Holly Jolly | Part Four
There’s a time, after Castiel has first Fallen, when he leaves Gabriel and wanders over the earth like a fickle wind of salvation. Where there is drought, he brings rain; when he comes upon the sick and the injured, he heals them. He hears the prayers of hundreds and performs thousands of miracles, until he is a hollowed-out husk barely moored in human flesh and bone. This, Gabriel tells him, is the poetic fate of many rebellious seraphim who are cast out: to die in base service to humankind, cut off from Heaven and any chance of renewal or redemption.
“Or you could just, you know, ignore them,” Gabriel says, after he collects Castiel’s dying body from the rocky shores of Lake Karakul. “It’s not really that hard. Look, I’m doing it right now! Amazing.”
“But they suffer,” Castiel rasps, feeling as scraped thin and fragile as an empty eggshell.
“Endlessly,” Gabriel agrees. “Which is why there’s no point, Castiel.”
“I can help,” Castiel insists.
“Sure, if you’re suicidal,” Gabriel says. “Are you?”
Castiel scowls hazily up at him, little more than a dark figure haloed by the cruel mountain sun. He has no wish to end his existence; in fact, he finds himself grown very attached, now that there is imminent danger of losing it.
“… no.”
“Good answer. Now, I’m only willing to do this once,” Gabriel says, laying his hands on Castiel’s chest. Though they don’t know it yet, it’s a lie. “Because I like you.” Also of debatable veracity. “And because I take a special, special joy in thwarting Michael’s designs whenever and wherever I can.” That much, at least, is true. “So hold on to your hat, cowboy, this part can hurt a little.”
Swallowing even a thread of archangel grace is, as it turns out, almost as painful as falling.
So Castiel learns ignorance, and selfishness. He learns the blind eye and the deaf ear. He is very bad at it. Gabriel questions his mental capacity, and failing that, his ability to take orders as a proper soldier of the Lord.
“But I’m not a soldier,” Castiel says weakly, too exhausted to pretend he’s not clinging to Gabriel’s wings. “Not anymore. I’ve fallen.”
“Yeah, at this point you’re much more leech-like,” Gabriel grumbles, irritation ruffling the feathers that cradle Castiel to him. “It’s like I’m talking to myself. Or a badly-trained Schnauzer that won’t stop running into traffic. Repeat after me, Castiel: food. Water. Bandaids. These are not complicated measures to take!”
So Castiel eats, and Castiel sleeps.
“And no miracles!”
Time after time, he finds Gabriel’s last admonition impossible to obey.
Castiel could think it was just another dream, a nightmare jarringly out of place in the unhurried run of days they’ve had at Bobby’s house. There’s something in Dean’s eyes, though, in Jo’s- an alien gleam of mistrust, a new wariness he hadn’t seen there before. Or perhaps he’d just never noticed it.
It started with Sam, and it ends with Sam: Sam and the half-frozen river churning sluggishly through the woods, and Dean’s foolish, “Come on out, guys, the water’s fine!”
There’s no warning before the splintering crack of ice breaking under their feet. Jo screams, Dean gets out one surprised, “Whoa!” and Sam does not say anything at all. He simply disappears.
They’re twenty feet from either steep bank and the snow laying over the ice is almost a foot high, free-flowing water showing only in patches, too few, too far. Castiel is on his knees on a thin sheet that bobs and sways when Dean launches himself at the choppy water where Sam stood a moment ago, arms plunging into the surprisingly small gap before it can close. “Sam!”
“Oh my God,” Jo says, scrambling forward, then back as the ice tilts. “Dean, be careful-”
Sam is under the water for five seconds, ten, and Dean yells, “Fuck, come on, come on! Sam!”
Castiel pulls Dean away and Dean fights him the entire way, striking out at his hands and lunging for the gap again as soon as he breaks free. Castiel throws him, the second time.
The water is so breathtakingly cold that it doesn’t even register as wet, and for a moment Castiel is unaware of anything but the shock of it. The air leaves his lungs in a stream of bubbles and a mouthful of void replaces it. He can’t see Sam. He can’t see anything.
Dean’s body crashes into his and they both sink, startlingly quickly. Castiel’s wings begin to edge into reality of their own accord, fighting the current and lighting the dark, muddy water around him. At his back, he thinks he hears Dean give a muffled shout.
Sam’s eyes are open, blue-white light reflecting back at Castiel as he stares. His mouth is open too, in confusion or desperation, and his fingers reach for the surface that falls further and further away as he sinks.
