Fic: The Shattered One (21/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
Sam didn’t sleep for shit most of the night, too worried about his nephew. He laid awake, tossing and turning and wondering when Castiel would make it back… if he did at all.
He was scared for Daniel. He found it strange how a child they had not anticipated having to work their lives around had quickly become so integral to the way of Winchester. The boy was already as much a fixture in the family as Dean or Sam himself.
Sam didn’t want to think about something happening to Daniel.
It was some god-awful hour when Sam heard the faint mumble of voices coming from the next bedroom… Dean’s voice, which Sam would know anywhere, but also the low rumble of Castiel’s. Sam felt the tension that had been held up tight in his body just bleed out of him in a rush, and while a part of him wanted to jump up, go into Dean’s bedroom, and get answers, he didn’t. Castiel was back, that’s what mattered, so Sam finally got some sleep.
Once he got there, he stayed there; he didn’t wake up until nearly noon the next day. The fact that the world was still there to wake up to had to be a good sign.
When Sam staggered his way down to the kitchen, he saw the back door thrown open and Bobby in his wheelchair parked in front of it, watching something outside.
“Hey, Bobby.”
“I was about to send Dean up to check you for a pulse.”
“It’s not that late,” Sam protested around a yawn, though Bobby’s snort suggested otherwise.
He came up alongside Bobby and looked out to see what the older hunter was watching. He couldn’t help but smile. Dean had finished replacing the Impala’s busted windows and seemed to be just lavishing extra love and attention on his car with a good wash. Castiel was sitting nearby on a shut cooler, watching Dean work with the same intense attention he gave everything. Daniel was lying on Castiel’s lap, his feet at Castiel’s belly and his head at Castiel’s knees. At first glance, it had the hallmarks of Castiel’s notoriously nonchalant attitude toward the baby (laid across the angel’s lap like a book Castiel had been reading a moment ago), but as Sam watched, he saw Castiel lift a hand and brush his fingers softly over Daniel’s head. It was gentle. Not something done out of necessity, but choice. Sam would daresay it was affectionate. Dean glanced over at the two, said something Sam couldn’t make out, then Castiel moved from touching Daniel’s hair to dancing his fingers over his own thigh near Daniel’s body. The baby kicked vigorously. Dean laughed.
For all that the world stood poised to end, they looked so content. Sam took them in, their manner and their closeness, and thought ‘that’s my family’ with an unexpected swell of tenderness.
“How long have they been out there?” Sam asked.
“Couple hours, at least.”
“Yeah… and how long have you been watching them?” Sam teased.
Bobby grunted evasively, which meant Sam wasn’t the only one caught staring at a family - one he could call his own - like others might stop and gape if a unicorn wandered into their front yard.
Sam went to fetch himself a cup of coffee (lukewarm by this hour, but Sam was good at drinking java most other human beings deemed unpalatable).
When he came back to resume silent watch alongside Bobby, Dean had wandered over to Castiel and Daniel. When Daniel saw Dean, he squirmed and flapped his arms at the hunter. For some reason, that made Dean grin like an idiot. Then he seemed to be trying to explain something to Castiel. Castiel looked up at Dean with that constipated, head-cocked look of incomprehension on his face. Finally, Dean flicked the wet chamois over his shoulder, squatted down in front of them, cupped Daniel’s head with one hand, and kissed the baby’s dark hair. Castiel watched like a student of archaeology studying the loincloth-clad natives, almost absently letting his fingers skirt over the patch of Daniel’s hair that Dean had just anointed.
It was possibly the most weirdly-normal Sam had ever seen his brother.
“This could do it for him, you know,” Bobby said out of nowhere.
Sam had been so caught up watching his brother with his angel and his son that he blinked a second, trying to catch up with Bobby’s train of thought. “What?”
“Your brother.” Bobby nodded out the doorway toward them. “If the world wasn’t coming down around our ears, I think this could actually make him happy. Who the hell would have thought?”
“That having a baby with a dude angel would be Dean’s apple-pie? No one in their right mind would have thought that.” But Bobby might be right. Except for one tiny detail. Sam smirked. “It’s missing one thing, though.” At Bobby’s expectant look, Sam said, “A woman.”
