fic: Wait For You 2/2
Title: Wait For You
Author: lies_unfurl
Rating/warnings: PG-13/themes of depression, PTSD, alcoholism
Characters/pairings: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Bobby; none (this part)
Word Count: ~7500
Summary: Follows Something I Don't Know. Dean and Sam settle down to wait as Castiel recovers from his trauma and learns to be human. It doesn't go so smoothly.
Notes: asdfghjkl; this is so late. I've been writing other parts of this 'verse, and have two [very important] parts more or less completed. Unfortunately, there are at least three other ones that come before that. But at least I've planned ahead?
Part I
Dean estimated that it would take them about six hours to get to the place in Montana where Bobby was staying. Castiel is released at about three; he fully expects to be there by nine.
Nine-fifteen, and they're driving around the back roads of Montana. Much as Dean hates to admit it, they're kind of lost. Cell phone connection here is spotty at best, and their calls of help to Bobby are constantly getting disconnected.
Next to him, Sam yawns. He's more or less given up on copiloting. "Dean, you realize that this is one of those situations that a GPS could be pretty damn useful."
"Yeah, and you realize that that'd make it even easier to track our asses? Besides, I doubt we'd be getting much of a satellite connection out here." Dean glances into the backseat. Castiel has been silent since they left the hospital. When Dean had asked if he needed to take a leak, or if he wanted to stop and grab something to eat, he'd been refuted with a quiet "No" each time. It's like he's brooding, but… not. Like he just doesn't know what to say maybe, or like he doesn't get how to be human. Which probably makes sense. "Cas, you okay back there? You're not doing worse?"
"No, thank you. I'm doing fine."
There's a tightness to his voice that strongly suggests that he's lying, but Dean doesn't bother trying to get through that right now. At the moment, it's a bit more important to figure out where the hell they are; he can address their various personal issues as soon as they've touched base in a safe place.
"There!" Sam sits up straight and points at what Dean thinks might be a narrow pathway, obscured mostly by brush and branches that make shadows like skeletal hands reaching out when his headlights flash across them. "Didn't Bobby say that it was marked by a boulder? It's mostly hidden, but it's definitely there."
Dean squints; Sam is right. There is a damn big rock hidden beneath the legions of trees. He turns onto the road, muttering, "If we get stuck here, then god help me, you're gonna be the one who gets out and pushes, Sam."
They don't. It takes about five minutes of near-misses with the mud, and Dean is fairly certain that his baby is going to require a new paint job after putting her through such a lane as narrow and tree-lined as this one, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a small structure. It's short, to the point where Dean expects that Sam is going to have to stoop down, but it looks to be sprawling, bigger than most of the places that they've been stuck in since Bobby's place burnt down.
Bobby himself comes outside just as Dean is killing the engine. As they all stumble out of the car, legs weak from being seated so long, he calls, "I was starting to think you boys wouldn't make it."
"Have some faith in us." Dean stretches his arms up. The sky is incredibly clear out here, not that he's one to just sit around and remark upon that sort of thing-particularly since it reminds him too much of a different clear night, one that involved him shooting Castiel for his own sake (and okay, that is something that's entered his never-ending stock of memories to be transmuted into nightmares, but he pretends that it hasn't, that it's still just the usual Hell visions that make him wake him up sweaty and shivering). "Few hours behind, but we're here, aren’t we?"
"I guess you are. All of you," Bobby adds, nodding at a Castiel who's staying close to the Impala, glancing around the new homestead with no shortage of reservations. "Good to see you in one piece, Castiel."
Cas starts, like he wasn't just standing right there. He recovers his composure quickly and gives Bobby a small, forced smile, and says, "It's good to see you as well, Bobby," but it doesn't hide the flinch. Which is probably just another thing that Dean should be concerned about when it comes to Castiel. There's this, his apparent flashbacks or something that take him out of the picture, and then his freakouts with water, and the way that he doesn't seem to trust Dean any more than Dean trusts him-seriously, the whole situation is kind of a clusterfuck, Dean thinks as they head into the cabin. He's dedicated himself to this, and he knows that he isn't about to go and throw Castiel into the woods or something, but at the same time he's wondering exactly how they're-or, well, how he's-supposed to deal here.
The cabin, as it turns out, is considerably bigger on the inside. A short flight of stairs reveals how it's partially underground, and not just a made-for-short-people facility. "There's two bedrooms and a couch," Bobby informs them as they go in and gaze around. "Kitchen's in the corner." He nods to the far side of the main room, which contains the aforementioned couch, an ancient-looking rug, and a sprawl of books. "No bathroom, but since there're woods as far as the eye can see, you should be fine."
"Great. Pissing on bushes. I guess we're really going back to our natural roots." Dean nods as he glances around. It's sparsely decorated, and it's clear that they're going to be cramped-the bedrooms don't look much bigger than two broom closets-but all in all, it could be worse. There are gas lamps, blankets, and a wood-burning stove in lieu of electricity, and trees instead of toilets, but it doesn't smell like piss, and there is a solid-looking roof over his head. Props for that, at least.
"Home sweet home." Sam drops his duffel bags, grimacing slightly. "Guess we should probably try to get some sleep, right?"
"Yeah." Dean stretches, yawning as he realizes how tired he actually is. "Bobby how do you wanna divvy up the bedrooms? You've got older bones than us, so you should probably take one."
Bobby glares at him, but there's no heat behind it. "When you get to be my age, you're not going to give up a free night off the floor either. Which one of you wants to take the other one?"
Dean and Sam exchange a glance, and come to a mutual decision. "Cas, you should take it," Sam says. "For the time being, I mean."
Castiel seems to shrink in on himself as everyone turns to size him up. "That's not necessary," he replies. Defensiveness creeps into his voice, and it occurs to Dean that Castiel is as prideful as he ever was. "I don't have any objections to sleeping on the floor."
Dean lets Sam take this one, since he's considerably less likely to get snappish, and Castiel seems to respond better to things that come from his mouth. "I know. We know. But Cas, your body's been through a lot. You should really take some time to let yourself rest up, get your energy back to speed."
For a moment he thinks that Castiel is going to protest that, but in the end he just looks away from all of them and says, "Very well. Which bed should I take?"
"I'll show you," Bobby answers hurriedly. He leads Cas to one of the tiny rooms off of the living room/kitchenette/whatever, and there's something weirdly… normal about that, because how many other times have they been in new squats like this, getting to know the lay of the place? It gives him some sense of ease: yeah, they're playing by different rules now, but normal is still normal.
"You want the couch?" Sam asks him, glancing at the worn-out piece of furniture. "Or want to flip a coin?"
"Sure. I call tails." Dean digs through his pockets until he manages to find a quarter, and with a flick of his thumb, launches it into the air, where it flips around until it finally decides to fall onto the floor, clinking and rolling until it finally settles on heads, and Dean gets ready to spend an uncomfortable night sleeping on the cabin's floor.
*
Maybe it's just because he's out of the hospital and against a "normal" background, but Castiel looks like crap the next morning-or, well, noon; so sue Dean, he got to sleep late, and his back is already punishing him enough for the extra hours clocked asleep. The fallen angel doesn't look like he slept at all, and Dean says as much to him as he sets about heating water for coffee.
Castiel, sitting at the two-chair table in the kitchenette, looks away. "I did my best."
"There're meds out there for that," Bobby calls from the corner, where he's poring over some of his books. Looking for Leviathan lore, Dean thinks, although he hasn't actually asked him.
"Meds are a last-ditch resort." Dean turns to the coffee pot, ignoring Bobby's disbelieving snort. "We're not gonna dose you up on anything other than what the doctor prescribed unless we absolutely have to."
"You're doin' a good job practicing what you preach," Bobby says, his scorn easily evident in his voice. "You done drinking and popping whatever crap it was that you were on the last time I saw you?"
Dean keeps his voice level as he steadily pours out coffee. "This isn't about me, and even if it was, I don't make a habit of being on that chemical crap." He only goes into their dwindling stock of not-entirely-legal pharmaceuticals when things get really, really bad. It's not the same thing as the alcohol, which is pretty much a daily guest from Happy Hour to whenever he falls asleep.
Sam walks in at that moment, coming back from a trip to behind the bushes. "'Chemical crap?' Cas, you want some of the meds from the hospital?"
"No. No, thank you." Castiel shakes his head, still staring down at the table. There are prominent bags beneath his eyes. Dean imagines that someone more familiar with humanity would probably be rubbing at them right about now. "I'm not in pain," he adds, not particularly convincing.
"Did you sleep?" Sam asks bluntly. He grabs one of the mugs from the shelf as he looks at Cas, concern evident in his eyes. "Because no offense Castiel, but you don't look too great."
"I did my best," he says again, and Dean takes that as a definite, "No." And he gets that, he really does. Nightmares fucking suck, and sometimes sleep deprivation is pretty damn tempting.
