Fic: Accidentally Like a Martyr, Part The Second
Part One
"This is bullshit!" Dean shouted over the sound of his gun as he blew away the toddler that had chased him across the parking lot. He slammed the car door closed and rolled up the widow, slapped the tape deck and ripped out Bob Dylan before it could play. He tossed the tape into the back seat. "Find something appropriately pissed off would you?" he said to Cas as he tore onto the road. Cas pulled the box out from under the seat and started rifling through the cassettes.
Dean turned on the radio while he waited and scrolled until he found a station that wasn't static. They were getting fewer and farther between.
"Hawaii has closed down all ingoing and outgoing traffic to the islands. The white house has been in teleconference all morning and the rumors are that Hawaii is planning to secede permanently. Homeland Security has announced-"
Dean turned off the radio.
It was the same everywhere. In Europe the Falkland Islands were suddenly prime real-estate. Greenland was the hot spot for tourism "this season", but the tourists weren't leaving. The wealthy were establishing colonies on Antarctica. The whole world was in a mad dash to find some imaginary panic room, huddling away the in the most remote corners of the world.
It was Chuck's idea to set up a safe space at Camp Chitaqua. It was in Colorado and it wasn't actually much of a camp according to Dean. But it had cabins and high fences around the grounds so the modifications to the perimeter would be minimal. There was a local Baptist church group that funded the upkeep of the camp.
Their first recon into the nearest town they found the Pastor eating what was left of his congregation and figured no one would bitch if they moved in right away.
"How do we zombie proof it?" asked Chuck.
"Barbed wire and land mines," said Dean.
Bobby took one look at it, grumbled something about "handicap accessible" and went to work on his spare wheelchair. It was an off-road vehicle by the next morning.
Castiel sat in Bobby's living room, tired but too weary to sleep, and watched the construction process, trying to determine the difference between art and utility and if useful things could still be art. It was only wheels and screws and welded metal in the composition of its parts. But it was also the representation of a broken man's determination, made so he could keep fighting.
"I admire your creativity, Bobby," Cas said softly.
"You my goddamn kindergarten teacher?" growled Bobby. "Hand me the socket wrench and shut up." Cas did, smiling a little to himself because he liked it when Bobby yelled at him. Technically he didn't have a family anymore, but Bobby did things like boss him around and call him an "idgit" and put him through guilt trips every time Cas allowed Dean to do something dangerous. Those were the sorts of things that human families did for each other.
"You should see what he can do with macaroni," mumbled Dean from the door. "I'll go let Chuck know we're about ready."
Cas set to memorizing the contours and details of Bobby's chair. It was a beautiful thing even if it wasn't art. He stayed, fuzzy with exhaustion, until Bobby told him to fuck off and do something useful. Castiel rose and went into the kitchen with the intention of making sandwiches for the long drive. He got as far as the bread and then discovered there was no meat or cheese in the refrigerator. He stood staring down at his non-sandwiches in consternation until Dean came back in and demonstrated how to work tuna fish.
They were supposed to take everything they could fit in the Impala to the camp and then drive back for Bobby. They were an hour and a half out on I 90 when Dean's cell rang. Dean answered on speakerphone.
"What?"
"I got bit." The crackle that stretched between Bobby's pause and Dean's gruff response was the loudest sound that Cas had never heard. It was the static in the storm. Chuck made a strangled noise in the back seat.
Cas was slammed against his door when Dean whipped the Impala around.
"By what?" asked Dean, probably inappropriately.
"The fucking mailman. Get here quick, boy. I've got maybe two hours left and some shit to tell you before I kick it." Bobby ended the call. Dean had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel so Cas closed the phone and put it in his pocket.
Looking out the window Castiel was overtaken with the impression that the car was standing still and the trees were flying by under the revving of the engine as South Dakota peeled off the planet.
"Who dies at eleven in the morning?" Chuck mumbled in the back.
When they rolled into Bobby's driveway Chuck opted to wait in the car with a silent shake of his head.
