Amorphous, Part 3
See Master Post for disclaimers, warnings, etc.
Part 2
----
Castiel took his hand off Dean's head, nodding to himself. “He was right,” he said. “That method of travel is dizzying and exhausting. He should be okay, given long enough to rest.” He looked up at Sam. “Sam, we don't have that kind of time. That golem was headed towards London, because that's where Dean was, but now that he's here, the golem will know it too. It will turn around, and whatever ground we gained thanks to Izrafel's stunt will be quickly lost.”
Sam sighed, sinking into a chair. “So what are we gonna do, shove Dean in the backseat and start driving?”
“Start driving what?” Castiel asked. “Your car is still being cleaned of mud and debris by the local police, who I think may take exception to your license plate once it's been uncovered.”
Sam swore under his breath. “Then what?”
Castiel picked up one of the books Dean had dropped and handed it to Sam. “Start researching. Izrafel was sure that the answer to our problem with the golem would be found in one of these books.”
Sam opened the book cautiously, flipping through the pages. He looked up at Castiel, concerned. “Wait, why don't you already know how to stop one?”
Castiel looked away, picking up another of the books. “The knowledge to create a golem was part of a book of spiritual information left to men. It was not made for angels to know. It was not something we should need to know.” Reading over the book quickly, he added, “Only the most pious of rabbis should be able to create a golem. It was never expected that one would need to be brought down against its master's will.”
“Because pious men shouldn't want to cause harm to others,” Sam said, filling in the blanks.
Castiel nodded. “Exactly.”
Sam sighed. “And of course the first one that does want to cause harm wants to cause it to us.”
“That's, uh, just your luck?”
Sam looked up. Castiel stared at him uncertainly. After a minute, Sam snorted, and Castiel relaxed. “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “That's just our luck.”
----
Several dozen feet under the Atlantic Ocean, the golem paused.
Its orders had been to find the Important Man, and it had been doing this by visiting every location the Important Man had visited. The place the golem was walking towards had been one such place, but now the Important Man was elsewhere. In the other direction.
A creature approached the golem as it considered what action to take. To go to the last location the Important Man had visited would be following his prior movements, and consistency was important to it. To go to where the Important Man was now would be faster, and the One who superseded the Creator wanted the Important Man found quickly.
The creature prodded it.
The golem absentmindedly touched its nearest opening and filled. The creature did not make as much noise as the humans had, which was a good change.
It had decided.
Turning around, it headed back in the direction it had came, walking ever closer to the Important Man it had been created to find.
----
Castiel's phone rang.
He pulled it out of his pocket, frowning. “I think I'm starting to get sick of this phone,” he said. “It brings me nothing but bad news.” He answered it, an anticipatory frown on his face. “Hello, Crowley,” he said coldly.
Sam watched expectantly, but Castiel made a motion at the book that Sam took to mean 'I've got this, you figure out what we're doing'. Paging through the index, he hoped absently that this book would be the one, that golem would be right there under 'g', and that right on the page listed would be instructions for how to kill one.
“The way I saw it, Izrafel wasn't very happy to see me.”
Nope, no entry for golem. Next, Judaic mythology. Kabbalah. Rabbinical magic.
“He seemed to think Heaven would notice a rogue angel appearing on his doorstep.”
Nothing even resembling them. A quick glance over the other indexed entries showed nothing promising, and Sam put aside the book in favor of another one.
“Get to the point, Crowley. We don't have time to play your games like last time.”
Oh, great. This one didn't even have an index. He paged through it, sighing when he realized there was no alphabetical order to it either. He'd have to look through this one the hard way - page by page.
“Really? And you're sure of this why, exactly?”
Page by page of necromancy, love potions and poisons, a hundred different ways to kill with a silver blade. It was practically the occult version of Cosmo. Sam winced at one particularly graphic drawing displayed what you could do to punish a cheating lover.
“One last question. Why are you really helping us?”
Thankfully, this book was shorter than the others. He dropped it to the side, dragging a large, heavy one into his lap.
“…no, I don’t think I would believe you. Well, if you're telling the truth, I guess you've lost your chance at surviving this war.”
This one had an index. Good. He looked through it, puzzling over the overly fancy script for a long moment before he realized that it wasn't the script that was hard to decipher, but the language. It was all in French. He put it aside for Castiel to look at. Castiel picked it up and started reading through it, having hung up on the demon after his last comment.
“So,” Sam asked, paging through an English language index. “What did Crowley have to say?”
“He claims to have a way of tracking the golem. Says at the speed it's traveling now, it'll be here in an hour, maybe two at best.” He frowned over a stained page of parchment. “He suggested that we should hurry, unless we want to all get caught, and killed by the angels. Again.”
Sam snorted. “How nice of him to think of us.”
“He also seemed to think,” Castiel added, “That we won't find what we're looking for in time.”
“Really.”
“Yes. He said death would remove us before the truth could arrive.”
Sam frowned. “Does that seem weirdly phrased to you?”
“It's a code,” said neither Sam nor Castiel. The two of them turned at once to see Dean pulling himself into a seated position against the backboard of the bed. He laughed weakly. “I'll be damned, he actually is on our side.” He swayed where he sat, and would have fallen over if Sam and Castiel hadn't gotten to either side of him and grabbed on to his arms. Dean laughed again.
“What do you mean, a code?” Castiel asked. “What do death and truth have to do with a golem?”
“Asks the guy who's never actually seen the damn thing,” Dean said. Leaning heavily on his arm, he said, “Let me go, I'm fine. Get a book that has some Hebrew in it, somewhere.” Castiel dropped Dean's arm to look through the books for one in that language, leaving Sam to grip Dean's other arm a little tighter when he wavered.
“I didn't know you knew any Hebrew.”
“I don't,” Dean grunted. “But Aziraphale had a book in Hebrew - the Sefer something or other - and I was thinking some of it looked familiar. I just realized how.”
Castiel placed a book on Dean's lap, open to a page of the ancient language. “Here,” he said. Dean leaned over the book, squinting at the symbols. Slowly, he pointed to three letters.
