Episode 24: Redemption (Part II)
Title: Redemption (Part II)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info,
warnings, and disclaimer)
Authors: swordofmymouth and zatnikatel
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam, OC and canon characters
Rating: R (this part)
Wordcount: ~27,000
Warnings: language, violence, sexuality, references to cutting
Betas: dotfic and murron
Art: Chapter banners by zatnikatel; digital paintings by Euclase, Rinienne, and ryuu_artist, which you can also find here and here (NB: art contains major spoilers for the chapter)
Summary: Love is stronger than death…
The railroad crossing where Jake Talley finally succumbed to Azazel's temptation is exactly where Carver Edlund's gospels said it would be, and Castiel slows the Impala down as she crests the raised iron rails, stares ahead at empty prairie land. Fifty miles thataway, Azazel had told the luckless Talley, and a knot of anticipation is tying itself ever tighter inside Castiel as he forges on through the snow.
The graveyard is colorless and desolate, iron gate hanging on its frame, dead and diseased trees pointing hopelessly up at the sky. The crypt is dead center, incongruously grand and stately among the weathered stone monuments and worn, lopsided wooden crosses that are scattered around it, and Castiel eyes it curiously as he pushes up out of the driver's seat. There is no sign of it ever having opened, but Castiel knows that it did, knows that it loosed a multitude of demons into the world. He knows that John Winchester emerged through it too, knows that Azazel met his end here; and there to his left is the solid bulk of the monument Dean slumped against while he raised the same gun Castiel has gripped in his fist.
He crosses to stand in front of the tomb. Its front is ornate, the sheen of the inlaid silver devil's trap that seals it bright in the pearly gray of dawn, and its sheer presence is forbidding, but Castiel is undeterred. He sinks down to kneel in front of the crypt, placing the Colt on the earth beside him. He brushes dirt and leaves away from the step that forms the threshold to Hell, slips Dean's jacket down off of his shoulders, feeling the frigid air bite into the skin of his arms. He breathes deep and steady as he reaches inside himself, drawing on his grace as economically as he can. His sword coalesces with an effort that leaves him gasping and off-balance for a full minute. He braces himself on the ground with one hand as he reels and blinks through the chaotic whirl of trees and monuments, until the world rights itself again, and then he doesn't hesitate any longer.
He slices his blade across the flesh of his inner arm so that blood shining luminous with grace wells up and oozes thickly through the lips of the slash. He whispers out the words of the ritual that will hold the horrors of the Pit inside the open gate as he journeys, daubing sigils and runes across the step, the Claves Angelicae: the forty-eight angelic keys. It's powerful magic, old magic, magic with a k; the magic of the Liber Logaeth, the Book of the Speech of God, and nothing demonic will get past the barrier the symbols form.
Castiel pushes up, the Colt gripped tight in his fist, ignoring the bloody rivulets that trickle down his wrist and hand and drip thickly from his fingertips.
For a moment he stares at the devil's trap, but he feels no doubt. It should have been me, he thinks.
He reaches to slot the gun into the keyhole, turns it sharply right, and steps back.
For a moment there is only stillness and silence. And then Castiel hears it: the creak of gears shifting laboriously into a rhythm, a clanking as the inner and outer circles of the seal begin to turn, slow at first and then more rapidly. Its sound is a clarion call, he knows, and already he can hear the far-off whisper of realization, a susurration that builds to a doubtful whine and then a gleeful howl as the ground underneath him begins to tremble with the restless anticipation of damned souls impatient to escape their prison.
Gripping the hilt of his sword even tighter, Castiel backs away slowly as the doors begin to grind open. He can already smell the fetid stench he remembers so well seeping out through the gap, the smell of burning meat; and the ashy heat of demons bombarding the portal blasts out at him, sending him reeling back against the Impala. Their screech and cry is earsplitting now, and Castiel raises his sword, braces himself to take on any that might breach the portal as the clamor becomes a fretful wail of disappointment and rage when they are thwarted by the runes.
They mill about aimlessly on the other side for long moments, plumes and puffs of oily black smoke that leap and billow, before they start to recede. As they clear, Castiel expects to see what the Winchesters saw when they stared into the abyss.
It isn't what the Winchesters saw, not according to the Prophet's version of events.
It isn't what Castiel remembers either, not from the first time he descended to redeem the Righteous Man, or the second time he ranged even deeper, to the solitary outer darkness where the Cage was.
Neither is it the same as Crowley's remodeled foyer, the bland front entrance to the demon's take-a-number-and-step-right-up torture chamber, with its endless waiting line.
Beyond the yawning maw of the portal there is a cracked and broken black top, bisected by a double yellow line. It stretches into infinity, into a far-off point on a sunset-red horizon, like the many highways Castiel has driven with the Winchesters in the Impala. Almost as he thinks it, he feels the nudge of the car on his thigh, places his hand on her to soothe her. And there it is again, that low-level current that blazes up through his fingers and casts his skin silvery-blue, and it is significant; and only now, as he focuses back on the road to nowhere, the road to somewhere, does he begin to understand what it might mean.
"You want to come with me to bring him home," Castiel murmurs, and he can feel her sigh under his palm. He smiles, remembers Dean's advice, treat my baby right, and she'll be real good to you. He dips his fingers in the blood on his arm, methodically inscribes the angelic keys on the metal shell of the car, a daisy chain of symbols to shield her as they travel. Once done, he swallows, looks up at the big sky. "You brought me back twice," he says. "Let it be for this. Please."
Castiel steps back up to the open mausoleum, reaches to pull the Colt out of the keyhole, and wedges it into the waistband of his jeans as he heads back to slide into the car. He slams the door, cranks her up, drowns out any trepidation with the rev of the engine as he pushes his foot against the pedal and is rewarded with a satisfying growl. The mark on his chest burns in reply, and when he rubs his hand over it, he thinks he feels it like embers beneath his skin. Son, don't do this, he can hear in his head, and it's as if Bobby is right next to him, but when he glances down he sees a red outline, a fiery glow that seeps out through the cotton of his t-shirt in the shape of Dean's handprint. "I'm coming, Dean," he breathes, and he ignores the howled chorus of distant hellhounds.
Castiel remembers how he folded his wings tight to himself and dove into the inferno before, he and his brothers in attack formation, accelerating arrow-straight and beset by demons. And surely this moment of passing from world to underworld again should be equally climactic even if his mode of transport is infinitely more mundane, but it's no different than going through a highway interchange at a toll booth, as the Impala slips effortlessly through a slot she is too wide to fit and her tires crunch across the border into the landscape of Hell.
