DCBB Black Glass pt.14
Part 13
Sam stirred from his spot by the bow when the natives around him whooped and hollered in excitement, jumping from the boat to swim ashore. He looked up above the boat and saw endless stone walls the likes of which he hadn’t seen before. They were tucked away from the world now, truly, in this land of orange and black sands and rock.
“We’re here,” Gabriel announced, stirring Sam with his now naked foot and Sam wrinkled his nose and batted him away, standing and yawning. Gabriel grinned impishly and jumped into the river himself, and Sam was surprised to see that it was rather shallow. The keel of their boat had most likely caught on the riverbed Sam thought as he gingerly removed his boots and stepped into the water. It was warm, and he instantly dug his toes into the sand beneath his feet, sighing. If he could have his way, he wouldn’t travel by boat ever again.
“Come on, Sam!” Gabriel called from further down the rocky canyon, and Sam hesitantly stepped forward, reluctant to leave their belongings behind. He rounded a corner and his breath caught at what he saw. It was a massive clearing, filled with huts and tents and several firmer structures made from stones and dried clay bricks. Cooking fires billowed smoke into the air, and the area smelled of fish and salt and spices. Dozens of small, sun dark children ran about their feet, laughing and squealing and Sam found himself smiling and laughing along, their delight infectious.
“I’m going to go talk to their priest, see if I can get him to raise the tide for us so we can bring the boat closer.” Gabriel explained, leaving his side to walk further into the community. Sam chuckled bitterly. No man could raise the water; they would simply have to wait for the tide to come in. But after a few minutes the water heated and bubbled around his ankles and the children screamed in excitement, swimming now that the water was…rising. The water was rising, Sam noted with a gape as it lapped at his upper thighs. A few from their group swam back around the corner, and a few minutes later the boat rounded the bend, coming to a stop not even feet from Sam’s dumbstruck face.
“Weird, isn’t it?” One of the children said, paddling around his waist, “My papa can do awesome things.”
“Your papa did this, did he?” Sam smiled wryly, earlier awe gone and now he wanted an explanation.
“Oh yes, Lucifer says he’s a magic man now, he can do all kinds of things. One time when we were starving he called fish to the river, big fish I ain’t ever seen before!”
“Right…” Sam chuckled, and the little girl frowned and splashed the still overly warm water in his face.
“Come and meet him, you’ll see! You won’t laugh when he chops your stones off and feeds them to the river shark.” She growled and Sam gaped.
“That is enough, Girl, I do not chop stones off.”
Sam backed away when one of the villagers came and lifted the mouthy girl from the water, grunting when she kicked and squealed in protest. The man was as dark as the girl, though not as much as the others Sam had seen, but he seemed to have far more tattoos than any one of them.
“But papa, he doesn’t believe you did that to the water!”
“No?” The man chuckled, not reproachful at all and he turned and dumped her back in the water with a splash. “Go play with the others, papa has business.”
Sam stared, fascinated, when he saw the man’s back. It was warped and burned, still livid red in some spots, splotchy white with new scar tissue in others. He winced in sympathy when the man straightened and the flesh stretched and warped to accommodate the movement, it had to be painful.
“I apologize for her, I…”
The man had turned around and Sam was finally able to get a good look at his face, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. His hair was a little lighter, but it was still thick and as unruly as ever. Uneven patches of facial hair dotted his chin and neck, a scruffy look that he knew he had adopted from watching Dean, that same scar on his chest from that wolf in the cabin all those years ago that now felt like another world and time entirely. And those eyes, still as bright and as blue as before.
“Sam…?” Cas, his brother, muttered, stepping forward hesitantly, and the others around them paused to watch them both.
“Cas, is that…is that you?” Sam croaked, hardly believing his eyes. Cas didn’t say a word, but he stumbled forward and drew Sam into a tight embrace, leaning his head against his neck. Sam reached around him, wrapping his arms around his waist in an effort to avoid the burns, too stunned to say anything.
“Sam,” Cas sobbed against his neck, and his arms tightened.
