DCBB Black Glass pt.13

[babygatsby]

Part 12



Cas’s time at River Rock-that’s what Lucifer said the natives called it-was, though not entirely pleasant, at least agreeable. The people kept out of his way so long as he kept out of theirs, and Girl was allowed free reign of the settlement to play with the other children. She had been raised all wrong, Cas knew that, and he held no delusions of being the proper voice in her development. She was different than the other children, too grown to play with those her own age. The wilderness had made her an old soul, like Cas. She didn’t fit in with the other young ones, but she tried. Cas didn’t even attempt to assimilate with the people. He knew he was too different to ever hope to blend with them. They were graceful and their movements flowed like the water, he was succinct, every action of his held a purpose or it was useless. Artful was not in his vocabulary.

Lucifer did oversee his marking though. It would seem that gaining tattoos was like a rite of passage to these people, and a grown man without at least an age marker was shameful at best. So he gritted his teeth and allowed the bare minimum, age markers for both himself and Girl. She was thrilled that at last her skin matched her peers, and barely the day after they were healed enough she was ripping through the water, squealing and laughing with the rest of them with fresh teal marked on her shoulder. Cas wasn’t let off easy though, it was one thing for a girl to have only age markers, but another matter entirely for him to have the minimum. The list went on and on, the stares continued, till finally he relented and snarled at Lucifer to have it done and be done with it.

The tattoo makers conversed with Lucifer silently for a while, with Cas sitting on a nearby rock, dejected and silently fuming. He did not believe in marking the flesh, save for a mating mark from teeth and tongue, and would never abide Dean being marked in such a way, he could scarcely believe that he allowed Girl to be marked as well. Girl sat by his side, playing with the ends of his furs that he never removed. He despised being so bared to these people, but from the way Lucifer was gesturing to his chest and shoulders, he knew he would have to make himself naked soon. The withered old man approached, and how one so old could have such steady hands Cas did not know. Lucifer came over as well, shooing Girl away, and he unbuckled and unstrapped the furs from Cas’s shoulders and chest. Cas squawked in protest but Lucifer scoffed and hit him lightly on the head. The old man glanced at his scarred chest with brows furrowed in concentration, but said not a word.

Lucifer and Cas watched as the old man laid out his planned ink with a water based paint that dried, like dye, on his skin. Lucifer nodded his approval, and the man began with the needles. After the first two tattoos-a strange whorl design on each of his shoulders-he was numb to the pain, but when the man settled in directly in front of him to plan out another mark on his chest Cas balked, growling low in confusion. Lucifer laughed at the sound.

“You are more like a wolf than a man, my friend. You never let anyone too close, save your cub.” He grinned, gesturing to Girl who lay sleeping at his feet. Cas twitched in annoyance, but didn’t dare move as the old man came at him with the needle again. This marking was much larger than the first two, and more painful. It tracked over the edges of his scars, and he couldn’t hold back a wince. The old man paused, but continued after a pointed look from Lucifer. When he was done, the old man nodded once to Cas and then to Lucifer, packing his items and retreating to his hut at the outskirts of the settlement. Cas hissed when he stood, unwittingly stretching the raw flesh and ink. Lucifer clucked his tongue and steered him toward his dwelling with the promise of cool salve and bandages.

Safely deposited in the cool confines of Lucifer’s hut, Cas leaned back against the many cushions on Lucifer’s own pallet and sighed, gratefully accepting the clay cup full of water. Lucifer returned moments later with the bandages and a pot of some creamy white substance.

“You did well. Nary a flinch from you,” Lucifer commented idly, smoothing a handful of the cream onto the largest mark on his chest. Cas hissed but remained silent as Lucifer continued his work. “You know, these aren’t the only marks expected of you,” he said as he bound his chest. His shoulders weren’t nearly as sore, more a dull throb, like a bruised or skinned knee. “They’ll want more from you.”

“How many more?” Cas asked wearily, not hiding the rankle in his words.

“As many as it takes,” he answered cryptically, tying off the bandages.

