Fic: The Shattered One (18/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
Outside the cabin, Dean could hear the hordes of Croatoan-infected overwhelming the defenses of Camp Chitaqua. The panicked screams of fleeing survivors and the crazed screams of Croats knitted together in a dissonant, broken choir of chaos. Gunfire cracked the air. Beyond the cabin’s walls, Dean could smell fire. Whether it was the camp or the world burning, he didn’t know.
Dean turned in a panic and saw Castiel lying prone on his back on a springboard mattress bare of sheets. His loose and dirty clothes, days’ worth of beard growth, and bare feet were sights Dean had seen before. Had hoped to never see again. Had hoped would never come true.
“Cas!” Dean ran to the bed. “Cas! We gotta get out of here!”
Castiel lay perfectly still, staring upward with a glassy look in his eyes. When Dean shook him by the shoulders, Castiel just hummed and smiled lazily. His drugged gaze followed some invisible creature climbing over the ceiling.
“Snap out of it, Cas!” Dean was pulling at Castiel’s shirt, trying to haul him up out of the bed, but it seemed like he was glued in place. The harder Dean tried to move him, the more immovable Castiel became. All Dean’s efforts earned him was Castiel languidly licking his lips and crooning, “Ohhh… Dean, it breaks so pretty…”
Dean gave up trying to budge the former angel. He grabbed his face with both hands and tried to force Castiel’s eyes to focus on him. “Cas, where’s Daniel?” Somehow, he knew the boy was not in the cabin with them.
“Daniel?” Cas slurred. Then he smiled dopily. “He flies, you know… up so high… Danny in the sky…”
“Damnit, Cas!” Dean turned his back on Castiel and bolted for the door.
The other side was all trees on fire, the wall of destruction creeping toward the cabin. Pines crackled and tree sap popped while flames consumed them, the blaze reaching up and up, right into the clouds. Croats were swarming over the campgrounds, all feral eyes, bloody mouths, and sallow skin. Several were afire, flames perched on their shoulders and clinging to arms, banners that followed their headlong pursuit of victims. When they passed Dean, each one looked his way, and Dean knew them all. Pastor Jim, Caleb, Rufus, John Winchester, Ellen, Jo, Strafe, Bobby… just about everyone Dean thought he’d ever known was infected with the Croatoan virus. Or they were the terrified faces of those running for their lives. Sometimes they were both.
“Daniel!” Dean called out. There was no answer but screams.
He jumped from the porch and sprinted into the woods behind the cabin. The trees he raced through were not burning, but their limbs withered and died before his eyes, needles and leaves sloughing off in great sheets, like dead rain. Dean batted rotting foliage out of his face as he ran crying, “Daniel! Daniel!”
Suddenly, the ground disappeared beneath him and Dean was falling. He flailed for purchase, clawing at air. He was falling, out of time.
He was standing in a clearing outside Camp Chitaqua. The forest wasn’t on fire yet. The horde of Croats hadn’t overtaken the security guarding the camp yet. But they would… it was only a matter of time.
“About time you embraced the idea of destiny,” Sam said.
Dean turned and saw his brother. But it wasn’t Sam. The Devil was wearing Sam’s face.
“No,” Dean breathed.
Lucifer smiled with Sam’s mouth. He stretched his arms out, and Dean saw jagged lines where the skin was stitched together… like Lucifer had skinned Sam Winchester and sewn his flesh on himself. “This is going to happen. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. You can’t save your family, Dean.”
“Dad?”
Dean turned his head and saw the small figure of a five-year-old boy standing among the trees.
“Daniel,” Dean croaked, his heart racing, “Daniel, come here!”
The boy lifted his dark-haired head slowly, blue eyes fixing on Dean with a look of sorrow thousands of years older than the child himself. The small smattering of freckles on his nose stood out against too-pale skin. While Dean held out his arms, pleading silently for Daniel to come to him, Daniel’s bright blue eyes filled with recrimination and disappointment. His chin wobbled. “You failed, Dad… you couldn’t save anyone.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Dean vowed.
