To the day we burned maps [3/3]
3. out of our flesh
She finds her sister in a small house outside Tulsa, miles away from the ruin of Camp Chitauqua. “You look kinda sick, ma’am. Are you okay? Are you here to see the doctor?” asks a young girl who accosts her on the street. Her tan skin bears the scabs of sores healed over. “She’s really nice! And she’s got the prettiest hair!”-and skipping down the road, she warbles, “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens-“ Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, Claire adds. The girl’s voice resounds like a clear silver bell, alien in its impossible happiness, and Castiel thinks to herself, Once upon a time, she could have been someone great. Just like everyone else.
No one presumes to be of grand stature in a croat-ridden world. But Anna Milton very nearly is. When she opens the door, she looks like no angel-her hair is tied back into a shapeless bun that slouches to the side; a raised scar runs along her left cheekbone and follows the path of a dagger slash; her body is covered in dust and sweat and streaked with the blood of a patient. Before her escape from Heaven, her wings had been flayed to tatters. But in her face Castiel can still see something left of her grace.
“Anael,” she says. “Anna.” Anna, Dean is dead, she opens her mouth again to say, but only silence uncoils from her tongue, cold and slow like a sinuous snake.
The world is dead.
Anna holds the door open wider. “Come in, Castiel,” she murmurs.
Castiel steps forward. In the dark circles of Anna’s irises, she can see her own reflection, and the grayness of despair.
*
Traditional Big Bang theory implies a curved heterogeneous universe when it is in fact flat and homogeneous - explanation derived from inflationary universe model → chaotic inflation theory
dude, do you understand any of this?
STOP WRITING ON MY NOTES, PETER.
The idea of bubble universes is derived from chaotic inflation theory - quantum fluctuations causing false (lower-energy) or true progeny vacuums - find a starting point and from there expand (like last night?)
WHOA. Last night yeahhhh
STOP INSINUATING. god you’re so dirty. just a dream I had last night. I dreamed I helped my sister turn time inside-out. It was pretty creepy.
you don’t have a sister, Milton.
THANKS FOR STATING THE OBVIOUS, mr. brainiac.
[cosmology notes marginalia, Anna Milton]
*
She hated biology. Meiosis, mitosis, whatever. Ms. Price was nice, but too slow when teaching her lessons in class and too easy on the students who whispered and threw spitballs around in the back of the room. The homework wasn’t any more interesting. She groaned and let her head thunk heavily against the textbook.
She’d been having trouble concentrating, for a while.
The hair on her neck rose slowly and she looked up-saw a shape through the window, a still figure on the sidewalk.
The girl started forward, walking up to their front door, maybe to sell subscriptions or publicize a fundraiser. (That made sense; the church was getting ready the upcoming annual Thanksgiving dinner and charity raffle.) She scooted her chair to the side and squinted, guessed that she was older, like she was in high school. Probably a fundraiser.
She got up from the table as the doorbell rang. Turned the doorknob, pulled the door open, and looked into eyes as blue as her own. The girl’s cheekbones showed prominently under skin pulled tight with exhaustion, and her jeans looked like they’d been ripped and sewn back together.
Or not a fundraiser after all.
“Hi,” she said cautiously.
“Hello,” replied the girl; she stared at her and didn’t blink. The dark circles under her eyes stood out starkly against pale skin, smudges curving under limp eyelashes and washed-out blue irises.
Claire shuffled her feet and stood up straighter. “Um,” she said. There’s a shelter three streets over, she recalled. Daddy volunteered in the kitchens there. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “It’ll only take a moment. Are your parents here?”
“Um.” Claire bit her lip. You don’t talk to strangers about stuff like that, she thought. But the silence stretched out too long for her answer to be seen as a truthful reaction. “Mom’s in the back,” she said, “if there’s anything important-”
“No,” said the girl. “Nothing to you. You don’t need to know. Or remember. I just wanted to see my parents again. Before tonight.”
She looked very grave and tired but her hand came up sharply and did not tremble as she rested two fingers against Claire’s forehead, and pressed down.
The darkness embraced her like a lover, but Claire could hear, very distantly, the flutter of wings.
*
“Just turn the engine off,” Reidy muttered to Victor as they sat in the car. Victor leaned forward, twisted the key sharply to the left-and silence suffused the car like chloroform.
They sat there, their breathing even. Reidy propped his elbow on the door of the car and stared out into the alley next to Winchester and Moore’s apartment. Victor kept his eyes on the door, barely visible from his angle.