That doesn't make it acceptable, of course, but Dean has no idea what you say to a fallen angel with sleep issues. He's probably kind of an asshole for this, but that's way more up Sam's line than it is his.
Sam apparently doesn't disagree with him, because he frowns at that. "Once you're off the painkillers, we can try sleeping pills. I don't want to mix meds right now, but with everything you've been through, it makes sense to think that you might need something to help you get some rest."
"Why don't we wait and see?" Dean sips at his bitter coffee and ignores Sam's raised eyebrow. "Like I said before, meds are a last-ditch resort."
"Since when?" Sam leans against the counter as he speaks, and his voice is one of intense disapproval.
"Since now." He forces himself to finish up the brew, not saying anything else on the topic. Not with Cas here, because even if he is just staring down at his bowl of dry cereal with a lost sort of expression, Dean is very well aware that he's listening. "Bobby, what are our plans for today?"
"I don't know," comes his gruff voice from his corner of books. "Rest, relax, get yourselves settled in, I guess. Don't think any of you have the energy to do any sort of heavy work, seein' as you pulled an all-nighter getting here."
"Is there something that you need done?" Sam asks. "I'm not that tired. I could take a ride into town, if you need anything."
Bobby shrugs. "Could probably use some groceries, if you're willing. Maybe a box or two of extra ammo. We want to be loaded up, if you're gonna be training him to shoot." He nods at Castiel, who looks mildly surprised at that, but doesn't comment. "If you boys wanna run down later today, I wouldn't object."
"Sure. Yeah, we can do that." Sam nods. "Cas, why don't you wait here? You're still tired, I know. Dean and I can handle it."
"As you wish." Castiel sighs, playing with the cereal in his bowl. It's mostly full, Dean notes. He decides to pass it off as a fluke for the moment. Cas was eating at the hospital; he should be able to do it now. "The dressings on my injuries will require changing tonight. Would one of you-any of you-be willing to help me?"
The words seem to be said with some reluctance; Castiel sounds decidedly unhappy to be asking for help. Even Sam's assurance that of course one of them would help out, just say when, doesn't take the dour expression off of his face. Dean forces himself to be patient, seeing as Castiel just got out of the hospital, and is probably still in a shit-ton of pain from the whole Leviathan thing. It would normally bother him to the point where he'd be telling Castiel to just snap out of it, but under the circumstances, moodiness is probably excusable.
*
They're halfway out of the long path leading to the cabin in the woods when Sam says grimly, "Okay, Dean. Spill. What's up with you and your sudden anti-drug thing?"
It would be pointless to act as though he didn't know what Sam was talking about, and so Dean doesn't. "Dude, we're not getting Castiel hooked on something. He's not really the type who can handle that shit in moderation, you know? He's got one of those-what do you call them-addictive personalities."
And it's true, it really is. Castiel doesn't do anything halfway. When he drinks, he drinks a liquor store; when he disagrees with Heaven, he falls like someone pushed him off his frigging cloud. And if they let him start popping pills like they're M&Ms, they're going to end up with a morphine addict for a fallen angel.
"Okay, I get that," Sam admits. "But you can't just deny him meds, Dean. I don't think he slept at all last night, and the nurses at the hospital mentioned to me that he had some pretty bad nightmares, to the point where they had to sedate him. Which, let's face it, we probably should have expected."
Dean grunts. Fair enough. They've both had their fair share of crappy dreams, so it probably wouldn't be just to hold Castiel, now that he's human, to different standards. "Still. Pills should be a last-resort thing. I've seen Castiel as a stoner, and man, it is not a pretty site."
"Oh." Sam falls silent as they drive down the bumpy road to the downtown area. They don't talk very much about the time when they split up. That's how it should be, as far as Dean is concerned.
They make it through the small grocery store in relative silence, only speaking when it comes to clarifying the things that Bobby has messily scrawled down on a crumpled piece of paper. When they get to the toiletries section, Sam tosses in another toothbrush, an extra razor, and a mini bottle of Advil. Dean doesn't bother asking why.
"Should we pick anything else up?" Dean asks when all of the brown paper bags have been piled into the backseat of the Impala. The downtown area here isn't much, but he can see the distinctive red sign of a Salvation Army up ahead. Castiel is going to have to start building up his wardrobe sooner or later. "Besides the ammo that Bobby asked for?"
"I don't think so. We're going to have to get Cas some clothes of his own, but I'd rather he be here when we do that." They walk down the dingy sidewalk, heading to get the bullets that are going to be blown training Castiel. "He's got to start developing a fashion sense of his own, and all that. But he should probably be here when we get him clothes. I mean, we don't even know what sizes he takes."
"That's true." Dean slouches deeper into his jacket and frowns at Sam's comment. It's a reminder that they really don't know all that much about the more human side of Castiel. What size he takes, what foods he eats, what music he likes. Hell, even Cas probably doesn't know all that. They have a long way to go with him, and Dean will be damned if that thought doesn't freak him out just a little, for reasons that he can't properly comprehend.
*
A strained sort of silence takes over the cabin when he and Sam get back. Dean sits on the floor and stares out at the window, watching grass grow. Sam hangs out on his laptop, even though there's no electricity to offer up the internet. Castiel sits in the corner and is silent. Bobby reads; cooks dinner when it's time. They eat, Castiel just poking at his, but managing more than he did at breakfast.
Dean sharpens knives after supper. Sam takes Castiel aside while he does that, probably to change his bandages. Bobby keeps on going through the latest copy of How to Kill Leviathans For Dummies, as written in Mesopotamian or Farsi or, more likely, some tongue that Dean's never even heard of.
They all go to bed early. Tension is still palpable in the air, a balance between them all not quite reached. But Dean falls asleep quickly, before he really has a chance to ponder that.
He wakes up three hours later, when he hears the screams.
*
Dean sits up before he's really aware of why he's doing it, tossing the blankets he had pulled around him to the floor. His back protests for a minute, but he doesn't pay much attention to that, because someone, somewhere, is hoarsely yelling like the hordes of hell are after them-
His eyes snap open to the couch first, but no. It's not Sam; from what he can make out in the darkness of the cabin, Sam is scrambling to get up too. And Dean's grown used to hearing his brother's screams over the years. Even as his brain is just starting to function right, he's thinking that the voice is too low, too rough to be Sam's.
"Castiel," Sam says, and then it all comes rushing back to Dean, his mind awakening in a bright flashbulb of awareness. He and Sam fumble their way through the lightless room, stumbling over piles of Bobby's books that have been left haphazardly on the floor. Sam gets there a half-second before him, manages to find one of the flashlights that they left at each entrance just in case, and clicks it on.
Castiel is sitting against the headboard, his knees pressed close to his chest. His eyes are wide, seeing something that no longer is around. He's stopped screaming now, and is instead now speaking too fast for Dean to understand. It takes him a moment to realize that it's not English that Castiel is speaking, it's Enochian. There's something very much like pleading in his tone, and it freaks Dean out, roots his feet to the spot in the doorway.
"Shit," Sam breathes from behind him. He pushes past Dean, always the better on in situations like this. "Cas! Snap out of it, man." He touches Castiel's shoulders, looks down, and swears.
It's then that Dean realizes that Castiel has been clawing at his stomach. Tatters of white bandage litter the floor, looking unsettlingly like feathers. Dean swallows hard and resists the urge to run away, get out of the cabin and into the Impala, and then far away from all this.
But before his instinct to flee can grow overwhelmingly strong, something else freezes him in place. Sam has leaned forward, firmly drawn Castiel's hand's away-and Cas isn't reacting well to that; he's struggling and twisting from side to side in Sam's grip, his words coming out uninterrupted-and then Sam speaks. In Enochian. The guttural syllables are unmistakable, and when exactly did he pick up that skill?
The results are immediate. Castiel stills, and then slumps back into Sam's arms. He wearily says something, and Sam answers in a soothing-sounding voice.
"I'll be damned," Bobby murmurs from where he's come up behind Dean. He leans on the other side of the doorframe, watching Sam and Cas as they continue to speak. "How long has he been able to pull off that little trick?"
"Damned if I know," Dean replies. The initial adrenaline rush that had resulted when Castiel had woken him up screaming has subsided, and now it's something like anger that's taking its place. What else has Sam been hiding from him? They can't afford to be strangers right now, not with Castiel being in the state that he is, and a million and one black-goo creatures running around doing God-knows-what.
But before his anger can grow to boiling levels, he realizes two things: that Castiel has fallen more or less silent, and that Sam is looking at him. "Dean, can you fix the bandages? I," and his eyes flicker down to where he holds Castiel, whose face is turned away from the door and buried against Sam's chest, "I don't want to move. We can talk after, promise," he adds, when Dean doesn't make to do anything.
"Fine." He turns on his heel, going to get the first-aid kit from his duffle bag. "Bobby, you staying up for this?"
