Duty Part 11 of 11 Complete
Title: Duty Part 11
Author: Gedry
Pairings: Dean/Cas, Sam/Gabriel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2171
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. I am making no profit from this fanfiction.
Spoilers: None
Warnings: None
Summary: The Winchester’s kingdom has been safe for centuries but when increase pressures from other territories bring about a forced bonding complications arise. For azryk who made some beautiful artwork of Dean being a prince and Castiel being a knight.
Thank you moonofblindness!!
Duty part 11
Cas doesn’t think of himself as a selfish person. But watching his brother so happy after he accidentally achieved something Cas has wanted his whole life and has no hope for, is enough to send him into a silent, tightlipped rage.
Gabriel is mated, Gabriel is happy; Gabriel will never be alone again for the rest of his life.
Cas contemplates that he might just die from grief when they get home. The one his soul calls out for is going to bond with another and there’s nothing he can do to avoid it now.
If not Dean then it would have had to have been Sam in his place.
Sam, the one now mated to his brother.
Life is so wholly unfair.
He spends most of his time on horseback scouting ahead for danger. He spends his nights caring for Lucifer, who is clearly in agony but has a strong will to live.
“Why fight so hard?” Cas whispers to him once everyone has gone to sleep.
“We all have our reasons,” Lucifer huffs, wincing at the pain the movement causes him. “I just feel like there is something pulling me onward. I could have died with Uriel on the ground back there but I didn’t. There’s something else I have left to do.”
He sounds determined enough to make Cas disgusted with himself. He never brings it up again.
Dean does everything to trap him into a moment alone. But Cas will have none of it. He turns the prince away again and again. First with his actions and finally with harsh words made to drive a wedge between them.
Dean doesn’t belong to him anymore; never did in the first place. Cas just needs his traitorous soul to understand that.
The subdued group arrives home to fan fare. Sam discovered alive after thinking he was lost is enough for the members of their kingdom to make merry. But to discover him mated to one of the most loved knights in the realm is even better.
No one seems to care that they failed in their quest after Lucifer gives a detail explanation of the other kingdom’s treachery. For a moment Cas burns hopeful that King John will back away from the alliance. But it’s to no avail.
The marriage will continue so that once the deal is sealed Dean can take control of the other kingdom by usurping the throne.
He brushes past the others as he heads to his rooms with his head bowed low and his heart breaking.
The joining ceremony is set for the morning and Cas passes the long empty night hoping that Dean will come to him for just one more moment of closeness before it all ends.
Dean doesn’t come. Gabriel slides into Cas’ room as dawn breaks and begs him to get up.
“Little brother,” Gabriel whispers to Cas’ blankly staring form. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings. You need to get up now and do your duty. Your prince needs you.”
“Duty,” Cas whispers; “is all I have.”
Dean’s face is frozen in a mask of compliance as Cas watches the servants straighten his royal clothing. But the peace and stillness of his body doesn’t reach his eyes. So much pain between them now that it’s shattering and Dean doesn’t even try to meet his gaze.
They make it as far as the church doors before Cas feels the bile rise up in his throat and can make it no farther.
“I’m going to secure the back entrance,” he says to anyone who might be listening. It’s a lie. The first perhaps that Cas has ever told Dean.
He staggers to the stables, stripping off his armor as he goes. He’s leaving this place. It’s not his home anymore.
As Cas rides away from the castle as fast as the horse will carry him he prays for Michael’s soul to forgive him. “I cannot keep my promise to you old friend,” Cas sobs to the wind. “I would die from it.”
*****
“Cas is fleeing,” Gabriel comments quietly as he watches his brother ride away out the window.
“I know,” Dean answers in a voice so shaken it hardly sounds like his own.
“I should go after him,” Gabriel announces. “This is his home.”
“No,” Dean says with all the authority he can muster. Adding more softly, “One of us at least should have a chance to be free. Let him go.”
Dean doesn’t cry. He’s cried all night and there aren’t any tears left to be shed.
The room is packed with dignitaries. His eyes fall on the tiny, blond princess at the top of the steps with her father.
She looks just as trapped as he does.
King Zachariah is an ass. He all but yanks the princess onto her knees in front of Dean as he kneels on his side of the cushions at the start of the ceremony. Suddenly putting a sword through the guy doesn’t seem like much of a hardship.
“The eyes are the windows to the soul,” the priest begins. “Through the eyes the story of our hearts are told.”
Dean’s mind thinks about blue eyes, laughing and teasing as they curl together in a bed as children; eyes so fiercely protective of him as they faced down danger on their journey; eyes so filled with sorrow as his friend had driven him away. Maybe Dean was wrong, maybe there are more tears to be shed.
He feels it as the priest positions his head toward her and says the holy words to bring his soul to the front even against his will. He opens his leaking eyes and knows they’re shining. Dean spares a moment to wonder if he will be able to feel regret after they’re linked. Will he still miss the man he loves so much right now?
Nothing happens.
“It won’t work,” she whispers to him with a grin. “I’m already claimed.”
