Fic: The Shattered One (9/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
A/N: Can I just take a moment to express my appreciation for how awesome you have all been toward this fic? Well, I’m doing it anyway! Wow, the response to this fic has been tremendous, and so validating in my strange little personal mission to write an actually non-squicky mpreg fic… let’s see if I can manage to not screw up!
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There were three phone numbers in Castiel’s phone. In the beginning, there had only been one. Dean’s. When Sam became a friend instead of the boy with demon blood, his number joined Dean’s on Castiel’s cell phone. The last reluctant addition was Bobby Singer. Even still, Castiel very rarely used any number but the first.
He sat on the edge of the bed in the predawn light stealing through the motel window, staring down at his phone. Sam was sprawled out on the far bed, Dean at rest next to Castiel. They had fallen asleep with ease born of a lifetime of slipping into the unconscious state, but Castiel found he couldn’t sleep. Lying down made the shattered one settle oddly inside him, and while it wasn’t exactly painful, it was uncomfortable. Unpleasant.
Staying awake was preferable anyway. At least if he was awake, Lucifer couldn’t torment him.
The shattered one was moving restlessly, a disturbing presence shattering Castiel’s inner peace. It was entirely too animated lately. It shifted sharply, tugged at his grace too hard, and Castiel winced. He hated that the last days of his life were to be spent longing to escape his own grace just to be rid of the shattered one.
He wondered what happened to angels when they died.
He stared long and hard at the phone in his hand, tracking the rise of the sun through the thin curtains to know when he could call without being inconsiderate. He had learned so many things from the humans he traveled with.
Finally, he rose from the bed and moved quietly to the door. With one glance back at the Winchesters, he stepped outside the motel room. He scrolled down the address book in his phone and hit ‘send’ when Bobby’s name was highlighted.
The grizzled hunter answered roughly, and Castiel suspected he hadn’t waited long enough to call, despite how many hours he’d sat there staring at his phone.
“There better be a real good reason you’re calling at this god-awful hour,” Bobby snarled.
“I… I apologize. The sun has come up; I thought it would be all right to call.”
“Might be up where you’re at, idjit, but it ain’t up here yet.”
“Oh.” Castiel hadn’t thought about that. It was so hard for him to think of the crawling movement of time the way humans felt it. But calling unacceptably early had made Bobby call Castiel ‘idjit’… that was the elder hunter’s nickname for the Winchesters. It was harsh and derogatory, yet when Bobby said it, it was also shrouded in affection.
Perhaps Bobby was too sleepy to know he’d used the Winchester word on Castiel, but even so, it made Castiel feel strangely happy. He felt like he was one of them. Like he belonged.
“You call me just to point out that the sun’s up in Tennessee?”
“No. Have you found anything that could allow us to steal the blade of an archangel?”
“You mean since yesterday, when I told you I hadn’t?”
“… yes.”
“Listen, soon as I know something, you’ll know something. Not like I’m going to sit on that one just to give everyone ulcers.” Bobby yawned into the phone. “So you boys reach Rufus’s place yet?”
“Not yet, we ran into trouble several hours ago and had to stop for the night.”
“Shit… what kind of trouble?”
“Just a demon.”
Bobby harrumphed. “Just a demon… fuck our lives. Is everyone okay?”
“Dean and Sam were unharmed.”
“All right… and what about you?”
Something in Castiel’s chest clenched. He thought Bobby tolerated him at best, but perhaps he’d misjudged Bobby all along. His brand of kindness toward the Winchesters was always barbed… why should it be different toward Castiel?
“I’m fine.”
“Well, make sure everyone stays that way. You boys watch yourselves out there, you hear me?”
“Yes… I’m going to hang up now.”
“Sure, you do that.” Even with forewarning of Castiel’s intent to end the call, Bobby still beat him to it.
For a moment, Castiel stood in the parking lot, the phone forgotten in his hand. He glanced skyward, read the scripture in the clouds, and said softly, “Gabriel…”
There was no answer. He hadn’t really expected one. Still, he would have felt remiss if he hadn’t tried everything one more time. For all the good it did them.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood out there watching the sun climb up the heavens before the door behind him opened and Dean peered out at him, hair disheveled and eyes squinty. “Yo, Cas… what’s up?”
“The sky.”
It took the hunter a moment to process that, and when he did Dean rolled his eyes. “Hopeless, dude… you ready to head out?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
******************
Dean tried to remember just how driving over the serpentine dirt road in the Tennessee woods toward Rufus’s cabin turned into this fucking mêlée. Except to use the blanket statement that their lives sucked.
