[and then shall that wicked be revealed] Part I
Title: and then shall that wicked be revealed 1/4
Fandoms: Supernatural/Doctor Who/Bioshock; SUPERWHOSHOCK
Summary: Castiel's gone missing, and finding one wayward angel in all of space and time is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Good thing he left a message behind-now there's only the matter of figuring out what this mysterious "Rapture" is. In which the splicers have the phone box, the Doctor has an angel for a BFF, Castiel uses a Little Sister for a temporary vessel, and everything’s really about family in the end.
It isn't often that upon meeting someone for the first time, an unbreakable bond is forged. It happens maybe a handful of times in a person's short life, and almost always, the bonds are overlooked. Overestimated. Shrugged off like it's an everyday occurrence to look a stranger in the eye and feel like the broken, jagged pieces inside of you have finally come together.
The Winchesters have spoiled Castiel.
He remembers a time when he'd only ever experienced that instant connection once-when the stars and the moons still gleamed with God's Grace and a man wrapped in a truly ridiculous scarf first showed him that there were other ways to view the universe. Back when he was Castiel, angel of the lord, and not Cas, eternal errand boy of the Winchesters, and both the hope and the downfall of Heaven.
The Doctor tells him of the Time Lords, of Gallifrey and fields of red grass that stretch for miles and miles-he tells Castiel of friends he once had-of Romanadvoratrelundar, of Koschei, and of Susan-Sarah Jane Smith and Leela of the Seveteem. He tells him about the universe, outside the realm of Castiel's father (although Castiel will always believe that nothing is quite that far out of reach.)
This is the time that he meets the Doctor, when the Doctor will teach him the things that he will need to know. He will think of the Doctor the moment Dean Winchester looks him in the eye and whispers, "If there was anything worth dying for, this is it."
This is the time that Castiel learns to run.
The Doctor didn't mean to lose him. Not really. Accidents happen, of course, usually as a result of poor timing, or a bad call, or in this case, giant lizard people set out to destroy the galaxy. And it isn't like he's an object, that he can just get misplaced like some toy.
Because the thing is, Castiel is one of his oldest friends, so it isn't as if the Doctor's going to stop looking for him. If they were normal people, the Doctor would let Castiel find his way back on his own; the man is, after all, completely and utterly capable of taking care of himself. But they aren't normal people, not by the angel's standards, and not by the Time Lord's. They have a penchant for getting into trouble, and the thing is-angel of the lord getting kidnapped by lizard men? Not the best way to start a story.
The year is 1500 BC, and the Doctor has known Castiel for approximately half his lifetime. It’s been four hundred and fifty years of Castiel popping in on him in awkward situations-four hundred and fifty years of distress calls and misplaced calculators and conversations that start like this: "Hey Cas, did I stick my sonic screwdriver in your coat the last time I saw you, and no-thank you, that was not a euphemism, Jack, mind yourself-but really Castiel, I kind of need that back-"
Four hundred and fifty years, and he's known Castiel since before he had a vessel, back when Cas was just space dust that looked a little bit iffy and something that might have been wings if the Doctor took a couple shots of Rose's tequila and squinted a lot. This certainly isn't the first time that the Doctor has misplaced Castiel in a temporal rift or left him on a planet where his Grace is completely useless. Why, there’d been that time in Xanageii of the Third Sun, a tiny little planet in a tiny little galaxy located at the very edges of the Virgo Cluster, where Castiel had managed to get lost among the locals in the largest shopping mall in the universe, only to be found hours later in a day spa, calmly getting a pedicure with a very confused look on his face.
Castiel will, as always, find his way back into the TARDIS, glaring and spitefully wiping lizard goop all over the TARDIS console (the Doctor will let her chide him for that one) and the Doctor will protest that he tried to look for him, he really did, but there were these things and a planet of chocolate that really needed his attention. Castiel will sigh and hold up a hand; interrupt him with rolled eyes and a sharp, "You got distracted, yes, Doctor, I know."