At that, blood dribbled from the corners of the boy’s mouth. “Too late.” Like a puppet whose strings were cut, Daniel crumpled to the ground.
“NO!” Dean ran over to where Daniel had fallen and dropped to his knees. Dean picked up his son and clutched the boy to him. His lifeless body hung limp in Dean’s arms. Dean hugged Daniel close, desperate to feel his warmth, but there was only cold. Only the stiffness of a corpse to hold. Dean rocked the boy as the forest was set on fire. Screaming rose in the distance. Somewhere, Castiel was lying drugged in a bed soon to burn.
Dean looked up and saw Michael sitting on a rock watching everything. He looked eerily like a young John Winchester, but the power gathered around him was inhuman. He was wearing armor like in the books, he had great wings arching over his shoulders… but his arms were bound before him. He sat helpless and watched Lucifer walk off laughing with Sam’s body.
While Dean clung to his dead son and the world burned, Michael looked somberly at Dean and said in a sad, resigned voice, “We could have stopped it all. We could have saved everyone.”
Daniel turned to ash in Dean’s arms.
Dean woke with a strangled gasp, blinking away visions of fire and death that danced at the periphery of his senses. When they’d cleared, he was in Bobby’s guest bedroom. He lay a moment, trying to get his racing heart and breathing under control. It was a nightmare. Just a dream. Lucifer hadn’t taken Sam. Castiel wasn’t strung out. Daniel wasn’t dead.
But knowing it was probably all true wasn’t very reassuring. So Dean got out of bed and padded to the bedroom door.
Dean peeked in on Sam in the other upstairs bedroom first, relieved to see his brother sprawled starfish-like on the bed, face mashed into his pillow and snoring faintly.
Next, Dean crept down the stairs and made his way to the threshold of the library.
Castiel was there, standing statue-like near the window in the dark room. He had Daniel in his arms, held safely against his chest, while he stared out the window. The moonlight coming through the window barely caught the sharpest angles of Castiel’s face, painting him a figure made of shadow and silver-blue wisps of light. He looked like he’d been standing just like that, on watch, for hours. He looked like he would stand precisely that way for hours more.
Dean smiled a little. This was how he knew Castiel, ever awkward in his human vessel, every bit angel, and so very, very far removed from that drugged-out hippie. But not so far removed from humanity after all, because he was holding his partly-human son to him. Dean hoped the angel would always be like this. It was something Dean could see himself counting on… there had been so little of that in Dean’s life.
“You should sway a little,” Dean spoke softly.
Castiel turned his head to look toward him, not seeming surprised that Dean was there. “What?”
“Sway… babies like rhythm. Here.” Dean stepped over to Castiel but hesitated to actually take Daniel from him. The baby looked peaceful and happy, sleeping soundly against Castiel’s chest. So Dean sidled in closer to the angel’s side, hooked an arm around Castiel’s waist, and guided him to move his body in tandem with Dean’s as Dean demonstrated a sway. Castiel let Dean move him - if he didn’t want to do it, Dean could not have moved him any more than he might move a mountain. He moved side to side with Dean, curious. He watched Dean closely at first, expression hidden in darkness, then he looked down at Daniel. There was no difference in the baby’s sleep, but Castiel seemed to see something Dean didn’t. “He does like it.”
“Yeah, I might not be able to pet his wings, but I can show you what human babies like.” Or what Sam had liked, at least, but that was Dean’s only frame of reference. One of his too-few vivid memories of Mary was watching her sway with Sammy in her arms.
He and Castiel were still swaying, he realized. “This doesn’t count as us dancing.”
Castiel blinked over at him, puzzled. “And us dancing would be bad?” he guessed.
“Hard to live down if Sam caught us,” Dean answered, then he finally let go of Castiel and stepped around to stand facing him. Castiel continued to sway, eyes following Dean.
“I think you don’t give your brother enough credit sometimes,” Castiel observed quietly.
Dean chuckled at the irony of hearing that about Sam from an angel. “Well, that’s certainly not the opinion of the rest of the angels.”