“What do those mean?” he asked. Castiel mouthed a few sounds, shaking his head helplessly.
“Nothing, they mean nothing. It's a nonsense combination of letters.”
“No,” Dean said, “No, I know that's the right ones. Those are-”
“Dean,” Sam said suddenly. “Hebrew is read right to left. You've got the word backwards.” He turned to Castiel, whose eyes had lit up at Sam's comment.
“Alef, mem, taw,” he said carefully, pleased. “Your word is emet. It means truth.”
Dean smiled to himself. “What'd I tell you? What’d I tell you?”
“Okay, Dean,” Sam said, giving in to Dean's kind of infectious grin. “You told us. It's a code.”
“Yes,” Castiel agreed. “But a code for what?”
“Those letters - that word, emet - were carved into that golem's head,” Dean said. “Now, I'm thinking that's gotta mean something.”
“How does 'death' fit in?” Sam wondered. He and Dean looked at Castiel, who looked like he'd just figured out the million dollar answer.
“Met means death.”
Dean smiled. “Just the one letter difference?” he asked. Castiel nodded. “Well, the way it sounds to me, we just have to remove that first letter and the golem will drop dead.”
Sam frowned. “You really think it's that easy?”
“Aw, Sammy, don't be such a Debbie Downer,” Dean said, grinning, just as Castiel said, “I wouldn't call that easy.”
Sam and Dean shared a confused frown, then looked at Castiel.
“We have to get close enough to the golem to remove the mark,” he explained.
The room went quiet.
“Well, shit.”
----
The three of them sat in that room, silent, for a long time. Once in awhile, one of them would look up to speak, an idea on the tip of their tongue, but would give up the thought as pointless before it ever got out. Finally, one of them said the thing they'd been avoiding all along.
“I'm doing it,” Dean said.
“The hell you are!” Sam said, standing up to look down at his brother. “Dean, you can barely stand, there's no way you can hold your own long enough against this thing to get to its head.”
“It's coming after me, so I'm doing it,” Dean repeated. “If either of you do it, it'll just try to get you out of the way. If I do it, it's already got what it wants-”
“And it will call down Zachariah to come get you,” Castiel interjected. He stared Dean down in that way he could never manage to avoid. ”Dean, none of our options right now are perfect, but you doing this is our worst chance of survival.”
“Geez, Cas, way to let me down gently,” he muttered.
“I should do it,” Castiel said.
“Hell no.”
“I'm with Dean on this one, Cas,” Sam said carefully. ”The angels have no reason to let you live. If you get caught by the golem, they're not gonna let you go.”
“Then I will not be caught by the golem.”
Dean snorted at that. ”And you're sure you can keep that promise?” He caught Castiel's eyes when he tried to look away, and stared him down in the way the angel could never avoid. Quid pro quo, or something like it. Castiel sighed, reluctantly admitting defeat.
“No.”
Sam clapped his hands together decisively. ”Then we're settled.”
“Yes.”
“I'm doing it.”
“Ye - wait, Sam, no.”
“Dean, I'm the only one of us they want to live that they don't want to capture. I'm not half-comatose, like you, and I'm not being put at risk. You and Cas keep behind me, it'll keep the golem coming at me. I'll get the mark off its head, it'll collapse, and we're done. We can go steal back the Impala in a day or two, and we're back on the road. Simple.”
Dean frowned. He hated it when Sam pulled logic on him like this. ”Okay,” he said warily, “But the second I think you're in trouble, Cas and I step in. Okay?”
“Dean-”
“Sam.”
He sighed. ”Fine. Okay.”
“Great,” Dean said. ”Let's get ready, then.”
----
The golem paused. A metal contraption squealed to a halt and made a noise.
The Important Man had moved again. Not as far, this time, but again suddenly.
The noise repeated itself, several times in fast succession. The golem pressed a hand to the contraption’s nearest opening, but filling it did nothing to stop the noise. If anything, it grew louder, and accompanied by a more human sound, screaming.
It would go to the new location, the golem decided. Speed was more highly prized than completeness.
More metal contraptions made noises as the golem changed direction, the one it had filled not moving as it made noise.
----
Sam parked the car they’d jacked from the hotel parking lot. He got out and looked around, asking, “Does this place look deserted enough to you?”
Castiel inspected the wide open space of the empty field. “It should suffice.”
Sam shared a glance with Dean, both of them internally rolling their eyes.
“We should prepare,” Castiel said, reaching into the backseat of the car. He held out a knife to each of the Winchesters, adding a gun when they took the knives. “These won’t be of much use against a golem,” he explained, taking the demon-killing knife for himself. “There aren’t any weapons that can be used against them effectively. Hopefully, they will hold it off long enough for Sam to get close enough to remove the aleph.”
“Hopefully?” Dean repeated skeptically, eyes narrowed at Castiel.
Castiel stared back at him. “Hopefully. I did say this would not be easy,” he added.
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean rolled his eyes, switching out the salt rounds in his gun for normal bullets. He looked up at Sam, who was doing the same. “You still okay with doing this?”
“Dean,” Sam started.
“Yeah, I know, “you’re fine”,” Dean interrupted. “I’m just checking, okay?”
Sam sighed. “Okay.” He looked back down at his gun, then at Dean again. “Actually, you know what? It’s not okay.” Dean glanced up. “Dean, I know you still don’t trust me completely, but can’t you at least accept that I know what I’m doing here?”
“Sam-”
“Quiet.”
Sam and Dean glanced between each other and Castiel, silently agreeing to deal with it later. “What is it, Cas?”
Castiel turned, looking off into the distance. “It’s coming.”
“The golem?” Sam stood up, a weapon in each hand.
Castiel nodded, moving to Dean’s side. The hand on Dean’s shoulder was a sign he needed to move, but it could wait. “Sam?”
“Yeah, Dean?”
“If it makes you feel better, Becky believes in you.”
Sam snorted. “Thanks, man.”
