Fic: The Shattered One (16/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
“Geez, he’s fussy,” Jo griped as she tried to get Daniel to settle down. She was standing near the counter in Strafe’s kitchen while Dean washed out the bottle he’d just used to feed the baby. He glanced over at Jo, who looked grouchy. Daniel wasn’t exactly being his usual endearing self. Jo was swaying side to side with the baby held against her, petting his dark hair to soothe him, but Daniel wasn’t having any of it. He was teetering on the edge of crying again, and he gave Jo several kicks in the ribs while she rocked him.
He was definitely cranky. Sam had suggested that Daniel was picking up on Dean’s bad mood. Dean didn’t remember his response to that, exactly, but he thought it might have involved a middle finger.
Dean put the clean bottle on the counter to dry and stepped toward Jo to take the baby from her. “Sorry… he’s usually better than this.”
Jo was more than happy to hand Daniel over. The baby hiccupped himself into a brief crying fit until Dean had situated him snuggly against his chest. There he quieted, but didn’t settle. Dean could feel the tension still knotted up in the little guy’s body, just on the brink of spilling out.
Jo pushed a strand of hair out of her face and huffed. “Now I know why Mom really wanted me to babysit him… she’s not going to have to worry about grandkids for a long time, that’s for sure.”
Dean scowled and rubbed his hand up and down Daniel’s back. He wondered if the boy could feel it against his wings, or if the touch had to be angel to touch the angel part of him. All Dean felt was Daniel’s curved, warm back and the tense breathing while he contemplated crying. “He’s normally pretty laidback.” And a love-bug, what with his fondness for being cuddled.
“Maybe he’s colicky,” Ellen offered as she wandered into the kitchen. “Jo was a nightmare when she would get colic.”
“Mom.”
Ellen moved up alongside Dean and lifted a hand to press her fingers to Daniel’s face. As she did, she asked, “Does he have a fever?”
Daniel whined and moved away from Ellen’s hand, tucking his face into Dean’s chest to hide. Ellen, at least, didn’t seem to take the slight personally. “Feels okay. Course, I can only advise you on human stuff… if he has angel diaper rash, you’re on your own on that one.”
And Castiel would rather be rooting around abandoned coal mines looking for wendigos.
“How was his appetite?” Ellen asked, eyeing the drying bottle on the counter.
“About the same as always… maybe a little less.” Dean craned his neck to look down at Daniel, as if that eerie Castiel-like stare of his could give him a clue what was going on with the little guy. What he noticed instead was Ellen watching him thoughtfully, head canted and a half-smirk of disbelief on her lips.
“What?” he asked defensively.
“Nothing,” she said. But that was bullshit. She shook her head. “Just never thought I’d see the day… Dean Winchester, a father. Strange as it seems, and screwed up as it was how you went about it, you’re good at it.”
For a second, he forgot he was in a bad mood.
“So…” Jo hedged awkwardly, “does that make Castiel, like, Daniel’s ‘mother’ or what?”
“Cas is the one who had him,” Dean answered immediately, because he wanted it to be known that if anyone was the dad, it was definitely Dean. No way was he Mom. “But it’s not really the same… I guess, technically, he doesn’t have a ‘mom’ so much as an angel parent.” Which sounded even weirder than it seemed in Dean’s head… there was a reason he hadn’t been giving much thought to what Daniel’s family tree looked like.
“You Winchesters never could do things the easy way,” Ellen quipped. Then she nodded at her daughter to get her attention, “Jo, I need you to come help me inventory ammunition, see where last night’s shindig leaves us.”
“Okay.” She sounded far more eager to do that than watch after the baby.
With that, the Harvelles left Dean alone in the kitchen.
Dean leaned back against the counter, barely touching his chin to the top of Daniel’s head. He tried not to feel annoyed at Castiel for ditching the second he had his wings in working order again. Really, he should have expected it. Castiel had been trying to put distance between himself and Daniel from the minute he was born. Dean had tried to get Castiel to bond with the baby (though why he tried, he wasn’t really sure), but the angel seemed impervious. And now he was gone.
Well, not gone, hunting, but oddly it felt close enough to count.
Daniel whimpered and squirmed against Dean.
“It’s okay,” Dean murmured, stroking Daniel’s back, “you still got me.”
Dean hadn’t expected to take to parenthood at all. It just kind of snuck up and blindsided him when he noticed how naturally he’d fallen into the role. Sam was the only one who hadn’t seemed surprised to see his brother go easily into daddy-mode. When Dean gave him a ‘what the fuck, man’ look for that, Sam just snorted and said, “Hell, Dean, you raised me… you were daddy material since you were four.”
Much as Dean thought John deserved some credit for raising Sam, he couldn’t exactly say Sam was wrong.
So maybe it wasn’t so much surprise that he was capable as it was bemusement that he constantly had to remind himself not to look like he enjoyed it. Because he kind of did. Apocalypse and shitty timing and weird-ass circumstances aside, part of him liked having a son.
“Hey…”
Dean looked up and saw Sam enter the kitchen.
“He finally settle down?” Sam asked with a chin-point at Daniel.
“A little.”
“How’s the shoulder?”
Dean moved it experimentally. Castiel had healed most of the damage done by the wendigo’s claws, but it wasn’t a miraculous full recovery like the angel used to manage before falling. Dean’s neck and shoulder muscles were sore as hell, and the place where the open wounds had been were a palette of blue, brown, and purple bruises. “Better than having to get it stitched,” Dean answered truthfully.
Sam came up alongside Dean and grunted. “I guess if Cas couldn’t completely wave away a few scratches, fixing up Bobby’s probably not in the cards.”