“Yeah Cas, it’s me…oh god it’s me…” Sam groaned, finding his voice as he tightened his grip and lifted Cas out of the water. Cas laughed and wrapped his legs around Sam’s waist, his voice thick, and his hands were everywhere, pressing around his shoulders, his back, running through his hair that was now a little longer than Cas was familiar with; he cupped his jaw and ran his thumbs over his eyebrows, kissing his forehead, all the while laughing and crying and uttering small words of gratitude and love. Sam set him down in the water and Cas slid gracefully from his waist, still staring fondly up at him, keeping a hand on the side of his face.
“I thought you to be dead,” Sam gasped, fighting off tears. For a moment they were back in the forest, in winter and snow and cold and everything was right and innocent again, but those days were long gone. Cas shook his head, smiling.
“But Cas, what…what happened to your wings? And you have tattoos now? I mean, what happened to you? And Dean! Oh, god! Dean’s still in the Empire. I just left him how could I have been so stupid and-”
“Sam,” Cas stopped him firmly with a hand on his chest and a lifted brow. Sam froze, realizing that Cas had spoken, for the second time within the past minute and he hadn’t even realized. He gaped like a fish out of water.
“You…you can talk? How…when?”
“When I lost Dean,” Cas answered, smile dropping.
“The river,” Cas continued, noticing Sam’s confusion, “the river broke the dam inside of me.”
Sam nodded, but he didn’t like it. Cas was definitely hiding something now, and he hoped that later he would get the full truth from Cas, and he hoped he could believe it.
“Papa, you cut his stones off yet?”
Cas blinked and looked down at the girl, and he lifted her into his arms, looking at Sam briefly with something unreadable in his eyes.
“Girl, this is Sam, my brother.”
She wrinkled her nose and glared at him, “Well I don’t like him.”
Cas laughed breathily and let her slip out of his arms to splash into the water again.
“Is she…?” Sam mouthed Dean’s name and Cas’s eyes widened, glancing down at the girl then back to Sam, nodding. Sam’s shoulders slumped and he kneeled with a soft smile on his lips.
“You have your daddy’s eyes,” he muttered, and the girl wrinkled her nose and frowned.
“Are you stupid? Papa has blue eyes, everyone knows that.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Uh, do you think I could talk to your papa alone please?”
She shrugged and skipped off to play and Sam watched her go. He stood and Cas was eyeing him warily.
“I couldn’t tell her,” he said, crossing his arms, “I couldn’t bear it.”
Sam nodded, trying to swallow around the dry lump in his throat.
“She is Dean’s.” Cas continued with a distant look in his eyes. “Born from Lisa in the cold and snow, would have died with her mother had I not…” He broke off and bit his lip, looking down. “Dean did not want her, and I took her as my own.”
“You raised her.” Sam prompted and Cas smiled softly.
“As much as I could.”
“And her name is Girl?”
“We never gave her a name…Girl just stuck.”
“And she never complained?”
“She does not know any better,” Cas laughed.
“I’m gonna have to get used to your voice,” Sam looked at Cas fondly. “Your accent is funny.”
“Forgive me for trying to learn all on my own.” Cas chuckled. Being with Cas again was easy and wonderful. He loved it, he loved Cas. He blinked and remembered the burns on his brother’s back and he frowned, gripping him on the shoulder to turn him around. He stared at Cas’s wingless back, at a loss for words.
“Not much to look at,” Cas tried to joke when Sam traced over the healing ropes of scar tissue and barely healed burns.
“Cas,” Sam sighed, admonishment thick in his tone, but Cas stepped away and turned back to face him.
“I had to do it, Sam. Maybe someday you will understand, perhaps not, but know that I did it for Dean. All of it, I did it for him.”
Sam nodded, following him into the shallows to retrieve their packs from the boat.