Castiel dives for him, all his limbs in concert. Where his wings slice through it the water boils into steam.
Sam has his arms up as if he’s bracing for impact when Castiel reaches him, current pulling them both to deeper, murkier depths, but his face has gone slack, his eyes barely open.
The void in Castiel’s mouth transmutes to words, and the words are, “Sam, Sam, Sam.”
Sam is almost certainly already unconscious, and Castiel is imagining what he wants to see- but he swears that in that moment Sam’s pale lips move, and he mouths Castiel’s name in answer.
“You’re fine,” Bobby announces, sounding surprised and relieved as he looks at the thermometer in his hand. “98.2 degrees.”
“Can I take some of these off, then?” Sam asks from the couch, pulling pointedly at the topmost layer of the blankets draped over him. “I’m getting kind of hot.”
“No,” Dean and Castiel say at the same time. They look at each other, where they would have shared a smile before Dean instead gives Castiel a cool, considering look over Sam’s head.
“Hey, Bobby, can I talk to you for a second?” he says casually. “Jo, stay with Sam.”
It’s a little too flat to be a suggestion, and Jo nods jerkily, sitting with her knees drawn up on the chair opposite.
Dean glances down at Sam for a moment as if for reassurance, hand straying to his shoulder. Sam nods. Dean returns it, and motions Bobby to follow him as he walks back towards the stairs. Bobby frowns at the two of them, but gets to his feet and goes.
Castiel stares after them, uneasy, but when Sam says, “Hey, Cas?” he immediately kneels in front of him, a hand on the cushions for balance. Castiel’s hair is still damp from the water, and it tickles unpleasantly at the back of his neck.
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” Sam says quietly. “I don’t- I’m not remembering much, honestly. I remember falling in, but… Dean says you pulled us both out?”
There’s a larger question there, but Castiel simply says, “As quickly as I could. Sam, are you sure you’re alright?”
Sam’s face is pale, brows drawn together as if in pain, but still he smiles wanly and shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he promises. “I just… I think I need a nap. Why don’t you go help Gabriel?”
It’s Christmas Eve, and Gabriel has been in the kitchen since the sun rose. “Alright,” Castiel says reluctantly. “But if you need anything…”
“I’ll be fine,” Sam says again, softer. “Go on.”
Castiel goes.
Gabriel is alone, standing at the counter with his back to the door while he uses smooth, rhythmic strokes to skin a row of carrots and parsnips. Long strips fall away from the blade and into the sink.
“I felt that, you know,” he says mildly, when Castiel hesitates at the door.
“I know,” Castiel says, resigned, and steps inside. He shoves the sleeves of Sam’s sweater up to his elbows. “What do you need help with?”
Gabriel gives him a sidelong look, but he sets the knife aside and unties the apron draped haphazardly around his waist. “Peel these, for a start. And try not to cut off any fingers until I get back.”
He brushes past Castiel without another word of instruction, tossing the apron at his head before disappearing around the corner.
“Of course I won’t,” Castiel says, annoyed. He’s still careful when he picks up the knife, and angles the blade away from his hand; there’s no use tempting the Fates, especially when he knows Atropos at least isn’t particularly fond of him.
It’s an absorbing, exacting process. There’s an old radio on top of the even older refrigerator to his left, static crackling periodically over someone emphatically demanding a hippopotamus for Christmas. Castiel hums to himself, enjoying the simple task of removing the thinnest amount of skin possible before setting the root aside and reaching for the next, again and again, nothing about the warm kitchen and syrupy-golden sun outside to remind him of the river and how cold Sam’s hand had been in his.
The light has shifted and he's gone through the majority of the pile before he hears someone walk into the room behind him.
“I haven’t cut myself at all, Gabriel,” he says, slicing the greens free from a carrot’s top before holding up his hand. “See?”
“Way to go, Cas,” Sam says, and Castiel glances sharply over his shoulder.
“You should be lying down,” he says, leaving the knife on the cutting board and turning to him. “Why aren’t you lying down?”
"I really don’t feel all that bad," Sam says with a strained smile. "And… I've got something for you."
Castiel tilts his head. "For me?"
"Yeah," Sam says, and holds up, of all things, a necklace. There's a small charm dangling from it, something that winks and flashes in the light. “Come here?”
Castiel obediently comes forward, wiping his hand on his apron and reaching for the long chain.