And soon Lucifer had his way. When he was done, Cas had tattoos over almost every part of his body. He had tattoos on his shoulders, on his nose, chest, hands and fingers, thighs and calves, and even an extensive tattoo that started around his navel that dropped all the way down to his groin, wrapping around the root of his cock. They had to knock him unconscious for that one, not for the pain, but for the mere fact that when Lucifer suggested it Cas punched him in the jaw.

Cas hobbled to the river bank, sore in indescribable ways in unmentionable places, and stepped into the cool water, gingerly, to wash away the week’s cumulated filth from his body. The marks were healed enough to be exposed, but they still felt raw and sensitive. He dipped his fingertips into the water and the tattoos on his fingers and hands burned, he grimaced, but muscled through the discomfort. He hadn’t bathed properly in a month, and his wings were a right mess, full of dust and sand, knots and dead feathers that hadn’t quite blown away. He was molting due to the extreme temperatures, and he was grateful for the resulting new, lighter down, but his old feathers wouldn’t unstick. He couldn’t ask Girl to help, she was much too short, and he didn’t much feel like sitting at the moment. He also couldn’t possibly hope to reach it all himself.

Dean would have been the one to clean his wings, to knead at his sore flesh and straighten his skewed feathers. Cas crouched in the river, submerging himself up to his chin, disregarding the pain he was in. He paused when his wings sunk to the sandy bottom. Dean would have yelled at him for getting his wings wet, they would be sodden now, and would take hours to dry. That had been a problem in the frigid middle lands, but not here in this desert place. He wrapped his arms around his chest, feeling a pain there that had nothing to do with his fresh tattoos.

Sam followed Gabriel and his riders as they fled to the Great River. Sam had never seen it before, save the part that branched from it, trickling into the lake by his cabin. There were Empire power boats waiting for them on the banks, with more tanned people with them. Sam gaped in awe. He only recognized them from his books, and had never seen such technology first hand. With the power boats they could be miles away in minutes.

When Gabriel got them out onto the open water and turned on the machine, Sam covered his ears and sunk to the bottom of the boat, plastering himself next to the side. Gabriel laughed, but apologized.

“I keep forgetting that you lived in a cabin your whole life.”

Sam didn’t think it was that funny. He had enjoyed the concept of the machine far more than being in it. It moved far too quickly for his tastes, and the riverside flew past at an alarming pace, making him fall ill if he watched too often. They rode for hours, but soon the river grew narrow and twisted, they had to slow down or risk dashing themselves against the rocks and the bank. They drove for many days and nights, and the days grew hotter. Sam realized, then, that they were heading west, to the desert lands he had only read about. He had wondered over how the land could turn black and orange like rust, and as hot as a fire. Yet it did. Rock walls rose over their heads, sometimes eclipsing the sun completely, and heat shimmered over their surfaces, playing tricks on his eyes.

“How far must we go?” Sam asked, leaning against the makeshift hut at the center of the boat, built to sleep in and keep out of the sun.

“As far as we can.” Gabriel replied, and one of the dark skinned men laughed.

“There is no farther than River Rock.”

“River Rock?” Sam asked, wiping sweat from his brow.

“It’s the farthest settlement in the west. River Rock will probably be our last stop.”

“There are people there? Is it a town?”

“No,” Gabriel shook his head and laughed, “just a hodge-podge of old women and children, useless men…vagabonds, traitors, cut-throats…our kind of people.” He smirked at Sam’s expression. “Too late to go home now, boy.”

Sam frowned and crossed his arms, blinking when sweat trickled into his eyes. He knew they had to run from the Empire, but would trading one den of wolves for the other be a viable option or them?

“He jokes,” one of the dark skinned men laughed, “River Rock is harmless. Full of good people, my mother is from there.”

Sam relaxed, albeit minutely, he hardly knew these people, they could be killers for all he knew. He hardly knew Gabriel himself, but he owed him his life, so he would go with him, wherever their travels took them.

“The Empire has the one you love?” Lucifer asked Cas late one night when the stars were out and nearly outshined the moon.

“Yes.” Cas replied, almost too softly to be heard over the sound of the river.

“I can’t help you the way you are now, you know that…”

Cas propped himself up on his elbows and looked over at his newfound friend.

“How?”