“So,” he started, attempting to change the subject, “you’re gonna tell me about those tattoos, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Cas breathed with a laugh, hefting a barrel full of rice over his head, something that two men should have had to move. They unpacked the remainder of the boat’s hold, and Sam and Cas wound up sitting on the shore afterwards, letting the warmth of the river lap at their bare ankles. Sam blushed when he realized how little Cas was actually wearing, he hadn’t taken the time to actually look beforehand. Straps of old, salt and sand crusted leather crisscrossed over his scarred and now tanned chest that creaked whenever he moved, peppered with buckles and sheathed blades and containers full of things Sam couldn’t possibly imagine. A simple flap of cloth covered his groin, and barely covered his ass, and Sam would almost feel embarrassed for him if the rest of the people weren’t dressed in a similar fashion, some wearing even less than him.
“How long…how long have you lived here, Cas?” Sam asked.
“I do not know. I have lost track of the days. The nights are…different here. And what of Dean? You were at the Empire, did you…have you learned anything?”
“When I was captured by the Empire, I heard a few soldiers talking about him.”
“What did they say?”
“I’m not…I’m not sure you want to know.”
“Sam-”
“Just know that he’s alive, okay? That’s more than we could ever hope for.”
“Alive is not enough!” Cas growled. Sam was unused to actually hearing his brother’s rage out loud other than animalistic cries.
“What did they say?” Cas asked again, quieter, deadlier.
“He is being…used, by Michael, the ruler of the Empire.”
Cas furrowed his brow and looked down.
“Used? I do not…”
“Please,” Sam whispered, pained, “don’t make me spell it out for you…”
Cas clenched his fists, and the very air seemed to change around the pair of them. Sam knew full well by then that Cas knew what he was insinuating.
“What happened, Cas? Why didn’t you come home?”
“You know why we could not.”
“Because of what you told me? About Lisa?”
“The soldiers from the Empire killed Lisa, we could not go back, there were too many.”
“But no word? No sign? I thought you both to be dead, Cas. Do you understand that?”
“We could not return, not even for you, Sam. You had wanted to keep me there, we had to run or face death.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. Cas squared his shoulders and looked up at him, still so much smaller than his older brother, even more so, now, without his wings.
“We ran north, with Girl. We were alone, we were safe for a time. Then we came across people by the Great River. They were from the Empire, we spent too long there, by the time we left soldiers had found the village.”
“Because of you…” Sam breathed. Did Cas even know what he was? Who he was?
“Yes. They were searching for me. And because of me those people died.”
“Because you are the heir to the throne, Cas!” Sam hissed under his breath, suddenly wary of where they were. These people were hardly sympathetic to the Empire as it was, and if they found that one of their adopted own was the heir to the Holy Throne, they would surely be killed.
Cas stared at him then guffawed, standing to walk back to the collection of tents with his shoulders shaking from mirth. It was a dry, wheezing sort of laughter, and Sam found he didn’t like it at all. He ran after his brother.
“Cas, wait!” He shouted, but Gabriel stepped in front of him and shook his head. Sam stared after him and sighed. He would have to get used to Cas again. So long without him made him forget how Cas was normally. He was difficult, cold, and even without words snide. This Cas was no different, just more…verbal. And without Dean as a buffer, he was even worse.
“Let him breathe for a bit, Sam. He has one of his brothers back, yes, but no offense, you’re not the one he wants.”
“Don’t you want to talk to him too, Gabriel? You’ve been looking for him longer than I have.”
“Sam!”
Both Gabriel and Sam turned to see Cas beckoning them from the front flap of a tent. He looked exasperated, but at least he wanted to talk after all. Once they were safely stowed inside the cool confines of the tent-judging by the blankets and cushions and things scattered around it was Cas’s dwelling-Cas sat down cross-legged and Sam and Gabriel did the same.
“I am sorry, Sam. Such things are too much too take in, and so much has happened, too much to describe.”
“But you know, don’t you? Know what you are?”
“I know many things now, Sam. But there is much that you don’t know.”
“Your wings?” Sam prompted, inching closer. Cas smiled and chuckled.
“I have gained and lost a great many things. Perhaps…” Cas trailed off and clenched his hands. “Perhaps it would be better to just show you.”
Sam saw Cas lean forward to place two fingers on both his forehead and Gabriel’s, then the world went white.