Dean hadn’t thought of that, but Sam had a point. Dean rolled his shoulder and winced. “Doubt it, if this is the best he could do on my shoulder. Guess some of those diminished powers weren’t just because of Daniel.” Dean thought a second. “Or maybe giving so much of his grace to make Daniel drained some of his angel mojo.” He glanced over at his brother. “Everything packed up?”
“Yeah…” Sam frowned. “You know, we could hang around a couple of days to wait for Cas… in case he needs help with the wendigo stuff.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam’s ill-disguised lie. And he resented the fact that apparently he was that transparent in his brooding about Castiel’s indifference to taking on a parent role.
And Dean wouldn’t give a shit, really, if it weren’t for the fact he felt really under-qualified to raise an angel without an angel on hand for backup when inhuman crap started happening. Like what the fuck was he supposed to do when Daniel actually started using his wings?
“Cas can take care of himself… no reason for us to stick around.”
Sam’s look said ‘you don’t buy that anymore than I do,’ but he didn’t say it aloud. What he said instead was, “It’s not like Bobby’s sounded the alarm…”
As if on cue, Sam’s phone began to ring. Daniel flinched and threatened to cry at the sound.
“Jinx,” Dean tossed out flippantly, already starting to frown.
Sam grimaced and answered his phone without looking at the caller ID, “Hey, Bobby… oh, just a bad feeling and a good guess. What’s up?” His eyes widened a little. “Really? No, of course. Yeah, we’ll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up the phone and turned toward Dean.
“What did he say?” Dean asked, spine tensing in anticipation.
“Bobby thinks he may have found a way to rob an archangel of his sword.”
Dean’s eyebrows rose. Amid everything else, he’d forgotten Bobby was looking into that. “Seriously?”
“That’s what he said.” Sam sounded cautiously optimistic… they were due some good news, after all.
Dean pushed off the counter. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get on the road.” Besides, if they could ever actually manage to get to the salvage yard, Dean could finally replace his poor baby’s windows. It physically hurt to see her in such bad shape.
Sam’s eyes flicked down to rest fleetingly on Daniel, then he looked back at Dean and nodded. “Sure… I’ll just go tell Jo, Ellen, and Strafe that we’re heading out.”
********************
Even as he was tearing it down, Castiel had to admire the complexity and ingenuity of the means by which Lucifer had been turning human beings into wendigos. A process that usually took hundreds of years had been manipulated to occur over a span of weeks.
Of course, the humans trapped within the invention did not feel it as weeks. To them, it did last centuries. If Castiel had questioned Lucifer’s involvement in the wendigo explosion before, he no longer doubted it once he found the source of the transformations.
Buried deep within one of the largest mines was a dark place where time raced ahead of the world. It pulled and bulged with time in defiance of itself. Only an angel could have manipulated time and contained it in a small area. There, the transients who had either been lured or dragged underground lived months in minutes.
Within that pocket of time out of sync, it was a frozen tundra. It was an arid wasteland. It was a sealed bunker with barren shelves in place of supplies. It was all of them and none, the embodiment of every nightmare of starvation the human mind could conjure. And it preyed on those humans already sensitive to the horror of going hungry.
Inside, Castiel found various humans in different stages of metamorphosis from man to wendigo. He saw the drawn cheekbones and bulging eyes of starving men tearing off pieces of their own clothing to eat. He saw humans gone feral, naked with wild eyes. He saw those who had succumbed, sinking teeth into human flesh and gulping down hot mouthfuls of bloody meat. He saw wendigos, gaunt, narrow creatures with tearing claws and frothing jaws.
It was a terrarium of tortured souls, a study in the entire progression from human to inhuman. Castiel, an avid studier of mankind, watched the living timeline inside for a moment. It was morbidly fascinating.
Then he took his sword in hand and set to tearing it all down. He breached the barrier holding time hostage, and the years and decades collided together in an atomic rush, crashing and breaking until the pieces fell scattered over normal time. The wendigos and doomed men were suddenly standing with Castiel in real time. Some sensed his holiness, his burning grace, and recoiled. Some, mostly human, tried to plead to him for food. Others saw him as food.
Castiel lost track of time, normal or otherwise, as he set himself to smiting every single living creature that had been held prisoner in Lucifer’s wendigo-manufacturing phenomenon. The wendigos he burned with righteousness. Those beasts somewhere between man and wendigo, he destroyed as a mercy. The ones who were still mostly human, he killed with remorse. He would have chosen to save them, but they had been tainted. The idea to eat their fellow man had already been planted in their minds… if they lived, they would forever be vulnerable to giving into that damning temptation. At least this way, putting them to rest before they could succumb, their souls would find peace in Heaven.
By the time Castiel had cleared out every last wendigo and proto-wendigo in the coal mine, he felt empowered. He felt himself again, a proper weapon of the Lord.
But it wasn’t with the unwavering confidence he’d once known, because his questions and doubts remained. He was coming to learn that those uncertainties would never go away.
Castiel frowned in consternation. That feeling of being someplace other than where he should be - the same sense that had gripped him when he left the bar to fetch the wendigo - was a persistent nudge, tugging at his grace. It was calling him to go somewhere.
He believed he missed being with the Winchesters.
It was unfit for an angel to miss the company of humans, but the drive compelling him to get back to the hunters was undeniable. Castiel had to consider the possibility that, while he was incapacitated by the crippling presence of the shattered one and spent prolonged periods of time with the Winchesters, he’d grown overly-fond of their nearness.
It was weak for an angel to feel that way about humans, but as Lucifer had pointed out so aptly, angels were not built to be alone.
When Castiel emerged at the mouth of the tunnel, it was nighttime. The sky unrolled blue and black above him, a scatter of diamonds bejeweling the sky. Castiel had ignored the close press of stone and earth while he had a job to do, but now that he was outside he basked in the freedom of knowing he could fling himself up into so much open air with a mere thought.
He might have, just to feel the universe on his wings, but almost at the same moment he fully settled his form on the ground outside the tunnel, the phone in his pocket beeped.