It had started with swerving hard and skidding into the trees trying to avoid hitting a damn bear with his car. Or actually, it started when they realized they were the only things going in when everything else was scrambling to get out. Or maybe it was back when Castiel sat up in the backseat and announced all creepy-horror-movie-like that there was a vortex of evil up ahead.
You know what… he was just going to back it up and say it all started when he fucking woke up that morning.
When the car fishtailed into the trees (not actually slamming into any because Dean was fucking NASCAR when it came to handling his baby), it took less than a second for the Impala to be surrounded by demons. Smarmy, black-eyed fucks fresh from the pit.
“Shit,” Dean grumbled.
Then they were pouring out of the car to fight.
Dean kind of lost track after that. He was flinging holy water like a sprinkler, grinning in satisfaction every time a demon screamed and sizzled like frying bacon. Sam was virtually yelling exorcisms at the demons. He never got to finish one, but just hearing part of it sometimes stunned a demon long enough for Sam to dance in and stab them with Ruby’s knife. They’d run out of salt rounds about fifteen minutes ago and dropped their guns wherever they happened to start dry firing. It felt like an eternity ago.
Dean checked with Castiel out of the corner of his eye now and then… the angel had his sword in hand, striking down any demon that came within range.
“Dean!”
At Sam’s warning, Dean instinctively ducked. A demon that had been lunging for his throat toppled over his crouched body. Before it could try getting up, Dean upended his flask over its face. The demon flailed and screeched as its eyes burned out.
“Behind you, Sam!” Dean barked.
Sam whirled, knife leading, and the demon caught it in the gut. Crackling light competed with the dying croak of the bastard. Sam planted his foot in the demon’s crotch and pushed it off his knife, already looking for his next target.
Dean flung an arch of water into a charging demon’s face. It bellowed and hands like claws reached out for him in blind fury. Dean sidestepped, but not enough. It grabbed hold of his sleeve, and Dean went down with it, kicking and cursing.
“Dean!” Sam yelped.
“I got it, watch your own ass!” Dean snapped as he wrestled with the demon. He straddled it, and hell it was like trying to ride a storm, but before it could buck him off, Dean was spouting the exorcism incantation. He wasn’t as flawless at it as Sam, but he could get the job done.
The demon wailed and seized but finally gave up its body. Dean reared back from the plumes of black pouring toward his face and scrambled off of the corpse. Another demon was on him, grabbing him from behind, fingers digging into his back. Dean yelled and twisted, splashing holy water over his shoulder. The demon screeched hideously, but it refused to let go its prey.
Out of nowhere, Sam was there, burying the knife in the demon’s back. Dean got to watch the shock on its face when it died clinging to Dean Winchester.
Dean shrugged off the demon and like a choreographed move, Dean and Sam stepped toward each other. They pressed back to back, eyeing the situation. Sam’s knife hand was coated in dark blood, the knife stained red from tip to handle. Speckles of blood were all over him. Dean could feel his cheek throbbing from where he’d slammed into the ground with his demon opponent.
Dean looked toward Castiel again. The angel was pulling his blade out of a slain demon while another one practically flew at him from the right. Dean couldn’t open his mouth to scream a warning fast enough. He didn’t need to. Castiel reached out his arm without looking, caught the demon’s face in his hand, and instantly it was burning from the inside out. The corpse dropped and Castiel was turning, sword at the ready, looking for his next foe.
There seemed to be no end to them. They kept coming out of the woods, waves of demons.
Dean shook the flask in his hand (one of many he’d already gone through since the fight began). The small splash inside was not good. “I’m almost out,” Dean informed his brother.
Sam’s shoulder pressed harder into his. “So… we’re going to need a plan B.”
“No shit… I’m open to suggestions.”
“Ummm…” Sam went rigid against Dean, and Dean glanced over and knew why. A wall of demons had formed up in front of Sam, watching him and his knife rabidly. Dean swore. Sam couldn’t handle them all at once. And he wasn’t going to be much help, because more demons were coming at him from the other side. There was an even bigger swarm of them around Castiel… maybe they were drawn to the angel, like sharks to chum. Dean couldn’t even see Cas anymore through the throng of demons.
“Yeah, we might be screwed,” Dean noted oh-so-brilliantly.
Sam glanced quickly at him, and the look could not have lasted but a second, but in it Dean could read the ‘this sucks/I’m sorry/I’m not ready to die’ in Sam’s eyes.