Bobby's porch was still standing, his screen door still held up the doorframe, the windows reflected the blue sky and the late morning sun. Sometimes Castiel thought it was odd that homes didn't die with the people who lived in them.
They stepped over the body of the postal worker and walked inside.
Bobby was in the kitchen, in his old wheelchair, looking frustrated.
"About damn time, " he said and handed the worn journal in his hand to Dean. He glanced at the sink and muttered, "Knew I should have done the dishes yesterday." Bobby's kitchen was not a big room, but it felt huge with the windows all thrown open and the silence shoving at the walls. Castiel stood against the fridge, watching Bobby and Dean, wishing that the moment could be over already. Dean swallowed and frowned and nodded while Bobby talked at him, hard and fast, for an hour. Bobby told them where all his hoodoo shit was hidden, where the black magic books were, how to decode the spells recorded in the journal, and that the secret to making good chili was two grams of baking chocolate. He made them promise to salt and burn his body as soon as he was dead.
Cas could feel every single shift of the second hand in his bones.
"Thanks for everything, Bobby," said Dean hoarsely with his back turned. He grabbed a bottle off the table and took a long swig out of it before handing it to Bobby.
Bobby toasted him grimly and drained it dry.
"Good luck with the end of the world, son."
While Dean was checking chamber of his pistol Cas put four in Bobby's chest.
Chuck helped Dean burn the body. Cas went through the house and found everything on Bobby's list.
***
Dean, as he Is, comes back with the colt. Cas does not argue. He has given up arguing because arguing is one of those activities that makes time fly. He does what he's told. He allows things to happen to him and makes sure he himself affects no change.
Time flies anyway.
They are ready to leave and Chuck looks frightened, the sky is dark. They are driving and Dean as he Was is asking questions, they sky is dark. The pills are like stones in Cas' throat, the sky is splitting at the seams. Dean and Dean are arguing where they can't be heard, the sun is rising.
They are too loud.
The sleeping dead are stirring. The sleeping dead are singing out of tune.
***
Doors, despite their heavy meanings, were fragile. Just wood and bolts.
Castiel discovered this when Dean kicked his door down the night after Bobby died. Cas was sitting on the edge of his army surplus cot, a mess of guilt and grief and anger. The splintering of the wood pissed him off.
He hid his head between his knees and beneath his hands and wished not looking could mean not seeing. Dean's boots fell in footsteps across the floor.
"I don't wish to speak with you, Dean. Please...fuck off." The hope that he would be left alone was an exercise in futility. Dean came closer.
"Stand up," he rumbled.
Castiel did was he was asked, pulling himself upright with a deep breath. He looked Dean Winchester in the face and folded his hands together. Just let it happen, he told himself.
He said, "Dean."
Dean punched him in the face.
Castiel let the strike topple him backwards onto his ass. He cradled the pain in his jaw and lay back against the floor with his eyes closed. He breathed through the hurt. His jacket smelled like Bobby's house. Dean stepped over him.
"Get up," he snarled. Cas opened his eyes to see Dean's teeth were bared and his hands were curled in fists. The moonlight made him smoky.
"No," said Cas and looked away to the wall, to the falling shadows of the cot. He was too low to the ground to cast a shadow. He was invisible, untouched by the light, unknown. He was un-guessable.
Dean dropped to his knees and twisted his hands into Cas' collar.
"You shot Bobby." Dean was finishing a conversation they had never begun. It was Dean's job to take on all the crap in the world. It was Dean's job to shoot his friends. Cas had crossed a line.
Dean's knuckles were digging bruises into him.
"Yes," said Cas, and then he couldn't help it, he brought up his own arms in resistance. Dean's irrationality was understandable, he was in pain, he was human. But he was being an idiot. Castiel took his anger and misdirected it to Dean. He pushed Dean back hard with his hands. ”So you wouldn't have to," he said and shoved Dean off of him.
Dean winced when he hit the wall. Castiel followed him off the floor and pinned Dean against the oak.