Castiel pulled it out and opened it. The date/time display on the screen was his first sense of how long he’d been in the mines. It had been two days since he saw the Winchesters. Though the feeling that made him gravitate toward them seemed to suggest it had been longer.
There were six text messages and two voice mails on his phone. Castiel began to thumb through the texts. They were all from Dean.
eaten by wendigo yet?
Castiel huffed and advanced to the next.
check in when you get a chance
bobby thinks found way to get dickangel sword…wrap up wendigo deal and get here
whats taking you so long?
need to talk to you, call me
spencer iowa daze inn rm 103 get here now!
Castiel puzzled at the urgency in that last text. He nearly went in that very instant, but there were still two voice mails, and if they contained some tactical information about what he would be encountering, he had to hear them first.
The first message from Dean sounded normal enough. “Hey, Cas… guess you’re still knee deep in wendigos. Look, um, I need to pick your brain about something, so when you get this call me back. As soon as you get this.”
The second message was unlike the first. Dean’s voice was harsh and panicked. “Damnit, Cas! Answer your fucking phone! Get your ass over here right now… there’s something wrong with Daniel.”
In the next second, Castiel went.
He assumed the brothers were still at the location provided in Dean’s last text message. He was correct. Castiel touched down in a motel room much like any other the brothers had stayed in that the Winchesters were adept at making feel like a semi-home just for living out of it with such familiarity.
But the atmosphere in this room was far from homey. Dean was pacing like a caged animal. Daniel was lying disturbingly, deathly still on one of the beds. Sam was…
Sam was suddenly at Castiel’s side, grabbing onto his arm and gripping tightly enough that a human would probably feel pain. Castiel looked toward Sam and was met with the younger brother’s eyes, wide and afraid. “Where the hell have you been?” Sam whispered tersely. His voice was raw and worried.
Dean whirled at his brother’s voice. “Cas! Jesus fucking… what the hell took you so long?”
Castiel gently pulled free of Sam’s hand. “It would seem my phone was unable to function when I was in the mines…” Castiel stopped and looked at Dean. He didn’t like what he saw. Dean looked that awful human combination of terrified and helpless.
Then Castiel remembered Dean’s last voice message. “You said that something was wrong with Daniel?”
A sick look joined the panic already on Dean’s face. “He started getting sick yesterday. Kept crying and nothing I tried would make him stop. Then he stopped eating this afternoon. Now he’ll barely even move.” While Dean was listing symptoms, Sam stepped around the pair of them and moved toward the bed. “Then he started having trouble breathing. I was a second away from calling an ambulance, but who the hell knows if a doctor can even do anything?! Or what if they do some test and find out he’s not all human and take him to some lab? God damnit, Cas, what if I’d had to decide between watching him die or seeing him turned into some science experiment? And screw you for putting that on me! You should have fucking been here!”
Dean’s words were growing increasingly disjointed and built on emotion rather than facts.
“He really doesn’t look good,” Sam said in a much calmer (though noticeably shaky) voice as he moved toward Castiel, the baby in his arms.
When Sam was standing in front of Castiel, the angel looked down at Daniel. He frowned. Daniel was limp in Sam’s arms, struggling to breathe, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
He looked remarkably like a human dying.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dean demanded.
“His grace is weakening.” Castiel could see the light inside the boy struggling to even shine dully… it was a drastic difference from the blinding ball of light Castiel saw the last time he’d looked into the child.
“Why would it do that? How do we fix it?”
“Is he dying?” Sam asked in a small voice, one he obviously hoped Dean wouldn’t hear.
Dean did anyway. “No! He’s not going to die, god damnit! Cas, he’s not dying, right? You can heal him, right?”
“I don’t know why his grace would start to fail…”
“Is it my fault?” Dean asked abruptly, looking like he might throw up. “Is it because he’s got human in him?”
Castiel was staring hard at the baby, trying to understand the flickering grace. It made his own grace lurch and cry out for something.
“Please do something,” Sam whispered hoarsely.
He had no idea what to do. “Let me take him,” Castiel said lowly.
It was unpleasant watching the baby change hands, as limp and weak as he was. It made Castiel fear there was little that could be done for the boy at this point. Dean was fidgeting, watching anxiously as Castiel resorted to the familiar. He brought Daniel to his chest and held him there as he tried to think of a reason the baby’s grace would falter… and what he could possibly do to reverse it.
Castiel’s grace pressed tight against the boundaries of him, clamoring to be near Daniel’s. As in the car, Castiel sensed Daniel’s grace reciprocating… albeit this time sluggishly. It moved laboriously to the edges of Daniel in order to lean against Castiel’s grace.
Two startling discoveries jumped out at Castiel at the same moment.
One: that aching, yearning sense he’d been feeling for days was suddenly gone, and he realized that all that time he hadn’t been missing the Winchester brothers… he’d been missing Daniel.
Two: it was not merely a desire for proximity that was ignited in both their graces… it was something much more. Castiel could see it now. As they pressed chest-to-chest, Castiel could feel and see some of the brilliance of his grace winding its way into Daniel’s.
There must have been a stupefied look on his face, because Dean was suddenly standing very close. “What? What is it? Cas?”
Daniel’s grace was soaking up the tendrils and wisps of Castiel’s as fast as it could reach him. The light found the core of Daniel’s grace and lit him up. Daniel’s grace slowly but surely started building itself back toward that shining star Castiel had come to know.
“Cas?”
Castiel looked up into Dean’s desperate, hopeful eyes.
“It would seem that Daniel’s grace needs periodic nearness to mine in order to thrive.”
Dean gaped while Sam sidled closer. “You mean, like, angel nursing or something?”
