything seems to fade out a bit, then sharpen again, and a wave of pure calm crashes down on him. He can still see all the mess, he’s still worried as fuck, about Sam, about Cas, about bloody everything, but at the same time he feels – he feels at peace.
The weird noise, or feeling, or whatever the fuck it is is still tugging at him from inside his very soul, but Dean pushes it back a bit so he can focus on the angels surrounding him.
“This is some good shit you have here, man,” he says, with a lazy smile, and he claps Gabriel on the shoulder.
He has a vague feeling that Cas was also somehow involved, but then he sees Cas is still standing on Raguel’s left, too rigid, almost distant, and he quickly dismisses the notion.
“If you are quite finished,” says Raguel, and he sounds almost annoyed, “we have work to do.”
Dean turns towards him and smiles a bit wider. The hint of annoyance and sarcasm in the archangel’s usually plain tone makes him think, for a split second, that this is realy Bobby. Before the thought can leave a wave of resentment and sadness in its wake, though, the slow beating presses against his ears again, and everything becomes fluffy and peaceful.
God – am I high?
Dean has directed the unfocused thought towards Gabriel, and now he turns, looks at the archangel again, tries and fails to summon some animosity against the guy. Instead, there is something about the him which, amazingly, actually relaxes Dean even further. It could be the familiar, slightly unsettling aura of quiet power surrounding Gabriel, or perhaps the light glowing from his face (not that Dean can actually see it; he just perceives it when he’s not really looking). Or maybe he just likes that Gabriel is here, because the archangel is just as much of a fuck-up as Dean is – after all, he did run out on his family and live as a bisexual horse goblin for a thousand years, so. In comparison, Dean is the poster boy of mental health.
Gabriel actually rolls his eyes at that, and Dean suddenly remembers he can look inside Dean’s head at leisure. He scowls, daring Gabriel to say anything, but the archangel just smiles benignly.
“As I said –” starts Raguel, and Dean interrupts him.
“Yeah, we heard you. So, you’re Mr Big Boss, fine. What’s the plan?” he asks, a bit roughly.
“There is no plan,” says Raguel, frowning. “yet. Our Father contemplated the possibility that this event may come to pass. And he made it so that He couldn’t be brought back into the world, even in this approximate form, without specific conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“He wanted his children to work in harmony.”
“Children – wait, you’re not saying –”
“Parents are weird like that, yes,” quips Gabriel, rolling his eyes.
“He created a spell – the first magic ever practiced, to be precise – and then He summoned to Him his favourite children, and best commanders, and gave to each one half of the incantation.”
“They’d be Michael and Lucifer, in case you’re wondering,” interrupts Gabriel, again, but Dean wasn’t wondering, not at all, because he now sees exactly where this is going, and he doesn’t like it at all.
“The Angel Tablet lists the ingredients, and the Demon Tablet indicates how to join them together. Both are needed if we are to succeed.”
“Great. Well, plan B?”
Raguel looks at him curiously.
“Plan B?”
Dean looks at Gabriel, then at Cas. Neither of them seems particularly concerned, though Cas looks guilty and Gabriel’s jaw is set very tightly.
“In case you haven’t noticed, man, we don’t have the damn Tablets. The Angel Tablet was destroyed, and the Demon Tablet is missing. So unless you can come up with something better –”
“There is no other way. And we don’t need anything as crude as the slab of rock upon which they were written.”
“Okay,” says Dean, slowly, and now there is a kind of tension mounting in the room, and he still doesn’t understand what Raguel is trying to say.
“The word of God is never truly gone. True, the Angel Tablet can not be recreated exactly as it was, which means it is well and truly lost, and the Demon Tablet is hidden from my eyes -”
“What, all of them?”
“- but Lucifer had the Demon Tablet for a long time. I would very surprised indeed if he hadn’t made a copy of it.”
Dean shakes his head, trying to clear it. All this jollyness and contentment is very distracting.
“So you were serious? You’re happy the Devil is back – you want to work with him?”
“He’s not the Devil anymore.”
“What does that even mean?”
Raguel doesn’t answer.
“You can’t seriously think –”
“Enough,” says the angel. “My dealings with my brothers are not your concern.”
“They become my concern if your fucking brother wants to destroy the world.”
“Was it my brother, Dean, who destroyed the world? Or yours?”
The sentence just hangs there, as heavy and unpleasant as rotten fruit, as Dean stares at Bobby’s face and tries to forget the sudden flash of disgust in his voice. Because this is not Bobby. Because Dean doesn’t know, not really, who the fuck this guy really is, and there is nothing he can do about it.
“Talking about that, where is Sam?” he spits.