Sam holds it away from him. “Let me.”
“… if you’d like to,” Castiel says, slowly dropping his hands.
He watches Sam's face carefully as the man lifts the necklace over his head. He’s a bit puzzled, both by the odd gift and the pinched, almost wounded look in Sam’s eyes, the barely-perceptible shake in his fingers. Whatever Sam says, he certainly doesn’t look like he’s feeling well at all. Impulsively, Castiel rocks up on his toes. He’s just tall enough to press a small, brief kiss to Sam’s lower lip, and he can’t help but think maybe this time-
The chain is heavy, heavy as a leaden anchor, and Castiel staggers into Sam with a gasp as his knees buckle. “What-?”
“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers. The floor is suddenly so much closer than it had been. Castiel’s cheek throbs where it’s hit the ground and still the chain drags at him, at his whole body, the pressure squeezing his lungs until there isn’t even air to ask Sam what he’s sorry for.
The light around him gutters and goes out, and Castiel doesn't see much of anything after that.
It feels like a strangely long time before he emerges from that darkness. It’s lonely there, and cold.
He’s cold.
Castiel feels the faintest kiss of ice on his forehead, then another on his cheek. Chin. Eyelid.
He opens his eyes, slowly.
Snow continues to fall, tiny pin-pricks of sensation on his skin. It’s almost invisible, drifting down from the pearl-gray clouds. A shadow eclipses Castiel’s vision, and it’s a few seconds before his eyes adjust enough to see the tense line of Gabriel’s mouth.
“Welcome back,” his brother says. He’s crouched next to Castiel, rows and rows of wings mantled aggressively for anyone with the eyes to see them. Trees stick out of the snow around them like bare bones, the tangled reaches of their branches clawing at the sky.
“What,” Castiel tries, but his throat aches and the word cracks down the middle. He swallows, and tries again. “What happened?”
"What happened is that you're a fucking idiot," Gabriel snarls. "They nearly killed you."
"They- who?" Castiel asks, bewildered.
"Oh, gee, I don't know," Gabriel says, "any one of the houseful of hunters you dragged us into the middle of? Hunters, Castiel!"
"Hunters?" he asks. "Yes, they hunt, but I don't see-"
"Hunters of things like us, you brainless fledgling! Of things that aren't human!"
Castiel hadn’t been aware such humans existed, in any organized sense. He lifts a hand to his neck. "Sam, he-"
"Yeah, he got you," Gabriel mutters, looking around the empty forest. "Dean tried the same trick, but there aren’t many artefacts left that can take me out. Lucky for you.”
"But- what happened? After?" Castiel swallows. “Did you-”
"None of them are dead,” Gabriel says, wings stirring restlessly. “Probably. You need new friends, Castiel.”
Castiel grabs him by the sleeve, with what feels like half his normal strength. "But," he says, and is surprised to find his vision blurring, a wet warmth burning in his eyes and overflowing onto his cheeks.
Gabriel glances back down at him, and sighs. "I am sorry," he murmurs, reaching for Castiel. "I'm sorry it has to be this way."
"But why," Castiel says, "why did he-"
"I don't know," Gabriel says, holding him tightly. "They're humans, Castiel, they're pointless, insignificant little meat puppets-"
"They are not!" Castiel cries, pushing at him. "They aren't, Gabriel, I know you don't really think that. Please."
"Please, what?" Gabriel says, looking suddenly exhausted. "Go back? Tell them we're the good kind of monster, not the ones that kill the firstborn and smite entire cities? Oh, wait-"
"Gabriel," Castiel says helplessly. "We can't just leave."
"We can,” Gabriel says, eyes hard. “It's easy."
"I won't leave," Castiel says, rolling to his side to get unsteadily to his knees in the deep snow. "I'll explain. I'm sure they'll listen."
"Castiel, I found Sam standing over your unconscious body with a knife," Gabriel says, grabbing his arm. "There's really nothing ambiguous about that. If you go back, you'll die, and I don't want that to happen."
"Gabriel-"
"They never understand!" Gabriel yells in his face, and Castiel stops pulling for a moment, shocked. "Millennia, Castiel, do you understand? Millennia of watching this happen over and over again. You're not the first to Fall, and you're not the first to fall for a human. It never works out, Castiel. Never."
"… I want to try," Castiel says, very quietly. "I have to at least try, Gabriel.”
Gabriel is stone-faced and silent for long enough that Castiel turns away, looking off into the woods.