It wasn’t a stake out he could trust to the local police, though he’d alerted them to be in the area and ready to go. He would not give people the misfortune of dealing with the Winchesters; and, frankly, he would not deny himself the grim satisfaction of being the one to box them in, hound them like they hounded others to their deaths, the slick beatings and stabbings and periodic bouts of grave desecration.
How strange, he thought, the divergence in experience and belief. He did not remember his mother well-only six years old when she was killed. A fired worker had not taken the news of his dismissal well at all, and had returned to the workplace with a gun in hand. It had been her bad luck to be cleaning out that day-the man could not have cared whether he was aiming at a manager or at a janitor or at a secretary or at a maid. What a terrible thing, the neighbors had whispered. Poor husband. Poor child.
Poor mom, Victor thought. We both idealized you too much for you to be human.
They had no way of restitution, since the matter was a massacre and a suicide. Instead Victor had watched his father spiral downward into alcohol and drugs and despair-and who else was there to take care of him but Victor himself? He had been a latch key kid a generation off, both sets of grandparents already passed on their own ways to death. He could not pinpoint his saving grace, what had separated him from the hundreds of other kids across the city schools of Baltimore: that ineffable quality which had pushed him to join law enforcement rather than the dealers on the streets. It had been a liberating decision to become a member of law, and protect those who could not protect themselves-and if not, to take justice.
A liberating decision, but also an imprisoning one. A thankless job, for the most part-there were the cases that went years without a tip, or the cases with tips that went unsolved, or the cases with known perpetrators who-simply-could not-be-caught. Victor closed his eyes and breathed. And there was too the mistrust from his own origins; the old neighbors spoke of little Victor with some respect and more wariness, while the street kids did not look him in the face. And he knew that if he stopped and addressed someone that the person would suffer for it.
The best I can do, he thought, the best he could do was to go after the criminals in the world. Winchester-what a life. He must have been twisted by his father’s grief all his life, that security of stability and home snatched from him on a moment’s whim. From school to school, the endless grind, and all the while transforming into the very disciple of his father. It was a wonder Sam Winchester had not turned out the same-or so it appeared. He looked up at the door again.
“Victor,” Reidy hissed quietly. “Someone in the alleyway!”
“Fuck,” Victor muttered. He clicked the door open very, very carefully. In the shadows he could barely make out any outlines-but there-a man straightened his back, oh so quietly, and turned to walk into the dark, the lines of his body vanishing from their sight. “Someone else is on a stake-out too then, looks like,” he said. “You follow him, I’ll go check out the apartment. Got you covered.”
“Right at you,” Reidy tossed back. He smiled then, the curve of his mouth brilliant and slow under the street light. “We always do.”
*
The door clicked open audibly. Sam turned from where he’d been talking to Brady and Jess, saw through the glass pane into the hallway-
He nearly slipped on the floor while turning the corner. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed. “Dean?” And then: “Dad?”
“Looking good, Sam,” Dean said, clapping him on the shoulder oh so casually, as if the last time they had seen each other Dean had not walked out and gunned up the Impala to leave and Sam had not broken a plate on the table.
Sam turned into the touch of his brother’s hand and hugged him tightly, then broke away and stared at Dean, then over Dean’s shoulder at his father. “Dad?”-and he was embarrassed to hear his voice crack-he’d chosen to leave whole-heartedly, he was not about to start-his eyes itched.
“Sam, you're in danger,” John said gruffly, and added, “The demon who killed your mother is in the area.”
“Wait-what?” What the fuck kind of greeting that was, Sam wanted to know. What had killed their mother-they’d hunted demons so rarely before that he could barely summon any details to mind, as much as he had retained most of his hunting knowledge. “You-you can’t just come in. My girlfriend and my friend are both here, you’re both on the FBI wanted list, the agents won’t miss the fact there’s a mysterious truck parked nearby-”
“Three streets over,” Dean said, and gave Sam a thumbs up.
Sam whipped his head around to glare at him. “They’ve got to have this place on stake-out!”
“Sam? What’s the matter?”
Sam squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck.
Brady loped over to the front door. “Geez, Sam, I know you’re happy to bring in stray puppies, but even these?”
“Hey!” Dean said. “What the hell-”
“Who’s this, Sam?” John asked.
