[Fic] Memento Mori (R) for burkesl17
Gift type: Fanfic
Title: Memento Mori
Recipient: burkesl17
Author: burkesl17
Rating: R
Warnings: H/C, emphasis on the hurt, swearing, that's about it.
Spoilers: All aired episodes.
Summary: Dean's day starts with a woman trying to kill him with a cleaver. It goes downhill from there.
Word Count: 3993
Author notes: Started writing between ep 9 and 10, so it basically became an AU. Welcome to the world of run on sentences. It didn't exactly turn out like I planned or like you prompted, but I hope you enjoy. Can be viewed as pre slash.
Cas thinks it’s a stupid freakin’ idea, Dean can tell by the way his jaw tightens and his eyes narrow slightly, and Dean really can’t argue because he’s right there with the guy, but Sam is full of “do you guys have another idea?” and “this is our one chance!” and neither of them can really argue with that. Because they’re sitting in the middle of a diner owned by a guy who could probably kick their asses if they so much as raise their voices above a hushed whisper, and really, it might be true.
Doesn’t mean it’s not stupid. And sudden. Too sudden. Cas had been all about the planning and structuring and looking for God to help before they were in this situation, and so far they hadn’t even gotten past point a. “It’s a bad idea,” Dean says.
“Yeah, well.” Sam shrugs. It’s all he’s got left in him and Dean nods; takes a look at Cas and gets nothing but a quiet admission in response.
“Okay then.” Dean palms the Colt tightly and quirks his eyebrows skyward. “I guess we’ll be needing this.”
Cas says something along the lines of “of course we will, it’s the basis of our plan” or whatever, Dean isn’t really listening as they walk out. His heart is in his throat, blood pumping in his ears, and all he can think is we are so screwed.
They’d been searching out some supposed hauntings, the usual lights flickering and voices and gruesome unexplained murders, and it had been normal and fine by Dean’s account, as normal and fine as a few flayed bodies could be, and some people here and there losing their minds, when he’d gone to interview Debbie Gordan about her missing husband and she’d offered him a cup of coffee and then come at him with a meat cleaver. Dean didn’t like punching women, but he thought it to be an exception. He’d locked her in the bathroom with the promise to come back later, and hauled ass.
That had been three hours ago, and in the time since, Castiel had showed up with that look in his eyes, and suddenly, flayed bodies and crazy cleaver ladies were the least of their worries.
“Lucifer is here. Now,” he’d said, and Sam had sat up with the brilliant idea of icing the devil, here, now.
It’s a stupid freakin’ idea, and yet, Dean finds himself walking through the streets of Crazytown, with an angel at his side and his brother trailing behind with a look that is leaning towards desperate, and Dean doesn’t like it, not one bit.
“So, do you know where he is?” Dean asks once they reach the car. One diner in the whole block, and parking had been a bitch to find. Cas hovers, looking torn between getting in and poofing wherever he needs to go and Dean rolls his eyes and opens the back door for him. “In.” He hesitates, for a second, but once Dean and Sam are in the car with the doors swung close, Cas carefully climbs in and shuts the door behind him. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Lucifer is in this town,” Cas says by way of response, and it’s not a good one.
“We’ve covered that, but thank you.”
Sam looks irritated in the passenger seat, and Dean decides it’s a normal day then, and they’re driving without a destination.
They end up back at the motel, and Dean thinks it’s all a bit anti climatic, after they’d all agreed to pretty much rush into a life or death, most likely death, situation back at the diner, and now Sam settles down in front of his laptop while Cas stands at the window, gazing out, and Dean feels the need to walk over and shake the hell out of the both of them.
He doesn’t, because Sam would get pissed at him, and Cas would give him that look that says I have no idea what you’re doing/saying/thinking/eating/talking about, you odd human and Dean hates that look. So he sits down next to Cas, their thighs brushing and Sam clicks away on his laptop, and Dean sighs heavy. “Can’t you, I don’t know, feel him?”
Cas frowns, and Dean waves a hand blindly before he’s interrupted. “You know, sense his mojo or his aura or whatever? I thought you guys had a homing beacon on each other?”
“Lucifer is cut off,” Cas says simply, and his lips thin. “I am the same.”
Dean doesn’t quite know what to say to that. So he doesn’t say anything, just sits there next to Cas with their thighs touching until Sam slumps back in his chair and mutters, “we might have jumped the gun on this one, a little.”
“We? I clearly recall me and a certain angel suggesting we skip town until we’re good and ready, not jump and board to try and shoot a needle in a haystack, Population 14,236.” Dean gives Sam the look from across the room and Sam just rolls his eyes and turns back to the computer.
“Whatever.”
“Whatever?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Sam snaps and Dean sits there frustrated, ready to give Sam a serving, or go grab a beer or storm out and go for an angry drive or something, when suddenly Sam isn’t in his seat anymore, he isn’t anywhere, and Dean’s on his feet before he can even think about it. Eyes wild around the room; Dean steps forward ready to make a hell of a commotion and freak, but Cas grabs his hand before he can say anything and yanks him down to the ground with a hissed, “down.”