"I don't need you protecting me," Dean said like he was reminding Cas. Like it was a fact of life. Cas pushed into the space that Dean kept between himself and everyone else. He was furious. His body was a coil of adrenaline and accusations.
He had killed for Dean. He was dying for Dean.
"I know what you need," Cas breathed. Then he swallowed Dean's protest with his mouth.
There was nothing else he could do. Dean would accept no help, and most of the things Dean really needed were beyond Castiel's power anyway. A comfortable pretense was the best he could offer. Dean could pretend he loved Cas, and Cas could pretend he believed it.
Dean was warm. He exhaled brokenly through his nose and, after a tense pause, returned the kiss with a question. He sucked hesitantly on Cas' bottom lip, uncurled his fists to push his fingertips into Cas' hair.
Castiel would always choose Dean. He poured his answer into Dean's mouth. He wrote it into Dean's breath with his tongue, scratched it into Dean's back.
The tension fell from Dean like flaking paint. He relaxed away from the wall, wrapping an arm around Castiel's waist and his fingers around his shoulder. He kissed Cas with all the words he'd choked up inside and forgotten about. He licked his apologies into the aching bruise on Cas' jaw. He bit his thanks into Cas' neck. He walked them over to the bed and undressed Cas with gentle hands.
They were reckless with each other. Testing the thin ice they lived on. Trying to get the surface to crack and plunge them into the cold dark. But reality held up, stubborn, and they were still mostly whole in the morning.
The dawn came despite them. Dean's unsteady voice woke Castiel from his familiar nightmares.
"Cas, I need..."
"I know, Dean." Castiel got up and dressed without glancing at the bed. He left the cabin without looking back.
His body was sticky and sore. He went to take a shower.
***
One Whole Dean and one Broken one, arguing over the worth of a friend's life.
Cas takes two more pills. Even if they don't slow down time, they slow down his mind. They let him pretend things are going his way.
Dean punches Dean in the jaw and Dean goes down with an unheard crash. When Dean looks up, and meets Cas' eyes, Cas winks at him. He grins with his teeth and doesn't say goodbye.
He leads the sheep to slaughter, high with adrenaline, giddy with the finale of his fucked up story.
The sun is too low in the sky still to cast their shadows. They are close to the ground, invisible and un-guessable. Running into the building is like running downhill. Gravity is on their side. Pulling them in. Tipping them over to spill.
***
Dean parked the Impala for good and once again demonstrated the fragility of doors by ripping them off. He used a crowbar and a Black and Decker Sawzall. He handed a door to Risa.
"That's bullet proof armor plating," he said, "use that."
"You really think they'll fire on me?" she asked.
"They've been ordered to fire on anything that moves. This is the only way you'll get close enough to prove you're not infected."
Two miles south they'd discovered a smattering of National-guardsmen and former marines. Unfortunately their first welcome party came back two men short and full of bullet holes. Radio contact wasn't working. Risa said "Fuck'em" but Dean said they could use the help and those people had bigger guns.
Castiel was standing on the concrete block Dean had told him to hold as Risa walked away. He was tipping it back and forth with his feet, playing with gravity until it got the better of him. Too far back, the momentum caught him and he fell. Somewhere between his startled gasp and the ground slamming into his lungs, his grace went out like a candle.
Dean leaned over him and didn't ask if he was okay, but held out his hand to help him up. Cas didn't take it. He gasped desperately for air and groaned through the tightness in his chest.
"I'm human," he announced.
Dean's hand fell back to his side. He swallowed and asked "Officially?" Cas nodded. Mud stuck in his hair. Dean pushed at the offending cinder block with his toe.
"I guess you had to fall from somewhere," he said.
***
Friendly fire does him in.
It must be Risa's gun, since she's behind him. Cas feels bullets tearing through his back and out his stomach before the shots ring out.
He hears himself grunt and then he's collapsing against the wall. He's fighting the parting mists, sliding down onto his side, railing against the returning clarity of his mind. Reason floods his thoughts and slows time down, slams him right up against it like a brick wall.
