Take Me Home -Part 24
Title: Take Me Home
Summary: The Trickster decides to have some fun with Sam. Wackiness ensues, with a healthy helping of whump, because it's me and I can't leave the boys intact.
Spoilers: All aired episodes up to 5.10
Word Count: 1,846 for this chapter
Disclaimer: Luckily for them, I own nothing. Otherwise they'd be in for a world of hurt.
Warning: Utter crack. Language that is definitely not workplace-appropriate.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer: No beta, written in such a hurry I'm amazed my fingers managed to connect with the keyboard.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer #2:I take NO responsibility for this, because it's cracktastic and weird and I can't believe it came out of of my brain. If you are scarred for life after reading it, it's NOT my fault!
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer #3: It's basically "Lassie Come-Home," Winchester-style. I dunno. STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!
Master Post
Part 23
Woah. The screaming I got about the last chapter! Holy heck, guys! :D
Don't worry. Unlike Kripke, I fix what I break. ;)
Anyway, this chapter is a new POV. This is the moment in the story when Castiel decided he was taking up residence in my brain and wouldn't leave until I paid attention to him. *shrug* I dunno, it made sense at the time.
So here's Christmas, à la Winchester.
*****
Castiel often feels as though the new earth is an alien and hostile place. Until he pulled Dean from the Pit nearly two years ago, he hadn't stepped foot on it in over two thousand years. Human beings haven't changed much, in the grand scheme of things, but they have added layers of complexity to their existence that simply weren't there when he last walked the earth. All the taboos have changed subtly, and he is hard-put most of the time to wrap his mind around the idiom of a language that hadn't even been born when he was last here. English in particular is a fluid, idiosyncratic beast, changing so much from region to region that he considers it a minor miracle that all the English-speaking people aren't constantly at war with each other -he remembers the story of the Tower of Babel, and thinks that America may not be far removed from it. There are moments, too, when he thinks that these people are at war with each other, but perhaps haven't realized it.
He tries not to entertain thoughts as dark as these on a regular basis. It was easier when he didn't inhabit a vessel, the fragile body of Jimmy Novak, on which he has such a tenuous hold that he sometimes worries that a gust of wind will sever their fragile bond. He has never felt so weak in all of his existence, and as far as he knows he has existed forever. He is bound by time, now, anchored in the earth, rooted in flesh as surely as a tree is rooted in the soil. Most of the time he manages to retain his faith -faith that he is doing the right thing, faith that he will find God, faith in Dean Winchester, as blasphemous as it sounds. There is little doubt in his mind now that God had some greater purpose in mind for Dean when He ordered him pulled out of Hell, something larger and grander than simply serving as a vessel for an archangel. That Dean himself can't see it speaks volumes, although he sometimes finds himself wishing that Dean would at the very least acknowledge that he has any worth at all.
Castiel clearly remembers seeing Dean's soul in hell amidst the squalor: even tarnished and battered and ripped to shreds, it shone brighter than anything else there, burning with defiance and hatred and self-loathing and love and loyalty. He remembers weeping at the sight before reaching out to grasp him and pull him aloft. There was no submission in Dean even then, only resignation tinged with hope.
Seeing the world through Dean's eyes is at once bewildering, a little frightening, and utterly exhilarating. It's easier now that he's fallen, and the uncertainty sometimes threatens to tear Castiel apart, but he's beginning to understand Dean's doubt and Jimmy Novak's unwavering faith, and even Sam's desperate, clinging hope. It's Sam who causes him the most doubts, who has done so ever since Castiel loosed him from his bonds and allowed him -encouraged him, even- to break the final seal. His regrets are too little, too late, as Dean would say, and perhaps that's why he is so intent on finding him for Dean. Now that he is tethered to the world, Castiel doesn't understand his own motivations as well as he used to, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he now knows that his motivations have always been more complex than he liked to think. His search for Sam and God both feel like a quest of atonement, a search for forgiveness and aid, and the thought is an uncomfortable one, because it also feels as though he is failing in every way that counts.
In spite of this, he feels unexpectedly warmed when Bobby extends a gruff invitation to spend Christmas with him and Dean at his house. Up until recently, he has been under the impression that Bobby merely tolerates him -and grudgingly at best. He allows Castiel to come and go so long as he keeps his 'fool angel wings' to himself, which Castiel interprets as meaning that he is not to touch Bobby's belongings without permission. Come and go he does, to check on Dean's welfare (and Bobby's as well, though it's perhaps not his first concern), because Dean is taking the events of the past few months especially hard. Castiel has never understood his propensity to shoulder the blame for events entirely out of his control, to go into self-destructive spirals because of it. Nothing the angel does can deter Dean from his irrational conviction that he could somehow have prevented Sam's becoming lost. Barring that, he offers what comfort, what consolation he can, and he vows not to stop looking until either Sam is found or the end of the world comes. At this point, it's difficult to say which will come first.