It was about as accurate as ever calling Castiel ‘pregnant’… but like before, probably as close as the humans could get to understanding the true nature of the condition. “Something like that, yes.” Castiel looked down at the baby. Now that he knew to search for it, he could feel his grace passing into Daniel. It curled hot and joyous in the infant’s grace, then it snaked in faint shimmers of light into the leading edges of his wings. They stirred from their limp state, trying to tuck properly against his back and shoulders.
Without thinking, Castiel stroked them.
“Are you sure?” Dean asked worriedly, looking down at Daniel in Castiel’s hands.
“I can feel my grace moving into him, and I can see his grace growing stronger.”
Lucifer’s words echoed uncomfortably inside Castiel. Not built to be alone.
What finally convinced Dean was Daniel. The baby stirred. He moved his arms from where they’d been hanging limp at his sides and tucked them against his chest as he cuddled against Castiel. It was so very like the Daniel they knew, the baby who craved physical contact… for a very good reason, as it turned out.
Dean let out a huge sigh. “God damn, he scared the shit out of me…” then Dean turned a venomous look on Castiel. “Why didn’t you tell us about the whole grace-feeding thing?”
“I didn’t know… there has never been a being like Daniel before; so much angel and yet partly human. I couldn’t know how that human part of him would express itself.” Castiel frowned at Dean, the hunter still tense with distress. “If I’d known, I would not have left him.” Whether for Dean’s sake or Daniel’s, Castiel wasn’t really sure… but it was true, regardless.
Finally, Dean’s expression changed into something other than horrified. He kind of smiled. “Yeah… okay.” Dean looked at Daniel pressed contently to Castiel’s chest. “So long as he’s going to be all right… but you gotta stick around from now on, Cas. You do that to him or me again, and I’ll shoot you.”
Knowing what would happen to Daniel if he couldn’t be near Castiel’s grace, the angel would sacrifice his freedom to be close when the baby needed him. “Of course.”
It struck him then that, had he not left the mines when he did, he might have been too late. Daniel might have died.
The thought was distressing. To reassure himself that Daniel was very much alive, Castiel stroked his wings. The baby made a content noise while his wings moved under Castiel’s touch. They shifted against Castiel’s energy with an electrifying tingle that Castiel could feel all the way to his own grace.
It wasn’t until Dean gave him an odd, tired but semi-amused look that Castiel realized he might have smiled a little.
Once the emergency was over, Castiel saw just how exhausted the brothers were. Adrenaline had been carrying them, and when it left much of the energy in the room went with it. Castiel knew the brothers’ rhythms well enough by now to know that they would not stay awake much longer.
Sam gave in first. He scrubbed his face with both hands and mumbled, “Okay, I have to throw in the towel.” Before he did, though, he approached Castiel and Daniel. He reached up, ghosted his palm over Daniel’s fine hair, then ducked down and pressed a light kiss against the boy’s head. “You just about gave us all heart attacks today, Danny.”
Castiel cocked his head at the new name.
For a moment, Sam seemed unable to stop touching the baby. His hand remained cupped around Daniel’s head, his thumb brushing softly over the child’s cheek. Castiel watched, fascinated. The longer he knew Sam Winchester, the harder it was to think of him as the boy with demon blood.
When Sam withdrew and flopped down on one of the beds, Castiel took it upon himself to go to the other and sit down. He propped himself against the headboard, gravity now doing the work of keeping Daniel in place on his chest.
As he knew it would, the angel and baby on the bed drew Dean down. The hunter crawled on to the bed next to the two, eyes glued to Daniel. “He’s really going to be okay?”
“He is already much stronger,” Castiel answered. It was the most honest answer he could give. He had no idea what lay ahead for a child like Daniel. But for now, he was on his way back to healthy and content.
Dean reached up and traced his fingers down Daniel’s back. Castiel watched, taken with the gentleness of hands that had days before fought superhuman monsters.
“Can he feel this?” Dean asked, and Castiel was confused by the question.
“Can he feel you touching his back?”
“I mean, can his wings feel this?”
Castiel watched Daniel’s wings lie unmoving as Dean’s hand passed over and through them. “No.”
“Oh…” Dean looked disappointed.
“Right now, he has no control of them. Your hand is in a plane of existence his wings are not; they pass through one another.” Not knowing why, Castiel added, “When he is older, and learns to control his grace, he may be able to feel you touch them… because he wants to feel it.”
Dean almost smiled. “That’ll be cool.” Dean shifted down to lie on his side on the bed, still watching Daniel intently. He seemed afraid to take his eyes off the baby.
“You were distraught at the thought of losing him,” Castiel noted lowly.
“Of course I was… he’s my son.”
Dean owned the identity of parent so passionately and with such ease. Castiel wondered if he could, too… if he tried. He wondered what it would feel like to love Daniel. Dean did, and it had brought out all the wonderful qualities in him. All that Castiel found worthy and good in humanity.
Dean nestled his head on his pillow then peered upward at Castiel with a bemused expression. “You should know me well enough by now to know how I feel about my family.”
The statement made Castiel miss the other angels… his brothers, his sisters… they were all so far away from him now.
“Moron,” Dean snorted.
“I’m sorry?”
“I wasn’t just talking about Daniel.” Before Castiel could think of something to say, Dean closed his eyes and slipped into sleep. For a minute, Castiel reclined in bed next to Dean and softly stroked Daniel’s wings. When he paid attention to the way Daniel’s grace responded to him, and how his own grace responded in kind, familiarity flared. It was the alacrity of being close to another angel that Castiel had been missing so long. Before that moment, he had not let himself perceive Daniel as another angel… at least not enough to realize that his isolation, in a strange way, had ended.
Sam started to snore softly in the other bed.
Castiel no longer succumbed to sleep. He was glad for that. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t stay in bed the rest of the night.
Settling in for the night, Castiel shifted on the mattress. He brought his wings up and around, folding himself and Daniel within them.