He's dying. He's dying in Denver and there's a song about that.
He's finally dying and it's going to take fucking forever.
***
At night Dean and Cas would hold on to each other on until it hurt and they were out of breath. Dean pressed kisses into Castiel's hair and face and throat, gentle and forgiving. He loved Cas after all and didn't pretend a damn thing. Cas had never needed to pretend.
Dean was always gone by the time the sun rose. And though Cas would sometimes catch Dean looking at him across a room, soft and sad, Dean never touched him during the day. Not because it was a secret, everyone knew, but because Dean didn't touch anyone that he wasn't punching or stabbing or hauling to their feet.
Cas gave Dean whatever he needed, whatever he asked, and tried to stop thinking like a fallen angel and started thinking how he thought a person thought. Castiel allowed the events of the day to damage him.
Then, at night, he allowed Dean to put him back together. He drank up the searing heat of Dean's mouth, he soaked up the unseen light of Dean's fingers. He could have played for more balance, he could have pressed Dean into the mattress and reassembled him the same way. But he knew Dean didn't want that.
And he was happy to burn in the dark.
***
There are two hundred and twenty eight bricks in the wall opposite him. He doesn't have to count them because as it turns out he isn't human at all. He's just an angel without his grace. The two are close, but they are not the same.
Risa is dead now. The hallway is empty except for corpses and Castiel, wondering if he'll fall asleep before his heart stops.
He has been trying very hard over the crawling seconds to let go. He let go of his own mistakes and his own regrets. He let go of the ghosts he knows and the blame of his brothers. He lets go of fear. He tries to let go of Dean, who disappointed him by turning out exactly as Castiel knew he would, but Dean is stuck in him like broken glass.
And he's a little bit afraid to find peace when he knows that Dean never will.
***
Shit fell apart in Cheyenne.
Cas broke his foot, and it was as if everything that mattered was standing on that one appendage. The delicate infrastructure of his hope and his philosophy crumbled.
It was supposed to be a simple supply run. And like all simple things it quickly became a complicated disaster. Cas was breaking into the United Medical Center on Warren, for the obvious, while Chuck waited three streets down in the truck with his clipboard and Dean and Risa searched for the armory. Cheyenne was long dead and empty. The doors of the hospital were shattered glass. Cas stepped under the jagged, clear fringe and moved into the lobby.
There were decaying bodies slumped over the tiles. Blood splattered across the floor. Bullet holes lined the walls and the reception desk. The sign that read "ER" had an arrow pointing left. Cas made to follow it.
And stepped on a bear trap.
The improbability of finding a bear trap in the lobby of a hospital was lost on him under the sickening crunch of his foot and the incredible effort it took to not scream. He collapsed and grabbed his thigh. He took shallow, uncontrolled gasps through his teeth. He could feel the glass slipping beneath him and he didn't want to cut himself so he tried to lie still, but the pain. Holy shit the pain. It was like lightning and thunder in the bones of his leg. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced.
Cell phones didn't work anymore, so he didn't have one. His mojo was long gone and screaming would only bring Crotes down on top of him. Radios were too dangerous by then, if you were hiding and loud static suddenly gave away your location...Cas had no choice. He could wait for Dean and Risa to find him. He could wait and hope they had the time to come looking.
He had no idea how long it took. He just kept breathing, kept not screaming. He occupied himself with trying to figure out the difference between external and internal pain because he'd been experiencing a lot of both lately and he couldn't decide which was worse. Although there was something to be said for the immediacy of physical pain.
Somewhere, within twenty yards probably, was a supply room filled with Vicodin and synthetic opiates that he was powerless to reach. Cas turned his face against the tiles and the tiny shards on the floor and continued to breathe. His chest felt strange and his face felt stranger. Numb. His hands were cold.
Pain had seemed like such a transient thing when he was an angel. It was passing, temporary. He couldn't understand back then why humans spent so much time desperately avoiding pain, even at the price of wonderful and beautiful things.
He was no longer confused on that point.