Up closer the route looks like nothing more than a dilapidated road with weeds growing up through its cracks, and as he looks ahead of him Castiel raises his hand to his mouth, chews meditatively on a knuckle. He knows that human philosophers have long dwelt on the concept of Hell, pondered on what its perceived quality is, theorized over whether it is literal or whether it is a state of consciousness, a spiritual condition caused by separation from God. But its fires are real and eternal, he has felt them himself. This is just the beginning, he knows. He must push further, and perhaps in a while he will be surrounded by all the familiar mosaics of Hell: the fire, the brimstone, the usual. Or was that simply the Hell he knew as an angel, instead of the hybrid he is now?
Too much thinking, and he shakes his head, punches the radio, and static comes in. "No," he decides sharply, because he wants music to drown out his thoughts and he wants it now, dammit.
He thumps the dashboard with a fist, and suddenly the radio chirrups and a transmission breaks through. According to Bobby there hasn't been radio since things fell apart and Castiel knows there isn't radio in Hell, even if Crowley's piped Blue Danube might still be playing as the late, unlamented King's endless line shuffles forward before looping back on itself. And that wasn't even proper radio, not like the station that Dean tunes into when he's holed up at the back of Singer Salvage with the guts of a classic car scattered around him on the floor of Bobby's auto shop, sorting out replacement parts for his baby.
No, they don't have that kind of radio in Hell.
Only now it seems they do, as a voice filters in through the static and magnifies.
Castiel doesn't know the song or the singer, but he lets it play because it sounds like the kind of thing Dean would listen to during their long drives through rustbelt cities and one-horse towns, through suburbs and abandoned places back in the world; along roads just like this one, because they all look the same at midnight, under the silver of moonglow. There's an hour when the dew hits and mist creeps up from the ground, and this is what Castiel drives through now, taking his time at a sedate forty miles per hour. He can make out stars revolving above through the trees, and from time to time he thinks he sees a face in the mist, a figure, but just as he draws closer it dissipates like a mirage.
He keeps his hands steady on the wheel and time stretches on like the road, and the road is long, so long that Castiel believes hours might pass while the radio plays in the background of the humming engine with the needle balanced over the red line, reading E. He doesn't know how the car keeps driving. It just does.
He finds himself falling asleep behind the wheel, thinks, highway hypnosis, and recalls Dean telling him about it on a long, meandering drive through deep-south humidity, Sam tucked in the backseat, snoring and drooling onto the leather.
Between the vibration of the engine and that syncopated line, you just fall asleep, Dean warns him again inside his head. So you have to be smarter than that, keep yourself aware, awake. Just that moment of comfort can cost you everything.
Castiel rolls down the window to feel the bite of wind in his face, and he turns the music up. He remembers what Dean taught him but he wonders if any of it is really relevant in this place where the road doesn't end, doesn't curve, doesn't meet with crossroads or intersections, but just goes on, and on, and on.
From dim memory, Castiel can hear the ghosts of conversations past, voices traded during midnight rides between cities and motels, Dean earnest, because it meant something to him, saving people, hunting things.
You feel yourself drifting. You want to pull over and grab some sleep and yeah, sometimes that's what we do. But I don't like that. Someone's waiting for us, you know? There's families out there, people in need, and if we don't get there, they could be on some vamp's dinner menu. Or a werewolf's. Or just a garden-variety haunting.
Castiel supplies his part of the conversation softly, like he had back then. "How do you deal with it?"
Don't fall asleep. Don't stop. Don't give up. I keep the faces of everyone I ever helped on a hunt with me. They keep me on the road.
Castiel reaches up to adjust the rearview mirror and he catches the familiar pattern of leather seating and then the smooth lines of Dean's shirt, his muscles flattening the fabric with their pressure and his easy slouch as he sinks into the vintage upholstery. He occupies it like he was born in the car. Just keep your eyes on the road, he instructs with a casual wave of his hand, as he scans the verge that races past. I got it under control. This is the way through.
Castiel fakes a derisive snort. "Do you have a road map for Hell back there?"
Dean smiles, the slow curl of his lips sensuous, and his eyes are iridescent in the pale orange sodium lights that dot the endless highway.
I can do you one better, buddy boy. We can try GPS.
Castiel smiles back, whispers, "We aren't in the world anymore, Dean."
Dean winks, a fold of green. Not the Global Positioning System. Get with the program, sport. It's the Gabriel Positioning System down here.
Castiel inhales, and only now does he realize just how heavy the atmosphere of comfort that surrounds Dean is; how even Dean's phantom presence arouses every latent memory of love, and joy, and ease, even as it scores him through with grief. Heat blazes out from the scar on his chest and he presses his hand to it, stifles a cry as another familiar voice echoes deep inside his head, calling his name. It sounds like Sam but Sam isn't here, and Castiel finds it easy to ignore because Dean's face is rippling like water swirling down a drain, and now Gabriel's face is in its place, his eyes crinkling and his grin crooked and snarky. In his hand is a Pepsi can, and Castiel can make out the beads of condensation dripping onto his fingers where he grips it.
What, you didn't miss me, brother? Gabriel taunts, and there in the background is Sam again, Cas, come on, almost as if he means to ground Castiel in reality.
"You're not real," Castiel says, his disappointment welling bitterly. "Neither was Dean. It's just…Hell. Like echoes of all of you. Like ghosts in a haunted house."
We could be real…
"Or you could be here to lead me astray."
Clever boy! his brother declares with a wink. But why on earth would we do that, Cas? I mean, we don't want you to leave. We want you to stay. Forever and ever. And wasn't that the plan from the get-go? You were supposed to be here with the rest of us. Your smackdown with the Beast was supposed to be a one way voyage on Lake of Fire Cruises, but you let boy-hero take the fall.
The radio crackles through Paint It Black, and then the Keith fuckin' Richards, hell yeah guitar riff fades into a sugar-sweet harmony, she's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care, before static crackles again. Castiel hisses, turns the dial left and right, then left again, until the volume peeters out and all they are left with is the faint rumble of the engine and the vibration of the struts as they float aimlessly across the blacktop like a ship adrift at sea. Behind him, his brother scoffs again, are those tears? and Castiel's frustration sears like inflammation, the patience he used to know so well and exercise with Dean lost somewhere on this odyssey. "I'm not human, not completely," he snaps, although he's not entirely sure if he's speaking to himself or the grinning apparition in the back seat. He swabs the wetness away from his eyes. "I don't cry. So if you've come for tears, go somewhere else."
Oh, you'll cry, Gabriel assures him, and his jocularity is gone. Especially if you think you can use it to put out a fire. A lake full of it. He leans back in the seat and laces his hands behind the back of his neck, as though he's reclining in a hammock with an ice-cold six pack at his feet, and he smirks. What is your plan, anyway short-bus? Don't you know how this road works?
"You're not real," Castiel persists. "I'm in the car alone and I'm arguing with myself."
