The Sky is No Man's Land: Part IV
"I would not, yesterday, have thought you capable of this."
"I was not capable of it," I reply. "Yesterday."
-Steven Pressfield, The Virtues of War
VAN NUYS, CA
2006-09-02 02:28 PM
Apparently an office, by angel terms, is a tetanus-encrusted warehouse plastered in enough No Trespassing signs to re-wallpaper the Trump Tower. As Dean slips through the side entrance, California sunshine peels back to mold-flavored shadows. The inside is mostly concrete floor, dusty but unobstructed. The only structure is what looks to have been a managerial office, an 8-foot tall shack planted towards the warehouse’s edge, the pane-glass window that a boss had once lorded over now boarded up with plywood.
Dean’s halfway to calling Cas a bucket of crazy when he spots the trim-looking 30-something standing by the door, looking absurd amongst the dust and debris in a well-tailored three-piece suit. Apparently out-of-place business casual is a company policy.
Once the guard puts an eerily Cas-like stare on him, Dean crosses the space in quick, authoritative steps, badge out and mouth running: “Hi, there. OSHA. Occupational Safety? Just doing a routine chuck-up. You guys had a business permit out on this place and well, frankly, we weren’t able to find any contract work for takin’ care of that asbestos problem in here-“ He gestures towards the ceiling. Bare metal struts and peeling paint, mostly, but hell, he’s making this up as he goes.
The suit pulls his hands out of his pockets, letting them fall loose by his sides. He’s got the mild frown that seems to pass for angelic confusion. He follows Dean’s pointing finger impassively, then drops his cold stare back to Dean. “I’ll have to ask you to leave,” he says flatly.
“Well, y’know, federal officer and all, so you can’t really ask me to do much of anything. You can tell me what kinda remedial-like steps you guys have taken, as pertains to the whole asbestos. Thing.” Damn. He probably should’ve let Sam take this part.
The angel is looking flatly suspicious, now. “Identify yourself properly.”
“Sure. To your superior, maybe?”
When they want to move, they move damn fast, angels. If any time passes between the guy standing ten feet away, hands slack, and him being right in Dean’s face with concrete fingers wrapped in his collar, Dean wasn’t able to perceive it. The angel turns his head, studying him. “You’re hidden to me. State your name, human.”
“Ok, hey! We’re cool.” Dean holds up his hands, pacifying. “Is there anybody else working here? One of your bros, maybe? See, my buddy was thinking there might be two of you, and it’d be real awkward if-“
Dust scuffs up in a gust of wind, eddying around his feet. Dean twists around in the chokehold, and there’s a slim woman in a power suit right behind him, eyes narrow and cold. “Oh. Good,” Dean says. “Hi there. Sam?”
Cas’s rib art must work pretty well. The angels are both looking flatly astonished when they catch sight of Sam around the corner of the shack, jamming his bloodied hand onto the sigil on the floor.
A fierce wash of white light sears through the warehouse, chasing the suits out with it.
Dean straightens his collar as he waits for his vision to clear. “I’m gonna be blind by the end of this.”
The fuzzed silhouette of Sam rolls up the sheet of canvas they’d painted the sigil onto, tucking it into the backpack over his shoulder. “Damn, this stuff actually works.”
“Need one of these for demons, is what we need,” Dean mutters. He turns towards the far door, shouts: “Hey! Cas! All-“ He drifts off as he sees the Cas in question is already halfway across the warehouse floor, moving at a hurried pace. “All clear,” he finishes lamely.
“I noticed,” Cas says dryly, moving past Dean. “Thank you.”
“Sure. Love nuking total strangers.” He waves a hand towards the shack. “So this is it? Big angel boss office? He’s got some weird taste in architecture.”
“Yes.” Castiel is running his hands over the edges of the door, examining each edge closely. When he seems satisfied, he turns the knob and presses it open. Bright sunlight spills through the open door.
“Yeah, okay.” Dean leans around the corner, keeping his toes just this side of reality. The edges of a svelte corner-office spread out beyond the door, too bright and too big to be anywhere near the 8’x10’ shack it’s enclosed in. “How the hell does that work?”
“Earth is hardly a safe storage place for sensitive documents. So, we don’t store them on Earth,” Cas says, casual as always, and steps through.