It’s like the world explodes. The king is grabbing her by her hair and screaming at her that she’s a whore.
Dean staggers back from the union stone with a gasp as he tries to force his soul back under control. He can only watch in frozen fascination as Lucifer draws his sword and forces the king to stop beating the poor girl.
“Touch my mate again and I will strike you dead,” Lucifer growls.
The princess scrambles to her feet and slips to his side. “Hello again love,” she comments as she wipes at the blood on her face.
“Joanna,” he answers with a grin.
“What have you done?!” Zachariah howls at her. “I told you to offer him money and power.”
“He didn’t want any of that,” Joanna comments. “He just wanted me. I found the arrangement more than acceptable.”
Zachariah lungs forward with a snarl only to drop suddenly to his knees with blood running out of his mouth. As he crumples Dean sees his Queen at his back with one of the flagpoles in her hand. She had impaled him from behind.
“My daughter and I have suffered enough of your ego,” she says as he slumps to his side and dies.
“Lady Ellen,” Lucifer says with a nod.
“Lucifer,” She says with a pat to his cheek before she wipes her hands off on her dress and begins barking orders at the servants to clean up the mess.
“You’re injured,” Joanna says to Lucifer while Dean tries to get his body to work again.
“It hurts significantly less than being away from you, Jo.” He’s kissing her then as light flows around them and people being to cheer.
Dean’s sluggish brain is only just now beginning to process what’s happening.
Lucifer turns to him with an intensity of focus that makes Dean shiver. “You’ve fulfilled your responsibilities to our kingdom and to your family,” Lucifer announces. “But you have another, more personal duty to attend to now. Go Dean, before he gets any farther away.”
“How am I going to find him?” Dean struggles to get out even as he scrambles to his feet and prepares to run to the stables.
“Let your soul guide you,” Lucifer answers before turning his full attention back to his mate and slowly caressing her belly with the kind of touch that says volumes for how deep the couple’s bond has become.
Lucifer will make a good king.
It’s the last thought Dean wastes before turning his attention to Cas.
*****
He doesn’t make it far before grief overwhelms him. The horse stops obediently when Cas’ numb hands slip from the reigns; it’s the only thing that saves him from falling off all together.
He slumps in the grass by the river and sobs like a child as his heart breaks. It must be over by now. Dean’s swimming in the link he now shares with his new mate and he’s certainly forgotten all about Cas.
He didn’t think anything could hurt this much. Cas wonders if you can keep breathing after your soul dies.
The sobs ring out of his mouth against his bidding, loud and wracking as he struggles to get himself under control and then finally just gives up and allows his pain to consume him. By the time the wave passes Cas is curled on his side by the river bank gasping for breath between bursts of hiccups.
He feels empty, numb. It’s almost worse than the pain.
“I don’t think you’ve cried like that since I cut the head off your doll when we were three,” a voice says to his left.
“Dean?” Cas gasps as he scrambles into a sitting position. It’s not possible but there the prince is, standing so close Cas can almost touch him. Dean’s face damp with what might be his own tears as his eyes glow silver. “Your eyes?”
“I can’t make it stop,” Dean answers. “The priest says there’s no way to end it until I’m bonded to someone. The princess was taken and I could only think of one person I wanted to link my soul with. I have to point out that it would have been a lot quicker and easier if you had kept your promise to Michael instead of making me chase you down.”
“You like me unpredictable,” Cas answers, too stunned to really follow what’s happening until Dean drops to his knees next to him.
“All of our lives together and there’s one thing you have never shown me,” Dean whispers. “I want to see it now. Show me your soul Cas. Show me that I’ve brought you more than pain during our life together.”
“But the Kingdom, the alliance,” Cas mutters as he struggles to make sense of what’s happening.
“I’ll explain it all later,” Dean assures him. “But believe me when I tell you that the only responsibility that I have right now is to you.”
Cas feels it happening before he even consciously agrees. His soul rising up and bursting out of him so brightly that Dean flinches under the heat of it before pressing his own forward to link them together.
It’s so warm.
Cas loses himself in shared memories of their life together; getting to witness and feel Dean’s side of their friendship and when that friendship fell into love. Now that it’s happening the whole situation seems infantile.
Of course there was no other way this could end. There’s only been each other for both of them. Under the hum of their genuine affection and the weight of their love for each other burns a passion almost unrecognized by them both as they never thought they would be able to explore it.
Once happened upon though it explodes into action and Cas finds himself tangled in his mate’s arms as they tear and jerk at each others’ clothing in an attempt to get closer.
But then one of the horse’s whinnies and Cas’ brain snaps back into life. “Dean,” he gasps as he struggles to stumble out of his mate’s grasp. “We can’t do this here. We’re not even off the road.”
There’s a moment where Dean’s not listening, but then he sighs and withdraws his hands from the back of Cas’ breaches with no small amount of regret that Cas shares across the link.
“You’re always taking care of me aren’t you?” Dean teases as he presses a kiss to Cas’ cheek.
“And I always will,” Cas rumbles before taking his prince’s, no, his mate’s hand and leading him somewhere more private.