Fic: Adventures in Solitude [3/11]
Title: Adventures in Soltiude [3/11]
Author: bloodism
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural/post-Season 4 canon-au, romance, hurt/comfort
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel, Sam/OC
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 30, 708
Warnings: fallen!cas, OC's, sexual content, canon-au
8th July 2010
New Orleans, Louisiana
To think that he would ever be safe was foolish of Castiel.
He didn’t refuse to love God’s creatures. He didn’t go into hiding and refuse to return to duty. He didn’t fall willingly because he knew that being a human was everything that an angel wasn’t.
He stopped the apocalypse, screwed up Heaven’s plan, killed his brothers and sisters and ripped up the ending that had been laid out since the beginning of time. Falling wouldn’t be enough.
He hadn’t stopped to consider this. He had thought that leaving the Winchesters and being powerless had been punishment enough. Clearly he was wrong.
He’s still at the Cooper’s, donned with a clean suit and typical tan trench coat, thick stubble coating his jawline.
“So,” Jude hands him a cool drink of orange juice with tiny ice cubes floating on the surface. “What’s your motivation?”
Castiel watches her move over to the garden swing and sit down, staring at him with interested eyes.
“Motivation?”
“You know, every hunter has a reason they got into the biz. ‘Cept for those who just love killing things.”
“I...” Castiel looks down at his drink and watches the ice cubes bob around. “I’m looking for purpose.”
“Purpose?”
“Defeating these creatures and saving the lives of others is all I can do. I have this idea that,” he smiles down at his hands, “If I save enough of them, I may be forgiven.”
Jude slides off of the swing slowly and seats herself next to him, her back rigid. She’s uncomfortable and possibly a little bit wary.
“Forgiven for what?”
Castiel raises his head to look at her and she’s watching him, tenderness and intelligence behind her young, brown eyes. It’s strange that the first person Castiel befriends as a human is so young when he himself is so old. Perhaps that was what he needed; someone who hadn’t lived long enough to be scarred by the evil in the world.
And yet she was.
There was that same haunted gleam lingering in her gaze. And hope. She wanted someone else to need forgiveness and that interested him.
“I’ve... done things. My family has banished me and though I know what I did was right, it still feels...”
“Wrong,” Jude cuts in and there’s an understanding smile tugging at her lips. Castiel feels a smile begin to twitch around his. He’s about to tell her that whatever wrongs she has done, he is sure they have been forgiven, but the floor beneath him starts to tremble.
“What the…” Jude’s looking at the sky. Castiel knows what it is. He knows what’s coming and it’s coming fast, because the walls are shaking and there’s a ringing that’s getting sharper and harsher and it’s familiar, it’s something he feels like he should be able to understand, but it’s scrambled, like he’s hearing the remnants of an echo.
“We need to go,” he says hurriedly, but Jude just turns around and stares at him dumbly. He feels a familiar dominance pumping through his veins. “Now!”
She starts to move. She’s pulling a handgun out of her pocket and jumping to her feet. Castiel places the orange juice hurriedly onto the table, the liquid spilling over his hand and he tugs at her sleeve. It’s louder now and he’s fighting against the instinctive urge to raise his hands to his ears.
“What is it?” Jude shouts over the rattling of the window panes and the deafening roar of an approaching open angel. Castiel’s scared. He’s worried for her safety, because an angel floating around out of its vessel was not a good sign.
It was coming for him, but it’d get her too.
He pulls harder on her sleeve and they’re stumbling down the stairs of the veranda, heading down a path. Castiel spots a shed and the ground beneath him starts to shudder violently.
“In there,” he says breathlessly, low and commanding. Jude spares him a crazed look, before nodding and he tugs her into the shed, pushing over old guns and sharp objects. Castiel pulls away from her, slices his arm lightly with a nearby blade and begins to draw a small sigil on the wood.
The rumbling halts and the weapons hanging from the walls stop moving. They tinkle, sending trickles of dust down from the ceiling.