"I'm gonna go and make the coffee," Bobby replies drily. "This is one explanation that I ain't about to miss for the world."
*
Castiel had managed to tear away Sam's tightly-wrapped work almost completely. Dean has to strip them off so he can put on new ones. He does this gingerly, moving Castiel as little as possible. Years of experience redressing wounds make this easier than it would be otherwise, but it's still slow going.
In some places thin red streams run over the mess of scars from where Castiel's clawing drew blood. He flinches when Dean touches a wad of cotton soaked in antiseptic against them, but he doesn't cry out. Dean notices Sam's arms tightening around Castiel almost imperceptibly when this happens. He also notices the way that Sam glances off into the corner, and he's forced to resist the urge to press the stinging pad harder than necessary against the scratches.
Castiel's abdomen is an absolute mess. The skin there is lined with a web of scars from where Sam cut to free the Leviathans. It's impossible to tell where one slice ends and another begins. It's almost reminiscent of the black veins that once stood out against Castiel's forehead as he was taken over by the creatures from Purgatory, except these are entirely human markings, raised and jagged bumps of skin. Most of Dean's scars are long gone, the results of body-wipes carried out by the once-angel in front of him now. That Cas is always going to carry his brands doesn't escape Dean.
It takes him around fifteen minutes to have the bandages wound to his satisfaction. In that time, Castiel gradually stills, his breath evening out. By the time the last of the gauze is pressed down, Dean is fairly sure that Castiel is asleep. The way Sam gingerly disentangles himself from the sheets as he stands confirms it.
They slink to the kitchen, Sam pulling the door shut behind him. But as soon as they're sitting at the one table in the cabin, Bobby's coffee set in front of them, the silence ends.
"What the hell was that?" Dean gulps the drink down, burning and black. "You suddenly hearing angels now?"
"How long?" Bobby asks, sitting next to him and grimacing. "And, well, how?"
"I'm not hearing angels. And not long. A few days. Since Cas fell." Sam pauses, looking down broodily at his coffee, and then elaborates. "It started when we were bringing him to the hospital, when I was in the backseat with him. He was talking to himself in Enochian, and, well, I was seeing Lucifer-"
"Something else you're supposed to tell me about," Dean growls, not sure if he's more pissed at Sam for not telling him, or Cas for causing the hallucinations.
"It's not a big deal. I'm dealing just fine, Dean. Anyway, Lucifer was there, and he said something to Cas. In Enochian. And Cas heard him. I asked him about it at the hospital, and he remembered. I've been trying to call it up, but it wasn't going very well. Until now, I mean. I guess seeing Cas like that triggered it or something." Sam shrugs. "I mean, I don't get all of it either. I can remember what I said, how to say it, but I don't know the rules of the language or anything. It's not like I can suddenly start conversing in it, or something."
"Michael and Lucifer spoke it?" Bobby asks. Sam nods in reply, his eyes clouding slightly. "So what was Cas sayin' in there?"
"'Get them out of me.' 'Not again.' Things like that." Before Dean can ask the obvious follow-up question, Sam adds, "I just talked him down from it. Nothing major, just your usual stuff."
Whatever that means. Sam's had enough close calls with Dean's fist to teach him that when Dean is having a nightmare, it's a fucking bad idea to approach him. And Dean hasn't exactly rushed to Sam's side since he was a teenager and started being all embarrassed about his big brother coming over 'cause of a bad dream. But yeah, he gets the gist of it. Guess fallen angels are just like human when it comes to all the bad shit.
Not that that's the important thing here. Castiel's not doing too well without his wings; news at eleven. There are more pressing issues to deal with right now. He looks at his brother and asks, as blunt as he can be while also trying not to set off a Hell-bomb, "What else do you remember? From the Cage?"
"Not much. I mean, nothing useful." Sam frowns down at his coffee as he stirs a sugar packet in. "It's not like I even know that much Enochian. Like, I can't sit down and write a book on the vocabulary and the syntaxes and all of that. I've been trying to bring up more of the memories of Michael and Lucifer talking, but it's all so scattered. It's just been luck that I've known what to say with Cas, I guess." He shrugs.
Dean nods, doesn't know what else to say. Neither does Bobby, apparently; they end up finishing their drinks in silence. When the last mug is drained, Bobby stands. "Well, now that I've pumped my system full of that, I'm gonna go and catch another hour or two of shut-eye. You?"
"Yeah." Dean stands, and Sam follows behind him. They leave their mugs on the table; it's not like they have the convenience of a sink to dump them in, and it's still dark outside. No point risking a run-in with a bear. "G'night, Bobby. Night, Sam."
"Night, Dean." Sam stretches and yawns, casting a quick glance over at Castiel's room. Concern is evident in his eyes. "I'll go to him if he wakes up again."
"If you need the sleep, I can do it." He forces himself to make the offer. He doesn't want to-doesn't know how the fuck he's supposed to deal with Cas on his own, if he's going to be that distraught every time he wakes up. But it would probably be an asshole move, forcing Sam to give up his sleep when he's the one who needs it more.
"No. Don't worry." Sam stretches and sighs as he sits down on the couch, and despite his words, Dean does worry as he clicks off the flashlight and tries to get comfortable again on the floor.
*
Dean and Sam are both up before Castiel the next morning. They're sitting next to Bobby at the same small table they occupied only a few hours ago, eating charred toast and drinking coffee from the same cups as last night (which probably isn't hygienic, but none of them is particularly concerned about that) when the door to his room swings open and Castiel comes out.
He freezes in the doorway when the three of them all automatically look up at him. Looks like crap, Dean thinks as he watches him pulls his shoulders back, drawing in on himself.
"I…I apologize for my conduct last night," he says briskly. He doesn't meet their eyes, just stares at some point beyond their shoulders. "It was unseemly."
Which isn't what Dean expected to hear from him, not at all. He raises an eyebrow, about to comment, but Sam gets to it first. "Cas, you don't have to apologize for anything. You weren't you."
"Nevertheless." Castiel crosses his arms tightly over his chest. There's something almost stoic about the way he stands that reminds Dean that he was an angel not so long ago-except then his lack of emotions had more to do with him not actually feeling them. Unlike now, when it's because he's too prideful to let them show. "I damaged the work that you'd put into the bandages, and I disturbed you-all of you-from your sleep. The blame for that is entirely on my shoulders, and so I apologize."
Dean bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, knowing that if he speaks without thinking, the results won't be pretty. There is something about what Cas just said that's pissing him off good, something he can't really identify, but which is definitely there. Interrupting Sam's speech about how nightmares are natural responses to the body dealing with stress he says, "Cut the pity party, Cas."
Which stops his brother mid-sentence. Sam frowns, turns to him with a look that says that he's about to get his head chewed off, but Dean just raises his hand, blocking out his protests. He looks right at Cas when he speaks, not letting him escape his gaze. "So you had a nightmare. Woke a few of us from our beauty sleep, clawed yourself up good. Big deal. We've all been there. But we ain't standing around sayin' we're sorry. It's life. Move on."
He thinks it's remarkably supportive. Sam's glare probably hints that he means otherwise, and Bobby is just watching them all with a combination of mild interest and amusement. But it's Castiel that he's watching for a reaction.
Cas frowns, leans against the doorframe. He's in the same pants that he slept in, plus a faded old shirt that Dean thinks was once Sam's. He doesn't look too sharp overall. "I apologize-"
"Cut out the fucking apologizing." Dean stands up, keeping his eyes on Cas. "It happened. It'll happen again. Not a big deal. We've got a million and one more important things to do, okay? Like, I dunno, getting you some shirts of your own. Or target practice, figuring out what you can do. Or resting up, since you look kinda like shit." He ignores Sam's look. It's true. "Okay?"
Cas stares at him a moment longer, that same indecipherable look on his face-an unnamable combination of annoyance, hesitation, frustration, and maybe a hint of fear. Finally breaking eye contact with him, looking down at the cabin's rough wooden floor, he says, "Okay."
"Good." Dean turns around and goes outside both to rinse his coffee mug, and to get away from Sam's irritated glare and Castiel's fucking helplessness.
*
Or, well. It sure as fuck looks like helplessness right then, seeing Cas too tired to stand without the support of the doorframe, seeing him toy with the corners of his shirt in an all-too-human gesture as he apologized for something that wasn't his fault. But that afternoon, after they've all gotten cleaned up and Castiel is looking halfway decent in a pair of old jeans that Dean thought he had thrown out a couple of years ago and one of Sam's shirts that fully covers the bulk of the bandages, they establish that he isn't. He's tired and has almost no energy, is lacking the strength that he had back in his Heaven days, but helpless? Nope. Not really.
Seven of the twelve empty cans that Dean sets up go flying off their ledge during Castiel's first round with a sawed-off. His hands shake as he lays the gun down-but maybe that's just the cold; it's hard to say. Point is, seven out of twelve's pretty good, for someone who's always been able to zap his enemies away before.