Bobby lifted his eyebrows mildly. “Why a woman?”
“Come on, Bobby,” Sam chuckled, “Dean not having sex? That’s like breathing to him. No way is Dean swearing off sex for this warped Norman Rockwell.”
“Don’t have to have a woman to have sex,” Bobby said off-handedly.
If Sam had been taking a drink of his coffee just then, he would have spit it all over the floor. “What?”
“Oh, like you haven’t thought it with as much eye-fucking as they do.”
Sam stared down at Bobby, flabbergasted. When the older hunter looked up at him with a look that dared him to say he was wrong, Sam stepped around him and toward the door, setting his cup on the counter without looking. “Okay, I’m just going to go outside and pretend this conversation ended three minutes ago.”
Bobby muttered something that Sam didn’t catch as he descended the porch ramp and walked over toward his brother and Castiel.
Castiel saw him approaching first and offered a greeting. “Hello, Sam.”
“Hey, Cas… good to see you back. Uh… so is everything all right?”
“Yes. I had to be certain Michael had not perished in the attack yesterday. He hadn’t.”
“Well, good… I guess.” Sam shrugged awkwardly. “I mean, as good as it can get to know the guy that wants to ride my brother like a mechanical bull is still out there.” Which led him to thinking about Dean getting ridden by an angel. Then he was thinking about his brother and angel sex. He was going to kick Bobby’s ass, wheelchair-bound or not.
“Yeah, well,” Dean turned to his brother, “for once, kinda nice to have a last resort.”
Suspicion and dread had a field day in Sam’s gut over that comment. Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean. “That sounds like you’ve actually been considering saying yes to Michael.”
“Not if I can help it,” Dean muttered darkly. “Talk about a bag of dicks.”
“Okay, now that sounds like you’ve actually met the guy… jesus, how long did I sleep?” The joke was a cover for how monumentally discomfited Sam actually felt.
Dean snorted and shifted toward Castiel, like a planet caught in an elliptical orbit being yanked from its apogee and pulled back to its perigee. He ended up back in Daniel’s line of sight. The baby saw him, his blue eyes lit up, and his arms flapped spastically. Dean grinned like a buffoon again. Even Castiel almost kind of smiled.
“What’s he doing that for?” Sam asked, because it was new. Daniel hadn’t been waving for attention yesterday.
“Showing his stuff,” Dean said with a hint of pride in his voice. He looked at Cas. “Do his wings flap, too, when he does that?”
“Yes… he’s not coordinated enough to purposefully move one without the other.”
Dean got this look on his face that Sam read as meaning he thought it totally kicked ass to have a son with wings. It was a far cry from the Dean Winchester of just a few years ago, who had two strict categories: humans and things you hunt. If he thought his brother would stand to hear it, Sam would tell Dean how proud he was of him. But Dean would give him no end of shit for saying something sappy like that, so instead he just watched and indulged in a secret smile.
“Hey,” Dean took the chamois off his shoulder and tossed it at Sam, “since you’re finally up, you can help.”
Normally, Sam would find some way to get out of the ritual car wash… he never could worship the car during a wash like Dean thought she deserved, and it invariably led to an argument over mental health and warning signs of psychological illness. Besides which, his conscience was telling him they should be focusing their time on coming up with a way to defeat Lucifer.
But at that moment, with Dean looking halfway to no-shit happy, Castiel back, Daniel healthy…
Fuck it… they deserved this stolen moment. Besides, if anyone had had some epiphany on how to take out the Devil, surely they would have said so already. But no one had. Taking time to wash one car wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“Sure.” Sam shook out the chamois and angled for the car while Dean skipped (as Sam would forever-after insist) over to a pile of supplies to find some wax.
Of course Sam knew the calm couldn’t last (if you could call an earthquake ‘calm’), but he had hoped it would last a little longer than an hour. At least long enough for Dean to put on a second coat of wax.
But life wasn’t that kind to them, and when Bobby came rolling down the back porch ramp and toward them barely an hour after Sam had joined his brother and the angel outside, Sam knew from the look on the older hunter’s face that the shit was about to hit the fan. Again.
“No,” Dean balked when he saw Bobby coming. He knew Bobby’s ‘there’s trouble’ look as well as Sam did.