Dean readied himself for a human-style blaze of glory.
A great scream tore through the air, louder than any demon’s death throes, a cannonball of sound that seemed to rattle Dean’s bones and made his ears hurt. The way Sam recoiled alongside him, Dean knew his brother felt it, too.
But the amazing part was that the demons felt it. Dean watched them all buckle as one, like the earth had shaken beneath their feet, unbalancing them all in the same moment.
Dean sucked in a sharp breath when something washed over his skin… like a wave of static electricity, sliding in pinpricks over his entire body. It went through him then through Sam, who gave a startled cry and did a weird full-body shimmy.
Dean was too busy watching the demons go flying. Dean could see the wave of whatever it was, because the demons were flung away in its crest. Like a giant hand was flicking them away as if they were no more than beetles. In droves, the demons became airborne, kicking and screaming, smoking and burning… the wave seemingly carried on forever, because the demons never seemed to come down, never looked close to falling to earth. They just got smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Dean whirled about, looking for any stragglers. There were none. There was not a single demon in sight where only seconds before they had been overwhelmed with them.
The only fighter that remained on the battlefield was Castiel. When Dean saw him, his stomach knotted. Castiel was crouched on one knee, doubled over, a hand trapped against his chest. His sword was on the ground next to him, for the time being forgotten.
“Cas!” Dean sprinted toward the angel. He heard Sam barreling after him, footfalls heavy on the hard-packed dirt road.
Dean slid to a stop on his knees next to Castiel, hands immediately on the angel’s back. He looked for blood, but there was so much of it, and no way to know at a glance if any of it was Castiel’s. “Cas!? You hurt? What the fuck was that?”
“That was… me.”
Dean blinked and shot a look up at Sam. His brother looked like a Friday the 13th cast member, painted in blood and still gripping the dripping knife. He looked wide-eyed as his eyes darted between Dean and Castiel.
“What the hell was it?” Dean demanded, shuffling closer to Castiel, still trying to unfold him from his crouch to look him over for injury. Castiel slowly straightened his back, still clutching his chest.
“That was a… defense mechanism.” The angel looked pointedly over at Dean. “Dean, it’s happening.”
It took him a couple of seconds to get it. Then he wished he hadn’t. “Oh… Oh! Shit, now?”
Castiel nodded grimly, breathing raggedly and clearly trying not to grimace.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Dean cursed. He looked around the woods, wondering how long they had before the demon hordes were back. “We’re pretty much in the dead center of enemy territory here.”
Castiel shook his head. “They can’t… the wavefront… now that it’s started, they can’t come near me.”
“Really?” Dean looked toward him thoughtfully. “You turned into demon repellant?”
“That’s the point of ‘defense mechanism’,” Castiel returned dryly.
Dean looked back toward the car, then down the road they’d been driving trying to reach Rufus’s cabin. He figured it couldn’t be much farther… better that Cas give birth there than in the middle of a dirt road. “All right… come on, let’s get you to the car.” Castiel grabbed his sword and Dean helped him to his feet. He was breathing tensely, like Dean had any time that he had broken ribs. The thought made Dean careful around the angel’s ribcage. Castiel’s face had gone pale and he was starting to sweat. He eased into the back of the Impala and sagged against the seat. Dean turned to Sam, sure that the same borderline-panicked look was mirrored on his own face. “Okay, let’s go.”
Once they were back on the road, heading to Rufus’s cabin, Dean couldn’t stop stealing looks at Castiel in the rearview mirror. The angel looked like shit. “You doing all right back there?” Dean asked.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t ask stupid questions,” Castiel grumbled. Then his eyes flew wide open, his back arched off the seat, and that ear-splitting scream tore through the car. Sam’s hands clamped down over his ears; Dean tried doing the same and nearly wrecked the car in the process. That tingly rush of static swept over Dean’s entire body, making his hairs stand on end. The back window of the Impala exploded outward in a shower of glass.
“Fuck!” Dean swore, fighting to keep his baby on the road.
Castiel fell back, panting.
Dean threw a look back at his busted window. “Damnit!”
“I’m sorry,” Castiel croaked.
“It’s not your fault,” Dean growled. “Though if you blow out our eardrums, those can’t be replaced.”
“I will… I’ll try not to scream.”
The sincere, gut-wrenching promise made Dean’s blood run cold.
“How much farther?” Sam asked lowly.
“I hope not much,” Dean said. “I don’t want to have to replace every window I have.” He cast another concerned look back at Castiel and pressed down on the gas pedal.