And just like that, all hell breaks loose.
Dean doesn’t see much for the first minute or so, because Cas is on top of him, bodily covering every inch that he can. Dean gets a mouthful of trench coat as the glass shatters and the wind picks up to an echoing howl, and he does see light with his eyes squeezed shut and Cas shielding his face with his arms. It’s gotta be blinding at that degree, the heat is eating into his skin and he thinks Sam.
The ear piercing whine starts then, not as bad as he’s heard, but bad and Dean doesn’t think much at all after that, just blindly reacts to whatever Cas tells him when they’re both up and on the move, with the instructions to keep your eyes shut, Dean, shouted in his ear over the noise. He’s lead by the wrist, out what is probably left of the motel room, and Castiel’s grip is strong and reassuring and wet, and the wetness scares the hell out of him. They battle against the wind, no rain but he’s waiting for it, his nose burning with the stench of blood and heat and smoke and then as quickly as it started, it stops. The whole damn thing stops and Dean opens his eyes to a shielded sun and finds Cas staring at him, eyes blown and blood dripping down his cracking cheeks, dripping from his eyes and ears and he misses the birds chirping. He’s pretty sure it ain’t just cos his ears are ringing, either.
“Cas?” It’s muffled in his head, and Cas ignores him, eyes up at the sky, scanning and bleeding, and Dean reaches out with a hand to do something, anything.
His hand misses as Cas drops to his knees, gasps, and Dean spots then the stained tan fabric, ripped and burnt and seeping skin peeking through. Dean gapes at him. Cas just shakes his head, blank, and Dean decides for the both of them, “we’re getting out of here.”
The car is gone, Dean realizes once he’s hefted Cas up and turned around, and Cas makes a sound that could be anything, but Dean prefers to think of it as a laugh, not something painful, and he spots Cas looking up again, looking at the sky. He’s calculating, Dean thinks, and it’s unnerving, and calming, and it makes him feel incredibly left out. But Dean just holds him closer and waits, and when Cas closes his eyes and tells him he’s right, Dean’s not just ready for the tight grip and out of body experience that comes with being zapped across town and country by an angel, he’s itching for it.
He’s not ready his brain to explode.
And it doesn’t, but Dean doesn’t realize that till after he wakes up.
He predicts it to be at least ten minutes later, maybe more, maybe a few hours. Who knows, his watch has stopped at 2:15 and his phone is sitting on the table next to his bed back at the motel, which is a lot of help, and he sits up abruptly at the thought of all that. It’s a bad idea, and Dean almost immediately hurls his breakfast up into a patch of grass that should have been cut a long time ago, his head pounding and his hands shaking, and once he’s finished, Dean wipes his mouth and says, “wha-?”
It’s as smart as he gets for a while, head in his hands, and when he does finally get the courage to sit up straight, feeling like someone has taken a nine iron to his temple and then backed over him with their truck, he blinks and recognizes the place he’s sitting.
Not exactly the place, but close enough. He’d pulled over to take a piss on the way in to town, with Sam shaking his head and saying, “Dean seriously, we’re twenty minutes away at most, you can’t hold on?” and him replying, “Dude, don’t talk to me when I’m peeing, alright?” and Sam had known that they were twenty minutes away because a) they’d passed a sign two minutes before hand and b) they could see the town clear from where they were, to the left and down the valley, straight off the very high up highway.
He can see the sign if he turned his head, but the town is gone. Not in pieces that could be rebuilt, not a fucking steaming crater, but gone in the way that if he told someone there had been a place to live just twenty minutes down the valley, they could laugh in his face and he wouldn’t have much to argue with.
“Holy shit,” is the only thing he can think to say. And once more, because really, “Holy shit.” Then he thinks about Debbie Gordan and the cleaver, and at least that was taken care of.
He gets moving after that.
There’s not much on his person besides his keys and the Colt, Ruby’s knife tucked safely in the glove of his car, his fucking car. Dean shakes his head, on his knees and then his feet, slow, and he teeters along carefully, seeing double and triple and stopping when he feels like he just might hit the ground. The road is right there, but there’s no one passing, there’s not much of anything, and for a moment Dean has to stop and wonder if he’s the last man alive.
“Fuckin Heston,” he mutters as he steps forward and scans the grass and more grass and the occasional tree, and there.
Dean breaks into a grin; he can’t help it, and says, “Omega, my ass.”
Cas is crumpled a good twenty feet away, not counting the fifteen he’s already covered, and he’s not moving, he’s not doing much of anything and Dean can’t even see his face, but he’s there, and it’s a start at least. It fucking scares him though, how far away they’d ended up from one another, how Cas isn’t moving, and how Sam was just gone.
