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Attempt 1051
There’s no sound. There’s nothing at all.
“You’re ready.”
He is.
Attempt 1009
“Cas, please, don’t.” The words are thick with blood and fear. They are meaningless sounds, emitted from flesh. The flesh is also meaningless. Its shape used to be important to him, Castiel knows. That’s important, because he doesn’t know much of anything anymore. The way the muscles spread over bone in that particular form used to make him feel something. He’s forgotten the use for that feeling just as he’s forgotten the meaning in that face.
The blade is in Castiel’s hand, and his arms are curiously light. They float up and move seemingly on their own, his hands making grisly music from the twist of bones and gristle. They aren’t a part of him, and he watches them without feeling. Then the blade is in Dean’s chest.
There’s something needling at the back of his mind as he tugs it out of the body; a slight murmuring, something familiar that sends a ripple of unease through his grace. He remains still, lets the words pass straight through him. They remind him of something, something he needs to remember—but he isn’t allowed to try.
Where the hell are you, man?
Attempt 760
He’s stopped apologizing. He doesn’t speak at all, now. When before each of Dean’s cries was another rock piled on Castiel’s chest, now he hardly hears them. They ring with a strange tinny quality, as if he’s hearing them through a radio. Nothing seems fully real. It’s better this way.
At some point the exercise becomes almost abstract. He sees the bones and tendons where before he saw a person, and he deconstructs them because it’s what he does. The muscles in front of him are split by the wedge of his sword, and from that single cut the rest of the body unravels.
I know you can hear me, you feathery asshole.
The sword slits a jugular.
You gotta come back to us.
Another body slumps to the ground.
Cas, just give me a sign.
Another. And another.
I know you’re out there. I need your help.
The voice is the one thing he holds on to. But he’s dissolving like salt into water, and the words slip from his fingers.
Attempt 396
It’s real every time.
Every bone he snaps, every nose he breaks, every gush of blood as he wrenches out his sword: every time it’s Dean, as real as the last hundred doubles Castiel’s left bloodied on the floor. There shouldn’t be enough room for all of them, but somehow there always is. Part of Castiel’s shattered mind knows that all this is staged, that Dean is behind the wheel of his Impala sipping a coke and stealing french fries from Sam. That hardly matters when he’s driving the life out of his body on the end of a sword.
“I’m sorry,” Cas says as his fist connects with Dean’s face. The sound it makes is a sickening necessity. “I have no choice. I’m sorry.” He keeps his face devoid of emotion, because he knows that’s what Naomi wants, and he knows she’s always watching. If she reaches into Castiel’s mind and tugs at the wiring again, Castiel isn’t sure he’ll be able to come back to himself. So his fists fall into a rhythm until his sword is in his hand, and the final stroke is a mercy for him as much as Dean.
You should have been here today, Cas. You’ll never guess what we were hunting. Wait for it: Nazi zombies. How cool is that?
“Why are you smiling?” Naomi’s eyes narrow as Castiel quickly pulls his face into its blank mask.
“It’s nothing,” he says. Anyways, we found this bunker in the middle of Kansas with a bunch of information from the Men of Letters. I know you can find us, so come when you can.
“You’re improving.” Naomi steps up to his side, eyeing Dean’s body dispassionately. “Certainly you have a long way to go, but I’m confident in your progress. Soon, you will be ready.”
Castiel blinks. “Ready for what?”
Gotta hit the road and chase down a lead on this tablet thing. Take care of yourself.
Naomi just smiles.
Attempt 96
“Why are you doing this?” Dean sobs. His limbs are useless beneath him, splayed out at odd angles. The tip of Castiel’s sword vibrates in little circles with the shaking of his hand. He’s breathing ragged, and not from physical exertion. He can’t seem to get things over with this time. At this point, he knows he has no choice. It doesn’t make it easier.
“Please, Cas, just tell me,” Dean says, each word a red gush. Castiel briefly thinks that this is the first time Dean has begged. It seems unnatural.
“We can get you out of this,” Dean is saying now, shuffling his broken body forward even as Cas raises his sword to deliver the final blow. “Come on, man. Let me help you.”