He heard gunfire. Then:
"Cas, we gotta go!" Dean's voice found him, and then Dean's footsteps, and finally Dean, skidding on the loose glass to a halt just outside the doors. His voice was tight and urgent. Chuck and Risa were with him, giving cover fire.
Cas couldn't really see Dean; he was on the other side of the broken doors and his image was fractured by the glass. But Cas could see Dean's knees, the worn fraying of the jeans where Dean was always ducking out of sight, the slight bend in his legs preparing to fight or fly. Cas could see, and he saw Dean's knees hesitate. He saw Dean's knees almost turn and leave him behind.
It only made sense. If Chuck was with them then, for whatever reason, they were on foot. Cas' foot was broken. He was lying on shards of glass and blood that wasn't all his, in a hot zone. He was a slew of liabilities. Dean and Chuck and Risa were being pursued. There were rules about such situations, rules about acceptable collateral loss.
"Shit," hissed Dean and made a gesture at Risa. She ducked into the room and ran past Cas, grabbing his duffle bag as she went, rounded the corner to the ER and was gone. Dean jumped through the door, shouting at Chuck, and dropped to his worn knees to wrench apart the device trapping Castiel's foot with the barrel of his rifle.
The pain tried to snatch Castiel away. But then Dean's shoulder was under his arm and they were fumbling their way deeper into the building. Chuck was behind them, sending wild bullets and panic shouts over his shoulder. Then Risa was back, and she was saying something unkind to Dean, who told her to shut the hell up.
They buried themselves in the basement with medical supplies and things that went boom. They were on their own. Recon teams that didn't return to camp were assumed dead. Man-power couldn't be risked on rescue operations. Cas wondered, in a vague and distant sort of way, if it would be his fault if they all died? Had his mistake been the avoidable or the inevitable kind?
Dean doped him up until they could quarantine him to check for symptoms and get his foot fixed. For that reason Cas missed the details of whatever their death defying escape was. It was a haze of booms and fire and being dragged around. He dropped off on the ride back to camp and was in the medical tent when he woke up again.
His head was pounding and his foot was wrapped in a terrifying amount of gauze. His whole body was incredibly stiff. However, he wasn't cuffed or dead and that meant he wasn't infected. So, because there was no one there to tell him to stay put, he grabbed the crutches at his bedside and began the long hobble back to his cabin.
Two steps out the door his foot began to kill him. He did his best to ignore it. The sun, at least, was nice on the back of his neck. He had a full two minutes of feeling glad to be alive before Dean intercepted him.
"You look like shit," Dean said. He was holding a plastic orange bottle gingerly in his right hand, like he wasn't sure he really wanted to be holding it at all.
"I feel like shit," Cas answered. Dean's honest face had the name of every friend they'd ever lost written into it. Cas saw his own name was there too. As a probability, a close call.
Dean helped Cas up the stairs and through the doorway of his cabin. He followed Cas in uncomfortably, like a stranger.
Cas sat on his ass on the floor next to his bed. His foot was pounding in time with his heart. He curled his arms around his chest and leaned his head back against the bed with a shuddery sigh. Around him fell the vast indifference of Heaven. It looked like sunlight but he knew better. His stomach was rolling over and over, all twisted up, like a noose in the wind. Dean was going to speak.
"Cas," he said, "I need-"
"I know," Cas snapped. He didn't want to hear the excuses. He didn't care if they were justified or true. He knew Dean needed his distance back-too close to a mistake he could never take back-before his giving a shit ruined their chances of killing the devil. He knew Dean was attempting to do the right thing.
But Dean was also giving up the only beautiful thing they had so he could become a better killer. Cas could hardly condone that. He was not okay with that. And, in fact, he was done being okay with things for Dean's sake.
Dean was standing, stunned and silent, wearing the last look of regret he could ever afford.
Cas reached behind him and under his mattress, careful to keep his foot still. He dug with clumsy fingers until he found the sock. It was stupid, he knew, to keep important things in a sock. But he'd begun it years ago, after being misinformed by a television show, and he'd never found a better hiding place.