Next
“Geez, he’s fussy,” Jo griped as she tried to get Daniel to settle down. She was standing near the counter in Strafe’s kitchen while Dean washed out the bottle he’d just used to feed the baby. He glanced over at Jo, who looked grouchy. Daniel wasn’t exactly being his usual endearing self. Jo was swaying side to side with the baby held against her, petting his dark hair to soothe him, but Daniel wasn’t having any of it. He was teetering on the edge of crying again, and he gave Jo several kicks in the ribs while she rocked him.
He was definitely cranky. Sam had suggested that Daniel was picking up on Dean’s bad mood. Dean didn’t remember his response to that, exactly, but he thought it might have involved a middle finger.
Dean put the clean bottle on the counter to dry and stepped toward Jo to take the baby from her. “Sorry… he’s usually better than this.”
Jo was more than happy to hand Daniel over. The baby hiccupped himself into a brief crying fit until Dean had situated him snuggly against his chest. There he quieted, but didn’t settle. Dean could feel the tension still knotted up in the little guy’s body, just on the brink of spilling out.
Jo pushed a strand of hair out of her face and huffed. “Now I know why Mom really wanted me to babysit him… she’s not going to have to worry about grandkids for a long time, that’s for sure.”
Dean scowled and rubbed his hand up and down Daniel’s back. He wondered if the boy could feel it against his wings, or if the touch had to be angel to touch the angel part of him. All Dean felt was Daniel’s curved, warm back and the tense breathing while he contemplated crying. “He’s normally pretty laidback.” And a love-bug, what with his fondness for being cuddled.
“Maybe he’s colicky,” Ellen offered as she wandered into the kitchen. “Jo was a nightmare when she would get colic.”
“Mom.”
Ellen moved up alongside Dean and lifted a hand to press her fingers to Daniel’s face. As she did, she asked, “Does he have a fever?”
Daniel whined and moved away from Ellen’s hand, tucking his face into Dean’s chest to hide. Ellen, at least, didn’t seem to take the slight personally. “Feels okay. Course, I can only advise you on human stuff… if he has angel diaper rash, you’re on your own on that one.”
And Castiel would rather be rooting around abandoned coal mines looking for wendigos.
“How was his appetite?” Ellen asked, eyeing the drying bottle on the counter.
“About the same as always… maybe a little less.” Dean craned his neck to look down at Daniel, as if that eerie Castiel-like stare of his could give him a clue what was going on with the little guy. What he noticed instead was Ellen watching him thoughtfully, head canted and a half-smirk of disbelief on her lips.
“What?” he asked defensively.
“Nothing,” she said. But that was bullshit. She shook her head. “Just never thought I’d see the day… Dean Winchester, a father. Strange as it seems, and screwed up as it was how you went about it, you’re good at it.”
For a second, he forgot he was in a bad mood.
“So…” Jo hedged awkwardly, “does that make Castiel, like, Daniel’s ‘mother’ or what?”
“Cas is the one who had him,” Dean answered immediately, because he wanted it to be known that if anyone was the dad, it was definitely Dean. No way was he Mom. “But it’s not really the same… I guess, technically, he doesn’t have a ‘mom’ so much as an angel parent.” Which sounded even weirder than it seemed in Dean’s head… there was a reason he hadn’t been giving much thought to what Daniel’s family tree looked like.
“You Winchesters never could do things the easy way,” Ellen quipped. Then she nodded at her daughter to get her attention, “Jo, I need you to come help me inventory ammunition, see where last night’s shindig leaves us.”
“Okay.” She sounded far more eager to do that than watch after the baby.
With that, the Harvelles left Dean alone in the kitchen.
Dean leaned back against the counter, barely touching his chin to the top of Daniel’s head. He tried not to feel annoyed at Castiel for ditching the second he had his wings in working order again. Really, he should have expected it. Castiel had been trying to put distance between himself and Daniel from the minute he was born. Dean had tried to get Castiel to bond with the baby (though why he tried, he wasn’t really sure), but the angel seemed impervious. And now he was gone.
Well, not gone, hunting, but oddly it felt close enough to count.
Daniel whimpered and squirmed against Dean.
“It’s okay,” Dean murmured, stroking Daniel’s back, “you still got me.”
Dean hadn’t expected to take to parenthood at all. It just kind of snuck up and blindsided him when he noticed how naturally he’d fallen into the role. Sam was the only one who hadn’t seemed surprised to see his brother go easily into daddy-mode. When Dean gave him a ‘what the fuck, man’ look for that, Sam just snorted and said, “Hell, Dean, you raised me… you were daddy material since you were four.”
Much as Dean thought John deserved some credit for raising Sam, he couldn’t exactly say Sam was wrong.
So maybe it wasn’t so much surprise that he was capable as it was bemusement that he constantly had to remind himself not to look like he enjoyed it. Because he kind of did. Apocalypse and shitty timing and weird-ass circumstances aside, part of him liked having a son.
“Hey…”
Dean looked up and saw Sam enter the kitchen.
“He finally settle down?” Sam asked with a chin-point at Daniel.
“A little.”
“How’s the shoulder?”
Dean moved it experimentally. Castiel had healed most of the damage done by the wendigo’s claws, but it wasn’t a miraculous full recovery like the angel used to manage before falling. Dean’s neck and shoulder muscles were sore as hell, and the place where the open wounds had been were a palette of blue, brown, and purple bruises. “Better than having to get it stitched,” Dean answered truthfully.
Sam came up alongside Dean and grunted. “I guess if Cas couldn’t completely wave away a few scratches, fixing up Bobby’s probably not in the cards.”
Dean hadn’t thought of that, but Sam had a point. Dean rolled his shoulder and winced. “Doubt it, if this is the best he could do on my shoulder. Guess some of those diminished powers weren’t just because of Daniel.” Dean thought a second. “Or maybe giving so much of his grace to make Daniel drained some of his angel mojo.” He glanced over at his brother. “Everything packed up?”