“Afraid so,” Bobby grumbled as he stopped near the group. “For the record, I’m giving serious consideration to having my phone disconnected.”
Dean’s shoulders drooped and he came around the front of the Impala to stand next to Sam. “Okay… what now?”
“We’ve got a big problem brewing in Michigan… I just got a call from a hunter I know who’s there now, and she says there have been a rash of possessions just since midday yesterday… too many for her to handle.”
“Exactly how many are we talking about here?” Sam asked.
Bobby looked hesitant. “She didn’t have numbers, but Cait’s not the type to call for help unless the sharks are circling and her life-raft’s going down.” Bobby looked grim. “Cait used to frequent the Roadhouse; she called Ellen yesterday for backup. Ellen, Jo, and Strafe are already on their way to help. Just between then and now, it’s gotten worse to the point she got in touch with me for more reinforcements.
“I just got off the phone with Gerald - sending him that way from Omaha.”
“Geez, Bobby,” Sam interjected, “and you want me, Dean, and Cas on it, too? That’s a lot of hunters.”
“Yeah, why is it the Apocalypse means we have to start being team players?” Dean grumbled petulantly.
“If the end of the world can’t get this surly lot to play nice, I imagine nothing will,” Bobby shrugged. He glanced between the brothers with a frown. “Cait says this is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation, and she’s not one to exaggerate. If she says all hell’s breaking loose, I believe her.”
Bobby trusting and vouching for this hunter that they didn’t know was all the Winchesters needed in terms of establishing credibility.
“When, exactly, did this large-scale rash of possessions in Michigan start happening?” Sam asked suspiciously.
Bobby wasn’t stupid, and he knew Sam wasn’t either. He looked right at Sam and answered, “About an hour after the Omaha quake.”
Dean caught on then. “Crap, Lucifer’s not wasting any time, is he?”
“He could hardly afford to,” Castiel noted from his place sitting on the cooler with Daniel in his lap. “He lost ground when his trap yesterday failed to capture Michael. He is probably hoping that acting now will catch Heaven while they are still trying to recover from their own losses.”
“Which means saddle up, boys.”
“You suck at motivational speeches, Bobby,” Dean quipped humorlessly.
“Just get your asses in gear, you idjits.”
Sam moved at once to do just that… but the fact that Dean didn’t budge an inch in kind drew Sam up short. He looked toward his brother, puzzled.
Dean was standing there rigidly, eyes on the ground and his expression frozen in a bitter scowl. He looked over at Daniel in Castiel’s lap. Then he looked back toward Bobby. The tense line of his shoulders could cut someone stupid enough to get too close. “Bobby… you think you could keep Daniel here with you?”
Sam froze.
Bobby stared at Dean a second, unblinking and expression unreadable. He cast one thoughtful look toward the baby, then resettled his gaze on Dean. “Listen, son… under other circumstances, you know I’d watch him for you.”
“But…?” Dean challenged testily.
“But… wherever he’s going to be is where Castiel is going to be a good chunk of the time… right?”
“Yeah… Daniel needs to be close to him.”
“And where do you need the angel right now?”
Dean stiffened… any tenser, and he’d pull something. “With us.” The admission seemed pulled out of him at great pains. Sam was a little worried about the storm building underneath Dean’s exterior.
Bobby’s expression softened a little. “Screwy as it sounds, the kid’s actually better off going with you.”
That was it… Dean snapped. “We’re heading straight into a place swarming with demons! How is that better? How is any of this okay?”
Castiel looked taken aback by Dean’s outburst. He stood slowly, scooping Daniel up off his lap and into his arms as he did so. His movement caught Dean’s eye, and when he had the hunter’s attention the angel said calmly, “I would rather not have to split my attention between you two and Daniel. I can easier protect all of you if you’re together.”
“Do you even see how fucked up this is, Cas?” Dean asked hoarsely. “Taking my kid hunting? Having him tag along on the mission to destroy Lucifer? For god’s sake, he’s just a baby.”
Something was coming out of hibernation in Sam, thrashing around issues he thought buried years ago.
“Daniel was born in the crucible,” Castiel answered in a maddeningly even tone. “This life that he was born into is his world. Sheltering him from the Apocalypse is not possible.”