Castiel can take care of himself. Big angel and all that, can tie his own shoelaces and everything (except for how the Doctor is pretty sure he can't, in fact, tie them).
It isn't the first time the Doctor misplaces Castiel, and it certainly won't be the last.
The first time (but not quite the earliest time) the Doctor meets him, Castiel is bleeding. He has blood smeared across his chest, sigils etched into lines and lines of borrowed skin, but that isn't the first thing that the Doctor notices about him. No, the first thing that the Doctor notices about this fascinating creature, are his wings.
Afterwards, the Doctor will notice how the light seeps through the gashes; he'll realize that the creature inhabiting this man's body is hundreds of thousands of years older than him. The man who used to be Jimmy Novak isn't even really alive anymore, life snuffed out like a candle the first time that this body was destroyed, but wasn't important enough to whoever stitched the fabric back together.
He'll realize, that for the first time in over two hundred years, that something in the universe looks at him and sees him as little more than a child.
And then he'll remember his manners and help clean up the blood, but first-first he notices those wings.
The first time that Castiel meets the Doctor, he is ginger: pale and freckled, dying.
He looks at Castiel as though he's a cherished friend and when Castiel, concerned, bends closer and asks, "Where does it hurt?" the Doctor sighs, eyes glassy and unfocused, and attempts a strained smile. He whispers, "I know that face."
The Doctor does call him "old friend"-several times and with increasing delirium, clutching the backs of Castiel's coat like he's intimately familiar with the threads of its existence. The stranger strokes a bloody hand down his cheek and breathes, "But you look so young."
Castiel is still young: newly-formed, wings fresh and heavy upon his back, his Grace still sparking with the lightning-sharp shocks of God's touch. The universe is fresh, though some parts of it have flourished more than others. This planet, for example: ripe with life already when there are planets still crackling together, earth and lightning and fire.
He is arrogant in his faith and his wings span planets. Yet something grounds him, so he waits with one of his Father's creations until his breath starts to shudder.
The first time Castiel meets the Doctor, he doesn't know him by that name. He's just a stranger that Castiel had held until he died, a body that he'd burned, ashes scattered across a pale river.
Castiel won’t put the pieces together for years and years, until he sees that pale, freckled face again- grinning at him from across the TARDIS console, saying "How do I look? Am I ginger, yet?" as he twists and turns like he hasn't just taken a billion volts of electricity to the brain.
The Doctor once described time as wibbly wobbly-as timey wimey-as stuff; but Castiel knows that it isn't quite that simple, the same way that he knew Dean would never understand if he'd tried to explain how Castiel had gotten him to nineteen seventy-three in the blink of an eye.
Timelines never really match up correctly when both parties are time travelers. River Song once taught him that over stolen wine on a lost moon in the Gamma Quadrant. They watched meteors pass overhead, and she told him her story.
He'll never have enough time to tell her his own, but he did his best to summarize.
The second time the Doctor sees Castiel, he isn't quite as bloody. In fact, the second time the Doctor sees Castiel, Castiel doesn't even have a body. An angel's true form can't quite be explained away with lion heads and bodies of rams-telling a human what an angel really looks like is a bit like trying to explain physics to mud.
An angel in its truest form looks like space dust and ice rings, a section of space that isn't quite a black hole or a nebulae, but isn't quite dead space either. It has an energy all of its own, like the static charge of a lightning storm in the summer-which isn't to say that angels just hang out in the void of space, or that they always look like remnants of dead stars, but when Castiel tries to explain the concept of an angel's existence, the Doctor deems it a bit too weird to even think about poking.
So angels are stardust, and Castiel's six wings are constellations stretching out behind him.
"I was waiting for you," Castiel tells him.
"I really don't think you're going to fit in the TARDIS like that," the Doctor shouts back.
River Song advises him to keep a book-a journal, if you will.