“Samuel is exactly where he is supposed to be.”
“If you –” starts Dean, but Raguel has had enough.
He moves a hand, lightly, and Dean finds he can’t speak. He tries again, passing his fingers on his throat and lips in disbelief, but no sound comes out. He grits his teeth, then, but when he sees Cas taking a step towards him, he puts his hand up, indicating Cas should keep his distance and trying to ignore the pang of guilt curling in his belly at the sight of Cas’ frown.
“As for the Angel Tablet, I doubt Michael could be devious enough, or clever enough, to read it and understand it,” continues Raguel. “But there were two other angels who were privy to God’s will.”
The temperature in the white room seems to drop ten degrees. Both Cas and Gabriel have gone very still, and since Dean has zero idea of what the fuck is going on and can’t even fucking ask about it, he simply tenses up, tries to gear himself up for some kind of action, because something is definitely going on, something pretty major, judging from the look on Gabriel’s face.
“His scribe,” says Raguel, and Dean knows he means Metatron, feels anger and revulsion rising in his mouth like bile, “and His messenger.”
His messenger? The sleazy clerk at that fucking hotel comes to Dean’s mind, before he realizes a) that was actually Mercury, b) he’s dead and c) wrong religion, anyway. Puzzled, he glances at Raguel and sees the angel is looking straight at Gabriel.
“Brother, are you willing?”
Willing to do what? thinks Dean, and then, immediately after, What happens if you’re not?
Gabriel’s honey eyes flicker to him, only just, and the angel smirks slightly. Then he takes a step forward.
His mouth is tense, his hands clenched so tight his knuckles are white, but as Raguel closes the distance between them, he stands his ground. And then, before Dean can do anything at all, Raguel plunges his hand inside Gabriel’s chest, right where his heart would be (if he were human; if he had one) and Gabriel cries out in pain.
“Son of a bitch,” growls Dean, without even noticing his voice is working again, and he instinctively starts forward, but then Cas is there, gripping his arms from behind, keeping him still.
“Cas – let me –”
“Dean, stop. Raguel is not causing Gabriel any permanent damage.”
Not causing a permanent damage my ass – Gabriel has slumped forward, into Raguel’s – Bobby’s arms, and he’s still yelling, a shameless, desperate sound which turns Dean’s heart upside-down – suddenly he’s with Alastair again, and Gabriel’s screams are Dean’s, are the souls Dean tortured – Dean feels blood in his mouth as he remembers the whole thing – Alastair standing behind him, so close Dean could feel his indecent, repulsive arousal, Alastair’s hand on his own, guiding the blade of the knife towards a terrified, pleading woman, Alastair’s voice in his ear, low and flirty (When we win, when we bring on the Apocalypse and burn this Earth down, we'll owe it all to you, Dean Winchester) – and Dean yells and fights against the unmovable body behind him, he tries to kick back before the arms around him tighten their grip, before Cas’ right hand moves upwards, finds naked skin under the collar of his t-shirt, and as soon as Cas’ places his thumb against Dean’s neck the beating noise starts again, slow and comforting and as necessary as as air. Dean takes a deep breath, shuddering, and the vision (dark, red, blood, the glint of metal) melts away against the white walls. He shakes his head, slowly, tries to make sense of it all, realizes the person holding him is Cas, and when he becomes aware of Gabriel’s screams again (they seem slighty out of tune, now, as if whatever that beating thing inside him is, it’s protecting Dean from the worst of it) he shuts his eyes tight and relaxes back into Cas, pressing his own hands on top of the angel’s arms.
It is horrible, and unbearable, and completely, utterly wrong; and it seems to go on and on. After a while, Cas dips his head in the crook of Dean’s neck, and Dean can feel the wetness of tears against his own skin. He clenches his fingers tighter on Cas’ arms, then, opens his eyes –
Gabriel is still not struggling, and his desperate cries have subsided into broken, anguished sobs. His face is red with blood; he is drenched with the stuff – red, surprisingly human blood which runs from his eyes and ears, from his ruined chest, and pools around his shoes, shimmering darkly against the white floor.
As Dean watches, Raguel takes a step back, and Gabriel falls to his hands and knees, shaking and bleeding.
“Thank you, brother.”
Raguel’s voice is calm and measured. His eyes drop down to the blood surrounding Gabriel, and he takes a step back before any of it can get on Bobby’s working boots.
Dean feels Cas raise his head, feels the ghost of Cas’ voice against his skin (a single, low word, Akhi?, which Dean doesn’t recognize), before Cas tightens his arms around him, once, as if in farewell, and then moves to kneel next to Gabriel.