Dean moves to follow, but holds a hand out towards Sam. “Keep an eye out, alright?”
“Oh, c’mon. Why am I always on watch?”
“’cause I told you to.” And he likes Sam to stay in a space-time dimension he’s familiar with. He waves a vague hand. “I dunno how long that grenade thing lasts.”
“Bullshit,” Sam mutters, but he pulls another canvas roll free.
On the outside, it can’t be more than a fifty square foot office. On the inside, it’s a 200-square-foot corner view of - damn, Manhattan? The walls are floor-to-ceiling glass, maximizing a million-dollar panorama of the Chrysler building and its 70-story pals.
Dean whistles. “Okay. He’s got some taste.”
Castiel is standing behind a steel and glass monster of a desk, sifting through a filing cabinet with rapid ticks of his fingers.
Dean pulls out one of his own canvas rolls - his own paint job, too, and his palm is itching something awful under the gauze - and steps towards the window. For not-Earth, there’s some realistic NYC traffic crawling a good fifty stories below.
“Here,” Castiel says behind him, dragging a folder free. Dean backs away from the window, filled with the sudden uneasy idea of fifty floors ceasing to be under his feet.
“He’ll be reporting to Chicago in two days,” Castiel mutters.
“Chicago? Woah, wait. Chicago’s a shithole these days. We don’t even send hunters there anymore.”
“Yes. There’s an instability forming between Hell and Earth, the Horde is hoping to capitalize on it.” Castiel slaps the folder closed and slides it back into the filing cabinet. He starts carding through deeper into the cabinet. “The Seraphim will be moving in to contain it. Sabachiel serves under them as a courier. It will be relatively safe.”
“Relatively-?” Dean stops, and gives a low whistle. With an imperceptible twitch of the air there’s a newcomer: a man standing by the desk, one hand pressed casually against the glass, the other tucked into his fancy business suit pocket. He’s got the balding pattern and paunch of a middling executive, and the sneer to match.
Cas turns sharply, and goes rigid, back straightening into that of a soldier at attention. “Zachariah,” he greets stiffly.
“Castiel,” the man drawls casually, and his voice has the perfect nasal dickishness to match his vessel. “Reporting to duty at last.” Zachariah cants his head, inspecting the air behind Cas with curiosity. Castiel’s shoulders rise another self-conscious inch. “Though I can see what took you so long.”
Dean rips the gauze off his hand as he sidles towards the door. Cas was right about one thing; the angels don’t give two shits about humans. Bossman doesn’t even notice as he rolls the sigil out and digs his nails into the cut on his palm, getting the blood flowing enough to get his hand covered.
“Well,” Zachariah says, and claps his hands together. “I’m glad you had the foresight to come straight to me. I’d be happy to escort you directly to the Council, clear this whole mess up.”
“My business here isn’t done,” Cas says.
That throws Zachariah off. His tone sharpens. “Your ‘business’ is to follow orders, Castiel. Something you’ve never been particularly gifted with.”
“No,” Castiel agrees quietly. “I’ll report to Heaven when I’m finished.” Then he’s walking away, heading towards Dean and the door.
Zachariah’s expression stills to a condescending surprise as he takes in the sigil under Dean’s hand. He sneers towards Cas. “Teaching the monkeys new tricks, as well. I’ll have to make note of that in the report.”
Cas just keeps walking.
“Stop,” Zachariah demands, and Cas does. There’s a cold resentment on his face when he’s looking towards Dean; but his expression is wiped clean when he turns back towards Zachariah. “Rumor is that you’ve had quite the obsession with these disappearances.” He clicks the filing cabinet door closed with a casual hand, strides around the edge of the desk. “Rumor is you’re piecing together a grand little conspiracy theory, and my name is somewhere on your list. What you think you have is the proof you need to claim I’ve cut some deal with the Horde.”
Castiel says nothing.
“What you have, from what I’m told, is circumstantial evidence that someone of my rank may be involved.”
Castiel stiffens. Zachariah smiles. “I’ve already initiated an investigation. That pandering fool Sandalphon tried to go above my head, but too little, too late, and even if Michael did reassign the case I will make sure the Council ruins you and any member of your pathetic garrison that corroborated. I may not be the one who will bring you to justice but I am going to enjoy every minute of seeing you and your brothers stripped before the entire Host. So do tell me, what evidence do you think you have against me?”