Early on Christmas morning he finds Dean in Bobby's kitchen, a large knife in his hand, methodically chopping up an onion. While Dean still has to use the forearm crutches over longer distances, he has been making a slow but steady recovery since October, and now the crutches are propped in a corner of the kitchen while he limps from one counter to the other. From the looks of things, Castiel guesses that Dean has bought a different kind of food than the customary fare in this house. There is an unfamiliar but undeniably pleasant smell coming from a pot simmering on the stove, and there is a small turkey in a roasting pan on the kitchen table.
Dean doesn't look up from his chopping, uses the corner of his sleeve to wipe tears from his eyes. Castiel doesn't worry about this: he knows all about onions. “Hey, Cas, you made it.”
“I did.”
“Feel like helping? I haven't tried anything like this in years.”
He tilts his head. “All right. What would you like me to do?”
Dean scrapes the chopped onion into a dish, then grabs a bowl full of apples, which he hands to Castiel, along with a paring knife. “Peel these and chop them into slices. Ever have homemade apple pie, Cas?”
“I haven't.”
“Didn't think so. It tastes even better when you've helped make it yourself, trust me.”
“You know how to make pie?”
Dean shrugs, looks a little embarrassed. “Sort of. I made it a couple of times when we were kids and we had a kitchen in one of the places where we stayed. It's been years, so I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle.”
Castiel has learned that if he asks for clarification about every idiom that comes out of Dean's mouth, they will never discuss anything else, so he files the expression away to look up later. He assumes it has something to do with ability and practice, from the context. They work in comfortable silence, for the most part, interrupting it only when Dean gives him instructions on how to prepare a dish, or when he asks for direction. The morning seems unsuited to idle chatter, although in reality it's a morning like any other, or it should be. He has discussed this with Dean on a previous occasion -just after Bobby extended his invitation, in fact.
“I don't understand why you of all people would choose to celebrate on this day,” he'd said. “You are agnostic, and barely believe in angels even when they stand right before you, let alone in an incarnate deity who sacrificed himself for the good of mankind,” he winces slightly at the irony, but Dean appears not to notice. “Besides, Christmas isn't the real birth of Jesus Christ, but merely a way for the clergy to appropriate earlier pagan solstice festivals in an attempt to-”
“Cas, I know all that,” Dean had held up a hand to forestall him. “Sam,” he'd almost choked on the name, rallied himself. “Sam already gave me this lecture a dozen times over, starting when he was eight and I told him there wasn't a Santa Claus. That's not why I celebrate Christmas, okay? Just come, would you?”
“Of course I will come.”
And that's how he finds himself chopping apples on Christmas morning with Dean, while Bobby starts a fire in the hearth in his little-used living room. Dean has even managed to put up a small evergreen tree decorated with garlands of popcorn and pine cones and paper stars, and the sight is oddly comforting, even though Castiel is all too aware of the tree's darker pagan origins. In the early afternoon they eat the meal that they've prepared, although not all of the dishes are ready at the same time -Dean claims that it's because he's out of practice at timing multiple dishes, and Castiel is inclined to believe him. He doesn't remember seeing Dean cook at all, and the discovery that he is good at it is something of a surprise. Dean catches his expression and gives him a wry grin.
“What? Who do you think did all the cooking when we were kids? Wasn't Dad, that's for sure, and while Spaghetti-O's are okay when you're ten, by the time you get older they're just not all that appetizing anymore. Seriously, they're actually pretty gross.”
He's about to apologize in case he caused offense, realizes it's the wrong reaction, and laughs instead, and feels warmth suffuse him when both Bobby and Dean join in. No one mentions the elephant in the room. They talk around the subject very carefully, like dancers learning a new and intricate choreography, but he can hear the words as clearly as if Dean had spoken them aloud, accusing. I wish Sam was here.
Later, he feels a sharp stab of disappointment that alcohol has no effect on him as they settle themselves in the living room around the fire with as many beers as Dean can fit into one of Bobby's many “spare” refrigerators. He nurses his beer, because it seems like it's wasted on him, watches as Dean and Bobby teeter on the edge of sobriety, as Bobby becomes more relaxed and Dean withdraws into himself, letting Bobby talk about the past as though it's an old, familiar friend. He stays silent for the most part, interjecting just enough to keep Bobby talking, taking his cue from Dean, and when Dean asks him to stay the night, he does, even going so far as to sleep on the sofa that Dean has relinquished in favour of the guest bedroom upstairs now that he's able to walk on his own again. Not so long ago he would not have needed the sleep at all, and even now it's not entirely necessary, but it's a more pleasant experience than he would have imagined.
When he sleeps now, he dreams of finding God, and he's filled with awe.