"Trust me, sweetie," she grins; "it'll help."
Castiel doesn't ever write down their first meeting. He will never pen out the Doctor's final resting place-be it in Enochian or Hebrew or the language of the stars-that the Doctor's ashes reside on a planet that's oceans gleam purple, its mountains a vibrant green, ripe with tropical flora. The Doctor promises to never peek, tells him that he's well-aware of the dangers of seeing his own future, but Castiel isn't stupid.
The Doctor is a curious creature, worse than Dean in a way, because at least Dean has the sense to pull back a bit once he's realized that he's gotten himself into trouble again. The Doctor, on the other hand, just pushes-keeps on pushing, and once he ends up in danger? Well, all the more adventure that way.
He keeps the Doctor's grave a secret, hides it within the depths of his Grace and keeps the memory there, buried.
(Most of the time.)
"Have we done Ragnarok, yet? Met Thor? Explored the roots of Yggdrasil? How about Loki? You got along with him so very well, almost like brothers. No? Damn. We had such a grand time-you should look forward to that."
"Lucifer has fallen," Castiel whispers, and the Doctor flinches, paging back to the very start.
"Ah yes," he whispers. "Very early, then."
The second time Castiel meets the Doctor, he's wearing a ridiculous scarf and has dark curls that manage to get everywhere. It's the second time, but Castiel will think it's the first for a few hundred years. He learns the Doctor's name, and the Doctor teaches him how to run.
The Doctor will never tell him, but when Castiel comes to him mere moments after he's dragged Dean Winchester out of hell, there is already a change in him-a slight shift from the man who thought he knew everything to the man who looked into hell and saw the only soul truly worth freeing.
It doesn't matter, though, because one day Castiel will realize it himself.
"No-Dean, Dean. I'm busy."
The Doctor watches Castiel through the reflection, ignores the burning star just beyond the tempered glass in favor of watching an angel pace around the ship's cargo bay. It's almost funny, how Castiel doesn't realize how much he actually enjoys the sound of Dean's voice, light years away but still tucked close to his ear.
"Dean, no. I can't. I'm-" he glances around the bay, at the alien technology that these people are attempting to smuggle to other planets, and decides against whatever he'd been about to say. "-out of reach at the moment."
The Doctor can hear a tinny voice through the speaker ("-what the hell do you mean out of reach? Cas, we need you to get your feathery ass down here before this whole thing explodes in our faces!") and smiles when Castiel's shoulders start to slump. He wonders what this Dean would do if he took the phone from Castiel and told the wretched human that Castiel was busy-that he really didn't exist to just sit around on some cloud and wait for the Winchester's to have a use for him.
"Please, Cas," the voice says, and the Doctor closes his eyes. Well, that's it then.
He listens to Castiel hang up the phone and doesn't turn around when he asks, "Boys need you again?"
"Of course." Precise, monotonous, no inkling at all that his borrowed heart is pounding double time, his wings already itching for flight. "But Doctor-"
"Yes, yes, the weapons."
And he does turn then, fixing Castiel with a look of amusement. "Don't you worry, Cas; I'll keep an eye out for them."
Castiel nods once, grateful, and with the sound of ruffled feathers, he is gone.
The Doctor shakes his head.
Humans.
"So let me get this straight. You-no really Cas, this is kind of ridiculous. You're searching for Heaven’s weapons with an alien who travels through time? Do I have that right?"
"Time and Space, but yes. That is correct."
"Right, so-what? He finds a weapon and just beams you up? Beam me up, Scotty, we've gotta find us some weapons."
"I don't understand that reference, Dean."
At first, he is somewhat reluctant to introduce Dean to the Doctor. Dean isn't known for his patience, and the Doctor has never dealt well with ignorant humans-especially ones of the self-righteous variety.
There are also the guns, and the killing, and how the Doctor would never look at a tortured soul and think to burn it.