There was only one thing left that was important to him.
He jerked the amulet out of its wool wrapping and threw it at Dean, who caught it with a wordless frown. When he opened his hand his eyebrows betrayed his surprise. His mouth fell open and formed a shape that looked like the beginning of Castiel's name.
"Get out," said Cas, making it easy for Dean. "Leave the drugs."
***
The perspective of a dying mortal is very close to that of a falling angel, Castiel finds. He's gasping and bleeding and confused and cursed with a lens of perfect objectivity that he can turn nowhere but on his mistakes. The previous five years are condensed into a litany of Oh wells and why didn'ts. He has the distinct impression of his last bridge burning, even though he never set fire to it, and he's standing on the other side with no idea what's behind him.
If there was distant gunfire it has faded. Everything is fading.
He cannot feel the racing or the stopping of time. There is no time, he is slipping away from it, he is falling through the cracks to be lost.
If time has no meaning for him anymore, what a funny thought forever is.
***
Chuck, hypocritically, was the only person who was of the opinion that Castiel did not have the right to self-medicate for existential angst.
Chuck said: "Cas, you just need some perspective, man."
Cas had perspective. He had the real perspective. He had thousands of years of hindsight and forsaken divine duty giving him the God's asshole view of perspective. But unlike Chuck, he didn't have a lifetime of practice lying to himself. And so, however much he hated his perspective he was powerless against his own rationalizations.
He didn't need perspective. He needed a permanent buzz of dopamine.
After he found his high Cas invented a new religion to fill up the time he had left. It was based in his experience of humanity, the physicality of it. He decided that if humans were hell bent on being so preoccupied with the tangible he might as well indulge that, it was hardly likely to change in the next year.
"The world is meant to be treated on a short-term basis, like a scale that needs to balanced," he said. "In a nutshell: seek pleasure because pain will seek you." He borrowed from all the religions, from Christianity and Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism.
He didn't find peace, or truth, or even convincing lies. But he found a distraction, and that was enough.
He thought that, maybe, he did help others find peace. The men and women who came to him for advice, and listened to his empty words, often told him how he made them feel...together. He made them feel that sex wasn't about sex, but community, and love was about everyone.
"I just wanted you to know that you've done some good," one young lady told him. Castiel stroked her hair until she fell asleep and let her think he was thankful for her words.
Really, it hardly mattered. Good was negligible in a dying world. It was a diminishing return.
He traded in his perspective for apathy.
***
And then, the room isn't empty any more.
Lucifer, wearing Sam Winchester's face, walks up and looks curiously down at Castiel. He's white. He's stainless. Cas, warm in a puddle of his own blood, looks up at his ruined brother and sees something beautiful.
Dean never fired the gun.
Suddenly Cas is laughing. He's lying sideways on the floor, bleeding through his fingers, and laughing. It hurts. It's agonizing. But he cannot stop.
Lucifer looks at him in confusion, tipping his head in the parody of a familiar gesture Castiel had once known in himself. And even though Cas knows Sam is gone from that face, Sam is what he sees. Sam, frowning and convincing Dean to be sensitive, frowning and trying to be kind, frowning and feeling responsible for the end of the world. The memory makes Cas laugh harder.
He's just been the ass in the world's biggest joke.
His shit is so fucked up.
And the funniest thing, the funniest thing, is that he'll die before he can even tell Lucifer what the punch line is. Cas looks up at a creature he can no longer identify with, at his brother, full of grace and anger, and laughs and laughs in his face. His stomach is tearing itself apart inside. The blood loss is making him helplessly dizzy. The pain rips up his spine. He's splintering like light falling through a jagged prism. But he can't stop laughing.
Because Dean never fired the gun. Dean loved Sam too much, he couldn't do it.
Dean Winchester ended the world with love.
Clutching his stomach, crying with agony, beneath Lucifer's puzzled frown, Cas laughs until his breath is gone.
He laughs his way into the peaceful dark.
fin