“Your wings,” he started slowly, as if broaching the subject was painful. For Lucifer, Cas thought, it probably was. “You must have noticed that the River Rock people do not look upon you kindly.”

“I thought they hated me because I am an outsider.”

Lucifer shook his head, running a hand over Cas’s extended, gnarled wing.

“They look upon you with fear, you must notice. You are not from the river, not of the earth to them. You represent what most of them despise; the Empire.”

Cas scoffed and returned to laying on his back.

“I hate the Empire as much as they do. No, more”

“They do not know. They do not understand. To them, you are royalty, upper class. If you went to the Empire now you would be greeted with respect. They…they are dirt.”

“I know nothing of class. I am not royalty.”

Lucifer looked at him peculiarly, opened his mouth as if to say something, then decided against it.

“Anyway, all I’m saying is…if you want their help, or mine, you’ll have to make certain sacrifices.” He continued after a moment more of silence.

Cas rolled onto his side and stared at the scarred man. They were so close, almost touching; Cas could feel his body heat, hear his breaths.

“What sacrifices?” He asked lowly. He could hear Girl’s gentle breaths of sleep from inside their hut. Lucifer had refused to let Cas leave his hut after his tattooing, insisting that they move their belongings and live with him. Cas had resisted at first, but he noticed that things of theirs were going missing, turning up at the base of the stone monolith and in Lucifer’s hut, until finally, overnight practically, their makeshift dwelling had been deconstructed from around them by invisible hands, and then they had no choice but to live with the man. So far he hadn’t done anything untoward, but Cas was still wary of the man he dared call his friend.

“You have to burn them.”

Cas sucked in a breath and rolled onto his back. Lucifer held an unhealthy obsession when it came to fire, to burning things. One of the man’s tattoos was even a flame, which left Cas to wonder why Lucifer’s tattoos were more jagged compared to his own organic circular inked lines. Everything about the man was off. He held sway over the River Rock people, could even be called their chieftain, yet he was an Outsider; even he once had wings, same as Cas.

“Why should I?” Cas asked lowly, voice laced with venom. Lucifer was silent for a time, gazing at the stars above them.

“You will be different. You will have an Other inside of you. Things will happen that you will have no recollection of. It will most likely tear the things from your back itself. I would save you from that pain…” Lucifer whispered, eyes looking at Cas’s face, though he could tell the man was looking somewhere else, far away. “I could make it painless.”

“And for my wings…what would you give me?”

Lucifer chuckled and shook his head. “It wouldn’t be what I would give you, it would be whatever Other took you as their own would give you.”

Cas bit his lip and regarded Lucifer, with his warped back and inked body, far more covered than Cas’s own with jagged edged ink.

“It would give me power to save the one I love?” Cas whispered as Lucifer trailed his coarse, calloused hand up his inner thigh. The man’s fiery hand squeezed just south of his groin, a foul promise in his touch.

“Yes.”

Dean’s days passed in blurs. Days went by as fast as minutes, then others dragged on and on in what felt like a week’s time. All of it he saw through a drugged haze. Michael had found herbs to hold him pliant and weary, horrible poisonous shrubs from the east, and Dean damned himself for not expanding his hunts with Cas, so that they, too, would be immune to these foul poisons.

Dean dreamt he saw Cas, often, too often to be coincidence he thought. But dreams were dreams, he knew, and they were fever dreams, little better than half remembered sticky thoughts in the heat of a summer’s night in his younger years.

Sometimes he imagined it was Cas holding and taking him in the night, not Michael. If it weren’t for the difference in their weight, especially their wings, the illusion would have been complete.

Michael had wings. Just like Cas had wings, but his were different. Cas’s were hard and bulging from usage in the wild whereas Michael’s were dainty and slight, far lighter than Cas’s, and his were hardly menacing. When Dean touched Cas’s wings, he had always felt their power, the muscles covered in tawny plumage that flexed and thrummed with every beat that matched his heart. Michael’s were dull and they hardly moved, and when they did they jerked, like a muscle spasm keeping oneself awake, or an afterthought, or how a horse’s flanks twitched to rid itself of winged pests.