*****
Part 25
Summary: The Trickster decides to have some fun with Sam. Wackiness ensues, with a healthy helping of whump, because it's me and I can't leave the boys intact.
Spoilers: All aired episodes up to 5.10
Word Count: 1,846 for this chapter
Disclaimer: Luckily for them, I own nothing. Otherwise they'd be in for a world of hurt.
Warning: Utter crack. Language that is definitely not workplace-appropriate.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer: No beta, written in such a hurry I'm amazed my fingers managed to connect with the keyboard.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer #2:I take NO responsibility for this, because it's cracktastic and weird and I can't believe it came out of of my brain. If you are scarred for life after reading it, it's NOT my fault!
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer #3: It's basically "Lassie Come-Home," Winchester-style. I dunno. STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!
Master Post
Part 23
Woah. The screaming I got about the last chapter! Holy heck, guys! :D
Don't worry. Unlike Kripke, I fix what I break. ;)
Anyway, this chapter is a new POV. This is the moment in the story when Castiel decided he was taking up residence in my brain and wouldn't leave until I paid attention to him. *shrug* I dunno, it made sense at the time.
So here's Christmas, à la Winchester.
*****
Castiel often feels as though the new earth is an alien and hostile place. Until he pulled Dean from the Pit nearly two years ago, he hadn't stepped foot on it in over two thousand years. Human beings haven't changed much, in the grand scheme of things, but they have added layers of complexity to their existence that simply weren't there when he last walked the earth. All the taboos have changed subtly, and he is hard-put most of the time to wrap his mind around the idiom of a language that hadn't even been born when he was last here. English in particular is a fluid, idiosyncratic beast, changing so much from region to region that he considers it a minor miracle that all the English-speaking people aren't constantly at war with each other -he remembers the story of the Tower of Babel, and thinks that America may not be far removed from it. There are moments, too, when he thinks that these people are at war with each other, but perhaps haven't realized it.
He tries not to entertain thoughts as dark as these on a regular basis. It was easier when he didn't inhabit a vessel, the fragile body of Jimmy Novak, on which he has such a tenuous hold that he sometimes worries that a gust of wind will sever their fragile bond. He has never felt so weak in all of his existence, and as far as he knows he has existed forever. He is bound by time, now, anchored in the earth, rooted in flesh as surely as a tree is rooted in the soil. Most of the time he manages to retain his faith -faith that he is doing the right thing, faith that he will find God, faith in Dean Winchester, as blasphemous as it sounds. There is little doubt in his mind now that God had some greater purpose in mind for Dean when He ordered him pulled out of Hell, something larger and grander than simply serving as a vessel for an archangel. That Dean himself can't see it speaks volumes, although he sometimes finds himself wishing that Dean would at the very least acknowledge that he has any worth at all.
Castiel clearly remembers seeing Dean's soul in hell amidst the squalor: even tarnished and battered and ripped to shreds, it shone brighter than anything else there, burning with defiance and hatred and self-loathing and love and loyalty. He remembers weeping at the sight before reaching out to grasp him and pull him aloft. There was no submission in Dean even then, only resignation tinged with hope.
Seeing the world through Dean's eyes is at once bewildering, a little frightening, and utterly exhilarating. It's easier now that he's fallen, and the uncertainty sometimes threatens to tear Castiel apart, but he's beginning to understand Dean's doubt and Jimmy Novak's unwavering faith, and even Sam's desperate, clinging hope. It's Sam who causes him the most doubts, who has done so ever since Castiel loosed him from his bonds and allowed him -encouraged him, even- to break the final seal. His regrets are too little, too late, as Dean would say, and perhaps that's why he is so intent on finding him for Dean. Now that he is tethered to the world, Castiel doesn't understand his own motivations as well as he used to, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he now knows that his motivations have always been more complex than he liked to think. His search for Sam and God both feel like a quest of atonement, a search for forgiveness and aid, and the thought is an uncomfortable one, because it also feels as though he is failing in every way that counts.
In spite of this, he feels unexpectedly warmed when Bobby extends a gruff invitation to spend Christmas with him and Dean at his house. Up until recently, he has been under the impression that Bobby merely tolerates him -and grudgingly at best. He allows Castiel to come and go so long as he keeps his 'fool angel wings' to himself, which Castiel interprets as meaning that he is not to touch Bobby's belongings without permission. Come and go he does, to check on Dean's welfare (and Bobby's as well, though it's perhaps not his first concern), because Dean is taking the events of the past few months especially hard. Castiel has never understood his propensity to shoulder the blame for events entirely out of his control, to go into self-destructive spirals because of it. Nothing the angel does can deter Dean from his irrational conviction that he could somehow have prevented Sam's becoming lost. Barring that, he offers what comfort, what consolation he can, and he vows not to stop looking until either Sam is found or the end of the world comes. At this point, it's difficult to say which will come first.