Cas crosses the room in three broad steps, slams a forearm into Zachariah’s chest and raises a fist high.
“Please,” Zachariah says, teeth bared in a shark’s smile. “Assault your superior. I’ll be sure to add it to the list of transgressions.”
“You have nothing on me. You have nothing on the garrison,” Castiel snarls.
“You’re 73 hours AWOL. I have everything I need.”
“I can drag your soldier before the Council and provide irrevocable proof that he endangered a captain of good standing--”
“Good standing,” Zachariah parrots, and laughs. “You’re nothing, Castiel. A no-name with a middling record. Your entire garrison. I tried, I really did, tried to turn you idiots into something worthwhile--”
“You’ve always mistaken incompetence for leadership,” Castiel snarls. He shoves away hard.
Zachariah rocks back onto the desk in a controlled motion, then seizes Cas by the back of the neck, fingers digging in deep. “I can drag you to Heaven as I please--“
Dean whistles, pushing bloody fingers a few inches closer to the sigil. “Wouldn’t do that, kiddo.”
Zachariah looks Dean over with disgust before releasing his hold. He busies his hands with straightening his lapels primly. “An investigation, Castiel. You know what that means; you’re cut off. Something as small as you - in six months, there isn’t going to be a shred of grace left in you. So go on, get your proof. Make a fool of yourself before the Council. Or skip the formality and just sink into that rat’s nest of humanity you’re so fond of. You’ll be one soon enough.”
Castiel’s fury is a sharp static thing on the air as he shoves through the door. Dean covers him, hand still hovering over the sigil and watching Zachariah with a testing smirk.
With Cas through, Dean nudges the door closed with a boot heel, and drops his hand onto the sigil.
Zachariah shoves away from his desk, face twisting up into rage. He’s opening his mouth when the sigil washes him out, scattering him to the four winds.
The office stands bright and empty.
He pushes back into the musty dim of the warehouse to find Sam shouldering his backpack and Cas scowling at him. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“Aw, Cas, c’mon. You should’ve seen the look on his face.”
♤ ♤ ♤
LA TUNA CANYON, CA
2006-09-02 03:42 PM
“I’m just saying, someone had to have told him, and you’re saying that kid was the only one who-“
“It wasn’t Nanael,” Castiel snaps.
Dean rolls his shoulders in a shrug. It’s a gesture Castiel’s coming to despise, because it rarely means he’s actually acceding to the point. “Alright, alright. Sam, how far we got?”
Sam consults the map spread across his lap. “’nother four, five miles and we should be hitting the inter-”
He’s cut short by a sharp lurch in the Impala’s motion. Dean has buried the brake pedal to the floor, his eyes set on the road ahead. Where the asphalt follows the smooth line of a curve, the earth of the uphill slope is giving a disorienting sideways lurch into the roadway. A vehicle in the oncoming lane swerves wide and hits a guardrail hard before getting sideswept by a wash of dun-colored boulders, which punch hard into the car’s exterior.
Dean releases the brake pedal and buries it again. The Impala gives a sharp fishtail, but he controls the sideways skid through to its conclusion: the crunch of the bumper against the rocks edging the landslide. The last of the landslide falls as pebbles that come plinking down on the black of the hood, but everything else lies still.
Sam pulls off his seatbelt, eyes on the civilian car.
“Wait-“ Castiel holds a staying hand against his shoulder.
The metal of the Impala’s roof indents with a loud thock. A woman’s high heel - cherry red - steps down onto the hood.
“Sytry,” Castiel says.
Sam’s already pulling his Beretta free. “You always on a first name basis with these things?”
Castiel watches her with cold distaste as she casually steps from hood to boulder to asphalt. “You’ve met this one before.” He shoves out of the car with the weight of his sword in hand.
Sytry slaps a hand on the roof of the Impala and drops her head down to the driver’s side window. “Hello, boys.” Castiel drops the door closed behind him. Sam balances his pistol in steady hands on the black shine of the roof.
“Are we playing with swords again today?” Sytry asks.