“Damnit, Cas!” Dean growled angrily, “Learn when to fucking lie!”
“We don’t have time for lies,” Bobby noted glumly.
“And I’m no better than Dad!” Dean snapped back.
Sam sucked in a breath.
Bobby had the decency to look away.
Even Castiel seemed uncertain how to respond to that statement.
It was Sam who had the history to venture, “It’s not the same, Dean…”
“Yeah, how is this different? Hell, Sam, you of all people should know how fucked up it is to charge off into a demon infestation and take my son along. You hated Dad for doing that to us. So how am I any better doing that to Daniel?”
“Perhaps you’re not,” Castiel’s powerful voice boomed with impatience. “And perhaps John Winchester was not the terrible father you imagine him to be. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because there’s no choice.”
Dean stood there and almost trembled with fury. Sam just waited, on edge, wondering what Dean would do. On the rare occasions Sam had seen his brother this angry, he usually lashed out.
Sure enough, Dean turned abruptly and kicked the bucket of soapy water he’d been using on the Impala. The suds spread out quickly and began to soak into the ground, turning the dirt into bubbly mud.
“Fuck…” Dean hissed. Then he gave the over-turned bucket a good punt across the yard for good measure. “Fuck.”
Sam waited it out, the way one hunkered down and waited out a hurricane.
Dean’s spurious anger turned into more of a simmering rage, coloring everything Dean did and said but still letting him do the job. “Fine… take my son into a demon hot-spot, no problem. Father-of-the-year material right here.” Dean sighed roughly and turned back toward Bobby.
For what it was worth, Bobby looked like he felt for the elder Winchester brother. Sam was sure the sentiment was genuine, because Bobby’s opinion of John Winchester had never been very high.
“Okay, we’ll go,” Dean grumbled. As if it had ever actually been an option not to. For all that the Winchesters were fighting the notion of destiny, they seemed to walk in lock-step with its kissing cousin a hell of a lot.
“I’ll give Sam Cait’s phone number so she can work out the details with you once you get closer.”
“Sure, fine, whatever… so where exactly are we going, anyway?”
“Detroit.”
Next
There is new fan art for this fic. View it at the fan art masterpost.
Sam didn’t sleep for shit most of the night, too worried about his nephew. He laid awake, tossing and turning and wondering when Castiel would make it back… if he did at all.
He was scared for Daniel. He found it strange how a child they had not anticipated having to work their lives around had quickly become so integral to the way of Winchester. The boy was already as much a fixture in the family as Dean or Sam himself.
Sam didn’t want to think about something happening to Daniel.
It was some god-awful hour when Sam heard the faint mumble of voices coming from the next bedroom… Dean’s voice, which Sam would know anywhere, but also the low rumble of Castiel’s. Sam felt the tension that had been held up tight in his body just bleed out of him in a rush, and while a part of him wanted to jump up, go into Dean’s bedroom, and get answers, he didn’t. Castiel was back, that’s what mattered, so Sam finally got some sleep.
Once he got there, he stayed there; he didn’t wake up until nearly noon the next day. The fact that the world was still there to wake up to had to be a good sign.
When Sam staggered his way down to the kitchen, he saw the back door thrown open and Bobby in his wheelchair parked in front of it, watching something outside.
“Hey, Bobby.”
“I was about to send Dean up to check you for a pulse.”
“It’s not that late,” Sam protested around a yawn, though Bobby’s snort suggested otherwise.
He came up alongside Bobby and looked out to see what the older hunter was watching. He couldn’t help but smile. Dean had finished replacing the Impala’s busted windows and seemed to be just lavishing extra love and attention on his car with a good wash. Castiel was sitting nearby on a shut cooler, watching Dean work with the same intense attention he gave everything. Daniel was lying on Castiel’s lap, his feet at Castiel’s belly and his head at Castiel’s knees. At first glance, it had the hallmarks of Castiel’s notoriously nonchalant attitude toward the baby (laid across the angel’s lap like a book Castiel had been reading a moment ago), but as Sam watched, he saw Castiel lift a hand and brush his fingers softly over Daniel’s head. It was gentle. Not something done out of necessity, but choice. Sam would daresay it was affectionate. Dean glanced over at the two, said something Sam couldn’t make out, then Castiel moved from touching Daniel’s hair to dancing his fingers over his own thigh near Daniel’s body. The baby kicked vigorously. Dean laughed.