Next
A/N: Can I just take a moment to express my appreciation for how awesome you have all been toward this fic? Well, I’m doing it anyway! Wow, the response to this fic has been tremendous, and so validating in my strange little personal mission to write an actually non-squicky mpreg fic… let’s see if I can manage to not screw up!
******************
There were three phone numbers in Castiel’s phone. In the beginning, there had only been one. Dean’s. When Sam became a friend instead of the boy with demon blood, his number joined Dean’s on Castiel’s cell phone. The last reluctant addition was Bobby Singer. Even still, Castiel very rarely used any number but the first.
He sat on the edge of the bed in the predawn light stealing through the motel window, staring down at his phone. Sam was sprawled out on the far bed, Dean at rest next to Castiel. They had fallen asleep with ease born of a lifetime of slipping into the unconscious state, but Castiel found he couldn’t sleep. Lying down made the shattered one settle oddly inside him, and while it wasn’t exactly painful, it was uncomfortable. Unpleasant.
Staying awake was preferable anyway. At least if he was awake, Lucifer couldn’t torment him.
The shattered one was moving restlessly, a disturbing presence shattering Castiel’s inner peace. It was entirely too animated lately. It shifted sharply, tugged at his grace too hard, and Castiel winced. He hated that the last days of his life were to be spent longing to escape his own grace just to be rid of the shattered one.
He wondered what happened to angels when they died.
He stared long and hard at the phone in his hand, tracking the rise of the sun through the thin curtains to know when he could call without being inconsiderate. He had learned so many things from the humans he traveled with.
Finally, he rose from the bed and moved quietly to the door. With one glance back at the Winchesters, he stepped outside the motel room. He scrolled down the address book in his phone and hit ‘send’ when Bobby’s name was highlighted.
The grizzled hunter answered roughly, and Castiel suspected he hadn’t waited long enough to call, despite how many hours he’d sat there staring at his phone.
“There better be a real good reason you’re calling at this god-awful hour,” Bobby snarled.
“I… I apologize. The sun has come up; I thought it would be all right to call.”
“Might be up where you’re at, idjit, but it ain’t up here yet.”
“Oh.” Castiel hadn’t thought about that. It was so hard for him to think of the crawling movement of time the way humans felt it. But calling unacceptably early had made Bobby call Castiel ‘idjit’… that was the elder hunter’s nickname for the Winchesters. It was harsh and derogatory, yet when Bobby said it, it was also shrouded in affection.
Perhaps Bobby was too sleepy to know he’d used the Winchester word on Castiel, but even so, it made Castiel feel strangely happy. He felt like he was one of them. Like he belonged.
“You call me just to point out that the sun’s up in Tennessee?”
“No. Have you found anything that could allow us to steal the blade of an archangel?”
“You mean since yesterday, when I told you I hadn’t?”
“… yes.”
“Listen, soon as I know something, you’ll know something. Not like I’m going to sit on that one just to give everyone ulcers.” Bobby yawned into the phone. “So you boys reach Rufus’s place yet?”
“Not yet, we ran into trouble several hours ago and had to stop for the night.”
“Shit… what kind of trouble?”
“Just a demon.”
Bobby harrumphed. “Just a demon… fuck our lives. Is everyone okay?”
“Dean and Sam were unharmed.”
“All right… and what about you?”
Something in Castiel’s chest clenched. He thought Bobby tolerated him at best, but perhaps he’d misjudged Bobby all along. His brand of kindness toward the Winchesters was always barbed… why should it be different toward Castiel?
“I’m fine.”
“Well, make sure everyone stays that way. You boys watch yourselves out there, you hear me?”
“Yes… I’m going to hang up now.”
“Sure, you do that.” Even with forewarning of Castiel’s intent to end the call, Bobby still beat him to it.
For a moment, Castiel stood in the parking lot, the phone forgotten in his hand. He glanced skyward, read the scripture in the clouds, and said softly, “Gabriel…”
There was no answer. He hadn’t really expected one. Still, he would have felt remiss if he hadn’t tried everything one more time. For all the good it did them.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood out there watching the sun climb up the heavens before the door behind him opened and Dean peered out at him, hair disheveled and eyes squinty. “Yo, Cas… what’s up?”
“The sky.”
It took the hunter a moment to process that, and when he did Dean rolled his eyes. “Hopeless, dude… you ready to head out?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
******************
Dean tried to remember just how driving over the serpentine dirt road in the Tennessee woods toward Rufus’s cabin turned into this fucking mêlée. Except to use the blanket statement that their lives sucked.