Dean rises last out of the car, his movements awkwardly mindful of the blade of a sickle resting against the curvature of his throat.
Castiel rests the point of his own blade against the pulse of her jugular. “We are,” she coos. Sytry tucks Dean against her chest. She smiles widely at Sam; he diverts the gun’s muzzle away from Dean with a tight expression. “See, this is much more fun with everyone on the same page.”
Dean slams his head back hard as Castiel reverses the sword in his grip and seizes her arm, dragging the sickle down and away. Dean drops to the ground; Sam gets a shot off in the brief moment Sytry is left exposed, but the bullet only traces a line along the edge of her skull, leaving red and the flash of white bone in its wake. She shoves a hand forward, propelling Sam into the rock of the landslide.
Dean moves to draw his own weapon; Sytry knees him hard in the face, rocking him back into the edge of the seat.
Castiel drops his right hand’s hold, driving his sword under her sickle and up, toward her chest. She breaks the weakened grip and drives the sickle down, but only succeeds in catching the cloth of his sleeve before the metal of the blades meet and twist aside with a shower of thin sparks.
Sytry grins, and the madness of Hell shines in the feral edge of her teeth. She draws a second sickle and ticks feverish eyes from Dean to Castiel. “I just can’t decide which of you to kill first.”
Dean smiles. There’s another brand of insanity in this human, Castiel thinks. Drawing a knife, he says, “Go on and give it a try, bitch.”
At their backs, Sam edges down the landslide onto the Impala’s hood. The black smoke rising thick from the passenger car pinned against the guardrail is what has his attention.
He keeps his attention on the fight as he backs towards the guardrail and hops over onto the loose scree sloping down towards the valley floor. The passenger door is jammed into the guardrail, the driver’s side penned in with rocks and dirt. Sam shatters the passenger-side window with the stock of his pistol, offering the struggling woman inside a hand. “Can you get the seatbelt?” She fumbles for it with shaking hands, catches the clasp and tears it free. “Good. You’re alright, just gimme your hand-“
Eyes flashing black in the California sun, she buries her fingernails deep in the flesh of his wrist and pulls. His head meets the doorframe hard, bringing the bright lights and clarion bells of an impending concussion before she’s shoving across the car and pushing at his chest.
For a lurching moment he’s falling; but he lands hard on the slope and rolls, feeling the woman’s fingers dig at his neck. She gets torn free, and tumbles a few yards further down the slope. He struggles back to the road, grabbing at the guard rail to get up and over while she scrambles in the scree behind him. The head blow is catching up fast; his toe catches on the rail, sending him into a drunken stumble to the pavement that ends in a sprawl. He drags a knife free of his boot, turning blindly to face her.
Dean is the one to catch her, burying a knife in her gut. The woman lights through and through with the sparks of something chaotic, writhing. Then she goes dark.
Dean wrenches the knife free. It’s partially Dean’s invention, partially Castiel’s; cold iron inscribed with an intricate design of Enochian sigils. There'd been a lot more to it than that, a specific sacrifice and a blend of six dozen herbs over some kind of burning holy oil, and Cas had had to do something weird with the metal - but hey, shit, it'd worked.
The host was already dead. She goes limp.
“Shit,” Dean’s echoing. “Actually works.”
“Huh.” Sam shoves the corpse off, rolls his head back in time to see Castiel ducking a scythe’s blade to headbutt Sytry square in the face. “D’you teach him that?”
Dean grins like a proud parent. “Hell yeah I did.”
Sam holds up a hand towards the knife. “Can I see that thing?”
The blow to the face does little to stun Sytry; she ensnares Castiel in a vicious embrace. In the fight to extract himself, she drags a sickle across his shoulder, but only carves a shallow wound. He falls back onto his heels. Sytry smiles through the rich red wash of blood pouring from her nose.
The hilt of Dean’s knife sprouts from her shoulder, buried deep by an expert throw. The inscriptions aren’t enough for one such as her; she drags the knife loose and discards it on the pavement.
With a twitch of her wrist she heaves Sam aside; he collides headlong with the Impala’s fender. “Wait your turn, boy.” Sam slumps low, stunned.