But there isn't much to do about it when the TARDIS materializes a few feet from the Impala, in the middle of some cheap motel's parking lot, and the Doctor steps out, whistling cheerfully with River Song at his heels.
"Hello, sweetie," she grins, and beside him, Dean splutters a bit when she goes up on tiptoe before Castiel to press a kiss to his cheek.
"How was the honeymoon?" he asks instead, because the Doctor is assessing Dean like he's a piece of machinery that he doesn't quite understand, and that never ends well.
River beams at him. "Splendid! Aepil XIV is always wonderful this time of year, as I'm sure you remember. Or-" she pauses and taps a finger against her lips, "have we done that yet? Please tell me we have. It's absolutely gorgeous, Castiel, there are these temples devoted to their sun gods, and what they've done with nuclear fission-they created their own sun! Right there in the temple!"
Castiel smiles at her. He hasn't been there yet, but he's sure it'll be somewhere in his near future.
Dean makes a strangled little noise of protest when the Doctor steps in close, stroking a finger along his jacket and then sticking it in his mouth. He brightens-"Oh yes, Castiel was quite right about you."
“What the fuck, dude?”
Dean takes three steps back and when his hand automatically goes for the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans, Castiel steps calmly between them. “It’s wonderful to see you, Doctor.”
The Doctor grins brightly at him and goes in for a hug. It’s only practice that keeps Castiel from going stiff and unyielding in his arms. The Doctor has this thing about hugs. He likes doling them out and is absolutely tickled pink when he receives them-and while Castiel appreciates them from time to time, there are other times when he could do without them.
This is one of those times when he really could have done without it, especially with Dean glaring over his shoulder as Castiel awkwardly wraps his arms around the Doctor’s torso.
Sam breaks the awkward silence when he turns to River and compliments her dress.
River and Sam hit it off spectacularly.
The Doctor and Dean do not.
It probably hadn’t helped that when they went out for lunch at the nearby diner, River taught Sam how to properly break out of a jail cell and the Doctor taught him how to splice atoms together.
"Yes, I'm with him, Dean."
A pause.
"No Dean, I'm not in the TARDIS right now."
Another pause, and Dean's voice on the line, like static-"Then where the hell are you?"
"Barcelona."
And then-"No, the planet."
Amy rolls her eyes at him, and the Doctor grins back. "How much do you want to bet that the wife will want him home in time for dinner?" she asks, and he gives her a long look.
"I have never been stupid enough to take that bet, Amelia Pond."
Castiel hangs up.
"I have to go," he says, and Amy laughs at him.
"Do you believe in monsters?" a woman asks him in Morocco, and Castiel nearly smiles.
"Do you believe in angels?" he asks her.
She'll never notice that he didn't answer her question.
He's got one foot into the TARDIS when Dean says, "I want to go with you this time."
Castiel turns around, his face completely and utterly still, already imagining the disaster that would result from Dean and the Doctor being in the same place for too long.
Ahead of him, Martha is reclining against the TARDIS console, regarding him with amusement over a steaming cup of tea. The Doctor meets his eyes, and calls, "Oh just let him in already-he'll just pine if you don't."
So Castiel steps aside, and allows Dean and Sam to step through the door. Sam’s eyes go wide in awe, but it’s Dean who speaks first.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
Martha grins at the flabbergasted look on Dean's face. "Bigger on the inside, right?"
The thing that Dean doesn't seem to understand yet is that he's completely besotted with Castiel. Over the moon with it, really, but Dean-see, he's not exactly the best at dealing with his own emotions. The Doctor's known that Castiel's been in love with the man for years; but it wasn't until he met Dean that he realized the feeling was mutual, just neither seemed to know it yet.
He watches them bicker over a cup of tea that Castiel is sipping, something about tea being for sissies-but what's really important is the hand that Dean's got wrapped around the back of Castiel's neck, helplessly intimate, his thumb stroking along the skin that meets Castiel's hairline. And the ridiculous thing is, they don't even realize it.