“What the hell…” Jude says, turning to look at Castiel, eyes still wild, “…was that?”
Castiel clenches his jaw shut and rips off some material from a worn sheet. He wraps it around his bleeding arm, pulls a dirty duffel bag towards him.
“I’m assuming it was something that wanted to harm me.” He puts a sawed-off shotgun into the bag and stares dumbly down at the weapon. He doesn’t know how to use it.
“You? What did it want with you? Whatever ‘it’ was?” Jude asks, a little hysteric. Castiel stiffens and sighs.
“I’m sorry.” He looks over his shoulder. “Now that they know you’re with me, they’ll hunt you too.”
There’s a flash of fear in Jude’s eyes before it’s covered with more confusion and anger.
“’They’? Who is ‘they?’ What aren’t you telling us? Why did a frickin’ blood doodle stop that… that... thing from attacking us? Huh?”
“Answers will just mean more questions.” Castiel shoulders the now-full bag of weapons. “We need to wait before we leave. That sigil doesn’t last long. Tell your sister not to come back here. Now that they know she is associated with me, she’s in danger.”
Jude seems unable to refuse his smooth orders and with one more irritated, curious glare, she picks her mobile out of her pocket and phones Fae. Their conversation is short, and Jude sighs when it ends.
“Well, other than her being completely freaked out, she said she’s near Wyoming, so she’ll meet us there in a couple of days. She’s found a hunt over there.”
Castiel nods.
“Good. She should be safe.”
Jude’s staring at him with these interested - and somewhat wary - eyes now.
“And us? What are we gonna do?”
Castiel doesn’t know. If he had been an angel, he’d carve sigils into her ribs to keep her safe. He’d fly her to Bobby’s, tell him to look after her. He’d go talk to Dean, tell him what had happened. He’d listen to Sam’s advice and silently enjoy Dean’s berating for how foolish he’d been.
But he couldn’t do that now. He had a wad of money in his pocket, a bag full of guns he couldn’t use, he hurt and he was tired.
“We meet back up with your sister. Then…” We’ll look for the Winchesters. He wants to say it, but he can’t. The image he’d imprinted - the brothers clutching each other, laughing - is still alive in his mind and he just can’t. “Then, we’ll make it up as we go.”
-
10th July 2010
Manhattan, Kansas
When Fae gets to Riverton, her mind has conjured up a thousand different things that could have happened to Jude and Castiel. Her fingers are itching to pick up the phone and call them, but the pup had insisted that she stop calling, as ‘they’ would be able to track her. He still had yet to define ‘they’ and she was twitchy with the urge to find out.
She drops her bags onto the bed with a sigh, rubbing a hand over her aching shoulder. She’d driven for hours, and at such short notice too. She was tired, and with such little provisions, she needed to head out almost immediately to stock up.
But just as she’s leaving the motel room, she stops.
The floor starts to tremble, the doorknob begins to rattle and she doesn’t hesitate. She’s across the room, slicing her arm and painting the symbol that Castiel described to her on the wall with shaking fingers. As she joins the two ends of the circle up, she hopes it’s right, because there’s a shrill ringing now and there’s this overwhelming aura of strength and purity that’s just a little too mysterious for her.
It’s right. The buzzing stops and it’s muffled, as though she’s hearing it through a bubble.
She waits for her heartbeat to return to normal and then slumps down on her bed. She knew something big was up and it had something to do with the puppy that Jude had dragged home with her. Information was being withheld and she didn’t like it.
But there was nothing she could do.
-
10th July 2010
Kentucky, Lexington
“Okay, we need to pull over,” Jude’s voice cuts through the silence of the car and Castiel jerks in his seat, blinking out the tiredness in his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he protests, gripping the wheel tighter. It was simple mechanics, really, the process of driving. He had always thought it looked easy when Dean was behind the wheel and he was right.
“Oh no, you are not fine. You’ve swerved over that line too many times for it to be safe. We’re pulling over.” Jude leans across and flicks the indicator. With a defeated glance, Castiel pulls into a parking lot of the roadside motel they had been driving past and parks.