Dean can smell the blood as he gets closer, and it mixes in with the taste of burnt flesh and fabric lingering in the air. His stomach rolls, but he keeps going until he’s right there in the ditch with Cas, on his hands and knees and glad of it until he gets a good look and freaks.
It’s not right, seeing Cas like this. Dean swallows, his eyes lingering on Castiel’s back in shreds of charred and missing skin, flesh, and he remembers the fire in hell and how he’d been absolutely gleeful when the bodies bubbled and screamed. He has Cas rolled onto his back before he knows it. “Don’t wake up,” he urges and knowing his luck, Cas will open his eyes and scream at the pressure or worse, he’ll open his eyes and do nothing because the nerves are gone, and neither of those things happen, but Dean still leans over to the side and chokes up some bile.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his fist, and Cas stays silent. Dean has to be thankful for that. He finds it hard though, looking down at Castiel’s face. It’s pale and lax, with blood tracks dried down his cheeks and staining his parted lips, and Dean hopes to God that there’s no permanent damage to his eyes. Which is stupid, because he’s a fucking angel, and one that’s got bigger problems than his damn vision.
Dean brushes Castiel’s cheek with the back of his hand, the skin rough and cracked like it’s completely dried out, and it’s hot. He’s felt Cas before, felt his skin and knows it’s warmer than most at the best of times, but he also knows this isn’t right. He flips his hand and cups Castiel’s chin, feeling the heat seep into his palm, and finally, his brain catches up to the rest of him. He’s shrugging of his jacket two seconds later and has Cas lifted up carefully into his arms, enough so he can slide the inside of the jacket between the open goddamn wounds and the dirt and grass and bacteria because he’s not an idiot, he knows what to do. Cas is limp in his grasp, arms falling to the side and head lolling, and it’s freaking disturbing, but he’s still breathing. Dean lays him back down, careful, hoping like hell that his jacket is at least a bit more sanitary than the open earth, and then they’re both still.
He brings Castiel’s hands up. They’re dry now, but blood stained, and Dean can’t find a reason for it so he just drops them till they’re resting over his heart, Jimmy’s heart. Dean finds himself idly hoping the poor bastard is already dead, looking at the flecks of red staining the crisp white shirt and he keeps his fingers over Castiel’s and bows his head. “You gotta wake up, man,” he murmurs. Nothing happens. For a long while. If he had his car, if Cas was awake and able to get them out of here, it would be a different story, but the nearest town is nearly an hours’ drive away, and Dean can’t carry him that far. He isn’t even sure if Cas should be moved. His best bet is to hold fort and wait for a car to pass. His head hurts.
Dean is scared he’s gonna be waiting for a while, but he’s is not leaving Cas alone, so he stays there and he doesn’t let his hand move once. He worries, about Sam, about the whole fucking world, but he zeroes in on Cas because he’s right there, and the whole thing gets hazy for a while. Then he’s jerking his head up from Castiel’s chest at a noise in the distance, something that breaks the silence and he’s up off the ground and racing out towards the open highway like an idiot. It seems like the smart thing to do.
Sam doesn’t agree. He thinks it’s a stupid thing to do, but it’s not like Dean jumped in front of the car or anything. His car. He says that much, and then he stops and stares and pulls Sam into a hug. Goddamn. He was so fucking scared.
Dean doesn’t say that much though, but Sam does, his eyes bright. “What the hell happened, Dean?” Sam asks.
Dean just shakes his head. There’s time for that later, when he’s got his head screwed on right and can sort through the mess for a second. “It’s Cas,” is all he says. Sam doesn’t ask again.
****
Bobby had asked, “Can’t he heal himself?” and nodded when Sam reminded him, exasperated, “he’s cut off, he can’t.”
Bobby had looked down at his legs, remembering. He had asked, “Do you think it’s alright to give him morphine?” Sam had shrugged and they’d looked at each other, perplexed until Dean had all but exploded:
“I doubt an angel of the freakin’ lord is allergic, Bobby!”
Things had happened quickly after that. Too quickly to a point, and dragging on in other aspects. Dean had missed some of it with the haziness in his head, and Cas had slept on with Bobby wheeling back and forth and Sam just not knowing how to help. But they’d cleaned and dressed and talked in hushed voices that usually ended in a yell, and somehow, four days had passed.
Dean could feel it on his face, the rough burn of not shaving for a while, and his eyelids dropped from time to time and stayed there, but there wasn’t much that could move him from his chair.
“What happened to you?” he asked Sam, quietly, the day after.
“I was in front of my laptop, and then I was sitting in the car two hours away,” Sam had shrugged, like it made any sense, and in Dean’s world, it kind of did. Sam had asked, and Dean had taken a while to figure it out, but he’d talked about one blast and maybe another, and Bobby had shaken his head.
“If I didn’t know any better,” he had nodded towards Castiel’s prone body, “I’d say those were radiation burns.” Like a fucking nuke.
Cas wakes up on the fourth day, hands and face scrubbed clean, dressed in some of Dean’s clothes because his suit and coat just weren’t worth trying to save.
