Supernatural fic - "Saving Grace" (Part Twenty-Two)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
A/N: I know, I know, you’re about to say “but you just got back from Los Angeles!”, but I’m going to have to ask you guys to wait a bit longer for the next chapter, as I’ll be in Washington, DC for a few days. Sorry! But here, here’s a chapter to tide you over! *shoves chapter toward readers*
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Elsewhere was a cabin in the woods. Dean had no idea where they were exactly, but a short exploration turned up a small living room, a modest kitchen, one small bedroom, and a bathroom with the bare essentials. The overhead lights were just naked bulbs. The cabin utterly lacked any traces of the human who owned it, but the necessities seemed in place. A look out the window on one side of the cabin revealed the Impala, black and unharmed in the moonlight filtering through the fall foliage (and bless Castiel for knowing how much it would stress Dean out to be so far away from his precious car). A look out the window on the other side of the cabin gave a view of a lake and a dock, both silvered by the moon.
Memory jumped out at Dean and he turned to look over at Castiel. “Is that the dock from my dream when you visited me?”
“Yes.”
“Wow… I didn’t know this was a real place.” He stood back from the window and turned to face Castiel. “Not that I don’t dig the pad, but what exactly are we doing here?”
Castiel looked around the small house and explained, “This place once belonged to Jimmy Novak’s grandfather. Jimmy visited it often as a child, but when his grandfather died it was abandoned. I found the memories in Jimmy’s mind and came here. I repaired the cabin - it was in an advanced state of ruin - then I warded the woodlands surrounding it heavily, in case I should ever need a place on Earth to be unseen by my enemies. It wouldn’t be perfectly safe, but a refuge nonetheless on the physical plane if I was desperate.”
Dean smirked when he realized what Castiel was saying. “You made your own version a panic room.” It also explained the lack of personal touches to the place, because what would an angel know of interior decorating? Dean was sure if Cas had even tried, it would just look eerily like a church.
Castiel’s lips twitched in response. “I was inspired by Bobby Singer’s room.”
“Well, this is pretty badass, Cas… but I still don’t understand why you brought us here.”
With a sigh, Castiel looked around the bare walls. He looked ridiculous standing there in his short-sleeved shirt and boxers, but Dean felt no less ridiculous in a t-shirt and boxer briefs. First chance he got, he had to ask Cas about their things.
“If you intend for us to go through with the retrieval of my grace…”
“I do,” Dean stated firmly.
“Then it should be somewhere where we will both be at least moderately protected.” Castiel looked long and hard at Dean. “This will be a harrowing experience for both of us, Dean. Painful. We will be vulnerable until we have recovered.”
Dean took a moment to mull that over. He gave it very careful thought, because being open to attack was no small thing. Especially for someone like Dean, trained since childhood not to get himself into a vulnerable position.
“If that’s the case, maybe we should do this at Bobby’s… at least there we’d have someone around to watch out for us until we’re back on our feet.”
Castiel scowled. “If you would feel safer there, I will take us there.”
“But…?”
“But I feel certain he would not approve of what we’re about to do.”
“I don’t know about that… I mean, he wanted your grace out of me.”
“But it won’t be.” Castiel cast a hard look at Dean, refusing to let Dean gloss over that fact. “Do you truly believe Bobby Singer will support my actions if they mean the removal of a part of your soul?”
Dean winced. “No… when you put it that way, he’d probably be really against it.” And he had to bear in mind that if Bobby was involved, the hunter would only be interested in helping Dean out… he wouldn’t spare much consideration toward what was good for Cas when push came to shove. That was Dean’s priority.
Dean rubbed sleep out of his eyes and said, “All right, let’s do this. But before we do anything, did you remember our things from the room?”
The look Castiel gave him was equally puzzled and offended at the insinuation he would forget anything. “Of course… why?”
“Because we’re in our underwear.”
“… so?”
“Just put on some clothes, Cas,” Dean grumbled, because even he couldn’t explain why he didn’t really want to stand around in his underclothes. Besides, if they were going to be in any kind of danger, any state of vulnerability, Dean would be damned if it would sneak up on him while he was in his undies. Maybe Castiel couldn’t understand that, but it was important. Pants might not be much in the way of actual armor, but it was psychological armor.
With a long-suffering sigh, Cas fetched their bags from the porch where he’d deposited them on their angelic flight out of Arizona and both men put on jeans. When Castiel was finished zipping up his fly, he looked at Dean and asked sarcastically, “Am I appropriately dressed now?”