Of course, Dean had never made it clear to him just how tiring it was to drive. All the times Dean had snapped at Castiel during intense conversations in the front of the Impala suddenly made sense.
“How much longer are we gonna be on the road?” Jude asks after they’ve checked into their room. She drops heavily onto her bed and throws an arm over her eyes, body limp with weariness.
“As long as we need to be.” Castiel’s surprised at the exhaustion of his tone and he drops onto his own bed, gazing around the run down motel room with an interest he’d never had before. When he had travelled with the Winchesters, the state of the motel rooms they stayed in had never been a matter of importance, as he was not the once using the facilities. However, now, as he was the one sleeping in the beds and using the bathroom, it seemed like something he should be thinking about.
Their room was small but clean, with plain white walls, gray carpet and the smell of cheap polish in the air. Little things that Castiel wouldn’t have picked up on originally were suddenly things he found important: the whirring of the cars that passed; the creaking of the walls; the lopsided picture on the wall opposite him.
At some point during the examination of the room, Castiel falls asleep. He dreams of hellfire and ice and green eyes.
-
11th October 2009
South Dakota, Rapid City
Dean Winchester’s eyes lurch open, and he stares into the darkness of the motel room. There’s soft, untroubled breathing coming from Sam’s bed and Dean evens his own breath out to match it.
It was the same dream. Roaring fires and bright ice, heat and white frost latching onto parts of his body, shrill noises and burning light and goodness amongst the screams and squelches of tearing flesh.
His shoulder throbs and to soothe it, he raises a sweaty palm and presses his fingers into the fabric of his shirt. Beneath it lies the handprint.
It’s a horrid memory and brings back the erratic flapping of wings he had heard so often. A reminder of something he’d never got to start.
Thunder rolls above him and he puts his head in his hands.
He knew it, now. It had been months since Castiel had left and when you were a hunter, after a couple of days you were supposed to assume the worst.
Castiel was dead.
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Author: bloodism
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural/post-Season 4 canon-au, romance, hurt/comfort
Pairing(s): Dean/Castiel, Sam/OC
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 30, 708
Warnings: fallen!cas, OC's, sexual content, canon-au
8th July 2010
New Orleans, Louisiana
To think that he would ever be safe was foolish of Castiel.
He didn’t refuse to love God’s creatures. He didn’t go into hiding and refuse to return to duty. He didn’t fall willingly because he knew that being a human was everything that an angel wasn’t.
He stopped the apocalypse, screwed up Heaven’s plan, killed his brothers and sisters and ripped up the ending that had been laid out since the beginning of time. Falling wouldn’t be enough.
He hadn’t stopped to consider this. He had thought that leaving the Winchesters and being powerless had been punishment enough. Clearly he was wrong.
He’s still at the Cooper’s, donned with a clean suit and typical tan trench coat, thick stubble coating his jawline.
“So,” Jude hands him a cool drink of orange juice with tiny ice cubes floating on the surface. “What’s your motivation?”
Castiel watches her move over to the garden swing and sit down, staring at him with interested eyes.
“Motivation?”
“You know, every hunter has a reason they got into the biz. ‘Cept for those who just love killing things.”
“I...” Castiel looks down at his drink and watches the ice cubes bob around. “I’m looking for purpose.”
“Purpose?”
“Defeating these creatures and saving the lives of others is all I can do. I have this idea that,” he smiles down at his hands, “If I save enough of them, I may be forgiven.”
Jude slides off of the swing slowly and seats herself next to him, her back rigid. She’s uncomfortable and possibly a little bit wary.
“Forgiven for what?”
Castiel raises his head to look at her and she’s watching him, tenderness and intelligence behind her young, brown eyes. It’s strange that the first person Castiel befriends as a human is so young when he himself is so old. Perhaps that was what he needed; someone who hadn’t lived long enough to be scarred by the evil in the world.
And yet she was.