Dean watches him quietly, waits for the initial blinking and confusion to pass, and he wonders if Cas has ever slept before, if his eyes are okay, if he’s okay, and when Cas turns his gaze towards him finally, sees him, Dean all but breathes a sigh of relief and asks, “how are you feeling?”
“Dean?” Cas asks blankly after a good twenty seconds of staring, and figures that the confusion hasn’t quite passed yet. Dean hopes. He’s asleep again not long after that, and Dean worries. He drifts off in the chair, and dreams of blue eyes staring at him, but when he jerks awake all he can remember is blood and skin and heat.
Thursday is a good day, it turns out, when Dean wakes up in his chair to find Cas sitting up, stiff and frowning. “Where are my clothes?” he asks.
Dean smiles. “Good mornin’.”
“Dean?” Cas looks down at his hands, then blinks and straightens his back. It garners a wince, which in Dean’s experience is angel talk for oh god, I couldn’t literally be in any more pain right now!
Dean’s up from his chair at that, all but forcing Cas back down onto the mattress, on his side this time, and he makes what he thinks is appropriate noises until Cas stares at him, confused. Dean stops and they just look at each other for a moment. Cas looks at him and Dean sighs and settles on the bed. “You kind of fell apart, Cas,” he says. “I would recommend not moving for a while. Doctors orders.”
“You are not a doctor.” Cas doesn’t move though, and Dean considers it a victory.
He asks, “Do you remember what happened?”
Cas doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes and stays like that until Dean considers getting back up and sitting in his chair. “It was an attack,” Cas murmurs. His eyes open. They’re still red rimmed and shot, but Dean feels a jolt go through him when they focus on him. “We have to be more careful.”
“Lucifer,” Dean starts. He stops when Cas shakes his head.
“It was the angels.” Cas pauses. “Do you remember when Uriel and I asked you to leave the town that held Samhain?”
Dean snorts. “You more like demanded-”
“We were going to destroy it.” Castiel’s mouth curves slightly, an almost smile, and it’s the saddest looking smile Dean has seen in a long long time.
He thinks of the light and the pain, and exclaims, “That’s what you two were going to do to that town?”
“It is efficient and quick.”
“Not efficient enough, we were able to get the hell out.”
“Dean-” Cas shakes his head, eyes flickering down to the floral covered bedspread. Dean has to wonder where the hell Bobby picks these things up from. “I don’t know exactly-”
“But you’re thinking, right?”
“I covered myself and you with my grace.” His eyes are back on Dean now, boring into him, and Dean swallows. “I felt it coming. The rest of the town did not.”
Dean frowns. “You mean the first blast was to destroy all the humans?”
“First blast. . .” Cas pinches his eyes tightly shut, and Dean has seen that look before. His first instinct is to get some Advil and a glass of water, but Cas nods, more to himself and says, “Lucifer would have survived. They could single him out with the town empty.”
“Wait.”
Dean jumps at the sudden voice, and if Sam notices, he doesn’t say anything. Just makes his way into the room with that gloomy look on his face. “They were trying to capture him?” At Castiel’s hesitant shrug, Sam’s eyebrows all but hit the roof. “Well, that’s ambitious.”
“Sammy,” Dean says. His brother looks at him, expectant, but Dean doesn’t have much else to say.
Cas picks it up for the both of them. “I thought, at first, that it was Lucifer coming. I was worried. Sam.” He licks his lips, something Dean has never seen him do, and lays his head back down on the pillow.
“Well, thanks for getting me out then,” Sam says, sounding almost sheepish. “And the car too, I guess.”
“I’m badly injured.” It’s not a question, just a fact. Cas rolls his eyes up to find Dean’s, and they stare at each other until Sam clears his throat, awkward, and Dean has to wonder why he always does that.
“I’m gonna go check on Bobby.” He’s out the door, his feet thumping on the stairs, and Dean doesn’t even bother to answer.
“The second blast was likely an attempt to kill me,” Cas says.
His words settle badly in Dean’s stomach. He laughs, short and tight. “Well, then they suck at life, don’t they?”
“My wings are damaged.” Cas rolls onto his back, his face pinching, and he sighs. It leaves Dean feeling uncomfortable; the whole situation does. With Sam he knew what to do, usually, and when he didn’t, Sam understood and they both ignored it until they couldn’t anymore. Cas was different. Dean knew how to make him angry, make him almost smile, confuse the hell out of him, he knew Cas. But he didn’t know what to do now. “Cas-”
“They will heal.” Cas turns his head to look at Dean. “I will heal.”
Dean swallows. He knows that, he does, no matter how much his brain tells him otherwise; keeps flashing back to Cas unconscious and bleeding and so fucking pale. But he does know, they’ll get over this, bounce back like they always do, because they have to and he says with a small smile, “I know that.”
“Good.” Cas blinks, his eyes a bit clearer now, and he says, “you can relax now, Dean.”