Gunfire plucks at the shoulder of her suit, cold iron bullets leaving puffs of torn cloth in their paths. She raises a hand to throw Dean aside with disinterest. He’s slow to rise.
The distraction of Sytry’s wrath between Dean and Castiel has served as a disadvantage to her; but it is a disadvantage to him, as well. In his divided attention she lunges forward, bearing a sickle deep into the flesh of his shoulder as she drives him to his back. She pins his sword hand beneath the point of a high heel. He presses hard against her wrist, keeping the sickle from sinking deeper still.
She looms above him, thick with the stench of corruption. “Three times I’ve caught you, little fish,” she breathes.
In North Platte she’d smiled from the back of the fray, as the fountain water he’d blessed splashed and hissed around the demon caught in his grip.
She’d smiled, and said: now, now, don’t harm the vessel, boys.
Castiel grimaces through the burn of the sickle driving deeper, towards bone. “You want me alive.”
“I did, at first,” she admits. “Now? Well-the tall one, I think I’ll just gut. But you and him? I’m going to see who I can skin the slowest.”
She is no more healed than he; he can still smell the ichor leeching through her skin from the wound Dean had carved into her. He abandons his hold on her arm - the sickle biting deeper still with the lost resistance - to bury his fingers in the flesh of her back, eliciting a howl as he presses grace against the poison burn of her corrupted essence.
When the pressure of her hold slackens he shoves forward, throwing her onto her back. He drives a knee into her stomach. Closing his hand tight upon her throat, he balances the point of his shortsword between thumb and forefinger. “Why did you want me alive?”
“To take my time,” Sytry chokes. “Pry you apart.” She reaches with her uninjured hand for the sickle still buried in his shoulder; Dean is there to plant a heel on her wrist, and aims the Glock at her skull.
Castiel redoubles the sword’s pressure. “Do you take them all alive?”
“Cas,” Dean warns. Castiel ignores him, pressing the point of the sword deeper still, drawing out a welling of rich blood and small spits of burning essence. “Do you?”
Sytry smiles with bloodied teeth. “We took her alive. Is that the question?”
“Cas, kill her--“
“Why?”
She laughs, high and mocking, and digs her nails into the flesh of his wrist, bringing a searing burn of absolute cold as she presses her tainted essence against his grace. “Oh, sweetheart, you should’ve smelled her burn.”
His grip tightens. Her essence shifts against his fingers, straining to pour out of the host’s throat, to escape.
Castiel drives the sword through cartilage, through bone. Crimson sparks through her frame, throwing bone and sinew into silhouette in a mockery of whatever grace she’d once possessed. There are no wings of ash, skeletal or otherwise, to mark her passage.
He wipes the sword clean on the fabric of the dead host’s blouse and rises slowly to his feet. His wrist throbs dully with her last touch.
“You’ve got a, uh-“ Dean plants gentle fingers against Castiel’s shoulder and pulls the sickle free. “There. Let’s get the hell out of here, huh?”
The human moves away. Castiel doesn’t immediately follow. He’s observing the empty vessel; what would have been a host, when she was a sister, one who followed the laws of God.
He’s never killed one such as her. What had been kin, once. He can taste her pollution on the back of his tongue, but still he thinks of the songs that would have been sung in Heaven, if she had died here not as this corruption, but as the angel she once was.
He removes himself from the sight slowly.
Dean is kneeling by his brother, peeling back Sam’s eyelid with a thumb; Sam flinches away, knocking a clumsy hand against his forearm. “Knock it off, jesus.”
“Up and at ‘em, sunshine. You’re concussed.”
“Coulda told you that.”
“No one likes a smartass, Sammy.” He takes hold of Sam’s upper arm and drags him to his feet with a steady grip. Levering open the back door, he guides Sam inside. “Get in the damn car. Cas?”
“Yes.”
“New job: keep Sam awake. Awake good, sleeping bad. Got it? Good. Go on.” He ushers Castiel impatiently towards the back door; Sam shuffles clumsily across the seat to allow him room. There are sirens arising in the distance, and Castiel is reminded uncomfortably of the constraints of human travel.
Still, he is confined to this plane, and these realities. The silence alone - it brings him a discomforting understanding of the madness in things such as Sytry.