There was that same haunted gleam lingering in her gaze. And hope. She wanted someone else to need forgiveness and that interested him.
“I’ve... done things. My family has banished me and though I know what I did was right, it still feels...”
“Wrong,” Jude cuts in and there’s an understanding smile tugging at her lips. Castiel feels a smile begin to twitch around his. He’s about to tell her that whatever wrongs she has done, he is sure they have been forgiven, but the floor beneath him starts to tremble.
“What the…” Jude’s looking at the sky. Castiel knows what it is. He knows what’s coming and it’s coming fast, because the walls are shaking and there’s a ringing that’s getting sharper and harsher and it’s familiar, it’s something he feels like he should be able to understand, but it’s scrambled, like he’s hearing the remnants of an echo.
“We need to go,” he says hurriedly, but Jude just turns around and stares at him dumbly. He feels a familiar dominance pumping through his veins. “Now!”
She starts to move. She’s pulling a handgun out of her pocket and jumping to her feet. Castiel places the orange juice hurriedly onto the table, the liquid spilling over his hand and he tugs at her sleeve. It’s louder now and he’s fighting against the instinctive urge to raise his hands to his ears.
“What is it?” Jude shouts over the rattling of the window panes and the deafening roar of an approaching open angel. Castiel’s scared. He’s worried for her safety, because an angel floating around out of its vessel was not a good sign.
It was coming for him, but it’d get her too.
He pulls harder on her sleeve and they’re stumbling down the stairs of the veranda, heading down a path. Castiel spots a shed and the ground beneath him starts to shudder violently.
“In there,” he says breathlessly, low and commanding. Jude spares him a crazed look, before nodding and he tugs her into the shed, pushing over old guns and sharp objects. Castiel pulls away from her, slices his arm lightly with a nearby blade and begins to draw a small sigil on the wood.
The rumbling halts and the weapons hanging from the walls stop moving. They tinkle, sending trickles of dust down from the ceiling.
“What the hell…” Jude says, turning to look at Castiel, eyes still wild, “…was that?”
Castiel clenches his jaw shut and rips off some material from a worn sheet. He wraps it around his bleeding arm, pulls a dirty duffel bag towards him.
“I’m assuming it was something that wanted to harm me.” He puts a sawed-off shotgun into the bag and stares dumbly down at the weapon. He doesn’t know how to use it.
“You? What did it want with you? Whatever ‘it’ was?” Jude asks, a little hysteric. Castiel stiffens and sighs.
“I’m sorry.” He looks over his shoulder. “Now that they know you’re with me, they’ll hunt you too.”
There’s a flash of fear in Jude’s eyes before it’s covered with more confusion and anger.
“’They’? Who is ‘they?’ What aren’t you telling us? Why did a frickin’ blood doodle stop that… that... thing from attacking us? Huh?”
“Answers will just mean more questions.” Castiel shoulders the now-full bag of weapons. “We need to wait before we leave. That sigil doesn’t last long. Tell your sister not to come back here. Now that they know she is associated with me, she’s in danger.”
Jude seems unable to refuse his smooth orders and with one more irritated, curious glare, she picks her mobile out of her pocket and phones Fae. Their conversation is short, and Jude sighs when it ends.
“Well, other than her being completely freaked out, she said she’s near Wyoming, so she’ll meet us there in a couple of days. She’s found a hunt over there.”
Castiel nods.
“Good. She should be safe.”
Jude’s staring at him with these interested - and somewhat wary - eyes now.
“And us? What are we gonna do?”
Castiel doesn’t know. If he had been an angel, he’d carve sigils into her ribs to keep her safe. He’d fly her to Bobby’s, tell him to look after her. He’d go talk to Dean, tell him what had happened. He’d listen to Sam’s advice and silently enjoy Dean’s berating for how foolish he’d been.
But he couldn’t do that now. He had a wad of money in his pocket, a bag full of guns he couldn’t use, he hurt and he was tired.