And for a moment there, Dean does.
Title: Memento Mori
Recipient: burkesl17
Author: burkesl17
Rating: R
Warnings: H/C, emphasis on the hurt, swearing, that's about it.
Spoilers: All aired episodes.
Summary: Dean's day starts with a woman trying to kill him with a cleaver. It goes downhill from there.
Word Count: 3993
Author notes: Started writing between ep 9 and 10, so it basically became an AU. Welcome to the world of run on sentences. It didn't exactly turn out like I planned or like you prompted, but I hope you enjoy. Can be viewed as pre slash.
Cas thinks it’s a stupid freakin’ idea, Dean can tell by the way his jaw tightens and his eyes narrow slightly, and Dean really can’t argue because he’s right there with the guy, but Sam is full of “do you guys have another idea?” and “this is our one chance!” and neither of them can really argue with that. Because they’re sitting in the middle of a diner owned by a guy who could probably kick their asses if they so much as raise their voices above a hushed whisper, and really, it might be true.
Doesn’t mean it’s not stupid. And sudden. Too sudden. Cas had been all about the planning and structuring and looking for God to help before they were in this situation, and so far they hadn’t even gotten past point a. “It’s a bad idea,” Dean says.
“Yeah, well.” Sam shrugs. It’s all he’s got left in him and Dean nods; takes a look at Cas and gets nothing but a quiet admission in response.
“Okay then.” Dean palms the Colt tightly and quirks his eyebrows skyward. “I guess we’ll be needing this.”
Cas says something along the lines of “of course we will, it’s the basis of our plan” or whatever, Dean isn’t really listening as they walk out. His heart is in his throat, blood pumping in his ears, and all he can think is we are so screwed.
They’d been searching out some supposed hauntings, the usual lights flickering and voices and gruesome unexplained murders, and it had been normal and fine by Dean’s account, as normal and fine as a few flayed bodies could be, and some people here and there losing their minds, when he’d gone to interview Debbie Gordan about her missing husband and she’d offered him a cup of coffee and then come at him with a meat cleaver. Dean didn’t like punching women, but he thought it to be an exception. He’d locked her in the bathroom with the promise to come back later, and hauled ass.
That had been three hours ago, and in the time since, Castiel had showed up with that look in his eyes, and suddenly, flayed bodies and crazy cleaver ladies were the least of their worries.
“Lucifer is here. Now,” he’d said, and Sam had sat up with the brilliant idea of icing the devil, here, now.
It’s a stupid freakin’ idea, and yet, Dean finds himself walking through the streets of Crazytown, with an angel at his side and his brother trailing behind with a look that is leaning towards desperate, and Dean doesn’t like it, not one bit.
“So, do you know where he is?” Dean asks once they reach the car. One diner in the whole block, and parking had been a bitch to find. Cas hovers, looking torn between getting in and poofing wherever he needs to go and Dean rolls his eyes and opens the back door for him. “In.” He hesitates, for a second, but once Dean and Sam are in the car with the doors swung close, Cas carefully climbs in and shuts the door behind him. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Lucifer is in this town,” Cas says by way of response, and it’s not a good one.
“We’ve covered that, but thank you.”
Sam looks irritated in the passenger seat, and Dean decides it’s a normal day then, and they’re driving without a destination.
They end up back at the motel, and Dean thinks it’s all a bit anti climatic, after they’d all agreed to pretty much rush into a life or death, most likely death, situation back at the diner, and now Sam settles down in front of his laptop while Cas stands at the window, gazing out, and Dean feels the need to walk over and shake the hell out of the both of them.
He doesn’t, because Sam would get pissed at him, and Cas would give him that look that says I have no idea what you’re doing/saying/thinking/eating/talking about, you odd human and Dean hates that look. So he sits down next to Cas, their thighs brushing and Sam clicks away on his laptop, and Dean sighs heavy. “Can’t you, I don’t know, feel him?”
Cas frowns, and Dean waves a hand blindly before he’s interrupted. “You know, sense his mojo or his aura or whatever? I thought you guys had a homing beacon on each other?”
“Lucifer is cut off,” Cas says simply, and his lips thin. “I am the same.”
Dean doesn’t quite know what to say to that. So he doesn’t say anything, just sits there next to Cas with their thighs touching until Sam slumps back in his chair and mutters, “we might have jumped the gun on this one, a little.”
“We? I clearly recall me and a certain angel suggesting we skip town until we’re good and ready, not jump and board to try and shoot a needle in a haystack, Population 14,236.” Dean gives Sam the look from across the room and Sam just rolls his eyes and turns back to the computer.
“Whatever.”
“Whatever?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Sam snaps and Dean sits there frustrated, ready to give Sam a serving, or go grab a beer or storm out and go for an angry drive or something, when suddenly Sam isn’t in his seat anymore, he isn’t anywhere, and Dean’s on his feet before he can even think about it. Eyes wild around the room; Dean steps forward ready to make a hell of a commotion and freak, but Cas grabs his hand before he can say anything and yanks him down to the ground with a hissed, “down.”