Two sets of wings fluttering later, Castiel was at Sam’s side. “Dean is nearby,” he said. “Close enough to draw the golem’s attention, without putting him in immediate danger.”
“Great,” Sam said, watching a dark figure in the distance approach. Then: “I didn’t say it before, but I don’t just need Dean. I kind of want you to stick around, too.”
Surprised, Castiel frowned at Sam. “Thank you?”
“Sure.” Nodding his head at the golem, he said, “So, you know, you’d better hang back. I don’t want this golem catching you any more than I want it to catch Dean.”
“Of course,” Castiel said, and then he wasn’t next to Sam.
It was just Sam and the golem now.
“Alright,” Sam muttered to himself as it approached. He couldn’t see too much yet, but what he could see was big. “Bring it.”
----
----
There was another human in front of the golem. He wasn’t running from it, or screaming at it. He was just… there. The golem tried to walk around him, but he moved in front of it each time.
The Important Man was not very far away. It did not have the time, or the patience, to wait for this human to tire of looking at it. The golem stepped closer to the human, arm outstretched, reading to fill his openings.
When it got close to the human, he struck out with a sharp piece of metal. The golem was surprised, momentarily, but the first attempt to harm it merely left a cut in its clay. It was a matter of a moment to fill in the gap, and its arm was whole again.
The second attempt to harm it, now that it was expected, was brushed off as easily as a door. The human expressed some surprise at that, moving away from the golem, but it was already tired of this. Pushing forward, it placed a hand over the largest opening on the human’s face.
A projectile, like the ones other humans had used on the golem before, struck its head. This was even less of an annoyance than the projectiles that struck its chest had been - it did not even penetrate the clay.
The golem filled the human. He screamed, still the most unfortunate noise it had ever heard.
Then the human was pulled from its grip. Momentarily stunned by the action, the golem paused.
Another creature - not a human, this one, though it resembled one - had had the strength to remove the human from its grasp. The human was on the ground now, gagging and choking. It had not had the time to completely fill him, unfortunately.
After it dealt with this new creature, it would rectify that.
The golem rushed at the creature, which was armed with another of the metal implements. It struck out at the golem, and its strikes were somehow more potent - it took more of the golem’s concentration to fill in the gaps created by the cuts, and the metal would not move under its Will.
What was more, the golem realized as it fought with the creature, was that it was much like the One who superseded the Creator. Its nature was lesser, but there was a glow about it, much like there had been around the One who superseded the Creator.
This was concerning. Had the One who superseded the Creator desired to change his instructions for it, and sent this creature to inform it?
No, the golem decided. This was unrelated. It could deal with this creature as it dealt with the others.
It held out a hand and reached for the largest opening, faster than the creature had been expecting -
Only for the creature to have disappeared.
The golem turned, trying to find the creature, but it had somehow escaped the golem’s sight.
No, the golem corrected after a moment. It was on the golem’s back.
It made another human noise, quieter than the screaming the golem knew best, then placed a hand to the golem’s forehead and rubbed.
The golem wondered what the creature was expecting this to do. Given how it reacted to the golem grabbing its hand and throwing it off, it must have expected something to occur. But as the golem stood over the creature, hands over all of the openings on its head, nothing happened.
Behind the golem, something spoke. Again, meaningless. The golem ignored the noise, began filling the creature. It was turning out to be more and more like a human than the golem had expected - it was shaped like a human, made noises like a human, fought like a human, and would stop like a human.
Maybe it had been human all along, and the golem had imagined that Heavenly glow?
But, as the golem filled the human-like creature, it felt something, which was entirely new to it.
It felt… an itch.
It tried to ignore the sensation, but the itch quickly became unbearable, and worse than that unitchable, as the golem could not determine its source.
“Over here,” a voice said helpfully.
It turned away from the creature at the sound of not-Hebrew. The source of the tongue was a short creature, at once as human-like as the one lying on the ground, but not at all resembling the One who superseded the Creator. Rather than glowing, it seemed to absorb all the light around it.
It required destruction.
“You see,” the creature said, “that itch you’re feeling? Is just how you would have felt if that angel hadn’t given you a face lift. And now that you don’t have it, you’re as vulnerable as the rest of us, if we know your secret. And, believe me, I know.” It approached the golem with the intent to fight, just as all the others before had fought it. And it would fail, just as all the others before had.
The golem stepped towards the creature, hand outstretched, all its sights focused on it.
So the golem did not see the knife through its neck coming.
It turned to face the one who had come closest to destroying it.
It was the Important Man.
This was perfect, the golem decided. Turning away from the creature, it replaced its head on its neck, and reached out for the Important Man. It might not have destroyed the creature that required destruction, or taken care of the other two who had interfered with its mission, but now - now - it could complete that mission regardless.
All it had to do was touch the Important Man, and -
And a hand was on its forehead again.
No. A thumb. Rubbing away at something over its eye.
What was there? The golem had never looked at itself before, but it suddenly wondered what was there that these people wanted to rub? What was -
What were they doing? The golem felt -
It felt -
It -
----
Dean looked at the smudge on his thumb and rubbed the dirt on his jeans, though it didn’t stop him from feeling freakishly dirty. He watched as the golem collapsed under its own superhuman weight, crumbling once again into dust and dirt. But mostly mud.
Crowley walked up to him, a squinty, scrunched up look on his face. “Hate Enochian,” he said. “Hate it. Makes my mouth go all numb and tingly.” He spat, and shuddered. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Dean said warily, edging away from where Crowley had spat. “How’d you know-?”
“You were here? Chuck Shurley doesn’t encrypt his computer. How to help you? Aziraphale. He says sorry, by the way. Missed a book.” Dean raised an eyebrow at that, and Crowley shrugged. “It’s what he said. He also says you might not have been wrong about that cover artist, whatever that means.” Standing on tiptoes, he glanced over Dean’s shoulder at the two bodies on the ground. “They going to be alright, do you think?”