Sam stirred from his spot by the bow when the natives around him whooped and hollered in excitement, jumping from the boat to swim ashore. He looked up above the boat and saw endless stone walls the likes of which he hadn’t seen before. They were tucked away from the world now, truly, in this land of orange and black sands and rock.
“We’re here,” Gabriel announced, stirring Sam with his now naked foot and Sam wrinkled his nose and batted him away, standing and yawning. Gabriel grinned impishly and jumped into the river himself, and Sam was surprised to see that it was rather shallow. The keel of their boat had most likely caught on the riverbed Sam thought as he gingerly removed his boots and stepped into the water. It was warm, and he instantly dug his toes into the sand beneath his feet, sighing. If he could have his way, he wouldn’t travel by boat ever again.
“Come on, Sam!” Gabriel called from further down the rocky canyon, and Sam hesitantly stepped forward, reluctant to leave their belongings behind. He rounded a corner and his breath caught at what he saw. It was a massive clearing, filled with huts and tents and several firmer structures made from stones and dried clay bricks. Cooking fires billowed smoke into the air, and the area smelled of fish and salt and spices. Dozens of small, sun dark children ran about their feet, laughing and squealing and Sam found himself smiling and laughing along, their delight infectious.
“I’m going to go talk to their priest, see if I can get him to raise the tide for us so we can bring the boat closer.” Gabriel explained, leaving his side to walk further into the community. Sam chuckled bitterly. No man could raise the water; they would simply have to wait for the tide to come in. But after a few minutes the water heated and bubbled around his ankles and the children screamed in excitement, swimming now that the water was…rising. The water was rising, Sam noted with a gape as it lapped at his upper thighs. A few from their group swam back around the corner, and a few minutes later the boat rounded the bend, coming to a stop not even feet from Sam’s dumbstruck face.
“Weird, isn’t it?” One of the children said, paddling around his waist, “My papa can do awesome things.”
“Your papa did this, did he?” Sam smiled wryly, earlier awe gone and now he wanted an explanation.
“Oh yes, Lucifer says he’s a magic man now, he can do all kinds of things. One time when we were starving he called fish to the river, big fish I ain’t ever seen before!”
“Right…” Sam chuckled, and the little girl frowned and splashed the still overly warm water in his face.
“Come and meet him, you’ll see! You won’t laugh when he chops your stones off and feeds them to the river shark.” She growled and Sam gaped.
“That is enough, Girl, I do not chop stones off.”
Sam backed away when one of the villagers came and lifted the mouthy girl from the water, grunting when she kicked and squealed in protest. The man was as dark as the girl, though not as much as the others Sam had seen, but he seemed to have far more tattoos than any one of them.
“But papa, he doesn’t believe you did that to the water!”
“No?” The man chuckled, not reproachful at all and he turned and dumped her back in the water with a splash. “Go play with the others, papa has business.”
Sam stared, fascinated, when he saw the man’s back. It was warped and burned, still livid red in some spots, splotchy white with new scar tissue in others. He winced in sympathy when the man straightened and the flesh stretched and warped to accommodate the movement, it had to be painful.
“I apologize for her, I…”
The man had turned around and Sam was finally able to get a good look at his face, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. His hair was a little lighter, but it was still thick and as unruly as ever. Uneven patches of facial hair dotted his chin and neck, a scruffy look that he knew he had adopted from watching Dean, that same scar on his chest from that wolf in the cabin all those years ago that now felt like another world and time entirely. And those eyes, still as bright and as blue as before.
“Sam…?” Cas, his brother, muttered, stepping forward hesitantly, and the others around them paused to watch them both.
“Cas, is that…is that you?” Sam croaked, hardly believing his eyes. Cas didn’t say a word, but he stumbled forward and drew Sam into a tight embrace, leaning his head against his neck. Sam reached around him, wrapping his arms around his waist in an effort to avoid the burns, too stunned to say anything.
“Sam,” Cas sobbed against his neck, and his arms tightened.