Jack had taken one look at the two of them and started laughing so hard that the Doctor was afraid he'd bust something. When Dean had glared at him, Jack held his hands up in helpless surrender, still giggling into his collar.
"What's so funny?"
Jack dissolved into laughter again, and curled a finger into the hem of an amused Ianto Jones's coat. "Nothing, pretty boy. You'll find out eventually."
When Castiel falls, the Doctor doesn't find out until he gets a phone call from Castiel while he's watching the Earth burn, Rose at his side, her hand tucked into his.
"Castiel?"
"Doctor."
Rose tilts her head at him, an uncertain smile curling around her lips. The Doctor makes a face at her, then makes some very abrupt hand motions that convey angels and their emotionally constipated boyfriends. "Why the bloody hell are you calling me? Come find me."
He hangs up.
Moments later, his phone chimes again.
When he picks up, Castiel sighs. "I can't."
"Well you've certainly gotten yourself into a pinch, haven't you?"
Castiel is tucked into crisp white sheets, hospital blues making him appear more naked than the crumpled, blistered wings on his back.
"Yes. It would appear so."
The Doctor isn't there the second time that Castiel dies. He's thousands of years and a few solar systems away, but he feels it.
Dean won't have time to call him, with his brother falling into Hell and his friend having his neck snapped in front of him. He won't have time to plead with the Doctor to change things-because there are remnants of Castiel dripping down his neck; blood and brain matter and shards of bone clinging to his skin like grains of sand.
He won't have time to call, but he thinks it.
He thinks it right before Lucifer attempts to rearrange his face and again when his brothers fall into hell with the angels-like Neverland and the fairies, like Martha and her satellites, I do believe in the Doctor, I do, I do-now come save them, you dick.
He thinks it in the aftermath, when he looks at Bobby's corpse and the ground that's sealed itself back together, all green grass and gravestones.
And then Castiel is there again, with a smile and a healing touch, and he won't have to think it anymore.
There's a world out there, in the dregs of space, that most people wouldn't care about. A junk yard-a graveyard for machines-past, present, and future. An entire planet of spare parts.
This is the place that the Doctor takes Dean the first time he has him aboard, just to watch the love unfold across Castiel's face as he watches Dean take it all in.
Castiel doesn't ever really tell her much about the Winchesters. She reads between the lines, the crows feet and the creases of laughter on the face of an older Castiel, the shine of the younger's eyes-River pages through his and the Doctor's stories, and takes them apart. The love is obvious, even before Castiel really felt it. But less so, are the glimpses of the real Dean Winchester. Though she's sure that Castiel is aware of the man's faults, they're tucked to the side, nearly out of reach, the same way one would tuck away the memory of their spouse doing something so erroneous that it was necessary to forget it in order to keep loving them.
Castiel is so in love with Dean Winchester that it sometimes catches her off guard, the thought that someone millions of years old could love one insignificant little creature so very much. With the Doctor, she understands. The Doctor truly believes that there is no such thing as insignificance, that every creature is beautiful and brilliant and impossible in its own way. Castiel is not like that and never has been. While he finds beauty in his Father’s creations, he has never been blind to their faults. Castiel, who once had to be told that it was impolite to refer to human beings as insects, is now so completely in love that he’d do anything for a creature he’d once thought so beneath him.
When she meets Dean Winchester, she hates him on sight. Arrogant, narcissistic, and downright impossible. He reminds her of herself.
In a timeline that does not exist, she will rule the world with him. Their lovers dead, stranded in a world that is not theirs, they will triumph time and time again, until they make it back to their own reality, their loved ones at their fingertips once more.
For him, this is still in his future. She does not tell him.
Spoilers.
The thing that none of them know is that the Doctor has met Sam Winchester before.
They met in a library, when Sam's voice still crackled and popped, hair flopping down over his brow-tickling his eyes when he leaned over a book.