He wondered if the angel would keep his barbed sarcasm when he was back to full angel status with a side-helping of Dean Winchester.
“Ready for the freaking opera, now tell me how we’re going to do this.”
Sarcasm and humor vanishing, Castiel looked intently around the cabin before beckoning Dean to follow him into the bedroom. One plain mattress with a set of white sheets was the only piece of furniture in the room.
Dean hesitated. “Uh… Cas?”
“You will need to lie down for this… I don’t want you to injure yourself falling to the floor.”
Dean swallowed as he walked toward the bed. “It’s going to be that bad?”
“Yes.” For what it was worth, Cas looked apologetic about that. “The extraction process will not be as… noninvasive as the insertion was. Not with your soul anchoring my grace inside you.”
“Does that mean the…” he made a scooping gesture with his arm.
“If that’s supposed to indicate my reaching into you to get it, yes,” Castiel replied.
“Great,” Dean grumbled sarcastically. He crawled on to the bed and flipped over to lie prone on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Castiel approached slowly. “I’m very sorry for the pain I’m going to cause you.” And when Dean looked in the angel’s eyes, he saw just how truly sorry Cas was about it. Castiel really was a good friend to Dean, no matter what he thought when the angel was being insufferable. He was much better than Dean’s brother at the moment… if it was Sam doing this, he wouldn’t care that he was going to more or less perform a torture technique on Dean.
“Don’t sweat it. Thirty years on the rack… I think I can get through this.”
The comparison made Castiel stiffen.
Dean leaned over and snagged the angel’s hand, hanging limp at his side, with his own. He pulled Castiel down until the angel was sitting on the bed next to Dean, looking down miserably at the human. “It’s okay, Cas… if it’ll save you, it’s worth it. At least there’s a point to this.” Dean offered a wavering smile for a brave front. “Now just get it over with.”
Castiel took in a deep breath and visibly steeled himself for the task ahead of him. Then he nodded.
Dean remained perfectly still while Castiel shifted on the bed, positioning himself until he was straddling Dean’s body. His knees were on either side of Dean’s hips and one arm braced his upper body aloft of the hunter with his hand planted on the mattress by Dean’s head. The other arm was bent, Castiel’s hand resting gently on Dean’s stomach in readiness. There he stopped.
Dean didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he had to let it out with a whoosh. He looked up at Castiel and blinked, question in his eyes. He didn’t get a chance to ask aloud.
In the next moment, Castiel dipped down and placed a single chaste kiss against Dean’s forehead. The shock of it, in the grace inside him and his own surprise, made Dean’s eyes go wide.
“I’m sorry,” Castiel whispered hoarsely. “Try to think of something pleasant.”
Then Castiel shoved his hand inside Dean’s chest, plowing up under the ribcage into Dean’s body.
Dean didn’t even bother trying not to scream. He threw back his head and yelled at the top of his lungs as a hard, thick foreign object burrowed through his flesh, shoving aside stomach, intestines, lungs, muscle… tearing them apart, cleaving them out of the path of the hand that stretched deeper and deeper into Dean. The angel’s touch was fire, it was ice, it was razor-edged, it was a blunt bludgeoning instrument. It was every kind of pain, every sensation of agony, compressed into a bulldozer forcing its way through him.
Then the lightning fingers closed tight around the knot of glorious grace inside his chest, the warmth and peace he’d embraced and made a part of him, and began to pull.
Dean bucked on the bed, his throat already raw from screaming. Tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t breathe; his lungs were scorched by Castiel’s touch. Except he was still screaming, so he must be getting air.
The grace didn’t want to budge at first… it stuck, happy where it was, content to stay.
When Castiel yanked harder, it tore free inside Dean. With it went chunks and shards of Dean, clinging to the grace’s light and heat. Dean jerked and screamed even louder, arching even harder. The pieces of him that were torn away left gaping holes, and he felt his soul bleeding out. It was a great rushing loss, and how the fuck was he supposed to live through any of it?
The knot of grace and fist and soul were dragging down Dean’s chest, following the path the hand had forced through Dean’s body. The leaving was just as painful as the entering. Dean wanted to scream for Cas to stop, but he couldn’t put together even that one word.
Castiel was such a fucking moron. Dean wasn’t going to survive this. He’d die from this. How could he not?
Then the presence was gone, slipping out of him, and a great emptiness filled the hollow Castiel’s hand had made. Dean’s head spun as his body tried to fill in the space, but there wasn’t enough of him to do it. He was gutted, eviscerated… Castiel must have taken the whole damn soul.
Then Dean was mercifully unconscious.