Sam gritted his teeth. They had no idea. They couldn’t just waltz in and say hello, they had to do so with witnesses inside and FBI agents almost certainly in the area. You need to get out of here, he thought desperately. Henriksen’s been on your trail for ages. “This is a friend of mine, Brady,” he said. “Brady, this is my brother and my dad-”
“Oh, I knew that.” Brady clucked his tongue, exaggerated amusement in the sound. “You're all too nice to me, bringing yourselves here.”
What are you talking about, Sam mouthed, and then realized that his voice would not work.
Dean made a muffled sound and an aborted attempt at lunging; John’s face was livid with anger.
Brady, Sam thought, no, not Brady, and then Brady turned to him with eyes that pooled black like twin oil spills, the shiny black film creeping across the whites of Brady’s eyes, and Sam could not stand to deny the reality anymore. Oh god, Jess.
“Sam? Brady?”
First mistake, Sam thought grimly as the silence stretched on. Brady, you forgot to keep the charade up-
-wham! Sam felt the force whiplash through his body as he hit the wall, barely missing the frame next to him. He tried to turn his head to the side, against the demon’s force-saw Dean out of the corner of his eye. We never really went up against demons before, he thought in blind panic. Jess, no, Jess, get out of here, you’re the only one who has no experience, you shouldn't be involved in this at all-
She came around with an iron pan held in one hand and a can of pepper spray in the other-swung at Brady and hit him full in the face with both metal and a flurry of pepper. “What the fuck are you doing, Brady?” she shrieked-damn, thought Sam, but her reflexes have always been good.
Jess smashed the pan into Brady’s face again before it flew out of her hands, but Brady’s control had slipped, just for a moment-and his dad shot him in the shoulder. Brady doubled over with a grimace. “Salt,” he hissed, “goddamn.”
This time when his eyes spilled over with black ink, Jess saw. Sam heard her barely audible gasp-her face cleared over, the slick shine of cold steel, as she brought the spray can down on Brady’s nose. “Don’t know what you’re doing, Brady,” she said, “but you’ve been fucking with me? Don’t you dare touch my boyfriend-“
The shotgun cracked again-and again-the rounds hit Brady in the stomach, the collarbone, and Sam saw the salt dash itself over his friend’s body, not-Brady cringing back; heard Dean's voice rising above the tumult: "Exorcizamus te-uh, omnis immundus spiritus-
Sam abruptly slid down the wall like a marionette. Dad tackled Brady down, smashing his knee into nose and mouth. "You stay down," he grunted.
Brady stared up at them through the blood trickling into his eyes. "Ya bunch o' bastards," he spat out.
Dad stared back coldly. "Dean, rope."
"How'd you," Sam began, struggling to his feet, but didn't continue. Jess grasped the back of his neck tightly, pulled his head down and kissed him, her tongue flicking lightly against his lips-then drew back and turned around with her pepper spray aimed at Dean. "Who the fuck are you?" she snapped.
Dad ignored her entirely. Dean let go of Brady's bindings and showed his hands, palm up. "Nice to meet you," he said irrepressibly, as if he wasn't a total stranger to her and was just enjoying some quality bondage time with rope. "I'm Dean, Sam's brother. This here's his dad. You're-"
"Sam's my boyfriend," Jess said bluntly. "You're Dean?" She glanced back at Sam for confirmation, who dropped his head in a nod. "I don't know what's wrong with my friend, but you've got nerve to barge in here and-and-" The fire had faded from her eyes. "Sam," she said, her voice wavering, "I don't know what's wrong with Brady. His eyes went black."
It'd only been a few minutes, Sam thought blankly. Just a few minutes and his family and his past hunting life had been blown open like a storm. What was there to say? He opened his mouth, but could not find the words-stood there, instead, like a man on trial. I plead the fifth, he said to himself dazedly. But this was no place for a lawyer.
It was Dean who spoke, Dean the saving grace. "Wasn't your friend, sorry," he said, and sounded like he cared. "He's possessed by a demon. Sam," and he flicked his eyes to his younger brother, "this is the demon who killed Mom."
"What?" Sam managed. "How would you know?"
"We're with a psychic, she said he was after you. Finish what he started, I guess."
"No." Dad suddenly looked up. "She's lying. His eyes are black."
"But Cas said-"
"I don't trust her, you don't trust her. Or she could be wrong. But that other demon's definitely around here, that much I've confirmed from the omens."
Dean bit his lower lip; said, "Sam. Look, we'll bundle him up and get him outta here, okay? No wacky stuff at your place, we got it."
"Wait-you can't just leave!" Sam grabbed Dean by the shoulder, Dad a brooding shape behind him. "If I'm in danger, Jess is in danger-you don't leave without giving us a goddamn explanation!"