I thought that was Sam's job, Gabriel points out, and suddenly his face is a twisting mire of flesh tones and facial structures, and his face pulls into Sam's familiar expression of gentle compassion, his listening face, the deep hazel of his eyes softening with every tale of woe, as though he takes on each stranger's sorrow for his own. Castiel wonders if that was a quality burned into him from the night his mother died onward, for all of time, as Sam's lips form words, pleading, Cas, come on, man.
Castiel pulls his eyes away from the mirror. "You're not Sam, either."
Well, what's a guy gotta do to get you to trust him?
Not-Sam shifts so he sits up in the seat, and he laces the fingers of both hands over his heart as he begins to sing, an alto of surprising strength, close your eyes, give me your hand, darling, can you feel my heart beating? Do you understand, do you feel the same? Am I only dreaming, or is this burning-
Caught out, and Castiel is triumphant. "Dean doesn't like that song, and Sam has better taste."
Don't talk shit about the Bangles, idjit!
Sam's long hair is gone, eyes shadowed by a threadbare baseball cap whose team insignia has faded beneath the force of a South Dakota sun. Bobby is as weathered as the tombstones that jutted haphazardly out of the soil in Colt's cemetery, sand-blasted by years of hunting, and he's typically stern and forbidding as he waggles a finger and lectures Castiel.
Dean used to sing that song to Sam to make him laugh and forget about what dear old sainted John Winchester was up to in the middle of the night with a forty-five and a prayer.
"Actually, that sounds like something Dean would do," Castiel admits.
Maybe he'd tell you himself, but you won't turn up the volume.
"Is that supposed to be a hint?"
Bobby sighs and then winks out like a light.
The radio snaps on again, and suddenly a woman is singing about clouds in her coffee, clouds in her coffee, and how Castiel is so vain he probably thinks the song is about him. It's a distraction, he tells himself; all of it is, distractions he doesn't need. Or perhaps this is a Hell of his own making, like those philosophers posited, a change in perception fueled by his waning grace and impending humanity. How many transmutations will it take, from angel to human and back again, from angel to God to this mongrel he is now, before the world as he knows it begins to look unrecognizable, before he is unrecognizable? Will Dean know it's me? he thinks frantically, and the hard smack of his palm onto his scar is purely instinctive.
When Castiel's fingers fall into the familiar grooves of Dean's handprint, he thinks that for an instant the thrum of the road and this eternal midnight falter. There is a flash like a spark that reminds him of that night in Pontiac, when he strode through the barn doors and the lights blew out above him in a thousand pinpricks of light. But then there is nothing but a brief flare of flame that erupts between his fingertips before it dies again, and if there was a connection between him and Dean, screaming for Castiel from the heart of Hell, it is gone.
Castiel chokes out terror, has to force himself to breathe deep and keep his free hand steady on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Not now, soldier, Balthazar breathes in his ear, for he is a traitor too and he burns with Dean in the Lake of Fire. You don't leave anyone behind. Castiel shakes his brother out of his head, focuses on his quest, but the fear that he might not succeed still seethes fitfully inside him. "It doesn't work," he whispers. "Dean, the link doesn't work. How am I going to find you if it doesn't work?"
He turns on the high beams as he careens along, pushes the pedal down until it grinds into the floor. The Impala races faster, Castiel's hands tighten on the wheel, and somewhere in this exhausting anxiety he drifts without thought as the hours turn into days.
Castiel sees the boy standing on the roadside at the last minute and almost clips him as he hauls the steering wheel to his left so that the big car fishtails clumsily, her tires tearing up grass and dirt as she skids to a halt. He peers up at the rearview mirror as the boy turns around, and he gasps, his eyes widening with his astonishment.
He's already leaning over to pull the handle and push open the door as the boy comes trotting up the shoulder, and as he draws close Castiel can make out the awkward sway of his arms poking through the sleeves of his black shirt and grass stains on a pair of old, unwashed jeans. He grabs the open door with one hand, stares in, and what Castiel sees steals his breath away.
"Dean," he croaks, his voice sandpaper rough because his throat has seized up from the long weeks of silence since Bobby flickered and vanished.
"Nope. I'm Vassago," the boy answers as he all but dives in, gangling arms and legs everywhere at once. He slides across the leather and looks over the interior of the car as though he's inspecting it to his satisfaction.
Castiel hasn't seen Dean for all the long weeks since he first drove the Impala through the portal, but he has known Dean down through his skin to his very molecules, through every hidden memory and every thought, both intimate and objective, and the teenager sitting beside him in the car is Dean. There's no mistaking it, even though the name he offers rings a distant alarm bell that clangs not, and even though Castiel can vaguely hear Sam's voice of reason cutting through it all from far away, Dean isn't here, Cas…
"Word is you're looking for this Dean guy," Vassago offers nonchalantly, and he winks in a way that stabs Castiel in the heart as he reaches across to clunk the passenger door shut.
"Have you seen him?" Castiel manages. "Do you know where he is?"
Vassago snorts. "Don't you know?"
Riddles, and Castiel blinks. "No. Where is he? Please…tell me."
"Look," Vassago says, and he sidles closer to Castiel with a glance around the wilderness, as though someone might overhear them, before he leans in conspiratorially. "Did you think to check the car before you started riding off every which way and getting your damn fool self lost?"
Castiel frowns, searches the boy's green eyes, with their stitchings of brown, and he is so hungry to find Dean's soul shining inside them that he has to make himself pull back and consider that what he is dealing with is not human. This thing beside him in the car is playing on his heartstrings by wearing the face of someone he loves so fiercely that he will lose all sense of purpose and direction if he doesn't make an effort to remain detached. But oh, it is so hard. "Come on," he dares finally. "I have no patience for your games."
After a snort, the boy rolls his eyes. "Jeez, try the trunk, man. Isn't that where Dean keeps everything he needs?"
Castiel opens the door in an unthinking, desperate scramble, and pounds down the asphalt. The trunk lid creaks loudly as it yawns wide open, and he thinks abstractedly that Dean would grease the hinges, that they will do it together when they get back. Moonlight fills the trunk and plays across the usual weapons bag, still open from when Castiel retrieved the Colt, and Castiel stares into it as though something will miraculously reveal itself.
Nothing does.
He scrubs a hand through his hair, yells, "There's nothing here!" and his voice echoes mockingly, nothing-nothing-nothing, so that he snaps his head around and gazes out across the flatlands.