"Not bad," he says, walking over and examining the fallen cans. A couple of them were nicked, not as dead-on as he'd have liked, but it was solid shooting overall, and Dean tells him that.
"I've fallen far, but I still remember everything that I knew in the past. The mechanics of shooting are simple in theory." Castiel frowns down at the gun and adds, "The actual action of it, not so much."
"Seven out of twelve's not bad. It's pretty good, actually," says Sam. He nods at Cas, his encouraging expression on. "Especially for your first time. That's better than I did."
"It might not be good enough, though," Castiel says seriously. "Not in a life-or-death situation. I'd like to try again."
So Dean sets a dozen cans up in a neat row again. And again.
After Castiel's fifth round, when he puts holes in ten of twelve, his hair is sticking to his scalp with sweat, despite how chilly it is in the winter's air, and his hands are visibly shaking. Dean glances at Sam, who nods and steps forward, carefully laying his hand onto Castiel's arm. "Hey. I think you should take a break."
Cas cocks his head at Sam in his classic expression of confusion. There's a trace of something that might be irritation in his eyes, but it's hard to say. "I can't. It wouldn't be right to stop before I hit them all."
"Who told you that?" Sam glances at Dean, brows drawn into an accusing glare. Dean raises his hands, the closest he can get to a white flag. He sure as hell never had the chance to force his childhood work-ethic onto Cas. "You can't do anything if you collapse."
"I won't collapse," he answers stubbornly. The way he sways from side to side before standing at attention belies his statement, and when he actually stumbles reaching down for more ammo, Dean decides to interfere.
He steps forward, to where Sam is all but holding Cas up. They're right in the cabin's backyard, surrounded by trees on all sides except for where the building is, and the tall pines somewhat call to mind the other time that Dean and Castiel were in a forest, when Dean had to hold onto him while Sam carved up his torso. "Cas. Get inside."
And Castiel flinches at his words, even though they're hardly stricter than what Sam's been saying. Dean suppresses his annoyance at that as best he can (although really, what the hell is so bad about him that it makes Cas twitch every time he speaks in something louder than a whisper?) and says firmly, "We know that you're a decent shot, okay? Means we won't have to start teaching you from scratch. And that's all we really needed to find out today, all right? So you might as well get inside, because you're only going to hurt yourself if you push yourself beyond what you can take."
He turns around, walks back towards the cabin. Castiel's quietly muttered, "I can handle pain, Dean," doesn't escape him, but he ignores it anyway. Cas will get over this stupid, self-sacrificing shit eventually. For now, Dean just wants him to get well enough so that he doesn't feel like a total douchbag for still being as pissed at him as he is over the whole Purgatory thing.
*
Cas falls asleep on the couch and stays there for the rest of the afternoon, legs stretched out over the faded maroon cushions, and one arm hanging off of the side. It's weird, seeing him in such a decidedly human position-and then it's weird that that's weird to Dean, considering that he saw him with a Leviathan baby bump, looking entirely like Hell warmed over.
Dean passes the rest of the afternoon by playing with an old deck of cards that's missing the Ace of Spades and the Three of Hearts. Solitaire's the theme of the day, save for when Bobby and Sam finally give in and set up a three-way of poker. They're all conmen, which makes the game all the better. Dean likes a challenge when it comes to cards, he really does.
He doesn't like the way that Sam keeps absentmindedly looking into the corner as he pushes in a pile of chips. Or how he spaces out to the point where he has to be yelled at that it's his turn. Bobby notices it too; Dean can see how his brow is furrowed, how he shakes his head when Sam has to be called back from just staring at the door.
"You okay?" Dean asks at some point during their third round. Sam jumps at the sound of his voice before he assures him that he is. Dean doesn't believe it, but Sam returns to the game with an intensity that leaves no room for pressing the subject.
Castiel wakes up right around six, with a sharp gasp that makes everyone else in the cabin jump and automatically look his way. He's sitting up on the couch, eyes wide and hands on his lap, breathing like he just finished a marathon-but it's better than the screaming, it really is.
"Cas?" Sam calls. He carefully lays his cards down, not making any sudden movements, even though Castiel isn't looking in their direction. "Hey, you okay over there?"
Cas nods. He squeezes his eyes shut, head hanging down towards his lap. A tense moment passes before he speaks. "Yes. Thank you. I'm fine."
It's a lie so blatant that even Dean, the unofficial king of lying about his current condition, is surprised that he tried. But he lets it go, because what else can he do? Cas knows how to ask for help. And it's not like nightmares are that bad, really-Dean knows that they suck, but he's been having them since before Hell, and they're not deadly. Not by a longshot.
(A small part of him wonders if maybe he likes that Castiel hasn't come out of this unscathed-that he's got his own wounds, that he's hurting just like Sam is because of what he did. But even if he alternates between feeling for him and being pissed at Cas, even if Cas has a long, long way to go until forgiveness, that's really petty even for him. Dean knows that, so he dismisses the doubt as something in his imagination and nothing more).
*
As the weeks pass and December slips into January with little fanfare, they settle into a strange sort of routine. Castiel spends his time regaining the strength that he lost, letting the last of his injuries heal up. He stays outside until he can shoot two dozen cans down on his first try, from a distance double what he started out with. Dean and Sam take him out on a regular hunt in the woods around them, and while he's not the greatest at it-his movements are stiff and clumsy; he still isn't as in touch with his body as a regular human would be, and despite his efforts, he ends up clambering through the woods and snapping practically every twig he meets-he still manages to bring down a skinny winter rabbit. Sam claps his shoulder, congratulates him, and Dean nods his approval too. Castiel doesn't seem overly pleased, which makes some sense (it's a bit of a fall, going from a slayer of demons to someone who almost lets an emaciated bunny get away) but it's his first, and it's still significant. Sam seems happy, so Dean plays along.
Out of the three of them, it's Sam who works the closest with Castiel. Sam, who's there after the worst of the nightmares (they happen two or three times a week now, the ones with screams. Or maybe more; Dean's gotten better at tuning them out) talking soothingly in Enochian. Sam, who usually helps Cas change the dressings that he still keeps around his scars. Once Castiel was strong enough, Sam began taking him out on his morning runs. He never said as much, but Dean gets the impression that they're mostly just walking and talking about their feelings.
Does he get why Sam is doing this, is helping the guy that's responsible for most of his nightmares? No, not at all. Not by a longshot. But that's just Sam, Dean supposes. Forgives everyone around him, even when they sure as hell don't deserve it. A part of him is as grudgingly proud of Sam as it is irritated, for being so damn empathetic. He can't decide if it's a sign of weakness or a very good thing.
For Dean's part, things settle into a fragile truce with Cas. He doesn't openly snip at him, or glare at him, or otherwise act like a dick. But he isn't exactly the warm, huggable type either-which, let's face it, would just be weird. The times he gets to Cas first when he's having a nightmare, it's… not all that comfortable. Cas doesn't respond to him like he does to Sam; if anything, Dean being there usually freaks him out more. Maybe it's English versus Enochian, but Dean is more inclined to think that Cas is smart enough to know that Sam is still suffering from what he did, and as long as his brother is hurting? Dean really can't forgive Cas. Can't just make things be exactly as they were before.
Of course, it's not like Sam is even talking about the whole "Devil-in-his-head" thing. No, he's totally mute on how and where and when he sees Lucifer. Which doesn't mean that Dean can't tell-he wasn't born yesterday; he knows what it means when his brother stares off in the distance and doesn't pay attention to his snapping fingers and demands to get him back. He knows that Sam has nightmares of his own; they rotate between the couch and the floor, so it's not like they're sleeping too far apart. But Sam doesn't talk about it, for whatever reason, and Dean doesn't push.
It's at the end of February, when they've been in the cabin for almost three months, that Bobby finally stands up and says that he's leaving. Says that the monsters in the world just keep on killing people, even when they need to rest and save up strength. Dean, suffering from a serious case of cabin fever, almost goes with him when he heads out to Polson to deal with a ghoul infestation. In the end, though, he realizes that it's probably a bad idea to leave Sam and Castiel together. Sam's not fully okay, much as he pretends otherwise, and neither is Cas. If there's an emergency-particularly if Sam starts going beyond just glimpsing Lucifer and full-out starts interacting with him again-he doesn't just want the other to be there.
So Dean stays and keeps up the cabin. Reads some books that Bobby just got in on Biblical lore. Bores the living daylights out of himself. Later, Sam invites him to go down to the grocery store with Castiel, just to pick up a few odds and ends. Dean is so overcome with boredom that he actually agrees, figuring that even wandering through the narrow aisles of the only grocery store this one horse town has to offer is preferable to staying inside for another day.
Later, Dean will wonder how things would have changed if he'd said no, Sam and Cas could have fun picking out the freshest February produce on their own. Later, he'll wonder if saying yes was the singlehandedly best decision that he made, and decide that yeah, it's probably up there in the top five.