For all that the world stood poised to end, they looked so content. Sam took them in, their manner and their closeness, and thought ‘that’s my family’ with an unexpected swell of tenderness.
“How long have they been out there?” Sam asked.
“Couple hours, at least.”
“Yeah… and how long have you been watching them?” Sam teased.
Bobby grunted evasively, which meant Sam wasn’t the only one caught staring at a family - one he could call his own - like others might stop and gape if a unicorn wandered into their front yard.
Sam went to fetch himself a cup of coffee (lukewarm by this hour, but Sam was good at drinking java most other human beings deemed unpalatable).
When he came back to resume silent watch alongside Bobby, Dean had wandered over to Castiel and Daniel. When Daniel saw Dean, he squirmed and flapped his arms at the hunter. For some reason, that made Dean grin like an idiot. Then he seemed to be trying to explain something to Castiel. Castiel looked up at Dean with that constipated, head-cocked look of incomprehension on his face. Finally, Dean flicked the wet chamois over his shoulder, squatted down in front of them, cupped Daniel’s head with one hand, and kissed the baby’s dark hair. Castiel watched like a student of archaeology studying the loincloth-clad natives, almost absently letting his fingers skirt over the patch of Daniel’s hair that Dean had just anointed.
It was possibly the most weirdly-normal Sam had ever seen his brother.
“This could do it for him, you know,” Bobby said out of nowhere.
Sam had been so caught up watching his brother with his angel and his son that he blinked a second, trying to catch up with Bobby’s train of thought. “What?”
“Your brother.” Bobby nodded out the doorway toward them. “If the world wasn’t coming down around our ears, I think this could actually make him happy. Who the hell would have thought?”
“That having a baby with a dude angel would be Dean’s apple-pie? No one in their right mind would have thought that.” But Bobby might be right. Except for one tiny detail. Sam smirked. “It’s missing one thing, though.” At Bobby’s expectant look, Sam said, “A woman.”
Bobby lifted his eyebrows mildly. “Why a woman?”
“Come on, Bobby,” Sam chuckled, “Dean not having sex? That’s like breathing to him. No way is Dean swearing off sex for this warped Norman Rockwell.”
“Don’t have to have a woman to have sex,” Bobby said off-handedly.
If Sam had been taking a drink of his coffee just then, he would have spit it all over the floor. “What?”
“Oh, like you haven’t thought it with as much eye-fucking as they do.”
Sam stared down at Bobby, flabbergasted. When the older hunter looked up at him with a look that dared him to say he was wrong, Sam stepped around him and toward the door, setting his cup on the counter without looking. “Okay, I’m just going to go outside and pretend this conversation ended three minutes ago.”
Bobby muttered something that Sam didn’t catch as he descended the porch ramp and walked over toward his brother and Castiel.
Castiel saw him approaching first and offered a greeting. “Hello, Sam.”
“Hey, Cas… good to see you back. Uh… so is everything all right?”
“Yes. I had to be certain Michael had not perished in the attack yesterday. He hadn’t.”
“Well, good… I guess.” Sam shrugged awkwardly. “I mean, as good as it can get to know the guy that wants to ride my brother like a mechanical bull is still out there.” Which led him to thinking about Dean getting ridden by an angel. Then he was thinking about his brother and angel sex. He was going to kick Bobby’s ass, wheelchair-bound or not.
“Yeah, well,” Dean turned to his brother, “for once, kinda nice to have a last resort.”
Suspicion and dread had a field day in Sam’s gut over that comment. Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean. “That sounds like you’ve actually been considering saying yes to Michael.”
“Not if I can help it,” Dean muttered darkly. “Talk about a bag of dicks.”
“Okay, now that sounds like you’ve actually met the guy… jesus, how long did I sleep?” The joke was a cover for how monumentally discomfited Sam actually felt.
Dean snorted and shifted toward Castiel, like a planet caught in an elliptical orbit being yanked from its apogee and pulled back to its perigee. He ended up back in Daniel’s line of sight. The baby saw him, his blue eyes lit up, and his arms flapped spastically. Dean grinned like a buffoon again. Even Castiel almost kind of smiled.