Castiel made a derisive noise at the mention of the other angels. Dean’s eyebrows rose. Castiel was usually withdrawn and somber when the subject of his heavenly siblings came up… not openly, emotionally hostile.
It didn’t take much for Dean to think about the confrontation with Gabriel yesterday. For hours after the archangel was gone, Castiel refused to let anyone else hold Daniel. Not even Dean. Castiel got his first go at bottle feeding Daniel, just because he wouldn’t give him to anyone else in order to feed him. Dean hadn’t fought him much, because that look on his face - that disconnected, on-freaky-angel-autopilot look - had lingered long after Gabriel was gone. Dean wasn’t really sure how much he’d get through to Castiel if he’d tried reasoning with that shield of robo-angel.
But Castiel looked fine now. Dean tried his luck. “That was pretty boss, how you dealt with Gabriel.”
Castiel’s swaying stopped and he looked cautiously over at Dean. He looked… embarrassed? Confused?
“I don’t know what came over me,” Castiel confided in a slightly sheepish tone. “I saw him move toward Daniel and I just reacted. There seemed to be little conscious thought involved. I have never experienced anything like that before. I have never been controlled so completely by some force so thoroughly detached from my intellect.”
“Sounds like Gabriel was right about angels having some serious protective powers when it comes to their kids.”
Castiel frowned. “I was very frightened he would harm Daniel,” the angel confessed lowly. “I felt driven to do anything I had to in order to keep Daniel safe, no matter the consequences.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Dean replied. He backed over to Bobby’s couch and perched on the arm. He watched Castiel thoughtfully as the angel tentatively began to sway again. He looked really bothered by being blindsided with a parental instinct. He looked torn.
Dean cocked his head. “Angels don’t have families, do they?”
Castiel glanced up at him.
“I mean, you call the others your brothers and sisters, but… it’s not like me and Sam, is it? And you guys don’t have moms and dads and sons and daughters…”
“We have a social structure that we define by familial labels. We have our Father, and I have brothers and sisters… but no, it is not as… enmeshed as human family ties seem to be. I love my brothers and sisters, but it…” Castiel scowled while trying to describe the relationships within Heaven’s clearly-dysfunctional family. “It is more a love hardwired into us. We are made to love God, we were built to love our brothers and sisters. There are some angels I have never met before, but I love them as I was commanded to.” Castiel tilted his head. “It’s not an unreal love… but an impersonal one.”
“But it’s different with Daniel, isn’t it?”
Castiel stilled uncomfortably. “Yes…” he finally admitted. “It’s different with Daniel.”
And he looked troubled by that.
Without prompting, Castiel continued. “If he had come into existence as angels normally do, he would have been welcomed into the heavenly Host of brothers and sisters. The moment we separated, he would have been more brother to me than offspring. A brother I would love and fight to defend, but a brother all the same. But me being cut off from Heaven when I shattered, and now being here alone with him, and Daniel being part you…”
Obviously, every single one of those circumstances was a game changer… taken all together, and Dean thought he had some idea what was giving Castiel so much trouble.
“Cas…” Dean began gently, “it’s okay to love Daniel. To love him like he’s your son.”
“I’m not sure I know how to.”
“Well, seems to me part of you is trying its damnedest to… so just quit fighting it.”
Castiel huffed. “You make it sound simple.”
Dean wanted to counter that there wasn’t much that was simpler than a father loving his son… but he and Castiel both had too many daddy issues for that to really be true.
“You are up at an unusual hour,” Castiel observed after a short silence.
“Yeah… bad dream.”
Castiel made an understanding noise, and didn’t that just beat all.
“Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation talking, but…” Dean heaved a sigh, “sometimes I have no idea how we’re going to do this.” At Castiel’s head tilt, Dean clarified, “Stopping Lucifer.”
“Nor do I.”
Dean snorted. “Thanks, man… reassuring.”
“Oh… I was supposed to lie.”