The Impala's headlights cast an eerie beam across the landscape, barren but for deformed trees whose branches twist and gnarl to form sigils against a glutinous mist. Outside of the safe confines of the car, this new version of Hell is even more desolate and hostile, and Castiel senses the malevolence of the place pressing in against him. He can feel it sliding across his bare arms, feel its cold caress at the nape of his neck where Dean likes to nuzzle warmth into his skin, feel it seeping into his pores, a creeping infection that might taint him forever now that the immunity of his grace is weakened. He has fought on myriad fields of glory through his long existence, but this place is ancient, frigid evil, and its chill sends dread coursing through him, making him long for the warm, red glow of torture he remembers from before. And move, he needs to keep moving and not stare into the wasteland, but when he tears his eyes away from it and steps to the side of the car to squint in through the quarterlight window and repeat, "There's nothing here," the shotgun seat is empty.
In the next second Castiel hears the crunch of a boot on a scree of stone and grit, turns to find that Vassago is behind him. And child-Dean is gone, replaced by a hulking giant, rake-thin and sinewy, with onyx eyes and skin like coffee with a splash of half and half.
The giant grins, flashing a row of sharpened teeth. "There will be," he says, and his fist is the last thing Castiel sees.
Castiel comes round to the taste of blood in his mouth, and it is half so bitter as the aftertaste of regret. He thinks it was a stupid trick, a ruse he should have seen coming a mile away; thinks that Dean would have known.
He jounces with every imperfection in the pavement, hears the rush of momentum beneath him as the wheels press hot rubber over ground, and an array of weapons clunking against each other under the false bottom of the trunk and inside the weapons duffel he is curled against. He has an arsenal at his disposal and no way to reach it, tied and trussed as he is, like a pig ready to be spit-roasted.
He strains at the cords that wind around his wrists and hands and cut cruelly into his flesh, mouths at the duct tape Vassago slapped over his face and tastes its bitter glue with a curse. How long have we been on this road? he thinks desperately, as he squirms against the rough surface of the trunk interior.
How much time has passed?
He thinks that it has been days.
He suspects that it could be weeks.
He worries that it could be months.
"Try years!" Vassago sings out from the front, and his voice slithers silkily through the back of the bench seat like a snake in the grass, before the sound of radio static snaps on and grows louder, cutting in and out through snatches of music until it settles and the sound of a guitar riff filters through to the trunk.
Castiel hears it only vaguely, beguiled by the notion that years might have passed for him down here even though it should come as no surprise after the four decades he spent here the first time, decades that added up to mere months back in the world. The second time he had been newly minted and stronger, raised at the hand of God, or so he thought, and the journey to the Cage and back had taken much less time.
He finds himself pondering his aimless drift through the wasteland before the demon waylaid him, and he considers his perception that this is not the Hell he knows, that this Hell is different. It has been stripped bare in the absence of Lilith and Alastair, without Crowley's iron hand at the tiller and the threat of Lucifer's return looming large. This Hell has been left to decay and ruin, and its miasma of atrophy befuddles and confounds his mind, spins his sense of direction until he has lost his true north. Everything is ephemeral, even memories he thought would be etched in stone. What is the name of the old man whose eyes soften when he thinks Castiel isn't looking, the man who offered him a home and calls him son, and what is the name of the man's dog? Who is the child he can see in his mind's eye, the girl with eyes like his own? And who is the pearl-skinned demon he kissed despite being repulsed by the misshapen, unholy fiend that roiled beneath her human veneer, the one who called him…what did she call him? Not his name, and that seems fitting because he can't recall what her name is.
They are important, he knows, but their identities are lost to him.
If he spent enough time here, trapped in this place, would he soon forget Sam too?
And would he forget Dean, the tidal pull of him, the longing of both separation and proximity? Would he forget the stolen kisses, the torrid nights, the way his bold, brash lover becomes something soft and tender in the dark, the way he gazes at Castiel through half-lidded, lust-dazed eyes as he worships him with tongue, teeth, trailing hands and teasing fingertips? Would he forget that Dean loves him, would he forget how Dean felt under him and around him as Castiel claimed him for his own?
Castiel suspects that given enough time, nothing withstands the amnesiac eternity that shapes this new Hell.
Years, has it been years? he marvels again, and he finds himself wondering why he came at all. He tries to navigate through this dementia that has cast his recollection in murky fog, searches through the ragged holes in his memory to find the reason for his quest.
I'm looking, he thinks. I'm looking… looking for…
And he spends a long time trying to recall the name of the thing he lost that he wanted back so badly, but can no longer remember.
The road goes on. And on. And on.
There is a wound on Castiel's chest that burns, and when he looks down he can see it glowing red through his t-shirt, but he doesn't know how it got there or what it means. When he seeks within himself for the remaining shreds of his grace to aid him, there is no weight to his light and energy; both are spent, dissipated, leaking from him like marrow from a smashed bone. Whatever is left isn't substance enough to fight back with, so he lets go with a sigh, starts to sing to himself softly, a song someone he can't put a name or face to taught him, hey Jude, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better, as he waits for the road to end.
And then an incredible thing happens.
The car stops.
Castiel wriggles like a worm, all invertebrate muscle and no bones or joints, twisting onto his back so he faces the opening of the trunk, and in his head he is going over every scenario, how to thrust his bound legs out heels-first, into Vassago's face to knock him backwards; how he will scramble to escape and cut himself free. Will he have to kill Vassago first? Castiel digs in with his awkward, clasped, immobile hands and listens, breathes in the Impala's sweat, and it smells like motor oil and gasoline.
A door opens and slams closed. Castiel hears muffled speech and there is more than one voice, the lilt of a woman speaking, and then another. He lists to the side, pushing his ear against the metal of the wheel well. The voices are low but he recognizes Vassago's baritone, and then an uptick in the conversation as it becomes more heated. Words filter through.
"Tweedledemon, I suggest you get back to wherever you came from-"
"Oooh, he's gettin' testy now."
"I'm the crown prince of twenty-six legions of demons, Tweedledumber. This means I'm not to be trifled with."
"You used to be a nice guy, Vassago. I know that ain't your car."
"I bought it. Fair and square."
Castiel kicks out and screams as best he can behind the barrier of duct tape. He tastes plastic as he kicks again, all feet and knees crashing against metal, until he pauses and listens to the silence from outside.
"Oh, that? That's nothing."
"Sounds like something, all right. You got contraband? You know we can't let you smuggle, Vassago. Rules is rules."
Vassago clears his throat loudly. "You really ought to treat me with more respect than that."
"We don't trust rats. And we know you dabble with those mudmonkey souls more than you should. So why don't you open the trunk and show us what you got?"
Castiel stills and listens to the scuffle and scrape of feet over gravel and dirt. The footsteps pause before the trunk catch, and he hears the sound of Vassago fumbling with the keys, and then the grating sound of metal shifting as the trunk opens.