“Yeah Cas, it’s me…oh god it’s me…” Sam groaned, finding his voice as he tightened his grip and lifted Cas out of the water. Cas laughed and wrapped his legs around Sam’s waist, his voice thick, and his hands were everywhere, pressing around his shoulders, his back, running through his hair that was now a little longer than Cas was familiar with; he cupped his jaw and ran his thumbs over his eyebrows, kissing his forehead, all the while laughing and crying and uttering small words of gratitude and love. Sam set him down in the water and Cas slid gracefully from his waist, still staring fondly up at him, keeping a hand on the side of his face.
“I thought you to be dead,” Sam gasped, fighting off tears. For a moment they were back in the forest, in winter and snow and cold and everything was right and innocent again, but those days were long gone. Cas shook his head, smiling.
“But Cas, what…what happened to your wings? And you have tattoos now? I mean, what happened to you? And Dean! Oh, god! Dean’s still in the Empire. I just left him how could I have been so stupid and-”
“Sam,” Cas stopped him firmly with a hand on his chest and a lifted brow. Sam froze, realizing that Cas had spoken, for the second time within the past minute and he hadn’t even realized. He gaped like a fish out of water.
“You…you can talk? How…when?”
“When I lost Dean,” Cas answered, smile dropping.
“The river,” Cas continued, noticing Sam’s confusion, “the river broke the dam inside of me.”
Sam nodded, but he didn’t like it. Cas was definitely hiding something now, and he hoped that later he would get the full truth from Cas, and he hoped he could believe it.
“Papa, you cut his stones off yet?”
Cas blinked and looked down at the girl, and he lifted her into his arms, looking at Sam briefly with something unreadable in his eyes.
“Girl, this is Sam, my brother.”
She wrinkled her nose and glared at him, “Well I don’t like him.”
Cas laughed breathily and let her slip out of his arms to splash into the water again.
“Is she…?” Sam mouthed Dean’s name and Cas’s eyes widened, glancing down at the girl then back to Sam, nodding. Sam’s shoulders slumped and he kneeled with a soft smile on his lips.
“You have your daddy’s eyes,” he muttered, and the girl wrinkled her nose and frowned.
“Are you stupid? Papa has blue eyes, everyone knows that.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Uh, do you think I could talk to your papa alone please?”
She shrugged and skipped off to play and Sam watched her go. He stood and Cas was eyeing him warily.
“I couldn’t tell her,” he said, crossing his arms, “I couldn’t bear it.”
Sam nodded, trying to swallow around the dry lump in his throat.
“She is Dean’s.” Cas continued with a distant look in his eyes. “Born from Lisa in the cold and snow, would have died with her mother had I not…” He broke off and bit his lip, looking down. “Dean did not want her, and I took her as my own.”
“You raised her.” Sam prompted and Cas smiled softly.
“As much as I could.”
“And her name is Girl?”
“We never gave her a name…Girl just stuck.”
“And she never complained?”
“She does not know any better,” Cas laughed.
“I’m gonna have to get used to your voice,” Sam looked at Cas fondly. “Your accent is funny.”
“Forgive me for trying to learn all on my own.” Cas chuckled. Being with Cas again was easy and wonderful. He loved it, he loved Cas. He blinked and remembered the burns on his brother’s back and he frowned, gripping him on the shoulder to turn him around. He stared at Cas’s wingless back, at a loss for words.
“Not much to look at,” Cas tried to joke when Sam traced over the healing ropes of scar tissue and barely healed burns.
“Cas,” Sam sighed, admonishment thick in his tone, but Cas stepped away and turned back to face him.
“I had to do it, Sam. Maybe someday you will understand, perhaps not, but know that I did it for Dean. All of it, I did it for him.”
Sam nodded, following him into the shallows to retrieve their packs from the boat.