“Nah…” Dean waved it off with an errant hand, “I never expect that from you. Kind of reassuring to know I can always count on you to give it to me straight.” He scrubbed his face with one hand. “I feel like I can’t say things like this to Sam, because… hell, I don’t know why.”
“You feel the need to protect him,” Castiel pointed out placidly.
“He’s not a kid anymore, and he’s definitely not stupid. He knows how bad the odds are… but it’s like I can’t let him see me know that.”
Castiel pursed his lips. “I think you have a saying for that… fake it ‘til you make it?”
Dean chuckled roughly. “Maybe that’s it.” Dean looked askance at Castiel, seeing him now and remembering the hippie he could be if it all went to hell. “However this ends, good or bad, just, you know… I’m glad you’re here. Seriously, don’t ever change.”
The look Castiel gave him was equal parts warmth and confusion. “You should go back to sleep… you will need to be rested if we’re going to devise a plan to kill Lucifer.”
“Yeah,” Dean huffed, inordinately proud of Castiel for learning to play the human linguist game of optimism in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Dean stood. Before heading back toward the stairs, he walked over to Castiel. He brought up a hand and smoothed his palm over Daniel’s soft hair. He leaned in and kissed the baby’s head. “Night, Daniel.” Dean drew back and looked up at Castiel to find the angel watching him intently, almost cataloguing and studying the hunter’s every move. “Night, Cas.”
“Good night, Dean,” Castiel replied.
Dean made his way toward the hall. Just shy of the staircase, he stopped and looked back into the library/living room. He saw only silhouettes as Castiel stood in front of the large window. But silhouettes were enough. Dean watched Castiel duck his head toward the baby. He stopped when his nose and mouth were a hair’s breadth from touching the crown of Daniel’s head. He stood there, breathing in Daniel’s smell. He didn’t kiss him as he’d watched Dean do, but it was so very near to it. It was Castiel experimenting with the gesture of affection, toying with the idea, trying to let himself love.
Dean smiled and eased back up the stairs.
Next
There is now fan art for "The Shattered One"! Check it out here.
Outside the cabin, Dean could hear the hordes of Croatoan-infected overwhelming the defenses of Camp Chitaqua. The panicked screams of fleeing survivors and the crazed screams of Croats knitted together in a dissonant, broken choir of chaos. Gunfire cracked the air. Beyond the cabin’s walls, Dean could smell fire. Whether it was the camp or the world burning, he didn’t know.
Dean turned in a panic and saw Castiel lying prone on his back on a springboard mattress bare of sheets. His loose and dirty clothes, days’ worth of beard growth, and bare feet were sights Dean had seen before. Had hoped to never see again. Had hoped would never come true.
“Cas!” Dean ran to the bed. “Cas! We gotta get out of here!”
Castiel lay perfectly still, staring upward with a glassy look in his eyes. When Dean shook him by the shoulders, Castiel just hummed and smiled lazily. His drugged gaze followed some invisible creature climbing over the ceiling.
“Snap out of it, Cas!” Dean was pulling at Castiel’s shirt, trying to haul him up out of the bed, but it seemed like he was glued in place. The harder Dean tried to move him, the more immovable Castiel became. All Dean’s efforts earned him was Castiel languidly licking his lips and crooning, “Ohhh… Dean, it breaks so pretty…”
Dean gave up trying to budge the former angel. He grabbed his face with both hands and tried to force Castiel’s eyes to focus on him. “Cas, where’s Daniel?” Somehow, he knew the boy was not in the cabin with them.
“Daniel?” Cas slurred. Then he smiled dopily. “He flies, you know… up so high… Danny in the sky…”
“Damnit, Cas!” Dean turned his back on Castiel and bolted for the door.