Author: lies_unfurl
Rating/warnings: PG-13/themes of depression, PTSD, alcoholism
Characters/pairings: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Bobby; none (this part)
Word Count: ~7500
Summary: Follows Something I Don't Know. Dean and Sam settle down to wait as Castiel recovers from his trauma and learns to be human. It doesn't go so smoothly.
Notes: asdfghjkl; this is so late. I've been writing other parts of this 'verse, and have two [very important] parts more or less completed. Unfortunately, there are at least three other ones that come before that. But at least I've planned ahead?
Part I
Dean estimated that it would take them about six hours to get to the place in Montana where Bobby was staying. Castiel is released at about three; he fully expects to be there by nine.
Nine-fifteen, and they're driving around the back roads of Montana. Much as Dean hates to admit it, they're kind of lost. Cell phone connection here is spotty at best, and their calls of help to Bobby are constantly getting disconnected.
Next to him, Sam yawns. He's more or less given up on copiloting. "Dean, you realize that this is one of those situations that a GPS could be pretty damn useful."
"Yeah, and you realize that that'd make it even easier to track our asses? Besides, I doubt we'd be getting much of a satellite connection out here." Dean glances into the backseat. Castiel has been silent since they left the hospital. When Dean had asked if he needed to take a leak, or if he wanted to stop and grab something to eat, he'd been refuted with a quiet "No" each time. It's like he's brooding, but… not. Like he just doesn't know what to say maybe, or like he doesn't get how to be human. Which probably makes sense. "Cas, you okay back there? You're not doing worse?"
"No, thank you. I'm doing fine."
There's a tightness to his voice that strongly suggests that he's lying, but Dean doesn't bother trying to get through that right now. At the moment, it's a bit more important to figure out where the hell they are; he can address their various personal issues as soon as they've touched base in a safe place.
"There!" Sam sits up straight and points at what Dean thinks might be a narrow pathway, obscured mostly by brush and branches that make shadows like skeletal hands reaching out when his headlights flash across them. "Didn't Bobby say that it was marked by a boulder? It's mostly hidden, but it's definitely there."
Dean squints; Sam is right. There is a damn big rock hidden beneath the legions of trees. He turns onto the road, muttering, "If we get stuck here, then god help me, you're gonna be the one who gets out and pushes, Sam."
They don't. It takes about five minutes of near-misses with the mud, and Dean is fairly certain that his baby is going to require a new paint job after putting her through such a lane as narrow and tree-lined as this one, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a small structure. It's short, to the point where Dean expects that Sam is going to have to stoop down, but it looks to be sprawling, bigger than most of the places that they've been stuck in since Bobby's place burnt down.
Bobby himself comes outside just as Dean is killing the engine. As they all stumble out of the car, legs weak from being seated so long, he calls, "I was starting to think you boys wouldn't make it."
"Have some faith in us." Dean stretches his arms up. The sky is incredibly clear out here, not that he's one to just sit around and remark upon that sort of thing-particularly since it reminds him too much of a different clear night, one that involved him shooting Castiel for his own sake (and okay, that is something that's entered his never-ending stock of memories to be transmuted into nightmares, but he pretends that it hasn't, that it's still just the usual Hell visions that make him wake him up sweaty and shivering). "Few hours behind, but we're here, aren’t we?"
"I guess you are. All of you," Bobby adds, nodding at a Castiel who's staying close to the Impala, glancing around the new homestead with no shortage of reservations. "Good to see you in one piece, Castiel."
Cas starts, like he wasn't just standing right there. He recovers his composure quickly and gives Bobby a small, forced smile, and says, "It's good to see you as well, Bobby," but it doesn't hide the flinch. Which is probably just another thing that Dean should be concerned about when it comes to Castiel. There's this, his apparent flashbacks or something that take him out of the picture, and then his freakouts with water, and the way that he doesn't seem to trust Dean any more than Dean trusts him-seriously, the whole situation is kind of a clusterfuck, Dean thinks as they head into the cabin. He's dedicated himself to this, and he knows that he isn't about to go and throw Castiel into the woods or something, but at the same time he's wondering exactly how they're-or, well, how he's-supposed to deal here.
The cabin, as it turns out, is considerably bigger on the inside. A short flight of stairs reveals how it's partially underground, and not just a made-for-short-people facility. "There's two bedrooms and a couch," Bobby informs them as they go in and gaze around. "Kitchen's in the corner." He nods to the far side of the main room, which contains the aforementioned couch, an ancient-looking rug, and a sprawl of books. "No bathroom, but since there're woods as far as the eye can see, you should be fine."
"Great. Pissing on bushes. I guess we're really going back to our natural roots." Dean nods as he glances around. It's sparsely decorated, and it's clear that they're going to be cramped-the bedrooms don't look much bigger than two broom closets-but all in all, it could be worse. There are gas lamps, blankets, and a wood-burning stove in lieu of electricity, and trees instead of toilets, but it doesn't smell like piss, and there is a solid-looking roof over his head. Props for that, at least.
"Home sweet home." Sam drops his duffel bags, grimacing slightly. "Guess we should probably try to get some sleep, right?"
"Yeah." Dean stretches, yawning as he realizes how tired he actually is. "Bobby how do you wanna divvy up the bedrooms? You've got older bones than us, so you should probably take one."
Bobby glares at him, but there's no heat behind it. "When you get to be my age, you're not going to give up a free night off the floor either. Which one of you wants to take the other one?"
Dean and Sam exchange a glance, and come to a mutual decision. "Cas, you should take it," Sam says. "For the time being, I mean."
Castiel seems to shrink in on himself as everyone turns to size him up. "That's not necessary," he replies. Defensiveness creeps into his voice, and it occurs to Dean that Castiel is as prideful as he ever was. "I don't have any objections to sleeping on the floor."
Dean lets Sam take this one, since he's considerably less likely to get snappish, and Castiel seems to respond better to things that come from his mouth. "I know. We know. But Cas, your body's been through a lot. You should really take some time to let yourself rest up, get your energy back to speed."
For a moment he thinks that Castiel is going to protest that, but in the end he just looks away from all of them and says, "Very well. Which bed should I take?"
"I'll show you," Bobby answers hurriedly. He leads Cas to one of the tiny rooms off of the living room/kitchenette/whatever, and there's something weirdly… normal about that, because how many other times have they been in new squats like this, getting to know the lay of the place? It gives him some sense of ease: yeah, they're playing by different rules now, but normal is still normal.
"You want the couch?" Sam asks him, glancing at the worn-out piece of furniture. "Or want to flip a coin?"
"Sure. I call tails." Dean digs through his pockets until he manages to find a quarter, and with a flick of his thumb, launches it into the air, where it flips around until it finally decides to fall onto the floor, clinking and rolling until it finally settles on heads, and Dean gets ready to spend an uncomfortable night sleeping on the cabin's floor.
*
Maybe it's just because he's out of the hospital and against a "normal" background, but Castiel looks like crap the next morning-or, well, noon; so sue Dean, he got to sleep late, and his back is already punishing him enough for the extra hours clocked asleep. The fallen angel doesn't look like he slept at all, and Dean says as much to him as he sets about heating water for coffee.
Castiel, sitting at the two-chair table in the kitchenette, looks away. "I did my best."
"There're meds out there for that," Bobby calls from the corner, where he's poring over some of his books. Looking for Leviathan lore, Dean thinks, although he hasn't actually asked him.
"Meds are a last-ditch resort." Dean turns to the coffee pot, ignoring Bobby's disbelieving snort. "We're not gonna dose you up on anything other than what the doctor prescribed unless we absolutely have to."
"You're doin' a good job practicing what you preach," Bobby says, his scorn easily evident in his voice. "You done drinking and popping whatever crap it was that you were on the last time I saw you?"
Dean keeps his voice level as he steadily pours out coffee. "This isn't about me, and even if it was, I don't make a habit of being on that chemical crap." He only goes into their dwindling stock of not-entirely-legal pharmaceuticals when things get really, really bad. It's not the same thing as the alcohol, which is pretty much a daily guest from Happy Hour to whenever he falls asleep.
Sam walks in at that moment, coming back from a trip to behind the bushes. "'Chemical crap?' Cas, you want some of the meds from the hospital?"
"No. No, thank you." Castiel shakes his head, still staring down at the table. There are prominent bags beneath his eyes. Dean imagines that someone more familiar with humanity would probably be rubbing at them right about now. "I'm not in pain," he adds, not particularly convincing.
"Did you sleep?" Sam asks bluntly. He grabs one of the mugs from the shelf as he looks at Cas, concern evident in his eyes. "Because no offense Castiel, but you don't look too great."
"I did my best," he says again, and Dean takes that as a definite, "No." And he gets that, he really does. Nightmares fucking suck, and sometimes sleep deprivation is pretty damn tempting.