Moonlight pours in, and Castiel scents brimstone on the air, but he has only a second to appreciate the view of the night stars and the inverted Milky Way scattered above before Vassago stands above him, bisecting his view of the pinprick lights and the sinister forest surrounding them. Beyond Vassago are the twisted faces of low-grade demons, their darkened skin bubbled and raw in their true forms, the withered remains of the humans they began life as barely apparent.
Castiel cries out behind his duct tape gag, cringing deeper into the trunk.
"Lookit that shit! He's smuggling a fuckin' angel in! Holy shit…"
Vassago does a funny thing, then. He winks at Castiel, his eyes flaring yellow for a fraction of a second. Before Tweedledemon and Tweedledumber can stop their hoots of excitement at discovering angel contraband in the back of a Chevy Impala, Vassago swiftly reaches down a hand to Castiel's lower back. He whips it up again grasping the Colt, snapping back the hammer before he turns and sets the butt of the gun over his left forearm to steady his aim. He shoots once, twice. The first demon goes down with the same vapid expression of delight on his face as the woman demon beside him. She has the sense to show fear before the bullet plugs her square between the eyes, and then they erupt into flame, dispersing their energy into the night.
Vassago huffs with annoyance and looks down at the Colt before he returns to staring at Castiel. His face is neutral, his eyes still burning sulfur yellow.
"You understand the kind of trouble we're in?" he says, not unkindly. "Now you just sit tight, kiddo. Hell ain't what it used to be. It feels. It senses. Especially bright ones like you. It knows you're somewhere around here, so I need you to be quiet inside, okay? Quiet, deep down. Don't be thinking about your sweetheart, you dig? You think too loud, and Hell will find you. And when Hell finds you, you don't get out. Upstarts like Crowley and even the grand master badass Lucy thought they had ownership rights on Hell, but you can't own what enslaves you. So…you be quiet for me, pretty little angel. Huh?"
Castiel wonders if this is a demon who has been tortured for so long he has gone mad, but his yellow eyes give all the indication Castiel needs to know that this is an old one, as old as Azazel and maybe even older. Azazel? he muses then. Where do I know that name from? And the name Vassago tolls that same warning klaxon it did before, but Castiel is so tired he can't remember where he heard it, and most of all he can't remember the one he swore he would never forget.
"Hey," the demon's voice cuts in. "You listening?"
Castiel stares up, nods obediently.
"Good," Vassago grins, and looks at the Colt. "I'll keep this with me for insurance. I'll give it back later."
And he closes the trunk and shrouds Castiel in pitch black again.
Castiel thinks he sleeps, and in the tiny slice of death that is heavy slumber he hears a syncopated, dull thud like an arrhythmic heartbeat far, far in the distance. He dismisses it and sleeps on but it remains, stitching haphazardly through his rest while he drifts, dreaming a jumble of incoherent images. He thinks he dreams of a man who smells faintly of bourbon, a man who sits beside him in this car that transports him and gives him a wry smile as he passes him a bottle. The man has green, green eyes, a faint smattering of freckles over his cheeks and he blinks lazily at Castiel and asks how he's doing, his voice a familiar drawled-out rumble, a patchwork of accents from a splintered life spread across too many states.
Castiel wants nothing more than to cant his head and touch tender lips to the man's, but before he can say this he is shaken awake by the halting of the vehicle. He hears the squeal of rubber as the tires skid across the surface and he rolls in a painful jumble of limbs from one side of the trunk to the other, ending up lying on his back like a turtle, staring up into the dark.
He hears the faint thud sound in the distance again.
He thought it was a dream-
thud
-but it beats as steadily as ocean waves crash onto the shoreline, and now Castiel becomes aware of a pounding boom just behind the sound. It is forbidding, threatening, like the footfalls of a giant a thousand miles away from here but drawing closer with every second, and Castiel wants to bury himself in a hole until the sound stops along with whatever is making it.
Running steps patter around the car and then there is a rush of air as the trunk creaks open again and Castiel is staring at someone new.
There is a moment of silence as the man regards him, and Castiel makes out a circle-flare of light around the man's head before it is gone, winked out of existence as the newcomer reaches down and rips away the duct tape.
Castiel winces and licks his lips. "Thank you," he ventures uncertainly, while the man stands there expectantly.
"Well?" the man challenges, and he raises an eyebrow.
Castiel tilts his head quizzically, asks, "Do I know you?"
"Know me?" The man throws up his hands. "Bro. Think harder. It'll come to you."
Castiel blinks. The man's face looks like a malleable wad of silly putty, meandering through any number of amused, bemused, indulgent expressions beneath a mop of brown hair, and he has eyes the color of mud. He waits with an air of patience for Castiel to reach some great conclusion, and when Castiel continues to stare without deducing anything at all, he sighs and reaches into his pocket, withdrawing a soda can with the word Pepsi across it.
Castiel recognizes it from an infinite number of motel vending machines across the lower forty-eight, and finally it clicks. "You're the man from the commercial."
The Pepsi guy's eyebrows arch with dramatic flair. He pops the tab and a hiss of carbonated syrup escapes. "Uh, no, little brother. That's just my vessel, Richard Speight Jr., before a certain spoiled brat of a kid brother killed the both of us and I ended up with a one way ticket to Inferno Island, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars." He leans down to pinch Castiel's cheek between his thumb and forefinger. "Don't worry, buddy. I'll admit, you weren't the smartest doll off the Precious Moments factory line, but ye olde Highway to Hell can do a number on you."
Castiel knows he gapes. "Vessel…you're an angel." A name surfaces from the depths then, and he clutches after it like a fisherman reeling in a line. It's not the right name, but it feels close, feels right, and he blurts it out without tact or consideration. "Kali."
The man goes still with the aluminum can still clutched in his hand, which flexes to form a fist and then grinds convulsively. Soda jets out as the metal crushes and he lets it drop, staring daggers at Castiel.
"You shouldn't drop litter like that," Castiel diverts. "Are you going to help me out of here or not? And where is Vassago? Why did he bring me to you?"
"Vassago's doing you a solid and risking his neck," Vassago calls out, and Castiel dares lift his head higher to see the demon taking a leak by a stunted tree. All he can make out is Vassago's motorcycle jacket, all zippers and intimidating leather, and a flare of phosphorus yellow where he pisses a line of urine into the ground as the tree blackens and withers under the stream of noxious liquid.
"Still got no reception?" the short man asks Castiel.
"You're an angel," Castiel repeats, and after a moment of trying to parse the concept it occurs to him to ask, "But what are you doing here?"
There is a short but weighty pause. "Fallen angels get the express elevator ride straight to Hell," the man retorts lightly and he taps his temple. "Been-"
"Fallen angels?" Castiel echoes, and he gets a flat look.
"Let's not dwell," the man says, and he repeats the tapping motion and backtracks. "Been on that road for a while, huh? Spacing out? Memory like a sieve? No matter. It just means we get to do everything all over again. My name's Gabriel, you've-"
"The Gabriel?" Castiel queries faintly, and the smaller man preens.