"A demon?" Jess said disbelievingly. "Brady can be a total fucker sometimes, but a demon?"
"We'll call you, Sam," Dad spoke up. "This guy's out." He didn't mention Brady's unconsciousness, but an empty sedative syringe dangled in his hand. "Where's Cas?"
"I don't know, she said she would just get in the way. Where's a psychic when you need them?" Dean snorted. "Sam, just trust us, all right?"-he opened the front door, said, "I'll explain it to you later, promise"-
-and went very still, the muzzle of a gun against his head.
"Or," said Agent Henriksen, emerging from the shadow of the hallway, "you can explain it to me now, before I charge you with murder."
*
The gun kissed the side of his head, steady and hard. Dean slanted a look over, saw it was the agent who'd talked to him in the Illinois prison-his last name had been something like Henry? Ericsen? If nothing else, he remembered his first name, and using that was sure to piss him off more.
"Heya, Victor," he said breezily. "Didn't know you liked me so much to chase after me."
He felt the agent dig the gun in just a bit more. "Didn't realize you liked to be chased."
"Agent Henriksen!" Sam broke in. "Don't-don't shoot, I can explain, I swear. I know it wasn't my brother, if-"
"You're very good at not telling lies," Agent Henriksen said, sharp and curt. "But not good enough. Winchester, you hurt that boy anymore and I will take care of your son. You understand, I'm sure. The police are coming." Dean could hear someone coming down the hallway. One pair of footsteps though, he figured, so Henriksen was totally bluffing.
"No!" Sam snapped. "Look, Agent, Brady was going after us all-"
"Right, your good friend was attacking you while your estranged family members-under suspicion of murder, arson, and I can't even name all the others-were here to help you. What are you going to say next, he killed your mom?"
"What?" said Sam's girlfriend. Jess, Dean remembered. She stepped away from all of them-Sam included. She looked absurdly small in her sweatpants and large sports jersey, but her face was dark with wariness.
Dean couldn't see the look on Sam's face, though he saw his brother stiffen. He wasn't sure he wanted to.
The footsteps stopped. "False alarm," came a man's voice. "That guy in the alleyway, I mean."
Dean wrinkled his nose.
“Reidy!” Henriksen snapped, the relief barely visible in his eyes. “Help me-”
“You’ve done me a great favor today,” the other man murmured. “You and your partner both-"
-Dean choked, smacked against the door jamb and dropped like a pile of bricks. An invisible hand had wrapped itself around his windpipe. Fuck, he'd rather have the gun. Heard the table screech sharply across the floor, a sudden displacement of air like a bird's landing.
"Get away!" he heard Sam yelling. "Dean! Dad!"
"Oh my god," Jess said. "Oh my god, Sam, your dad-"
And heard, again, "Dean!" Castiel's voice, a young girl's gone hoarse.
"Cas," he gasped. "Where you been?" And where the hell had she come from? He strained to turn his head but couldn't see Dad. Dad, he tried to say, that demon's here-and you've got the Colt-
Henriksen was scrabbling against the floor for something to hold. "Reidy," he gritted, "what the fuck are you up to-"
The man blinked, his eyes rolling into an acid yellow color. Henriksen went silent, his body suddenly locking down to the linoleum beneath. "I think this body's younger than the other one," the yellow-eyed demon mused. "Quite nice. And you, you're the one who's been tracking me in your dreams?"
"Azazel," Cas said.
"You've been a real pest to me." But the yellow-eyed demon frowned as he made a dismissive gesture. Cas didn't budge an inch. "Very interesting," he said. "You smell strange."
Cas didn't speak. Dean grimaced; managed to look to the side. Jess was collapsed next to Sam, who stared straight back at Dean, shifted his hand. The demon wasn't paying attention.
The gun, Dean mouthed. Dad's gun. Where's Dad?
"Do you have a tongue?" the demon asked casually. "Or if so, shall I rip it out of you to hear you speak?"
Sam slowly looked to his right, Dean following his gaze.
Oh fuck, Dad. The glass of the picture frame had smashed against his head, had fallen like confetti over his face. The blood spread out over his nose and mouth like the tributaries of a stream. But he's not dead, Dean thought wildly. Because Dad doesn't die. Can't die.
"You won't leave this place tonight," Cas said softly. "Do you remember what you used to be? And what I am?"