His hand falls on Castiel’s sleeve, and Castiel remembers the cool, dry press of Naomi’s fingers to his forehead. His mind stutters, and when he looks down his sword is buried in Dean’s throat.
Thinking of you, man.
The voice is a ghost muttering in Castiel’s ears. The pleasant hum of trust he hears there is as bitter as any poison.
Attempt 1
Something is wrong; that much is immediately evident. Castiel has no memory of this place, or how he got here. The fluorescent lighting paints the warehouse in shades of cold, sterilized white. He feels as if his mind has been pulled out of his head and then stuffed back inside, a strange sensation for a being of grace and aether. Perhaps he truly has spent too long on Earth.
“Cas?”
The voice comes from behind him, swallowed up by the emptiness of the room. It’s familiar. Painfully so. Castiel frowns as he turns to see Dean hurrying towards him, his green eyes flicking over the unfamiliar walls. It’s been so long since Castiel has seen his face that looking at it now is almost a shock. He studies it like he hasn’t in a long while, his eyes travelling over Dean’s features and cataloguing every detail.
Pausing a short distance away, Dean’s hand rests on the grip of his gun without drawing it. Clearly he does not feel overly threatened. Perhaps he believes that Castiel will protect him.
“Where the hell are we?” Dean asks. Castiel gives no answer because he realizes he doesn’t have one. He cannot seem to access the power to find out. That should alarm him, probably, but his mind has suffered so many hole-punches and cigarette burns that a slight lapse in memory is nothing shocking. Something brought them both there. That’s all he can know for sure.
Dean is looking at him strangely. “You okay, man? You see a bit off.”
Kill him.
The words jump unbidden into Castiel’s mind, as foreign as if they belong to someone else. He frowns, presses the bridge of his nose, looks at Dean again. He looks concerned. It’s an expression Castiel has seen on Dean’s face all too often.
“I am fine,” Castiel says. “I do not know our present location. I…” he frowns. “My powers appear to be limited somehow. I cannot leave.”
“What sort of creep can neuter an angel?” Dean asks.
Kill him. Kill him now.
“A variety of things,” Castiel says distractedly. Something is building in his head, something worming its way into him and turning the world into sharp lines and light. He closes his eyes, opens them. A stab of numbness flashes through his chest when he meets Dean’s eyes, coming from nowhere and disappearing just as quickly. “I…Dean, I don’t…”
Dean steps closer, a motion which makes Castiel reel like he’s smelled rotting meat. Like he’s smelled rotting meat, and he’s a scavenger. He steps away on instinct, swaying on his feet, but the only effect is that Dean follows to grab his arm.
“Hey,” Dean says, his eyes wide enough to see the kernel of fear lodged deep in them. “Cas, what’s wrong? Are they doing something to you?”
“I am having difficulty thinking,” Castiel says. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
“Alright, easy does it,” Dean says, pulling him closer to shoulder the weight. Castiel lets him. The closeness comforts him as much as it disturbs him, for a reason he cannot understand. Suddenly there is a woman standing far away, her hands clasped behind her back, her chin raised and her eyes expectant. I’m waiting, Castiel. Do it.
“No,” Castiel says weakly, earning him a sideways glance from Dean as they stumble around the pillars in the warehouse.
You know what you have to do.
The next moment Dean is torn away from Castiel’s side, thrown across the room where his body breaks over a pillar with a crunch that Castiel feels in the roots of his grace.
“Dean!” he cries, lunging forward—but his feet are sealed to the floor. Dean struggles to sit up, his face a mask of pain.
“Castiel. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.” Naomi steps out of a space that mere seconds ago had contained nothing but stale air. Her dark eyes are cool and flat, but her mouth twists with distaste. “You were given an order. Carry it out.”
He remembers then: the room with the desk and the chairs, a sliver of silver in his eye, Naomi’s voice repeating the order with a nonchalance that disgusted him: Kill Dean.
“No,” Castiel says again, fear churning in his stomach. “No, I won’t. This isn’t right.”
“This is right,” Naomi corrects him fiercely. “This is the will of heaven, Castiel. By definition it is without fault. It is your disobedience that is in need of correction.”