"The Gabriel. You've already met my sometime associate, Vassago."
"I find lost shit," Vassago interjects as he zips up and ambles over, idly kicking a stone across the faded meridian.
Again Castiel hears the faint thud-boom in the background, and it momentarily distracts him. "What's that noise?" he wonders aloud.
"That, kiddo, is going to jog your memory," Gabriel informs him, and when the smaller man winks, Castiel likes it not at all.
The noise sounds again as Gabriel sidesteps around Castiel, muttering something about Rambo and overkill, and leans on the lip of the trunk for a bare instant before he snatches his hand back along to a vibrant strobe of light. His eyes widen as he slants his gaze back to Castiel.
"It's her grace," Castiel explains, and he knows this more than ever now, as he reaches to touch the metal himself. A hazy bluish light emanates from her dusty skin to bathe his fingertips, and again he is caught by its familiarity and comfort.
Gabriel grunts noncommittally, disturbing Castiel's brief reverie as he bends in to heave the weapons duffel out and on to the ground. The angel squats down, his hand streaking into the bag to grasp one of the short, lethal silver blades poking out from the jumbled collection of knives, semi-automatics and crossbows. "You kept my sword," he remarks softly, as he runs a thumb along the edge.
Castiel has no real memory of where any of the swords in the bag came from, but he nods anyway.
The man returns the small gesture, says, "I'm touched." He returns to his examination of the bag's contents, clears his throat in what seems a critical way as he sifts through the interior. "That's quite a killing spree, little brother. Isn't this Rachel's?"
"I…don't really remember." And it's true, Castiel is racking his brain as he stares at the weapons, but there is nothing, just a nebulous fog he can't see through.
"Oh, that'll all come back to you too," the man says. "In fact-" He stops abruptly and Castiel hears a barely perceptible out-breath, sees his shoulders tense as he withdraws another sword. It's different from the others, the blade longer, the hilt covered with intricate designs. Gabriel holds it up in front of him, turns it so that Castiel can see a curved sigil etched into the metal under the crossguard, and he whistles with something that sounds like awe. "I know someone who'll be pretty damned happy to see this," he says, and a wicked smile curls his lips up as he admires the rest of the weaponry. "Sure you brought enough?" he adds dryly.
"The trunk has a false bottom, so there's more ordnance should we need it," Castiel tells him. "I came prepared because I'm here to find - someone. I'm just not sure who."
He knows it comes out a little sheepishly, as though this is a matter of remembering where he put the car keys, and after another grin and a wink Gabriel says, "Like I said. We're going to jog your memory."
Vassago pulls his lips back from his fangs as he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a pair of brass knuckles and a knife. "Why don't you hang onto this?" he offers, as he holds the Colt out butt-first.
Castiel takes it gingerly and slides it back into his jeans. Gabriel looks him up and down, the examination critical, and then turns his attention back to the duffel, his eyes narrowing as he pulls out an assortment of weapons. A few minutes later, Castiel is feeling twenty pounds heavier. There are several bandoliers slotted with salt rounds slung around his neck, his crossbow is clipped in its customary position at his back, knives drenched in holy water are jammed into a holster strapped to his thigh, and a shotgun is hooked over his shoulder.
"You look beautiful," Gabriel decides, and he opens the passenger door for Castiel with a theatrical flare, as though this were a date, and the thought sounds like the kind of thing Dean would say.
Dean?
Castiel trips over the name, and there is a quickening of images that swirls into nothingness as quickly as they arrive.
"Looks like you almost had it there," Gabriel says. "Don't worry. You will soon. Now get your head back in the game, because letting Vassago get the jump on you like that?" He tsks. "Not the soldier I remember."
Just as Castiel is settling into the shotgun seat, there is a shattering noise that sends him bolt upright in choking fear, and he forgets the relentless thud-boom that never quits. When he turns to look, he sees Vassago leaning over the trunk with a tire iron in one hand, and the shattered glass of the Impala's back windshield is sprinkled all over the bench seat.
Castiel is speechless for a split second before a geyser of rage bursts out of him. "What the fuck did you do that for?"
"Better now than when the shooting begins," Vassago informs him through the ragged shards that still cling to the windshield frame. "I've eaten glass. It's no party."
The answer is even more disconcerting than the distant sound, and Gabriel slaps a hand down on the steering wheel, barks out, "Get in the damn car, we've been in one place too long as it is." He guns the engine as Vassago is slamming the back door shut, and doesn't wait for anyone to brace for take-off before he kills the lights, barrels them into motion, and cuts the wheels into a hard right.
Castiel grunts in surprise when he feels the Impala leave the numbing security of the endless highway and dig into soft soil. "Don't we need to stay on the road?"
He gets a decisive headshake in reply, followed by, "You still don't get it, do you? The road's for do-gooders like you. It just goes in a circle, round and round." Gabriel's features twist into a scowl. "It's like driving in New Jersey."
He floors the pedal then, and they rocket forward. It takes only a matter of seconds before Castiel realizes they are heading in the direction of the sound, the sound that is growing louder as they travel, shaking the leaves on the arching trees that are greater in number here in the wooded hinterland, and appear to be closing in and bending over them to scratch and tap inquisitively at the windshield and quarterlights. A shot explodes in the darkness, and Castiel sees Vassago's silhouette in the rearview mirror, cranes to look over his shoulder as the demon leans out the busted back window and fires into the darkness again.
He looks back at the narrow-featured man who stares calmly ahead as he drives, asks, "What's he doing?"
Gabriel waves a dismissive hand. "It's just the trees. Don't worry, this isn't the worst. You should see what happens when we have to use the sewers." He spares Castiel a glance and smirks, an expression that's so familiar it catches Castiel in his heart, though he doesn't know why.
If the man notices how Castiel sucks in a surprised breath, he ignores it. "I keep forgetting you haven't been to this part before," he goes on. "It's not the sort of place you send postcards from. More like the lock-your-doors-as-you-pass-through and keep-your-hand on-your-gun section. The Detroit of the Underworld."
Gabriel turns his attention back to the road again, and in profile it's easy to see that a muscle is jumping in his cheek and his jaw is clenched. It gives Castiel the impression that he's scared despite his bravado and his snarky comments.
Far above the trees is a pale hue of pink, as though the horizon is on fire. A jet of flame spikes into the sky and then recedes, and after a moment Castiel realizes it is occurring in time with the steady thud that has become a boom-boom-boom that shakes the car. Through the window he can see shapes flitting by now; twisted freaks, gargoyles, aberrations that never should be, things with scales and talons and forked tongues, things that he somehow knows are wrong even for this place of the condemned. He presses his nose to the glass to see better, jerks back with a yelp as something grotesque looms up from the half-light. "Why are those creatures here?" he gasps. "I don't think they should be."