And just like that, all hell breaks loose.
Dean doesn’t see much for the first minute or so, because Cas is on top of him, bodily covering every inch that he can. Dean gets a mouthful of trench coat as the glass shatters and the wind picks up to an echoing howl, and he does see light with his eyes squeezed shut and Cas shielding his face with his arms. It’s gotta be blinding at that degree, the heat is eating into his skin and he thinks Sam.
The ear piercing whine starts then, not as bad as he’s heard, but bad and Dean doesn’t think much at all after that, just blindly reacts to whatever Cas tells him when they’re both up and on the move, with the instructions to keep your eyes shut, Dean, shouted in his ear over the noise. He’s lead by the wrist, out what is probably left of the motel room, and Castiel’s grip is strong and reassuring and wet, and the wetness scares the hell out of him. They battle against the wind, no rain but he’s waiting for it, his nose burning with the stench of blood and heat and smoke and then as quickly as it started, it stops. The whole damn thing stops and Dean opens his eyes to a shielded sun and finds Cas staring at him, eyes blown and blood dripping down his cracking cheeks, dripping from his eyes and ears and he misses the birds chirping. He’s pretty sure it ain’t just cos his ears are ringing, either.
“Cas?” It’s muffled in his head, and Cas ignores him, eyes up at the sky, scanning and bleeding, and Dean reaches out with a hand to do something, anything.
His hand misses as Cas drops to his knees, gasps, and Dean spots then the stained tan fabric, ripped and burnt and seeping skin peeking through. Dean gapes at him. Cas just shakes his head, blank, and Dean decides for the both of them, “we’re getting out of here.”
The car is gone, Dean realizes once he’s hefted Cas up and turned around, and Cas makes a sound that could be anything, but Dean prefers to think of it as a laugh, not something painful, and he spots Cas looking up again, looking at the sky. He’s calculating, Dean thinks, and it’s unnerving, and calming, and it makes him feel incredibly left out. But Dean just holds him closer and waits, and when Cas closes his eyes and tells him he’s right, Dean’s not just ready for the tight grip and out of body experience that comes with being zapped across town and country by an angel, he’s itching for it.
He’s not ready his brain to explode.
And it doesn’t, but Dean doesn’t realize that till after he wakes up.
He predicts it to be at least ten minutes later, maybe more, maybe a few hours. Who knows, his watch has stopped at 2:15 and his phone is sitting on the table next to his bed back at the motel, which is a lot of help, and he sits up abruptly at the thought of all that. It’s a bad idea, and Dean almost immediately hurls his breakfast up into a patch of grass that should have been cut a long time ago, his head pounding and his hands shaking, and once he’s finished, Dean wipes his mouth and says, “wha-?”
It’s as smart as he gets for a while, head in his hands, and when he does finally get the courage to sit up straight, feeling like someone has taken a nine iron to his temple and then backed over him with their truck, he blinks and recognizes the place he’s sitting.
Not exactly the place, but close enough. He’d pulled over to take a piss on the way in to town, with Sam shaking his head and saying, “Dean seriously, we’re twenty minutes away at most, you can’t hold on?” and him replying, “Dude, don’t talk to me when I’m peeing, alright?” and Sam had known that they were twenty minutes away because a) they’d passed a sign two minutes before hand and b) they could see the town clear from where they were, to the left and down the valley, straight off the very high up highway.
He can see the sign if he turned his head, but the town is gone. Not in pieces that could be rebuilt, not a fucking steaming crater, but gone in the way that if he told someone there had been a place to live just twenty minutes down the valley, they could laugh in his face and he wouldn’t have much to argue with.
“Holy shit,” is the only thing he can think to say. And once more, because really, “Holy shit.” Then he thinks about Debbie Gordan and the cleaver, and at least that was taken care of.
He gets moving after that.
There’s not much on his person besides his keys and the Colt, Ruby’s knife tucked safely in the glove of his car, his fucking car. Dean shakes his head, on his knees and then his feet, slow, and he teeters along carefully, seeing double and triple and stopping when he feels like he just might hit the ground. The road is right there, but there’s no one passing, there’s not much of anything, and for a moment Dean has to stop and wonder if he’s the last man alive.
“Fuckin Heston,” he mutters as he steps forward and scans the grass and more grass and the occasional tree, and there.
Dean breaks into a grin; he can’t help it, and says, “Omega, my ass.”
Cas is crumpled a good twenty feet away, not counting the fifteen he’s already covered, and he’s not moving, he’s not doing much of anything and Dean can’t even see his face, but he’s there, and it’s a start at least. It fucking scares him though, how far away they’d ended up from one another, how Cas isn’t moving, and how Sam was just gone.
Dean can smell the blood as he gets closer, and it mixes in with the taste of burnt flesh and fabric lingering in the air. His stomach rolls, but he keeps going until he’s right there in the ditch with Cas, on his hands and knees and glad of it until he gets a good look and freaks.