Dean almost stumbles when Cas walks away, but he immediately steadies himself and takes a step forward – he wants to get closer to them, make sure Gabriel is okay, but it feels – it feels like they have forgotten about him, and what can he do, anyway? - so he turns to Raguel instead.
“What the hell?” he says, angrily.
“Nothing quite so dramatic. What we need was at the very core of my brother’s – soul, I guess you could call it - the core of his angelic being, in any case, and I needed to get past his mortal body to access it.”
“To get past –”
“To destroy it, so to speak. It would have been much less painful, brother, if you hadn’t attached yourself so tightly to that vessel.”
“He’s not a vessel,” Gabriel coughs from the floor. “His name was Leif.”
“And his soul is in Heaven,” says Raguel, in that same calm, reasonable voice. “Going to such lenghts to preserve his body was illogical, Gabriel.”
Dean shifts his eyes, sees Gabriel open his mouth, as if to answer, then cough up blood again. For a wild second, he thinks this is a Lucifer and Micheal thing – he imagines Gabriel chasing after the poor bastard, lying and hurting him to get this Leif person to say Yes – but then Gabriel looks up again, and Dean has to change his mind at the expression in Gabriel’s eyes, because this is an expression he knows very well. It is, after all, the same peculiar mix he feels inside himself every damn day – regret, guilt, and a naked, desperate longing. He’s about to say some douchy thing about it, because he's an idiot and that’s what he does, but then, mercifully, Raguel speaks again.
“Our first ingredient,” he says, “is the blood of Christ.”
He sounds so serious, and he’s such a bastard – hell, look at him – Bobby looks grumpy on any day, but with this thing inside him he’s downright scary – that Dean can’t help himself.
“So by list you meant list? Actual fucking ingredients? Bones of a nun, that kind of stuff? God, that takes me back. And how come you guys are allowed to do magic, anyway?”
Raguel frowns at him.
“Allowed?” he repeats, and there is such coldness in his voice Dean unconsciously takes a step back.
“I only meant,” he starts, then he realizes his voice is a bit wobbly, and clenches his jaw – he will not be afraid of this bloody thing – he will fucking not. “Isn’t that, ‘demonic’ or something?”
“Magic is a contract,” says Raguel, without even blinking. “It is not good, or bad or forbidden. What counts is who signs at the bottom.”
“What do you mean?”
“Magic is a way of controlling things that can’t be controlled,” says Cas, and Dean jumps, because he hadn’t felt the guy move, and now he’s standing right behind Dean, and he’s way too close. “The reason we advise against it – ”
“Tell your guys to burn women alive, you mean,” he interrupts, as coldly as he can manage it.
“- is because it mostly involves demonic powers. But it doesn’t have to. Prayer is a form of magic.”
“Prayer.”
Cas shuffles, a bit uncomfortably.
“Aren’t you sacrificing your time, a bit of your life, so to speak, to exact an answer and protection from a higher power?”
Dean turns then, but then answer he had on his lips (Answer and protection from a higher power? How is that going, then?) seems all kind of wrong when he sees the expression on Cas’ face, so he decides to ignore that.
“So, blood of Christ, uh? That’s an easy one. There must be around a gazillion churches in Europe who own that shit. Guy was a donor, a real generous soul. Though he probably did it for the sweets, if he was anything like you guys,” he adds, looking down at Gabriel, surreptitiously checking on him.
The archangel is slowly getting up, and, though he still looks a bit pale, there is a healthy moue of exasperation on his face as he gazes back at Dean. As he straightens up, he passes his fingers through his hair, then presses his hands against his eyes, and the blood covering him – dark red, and, God, the sheer quantity of it – disappears.
“There are six, actually,” says Cas, and when Dean looks at him he sees the angel is frowning, as if mentally googling the things. “Mostly pig’s blood, except for the Basilica in Mantua. That is –”
Cas hesitates, then he sighs in diseblief.
“- the blood of a child. An unborn child.”
“Nice friends, dude,” says Dean, and he’s about to add something else when Raguel speaks again.
“The spell does not refer specifically to Yeshua ben Yosef. Any Nephilim will do.”
This charged announcement is followed by a second of silence, after which Dean and Cas speak at the same time.
“Wait, Jesus was a bloody Nephilim?”
“There are no Nephilim left on this Earth.”
“Of course. The first, and the only one to be made with raw divine Grace.”
“I thought you said God was -” Dean struggles to remember the proper word, gives up, “not part of this world anymore? Is that a recent thing, then?”
“No. But angels are.”