“Brother, please,” he says.
"… we'll go back," the archangel says softly. "They'll reject us. We'll leave."
"Thank you," Castiel says, turning back. "Thank for that much."
Something is wrong.
Something is very, very wrong, and the house is deserted when they reach it, the wards torn to wraith-like shreds. The front door shifts open at a touch, the wood where the knob had once been completely shattered.
“Did you do this?” Castiel asks, staring into the unlit rooms. Window-glass cracks and crunches under his feet.
Gabriel’s expression is wary. “Some of it. Not the door. Not that.”
He points, and a shadow lying on the floor resolves into a dark streak of blood. Castiel almost drops to his knees in the hallway, but Gabriel grips his wrist so hard the bones shift.
“I… I think I hear-"
Ellen moves quickly for a woman her age. Luckily for Castiel, Gabriel is that much quicker, and he has her pinned to the wall before Castiel even realizes the danger. She chokes, struggling against his grip across her throat, and Gabriel lets up just enough for her to get out, "You goddamn sonova-"
"We are not here to hurt you," Castiel says. Ellen gives him a plainly disbelieving look, and Castiel motions for Gabriel to let her go. Gabriel stares at him for a long moment, but at Castiel’s sharp, “Gabriel,” lowers her to the ground.
Ellen coughs and rubs her throat, eyeing them defiantly. "Came back to finish us off?"
"I told you, we are not here to hurt you," Castiel says. "Where are the others?"
Ellen spits on the floor. “Fuck, I think you hurt us plenty.”
Castiel notices, for the first time, the long furrows are dug deep in the flesh, blood oozing through the shirt she's tied around it as a makeshift bandage. "What happened?" he exclaims, reaching out. She jerks her arm away before he touches her. “Ellen-”
"Castiel," Gabriel says, inhaling over the flat of his tongue. "Do you smell that?"
Castiel frowns at him, and unfurls his wings through the surround rooms, looking for-
Ellen’s knife streaks through the air, so close to his face he feels the breeze of its passage, and a hellhound yelps as it staggers briefly into visibility.
“Demons!” Castiel calls to Gabriel, almost gagging on the sudden rush of sulfur, and hears Gabriel’s “No shit,” just before the rest of the pack charges them.
It’s brutally quick and bloody, and they force their back towards the kitchen where the sulfur hangs in a palpable haze. Gabriel blows out the door and they tumble into the snowy yard, Ellen with a sawed-off shotgun and shells she pulls from the breadbox, Castiel with his blade flashing between long fangs and mad, dead eyes.
“I fucking hate these things,” Gabriel says after they’ve killed them all, making a face at the black seeping into his shirt. “Ugh.”
Castiel pulls his hand from inside the ribcage of a smoking carcass and shakes the ash off. “Likewise. Ellen, are you-“
“Just dandy, thanks,” Ellen says, both barrels trained on his chest. “Neat trick with the lightning.”
Gabriel rolls his eyes. Castiel sighs.
“I promise we mean you no harm,” he says, holding his hands palms-up. “Truly.”
“See, Cas, I can only take your word for that,” Ellen says. “And nothing I’ve seen so far has made me think you’re anything worth trusting.”
“But… we saved you,” Castiel says, confused, and Ellen chuckles bitterly.
“You let them in,” she says darkly.
Castiel looks at Gabriel, who purses his lips.
“I may have destroyed the wards on egress,” he allows. “Accidentally, you understand.”
“And then we get these lovely visitors,” Ellen says, swinging the shotgun to face him. “Are you telling me the two aren’t related?”
“I have no way of knowing-”
“Wait,” Castiel says in sudden inspiration. “Gabriel. What about Crowley?”
Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “Crowley?”
“Does he know you’re here? And Sam-”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Gabriel says instead of answering the question. “It’s too early, Castiel, he and I agreed on that. And he’s had every opportunity to renege and take Sam if he wanted him.”
“I think if something changed his mind, we’ve led him to a perfect opportunity to take both Sam and Dean,” Castiel says grimly, getting to his feet.
"What’s a Crowley?" Ellen asks, swinging the barrels between them. "Who are you? What are you, if you aren’t demons?"
"We are angels of the Lord," Castiel says.
Ellen stares. "Like fun you are."
"Be not afraid," Gabriel says dryly. "Incidentally, there's a rapidly fading spectral trail we should be following if we want to find our missing."