♤ ♤ ♤
HOLBROOK, AZ
2006-09-03 02:47 AM
Sam stands with his toes sinking into soft mud, heels on the sharp cubes of shattered safety glass. The rich smell of burnt oil and diesel clings to the crumpled edges of black paint and raw metal laid out before him. But it’s not the Impala, buried under all those unnatural angles; it’s a monstrosity of a truck, the perfect image of his father’s philosophy on masculinity. The driver’s side is crushed in.
He doesn’t look. He never looks.
The tractor trailer rig that’d been the end of John Winchester (neatly scribbled lines on a police report: blunt force trauma dead on arrival) looms high over the tarmac of a no-name Louisiana backroad, grill rattling with the low rumble of its battered engine. The rig frame lurches and falls still as the engine cuts out. Silence settles, heavy and thick, but there’s nothing crawling out through the cab’s shattered windshield tonight. Not the old bastard of a trucker that’d fallen asleep at the wheel; not the specter of his father, still spitting half-truths and empty orders; not Jess, painted in blood and soot and sulfur and saying Sam, I don’t understand, why--.
There’s just the weight of the dark at his back. Whatever he dreams, there’s always that.
He never wants to look; never wants to see - but he always turns, and the dark is always there to greet him. That old familiar friend, staring back with sightless eyes. It hasn't seen him, hasn't truly seen him, not yet, but the days are ticking down to hours are ticking down to minutes, and it will wait, it will keep waiting, it has waited for the span of all his lifetimes--
There’s someone beside him.
He turns about fast and buries his arm in its neck, shoving it hard into the dented grill of the truck. It’s an awkward college kid staring up at him, both hands thrown up in a sign of peace. “Hi, Sam,” he chokes. Nanael points a vague finger towards the empty black over Sam’s shoulder. “What’re you looking at?”
“Nanael.” Sam falls back. “What?” He follows the stare towards the dark. “Nothing.” He waves a hand, tries for casual, but the gesture has more aggression to it than he would like. “Whole lot of it. What’re you doing here?”
“Oh.” He tugs at the wrinkled hem of his shirt. “I was, uh-well, I was going to talk to you. D’you mind a change of scenery, or--?” He’s glancing toward the wrecked car, the caved-in door. Sam doesn’t follow his gaze, just twitches his shoulders in a small shrug.
He looks relieved. “Good.” A clap of his hands and the night brightens up to a loft apartment, decked out in fine oak and new-age furniture and a sprawling urban view.
Nanael is rummaging behind the kitchen counter. “You like it? It’s mine. Well, my host’s. Mountain Dew?”
“I’m alright.”
“Calorie free, you can splurge. This is still a dream. Yours, technically.”
“Right.” This is all going to seem a little weirder when he wakes up. He glances towards the skyline. It looks familiar. San Diego, maybe. “What do you want to talk about?”
“You’re still with my brother, yeah?”
“Yeah. We’re heading to-“ Sam stops, getting hung up on both the idea of the Hell-on-Earth that is Chicago, and the memory of Castiel’s anger back in Nevada. “I really shouldn’t tell you.”
Nanael smiles lightly, ticking his gaze towards the windows. The lighting in the room has changed, taking on a red glow. Sam follows Nanael’s stare. “Oh.”
The Sears Tower fills up the skyline, Lake Michigan spreading out beyond it. Smoke rises in slow, lazy columns from the streets.
“Sorry. It’s still your dream.” Nanael takes an awkward sip of his drink to fill the silence. “Chicago, huh?”
Sam jabs a finger at him. “Don’t you dare tell your brother I told you that. He’ll smite me.” But too little, too late; he cards his fingers through his hair, staring at the charred landscape. It’s a fantasized version. He doesn’t know if the fires have gotten that bad, yet. But he isn’t looking forward to the visit. “We’re going after the guy that beat up Cas in North Platte. Sabachiel.”
Nanael’s grinning. “That’s perfect.”
Sam gives him a distracted glance. “What?”
“It’s perfect. You guys get him, and I’ll talk with Barachiel, see if I can get him to take word up to-“ he dissolves into muttering and poking at his phone, seeming to forget for a few seconds that Sam’s there. When he glances back up, he blinks. “Oh, I should--” He rummages through his pockets, comes up with a small photo that he drops on the countertop. It’s a headshot of a trim, 30-something male. He’s got a face for magazine covers.