“Yeah…” Sam frowned. “You know, we could hang around a couple of days to wait for Cas… in case he needs help with the wendigo stuff.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam’s ill-disguised lie. And he resented the fact that apparently he was that transparent in his brooding about Castiel’s indifference to taking on a parent role.
And Dean wouldn’t give a shit, really, if it weren’t for the fact he felt really under-qualified to raise an angel without an angel on hand for backup when inhuman crap started happening. Like what the fuck was he supposed to do when Daniel actually started using his wings?
“Cas can take care of himself… no reason for us to stick around.”
Sam’s look said ‘you don’t buy that anymore than I do,’ but he didn’t say it aloud. What he said instead was, “It’s not like Bobby’s sounded the alarm…”
As if on cue, Sam’s phone began to ring. Daniel flinched and threatened to cry at the sound.
“Jinx,” Dean tossed out flippantly, already starting to frown.
Sam grimaced and answered his phone without looking at the caller ID, “Hey, Bobby… oh, just a bad feeling and a good guess. What’s up?” His eyes widened a little. “Really? No, of course. Yeah, we’ll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up the phone and turned toward Dean.
“What did he say?” Dean asked, spine tensing in anticipation.
“Bobby thinks he may have found a way to rob an archangel of his sword.”
Dean’s eyebrows rose. Amid everything else, he’d forgotten Bobby was looking into that. “Seriously?”
“That’s what he said.” Sam sounded cautiously optimistic… they were due some good news, after all.
Dean pushed off the counter. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get on the road.” Besides, if they could ever actually manage to get to the salvage yard, Dean could finally replace his poor baby’s windows. It physically hurt to see her in such bad shape.
Sam’s eyes flicked down to rest fleetingly on Daniel, then he looked back at Dean and nodded. “Sure… I’ll just go tell Jo, Ellen, and Strafe that we’re heading out.”
********************
Even as he was tearing it down, Castiel had to admire the complexity and ingenuity of the means by which Lucifer had been turning human beings into wendigos. A process that usually took hundreds of years had been manipulated to occur over a span of weeks.
Of course, the humans trapped within the invention did not feel it as weeks. To them, it did last centuries. If Castiel had questioned Lucifer’s involvement in the wendigo explosion before, he no longer doubted it once he found the source of the transformations.
Buried deep within one of the largest mines was a dark place where time raced ahead of the world. It pulled and bulged with time in defiance of itself. Only an angel could have manipulated time and contained it in a small area. There, the transients who had either been lured or dragged underground lived months in minutes.
Within that pocket of time out of sync, it was a frozen tundra. It was an arid wasteland. It was a sealed bunker with barren shelves in place of supplies. It was all of them and none, the embodiment of every nightmare of starvation the human mind could conjure. And it preyed on those humans already sensitive to the horror of going hungry.
Inside, Castiel found various humans in different stages of metamorphosis from man to wendigo. He saw the drawn cheekbones and bulging eyes of starving men tearing off pieces of their own clothing to eat. He saw humans gone feral, naked with wild eyes. He saw those who had succumbed, sinking teeth into human flesh and gulping down hot mouthfuls of bloody meat. He saw wendigos, gaunt, narrow creatures with tearing claws and frothing jaws.
It was a terrarium of tortured souls, a study in the entire progression from human to inhuman. Castiel, an avid studier of mankind, watched the living timeline inside for a moment. It was morbidly fascinating.
Then he took his sword in hand and set to tearing it all down. He breached the barrier holding time hostage, and the years and decades collided together in an atomic rush, crashing and breaking until the pieces fell scattered over normal time. The wendigos and doomed men were suddenly standing with Castiel in real time. Some sensed his holiness, his burning grace, and recoiled. Some, mostly human, tried to plead to him for food. Others saw him as food.
Castiel lost track of time, normal or otherwise, as he set himself to smiting every single living creature that had been held prisoner in Lucifer’s wendigo-manufacturing phenomenon. The wendigos he burned with righteousness. Those beasts somewhere between man and wendigo, he destroyed as a mercy. The ones who were still mostly human, he killed with remorse. He would have chosen to save them, but they had been tainted. The idea to eat their fellow man had already been planted in their minds… if they lived, they would forever be vulnerable to giving into that damning temptation. At least this way, putting them to rest before they could succumb, their souls would find peace in Heaven.
By the time Castiel had cleared out every last wendigo and proto-wendigo in the coal mine, he felt empowered. He felt himself again, a proper weapon of the Lord.
But it wasn’t with the unwavering confidence he’d once known, because his questions and doubts remained. He was coming to learn that those uncertainties would never go away.
Castiel frowned in consternation. That feeling of being someplace other than where he should be - the same sense that had gripped him when he left the bar to fetch the wendigo - was a persistent nudge, tugging at his grace. It was calling him to go somewhere.
He believed he missed being with the Winchesters.
It was unfit for an angel to miss the company of humans, but the drive compelling him to get back to the hunters was undeniable. Castiel had to consider the possibility that, while he was incapacitated by the crippling presence of the shattered one and spent prolonged periods of time with the Winchesters, he’d grown overly-fond of their nearness.
It was weak for an angel to feel that way about humans, but as Lucifer had pointed out so aptly, angels were not built to be alone.
When Castiel emerged at the mouth of the tunnel, it was nighttime. The sky unrolled blue and black above him, a scatter of diamonds bejeweling the sky. Castiel had ignored the close press of stone and earth while he had a job to do, but now that he was outside he basked in the freedom of knowing he could fling himself up into so much open air with a mere thought.
He might have, just to feel the universe on his wings, but almost at the same moment he fully settled his form on the ground outside the tunnel, the phone in his pocket beeped.