"I'm not saying I'm convinced," Ellen says, holding the shotgun close to her chest. "But if you take me to Jo, I'll call it even.”
She’s bleeding from new wounds on her face and chest, and the shirt around her arm is soaked through. "Are you sure you’re well enough to continue?" Castiel asks, and she laughs, tossing her hair out of her eyes.
"It's just not Christmas if you ain't killing things," she says. "Now, let's go find us some demons."
Bobby and Rufus they find unconscious in the junkyard, and whatever injuries they have are gone when Gabriel helps them up.
"I'm getting really tired of this," the archangel says, gently setting aside a red-faced, murderous Bobby after confiscating the man's rifle, pistol, and butterfly knife. "Which way did the hounds run?"
The answer, as it turns out, is into the woods.
"There are empty properties up that way," Bobby says, once he's settled down. "Might be that they've been hiding out there."
"You're saying you're an angel?" Rufus says, for the third or fourth time. "Michael Landon angels?"
"More like 'Wings of Desire', right, Cassie?" Gabriel says.
"We have to find them," Castiel says without even hearing the jibe, a sense of urgency rising in his chest. He starts towards the trees.
They find Jo in a creek at the bottom of a ravine, cold and stiff until Gabriel lays his hands on her.
"That's funny," she says, coughing out the blood in bright splashes on the new snow. "Could have sworn I just had my lungs aerated."
"Dodge better next time," Ellen says, and if her voice is a little shaky in relief, no one says anything.
"So what you're saying," Jo says, very slowly, like she's having trouble piecing together even that many words, "is that they've kidnapped Sam because Sam is… the devil's homecoming dress?"
"A potential dress," Gabriel says distractedly, wings sweeping outward in ever-widening circles. "The big boss likes the look of his bloodlines, but he's not sure if Sam’ll go with the shoes he's already picked out. Might have to go back to the JCPenny's, find another sibling pair. There we go." His eyes spark bright gold. "I see them."
"Whoa now," Ellen says, hands out, "see the-?"
There's a rush of air and snow, a terrifying flash of the void. A single snap of Gabriel’s wings brings them to the edge of a winter-fallow field, the broken corn stocks jutting out of the earth like knives.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Rufus gasps, bent over with his hands on his knees.
“Christ,” Ellen echoes, looking out over the field.
The sun is near setting somewhere behind the dense cloudcover, and the world is a thousand shades of gunmetal grey. Castiel sees an old farmhouse squatting a hundred feet ahead, across the field.
Sam's there. He knows it. But between their position and house there must be more than fifty demons- black-eyed men and women, even children, who look to Castiel's eyes like they're burning in a clear dark fire. They hold cleavers and handguns and rusty scythes, and pace forward with the hellhounds prowling after, growls rising in their wake like distant thunder.
“Piece of cake,” Gabriel grins, sword bare and ready. His eyes are already starting to spill blue-white light.
“You must be the archangel,” one of the closer demons says with a broad smile, unafraid. “Heya, Gabe. Bossman gave us something real special for you.”
“Catch!” calls another.
The flaming arch of holy oil doesn’t have to be accurate; just the tiny spatter that hits Castiel’s side is enough to momentarily blind with pain. He staggers to the side, and Gabriel goes up in a cry of agony that stops abruptly as his vessel burns away.
“Gabriel!” Castiel screams, but he’s gone, and the demons are lunging forward with whooping laughter like howls. He disables three in quick succession before their sheer numbers mire him in darting stabs and defensive sweeps. The humans behind him have salt and their exorcisms, but the demons overwhelm them as well. They can’t even hear hellhounds, Castiel realizes with horror, and tears the head from one with his bare hands before it can do the same to Bobby.
He remembers the fighting in Ophir and Cimmeria, how the mere brush of his wings would have incinerated twice this number of hellspawn then. Those days are so long past him that he half-doubts the memories themselves, soaked to the elbows as he wades in with his hands and his sword.
But they’re gaining ground. The farmhouse is closer now, the demons fewer. It’s more difficult to burn their spectral bodies out of the sky than from vessels, and each wrenching pull seems to tear something in his chest, but he leaves a trail of their sooty imprints on the snow behind him.
His steps are starting to falter, but he throws himself forward, again and again until the rotted railing of the porch is under his hand. He reels backwards as a round from Ellen’s shotgun takes out a possessed man inches from his face, then staggers up the steps. The door has a banishing glyph scrawled across it, but the ax he takes from the loosened grip of the demon’s dead host makes short work of it.