Really hating that a demon had to remind him of his brother’s condition, Dean ran over to Sam, who was still coughing up a gruesome mixture of mud and blood. “Sam, you okay?”
Sam coughed again. “Does it look like it?” he asked, voice impossibly hoarse. “I guess we know why there were no witnesses now,” he added.
Dean laughed shortly. “Guess so,” he agreed. Raising his voice, he asked, “Crowley, how’s Cas?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Just peachy, in fact,” Crowley squawked.
Dean looked up.
Castiel wasn’t exactly fine - he had mud dripping out of his mouth and ears, that wasn’t what Dean would call “fine” - but he was apparently well enough that he could get Crowley in a choking grip.
“Cas,” Dean said. “He helped us. Put him down.”
After a long moment, Castiel relented, dropping Crowley on his ass. He glared up at the angel, muttering unkind words, and stood up, brushing off his pants. He flicked Castiel on the forehead, barked, “You’re welcome!” and walked towards Dean, frowning.
Castiel coughed once, twice, and spat out a large amount of mud. He blinked, and shook his head, mud spraying out of unfortunate places. When he stopped, his entire head was mud-free and showed no signs that he’d even been attacked. “Thank you,” he said reluctantly.
Crowley, standing over Sam, rolled his eyes. “Bastard.” He flicked Sam on the forehead as well, which led to a coughing fit that eventually ended in Sam looking and feeling okay. He stood up, Dean supporting him on one side, hardly believing it.
“Can’t believe I’m saying this,” Sam said, “but thanks, Crowley.”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. If you want answers, I’ve left my card in your pockets.” With that, he disappeared.
Sam reached into his pocket, and pulled out a blank business card. One side had an international telephone number on it. A bewildered look on his face, Castiel reached into his pockets as well, eventually coming across one that had a similar card in it, though for a different number.
There was a card in Dean’s pocket too, but no phone. Which - oh shit, Dean remembered where he’d left that, an apartment that was probably covered in mud -
“Almost forgot!” Crowley said from just behind Dean. He winced, but didn’t jump. “Here,” he said, tossing Dean his phone. Between carrying half of Sam’s massive body weight and holding onto Crowley’s card, it was a difficult and complicated fumbling process that got Dean’s phone back in his pocket.
“Thanks.”
“And there,” Crowley added, pointing at a familiar black car, not too far off. “Don’t worry, no charge for the dry cleaning.”
“Thanks,” Dean repeated, much more sincerely this time.
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Just don’t let yourselves go getting killed again any time soon. I can’t keep living on Earth if you don’t save it.”
Dean smirked. “Whatever, man, I’ve read the book. I’ve got your number.”
Crowley looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he was gone.
Dean’s phone rang. Grumbling, he got it back out of his pocket again as he lugged Sam towards the Impala. At some point, Castiel had decided to call the number on his business card, and from his tone was definitely not speaking to Crowley.
“Izrafel, I don’t understand - just tell me what’s really going on-”
Dean answered his phone. “Hello?”
“Oh, hey Dean!”
“Becky.” Sam turned a look on Dean, but he just shoved his brother into the passenger seat of the Impala and mouthed “tell you later”. “What’s up, you got another creature to save me from?”
She giggled. “No, just checking on you guys. Chuck said you’d taken care of the golem by now.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, revving the engine. Castiel popped into the backseat, still talking on his cell. “Just finished.”
“How’d it go?”
“Didn’t you read that part already?”
“Well, yeah, but it’d be cool hearing your side of the story!”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Maybe later, Becky, we’re still kind of in the “monster clean-up” part of the hunt.”
Sam’s phone rang. He looked at Dean, who shrugged. He shrugged, and answered.
“Hello?”
“Oh, sorry,” Becky said. “I’ll call later.”
“You do that.” Dean hung up.
“-but how can you trust him?” Castiel asked, still on his call with Aziraphale, still really confused. “I don’t-”
“Adam?” Sam said. “Like, the Adam?” Then: “Uh. Wow. Is it weird that you’re one of my favorite fictional antichrists?” After a pause, he laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. Did, uh, did Crowley ask you to talk to me?”
“What do you mean by an “Arrangement”?” Castiel asked carefully.
Laughing to himself, Dean drove them out of the field and in search of a proper highway.
----
Author's Notes: Welcome to the end of “Amorphous”! Thanks for actually reading it through the entire piece, as odd as it got at times. This was my first big bang, as well as the first fic over 10,000 words I've completed in several years. As such, I'm not entirely satisfied with the finished work, but it did what I wanted to do.
I wanted to write a Supernatural/Good Omens crossover (which, at the time of big bang sign-ups, weren't nearly as common as they are now). I wanted to write a longer fic with a plot (which is not exactly my strong suit). And I wanted to write a Supernatural fic involving a Judaic “creature” (which I'd seen weren't really used in the show).
Once again, I want to thank my artist angelicfoodcake for all the pieces she made, and the mods at sncross_bigbang for making this fic a possibility in the first place. I really enjoyed the big bang experience, and I'm likely to sign up for another after this promising first experience.
A few other comments:
Generally speaking, it's a good idea to know what you're writing before you get into a big bang. Normally that wouldn't be a problem for me, but I spent the first month waffling between this plot and a more Apocalypse-focused plot. Which is not an idea I would recommend to anyone else going for a big bang - I really had to rush my first draft.
The doll Dean spots in Becky's apartment that he describes as “some chick with ridiculously red hair and freaky looking eyes” is actually one of this YuYu Hakusho character. I don't know why, I just think he's Becky's type.
The events of “The Devil You Know” and “Two Minutes to Midnight” were both a blessing and a curse to this fic. On one hand, more Crowley! More Crowley characterization to work with, more tidbits of his life to add in (see: the coin nicked from the Impala). But also the Winchesters reacting way differently to Crowley's return than I'd expected. Rather than change around the entire characterization of the fic (difficult to do this late in the game), and/or place it chronologically after those two episodes (where it could almost-but-not-quite fit), I've decided this fic exists in a slight AU of the current season, not long after “My Bloody Valentine”.