It’s not right, seeing Cas like this. Dean swallows, his eyes lingering on Castiel’s back in shreds of charred and missing skin, flesh, and he remembers the fire in hell and how he’d been absolutely gleeful when the bodies bubbled and screamed. He has Cas rolled onto his back before he knows it. “Don’t wake up,” he urges and knowing his luck, Cas will open his eyes and scream at the pressure or worse, he’ll open his eyes and do nothing because the nerves are gone, and neither of those things happen, but Dean still leans over to the side and chokes up some bile.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his fist, and Cas stays silent. Dean has to be thankful for that. He finds it hard though, looking down at Castiel’s face. It’s pale and lax, with blood tracks dried down his cheeks and staining his parted lips, and Dean hopes to God that there’s no permanent damage to his eyes. Which is stupid, because he’s a fucking angel, and one that’s got bigger problems than his damn vision.
Dean brushes Castiel’s cheek with the back of his hand, the skin rough and cracked like it’s completely dried out, and it’s hot. He’s felt Cas before, felt his skin and knows it’s warmer than most at the best of times, but he also knows this isn’t right. He flips his hand and cups Castiel’s chin, feeling the heat seep into his palm, and finally, his brain catches up to the rest of him. He’s shrugging of his jacket two seconds later and has Cas lifted up carefully into his arms, enough so he can slide the inside of the jacket between the open goddamn wounds and the dirt and grass and bacteria because he’s not an idiot, he knows what to do. Cas is limp in his grasp, arms falling to the side and head lolling, and it’s freaking disturbing, but he’s still breathing. Dean lays him back down, careful, hoping like hell that his jacket is at least a bit more sanitary than the open earth, and then they’re both still.
He brings Castiel’s hands up. They’re dry now, but blood stained, and Dean can’t find a reason for it so he just drops them till they’re resting over his heart, Jimmy’s heart. Dean finds himself idly hoping the poor bastard is already dead, looking at the flecks of red staining the crisp white shirt and he keeps his fingers over Castiel’s and bows his head. “You gotta wake up, man,” he murmurs. Nothing happens. For a long while. If he had his car, if Cas was awake and able to get them out of here, it would be a different story, but the nearest town is nearly an hours’ drive away, and Dean can’t carry him that far. He isn’t even sure if Cas should be moved. His best bet is to hold fort and wait for a car to pass. His head hurts.
Dean is scared he’s gonna be waiting for a while, but he’s is not leaving Cas alone, so he stays there and he doesn’t let his hand move once. He worries, about Sam, about the whole fucking world, but he zeroes in on Cas because he’s right there, and the whole thing gets hazy for a while. Then he’s jerking his head up from Castiel’s chest at a noise in the distance, something that breaks the silence and he’s up off the ground and racing out towards the open highway like an idiot. It seems like the smart thing to do.
Sam doesn’t agree. He thinks it’s a stupid thing to do, but it’s not like Dean jumped in front of the car or anything. His car. He says that much, and then he stops and stares and pulls Sam into a hug. Goddamn. He was so fucking scared.
Dean doesn’t say that much though, but Sam does, his eyes bright. “What the hell happened, Dean?” Sam asks.
Dean just shakes his head. There’s time for that later, when he’s got his head screwed on right and can sort through the mess for a second. “It’s Cas,” is all he says. Sam doesn’t ask again.
****
Bobby had asked, “Can’t he heal himself?” and nodded when Sam reminded him, exasperated, “he’s cut off, he can’t.”
Bobby had looked down at his legs, remembering. He had asked, “Do you think it’s alright to give him morphine?” Sam had shrugged and they’d looked at each other, perplexed until Dean had all but exploded:
“I doubt an angel of the freakin’ lord is allergic, Bobby!”
Things had happened quickly after that. Too quickly to a point, and dragging on in other aspects. Dean had missed some of it with the haziness in his head, and Cas had slept on with Bobby wheeling back and forth and Sam just not knowing how to help. But they’d cleaned and dressed and talked in hushed voices that usually ended in a yell, and somehow, four days had passed.
Dean could feel it on his face, the rough burn of not shaving for a while, and his eyelids dropped from time to time and stayed there, but there wasn’t much that could move him from his chair.
“What happened to you?” he asked Sam, quietly, the day after.
“I was in front of my laptop, and then I was sitting in the car two hours away,” Sam had shrugged, like it made any sense, and in Dean’s world, it kind of did. Sam had asked, and Dean had taken a while to figure it out, but he’d talked about one blast and maybe another, and Bobby had shaken his head.
“If I didn’t know any better,” he had nodded towards Castiel’s prone body, “I’d say those were radiation burns.” Like a fucking nuke.
Cas wakes up on the fourth day, hands and face scrubbed clean, dressed in some of Dean’s clothes because his suit and coat just weren’t worth trying to save.