“Cas?” Dean says, his voice weak as he pushes himself into a sitting position. He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, and it comes away smeared with red. “Who the hell is this?”
“You have been questioning heaven’s orders for too long,” Naomi says. “You cannot choose which rules you follow and which you disregard. Angels were built to obey.”
Something slams into Castiel’s mind like a wave, a giant hand coming down on his emotions and snuffing them all out. For a moment he feels nothing, inspecting the turn of his thoughts like they don’t belong to him, the directive to kill as simple and meaningless as stepping on an ant. He looks at Dean’s face and sees nothing but a mass of twitching muscle and marred skin.
Just as quickly he comes back to himself, and realizes that he’s taken a step forward and materialized his sword. He looks down at it, his reflection gazing back impassively in the shiny surface, before he tosses it away with a snarl of disgust.
“You can’t force me to do this,” Castiel spits at Naomi. “I have free will. They made sure of that.”
Naomi smiles. It’s not gloating, or cruel, or sad. It tugs at her lips as dispassionately as the tide. “We’ll see.”
The scream that tears from Dean’s lips is something inhuman as a crack resounds through the air, his leg twisting in a way that human limbs were never meant to. The next moment his other leg goes.
Castiel struggles to move, to lash out at Naomi or make it to Dean’s side. He can do neither. He watches as Deans’ bones break one by one, the other man’s suffering ringing in his ears.
“Stop,” Castiel says wretchedly. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“You know what you have to do.”
“I can’t,” Castiel says. Dean’s form is crumpled on the floor, motionless but for the shudder of his breaths. He is dying.
“Look at him, Castiel.” Naomi appears by his side, so close that he could reach out and grab her throat if only his arms would obey him. “Humans. They truly are remarkable beings.” She looks at Castiel pointedly. “Remarkable, but still inferior. It’s time you remembered that fact.”
In a moment Dean is on his feet, bloody and shaking but whole again. Naomi slides Castiel’s sword back into his hand. He hardly feels the cold of the metal.
“No,” he says again, but the word feels thick on his tongue. There’s a fog in his head, a clean antiseptic mist that tries to dissolve him. He struggles through it to meet Naomi’s gaze.
“Not him,” he says. The blankness in his mind rises like water. “Not him.”
Naomi sighs. “I was hoping you would make this easy on yourself. But I suppose that’s not in your nature.” She raises her hand, two fingers extended like the blade of a scalpel. “Remember that you chose this.”
When Castiel next comes to himself his first sensation is the smell of blood. It coats his hands, splatters his coat, and makes a bitter taste on his tongue. The next is the weight on his legs. He’s sitting down, he realizes. He’s sitting down, and there’s something on top of him. A body. He’s holding a body in his lap.
A quiet whimper splits the air. It takes Castiel a moment to realize it’s his own. He can’t recall ever making a sound like that before, and didn’t mean to make it now. It’s the sort of thing he might ask Dean about, the strange pieces of humanity that find their way into Castiel’s being, but Dean is lying dead in his arms with Castiel’s sword between his ribs.
No. The word bubbles up in Castiel’s brain, but refuses to leave his tongue. Impulsively he reaches out with his grace, tries to pieces together the shredded flesh where Dean’s heart should have been pumping life through his veins. The white walls leech his strength away, and the healing power won’t come.
Something is yawning in Castiel’s chest, something black and seething and cold. His hands rest numbly on Dean’s chest and shoulders, where at one point he must have been holding the other man down. He remembers nothing. That’s the cruelest part: there’s just a blank space where Dean’s final moments should have been. No pain. No crying. Just nothing. He wants to scream, but the void eats the sound.
There’s a dusting of blood on the man’s face, perfect little circles warped in the hollow below one of Dean’s eyes, where a tiny pool of water has collected. The sight blurs, and if Castiel was to touch his own cheek he believes he would find it wet. Another fragment of humanity for Dean to never explain. His hands don’t leave Dean’s body, which has become the holiest object in the universe. They slide up to touch his face, trailing down a cheek and disturbing the pattern of blood there. A spasm wrenches Castiel’s chest and sucks in a ragged gasp. Still warm.