“What’s he doing that for?” Sam asked, because it was new. Daniel hadn’t been waving for attention yesterday.
“Showing his stuff,” Dean said with a hint of pride in his voice. He looked at Cas. “Do his wings flap, too, when he does that?”
“Yes… he’s not coordinated enough to purposefully move one without the other.”
Dean got this look on his face that Sam read as meaning he thought it totally kicked ass to have a son with wings. It was a far cry from the Dean Winchester of just a few years ago, who had two strict categories: humans and things you hunt. If he thought his brother would stand to hear it, Sam would tell Dean how proud he was of him. But Dean would give him no end of shit for saying something sappy like that, so instead he just watched and indulged in a secret smile.
“Hey,” Dean took the chamois off his shoulder and tossed it at Sam, “since you’re finally up, you can help.”
Normally, Sam would find some way to get out of the ritual car wash… he never could worship the car during a wash like Dean thought she deserved, and it invariably led to an argument over mental health and warning signs of psychological illness. Besides which, his conscience was telling him they should be focusing their time on coming up with a way to defeat Lucifer.
But at that moment, with Dean looking halfway to no-shit happy, Castiel back, Daniel healthy…
Fuck it… they deserved this stolen moment. Besides, if anyone had had some epiphany on how to take out the Devil, surely they would have said so already. But no one had. Taking time to wash one car wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“Sure.” Sam shook out the chamois and angled for the car while Dean skipped (as Sam would forever-after insist) over to a pile of supplies to find some wax.
Of course Sam knew the calm couldn’t last (if you could call an earthquake ‘calm’), but he had hoped it would last a little longer than an hour. At least long enough for Dean to put on a second coat of wax.
But life wasn’t that kind to them, and when Bobby came rolling down the back porch ramp and toward them barely an hour after Sam had joined his brother and the angel outside, Sam knew from the look on the older hunter’s face that the shit was about to hit the fan. Again.
“No,” Dean balked when he saw Bobby coming. He knew Bobby’s ‘there’s trouble’ look as well as Sam did.
“Afraid so,” Bobby grumbled as he stopped near the group. “For the record, I’m giving serious consideration to having my phone disconnected.”
Dean’s shoulders drooped and he came around the front of the Impala to stand next to Sam. “Okay… what now?”
“We’ve got a big problem brewing in Michigan… I just got a call from a hunter I know who’s there now, and she says there have been a rash of possessions just since midday yesterday… too many for her to handle.”
“Exactly how many are we talking about here?” Sam asked.
Bobby looked hesitant. “She didn’t have numbers, but Cait’s not the type to call for help unless the sharks are circling and her life-raft’s going down.” Bobby looked grim. “Cait used to frequent the Roadhouse; she called Ellen yesterday for backup. Ellen, Jo, and Strafe are already on their way to help. Just between then and now, it’s gotten worse to the point she got in touch with me for more reinforcements.
“I just got off the phone with Gerald - sending him that way from Omaha.”
“Geez, Bobby,” Sam interjected, “and you want me, Dean, and Cas on it, too? That’s a lot of hunters.”
“Yeah, why is it the Apocalypse means we have to start being team players?” Dean grumbled petulantly.
“If the end of the world can’t get this surly lot to play nice, I imagine nothing will,” Bobby shrugged. He glanced between the brothers with a frown. “Cait says this is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation, and she’s not one to exaggerate. If she says all hell’s breaking loose, I believe her.”
Bobby trusting and vouching for this hunter that they didn’t know was all the Winchesters needed in terms of establishing credibility.
“When, exactly, did this large-scale rash of possessions in Michigan start happening?” Sam asked suspiciously.
Bobby wasn’t stupid, and he knew Sam wasn’t either. He looked right at Sam and answered, “About an hour after the Omaha quake.”
Dean caught on then. “Crap, Lucifer’s not wasting any time, is he?”
“He could hardly afford to,” Castiel noted from his place sitting on the cooler with Daniel in his lap. “He lost ground when his trap yesterday failed to capture Michael. He is probably hoping that acting now will catch Heaven while they are still trying to recover from their own losses.”
“Which means saddle up, boys.”