That doesn't make it acceptable, of course, but Dean has no idea what you say to a fallen angel with sleep issues. He's probably kind of an asshole for this, but that's way more up Sam's line than it is his.
Sam apparently doesn't disagree with him, because he frowns at that. "Once you're off the painkillers, we can try sleeping pills. I don't want to mix meds right now, but with everything you've been through, it makes sense to think that you might need something to help you get some rest."
"Why don't we wait and see?" Dean sips at his bitter coffee and ignores Sam's raised eyebrow. "Like I said before, meds are a last-ditch resort."
"Since when?" Sam leans against the counter as he speaks, and his voice is one of intense disapproval.
"Since now." He forces himself to finish up the brew, not saying anything else on the topic. Not with Cas here, because even if he is just staring down at his bowl of dry cereal with a lost sort of expression, Dean is very well aware that he's listening. "Bobby, what are our plans for today?"
"I don't know," comes his gruff voice from his corner of books. "Rest, relax, get yourselves settled in, I guess. Don't think any of you have the energy to do any sort of heavy work, seein' as you pulled an all-nighter getting here."
"Is there something that you need done?" Sam asks. "I'm not that tired. I could take a ride into town, if you need anything."
Bobby shrugs. "Could probably use some groceries, if you're willing. Maybe a box or two of extra ammo. We want to be loaded up, if you're gonna be training him to shoot." He nods at Castiel, who looks mildly surprised at that, but doesn't comment. "If you boys wanna run down later today, I wouldn't object."
"Sure. Yeah, we can do that." Sam nods. "Cas, why don't you wait here? You're still tired, I know. Dean and I can handle it."
"As you wish." Castiel sighs, playing with the cereal in his bowl. It's mostly full, Dean notes. He decides to pass it off as a fluke for the moment. Cas was eating at the hospital; he should be able to do it now. "The dressings on my injuries will require changing tonight. Would one of you-any of you-be willing to help me?"
The words seem to be said with some reluctance; Castiel sounds decidedly unhappy to be asking for help. Even Sam's assurance that of course one of them would help out, just say when, doesn't take the dour expression off of his face. Dean forces himself to be patient, seeing as Castiel just got out of the hospital, and is probably still in a shit-ton of pain from the whole Leviathan thing. It would normally bother him to the point where he'd be telling Castiel to just snap out of it, but under the circumstances, moodiness is probably excusable.
*
They're halfway out of the long path leading to the cabin in the woods when Sam says grimly, "Okay, Dean. Spill. What's up with you and your sudden anti-drug thing?"
It would be pointless to act as though he didn't know what Sam was talking about, and so Dean doesn't. "Dude, we're not getting Castiel hooked on something. He's not really the type who can handle that shit in moderation, you know? He's got one of those-what do you call them-addictive personalities."
And it's true, it really is. Castiel doesn't do anything halfway. When he drinks, he drinks a liquor store; when he disagrees with Heaven, he falls like someone pushed him off his frigging cloud. And if they let him start popping pills like they're M&Ms, they're going to end up with a morphine addict for a fallen angel.
"Okay, I get that," Sam admits. "But you can't just deny him meds, Dean. I don't think he slept at all last night, and the nurses at the hospital mentioned to me that he had some pretty bad nightmares, to the point where they had to sedate him. Which, let's face it, we probably should have expected."
Dean grunts. Fair enough. They've both had their fair share of crappy dreams, so it probably wouldn't be just to hold Castiel, now that he's human, to different standards. "Still. Pills should be a last-resort thing. I've seen Castiel as a stoner, and man, it is not a pretty site."
"Oh." Sam falls silent as they drive down the bumpy road to the downtown area. They don't talk very much about the time when they split up. That's how it should be, as far as Dean is concerned.
They make it through the small grocery store in relative silence, only speaking when it comes to clarifying the things that Bobby has messily scrawled down on a crumpled piece of paper. When they get to the toiletries section, Sam tosses in another toothbrush, an extra razor, and a mini bottle of Advil. Dean doesn't bother asking why.
"Should we pick anything else up?" Dean asks when all of the brown paper bags have been piled into the backseat of the Impala. The downtown area here isn't much, but he can see the distinctive red sign of a Salvation Army up ahead. Castiel is going to have to start building up his wardrobe sooner or later. "Besides the ammo that Bobby asked for?"
"I don't think so. We're going to have to get Cas some clothes of his own, but I'd rather he be here when we do that." They walk down the dingy sidewalk, heading to get the bullets that are going to be blown training Castiel. "He's got to start developing a fashion sense of his own, and all that. But he should probably be here when we get him clothes. I mean, we don't even know what sizes he takes."
"That's true." Dean slouches deeper into his jacket and frowns at Sam's comment. It's a reminder that they really don't know all that much about the more human side of Castiel. What size he takes, what foods he eats, what music he likes. Hell, even Cas probably doesn't know all that. They have a long way to go with him, and Dean will be damned if that thought doesn't freak him out just a little, for reasons that he can't properly comprehend.
*
A strained sort of silence takes over the cabin when he and Sam get back. Dean sits on the floor and stares out at the window, watching grass grow. Sam hangs out on his laptop, even though there's no electricity to offer up the internet. Castiel sits in the corner and is silent. Bobby reads; cooks dinner when it's time. They eat, Castiel just poking at his, but managing more than he did at breakfast.
Dean sharpens knives after supper. Sam takes Castiel aside while he does that, probably to change his bandages. Bobby keeps on going through the latest copy of How to Kill Leviathans For Dummies, as written in Mesopotamian or Farsi or, more likely, some tongue that Dean's never even heard of.
They all go to bed early. Tension is still palpable in the air, a balance between them all not quite reached. But Dean falls asleep quickly, before he really has a chance to ponder that.
He wakes up three hours later, when he hears the screams.
*
Dean sits up before he's really aware of why he's doing it, tossing the blankets he had pulled around him to the floor. His back protests for a minute, but he doesn't pay much attention to that, because someone, somewhere, is hoarsely yelling like the hordes of hell are after them-
His eyes snap open to the couch first, but no. It's not Sam; from what he can make out in the darkness of the cabin, Sam is scrambling to get up too. And Dean's grown used to hearing his brother's screams over the years. Even as his brain is just starting to function right, he's thinking that the voice is too low, too rough to be Sam's.
"Castiel," Sam says, and then it all comes rushing back to Dean, his mind awakening in a bright flashbulb of awareness. He and Sam fumble their way through the lightless room, stumbling over piles of Bobby's books that have been left haphazardly on the floor. Sam gets there a half-second before him, manages to find one of the flashlights that they left at each entrance just in case, and clicks it on.
Castiel is sitting against the headboard, his knees pressed close to his chest. His eyes are wide, seeing something that no longer is around. He's stopped screaming now, and is instead now speaking too fast for Dean to understand. It takes him a moment to realize that it's not English that Castiel is speaking, it's Enochian. There's something very much like pleading in his tone, and it freaks Dean out, roots his feet to the spot in the doorway.
"Shit," Sam breathes from behind him. He pushes past Dean, always the better on in situations like this. "Cas! Snap out of it, man." He touches Castiel's shoulders, looks down, and swears.
It's then that Dean realizes that Castiel has been clawing at his stomach. Tatters of white bandage litter the floor, looking unsettlingly like feathers. Dean swallows hard and resists the urge to run away, get out of the cabin and into the Impala, and then far away from all this.
But before his instinct to flee can grow overwhelmingly strong, something else freezes him in place. Sam has leaned forward, firmly drawn Castiel's hand's away-and Cas isn't reacting well to that; he's struggling and twisting from side to side in Sam's grip, his words coming out uninterrupted-and then Sam speaks. In Enochian. The guttural syllables are unmistakable, and when exactly did he pick up that skill?
The results are immediate. Castiel stills, and then slumps back into Sam's arms. He wearily says something, and Sam answers in a soothing-sounding voice.
"I'll be damned," Bobby murmurs from where he's come up behind Dean. He leans on the other side of the doorframe, watching Sam and Cas as they continue to speak. "How long has he been able to pull off that little trick?"
"Damned if I know," Dean replies. The initial adrenaline rush that had resulted when Castiel had woken him up screaming has subsided, and now it's something like anger that's taking its place. What else has Sam been hiding from him? They can't afford to be strangers right now, not with Castiel being in the state that he is, and a million and one black-goo creatures running around doing God-knows-what.
But before his anger can grow to boiling levels, he realizes two things: that Castiel has fallen more or less silent, and that Sam is looking at him. "Dean, can you fix the bandages? I," and his eyes flicker down to where he holds Castiel, whose face is turned away from the door and buried against Sam's chest, "I don't want to move. We can talk after, promise," he adds, when Dean doesn't make to do anything.
"Fine." He turns on his heel, going to get the first-aid kit from his duffle bag. "Bobby, you staying up for this?"
"I'm gonna go and make the coffee," Bobby replies drily. "This is one explanation that I ain't about to miss for the world."