In every way Dean could imagine, Cas was far more glorious than Michael. Michael was a toad, a wretch, a lecher and a fool that panted after anything that would spread its legs for him. He relied on sexual aggression to keep Dean in line, to keep him down and under, but Dean was quick to build immunities, always had been. Soon enough, he thought when the potion makers forced more of that vile liquid down his throat, soon he would be free of this mind control and he would rip the disgusting wings from Michael’s back himself with his hands and teeth. He did not deserve them. There was only one who deserved wings in his eyes, and right now he was hundreds of miles away.

Cas stood frozen before the same crevasse in the river wall that he had entered through to his new life. It would serve a new purpose now. He was alone, naked, but feeling far more bare than ever before. His back burned and the phantom twitches of now useless muscles twittered under his skin. His wings were well and truly gone. He knew his skin would be cracked, swollen and black, and as equally misshapen and hideous as Lucifer’s, but he knew the outcome of such a travesty would be worth the shame.

He waded forward through the lukewarm water, eyes transfixed ahead. He could hear the low chanting of the River Rock people, and he blinked and flinched slightly when he felt the first few drops of paint that would soon cover his whole body. He glanced up at the top of the river canyon and saw Girl among the people of the tribe, dumping the paint and dyes down the walls onto his bared flesh. The paint would wash away, but permanent ink would follow the ceremony, upon his completion.

When he rounded the corner the people’s chanting increased. He wasn’t afraid, he had already overcome his greatest obstacle, hardly healed yet and already moving with his plans. Cas believed in no Gods; new, old, eastern, western, southern, or northern. He believed in the power of nature, her wiles were well known to him, and the only thing he believed to be truly good in this world. So he would play along with Lucifer and his delusions. Gods, real or not, held power over people, he had seen it. He would become the voice of the River Rock peoples’ Gods; violent, barbaric things from what he had gathered. He could become violent and barbaric, he could become a base, visceral thing if he so desired, he could become a disgusting letch of a man if that was what it took to get his mate back. And that was indeed what it took.

Lucifer was there by the shore to meet him, as bare as Cas was, though only marred by his tattoos and scars. He held out his hand, and Cas took it. Lucifer gripped his hand, and slipped up through the mud and paint over his arm, hand coming to rest around his neck, compelling him to walk forward again from where he had stalled. The dwellings had been cleared, and the ground around the stone monolith bare and burnt, black as the velvet night sky. Cas felt the blackened sand and grit stick to his feet as he walked, felt it crunch underneath like the fiery dead leaves of autumn back home.

“Give yourself over,” Cas heard Lucifer say, but he didn’t see his lips move, “give yourself over to us and we shall watch over you, keep you and your own safe.”

“I do not know what to do…” Cas said, heard his words warp around him and flung away in the wind.

“You are a mother or a father, or a daughter or a son; you are all of these things and more, Outsider. But most of all,” Cas felt a chilled touch over his heart, “you are ours, Castiel.”

Cas blinked and all he could see was white, white entreating so fully upon his senses that he felt he almost ceased to exist for a horrible, tangible moment. Then he felt the presence. It started out small, like a pinprick of blood on pale perfect skin, and then it spread like a torrent, like a deluge of calm and cold over his arms, his chest, through his very bones. He was dimly aware of touching the monolith, that was also charred and black, and his hands came away coated in charcoal, which he used to draw over the now dry paint, lining a new sigil directly below his clavicle. It flowed, like water, like air, like the earth itself. He knew it was right in his heart. He saw all of this as if looking through a glass, through someone else’s eyes and it felt like a hand was squeezing his brain and the juices were leaking from his ears and eyes.

He heard murmurs and whispers behind him and around him in tongues he did not understand and yet he did all the same, in electric bright voices that stung and enthralled him equally. The voices made horrid promises of torment and destruction, torture and maiming, raping and burning, pillaging and ravaging, and all of it Cas desired in his heart of hearts. He felt himself committing the acts, felt his hands around the necks of women and children alike, felt his hand hold the blade that dealt the blows. He felt him throw the people down-both men and women-felt as he took his pleasure from their unwilling bodies. He would destroy the Empire that destroyed him. He would take their lands like they took his own, and his love and his life. They would learn soon enough of what it meant to take what was his.

Everything was white.