The inside of the house is colder, somehow, than the field. Castiel’s wheezing breaths hang in the air above him like ghosts.
“Go,” Bobby says from behind him, and Castiel looks over his shoulder to see him positioning himself in the open door, rifle at the ready. Beside him, Jo holds a machete as long as her forearm. “Find Sam and Dean, Cas. We’ll hold them off.”
“I can’t ask you to-”
“Go!” Bobby bellows as remaining demons begin to converge, and fires another deafening round into the crowd. Castiel runs.
The house is longer than it should be. Larger. The smell of decay and abandoned places is too strong for how cold it is, the darkness too settled. The shadows have palpable weight on his tongue as he stumbles deeper into them, fumbling blindly from room to room.
It gets very quiet, then quieter, until the silence has its own oppressive heaviness.
Thin grey light spills from an open doorway ahead, and Castiel’s harsh breaths are the only sound as he eases around the corner.
Sam is seated at the head of a formal dining table set for thirteen, arms hanging limp at his sides. He barely looks conscious. Something thick and viscous has been smeared over his mouth, dripping down his chin to land in dark spots on his shirt and the fine porcelain plate in front of him.
There’s another figure on the floor behind the table, leather and ripped denim lying motionless on the muddy carpet. Castiel hopes Dean is only hurt, and not worse.
The third person in the room stands with his hands clasped behind his back, surveying the battle outside with evident pleasure, and Castiel would know this twisted soul even from the bottom of the Pit.
"... Azazel," Castiel says quietly, and the man-shaped monster turns to face him, smile wide and mocking.
"Angel," the demon answers patronizingly. “I wonder, what’s that look for?”
Castiel takes a deliberate step closer. “To be frank, I was expecting someone else.”
“Oh?”
“How did you find us?” Castiel asks bluntly, and Azazel chuckles.
“Oh, I see. I found you,” he says, “because Crowley is a conniving, spineless little bastard, and I do mean that literally. Ever ripped out someone’s spine? Such a godawful mess. It really only comes in pieces, no matter what you do.”
“I can’t say that I have,” Castiel says, edging forward.
Azazel kicks Dean’s legs aside and steps up to lay a paternal hand on Sam’s shoulder. Sam doesn’t react. “Well, even cowards can be useful. Crowley told me my little boy was in trouble, and gosh, he was right. I suppose I have you to thank for this?”
Castiel holds his gaze. “For what?”
Azazel grips Sam’s hair and tugs, angling his face towards the weak light from the shattered window. “I don’t appreciate having all my hard work undone by some pesky little cherub.”
Sam’s eyelids flutter, a flash of whites, and his lips part on a faint noise of protest. His teeth gleam wet and red.
“You-” Castiel inhales sharply, immediately reaching for him, only to be stopped by Azazel’s open palm.
“Ah ah ah,” the demon says softly. “You should let it settle. I don’t think that human shell is handling it too well- there’s a reason I call the little children unto me, angel. It’s easier on them.”
“Get away from him,” Castiel says, hands still poised to touch. To heal, if he can. This has always been a part of Sam, but the few faint and fading remnants Castiel has been quietly burning out since he met Sam are nothing compared to the rot spreading in him now.
“Or you’ll do what, exactly?” Azazel asks with a lazy sneer. “Kick me in the shins?”
“If you insist,” Dean gasps from the floor, and takes him out at the knees.
Castiel lunges for Sam and pulls him out of the chair as Azazel topples backwards with an indignant curse, out of the way as the walls begin shake and the demon’s wrath swells in the room like a separate, malevolent entity. Sam’s eyes are open now, and fighting to focus on him. “C’s…”
“It will be okay,” Castiel says, struggling to haul him away as the shadows turn edged and start to prowl after them.
“Bet you think you’re funny,” Azazel growls. A hard noise of impact, and Dean’s body skids across the table, shattering plates and glassware. He hits the floor and rolls into a wall, coughing raggedly.
“Dean,” Sam says a little more clearly, trying to sit up, and Azazel’s cold yellow eyes roll in their direction.
“Oh, Sammy, don’t think I’m done with you,” he says, raising a hand. Castiel throws his wings up in a futile effort to shield them, and the pain is indescribable. It makes him think of burrowing, biting things, of a cancer eating at his grace. He curls over Sam as it wriggles deeper, catching a scream behind his teeth. So be it. If it takes his wings, he’ll block it with his human flesh.