Sam was looking for something.
The first words that the Doctor will ever say to Sam Winchester are this: "Try this one. You'll find what you're looking for. Promise."
Sam won't remember it when he's older, but the Doctor will look at him-towering now, a positive skyscraper, and think that the little lost boy in the library might have found his answer.
When Castiel becomes corrupt, the Doctor doesn’t find out at first. Castiel still comes to him, even as he squanders most of his time away with Crowley in a dank room that smells of blood and excrement. He tortures, or more accurately, watches as dozens of creatures are played with-yanked around and made to dangle like a puppet on a string for the King of Hell.
He makes a deal with a demon, because it’s preferable to disturbing Dean. Wrenching Dean from this new life of his-happy and in love with a gorgeous woman, raising a little boy... it’s unthinkable. Watching Dean with them makes something deep inside ache, but Dean is happy like this. That is all that matters.
So he fights and kills, spending most of his time with a demon that smells like decay.
Then Sam happens, soulless Sam, and Death gives it back to him. Puts it up behind a wall. His friends abandon him, after all this time, and Castiel reaches for power. He takes it into himself, and proclaims himself God.
He watches Dean’s face twist with horror and pain, and past all the other souls inside him, he can feel his Grace shrink back, away from Dean’s pain.
He tries to reshape the world, and only at his worst does he attempt to call the only other friend he has.
The Doctor does not answer, so Castiel goes to Dean.
Getting rid of the souls hurts more than it should. “I feel regret,” he whispers, and later he promises Dean that he will find a way to redemption.
The creatures in his chest squirm, and Castiel fights them for seconds before he is overpowered.
They squirm and fester and his body cannot handle-
The water closes over his head.
He sleeps.
Emmanuel never sleeps.
Emmanuel does not eat or drink.
He slept with his wife just the once, on their honeymoon, and his heart trembled. It did not feel right, and he is thankful that when he tells Daphne this, she smiles sadly and accepts. She is a loving woman, faithful, and when she slices her palm open while cooking, she does not fear when he closes her wound with a touch of his hand.
Emmanuel spends nine months with her, healing the sick and injured when he can, and wondering just what he is missing.
When a stranger shows up on his doorstep, killing some monster with smoke and ashes and death in its features, he looks at this stranger, and some of the pressure in his chest eases.
He has found what his heart was looking for.
When the stranger, Dean, speaks of sick brothers and demons, Emmanuel does not have to think about it.
The stranger asks for his help.
He goes.
After all, his heart knows that this man is no stranger.
Castiel remembers.
Castiel finds redemption in the clarity of Sam’s eyes and in the corner of Lucifer’s smile.
“Doctor,” he whispers.
Meg laughs at him, and Lucifer joins her.
“I’m no Doctor, Clarence. But right now, I’m your nurse, so take your pills and go rock-a-bye angel.”
He takes the pills.
Lucifer laughs and laughs.
Castiel does not sleep.
The Doctor comes to him, his smile sad, River Song at his heels. She pets his hair and tells him stories, curling up on the bed with him, the train of her dress falling over the side. The Doctor sits in the chair by her side, unconcerned with Lucifer sitting on the table at his elbow.
“He’s not real, Cas. You know that.”
He nods. Castiel does know, just like how he knows that every night when Lucifer claws his intestines free and shows him visions of his friends in agony, none of it is real. It still feels true, though.
When he was young, Lucifer had taught him how to laugh.
Now, Lucifer reminds him how to scream.
River reads to him from her diary.
“Don’t worry, sweetie, none of it concerns you. I’ll save your stories for another day.”
Meg brings him his medicine, and River smiles at her, a quick show of teeth.
Meg smiles back.
When the Doctor comes back, it’s with the Winchesters and a healer from four galaxies over, who specializes in the soul. The Doctor smiles at him, and the woman he’s brought with him lifts her hands to his chest, prodding at the skin directly above his heart before she slides those gentle hands upwards, up and over his collarbone, the tendons of his neck, his jawline, his brow-before they finally settle at his temples.