The other side was all trees on fire, the wall of destruction creeping toward the cabin. Pines crackled and tree sap popped while flames consumed them, the blaze reaching up and up, right into the clouds. Croats were swarming over the campgrounds, all feral eyes, bloody mouths, and sallow skin. Several were afire, flames perched on their shoulders and clinging to arms, banners that followed their headlong pursuit of victims. When they passed Dean, each one looked his way, and Dean knew them all. Pastor Jim, Caleb, Rufus, John Winchester, Ellen, Jo, Strafe, Bobby… just about everyone Dean thought he’d ever known was infected with the Croatoan virus. Or they were the terrified faces of those running for their lives. Sometimes they were both.
“Daniel!” Dean called out. There was no answer but screams.
He jumped from the porch and sprinted into the woods behind the cabin. The trees he raced through were not burning, but their limbs withered and died before his eyes, needles and leaves sloughing off in great sheets, like dead rain. Dean batted rotting foliage out of his face as he ran crying, “Daniel! Daniel!”
Suddenly, the ground disappeared beneath him and Dean was falling. He flailed for purchase, clawing at air. He was falling, out of time.
He was standing in a clearing outside Camp Chitaqua. The forest wasn’t on fire yet. The horde of Croats hadn’t overtaken the security guarding the camp yet. But they would… it was only a matter of time.
“About time you embraced the idea of destiny,” Sam said.
Dean turned and saw his brother. But it wasn’t Sam. The Devil was wearing Sam’s face.
“No,” Dean breathed.
Lucifer smiled with Sam’s mouth. He stretched his arms out, and Dean saw jagged lines where the skin was stitched together… like Lucifer had skinned Sam Winchester and sewn his flesh on himself. “This is going to happen. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. You can’t save your family, Dean.”
“Dad?”
Dean turned his head and saw the small figure of a five-year-old boy standing among the trees.
“Daniel,” Dean croaked, his heart racing, “Daniel, come here!”
The boy lifted his dark-haired head slowly, blue eyes fixing on Dean with a look of sorrow thousands of years older than the child himself. The small smattering of freckles on his nose stood out against too-pale skin. While Dean held out his arms, pleading silently for Daniel to come to him, Daniel’s bright blue eyes filled with recrimination and disappointment. His chin wobbled. “You failed, Dad… you couldn’t save anyone.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Dean vowed.
At that, blood dribbled from the corners of the boy’s mouth. “Too late.” Like a puppet whose strings were cut, Daniel crumpled to the ground.
“NO!” Dean ran over to where Daniel had fallen and dropped to his knees. Dean picked up his son and clutched the boy to him. His lifeless body hung limp in Dean’s arms. Dean hugged Daniel close, desperate to feel his warmth, but there was only cold. Only the stiffness of a corpse to hold. Dean rocked the boy as the forest was set on fire. Screaming rose in the distance. Somewhere, Castiel was lying drugged in a bed soon to burn.
Dean looked up and saw Michael sitting on a rock watching everything. He looked eerily like a young John Winchester, but the power gathered around him was inhuman. He was wearing armor like in the books, he had great wings arching over his shoulders… but his arms were bound before him. He sat helpless and watched Lucifer walk off laughing with Sam’s body.
While Dean clung to his dead son and the world burned, Michael looked somberly at Dean and said in a sad, resigned voice, “We could have stopped it all. We could have saved everyone.”
Daniel turned to ash in Dean’s arms.
Dean woke with a strangled gasp, blinking away visions of fire and death that danced at the periphery of his senses. When they’d cleared, he was in Bobby’s guest bedroom. He lay a moment, trying to get his racing heart and breathing under control. It was a nightmare. Just a dream. Lucifer hadn’t taken Sam. Castiel wasn’t strung out. Daniel wasn’t dead.
But knowing it was probably all true wasn’t very reassuring. So Dean got out of bed and padded to the bedroom door.
Dean peeked in on Sam in the other upstairs bedroom first, relieved to see his brother sprawled starfish-like on the bed, face mashed into his pillow and snoring faintly.
Next, Dean crept down the stairs and made his way to the threshold of the library.
Castiel was there, standing statue-like near the window in the dark room. He had Daniel in his arms, held safely against his chest, while he stared out the window. The moonlight coming through the window barely caught the sharpest angles of Castiel’s face, painting him a figure made of shadow and silver-blue wisps of light. He looked like he’d been standing just like that, on watch, for hours. He looked like he would stand precisely that way for hours more.