Dean watches him quietly, waits for the initial blinking and confusion to pass, and he wonders if Cas has ever slept before, if his eyes are okay, if he’s okay, and when Cas turns his gaze towards him finally, sees him, Dean all but breathes a sigh of relief and asks, “how are you feeling?”
“Dean?” Cas asks blankly after a good twenty seconds of staring, and figures that the confusion hasn’t quite passed yet. Dean hopes. He’s asleep again not long after that, and Dean worries. He drifts off in the chair, and dreams of blue eyes staring at him, but when he jerks awake all he can remember is blood and skin and heat.
Thursday is a good day, it turns out, when Dean wakes up in his chair to find Cas sitting up, stiff and frowning. “Where are my clothes?” he asks.
Dean smiles. “Good mornin’.”
“Dean?” Cas looks down at his hands, then blinks and straightens his back. It garners a wince, which in Dean’s experience is angel talk for oh god, I couldn’t literally be in any more pain right now!
Dean’s up from his chair at that, all but forcing Cas back down onto the mattress, on his side this time, and he makes what he thinks is appropriate noises until Cas stares at him, confused. Dean stops and they just look at each other for a moment. Cas looks at him and Dean sighs and settles on the bed. “You kind of fell apart, Cas,” he says. “I would recommend not moving for a while. Doctors orders.”
“You are not a doctor.” Cas doesn’t move though, and Dean considers it a victory.
He asks, “Do you remember what happened?”
Cas doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes and stays like that until Dean considers getting back up and sitting in his chair. “It was an attack,” Cas murmurs. His eyes open. They’re still red rimmed and shot, but Dean feels a jolt go through him when they focus on him. “We have to be more careful.”
“Lucifer,” Dean starts. He stops when Cas shakes his head.
“It was the angels.” Cas pauses. “Do you remember when Uriel and I asked you to leave the town that held Samhain?”
Dean snorts. “You more like demanded-”
“We were going to destroy it.” Castiel’s mouth curves slightly, an almost smile, and it’s the saddest looking smile Dean has seen in a long long time.
He thinks of the light and the pain, and exclaims, “That’s what you two were going to do to that town?”
“It is efficient and quick.”
“Not efficient enough, we were able to get the hell out.”
“Dean-” Cas shakes his head, eyes flickering down to the floral covered bedspread. Dean has to wonder where the hell Bobby picks these things up from. “I don’t know exactly-”
“But you’re thinking, right?”
“I covered myself and you with my grace.” His eyes are back on Dean now, boring into him, and Dean swallows. “I felt it coming. The rest of the town did not.”
Dean frowns. “You mean the first blast was to destroy all the humans?”
“First blast. . .” Cas pinches his eyes tightly shut, and Dean has seen that look before. His first instinct is to get some Advil and a glass of water, but Cas nods, more to himself and says, “Lucifer would have survived. They could single him out with the town empty.”
“Wait.”
Dean jumps at the sudden voice, and if Sam notices, he doesn’t say anything. Just makes his way into the room with that gloomy look on his face. “They were trying to capture him?” At Castiel’s hesitant shrug, Sam’s eyebrows all but hit the roof. “Well, that’s ambitious.”
“Sammy,” Dean says. His brother looks at him, expectant, but Dean doesn’t have much else to say.
Cas picks it up for the both of them. “I thought, at first, that it was Lucifer coming. I was worried. Sam.” He licks his lips, something Dean has never seen him do, and lays his head back down on the pillow.
“Well, thanks for getting me out then,” Sam says, sounding almost sheepish. “And the car too, I guess.”
“I’m badly injured.” It’s not a question, just a fact. Cas rolls his eyes up to find Dean’s, and they stare at each other until Sam clears his throat, awkward, and Dean has to wonder why he always does that.
“I’m gonna go check on Bobby.” He’s out the door, his feet thumping on the stairs, and Dean doesn’t even bother to answer.
“The second blast was likely an attempt to kill me,” Cas says.
His words settle badly in Dean’s stomach. He laughs, short and tight. “Well, then they suck at life, don’t they?”
“My wings are damaged.” Cas rolls onto his back, his face pinching, and he sighs. It leaves Dean feeling uncomfortable; the whole situation does. With Sam he knew what to do, usually, and when he didn’t, Sam understood and they both ignored it until they couldn’t anymore. Cas was different. Dean knew how to make him angry, make him almost smile, confuse the hell out of him, he knew Cas. But he didn’t know what to do now. “Cas-”
“They will heal.” Cas turns his head to look at Dean. “I will heal.”
Dean swallows. He knows that, he does, no matter how much his brain tells him otherwise; keeps flashing back to Cas unconscious and bleeding and so fucking pale. But he does know, they’ll get over this, bounce back like they always do, because they have to and he says with a small smile, “I know that.”
“Good.” Cas blinks, his eyes a bit clearer now, and he says, “you can relax now, Dean.”
And for a moment there, Dean does.