“So,” he started, attempting to change the subject, “you’re gonna tell me about those tattoos, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Cas breathed with a laugh, hefting a barrel full of rice over his head, something that two men should have had to move. They unpacked the remainder of the boat’s hold, and Sam and Cas wound up sitting on the shore afterwards, letting the warmth of the river lap at their bare ankles. Sam blushed when he realized how little Cas was actually wearing, he hadn’t taken the time to actually look beforehand. Straps of old, salt and sand crusted leather crisscrossed over his scarred and now tanned chest that creaked whenever he moved, peppered with buckles and sheathed blades and containers full of things Sam couldn’t possibly imagine. A simple flap of cloth covered his groin, and barely covered his ass, and Sam would almost feel embarrassed for him if the rest of the people weren’t dressed in a similar fashion, some wearing even less than him.
“How long…how long have you lived here, Cas?” Sam asked.
“I do not know. I have lost track of the days. The nights are…different here. And what of Dean? You were at the Empire, did you…have you learned anything?”
“When I was captured by the Empire, I heard a few soldiers talking about him.”
“What did they say?”
“I’m not…I’m not sure you want to know.”
“Sam-”
“Just know that he’s alive, okay? That’s more than we could ever hope for.”
“Alive is not enough!” Cas growled. Sam was unused to actually hearing his brother’s rage out loud other than animalistic cries.
“What did they say?” Cas asked again, quieter, deadlier.
“He is being…used, by Michael, the ruler of the Empire.”
Cas furrowed his brow and looked down.
“Used? I do not…”
“Please,” Sam whispered, pained, “don’t make me spell it out for you…”
Cas clenched his fists, and the very air seemed to change around the pair of them. Sam knew full well by then that Cas knew what he was insinuating.
“What happened, Cas? Why didn’t you come home?”
“You know why we could not.”
“Because of what you told me? About Lisa?”
“The soldiers from the Empire killed Lisa, we could not go back, there were too many.”
“But no word? No sign? I thought you both to be dead, Cas. Do you understand that?”
“We could not return, not even for you, Sam. You had wanted to keep me there, we had to run or face death.”
Sam ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. Cas squared his shoulders and looked up at him, still so much smaller than his older brother, even more so, now, without his wings.
“We ran north, with Girl. We were alone, we were safe for a time. Then we came across people by the Great River. They were from the Empire, we spent too long there, by the time we left soldiers had found the village.”
“Because of you…” Sam breathed. Did Cas even know what he was? Who he was?
“Yes. They were searching for me. And because of me those people died.”
“Because you are the heir to the throne, Cas!” Sam hissed under his breath, suddenly wary of where they were. These people were hardly sympathetic to the Empire as it was, and if they found that one of their adopted own was the heir to the Holy Throne, they would surely be killed.
Cas stared at him then guffawed, standing to walk back to the collection of tents with his shoulders shaking from mirth. It was a dry, wheezing sort of laughter, and Sam found he didn’t like it at all. He ran after his brother.
“Cas, wait!” He shouted, but Gabriel stepped in front of him and shook his head. Sam stared after him and sighed. He would have to get used to Cas again. So long without him made him forget how Cas was normally. He was difficult, cold, and even without words snide. This Cas was no different, just more…verbal. And without Dean as a buffer, he was even worse.
“Let him breathe for a bit, Sam. He has one of his brothers back, yes, but no offense, you’re not the one he wants.”
“Don’t you want to talk to him too, Gabriel? You’ve been looking for him longer than I have.”
“Sam!”
Both Gabriel and Sam turned to see Cas beckoning them from the front flap of a tent. He looked exasperated, but at least he wanted to talk after all. Once they were safely stowed inside the cool confines of the tent-judging by the blankets and cushions and things scattered around it was Cas’s dwelling-Cas sat down cross-legged and Sam and Gabriel did the same.
“I am sorry, Sam. Such things are too much too take in, and so much has happened, too much to describe.”
“But you know, don’t you? Know what you are?”
“I know many things now, Sam. But there is much that you don’t know.”
“Your wings?” Sam prompted, inching closer. Cas smiled and chuckled.
“I have gained and lost a great many things. Perhaps…” Cas trailed off and clenched his hands. “Perhaps it would be better to just show you.”
Sam saw Cas lean forward to place two fingers on both his forehead and Gabriel’s, then the world went white.