She is quiet, and that silence spreads to the rest of the room, eerie, until the only one who is still speaking at all is Lucifer, standing over her shoulder like he can touch her-like he isn’t just as much a prisoner of Castiel’s mind as Castiel himself. Blue lips curl, and when she smiles at him, her eyes go bright with color. The glow of Castiel’s grace is sudden enough that everyone but her closes their eyes, flinching away from the sudden light, but Castiel-Castiel watches as her lips form words that even he doesn’t know, as her hands leach the sickness away from his grace until it isn’t quite as heavy-until Lucifer is a flickering shade in the corner.
The woman’s smile brightens, and the light that is weaving around her fingers pulses once. Lucifer vanishes with a howl.
Suddenly, the world is quiet. His brother no longer by his side, no longer able to stick his fingers inside Castiel and pull on his strings. The world is quiet, and for the first time in a long time, Castiel is not afraid. He looks around at his friends; at the Doctor and the grin that’s playing along the edges of his lips, at River, curled up at his side and stroking a hand along his shoulder blade, at Sam, who looks guilty and pleased and so very much the beautiful soul that has flourished without the madness curdling his mind. Then he looks at Dean, standing at the Doctor’s side and frowning down at his feet as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wonders if Dean still blames him for all of this, if Dean will forever hold it all against him. Crowley, Sam, the creatures that Castiel brought into this world-he wonders if Dean would ever want to forgive him.
He starts to sit up, struggling with his own limbs, because the urge to go to Dean is the strongest it has ever been, but before he gets far, River’s hand stops him. And then Dean looks up.
They say that you can read a lot in a person’s eyes. That they’re the windows to the soul. Castiel has never believed that more than this moment here, when he doesn’t need to get into Dean’s head to know that he is thanking God, even if he’s doing it with far too many expletives. Dean looks at him, and when he smiles, it’s truer than any he’s bestowed upon Castiel thus far.
Silently, he reaches around the woman, and hands Castiel a change of clothes. A familiar trench coat lies on top of the pile, carefully dry cleaned until the blood has been all but removed from the fabric, a few rips and tears the only thing telling its history. But more than that is it smells like Dean-hotel room laundry detergent, gunmetal, and old cars.
He holds the pile close to his chest, and helplessly smiles back.
“I think I’ve found something, Doctor.”
Castiel’s voice is quiet, vaguely static over the telephone line, but he sounds happy. “A weapon?” the Doctor asks, knuckles gone white around the screwdriver. River watches him carefully, her gown lovely-shades of the African sunset vivid in the gloom of the sewers. Minutes before, she had smiled at him and laughed, “Really sweetie? Our dates always seem to end like this.” Tramping around sewers, deserts, prisons-everything but what the Doctor has promised her.
Castiel chuckles on the other end and the Doctor can tell he’s smiling. The small one that he’d learned from Dean, but a smile nonetheless. “Perhaps the greatest of them all, but I can’t be sure. I think-Doctor, I think I’ve found Him. I think that He’s here. Dean wouldn’t approve, but this close-I can’t just forget. I can’t forget. I won’t.”
Deep breath. The Doctor breathes in the acrid, stale air, and River wraps her hand around his. “Doctor?” she asks, her breath fogging the air before him. He breathes out, and yes, her perfume smells much better than the poisoned, fetid water just beneath them.
“Castiel, you’ve found who? Who, Castiel?”
Deep breath in-
“God.”
The line goes dead.
-and out.
The Doctor didn't mean to lose him.
Not really.
It isn't the first time, and it certainly won't be the last.
"Where the hell is he? Where is Castiel?"
The thing is, the story doesn't start with lizard men. It starts with a missing angel, and a message.
It does not start with Castiel finding his way back home.
It begins with static.
Roll opening credits.
The story is about to start.
Part II