Part 2
----
Castiel took his hand off Dean's head, nodding to himself. “He was right,” he said. “That method of travel is dizzying and exhausting. He should be okay, given long enough to rest.” He looked up at Sam. “Sam, we don't have that kind of time. That golem was headed towards London, because that's where Dean was, but now that he's here, the golem will know it too. It will turn around, and whatever ground we gained thanks to Izrafel's stunt will be quickly lost.”
Sam sighed, sinking into a chair. “So what are we gonna do, shove Dean in the backseat and start driving?”
“Start driving what?” Castiel asked. “Your car is still being cleaned of mud and debris by the local police, who I think may take exception to your license plate once it's been uncovered.”
Sam swore under his breath. “Then what?”
Castiel picked up one of the books Dean had dropped and handed it to Sam. “Start researching. Izrafel was sure that the answer to our problem with the golem would be found in one of these books.”
Sam opened the book cautiously, flipping through the pages. He looked up at Castiel, concerned. “Wait, why don't you already know how to stop one?”
Castiel looked away, picking up another of the books. “The knowledge to create a golem was part of a book of spiritual information left to men. It was not made for angels to know. It was not something we should need to know.” Reading over the book quickly, he added, “Only the most pious of rabbis should be able to create a golem. It was never expected that one would need to be brought down against its master's will.”
“Because pious men shouldn't want to cause harm to others,” Sam said, filling in the blanks.
Castiel nodded. “Exactly.”
Sam sighed. “And of course the first one that does want to cause harm wants to cause it to us.”
“That's, uh, just your luck?”
Sam looked up. Castiel stared at him uncertainly. After a minute, Sam snorted, and Castiel relaxed. “Yeah,” Sam agreed. “That's just our luck.”
----
Several dozen feet under the Atlantic Ocean, the golem paused.
Its orders had been to find the Important Man, and it had been doing this by visiting every location the Important Man had visited. The place the golem was walking towards had been one such place, but now the Important Man was elsewhere. In the other direction.
A creature approached the golem as it considered what action to take. To go to the last location the Important Man had visited would be following his prior movements, and consistency was important to it. To go to where the Important Man was now would be faster, and the One who superseded the Creator wanted the Important Man found quickly.
The creature prodded it.
The golem absentmindedly touched its nearest opening and filled. The creature did not make as much noise as the humans had, which was a good change.
It had decided.
Turning around, it headed back in the direction it had came, walking ever closer to the Important Man it had been created to find.
----
Castiel's phone rang.
He pulled it out of his pocket, frowning. “I think I'm starting to get sick of this phone,” he said. “It brings me nothing but bad news.” He answered it, an anticipatory frown on his face. “Hello, Crowley,” he said coldly.
Sam watched expectantly, but Castiel made a motion at the book that Sam took to mean 'I've got this, you figure out what we're doing'. Paging through the index, he hoped absently that this book would be the one, that golem would be right there under 'g', and that right on the page listed would be instructions for how to kill one.
“The way I saw it, Izrafel wasn't very happy to see me.”
Nope, no entry for golem. Next, Judaic mythology. Kabbalah. Rabbinical magic.
“He seemed to think Heaven would notice a rogue angel appearing on his doorstep.”
Nothing even resembling them. A quick glance over the other indexed entries showed nothing promising, and Sam put aside the book in favor of another one.
“Get to the point, Crowley. We don't have time to play your games like last time.”
Oh, great. This one didn't even have an index. He paged through it, sighing when he realized there was no alphabetical order to it either. He'd have to look through this one the hard way - page by page.
“Really? And you're sure of this why, exactly?”
Page by page of necromancy, love potions and poisons, a hundred different ways to kill with a silver blade. It was practically the occult version of Cosmo. Sam winced at one particularly graphic drawing displayed what you could do to punish a cheating lover.
“One last question. Why are you really helping us?”
Thankfully, this book was shorter than the others. He dropped it to the side, dragging a large, heavy one into his lap.
“…no, I don’t think I would believe you. Well, if you're telling the truth, I guess you've lost your chance at surviving this war.”
This one had an index. Good. He looked through it, puzzling over the overly fancy script for a long moment before he realized that it wasn't the script that was hard to decipher, but the language. It was all in French. He put it aside for Castiel to look at. Castiel picked it up and started reading through it, having hung up on the demon after his last comment.
“So,” Sam asked, paging through an English language index. “What did Crowley have to say?”
“He claims to have a way of tracking the golem. Says at the speed it's traveling now, it'll be here in an hour, maybe two at best.” He frowned over a stained page of parchment. “He suggested that we should hurry, unless we want to all get caught, and killed by the angels. Again.”
Sam snorted. “How nice of him to think of us.”
“He also seemed to think,” Castiel added, “That we won't find what we're looking for in time.”
“Really.”
“Yes. He said death would remove us before the truth could arrive.”
Sam frowned. “Does that seem weirdly phrased to you?”
“It's a code,” said neither Sam nor Castiel. The two of them turned at once to see Dean pulling himself into a seated position against the backboard of the bed. He laughed weakly. “I'll be damned, he actually is on our side.” He swayed where he sat, and would have fallen over if Sam and Castiel hadn't gotten to either side of him and grabbed on to his arms. Dean laughed again.
“What do you mean, a code?” Castiel asked. “What do death and truth have to do with a golem?”
“Asks the guy who's never actually seen the damn thing,” Dean said. Leaning heavily on his arm, he said, “Let me go, I'm fine. Get a book that has some Hebrew in it, somewhere.” Castiel dropped Dean's arm to look through the books for one in that language, leaving Sam to grip Dean's other arm a little tighter when he wavered.
“I didn't know you knew any Hebrew.”
“I don't,” Dean grunted. “But Aziraphale had a book in Hebrew - the Sefer something or other - and I was thinking some of it looked familiar. I just realized how.”
Castiel placed a book on Dean's lap, open to a page of the ancient language. “Here,” he said. Dean leaned over the book, squinting at the symbols. Slowly, he pointed to three letters.