Early on Christmas morning he finds Dean in Bobby's kitchen, a large knife in his hand, methodically chopping up an onion. While Dean still has to use the forearm crutches over longer distances, he has been making a slow but steady recovery since October, and now the crutches are propped in a corner of the kitchen while he limps from one counter to the other. From the looks of things, Castiel guesses that Dean has bought a different kind of food than the customary fare in this house. There is an unfamiliar but undeniably pleasant smell coming from a pot simmering on the stove, and there is a small turkey in a roasting pan on the kitchen table.
Dean doesn't look up from his chopping, uses the corner of his sleeve to wipe tears from his eyes. Castiel doesn't worry about this: he knows all about onions. “Hey, Cas, you made it.”
“I did.”
“Feel like helping? I haven't tried anything like this in years.”
He tilts his head. “All right. What would you like me to do?”
Dean scrapes the chopped onion into a dish, then grabs a bowl full of apples, which he hands to Castiel, along with a paring knife. “Peel these and chop them into slices. Ever have homemade apple pie, Cas?”
“I haven't.”
“Didn't think so. It tastes even better when you've helped make it yourself, trust me.”
“You know how to make pie?”
Dean shrugs, looks a little embarrassed. “Sort of. I made it a couple of times when we were kids and we had a kitchen in one of the places where we stayed. It's been years, so I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle.”
Castiel has learned that if he asks for clarification about every idiom that comes out of Dean's mouth, they will never discuss anything else, so he files the expression away to look up later. He assumes it has something to do with ability and practice, from the context. They work in comfortable silence, for the most part, interrupting it only when Dean gives him instructions on how to prepare a dish, or when he asks for direction. The morning seems unsuited to idle chatter, although in reality it's a morning like any other, or it should be. He has discussed this with Dean on a previous occasion -just after Bobby extended his invitation, in fact.
“I don't understand why you of all people would choose to celebrate on this day,” he'd said. “You are agnostic, and barely believe in angels even when they stand right before you, let alone in an incarnate deity who sacrificed himself for the good of mankind,” he winces slightly at the irony, but Dean appears not to notice. “Besides, Christmas isn't the real birth of Jesus Christ, but merely a way for the clergy to appropriate earlier pagan solstice festivals in an attempt to-”
“Cas, I know all that,” Dean had held up a hand to forestall him. “Sam,” he'd almost choked on the name, rallied himself. “Sam already gave me this lecture a dozen times over, starting when he was eight and I told him there wasn't a Santa Claus. That's not why I celebrate Christmas, okay? Just come, would you?”
“Of course I will come.”
And that's how he finds himself chopping apples on Christmas morning with Dean, while Bobby starts a fire in the hearth in his little-used living room. Dean has even managed to put up a small evergreen tree decorated with garlands of popcorn and pine cones and paper stars, and the sight is oddly comforting, even though Castiel is all too aware of the tree's darker pagan origins. In the early afternoon they eat the meal that they've prepared, although not all of the dishes are ready at the same time -Dean claims that it's because he's out of practice at timing multiple dishes, and Castiel is inclined to believe him. He doesn't remember seeing Dean cook at all, and the discovery that he is good at it is something of a surprise. Dean catches his expression and gives him a wry grin.
“What? Who do you think did all the cooking when we were kids? Wasn't Dad, that's for sure, and while Spaghetti-O's are okay when you're ten, by the time you get older they're just not all that appetizing anymore. Seriously, they're actually pretty gross.”
He's about to apologize in case he caused offense, realizes it's the wrong reaction, and laughs instead, and feels warmth suffuse him when both Bobby and Dean join in. No one mentions the elephant in the room. They talk around the subject very carefully, like dancers learning a new and intricate choreography, but he can hear the words as clearly as if Dean had spoken them aloud, accusing. I wish Sam was here.
Later, he feels a sharp stab of disappointment that alcohol has no effect on him as they settle themselves in the living room around the fire with as many beers as Dean can fit into one of Bobby's many “spare” refrigerators. He nurses his beer, because it seems like it's wasted on him, watches as Dean and Bobby teeter on the edge of sobriety, as Bobby becomes more relaxed and Dean withdraws into himself, letting Bobby talk about the past as though it's an old, familiar friend. He stays silent for the most part, interjecting just enough to keep Bobby talking, taking his cue from Dean, and when Dean asks him to stay the night, he does, even going so far as to sleep on the sofa that Dean has relinquished in favour of the guest bedroom upstairs now that he's able to walk on his own again. Not so long ago he would not have needed the sleep at all, and even now it's not entirely necessary, but it's a more pleasant experience than he would have imagined.
When he sleeps now, he dreams of finding God, and he's filled with awe.
*****
Part 25