"Bad things afoot," Vassago informs him amiably from the back seat. "The planes are coming together, ripping into each other's meat, bleeding their infection into each other's wounds. Like osmosis, and soon there won't be any barriers. Purgatory, Hell… they're becoming one reality, one disease, and the underworld is spilling its bacteria out all over your beloved place of men."
He pauses to let loose a volley of shots, and as the gun blats, the Impala launches into a whirling three hundred sixty-degree turn, Gabriel spinning the steering wheel energetically even as he shakes Castiel off his shoulder. The car pegs three demons at the back end, crushes them under her thundering wheels in a grind of bone and tissue that splatters upwards and curves its glutinous way down onto the trunk lid.
"Jaywalking's a capital offense in my book," Gabriel quips.
Vassago makes a gleeful hooting noise, and when he glances back at Castiel, his face is streaked with ichor and gristle. And then they are plowing once more through earth that might not be earth at all. Where demon blood spatters the Impala's hood, Castiel can see the paint job smoke and singe as it burns away into ash beneath a faint blue-white glow of grace before vanishing. Castiel studies the side-view mirror, finding the view hypnotic. He thinks he sees things buried in the crust of the earth as they blur past, struggling neck deep in mud and waving their many hands. He had wondered what those ominous thumps beneath the chassis were, and there they are, deformed fiends birthing themselves from the poisonous womb of the Pit.
Before long the forest grows patchy, but Vassago remains with his hand white-knuckled on the back seat as he leans out the broken back windshield. Castiel can see him casting his eyes up and around them every few minutes, as if he's expecting something to descend from the midnight sky, and when he catches Castiel's gaze he pulls a face of mock horror. "Here be dragons."
The steady boom-boom grows louder as they breach the treeline and bounce down an embankment before breasting a slight rise.
At the pinnacle of this brief valley, the Impala's headlights dip over what lies beyond, and Castiel sees the mirror surface of a lake. For an instant he thinks it is no more imposing than a resort for older folks looking to take in the air and serenity of the countryside in their twilight years, but for the midnight blackness and the sense of fire close by - and not fire like Castiel knows fire. Vague memories trip back into his neurons, lighting a path through his brain, and he thinks of the green-eyed man who told him about the fireworks he set for his brother. A man who showed him how to flick open a lighter without using your thumb because it was more badass if you did it off the sleeve of your jacket; how to take one apart and adjust the flame so the next person to light a cigarette with it nearly burns off their eyebrows.
Dean.
That name again.
Dean understood fire like this, somehow Castiel knows it.
When he looks down across the onyx surface of the lake it seems flat black, but as they draw closer, their proximity reveals more. A ripple disturbs and distends the surface along to the resounding boom, because the sound is emanating from the water itself, and in those fractious ripples small currents of flame erupt hot blue before winking out as though they had never been there at all.
The car rolls to a stop, and the silence within the cabin is broken only by the nightmarish pounding.
"It's on fire, isn't it?" Castiel breathes.
"You remember?" Gabriel asks.
"No. Not…quite." It is there somewhere though, recall from long ago and from more recent times too. "I can feel something," Castiel continues in a murmur. "Familiarity. A memento of this place buried in the back of my mind."
"It doesn't look like it's on fire," Gabriel teases.
"No," Castiel agrees. "But it is, isn't it?"
Gabriel nods, and the mirth is suddenly gone from him. "The blue flames, the heat of the forge." His tone turns almost wistful. "This was earth. This was earth before the surface cooled, before bacteria, before the Cambrian explosion, before those really important fish, before dinosaurs, and before the mudmonkeys climbed down from their trees. This was the earth of the Great Old Ones. The primeval heart of Hell. Can you hear it beat, Castiel?"
Boom. Boom. Boom. Castiel can hear it, and he licks lips gone arid. "That's where he is, isn't it?"
"That's where they are," is the enigmatic reply.
"They?" Castiel pushes tentatively.
Gabriel shrugs. "Dean bound himself to Cthulhu and dragged the big guy down with him like a drowning. We all heard it when it happened."
"Cthulhu…" Castiel frowns, chases the name through the murk in his brain as though it will bring everything flaring back to life, and then, like a computer rebooted, he will know everything complete. It simmers beneath the shell of his consciousness, so close, so close…
"This is where we switch seats," Gabriel continues. He doesn't look at Castiel when he says it. He stares over the surface of the lake as though he's mesmerized by the flutter of blue fire that snaps across the top and then recedes. "You have to drive her down, down deep. Strap in and go, and you may as well forget about calling triple A. They don't take calls down here."
Heat, molten, and Castiel remembers it abruptly, remembers how it scalds. "It's too hot," he protests feebly. "We'll burn up. It's not possible."
Gabriel keeps his eyes fixed to the Lake of Fire. "We've got a case of Pepsi to cool us down," he quips, and his lips twist in a humorless smile. "You're right, though. We probably won't survive it. The car might give us an extra layer of protection, though. Her grace and all…who knows? Anyhoo. Balt's been expecting you, but it's this-"
Gabriel leans over to tap his first two fingers against Castiel's chest before withdrawing, and Castiel feels an electric charge of sensation there, where the handprint is burned into his skin.
"-that you need to use to find him."
Confused, Castiel asks, "Find Balt?"
"Dean," the angel corrects. "You need to use that to find Dean. So…ready for the Indy 500, bro?"
Castiel swallows. He thinks, no, and he doesn't even know what he's here for and what his motivation might be when he exits the passenger side almost mechanically, as if Gabriel's words are hiding some spell of compulsion. As they switch sides, Castiel experiences a sparking fragment of memory, armor shining like light through fire and Gabriel's face set as solemn as it is now.
He has done this before, through different means and for a different cause, but the elements are all the same, and Castiel is suddenly serene and ready. He makes himself comfortable in the driver's seat, adjusts the rearview mirror and sees Vassago reflected in it, watching the proceedings with eyes that glow red before their embers dampen to cold obsidian again, and his gaze drifts to the lake.
Gabriel doesn't bother to buckle himself in and he twists, holds his hand out, palm up and flat. Castiel hears Vassago groan behind him.
"Drama queen," the demon growls, and he leans forward to slap something that looks like a rounded shank of bone into Gabriel's hand. It winks, a glimmer of blue-white that flares for a fraction of a second before it vanishes into the ossified surface once more, and Castiel blinks because he has seen it in Gabriel's hand in some other past.
The angel's sharp features are almost reverent as he looks at Castiel. "And storms will rage and oceans roar, when Gabriel stands on sea and shore…"
And Castiel finds that he knows the prophecy, and picks it up. "And as he blows his wondrous horn, old worlds die and new be born."