Part Twenty-Three/End
A/N: I know, I know, you’re about to say “but you just got back from Los Angeles!”, but I’m going to have to ask you guys to wait a bit longer for the next chapter, as I’ll be in Washington, DC for a few days. Sorry! But here, here’s a chapter to tide you over! *shoves chapter toward readers*
***************
Elsewhere was a cabin in the woods. Dean had no idea where they were exactly, but a short exploration turned up a small living room, a modest kitchen, one small bedroom, and a bathroom with the bare essentials. The overhead lights were just naked bulbs. The cabin utterly lacked any traces of the human who owned it, but the necessities seemed in place. A look out the window on one side of the cabin revealed the Impala, black and unharmed in the moonlight filtering through the fall foliage (and bless Castiel for knowing how much it would stress Dean out to be so far away from his precious car). A look out the window on the other side of the cabin gave a view of a lake and a dock, both silvered by the moon.
Memory jumped out at Dean and he turned to look over at Castiel. “Is that the dock from my dream when you visited me?”
“Yes.”
“Wow… I didn’t know this was a real place.” He stood back from the window and turned to face Castiel. “Not that I don’t dig the pad, but what exactly are we doing here?”
Castiel looked around the small house and explained, “This place once belonged to Jimmy Novak’s grandfather. Jimmy visited it often as a child, but when his grandfather died it was abandoned. I found the memories in Jimmy’s mind and came here. I repaired the cabin - it was in an advanced state of ruin - then I warded the woodlands surrounding it heavily, in case I should ever need a place on Earth to be unseen by my enemies. It wouldn’t be perfectly safe, but a refuge nonetheless on the physical plane if I was desperate.”
Dean smirked when he realized what Castiel was saying. “You made your own version a panic room.” It also explained the lack of personal touches to the place, because what would an angel know of interior decorating? Dean was sure if Cas had even tried, it would just look eerily like a church.
Castiel’s lips twitched in response. “I was inspired by Bobby Singer’s room.”
“Well, this is pretty badass, Cas… but I still don’t understand why you brought us here.”
With a sigh, Castiel looked around the bare walls. He looked ridiculous standing there in his short-sleeved shirt and boxers, but Dean felt no less ridiculous in a t-shirt and boxer briefs. First chance he got, he had to ask Cas about their things.
“If you intend for us to go through with the retrieval of my grace…”
“I do,” Dean stated firmly.
“Then it should be somewhere where we will both be at least moderately protected.” Castiel looked long and hard at Dean. “This will be a harrowing experience for both of us, Dean. Painful. We will be vulnerable until we have recovered.”
Dean took a moment to mull that over. He gave it very careful thought, because being open to attack was no small thing. Especially for someone like Dean, trained since childhood not to get himself into a vulnerable position.
“If that’s the case, maybe we should do this at Bobby’s… at least there we’d have someone around to watch out for us until we’re back on our feet.”
Castiel scowled. “If you would feel safer there, I will take us there.”
“But…?”
“But I feel certain he would not approve of what we’re about to do.”
“I don’t know about that… I mean, he wanted your grace out of me.”
“But it won’t be.” Castiel cast a hard look at Dean, refusing to let Dean gloss over that fact. “Do you truly believe Bobby Singer will support my actions if they mean the removal of a part of your soul?”
Dean winced. “No… when you put it that way, he’d probably be really against it.” And he had to bear in mind that if Bobby was involved, the hunter would only be interested in helping Dean out… he wouldn’t spare much consideration toward what was good for Cas when push came to shove. That was Dean’s priority.
Dean rubbed sleep out of his eyes and said, “All right, let’s do this. But before we do anything, did you remember our things from the room?”
The look Castiel gave him was equally puzzled and offended at the insinuation he would forget anything. “Of course… why?”
“Because we’re in our underwear.”
“… so?”
“Just put on some clothes, Cas,” Dean grumbled, because even he couldn’t explain why he didn’t really want to stand around in his underclothes. Besides, if they were going to be in any kind of danger, any state of vulnerability, Dean would be damned if it would sneak up on him while he was in his undies. Maybe Castiel couldn’t understand that, but it was important. Pants might not be much in the way of actual armor, but it was psychological armor.
With a long-suffering sigh, Cas fetched their bags from the porch where he’d deposited them on their angelic flight out of Arizona and both men put on jeans. When Castiel was finished zipping up his fly, he looked at Dean and asked sarcastically, “Am I appropriately dressed now?”
He wondered if the angel would keep his barbed sarcasm when he was back to full angel status with a side-helping of Dean Winchester.