“What do those mean?” he asked. Castiel mouthed a few sounds, shaking his head helplessly.
“Nothing, they mean nothing. It's a nonsense combination of letters.”
“No,” Dean said, “No, I know that's the right ones. Those are-”
“Dean,” Sam said suddenly. “Hebrew is read right to left. You've got the word backwards.” He turned to Castiel, whose eyes had lit up at Sam's comment.
“Alef, mem, taw,” he said carefully, pleased. “Your word is emet. It means truth.”
Dean smiled to himself. “What'd I tell you? What’d I tell you?”
“Okay, Dean,” Sam said, giving in to Dean's kind of infectious grin. “You told us. It's a code.”
“Yes,” Castiel agreed. “But a code for what?”
“Those letters - that word, emet - were carved into that golem's head,” Dean said. “Now, I'm thinking that's gotta mean something.”
“How does 'death' fit in?” Sam wondered. He and Dean looked at Castiel, who looked like he'd just figured out the million dollar answer.
“Met means death.”
Dean smiled. “Just the one letter difference?” he asked. Castiel nodded. “Well, the way it sounds to me, we just have to remove that first letter and the golem will drop dead.”
Sam frowned. “You really think it's that easy?”
“Aw, Sammy, don't be such a Debbie Downer,” Dean said, grinning, just as Castiel said, “I wouldn't call that easy.”
Sam and Dean shared a confused frown, then looked at Castiel.
“We have to get close enough to the golem to remove the mark,” he explained.
The room went quiet.
“Well, shit.”
----
The three of them sat in that room, silent, for a long time. Once in awhile, one of them would look up to speak, an idea on the tip of their tongue, but would give up the thought as pointless before it ever got out. Finally, one of them said the thing they'd been avoiding all along.
“I'm doing it,” Dean said.
“The hell you are!” Sam said, standing up to look down at his brother. “Dean, you can barely stand, there's no way you can hold your own long enough against this thing to get to its head.”
“It's coming after me, so I'm doing it,” Dean repeated. “If either of you do it, it'll just try to get you out of the way. If I do it, it's already got what it wants-”
“And it will call down Zachariah to come get you,” Castiel interjected. He stared Dean down in that way he could never manage to avoid. ”Dean, none of our options right now are perfect, but you doing this is our worst chance of survival.”
“Geez, Cas, way to let me down gently,” he muttered.
“I should do it,” Castiel said.
“Hell no.”
“I'm with Dean on this one, Cas,” Sam said carefully. ”The angels have no reason to let you live. If you get caught by the golem, they're not gonna let you go.”
“Then I will not be caught by the golem.”
Dean snorted at that. ”And you're sure you can keep that promise?” He caught Castiel's eyes when he tried to look away, and stared him down in the way the angel could never avoid. Quid pro quo, or something like it. Castiel sighed, reluctantly admitting defeat.
“No.”
Sam clapped his hands together decisively. ”Then we're settled.”
“Yes.”
“I'm doing it.”
“Ye - wait, Sam, no.”
“Dean, I'm the only one of us they want to live that they don't want to capture. I'm not half-comatose, like you, and I'm not being put at risk. You and Cas keep behind me, it'll keep the golem coming at me. I'll get the mark off its head, it'll collapse, and we're done. We can go steal back the Impala in a day or two, and we're back on the road. Simple.”
Dean frowned. He hated it when Sam pulled logic on him like this. ”Okay,” he said warily, “But the second I think you're in trouble, Cas and I step in. Okay?”
“Dean-”
“Sam.”
He sighed. ”Fine. Okay.”
“Great,” Dean said. ”Let's get ready, then.”
----
The golem paused. A metal contraption squealed to a halt and made a noise.
The Important Man had moved again. Not as far, this time, but again suddenly.
The noise repeated itself, several times in fast succession. The golem pressed a hand to the contraption’s nearest opening, but filling it did nothing to stop the noise. If anything, it grew louder, and accompanied by a more human sound, screaming.
It would go to the new location, the golem decided. Speed was more highly prized than completeness.
More metal contraptions made noises as the golem changed direction, the one it had filled not moving as it made noise.
----
Sam parked the car they’d jacked from the hotel parking lot. He got out and looked around, asking, “Does this place look deserted enough to you?”
Castiel inspected the wide open space of the empty field. “It should suffice.”
Sam shared a glance with Dean, both of them internally rolling their eyes.
“We should prepare,” Castiel said, reaching into the backseat of the car. He held out a knife to each of the Winchesters, adding a gun when they took the knives. “These won’t be of much use against a golem,” he explained, taking the demon-killing knife for himself. “There aren’t any weapons that can be used against them effectively. Hopefully, they will hold it off long enough for Sam to get close enough to remove the aleph.”
“Hopefully?” Dean repeated skeptically, eyes narrowed at Castiel.
Castiel stared back at him. “Hopefully. I did say this would not be easy,” he added.
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean rolled his eyes, switching out the salt rounds in his gun for normal bullets. He looked up at Sam, who was doing the same. “You still okay with doing this?”
“Dean,” Sam started.
“Yeah, I know, “you’re fine”,” Dean interrupted. “I’m just checking, okay?”
Sam sighed. “Okay.” He looked back down at his gun, then at Dean again. “Actually, you know what? It’s not okay.” Dean glanced up. “Dean, I know you still don’t trust me completely, but can’t you at least accept that I know what I’m doing here?”
“Sam-”
“Quiet.”
Sam and Dean glanced between each other and Castiel, silently agreeing to deal with it later. “What is it, Cas?”
Castiel turned, looking off into the distance. “It’s coming.”
“The golem?” Sam stood up, a weapon in each hand.
Castiel nodded, moving to Dean’s side. The hand on Dean’s shoulder was a sign he needed to move, but it could wait. “Sam?”
“Yeah, Dean?”
“If it makes you feel better, Becky believes in you.”
Sam snorted. “Thanks, man.”