Nanael grins again, proud. “That’s the guy that’s been falsifying orders.”
Sam squints. “Zachariah?” He hadn’t seen what had gone on in the office, but this isn’t the petty, middling executive he’d expected.
“What? No, no. Calabriel. Same rank as Zachariah. Same access, everything.”
“Cas thinks it’s Zachariah.”
“Well, maybe. Could be. But-“ Nanael digs through a pile of folders that’s wandered into existence on the counter. He pulls a couple sheets free, laying them out. It looks like e-mail logs. “There were two, maybe three days Calabriel was unaccounted for, in September of last year. I missed him in my first sweep, ‘cause it never made the official reports, but with a little bit of digging through his personal communications -- voila.”
“If you’ve got the proof, why not grab this guy now?”
Nanael deflates a bit. “Well. It’s more of a hunch. It’s a good hunch, really. See, a lot of the orders, as best I can tell, they were falsified at an administrative level, someone with Zachariah’s rank or higher. That’s why we were thinking Zachariah, maybe, but then when Zachariah started an investigation on Castiel for going AWOL, Calabriel asked the case be reassigned to him. There was all this political crap about a conflict of interest, but it’s all highly unusual, an internal affairs case getting assigned to a different CO-“
“Alright, alright.” Sam waves a hand to stop him. “I believe you.”
“So I don’t have, y’know, evidence, per se. He’s really careful, y’know? Somebody in his rank, they don’t keep records of his movements the same way they do ours, and he’s probably got a dozen alibis lined up to cover him. But I think we can get him out in the open, with a little help.”
“From who?”
“Zachariah.”
Sam frowns. “Uh-“
“He’s a dick,” Nanael admits. “But Calabriel, he’s Zachariah’s equal. They compete, for assignments, for positions, for garrisons. If I can convince Zachariah that Calabriel’s up to something-“
“Then you can use Zachariah to pressure him.”
“Yeah. Exactly. You guys grab Sabachiel, I put pressure on Calabriel, and we’ll have him cornered.” Nanael shrugs. “People do stupid stuff when they’re cornered.”
There’s a couple awkward seconds of expectant silence, before Nanael bursts: “How is he?”
“Cas? Uh-- he’s alright.” A hole in his shoulder and morosely silent, from the hazed bits and pieces of tonight that he remembers. “Dean’s been shoving food at him this whole time, some weird attempt at indoctrinating Castiel into American culture. He likes hamburgers, turns out. And egg rolls.”
“Egg rolls,” Nanael mutters curiously, and taps something into his phone.
Oh, good. His brother’s going to get a garrison addicted to MSG.
Nanael goes quiet a second, looking Sam over. When he catches Sam’s curious stare he ducks his head. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. Helping Castiel, I mean. But-“ He shoves out a hand. Sam looks at a few seconds before realizing what it’s for. He takes it in a tentative handshake. “Thanks,” Nanael says. “I’d help him myself, but y’know-“
Sam nods along, shrugs. “Hey, I’ve been there. Brothers, right?"
Nanael gives a lopsided smile.
“What about the texts?” Sam asks. “The ones that sent Castiel to North Platte? You thought that was somebody else, somebody close.”
Nanael’s expression closes down. “I think-“
He doesn’t finish. In another place and another time, Sam is waking abruptly to a gentle pressure on his shoulder and the dim interior of an Arizona motel room. His head picks up the steady rhythm of a headache without missing a beat.
There’s a different angel leaning over him. “Shit,” Sam mutters, and shoves away from him. Then he grimaces. “Sorry.”
Cas takes the crude greeting in stride. “Your brother insists that you’re to be awake, no matter how often I inform him you’re alive.”
“Shut up, Cas,” Dean says from the other bed. There’s an infomercial muttering low on the television. Sam presses his palms into his eye sockets. “Good dreams?” Dean asks.
Sam considers. Waking with the dull pressure of a concussion headache, well, that sucks; but waking without the lingering weight of the foreign backwaters of his subconscious peering out at him, that, he’ll take. “Better.”
Part III | Part IV | Part V