Dad can't die, he repeated. Mouthed at Sam-get the fucking gun-get it-
"Look over here, boy," the demon said. "Who's your friend here?" And Dean felt his neck wrenched around like it would fall, his jaw banging against the wall. Looked over. Saw:
"I've been tracing you," the demon said. "But you wouldn't be found. The Winchesters wouldn't be found."
"So basically the FBI's a hell of a lot smarter than you are," Dean said, clenching his teeth; stared at the floor. Victor Henriksen looked back at him. Dean didn't know who the fuck the possessed man was, but Henriksen had clearly known and recognized him-FBI or something like that? Henriksen looked sick and enraged all at once.
"You have no idea who I am." And Cas-
-disappeared-
-appeared-
-behind the demon, slapped her hand against his back-
-"but I know who you are. And how to make you weak." Her eyes were-
-glowing, Dean stared and checked but her eyes were brightening, two twin stars, both looking straight at him as the blue of her eyes whitened out-
-and dimmed-
-and the demon threw its head back and laughed. "I think, you sad little angel," he said, "that it's you who's the weak one."
The bullet struck him right between the eyes.
*
“Get an ambulance!” the FBI agent was shouting into the phone. Jess could barely make out his face through the blurriness of her tears. “Now! We have four casualties. Three unconscious, one-" his voice trembled for a moment "-one dead."
Jess stared at the body. Only a minute before, the agent had been screaming. Reidy, he'd said, Reidy, Jesus fucking Christ, Reidy.
"Sam," she said hollowly. "You killed him."
"... I killed the demon possessing him," Sam said.
"But you killed him too."
Sam rested his hand at the back of her neck. Jess thought for a moment, but decided to lean into his touch. "Yeah," Sam said. His words dropped softly into the air; he let the antique gun dangle limply from his hand. "I did."
Sam's brother Dean was bent over their father, carefully picking away at the glass. He raised his head to look once at Sam, an expression of relief sharply drawn upon his face, before turning his attention back down.
"You never told me," she said. "About any of this."
"I didn't think-" Sam dropped his hand away from her. "I didn't think you'd believe me. I didn't want to bring it here."
Jess watched the agent take Reidy's hands and arrange them on his chest. "... You're right," she said. "I wouldn't have believed you."
"Jess-"
She shook her head. The agent stood up; when he walked over to them, he was the very paragon of sobriety, so it was only when she squinted that she could see the redness around his eyes.
"Agent Henriksen," Sam said. "I'll-"
"Explain it later," Henriksen said heavily. "I don't want to explain why my partner is dead." He looked away. "You'll all be under surveillance at the hospital," he said. "You understand."
"For the safety of others," Sam replied. "And for our own."
"Yes." Henriksen didn't add anything else, but left in Dean's direction.
"... you'll have to ask your brother what sedative they gave Brady," Jess said.
Sam bit his lip. "We have to exorcise him first-"
"And not the other guy who's dead?"
Sam didn't answer.
"And the girl, she's-I don't know, she's not responding right now. Not even unconscious reflexes are kicking in, Sam, I just don't know-"
"They'll tell us at the hospital," Sam interrupted. "I-I'm sorry."
Jess looked down then, at the shattered glass, the rough streaks and drops of blood across the floor. She shifted to grasp Sam's hand in her own.
"I still love you," she said. "And you and I, we're alive."
*
Claire, Castiel says. We're finished. Azazel is dead. He'll never lead Sam or any of the others to the gates of Hell. And you saw your parents, right?
She hears no reply. But she goes on, And Dean's alive. No one knows that the world has not been changed from the old future. There will be no need for me to speak to your father. Your younger self will be happy, won't she?
Of course she will, she says. How can she not? All she'll worry about is classes and sleepovers and never matters of life or death. Claire. We're done.
Are you tired?
Castiel coils herself up, remembers when she could see the superstrings tucked into pockets of space like miniature time capsules. Now she sees little but a quietly sweeping blackness.
I wonder, she says, if you'll see Heaven again.
*
This was the last time Sam had a dream of the end of the world:
He was sitting alone in a car. The car was not the Impala; its ends were rounded, its insides more sleek, the automatic lock snapping into place at the press of a button. It was not the messenger which carried the initials SW and DW along like a arrow to the end of time; he had carjacked it from a parking lot, had siphoned gas without shame when necessary, had dented the fender and never once bothered to fix it. It was an object of no particular import to him, and now it could no longer move.
He turned the key again, heard the engine rally weakly once, twice. Then it sputtered like a stopped up pipe and coughed its last.