Two sets of wings fluttering later, Castiel was at Sam’s side. “Dean is nearby,” he said. “Close enough to draw the golem’s attention, without putting him in immediate danger.”
“Great,” Sam said, watching a dark figure in the distance approach. Then: “I didn’t say it before, but I don’t just need Dean. I kind of want you to stick around, too.”
Surprised, Castiel frowned at Sam. “Thank you?”
“Sure.” Nodding his head at the golem, he said, “So, you know, you’d better hang back. I don’t want this golem catching you any more than I want it to catch Dean.”
“Of course,” Castiel said, and then he wasn’t next to Sam.
It was just Sam and the golem now.
“Alright,” Sam muttered to himself as it approached. He couldn’t see too much yet, but what he could see was big. “Bring it.”
----
----
There was another human in front of the golem. He wasn’t running from it, or screaming at it. He was just… there. The golem tried to walk around him, but he moved in front of it each time.
The Important Man was not very far away. It did not have the time, or the patience, to wait for this human to tire of looking at it. The golem stepped closer to the human, arm outstretched, reading to fill his openings.
When it got close to the human, he struck out with a sharp piece of metal. The golem was surprised, momentarily, but the first attempt to harm it merely left a cut in its clay. It was a matter of a moment to fill in the gap, and its arm was whole again.
The second attempt to harm it, now that it was expected, was brushed off as easily as a door. The human expressed some surprise at that, moving away from the golem, but it was already tired of this. Pushing forward, it placed a hand over the largest opening on the human’s face.
A projectile, like the ones other humans had used on the golem before, struck its head. This was even less of an annoyance than the projectiles that struck its chest had been - it did not even penetrate the clay.
The golem filled the human. He screamed, still the most unfortunate noise it had ever heard.
Then the human was pulled from its grip. Momentarily stunned by the action, the golem paused.
Another creature - not a human, this one, though it resembled one - had had the strength to remove the human from its grasp. The human was on the ground now, gagging and choking. It had not had the time to completely fill him, unfortunately.
After it dealt with this new creature, it would rectify that.
The golem rushed at the creature, which was armed with another of the metal implements. It struck out at the golem, and its strikes were somehow more potent - it took more of the golem’s concentration to fill in the gaps created by the cuts, and the metal would not move under its Will.
What was more, the golem realized as it fought with the creature, was that it was much like the One who superseded the Creator. Its nature was lesser, but there was a glow about it, much like there had been around the One who superseded the Creator.
This was concerning. Had the One who superseded the Creator desired to change his instructions for it, and sent this creature to inform it?
No, the golem decided. This was unrelated. It could deal with this creature as it dealt with the others.
It held out a hand and reached for the largest opening, faster than the creature had been expecting -
Only for the creature to have disappeared.
The golem turned, trying to find the creature, but it had somehow escaped the golem’s sight.
No, the golem corrected after a moment. It was on the golem’s back.
It made another human noise, quieter than the screaming the golem knew best, then placed a hand to the golem’s forehead and rubbed.
The golem wondered what the creature was expecting this to do. Given how it reacted to the golem grabbing its hand and throwing it off, it must have expected something to occur. But as the golem stood over the creature, hands over all of the openings on its head, nothing happened.
Behind the golem, something spoke. Again, meaningless. The golem ignored the noise, began filling the creature. It was turning out to be more and more like a human than the golem had expected - it was shaped like a human, made noises like a human, fought like a human, and would stop like a human.
Maybe it had been human all along, and the golem had imagined that Heavenly glow?
But, as the golem filled the human-like creature, it felt something, which was entirely new to it.
It felt… an itch.
It tried to ignore the sensation, but the itch quickly became unbearable, and worse than that unitchable, as the golem could not determine its source.
“Over here,” a voice said helpfully.
It turned away from the creature at the sound of not-Hebrew. The source of the tongue was a short creature, at once as human-like as the one lying on the ground, but not at all resembling the One who superseded the Creator. Rather than glowing, it seemed to absorb all the light around it.
It required destruction.
“You see,” the creature said, “that itch you’re feeling? Is just how you would have felt if that angel hadn’t given you a face lift. And now that you don’t have it, you’re as vulnerable as the rest of us, if we know your secret. And, believe me, I know.” It approached the golem with the intent to fight, just as all the others before had fought it. And it would fail, just as all the others before had.
The golem stepped towards the creature, hand outstretched, all its sights focused on it.
So the golem did not see the knife through its neck coming.
It turned to face the one who had come closest to destroying it.
It was the Important Man.
This was perfect, the golem decided. Turning away from the creature, it replaced its head on its neck, and reached out for the Important Man. It might not have destroyed the creature that required destruction, or taken care of the other two who had interfered with its mission, but now - now - it could complete that mission regardless.
All it had to do was touch the Important Man, and -
And a hand was on its forehead again.
No. A thumb. Rubbing away at something over its eye.
What was there? The golem had never looked at itself before, but it suddenly wondered what was there that these people wanted to rub? What was -
What were they doing? The golem felt -
It felt -
It -
----
Dean looked at the smudge on his thumb and rubbed the dirt on his jeans, though it didn’t stop him from feeling freakishly dirty. He watched as the golem collapsed under its own superhuman weight, crumbling once again into dust and dirt. But mostly mud.
Crowley walked up to him, a squinty, scrunched up look on his face. “Hate Enochian,” he said. “Hate it. Makes my mouth go all numb and tingly.” He spat, and shuddered. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Dean said warily, edging away from where Crowley had spat. “How’d you know-?”
“You were here? Chuck Shurley doesn’t encrypt his computer. How to help you? Aziraphale. He says sorry, by the way. Missed a book.” Dean raised an eyebrow at that, and Crowley shrugged. “It’s what he said. He also says you might not have been wrong about that cover artist, whatever that means.” Standing on tiptoes, he glanced over Dean’s shoulder at the two bodies on the ground. “They going to be alright, do you think?”
Really hating that a demon had to remind him of his brother’s condition, Dean ran over to Sam, who was still coughing up a gruesome mixture of mud and blood. “Sam, you okay?”