Castiel pulled it out and opened it. The date/time display on the screen was his first sense of how long he’d been in the mines. It had been two days since he saw the Winchesters. Though the feeling that made him gravitate toward them seemed to suggest it had been longer.
There were six text messages and two voice mails on his phone. Castiel began to thumb through the texts. They were all from Dean.
eaten by wendigo yet?
Castiel huffed and advanced to the next.
check in when you get a chance
bobby thinks found way to get dickangel sword…wrap up wendigo deal and get here
whats taking you so long?
need to talk to you, call me
spencer iowa daze inn rm 103 get here now!
Castiel puzzled at the urgency in that last text. He nearly went in that very instant, but there were still two voice mails, and if they contained some tactical information about what he would be encountering, he had to hear them first.
The first message from Dean sounded normal enough. “Hey, Cas… guess you’re still knee deep in wendigos. Look, um, I need to pick your brain about something, so when you get this call me back. As soon as you get this.”
The second message was unlike the first. Dean’s voice was harsh and panicked. “Damnit, Cas! Answer your fucking phone! Get your ass over here right now… there’s something wrong with Daniel.”
In the next second, Castiel went.
He assumed the brothers were still at the location provided in Dean’s last text message. He was correct. Castiel touched down in a motel room much like any other the brothers had stayed in that the Winchesters were adept at making feel like a semi-home just for living out of it with such familiarity.
But the atmosphere in this room was far from homey. Dean was pacing like a caged animal. Daniel was lying disturbingly, deathly still on one of the beds. Sam was…
Sam was suddenly at Castiel’s side, grabbing onto his arm and gripping tightly enough that a human would probably feel pain. Castiel looked toward Sam and was met with the younger brother’s eyes, wide and afraid. “Where the hell have you been?” Sam whispered tersely. His voice was raw and worried.
Dean whirled at his brother’s voice. “Cas! Jesus fucking… what the hell took you so long?”
Castiel gently pulled free of Sam’s hand. “It would seem my phone was unable to function when I was in the mines…” Castiel stopped and looked at Dean. He didn’t like what he saw. Dean looked that awful human combination of terrified and helpless.
Then Castiel remembered Dean’s last voice message. “You said that something was wrong with Daniel?”
A sick look joined the panic already on Dean’s face. “He started getting sick yesterday. Kept crying and nothing I tried would make him stop. Then he stopped eating this afternoon. Now he’ll barely even move.” While Dean was listing symptoms, Sam stepped around the pair of them and moved toward the bed. “Then he started having trouble breathing. I was a second away from calling an ambulance, but who the hell knows if a doctor can even do anything?! Or what if they do some test and find out he’s not all human and take him to some lab? God damnit, Cas, what if I’d had to decide between watching him die or seeing him turned into some science experiment? And screw you for putting that on me! You should have fucking been here!”
Dean’s words were growing increasingly disjointed and built on emotion rather than facts.
“He really doesn’t look good,” Sam said in a much calmer (though noticeably shaky) voice as he moved toward Castiel, the baby in his arms.
When Sam was standing in front of Castiel, the angel looked down at Daniel. He frowned. Daniel was limp in Sam’s arms, struggling to breathe, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
He looked remarkably like a human dying.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dean demanded.
“His grace is weakening.” Castiel could see the light inside the boy struggling to even shine dully… it was a drastic difference from the blinding ball of light Castiel saw the last time he’d looked into the child.
“Why would it do that? How do we fix it?”
“Is he dying?” Sam asked in a small voice, one he obviously hoped Dean wouldn’t hear.
Dean did anyway. “No! He’s not going to die, god damnit! Cas, he’s not dying, right? You can heal him, right?”
“I don’t know why his grace would start to fail…”
“Is it my fault?” Dean asked abruptly, looking like he might throw up. “Is it because he’s got human in him?”
Castiel was staring hard at the baby, trying to understand the flickering grace. It made his own grace lurch and cry out for something.
“Please do something,” Sam whispered hoarsely.
He had no idea what to do. “Let me take him,” Castiel said lowly.
It was unpleasant watching the baby change hands, as limp and weak as he was. It made Castiel fear there was little that could be done for the boy at this point. Dean was fidgeting, watching anxiously as Castiel resorted to the familiar. He brought Daniel to his chest and held him there as he tried to think of a reason the baby’s grace would falter… and what he could possibly do to reverse it.
Castiel’s grace pressed tight against the boundaries of him, clamoring to be near Daniel’s. As in the car, Castiel sensed Daniel’s grace reciprocating… albeit this time sluggishly. It moved laboriously to the edges of Daniel in order to lean against Castiel’s grace.
Two startling discoveries jumped out at Castiel at the same moment.
One: that aching, yearning sense he’d been feeling for days was suddenly gone, and he realized that all that time he hadn’t been missing the Winchester brothers… he’d been missing Daniel.
Two: it was not merely a desire for proximity that was ignited in both their graces… it was something much more. Castiel could see it now. As they pressed chest-to-chest, Castiel could feel and see some of the brilliance of his grace winding its way into Daniel’s.
There must have been a stupefied look on his face, because Dean was suddenly standing very close. “What? What is it? Cas?”
Daniel’s grace was soaking up the tendrils and wisps of Castiel’s as fast as it could reach him. The light found the core of Daniel’s grace and lit him up. Daniel’s grace slowly but surely started building itself back toward that shining star Castiel had come to know.
“Cas?”
Castiel looked up into Dean’s desperate, hopeful eyes.
“It would seem that Daniel’s grace needs periodic nearness to mine in order to thrive.”
Dean gaped while Sam sidled closer. “You mean, like, angel nursing or something?”