Dean smiled a little. This was how he knew Castiel, ever awkward in his human vessel, every bit angel, and so very, very far removed from that drugged-out hippie. But not so far removed from humanity after all, because he was holding his partly-human son to him. Dean hoped the angel would always be like this. It was something Dean could see himself counting on… there had been so little of that in Dean’s life.
“You should sway a little,” Dean spoke softly.
Castiel turned his head to look toward him, not seeming surprised that Dean was there. “What?”
“Sway… babies like rhythm. Here.” Dean stepped over to Castiel but hesitated to actually take Daniel from him. The baby looked peaceful and happy, sleeping soundly against Castiel’s chest. So Dean sidled in closer to the angel’s side, hooked an arm around Castiel’s waist, and guided him to move his body in tandem with Dean’s as Dean demonstrated a sway. Castiel let Dean move him - if he didn’t want to do it, Dean could not have moved him any more than he might move a mountain. He moved side to side with Dean, curious. He watched Dean closely at first, expression hidden in darkness, then he looked down at Daniel. There was no difference in the baby’s sleep, but Castiel seemed to see something Dean didn’t. “He does like it.”
“Yeah, I might not be able to pet his wings, but I can show you what human babies like.” Or what Sam had liked, at least, but that was Dean’s only frame of reference. One of his too-few vivid memories of Mary was watching her sway with Sammy in her arms.
He and Castiel were still swaying, he realized. “This doesn’t count as us dancing.”
Castiel blinked over at him, puzzled. “And us dancing would be bad?” he guessed.
“Hard to live down if Sam caught us,” Dean answered, then he finally let go of Castiel and stepped around to stand facing him. Castiel continued to sway, eyes following Dean.
“I think you don’t give your brother enough credit sometimes,” Castiel observed quietly.
Dean chuckled at the irony of hearing that about Sam from an angel. “Well, that’s certainly not the opinion of the rest of the angels.”
Castiel made a derisive noise at the mention of the other angels. Dean’s eyebrows rose. Castiel was usually withdrawn and somber when the subject of his heavenly siblings came up… not openly, emotionally hostile.
It didn’t take much for Dean to think about the confrontation with Gabriel yesterday. For hours after the archangel was gone, Castiel refused to let anyone else hold Daniel. Not even Dean. Castiel got his first go at bottle feeding Daniel, just because he wouldn’t give him to anyone else in order to feed him. Dean hadn’t fought him much, because that look on his face - that disconnected, on-freaky-angel-autopilot look - had lingered long after Gabriel was gone. Dean wasn’t really sure how much he’d get through to Castiel if he’d tried reasoning with that shield of robo-angel.
But Castiel looked fine now. Dean tried his luck. “That was pretty boss, how you dealt with Gabriel.”
Castiel’s swaying stopped and he looked cautiously over at Dean. He looked… embarrassed? Confused?
“I don’t know what came over me,” Castiel confided in a slightly sheepish tone. “I saw him move toward Daniel and I just reacted. There seemed to be little conscious thought involved. I have never experienced anything like that before. I have never been controlled so completely by some force so thoroughly detached from my intellect.”
“Sounds like Gabriel was right about angels having some serious protective powers when it comes to their kids.”
Castiel frowned. “I was very frightened he would harm Daniel,” the angel confessed lowly. “I felt driven to do anything I had to in order to keep Daniel safe, no matter the consequences.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Dean replied. He backed over to Bobby’s couch and perched on the arm. He watched Castiel thoughtfully as the angel tentatively began to sway again. He looked really bothered by being blindsided with a parental instinct. He looked torn.
Dean cocked his head. “Angels don’t have families, do they?”
Castiel glanced up at him.