“You suck at motivational speeches, Bobby,” Dean quipped humorlessly.
“Just get your asses in gear, you idjits.”
Sam moved at once to do just that… but the fact that Dean didn’t budge an inch in kind drew Sam up short. He looked toward his brother, puzzled.
Dean was standing there rigidly, eyes on the ground and his expression frozen in a bitter scowl. He looked over at Daniel in Castiel’s lap. Then he looked back toward Bobby. The tense line of his shoulders could cut someone stupid enough to get too close. “Bobby… you think you could keep Daniel here with you?”
Sam froze.
Bobby stared at Dean a second, unblinking and expression unreadable. He cast one thoughtful look toward the baby, then resettled his gaze on Dean. “Listen, son… under other circumstances, you know I’d watch him for you.”
“But…?” Dean challenged testily.
“But… wherever he’s going to be is where Castiel is going to be a good chunk of the time… right?”
“Yeah… Daniel needs to be close to him.”
“And where do you need the angel right now?”
Dean stiffened… any tenser, and he’d pull something. “With us.” The admission seemed pulled out of him at great pains. Sam was a little worried about the storm building underneath Dean’s exterior.
Bobby’s expression softened a little. “Screwy as it sounds, the kid’s actually better off going with you.”
That was it… Dean snapped. “We’re heading straight into a place swarming with demons! How is that better? How is any of this okay?”
Castiel looked taken aback by Dean’s outburst. He stood slowly, scooping Daniel up off his lap and into his arms as he did so. His movement caught Dean’s eye, and when he had the hunter’s attention the angel said calmly, “I would rather not have to split my attention between you two and Daniel. I can easier protect all of you if you’re together.”
“Do you even see how fucked up this is, Cas?” Dean asked hoarsely. “Taking my kid hunting? Having him tag along on the mission to destroy Lucifer? For god’s sake, he’s just a baby.”
Something was coming out of hibernation in Sam, thrashing around issues he thought buried years ago.
“Daniel was born in the crucible,” Castiel answered in a maddeningly even tone. “This life that he was born into is his world. Sheltering him from the Apocalypse is not possible.”
“Damnit, Cas!” Dean growled angrily, “Learn when to fucking lie!”
“We don’t have time for lies,” Bobby noted glumly.
“And I’m no better than Dad!” Dean snapped back.
Sam sucked in a breath.
Bobby had the decency to look away.
Even Castiel seemed uncertain how to respond to that statement.
It was Sam who had the history to venture, “It’s not the same, Dean…”
“Yeah, how is this different? Hell, Sam, you of all people should know how fucked up it is to charge off into a demon infestation and take my son along. You hated Dad for doing that to us. So how am I any better doing that to Daniel?”
“Perhaps you’re not,” Castiel’s powerful voice boomed with impatience. “And perhaps John Winchester was not the terrible father you imagine him to be. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because there’s no choice.”
Dean stood there and almost trembled with fury. Sam just waited, on edge, wondering what Dean would do. On the rare occasions Sam had seen his brother this angry, he usually lashed out.
Sure enough, Dean turned abruptly and kicked the bucket of soapy water he’d been using on the Impala. The suds spread out quickly and began to soak into the ground, turning the dirt into bubbly mud.
“Fuck…” Dean hissed. Then he gave the over-turned bucket a good punt across the yard for good measure. “Fuck.”
Sam waited it out, the way one hunkered down and waited out a hurricane.
Dean’s spurious anger turned into more of a simmering rage, coloring everything Dean did and said but still letting him do the job. “Fine… take my son into a demon hot-spot, no problem. Father-of-the-year material right here.” Dean sighed roughly and turned back toward Bobby.
For what it was worth, Bobby looked like he felt for the elder Winchester brother. Sam was sure the sentiment was genuine, because Bobby’s opinion of John Winchester had never been very high.
“Okay, we’ll go,” Dean grumbled. As if it had ever actually been an option not to. For all that the Winchesters were fighting the notion of destiny, they seemed to walk in lock-step with its kissing cousin a hell of a lot.
“I’ll give Sam Cait’s phone number so she can work out the details with you once you get closer.”
“Sure, fine, whatever… so where exactly are we going, anyway?”
“Detroit.”
Next
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