“Cas, what’s wrong?” Sam says shakily, mouth close to his ear.
“Nothing a little dying won’t fix,” Azazel says dismissively. “Push him off. We need to talk.”
“Fuck you,” Sam snarls, pulling himself up straighter.
The demon tskes. A creak of floorboards puts him right in front of Castiel’s face, should he raise his head. He wants to; he wants to make that one last defiant stand, but it hurts, it hurts so badly.
And hidden between their bodies, Sam is prying the hilt of Castiel’s sword from his fingers.
“Who are you?” Sam asks, angry, like he’s tearing the words with his teeth. “What do you even want?”
“What does any father want?” Azazel asks on a laugh. “I want my prodigal son back in the fold. I’ve got to let you in on a little secret, Sammy- your siblings might be a little quicker off the mark, but you’ve always been my favorite.”
“For what?” Sam says, sounding frustrated.
Azazel sounds closer, suddenly, like he’s bent at the waist. “You’ve got a glorious destiny, kiddo.”
“I- I do?”
“We’re going to rule the world,” Azazel says, all sanctimonious satisfaction. “Just wait and see-”
Sam moves quickly, striking out like a snake, and Castiel looks up to see his sword angled expertly through Azazel’s ribcage, buried in his heart.
To his horror, though, the demon staggers but doesn’t fall, and his grin only gets wider. “Oh, Sam,” he says thickly, blood bubbling on his lips. He yanks the blade out of his chest with a grunt and drops it on the floor. “Sammy. You’re just too perfect.”
“Blah blah blah,” Gabriel says from the doorway. “Fire, brimstone. End of days, firstborn sons, does this vessel make my ass look big?”
He swaggers into the room, and the shadows scurry aside like rats. He’s wearing a tiger's smile, more threat than mirth.
"Look, Azzie. Can I call you Azzie? I love my brother, but he’s a great big bag of dicks and thirty-two flavors of crazy.”
In the crawling dark of the hallway, his wings make a perfect six-point star. Azazel falls back a single, terrified step, and Castiel pulls Sam down.
“The Cage is the best place for him," Gabriel says, smile gone, voice low, and the air in the damp room superheats.
For a long stretch of seconds, there are no shadows. Azazel is reduced to a sliver of black, and then nothing. Everything lies revealed, light pouring into the room from all angles. Sam’s eyes are open wide and unafraid as he stares at Castiel’s face, and Castiel soaks it in, the gaze and the light, until the pain falls away and he can gets his arms under him.
“And good riddance,” Gabriel sings, and the humans in the room wince and grab their heads.
“Gabriel,” Castiel warns him, although he’d sing too if he could.
“Humans are so fucking delicate,” the archangel grumbles. “Damn, that felt good.”
He’s reaching for Dean’s prone body with a still-glowing hand as he says it, and Dean jerks violently away, rolling to his side and brandishing Castiel’s bloodied angel blade.
"Dad damn it, again?" Gabriel says. "We're kind of obviously the good guys here, Dean-o"
Dean’s breathing hard, face bruised and his hand shaking where it grips the sword. "You were..." he swallows audibly. “Kind of lion-headed for a second?"
"Was I?" Gabriel asks, smoothing down his hair. "Oops."
Castiel is vaguely aware of Dean getting to his feet, swaying and almost falling before Gabriel gets an arm under his, and the sudden, noisy entry of Ellen, Jo, Bobby and Rufus.
But Sam is touching unsteady fingers to his mouth, eyes dark and horrified, and Castiel cups his cheek in mute understanding.
“It will hurt,” he says, mindful of Dean dropping to the floor beside them. “But I will heal you. I won’t allow it home or hearth within you.”
There's an old, old curse that's tied itself to this blood, sunk deep in Sam’s very bones, and he can't remove it all, not now. But miracles are something of a specialty to him, and he possesses the patience of oceans. He will not stumble. Not with Sam.
“Yeah?” Sam asks softly.
“I swear,” Castiel says with quiet fierceness. Sam blinks, and stares.
“You- when you say that. I can see your halo.”
Castiel smiles tentatively. “Yes?”
"It's amazing," Sam says, looking dazed. His hand drops, and he sways a little. "… I'm really hungry?"
At his side, Dean laughs softly, grabbing him around the shoulders and squeezing. "Hey, buddy, I think we've got just the thing."
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