“I mean, you call the others your brothers and sisters, but… it’s not like me and Sam, is it? And you guys don’t have moms and dads and sons and daughters…”
“We have a social structure that we define by familial labels. We have our Father, and I have brothers and sisters… but no, it is not as… enmeshed as human family ties seem to be. I love my brothers and sisters, but it…” Castiel scowled while trying to describe the relationships within Heaven’s clearly-dysfunctional family. “It is more a love hardwired into us. We are made to love God, we were built to love our brothers and sisters. There are some angels I have never met before, but I love them as I was commanded to.” Castiel tilted his head. “It’s not an unreal love… but an impersonal one.”
“But it’s different with Daniel, isn’t it?”
Castiel stilled uncomfortably. “Yes…” he finally admitted. “It’s different with Daniel.”
And he looked troubled by that.
Without prompting, Castiel continued. “If he had come into existence as angels normally do, he would have been welcomed into the heavenly Host of brothers and sisters. The moment we separated, he would have been more brother to me than offspring. A brother I would love and fight to defend, but a brother all the same. But me being cut off from Heaven when I shattered, and now being here alone with him, and Daniel being part you…”
Obviously, every single one of those circumstances was a game changer… taken all together, and Dean thought he had some idea what was giving Castiel so much trouble.
“Cas…” Dean began gently, “it’s okay to love Daniel. To love him like he’s your son.”
“I’m not sure I know how to.”
“Well, seems to me part of you is trying its damnedest to… so just quit fighting it.”
Castiel huffed. “You make it sound simple.”
Dean wanted to counter that there wasn’t much that was simpler than a father loving his son… but he and Castiel both had too many daddy issues for that to really be true.
“You are up at an unusual hour,” Castiel observed after a short silence.
“Yeah… bad dream.”
Castiel made an understanding noise, and didn’t that just beat all.
“Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation talking, but…” Dean heaved a sigh, “sometimes I have no idea how we’re going to do this.” At Castiel’s head tilt, Dean clarified, “Stopping Lucifer.”
“Nor do I.”
Dean snorted. “Thanks, man… reassuring.”
“Oh… I was supposed to lie.”
“Nah…” Dean waved it off with an errant hand, “I never expect that from you. Kind of reassuring to know I can always count on you to give it to me straight.” He scrubbed his face with one hand. “I feel like I can’t say things like this to Sam, because… hell, I don’t know why.”
“You feel the need to protect him,” Castiel pointed out placidly.
“He’s not a kid anymore, and he’s definitely not stupid. He knows how bad the odds are… but it’s like I can’t let him see me know that.”
Castiel pursed his lips. “I think you have a saying for that… fake it ‘til you make it?”
Dean chuckled roughly. “Maybe that’s it.” Dean looked askance at Castiel, seeing him now and remembering the hippie he could be if it all went to hell. “However this ends, good or bad, just, you know… I’m glad you’re here. Seriously, don’t ever change.”
The look Castiel gave him was equal parts warmth and confusion. “You should go back to sleep… you will need to be rested if we’re going to devise a plan to kill Lucifer.”
“Yeah,” Dean huffed, inordinately proud of Castiel for learning to play the human linguist game of optimism in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Dean stood. Before heading back toward the stairs, he walked over to Castiel. He brought up a hand and smoothed his palm over Daniel’s soft hair. He leaned in and kissed the baby’s head. “Night, Daniel.” Dean drew back and looked up at Castiel to find the angel watching him intently, almost cataloguing and studying the hunter’s every move. “Night, Cas.”
“Good night, Dean,” Castiel replied.
Dean made his way toward the hall. Just shy of the staircase, he stopped and looked back into the library/living room. He saw only silhouettes as Castiel stood in front of the large window. But silhouettes were enough. Dean watched Castiel duck his head toward the baby. He stopped when his nose and mouth were a hair’s breadth from touching the crown of Daniel’s head. He stood there, breathing in Daniel’s smell. He didn’t kiss him as he’d watched Dean do, but it was so very near to it. It was Castiel experimenting with the gesture of affection, toying with the idea, trying to let himself love.
Dean smiled and eased back up the stairs.
Next
There is now fan art for "The Shattered One"! Check it out here.