It had started with swerving hard and skidding into the trees trying to avoid hitting a damn bear with his car. Or actually, it started when they realized they were the only things going in when everything else was scrambling to get out. Or maybe it was back when Castiel sat up in the backseat and announced all creepy-horror-movie-like that there was a vortex of evil up ahead.
You know what… he was just going to back it up and say it all started when he fucking woke up that morning.
When the car fishtailed into the trees (not actually slamming into any because Dean was fucking NASCAR when it came to handling his baby), it took less than a second for the Impala to be surrounded by demons. Smarmy, black-eyed fucks fresh from the pit.
“Shit,” Dean grumbled.
Then they were pouring out of the car to fight.
Dean kind of lost track after that. He was flinging holy water like a sprinkler, grinning in satisfaction every time a demon screamed and sizzled like frying bacon. Sam was virtually yelling exorcisms at the demons. He never got to finish one, but just hearing part of it sometimes stunned a demon long enough for Sam to dance in and stab them with Ruby’s knife. They’d run out of salt rounds about fifteen minutes ago and dropped their guns wherever they happened to start dry firing. It felt like an eternity ago.
Dean checked with Castiel out of the corner of his eye now and then… the angel had his sword in hand, striking down any demon that came within range.
“Dean!”
At Sam’s warning, Dean instinctively ducked. A demon that had been lunging for his throat toppled over his crouched body. Before it could try getting up, Dean upended his flask over its face. The demon flailed and screeched as its eyes burned out.
“Behind you, Sam!” Dean barked.
Sam whirled, knife leading, and the demon caught it in the gut. Crackling light competed with the dying croak of the bastard. Sam planted his foot in the demon’s crotch and pushed it off his knife, already looking for his next target.
Dean flung an arch of water into a charging demon’s face. It bellowed and hands like claws reached out for him in blind fury. Dean sidestepped, but not enough. It grabbed hold of his sleeve, and Dean went down with it, kicking and cursing.
“Dean!” Sam yelped.
“I got it, watch your own ass!” Dean snapped as he wrestled with the demon. He straddled it, and hell it was like trying to ride a storm, but before it could buck him off, Dean was spouting the exorcism incantation. He wasn’t as flawless at it as Sam, but he could get the job done.
The demon wailed and seized but finally gave up its body. Dean reared back from the plumes of black pouring toward his face and scrambled off of the corpse. Another demon was on him, grabbing him from behind, fingers digging into his back. Dean yelled and twisted, splashing holy water over his shoulder. The demon screeched hideously, but it refused to let go its prey.
Out of nowhere, Sam was there, burying the knife in the demon’s back. Dean got to watch the shock on its face when it died clinging to Dean Winchester.
Dean shrugged off the demon and like a choreographed move, Dean and Sam stepped toward each other. They pressed back to back, eyeing the situation. Sam’s knife hand was coated in dark blood, the knife stained red from tip to handle. Speckles of blood were all over him. Dean could feel his cheek throbbing from where he’d slammed into the ground with his demon opponent.
Dean looked toward Castiel again. The angel was pulling his blade out of a slain demon while another one practically flew at him from the right. Dean couldn’t open his mouth to scream a warning fast enough. He didn’t need to. Castiel reached out his arm without looking, caught the demon’s face in his hand, and instantly it was burning from the inside out. The corpse dropped and Castiel was turning, sword at the ready, looking for his next foe.
There seemed to be no end to them. They kept coming out of the woods, waves of demons.
Dean shook the flask in his hand (one of many he’d already gone through since the fight began). The small splash inside was not good. “I’m almost out,” Dean informed his brother.
Sam’s shoulder pressed harder into his. “So… we’re going to need a plan B.”
“No shit… I’m open to suggestions.”
“Ummm…” Sam went rigid against Dean, and Dean glanced over and knew why. A wall of demons had formed up in front of Sam, watching him and his knife rabidly. Dean swore. Sam couldn’t handle them all at once. And he wasn’t going to be much help, because more demons were coming at him from the other side. There was an even bigger swarm of them around Castiel… maybe they were drawn to the angel, like sharks to chum. Dean couldn’t even see Cas anymore through the throng of demons.
“Yeah, we might be screwed,” Dean noted oh-so-brilliantly.
Sam glanced quickly at him, and the look could not have lasted but a second, but in it Dean could read the ‘this sucks/I’m sorry/I’m not ready to die’ in Sam’s eyes.