Castiel stares at that familiar face in horror. What has he done?
I feel like a damn fool for doing this, Cas, but if you’re going to be a douche and never show up then I guess we’ll do it this way.
His head snaps up at the sound in his head, clearer than anything he’s experienced so far in this place. Dean’s voice. Alive.
Firstly, I hope you’re okay. Secondly, if you are okay then I hope you have a goddamn good excuse for playing keep away. I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re playing a pretty high stakes game here and can use every player we can get. Plus you’re, uh, not too bad to have around. When you’re not being a pain in the ass.
Castiel closes his eyes, the ache in his chest so bitter it feels as if he’s collapsing on himself. A tiny smile tugs at his lips.
I met my granddad today. The other one, I mean. He was sort of a dick, but not too bad a guy. He died. Surprising no one. I swear Cas, I think this family is cursed. Which means I should probably be telling you to run the other way. But I’m a selfish son of a bitch. So get your ass down here.
“Well done.” Naomi’s voice, a cold knife. She steps up behind Castiel’s shoulder and surveys his work. “Messy and emotional, of course, but that was to be expected. I have no doubt you will improve with practice.”
Practice. In the time it takes for Castiel to begin comprehending what she means, Naomi is stepping away to reveal the figure standing behind her, the familiar slouch of a jacket still just a little too big, the rough hands, the eyes. Dean, standing alive in front of him, and Dean dead in his lap. Dean’s words in his head, a rope thrown to a drowning man. Castiel clings to it.
I’ll be waiting for you, man. Don’t take too long.
Naomi raises her hand to the side of Castiel’s head.
“Again.”
There’s no voice in his head anymore. And he doesn’t need it, because Dean is standing in front of him. It’s the real Dean now, and it makes Castiel wonder how he could ever fall for one of the fakes. There’s a depth to this one, a texture that the others lacked, and it’s all Castiel can do to stop himself from reaching out to pinch a piece of the man’s clothing between his fingers, or touch his eyelids. The real Dean wouldn’t approve of that sort of thing.
Except then he can touch, he can send his hands flying across Dean’s face and dig up the secret veins nestled beneath it. He can pick apart each neuron like tugging the petals off a carnation. Or the legs off a spider.
Dean’s face is a pulpy mass of blood, but Castiel has seen it worse. But the desperate gasps are different this time, like they’ve taken on a different cadence. They wriggle through his ribs and twist inside of him as his fists do the work for him. He hardly feels it. Or so he tells himself.
He doesn’t want to. He has to. The two thoughts rush through his head as he’s torn between the green room and Dean, Heaven and this fraying mass of carbon and electrical impulses in front of him. Castiel has seen every inch of Dean, knows him in the most intimate way it is possible to know another person—he’s recreated him from the ashes of Hell, and torn him apart piece-by-piece a thousand times after. He knows, unequivocally, that Dean is nothing more than a man. Human. Insignificant. But that last part isn’t right, because while there are seven billion humans walking the earth, only a handful managed to shove the cosmos off its tracks. And only one seems to matter right now. Dean. Stubborn, arrogant, impossible Dean.
“Cas, don’t,” he says, words thick, eyes clinging. Castiel knows that those eyes won’t look away even after he drives his sword through the man’s heart. “I need you. We’re family.”
In the immeasurable length of time that Castiel spent being reprogrammed, he had witnessed Dean Winchester in what he thought was every possible state of emotion. He had seen him weep, beg, scream, and curse. Many times Dean had attempted to kill him. As time went on Dean’s reactions had become more and more extreme, but Castiel’s memory had begun to blur in order to compensate. From what he could recall, Dean had told Castiel that he needed him approximately 143 times, and called him family 57 times. Naomi had prepared for every possibility. Except, of course, for the one that mattered: that this Dean was real, and Castiel won’t kill him.
When his sword hits the ground with a clatter, he is finally at peace. That feeling is fleeting, of course; there’s always more pain to be sown, it seems. But when Castiel cups the side of Dean’s face and looks at the man who he’s died for, who he’s saved and been saved by countless times—he thinks it might just be worth it.