Sam coughed again. “Does it look like it?” he asked, voice impossibly hoarse. “I guess we know why there were no witnesses now,” he added.
Dean laughed shortly. “Guess so,” he agreed. Raising his voice, he asked, “Crowley, how’s Cas?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Just peachy, in fact,” Crowley squawked.
Dean looked up.
Castiel wasn’t exactly fine - he had mud dripping out of his mouth and ears, that wasn’t what Dean would call “fine” - but he was apparently well enough that he could get Crowley in a choking grip.
“Cas,” Dean said. “He helped us. Put him down.”
After a long moment, Castiel relented, dropping Crowley on his ass. He glared up at the angel, muttering unkind words, and stood up, brushing off his pants. He flicked Castiel on the forehead, barked, “You’re welcome!” and walked towards Dean, frowning.
Castiel coughed once, twice, and spat out a large amount of mud. He blinked, and shook his head, mud spraying out of unfortunate places. When he stopped, his entire head was mud-free and showed no signs that he’d even been attacked. “Thank you,” he said reluctantly.
Crowley, standing over Sam, rolled his eyes. “Bastard.” He flicked Sam on the forehead as well, which led to a coughing fit that eventually ended in Sam looking and feeling okay. He stood up, Dean supporting him on one side, hardly believing it.
“Can’t believe I’m saying this,” Sam said, “but thanks, Crowley.”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. If you want answers, I’ve left my card in your pockets.” With that, he disappeared.
Sam reached into his pocket, and pulled out a blank business card. One side had an international telephone number on it. A bewildered look on his face, Castiel reached into his pockets as well, eventually coming across one that had a similar card in it, though for a different number.
There was a card in Dean’s pocket too, but no phone. Which - oh shit, Dean remembered where he’d left that, an apartment that was probably covered in mud -
“Almost forgot!” Crowley said from just behind Dean. He winced, but didn’t jump. “Here,” he said, tossing Dean his phone. Between carrying half of Sam’s massive body weight and holding onto Crowley’s card, it was a difficult and complicated fumbling process that got Dean’s phone back in his pocket.
“Thanks.”
“And there,” Crowley added, pointing at a familiar black car, not too far off. “Don’t worry, no charge for the dry cleaning.”
“Thanks,” Dean repeated, much more sincerely this time.
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Just don’t let yourselves go getting killed again any time soon. I can’t keep living on Earth if you don’t save it.”
Dean smirked. “Whatever, man, I’ve read the book. I’ve got your number.”
Crowley looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he was gone.
Dean’s phone rang. Grumbling, he got it back out of his pocket again as he lugged Sam towards the Impala. At some point, Castiel had decided to call the number on his business card, and from his tone was definitely not speaking to Crowley.
“Izrafel, I don’t understand - just tell me what’s really going on-”
Dean answered his phone. “Hello?”
“Oh, hey Dean!”
“Becky.” Sam turned a look on Dean, but he just shoved his brother into the passenger seat of the Impala and mouthed “tell you later”. “What’s up, you got another creature to save me from?”
She giggled. “No, just checking on you guys. Chuck said you’d taken care of the golem by now.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, revving the engine. Castiel popped into the backseat, still talking on his cell. “Just finished.”
“How’d it go?”
“Didn’t you read that part already?”
“Well, yeah, but it’d be cool hearing your side of the story!”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Maybe later, Becky, we’re still kind of in the “monster clean-up” part of the hunt.”
Sam’s phone rang. He looked at Dean, who shrugged. He shrugged, and answered.
“Hello?”
“Oh, sorry,” Becky said. “I’ll call later.”
“You do that.” Dean hung up.
“-but how can you trust him?” Castiel asked, still on his call with Aziraphale, still really confused. “I don’t-”
“Adam?” Sam said. “Like, the Adam?” Then: “Uh. Wow. Is it weird that you’re one of my favorite fictional antichrists?” After a pause, he laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. Did, uh, did Crowley ask you to talk to me?”
“What do you mean by an “Arrangement”?” Castiel asked carefully.
Laughing to himself, Dean drove them out of the field and in search of a proper highway.
----
Author's Notes: Welcome to the end of “Amorphous”! Thanks for actually reading it through the entire piece, as odd as it got at times. This was my first big bang, as well as the first fic over 10,000 words I've completed in several years. As such, I'm not entirely satisfied with the finished work, but it did what I wanted to do.
I wanted to write a Supernatural/Good Omens crossover (which, at the time of big bang sign-ups, weren't nearly as common as they are now). I wanted to write a longer fic with a plot (which is not exactly my strong suit). And I wanted to write a Supernatural fic involving a Judaic “creature” (which I'd seen weren't really used in the show).
Once again, I want to thank my artist angelicfoodcake for all the pieces she made, and the mods at sncross_bigbang for making this fic a possibility in the first place. I really enjoyed the big bang experience, and I'm likely to sign up for another after this promising first experience.
A few other comments:
Generally speaking, it's a good idea to know what you're writing before you get into a big bang. Normally that wouldn't be a problem for me, but I spent the first month waffling between this plot and a more Apocalypse-focused plot. Which is not an idea I would recommend to anyone else going for a big bang - I really had to rush my first draft.
The doll Dean spots in Becky's apartment that he describes as “some chick with ridiculously red hair and freaky looking eyes” is actually one of this YuYu Hakusho character. I don't know why, I just think he's Becky's type.
The events of “The Devil You Know” and “Two Minutes to Midnight” were both a blessing and a curse to this fic. On one hand, more Crowley! More Crowley characterization to work with, more tidbits of his life to add in (see: the coin nicked from the Impala). But also the Winchesters reacting way differently to Crowley's return than I'd expected. Rather than change around the entire characterization of the fic (difficult to do this late in the game), and/or place it chronologically after those two episodes (where it could almost-but-not-quite fit), I've decided this fic exists in a slight AU of the current season, not long after “My Bloody Valentine”.