Dean readied himself for a human-style blaze of glory.
A great scream tore through the air, louder than any demon’s death throes, a cannonball of sound that seemed to rattle Dean’s bones and made his ears hurt. The way Sam recoiled alongside him, Dean knew his brother felt it, too.
But the amazing part was that the demons felt it. Dean watched them all buckle as one, like the earth had shaken beneath their feet, unbalancing them all in the same moment.
Dean sucked in a sharp breath when something washed over his skin… like a wave of static electricity, sliding in pinpricks over his entire body. It went through him then through Sam, who gave a startled cry and did a weird full-body shimmy.
Dean was too busy watching the demons go flying. Dean could see the wave of whatever it was, because the demons were flung away in its crest. Like a giant hand was flicking them away as if they were no more than beetles. In droves, the demons became airborne, kicking and screaming, smoking and burning… the wave seemingly carried on forever, because the demons never seemed to come down, never looked close to falling to earth. They just got smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Dean whirled about, looking for any stragglers. There were none. There was not a single demon in sight where only seconds before they had been overwhelmed with them.
The only fighter that remained on the battlefield was Castiel. When Dean saw him, his stomach knotted. Castiel was crouched on one knee, doubled over, a hand trapped against his chest. His sword was on the ground next to him, for the time being forgotten.
“Cas!” Dean sprinted toward the angel. He heard Sam barreling after him, footfalls heavy on the hard-packed dirt road.
Dean slid to a stop on his knees next to Castiel, hands immediately on the angel’s back. He looked for blood, but there was so much of it, and no way to know at a glance if any of it was Castiel’s. “Cas!? You hurt? What the fuck was that?”
“That was… me.”
Dean blinked and shot a look up at Sam. His brother looked like a Friday the 13th cast member, painted in blood and still gripping the dripping knife. He looked wide-eyed as his eyes darted between Dean and Castiel.
“What the hell was it?” Dean demanded, shuffling closer to Castiel, still trying to unfold him from his crouch to look him over for injury. Castiel slowly straightened his back, still clutching his chest.
“That was a… defense mechanism.” The angel looked pointedly over at Dean. “Dean, it’s happening.”
It took him a couple of seconds to get it. Then he wished he hadn’t. “Oh… Oh! Shit, now?”
Castiel nodded grimly, breathing raggedly and clearly trying not to grimace.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Dean cursed. He looked around the woods, wondering how long they had before the demon hordes were back. “We’re pretty much in the dead center of enemy territory here.”
Castiel shook his head. “They can’t… the wavefront… now that it’s started, they can’t come near me.”
“Really?” Dean looked toward him thoughtfully. “You turned into demon repellant?”
“That’s the point of ‘defense mechanism’,” Castiel returned dryly.
Dean looked back toward the car, then down the road they’d been driving trying to reach Rufus’s cabin. He figured it couldn’t be much farther… better that Cas give birth there than in the middle of a dirt road. “All right… come on, let’s get you to the car.” Castiel grabbed his sword and Dean helped him to his feet. He was breathing tensely, like Dean had any time that he had broken ribs. The thought made Dean careful around the angel’s ribcage. Castiel’s face had gone pale and he was starting to sweat. He eased into the back of the Impala and sagged against the seat. Dean turned to Sam, sure that the same borderline-panicked look was mirrored on his own face. “Okay, let’s go.”
Once they were back on the road, heading to Rufus’s cabin, Dean couldn’t stop stealing looks at Castiel in the rearview mirror. The angel looked like shit. “You doing all right back there?” Dean asked.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t ask stupid questions,” Castiel grumbled. Then his eyes flew wide open, his back arched off the seat, and that ear-splitting scream tore through the car. Sam’s hands clamped down over his ears; Dean tried doing the same and nearly wrecked the car in the process. That tingly rush of static swept over Dean’s entire body, making his hairs stand on end. The back window of the Impala exploded outward in a shower of glass.
“Fuck!” Dean swore, fighting to keep his baby on the road.
Castiel fell back, panting.
Dean threw a look back at his busted window. “Damnit!”
“I’m sorry,” Castiel croaked.
“It’s not your fault,” Dean growled. “Though if you blow out our eardrums, those can’t be replaced.”
“I will… I’ll try not to scream.”
The sincere, gut-wrenching promise made Dean’s blood run cold.
“How much farther?” Sam asked lowly.
“I hope not much,” Dean said. “I don’t want to have to replace every window I have.” He cast another concerned look back at Castiel and pressed down on the gas pedal.
Next