Again, there is a short pause. Dean is starting to freak out again, because Cas is standing way too close, and this thing they’re trying to do will never work – Lucifer is not okay, whatever this douchebag says – and Sam – Raguel was so casual about Lucifer, Dean is trying very hard not to think about that – about Sam 'being exactly where he’s supposed to be', or some bullshit – and now it turns out the bloody Virgin Mary had sex with an angel, had sex with –
Wait a goddamn second.
“Son of a bitch,” says Dean, and for some reason he’s completely, utterly shocked. He turns around, looks directly at Gabriel. “Are you Jesus’ daddy?”
Gabriel (Holy Messenger, archangel of the Lord, badly ironed jeans and a Freddie Mercury t-shirt) actually looks uncomfortable.
“Technically –”
“God. You totally are. Always thought those paintings looked dodgy – Mary and the angel having a chat, yeah, right – you banged her, didn’t –”
“Enough,” says Raguel, and though his voice is quiet, Dean feels his ears ringing. “Gabriel did his duty. And you are going to, as well.”
“Now wait a goddamn minute –” starts Dean, and he doesn’t even know why he’s objecting, of course he’s going to help, he even has a decent idea about this blood of Christ thing, but there’s just something about Raguel that makes his skin crawl.
“I thought you wanted to help?”
“Yes, but –”
Also, should I remind you that you have a stake in these proceedings? says Raguel, and this time he’s talking directly inside Dean’s head, and it happens at once – one second, everything is normal (white walls, white ceiling, the three angels standing almost in a circle around him), and the next, the bloody next Cas is in front of Dean, on his knees, staring at the angel blade protruding from his chest – there is an astonished, lost look in his blue eyes, a look which, before Dean can even move, changes into pure, white light –
“No!” yells Dean, starting forward, and the image dissolves at once. He crashes into Gabriel instead, and of course, it’s like running into a bloody wall.
“You okay?” says Gabriel, steadying him, but Dean barely notices the archangel’s words, and his own bruised shoulder – he turns towards Cas instead, but Cas is just fine – he’s standing exactly where he was before, his head slightly tilted to the side as he watches Dean curiously –
“As I said, under the circumstances,” Raguel is saying, from a long way away (Dean wills himself to look away, but somehow his eyes fall to Cas’ lips instead), “any Nephilim will do. If you can’t find one, make one.”
“But that is – ”starts Cas, and then he adds, more quietly, “Both the mother and the baby would die.”
“Two lives for seven billions. A fair exchange,” says Raguel, and then he turns and looks at Dean – Dean feels, again, a sort of weight pushing on the top of his head, and he starts singing inside his head, because he has the definite feeling his idea would work, and he doesn’t want the bastard to pluck it from his mind until –
Raguel opens his mouth, and Dean is sure he’s about to do something douchy like forcing Dean to talk to him, and Dean won’t have it, not until he’s absolutely sure everybody will be safe. Still keeping up an elaborate and vaguely off-key rendition of Eye of the Tiger inside his mind, Dean turns to Gabriel and claps him on the shoulder.
“So, I’m thinking you and I should get out of here.”
“What?”
“Yeah, come on. Let’s get you drunk and find you a virgin. You’re the man for the job, right?”
“Dean –”
“Yeah, can’t count on Cas for getting laid – terrible taste in women, let me tell you -”
“Dean –”
“Now, I know you’re in love with my brother, but still –”
“What?”
If Gabriel looked confused before, he now looks completely shocked – and also, there is something in his eyes, there and gone in a second, something which suggests he’s cottoning up, he’s trying to understand what Dean is up to, and about bloody time –
“Yeah, couldn’t help noticing that whenever you fuck with us, I end up dying, while he becomes this big hero on a quest and figures out his destiny -”
“I had him shoot an STD commercial –”
“You mean a sex thing –”
“Dean –”
“Hey, I’m not judging – I mean, it’s my brother, so, well, gross, and if the goal here is another baby Jesus, maybe not the best choice, but -”
“There are ways around that,” says Gabriel, completely deadpan – Dean ignores him, because, hello, that’s a picture he doesn’t want inside his head, like, ever -
“- sometimes duty stands in the way of true love,” he says instead, and he looks at Gabriel, really looks at him, trying to convey the necessity to get the fuck out of here, and right bloody now.
Gabriel stares back, still looking amused and very gently bewildered, but then (finally, mercifully) he says, “Where would you like to go?”
“A beach would be nice,” says Dean, at once. “Maybe I can take diving lessons while you’re off doing the nasty with an underage waitress.”
“Dean –”
This is Cas’ voice, but Dean just can’t deal with him, not now; without even turning around, he grips Gabriel’s left arm and nods. The archangel touches his forehead with his right index, and everything goes black.