*
Castiel had managed to tear away Sam's tightly-wrapped work almost completely. Dean has to strip them off so he can put on new ones. He does this gingerly, moving Castiel as little as possible. Years of experience redressing wounds make this easier than it would be otherwise, but it's still slow going.
In some places thin red streams run over the mess of scars from where Castiel's clawing drew blood. He flinches when Dean touches a wad of cotton soaked in antiseptic against them, but he doesn't cry out. Dean notices Sam's arms tightening around Castiel almost imperceptibly when this happens. He also notices the way that Sam glances off into the corner, and he's forced to resist the urge to press the stinging pad harder than necessary against the scratches.
Castiel's abdomen is an absolute mess. The skin there is lined with a web of scars from where Sam cut to free the Leviathans. It's impossible to tell where one slice ends and another begins. It's almost reminiscent of the black veins that once stood out against Castiel's forehead as he was taken over by the creatures from Purgatory, except these are entirely human markings, raised and jagged bumps of skin. Most of Dean's scars are long gone, the results of body-wipes carried out by the once-angel in front of him now. That Cas is always going to carry his brands doesn't escape Dean.
It takes him around fifteen minutes to have the bandages wound to his satisfaction. In that time, Castiel gradually stills, his breath evening out. By the time the last of the gauze is pressed down, Dean is fairly sure that Castiel is asleep. The way Sam gingerly disentangles himself from the sheets as he stands confirms it.
They slink to the kitchen, Sam pulling the door shut behind him. But as soon as they're sitting at the one table in the cabin, Bobby's coffee set in front of them, the silence ends.
"What the hell was that?" Dean gulps the drink down, burning and black. "You suddenly hearing angels now?"
"How long?" Bobby asks, sitting next to him and grimacing. "And, well, how?"
"I'm not hearing angels. And not long. A few days. Since Cas fell." Sam pauses, looking down broodily at his coffee, and then elaborates. "It started when we were bringing him to the hospital, when I was in the backseat with him. He was talking to himself in Enochian, and, well, I was seeing Lucifer-"
"Something else you're supposed to tell me about," Dean growls, not sure if he's more pissed at Sam for not telling him, or Cas for causing the hallucinations.
"It's not a big deal. I'm dealing just fine, Dean. Anyway, Lucifer was there, and he said something to Cas. In Enochian. And Cas heard him. I asked him about it at the hospital, and he remembered. I've been trying to call it up, but it wasn't going very well. Until now, I mean. I guess seeing Cas like that triggered it or something." Sam shrugs. "I mean, I don't get all of it either. I can remember what I said, how to say it, but I don't know the rules of the language or anything. It's not like I can suddenly start conversing in it, or something."
"Michael and Lucifer spoke it?" Bobby asks. Sam nods in reply, his eyes clouding slightly. "So what was Cas sayin' in there?"
"'Get them out of me.' 'Not again.' Things like that." Before Dean can ask the obvious follow-up question, Sam adds, "I just talked him down from it. Nothing major, just your usual stuff."
Whatever that means. Sam's had enough close calls with Dean's fist to teach him that when Dean is having a nightmare, it's a fucking bad idea to approach him. And Dean hasn't exactly rushed to Sam's side since he was a teenager and started being all embarrassed about his big brother coming over 'cause of a bad dream. But yeah, he gets the gist of it. Guess fallen angels are just like human when it comes to all the bad shit.
Not that that's the important thing here. Castiel's not doing too well without his wings; news at eleven. There are more pressing issues to deal with right now. He looks at his brother and asks, as blunt as he can be while also trying not to set off a Hell-bomb, "What else do you remember? From the Cage?"
"Not much. I mean, nothing useful." Sam frowns down at his coffee as he stirs a sugar packet in. "It's not like I even know that much Enochian. Like, I can't sit down and write a book on the vocabulary and the syntaxes and all of that. I've been trying to bring up more of the memories of Michael and Lucifer talking, but it's all so scattered. It's just been luck that I've known what to say with Cas, I guess." He shrugs.
Dean nods, doesn't know what else to say. Neither does Bobby, apparently; they end up finishing their drinks in silence. When the last mug is drained, Bobby stands. "Well, now that I've pumped my system full of that, I'm gonna go and catch another hour or two of shut-eye. You?"
"Yeah." Dean stands, and Sam follows behind him. They leave their mugs on the table; it's not like they have the convenience of a sink to dump them in, and it's still dark outside. No point risking a run-in with a bear. "G'night, Bobby. Night, Sam."
"Night, Dean." Sam stretches and yawns, casting a quick glance over at Castiel's room. Concern is evident in his eyes. "I'll go to him if he wakes up again."
"If you need the sleep, I can do it." He forces himself to make the offer. He doesn't want to-doesn't know how the fuck he's supposed to deal with Cas on his own, if he's going to be that distraught every time he wakes up. But it would probably be an asshole move, forcing Sam to give up his sleep when he's the one who needs it more.
"No. Don't worry." Sam stretches and sighs as he sits down on the couch, and despite his words, Dean does worry as he clicks off the flashlight and tries to get comfortable again on the floor.
*
Dean and Sam are both up before Castiel the next morning. They're sitting next to Bobby at the same small table they occupied only a few hours ago, eating charred toast and drinking coffee from the same cups as last night (which probably isn't hygienic, but none of them is particularly concerned about that) when the door to his room swings open and Castiel comes out.
He freezes in the doorway when the three of them all automatically look up at him. Looks like crap, Dean thinks as he watches him pulls his shoulders back, drawing in on himself.
"I…I apologize for my conduct last night," he says briskly. He doesn't meet their eyes, just stares at some point beyond their shoulders. "It was unseemly."
Which isn't what Dean expected to hear from him, not at all. He raises an eyebrow, about to comment, but Sam gets to it first. "Cas, you don't have to apologize for anything. You weren't you."
"Nevertheless." Castiel crosses his arms tightly over his chest. There's something almost stoic about the way he stands that reminds Dean that he was an angel not so long ago-except then his lack of emotions had more to do with him not actually feeling them. Unlike now, when it's because he's too prideful to let them show. "I damaged the work that you'd put into the bandages, and I disturbed you-all of you-from your sleep. The blame for that is entirely on my shoulders, and so I apologize."
Dean bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, knowing that if he speaks without thinking, the results won't be pretty. There is something about what Cas just said that's pissing him off good, something he can't really identify, but which is definitely there. Interrupting Sam's speech about how nightmares are natural responses to the body dealing with stress he says, "Cut the pity party, Cas."
Which stops his brother mid-sentence. Sam frowns, turns to him with a look that says that he's about to get his head chewed off, but Dean just raises his hand, blocking out his protests. He looks right at Cas when he speaks, not letting him escape his gaze. "So you had a nightmare. Woke a few of us from our beauty sleep, clawed yourself up good. Big deal. We've all been there. But we ain't standing around sayin' we're sorry. It's life. Move on."
He thinks it's remarkably supportive. Sam's glare probably hints that he means otherwise, and Bobby is just watching them all with a combination of mild interest and amusement. But it's Castiel that he's watching for a reaction.
Cas frowns, leans against the doorframe. He's in the same pants that he slept in, plus a faded old shirt that Dean thinks was once Sam's. He doesn't look too sharp overall. "I apologize-"
"Cut out the fucking apologizing." Dean stands up, keeping his eyes on Cas. "It happened. It'll happen again. Not a big deal. We've got a million and one more important things to do, okay? Like, I dunno, getting you some shirts of your own. Or target practice, figuring out what you can do. Or resting up, since you look kinda like shit." He ignores Sam's look. It's true. "Okay?"
Cas stares at him a moment longer, that same indecipherable look on his face-an unnamable combination of annoyance, hesitation, frustration, and maybe a hint of fear. Finally breaking eye contact with him, looking down at the cabin's rough wooden floor, he says, "Okay."
"Good." Dean turns around and goes outside both to rinse his coffee mug, and to get away from Sam's irritated glare and Castiel's fucking helplessness.
*
Or, well. It sure as fuck looks like helplessness right then, seeing Cas too tired to stand without the support of the doorframe, seeing him toy with the corners of his shirt in an all-too-human gesture as he apologized for something that wasn't his fault. But that afternoon, after they've all gotten cleaned up and Castiel is looking halfway decent in a pair of old jeans that Dean thought he had thrown out a couple of years ago and one of Sam's shirts that fully covers the bulk of the bandages, they establish that he isn't. He's tired and has almost no energy, is lacking the strength that he had back in his Heaven days, but helpless? Nope. Not really.
Seven of the twelve empty cans that Dean sets up go flying off their ledge during Castiel's first round with a sawed-off. His hands shake as he lays the gun down-but maybe that's just the cold; it's hard to say. Point is, seven out of twelve's pretty good, for someone who's always been able to zap his enemies away before.