“Fuck,” Sam said. He slumped in his seat and pressed his forehead to the steering wheel. It was hard to come by any driving vehicles these days, or spare tires, or spare engine parts. Bobby’s place had been ransacked the last time he’d visited, after the last time he’d called Bobby, and Bobby had not answered. He still didn’t know where he was, or Dean, or anyone.
“You shouldn’t give up just yet,” said the person in the front seat next to him. His voice was strangely high and yet low at once, a collection of tones overlaid upon one another like the sunlit hues of the insides of an oyster shell. When Sam looked to his side he saw a girl bowing her bright blonde head, raising a small hand to touch the side of her neck, and then the vision resolved itself into an older dark-haired man, carefully untangling his tie from its knot.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Sam said. Bobby’s place was perfectly intact, wasn’t it? The last time he’d been there was many years ago, but he had heard no ill news of Bobby and his communications and information hub.
He glanced out the window at the dying grass. They had grown mottled sickly yellow and twisted over and died like trampled ribbons under the sun, no rain to relieve their pain, and the wind blew up dust like a hurricane hitting land. He sat in the eye and hunched his shoulders forward, looked away from the image and blocked it out of his mind.
“I don’t speak of specifics, Sam,” said the man. He faded in and out of existence, the man’s features softening to the girl’s features and back again. “I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to help you and your brother anymore. I have spent all that I could give. I know someone else who can help-my sister-but she won't know it herself for a while."
“It’s not so bad.” Sam frowned and squinted, trying to keep his eyes on the person next to him. When he reached forward to grab the girl’s wrist, it twisted and slipped out of his grasp like a rush of cold air. “I don’t-if you could explain. The thing that killed my mom-it’s dead, isn’t it? We’re done with that.”
“There are more things in heaven and hell, Sam, then are dreamt of in all your lives,” the man said. “Now that I have met you in this time, and in others past-you have always tried to do what is right, but you haven't always succeeded. Your brother, too. And me.”
“And who are you?”
“If you remember-I was named Castiel. Your brother once called me Cas.”
“You can just call him Dean, you know.” Dean, he had said, and his brother’s name slipped down into his gut and stuck there, unable to be dislodged. A wave of misery swept over him and sank into the sockets of his eyes, the weight drawing in all the aches in his head till it became concentrated around his eyes. His sight blurred. Dean was not here-this was not the Impala-but no. Dean had just met Jess. They had hit it off excellently, they’d both come to Sam-Sam paused, tried the name on his tongue: “Cas. Castiel. That’s the psychic’s name.”
The man-Castiel-turned his face away. “You don’t know me in this time,” he said, then tossed her blonde hair back, long and healthy like a horse’s mane, as if she had not cut it short, her face filled out like a child’s instead of the brittle structure Sam suddenly recalled. “Dean doesn’t know me in this time. I did not expect you to, but.” She stopped then-pulled his trench coat tightly around himself, and went on: “I've done all that I could. I did it because I had faith. That this-" he pointed out, across the farmland along the highway, where the hay bales had blown away in the hurricane winds and the smell of cow dung rose up unbidden, rank and strong “-this will not happen. That you humans will save yourselves. I can still believe.”
“In what?”
Castiel fixed her gaze on him, silently, but didn’t answer the question. She said, instead, “Will you tell your brother something, for me?”
“If I remember,” Sam said, “I can definitely do that.”
“I'm too weak. I don’t know if I'll be able to return and see you again,” she said. “Perhaps in this lifetime, perhaps in the time beyond. And with the demon Azazel gone, and your father alive, this should never happen-
“-but tell Dean that he is worth raising from Hell. For neither of you are among the damned. I learned this a long time ago.”
“What?” Sam said. “Of course we’re not damned-we’re all worth something, right? What would we be damned for?”
“If that is what you believe,” Castiel said quietly, “and Dean too-then that is all I wanted.”
Then the eye of the hurricane passed, the wind leaping through the windows and drawing glass shards into a lethal swirl, but Castiel reached out and she smiled very faintly and pressed his hand to Sam’s forehead-
In the hospital room, the light fell through the window in a soft weave of gilded gossamer. Sam opened his eyes; listened to the sound of his father's breathing. Next to him, Dean snored, and Jess tucked her head into his shoulder like a nesting bird.
He could see outside, and above his head the rising sun shone bright as a coin, the color of polished gold.
1. carved into arrows | 2. and singing bones | 3. out of our flesh
master post