“We meet back up with your sister. Then…” We’ll look for the Winchesters. He wants to say it, but he can’t. The image he’d imprinted - the brothers clutching each other, laughing - is still alive in his mind and he just can’t. “Then, we’ll make it up as we go.”
-
10th July 2010
Manhattan, Kansas
When Fae gets to Riverton, her mind has conjured up a thousand different things that could have happened to Jude and Castiel. Her fingers are itching to pick up the phone and call them, but the pup had insisted that she stop calling, as ‘they’ would be able to track her. He still had yet to define ‘they’ and she was twitchy with the urge to find out.
She drops her bags onto the bed with a sigh, rubbing a hand over her aching shoulder. She’d driven for hours, and at such short notice too. She was tired, and with such little provisions, she needed to head out almost immediately to stock up.
But just as she’s leaving the motel room, she stops.
The floor starts to tremble, the doorknob begins to rattle and she doesn’t hesitate. She’s across the room, slicing her arm and painting the symbol that Castiel described to her on the wall with shaking fingers. As she joins the two ends of the circle up, she hopes it’s right, because there’s a shrill ringing now and there’s this overwhelming aura of strength and purity that’s just a little too mysterious for her.
It’s right. The buzzing stops and it’s muffled, as though she’s hearing it through a bubble.
She waits for her heartbeat to return to normal and then slumps down on her bed. She knew something big was up and it had something to do with the puppy that Jude had dragged home with her. Information was being withheld and she didn’t like it.
But there was nothing she could do.
-
10th July 2010
Kentucky, Lexington
“Okay, we need to pull over,” Jude’s voice cuts through the silence of the car and Castiel jerks in his seat, blinking out the tiredness in his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he protests, gripping the wheel tighter. It was simple mechanics, really, the process of driving. He had always thought it looked easy when Dean was behind the wheel and he was right.
“Oh no, you are not fine. You’ve swerved over that line too many times for it to be safe. We’re pulling over.” Jude leans across and flicks the indicator. With a defeated glance, Castiel pulls into a parking lot of the roadside motel they had been driving past and parks.
Of course, Dean had never made it clear to him just how tiring it was to drive. All the times Dean had snapped at Castiel during intense conversations in the front of the Impala suddenly made sense.
“How much longer are we gonna be on the road?” Jude asks after they’ve checked into their room. She drops heavily onto her bed and throws an arm over her eyes, body limp with weariness.
“As long as we need to be.” Castiel’s surprised at the exhaustion of his tone and he drops onto his own bed, gazing around the run down motel room with an interest he’d never had before. When he had travelled with the Winchesters, the state of the motel rooms they stayed in had never been a matter of importance, as he was not the once using the facilities. However, now, as he was the one sleeping in the beds and using the bathroom, it seemed like something he should be thinking about.
Their room was small but clean, with plain white walls, gray carpet and the smell of cheap polish in the air. Little things that Castiel wouldn’t have picked up on originally were suddenly things he found important: the whirring of the cars that passed; the creaking of the walls; the lopsided picture on the wall opposite him.
At some point during the examination of the room, Castiel falls asleep. He dreams of hellfire and ice and green eyes.
-
11th October 2009
South Dakota, Rapid City
Dean Winchester’s eyes lurch open, and he stares into the darkness of the motel room. There’s soft, untroubled breathing coming from Sam’s bed and Dean evens his own breath out to match it.
It was the same dream. Roaring fires and bright ice, heat and white frost latching onto parts of his body, shrill noises and burning light and goodness amongst the screams and squelches of tearing flesh.
His shoulder throbs and to soothe it, he raises a sweaty palm and presses his fingers into the fabric of his shirt. Beneath it lies the handprint.
It’s a horrid memory and brings back the erratic flapping of wings he had heard so often. A reminder of something he’d never got to start.
Thunder rolls above him and he puts his head in his hands.
He knew it, now. It had been months since Castiel had left and when you were a hunter, after a couple of days you were supposed to assume the worst.
Castiel was dead.
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