"Not bad," he says, walking over and examining the fallen cans. A couple of them were nicked, not as dead-on as he'd have liked, but it was solid shooting overall, and Dean tells him that.
"I've fallen far, but I still remember everything that I knew in the past. The mechanics of shooting are simple in theory." Castiel frowns down at the gun and adds, "The actual action of it, not so much."
"Seven out of twelve's not bad. It's pretty good, actually," says Sam. He nods at Cas, his encouraging expression on. "Especially for your first time. That's better than I did."
"It might not be good enough, though," Castiel says seriously. "Not in a life-or-death situation. I'd like to try again."
So Dean sets a dozen cans up in a neat row again. And again.
After Castiel's fifth round, when he puts holes in ten of twelve, his hair is sticking to his scalp with sweat, despite how chilly it is in the winter's air, and his hands are visibly shaking. Dean glances at Sam, who nods and steps forward, carefully laying his hand onto Castiel's arm. "Hey. I think you should take a break."
Cas cocks his head at Sam in his classic expression of confusion. There's a trace of something that might be irritation in his eyes, but it's hard to say. "I can't. It wouldn't be right to stop before I hit them all."
"Who told you that?" Sam glances at Dean, brows drawn into an accusing glare. Dean raises his hands, the closest he can get to a white flag. He sure as hell never had the chance to force his childhood work-ethic onto Cas. "You can't do anything if you collapse."
"I won't collapse," he answers stubbornly. The way he sways from side to side before standing at attention belies his statement, and when he actually stumbles reaching down for more ammo, Dean decides to interfere.
He steps forward, to where Sam is all but holding Cas up. They're right in the cabin's backyard, surrounded by trees on all sides except for where the building is, and the tall pines somewhat call to mind the other time that Dean and Castiel were in a forest, when Dean had to hold onto him while Sam carved up his torso. "Cas. Get inside."
And Castiel flinches at his words, even though they're hardly stricter than what Sam's been saying. Dean suppresses his annoyance at that as best he can (although really, what the hell is so bad about him that it makes Cas twitch every time he speaks in something louder than a whisper?) and says firmly, "We know that you're a decent shot, okay? Means we won't have to start teaching you from scratch. And that's all we really needed to find out today, all right? So you might as well get inside, because you're only going to hurt yourself if you push yourself beyond what you can take."
He turns around, walks back towards the cabin. Castiel's quietly muttered, "I can handle pain, Dean," doesn't escape him, but he ignores it anyway. Cas will get over this stupid, self-sacrificing shit eventually. For now, Dean just wants him to get well enough so that he doesn't feel like a total douchbag for still being as pissed at him as he is over the whole Purgatory thing.
*
Cas falls asleep on the couch and stays there for the rest of the afternoon, legs stretched out over the faded maroon cushions, and one arm hanging off of the side. It's weird, seeing him in such a decidedly human position-and then it's weird that that's weird to Dean, considering that he saw him with a Leviathan baby bump, looking entirely like Hell warmed over.
Dean passes the rest of the afternoon by playing with an old deck of cards that's missing the Ace of Spades and the Three of Hearts. Solitaire's the theme of the day, save for when Bobby and Sam finally give in and set up a three-way of poker. They're all conmen, which makes the game all the better. Dean likes a challenge when it comes to cards, he really does.
He doesn't like the way that Sam keeps absentmindedly looking into the corner as he pushes in a pile of chips. Or how he spaces out to the point where he has to be yelled at that it's his turn. Bobby notices it too; Dean can see how his brow is furrowed, how he shakes his head when Sam has to be called back from just staring at the door.
"You okay?" Dean asks at some point during their third round. Sam jumps at the sound of his voice before he assures him that he is. Dean doesn't believe it, but Sam returns to the game with an intensity that leaves no room for pressing the subject.
Castiel wakes up right around six, with a sharp gasp that makes everyone else in the cabin jump and automatically look his way. He's sitting up on the couch, eyes wide and hands on his lap, breathing like he just finished a marathon-but it's better than the screaming, it really is.
"Cas?" Sam calls. He carefully lays his cards down, not making any sudden movements, even though Castiel isn't looking in their direction. "Hey, you okay over there?"
Cas nods. He squeezes his eyes shut, head hanging down towards his lap. A tense moment passes before he speaks. "Yes. Thank you. I'm fine."
It's a lie so blatant that even Dean, the unofficial king of lying about his current condition, is surprised that he tried. But he lets it go, because what else can he do? Cas knows how to ask for help. And it's not like nightmares are that bad, really-Dean knows that they suck, but he's been having them since before Hell, and they're not deadly. Not by a longshot.
(A small part of him wonders if maybe he likes that Castiel hasn't come out of this unscathed-that he's got his own wounds, that he's hurting just like Sam is because of what he did. But even if he alternates between feeling for him and being pissed at Cas, even if Cas has a long, long way to go until forgiveness, that's really petty even for him. Dean knows that, so he dismisses the doubt as something in his imagination and nothing more).
*
As the weeks pass and December slips into January with little fanfare, they settle into a strange sort of routine. Castiel spends his time regaining the strength that he lost, letting the last of his injuries heal up. He stays outside until he can shoot two dozen cans down on his first try, from a distance double what he started out with. Dean and Sam take him out on a regular hunt in the woods around them, and while he's not the greatest at it-his movements are stiff and clumsy; he still isn't as in touch with his body as a regular human would be, and despite his efforts, he ends up clambering through the woods and snapping practically every twig he meets-he still manages to bring down a skinny winter rabbit. Sam claps his shoulder, congratulates him, and Dean nods his approval too. Castiel doesn't seem overly pleased, which makes some sense (it's a bit of a fall, going from a slayer of demons to someone who almost lets an emaciated bunny get away) but it's his first, and it's still significant. Sam seems happy, so Dean plays along.
Out of the three of them, it's Sam who works the closest with Castiel. Sam, who's there after the worst of the nightmares (they happen two or three times a week now, the ones with screams. Or maybe more; Dean's gotten better at tuning them out) talking soothingly in Enochian. Sam, who usually helps Cas change the dressings that he still keeps around his scars. Once Castiel was strong enough, Sam began taking him out on his morning runs. He never said as much, but Dean gets the impression that they're mostly just walking and talking about their feelings.
Does he get why Sam is doing this, is helping the guy that's responsible for most of his nightmares? No, not at all. Not by a longshot. But that's just Sam, Dean supposes. Forgives everyone around him, even when they sure as hell don't deserve it. A part of him is as grudgingly proud of Sam as it is irritated, for being so damn empathetic. He can't decide if it's a sign of weakness or a very good thing.
For Dean's part, things settle into a fragile truce with Cas. He doesn't openly snip at him, or glare at him, or otherwise act like a dick. But he isn't exactly the warm, huggable type either-which, let's face it, would just be weird. The times he gets to Cas first when he's having a nightmare, it's… not all that comfortable. Cas doesn't respond to him like he does to Sam; if anything, Dean being there usually freaks him out more. Maybe it's English versus Enochian, but Dean is more inclined to think that Cas is smart enough to know that Sam is still suffering from what he did, and as long as his brother is hurting? Dean really can't forgive Cas. Can't just make things be exactly as they were before.
Of course, it's not like Sam is even talking about the whole "Devil-in-his-head" thing. No, he's totally mute on how and where and when he sees Lucifer. Which doesn't mean that Dean can't tell-he wasn't born yesterday; he knows what it means when his brother stares off in the distance and doesn't pay attention to his snapping fingers and demands to get him back. He knows that Sam has nightmares of his own; they rotate between the couch and the floor, so it's not like they're sleeping too far apart. But Sam doesn't talk about it, for whatever reason, and Dean doesn't push.
It's at the end of February, when they've been in the cabin for almost three months, that Bobby finally stands up and says that he's leaving. Says that the monsters in the world just keep on killing people, even when they need to rest and save up strength. Dean, suffering from a serious case of cabin fever, almost goes with him when he heads out to Polson to deal with a ghoul infestation. In the end, though, he realizes that it's probably a bad idea to leave Sam and Castiel together. Sam's not fully okay, much as he pretends otherwise, and neither is Cas. If there's an emergency-particularly if Sam starts going beyond just glimpsing Lucifer and full-out starts interacting with him again-he doesn't just want the other to be there.
So Dean stays and keeps up the cabin. Reads some books that Bobby just got in on Biblical lore. Bores the living daylights out of himself. Later, Sam invites him to go down to the grocery store with Castiel, just to pick up a few odds and ends. Dean is so overcome with boredom that he actually agrees, figuring that even wandering through the narrow aisles of the only grocery store this one horse town has to offer is preferable to staying inside for another day.
Later, Dean will wonder how things would have changed if he'd said no, Sam and Cas could have fun picking out the freshest February produce on their own. Later, he'll wonder if saying yes was the singlehandedly best decision that he made, and decide that yeah, it's probably up there in the top five.