“Ready for the freaking opera, now tell me how we’re going to do this.”
Sarcasm and humor vanishing, Castiel looked intently around the cabin before beckoning Dean to follow him into the bedroom. One plain mattress with a set of white sheets was the only piece of furniture in the room.
Dean hesitated. “Uh… Cas?”
“You will need to lie down for this… I don’t want you to injure yourself falling to the floor.”
Dean swallowed as he walked toward the bed. “It’s going to be that bad?”
“Yes.” For what it was worth, Cas looked apologetic about that. “The extraction process will not be as… noninvasive as the insertion was. Not with your soul anchoring my grace inside you.”
“Does that mean the…” he made a scooping gesture with his arm.
“If that’s supposed to indicate my reaching into you to get it, yes,” Castiel replied.
“Great,” Dean grumbled sarcastically. He crawled on to the bed and flipped over to lie prone on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Castiel approached slowly. “I’m very sorry for the pain I’m going to cause you.” And when Dean looked in the angel’s eyes, he saw just how truly sorry Cas was about it. Castiel really was a good friend to Dean, no matter what he thought when the angel was being insufferable. He was much better than Dean’s brother at the moment… if it was Sam doing this, he wouldn’t care that he was going to more or less perform a torture technique on Dean.
“Don’t sweat it. Thirty years on the rack… I think I can get through this.”
The comparison made Castiel stiffen.
Dean leaned over and snagged the angel’s hand, hanging limp at his side, with his own. He pulled Castiel down until the angel was sitting on the bed next to Dean, looking down miserably at the human. “It’s okay, Cas… if it’ll save you, it’s worth it. At least there’s a point to this.” Dean offered a wavering smile for a brave front. “Now just get it over with.”
Castiel took in a deep breath and visibly steeled himself for the task ahead of him. Then he nodded.
Dean remained perfectly still while Castiel shifted on the bed, positioning himself until he was straddling Dean’s body. His knees were on either side of Dean’s hips and one arm braced his upper body aloft of the hunter with his hand planted on the mattress by Dean’s head. The other arm was bent, Castiel’s hand resting gently on Dean’s stomach in readiness. There he stopped.
Dean didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he had to let it out with a whoosh. He looked up at Castiel and blinked, question in his eyes. He didn’t get a chance to ask aloud.
In the next moment, Castiel dipped down and placed a single chaste kiss against Dean’s forehead. The shock of it, in the grace inside him and his own surprise, made Dean’s eyes go wide.
“I’m sorry,” Castiel whispered hoarsely. “Try to think of something pleasant.”
Then Castiel shoved his hand inside Dean’s chest, plowing up under the ribcage into Dean’s body.
Dean didn’t even bother trying not to scream. He threw back his head and yelled at the top of his lungs as a hard, thick foreign object burrowed through his flesh, shoving aside stomach, intestines, lungs, muscle… tearing them apart, cleaving them out of the path of the hand that stretched deeper and deeper into Dean. The angel’s touch was fire, it was ice, it was razor-edged, it was a blunt bludgeoning instrument. It was every kind of pain, every sensation of agony, compressed into a bulldozer forcing its way through him.
Then the lightning fingers closed tight around the knot of glorious grace inside his chest, the warmth and peace he’d embraced and made a part of him, and began to pull.
Dean bucked on the bed, his throat already raw from screaming. Tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t breathe; his lungs were scorched by Castiel’s touch. Except he was still screaming, so he must be getting air.
The grace didn’t want to budge at first… it stuck, happy where it was, content to stay.
When Castiel yanked harder, it tore free inside Dean. With it went chunks and shards of Dean, clinging to the grace’s light and heat. Dean jerked and screamed even louder, arching even harder. The pieces of him that were torn away left gaping holes, and he felt his soul bleeding out. It was a great rushing loss, and how the fuck was he supposed to live through any of it?
The knot of grace and fist and soul were dragging down Dean’s chest, following the path the hand had forced through Dean’s body. The leaving was just as painful as the entering. Dean wanted to scream for Cas to stop, but he couldn’t put together even that one word.
Castiel was such a fucking moron. Dean wasn’t going to survive this. He’d die from this. How could he not?
Then the presence was gone, slipping out of him, and a great emptiness filled the hollow Castiel’s hand had made. Dean’s head spun as his body tried to fill in the space, but there wasn’t enough of him to do it. He was gutted, eviscerated… Castiel must have taken the whole damn soul.
Then Dean was mercifully unconscious.
Part Twenty-Three/End