It was about as accurate as ever calling Castiel ‘pregnant’… but like before, probably as close as the humans could get to understanding the true nature of the condition. “Something like that, yes.” Castiel looked down at the baby. Now that he knew to search for it, he could feel his grace passing into Daniel. It curled hot and joyous in the infant’s grace, then it snaked in faint shimmers of light into the leading edges of his wings. They stirred from their limp state, trying to tuck properly against his back and shoulders.
Without thinking, Castiel stroked them.
“Are you sure?” Dean asked worriedly, looking down at Daniel in Castiel’s hands.
“I can feel my grace moving into him, and I can see his grace growing stronger.”
Lucifer’s words echoed uncomfortably inside Castiel. Not built to be alone.
What finally convinced Dean was Daniel. The baby stirred. He moved his arms from where they’d been hanging limp at his sides and tucked them against his chest as he cuddled against Castiel. It was so very like the Daniel they knew, the baby who craved physical contact… for a very good reason, as it turned out.
Dean let out a huge sigh. “God damn, he scared the shit out of me…” then Dean turned a venomous look on Castiel. “Why didn’t you tell us about the whole grace-feeding thing?”
“I didn’t know… there has never been a being like Daniel before; so much angel and yet partly human. I couldn’t know how that human part of him would express itself.” Castiel frowned at Dean, the hunter still tense with distress. “If I’d known, I would not have left him.” Whether for Dean’s sake or Daniel’s, Castiel wasn’t really sure… but it was true, regardless.
Finally, Dean’s expression changed into something other than horrified. He kind of smiled. “Yeah… okay.” Dean looked at Daniel pressed contently to Castiel’s chest. “So long as he’s going to be all right… but you gotta stick around from now on, Cas. You do that to him or me again, and I’ll shoot you.”
Knowing what would happen to Daniel if he couldn’t be near Castiel’s grace, the angel would sacrifice his freedom to be close when the baby needed him. “Of course.”
It struck him then that, had he not left the mines when he did, he might have been too late. Daniel might have died.
The thought was distressing. To reassure himself that Daniel was very much alive, Castiel stroked his wings. The baby made a content noise while his wings moved under Castiel’s touch. They shifted against Castiel’s energy with an electrifying tingle that Castiel could feel all the way to his own grace.
It wasn’t until Dean gave him an odd, tired but semi-amused look that Castiel realized he might have smiled a little.
Once the emergency was over, Castiel saw just how exhausted the brothers were. Adrenaline had been carrying them, and when it left much of the energy in the room went with it. Castiel knew the brothers’ rhythms well enough by now to know that they would not stay awake much longer.
Sam gave in first. He scrubbed his face with both hands and mumbled, “Okay, I have to throw in the towel.” Before he did, though, he approached Castiel and Daniel. He reached up, ghosted his palm over Daniel’s fine hair, then ducked down and pressed a light kiss against the boy’s head. “You just about gave us all heart attacks today, Danny.”
Castiel cocked his head at the new name.
For a moment, Sam seemed unable to stop touching the baby. His hand remained cupped around Daniel’s head, his thumb brushing softly over the child’s cheek. Castiel watched, fascinated. The longer he knew Sam Winchester, the harder it was to think of him as the boy with demon blood.
When Sam withdrew and flopped down on one of the beds, Castiel took it upon himself to go to the other and sit down. He propped himself against the headboard, gravity now doing the work of keeping Daniel in place on his chest.
As he knew it would, the angel and baby on the bed drew Dean down. The hunter crawled on to the bed next to the two, eyes glued to Daniel. “He’s really going to be okay?”
“He is already much stronger,” Castiel answered. It was the most honest answer he could give. He had no idea what lay ahead for a child like Daniel. But for now, he was on his way back to healthy and content.
Dean reached up and traced his fingers down Daniel’s back. Castiel watched, taken with the gentleness of hands that had days before fought superhuman monsters.
“Can he feel this?” Dean asked, and Castiel was confused by the question.
“Can he feel you touching his back?”
“I mean, can his wings feel this?”
Castiel watched Daniel’s wings lie unmoving as Dean’s hand passed over and through them. “No.”
“Oh…” Dean looked disappointed.
“Right now, he has no control of them. Your hand is in a plane of existence his wings are not; they pass through one another.” Not knowing why, Castiel added, “When he is older, and learns to control his grace, he may be able to feel you touch them… because he wants to feel it.”
Dean almost smiled. “That’ll be cool.” Dean shifted down to lie on his side on the bed, still watching Daniel intently. He seemed afraid to take his eyes off the baby.
“You were distraught at the thought of losing him,” Castiel noted lowly.
“Of course I was… he’s my son.”
Dean owned the identity of parent so passionately and with such ease. Castiel wondered if he could, too… if he tried. He wondered what it would feel like to love Daniel. Dean did, and it had brought out all the wonderful qualities in him. All that Castiel found worthy and good in humanity.
Dean nestled his head on his pillow then peered upward at Castiel with a bemused expression. “You should know me well enough by now to know how I feel about my family.”
The statement made Castiel miss the other angels… his brothers, his sisters… they were all so far away from him now.
“Moron,” Dean snorted.
“I’m sorry?”
“I wasn’t just talking about Daniel.” Before Castiel could think of something to say, Dean closed his eyes and slipped into sleep. For a minute, Castiel reclined in bed next to Dean and softly stroked Daniel’s wings. When he paid attention to the way Daniel’s grace responded to him, and how his own grace responded in kind, familiarity flared. It was the alacrity of being close to another angel that Castiel had been missing so long. Before that moment, he had not let himself perceive Daniel as another angel… at least not enough to realize that his isolation, in a strange way, had ended.
Sam started to snore softly in the other bed.
Castiel no longer succumbed to sleep. He was glad for that. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t stay in bed the rest of the night.
Settling in for the night, Castiel shifted on the mattress. He brought his wings up and around, folding himself and Daniel within them.
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