There is a still moment, a moment that feels like brotherhood, before Gabriel snorts. "I'm supposed to save it for earth, but, meh, what the hell, right?" He reaches a hand out to brace himself on the dash, and his face splits in a smile as he looks at Castiel. "Hit it, kiddo."
Castiel takes a deep breath and when he does the mark in the center of his chest flares like power does on electronics, as though it is one great on button in the middle of him. It begins to throb like a burn when the deep tissue is busy dying, but there is no time to wonder at that now and Castiel fears to remember how he was scarred, or the name of the man who left it there.
He slams on the gas pedal without ceremony.
The pedal sinks to the floor and after a brief hesitation as the old car catches up with the command, the engine revs so hot and hard Castiel wonders if her pistons might break, and her valves blow, and her engine block crack like a nuclear reactor. But the rev reaches a scream and then levels out as the car jolts forward, and Castiel bites down on a cry while everything in him cringes backwards into the surface of his seat and revolts against slamming the car grille-first into the waves.
From the corner of his vision, Castiel sees Gabriel lift the horn in one fist. The archangel's eyes have become burning stones in the center of his face, reflecting the waves that surge across the surface of the lake to meet them. As Gabriel inhales deeply and presses his lips to the mouthpiece, there is a second of time that Castiel uses up deliciously, savoring every micro-fraction of it the way he remembers the green-eyed man, Dean, would savor the best liquor when he tipped a glass until every last drop was gone and sliding down the golden trail of his throat. And then there is a sound that causes a visible shockwave, the air folding and bending around them.
Gunfire rips through the engine's growl as Vassago leans out of the window and begins to shoot a steady rat-a-tat-tat, like a Chicago gangster from an old film Castiel remembers watching with the green-eyed man. The front windshield explodes outward simultaneously with every other pane of glass, and the instrument panels blow, dials spinning in every direction. Castiel can smell burning rubber and a swift glance at the side mirror reveals flames licking out from the Impala's back tires as they hit the water and shoot fat clouds of noxious smelling smoke into the air.
Castiel rocks back in his own private whiplash, knuckles sharp and bony as he grips the steering wheel, and the car is illuminated in white like a halo as they breach the surface. The temperature spikes like a kiln at the highest setting, heat billowing in through the broken window and melting everything with its simmering breath. Gabriel leans over and collapses into the concave of his chest as he blows into the horn with his eyes closed and tears streaming from his lashes, and Castiel can't hear Vassago shooting at anything now.
Liquid fire rises up to meet them and Castiel thinks he cries out, no. His shirt ignites with a vicious snap where it meets the mark on his chest, and he slams his hand there to put out the flames. When he does, the jolt is nuclear and he is at the nexus of infinite volts of energy from every dimension, and memories, memories that stutter out from his mind and then speed up to flood him with recognition.
Of course. Sam. Bobby. Gabriel. Balthazar. And Dean-Dean-Dean.
Castiel leans forward to hug Gabriel into him, away from the inferno that engulfs them. This is what he was made for: the fight, the glory of victory, and he laughs wildly with the centrifugal force of their spin as they submerge and dive full-fathom-five into deep, hot, wet Hell.
Episode 24: Redemption (part II continued)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info,
warnings, and disclaimer)
Authors: swordofmymouth and zatnikatel
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam, OC and canon characters
Rating: R (this part)
Wordcount: ~27,000
Warnings: language, violence, sexuality, references to cutting
Betas: dotfic and murron
Art: Chapter banners by zatnikatel; digital paintings by Euclase, Rinienne, and ryuu_artist, which you can also find here and here (NB: art contains major spoilers for the chapter)
Summary: Love is stronger than death…
The railroad crossing where Jake Talley finally succumbed to Azazel's temptation is exactly where Carver Edlund's gospels said it would be, and Castiel slows the Impala down as she crests the raised iron rails, stares ahead at empty prairie land. Fifty miles thataway, Azazel had told the luckless Talley, and a knot of anticipation is tying itself ever tighter inside Castiel as he forges on through the snow.
The graveyard is colorless and desolate, iron gate hanging on its frame, dead and diseased trees pointing hopelessly up at the sky. The crypt is dead center, incongruously grand and stately among the weathered stone monuments and worn, lopsided wooden crosses that are scattered around it, and Castiel eyes it curiously as he pushes up out of the driver's seat. There is no sign of it ever having opened, but Castiel knows that it did, knows that it loosed a multitude of demons into the world. He knows that John Winchester emerged through it too, knows that Azazel met his end here; and there to his left is the solid bulk of the monument Dean slumped against while he raised the same gun Castiel has gripped in his fist.
He crosses to stand in front of the tomb. Its front is ornate, the sheen of the inlaid silver devil's trap that seals it bright in the pearly gray of dawn, and its sheer presence is forbidding, but Castiel is undeterred. He sinks down to kneel in front of the crypt, placing the Colt on the earth beside him. He brushes dirt and leaves away from the step that forms the threshold to Hell, slips Dean's jacket down off of his shoulders, feeling the frigid air bite into the skin of his arms. He breathes deep and steady as he reaches inside himself, drawing on his grace as economically as he can. His sword coalesces with an effort that leaves him gasping and off-balance for a full minute. He braces himself on the ground with one hand as he reels and blinks through the chaotic whirl of trees and monuments, until the world rights itself again, and then he doesn't hesitate any longer.
He slices his blade across the flesh of his inner arm so that blood shining luminous with grace wells up and oozes thickly through the lips of the slash. He whispers out the words of the ritual that will hold the horrors of the Pit inside the open gate as he journeys, daubing sigils and runes across the step, the Claves Angelicae: the forty-eight angelic keys. It's powerful magic, old magic, magic with a k; the magic of the Liber Logaeth, the Book of the Speech of God, and nothing demonic will get past the barrier the symbols form.
Castiel pushes up, the Colt gripped tight in his fist, ignoring the bloody rivulets that trickle down his wrist and hand and drip thickly from his fingertips.
For a moment he stares at the devil's trap, but he feels no doubt. It should have been me, he thinks.
He reaches to slot the gun into the keyhole, turns it sharply right, and steps back.
For a moment there is only stillness and silence. And then Castiel hears it: the creak of gears shifting laboriously into a rhythm, a clanking as the inner and outer circles of the seal begin to turn, slow at first and then more rapidly. Its sound is a clarion call, he knows, and already he can hear the far-off whisper of realization, a susurration that builds to a doubtful whine and then a gleeful howl as the ground underneath him begins to tremble with the restless anticipation of damned souls impatient to escape their prison.
Gripping the hilt of his sword even tighter, Castiel backs away slowly as the doors begin to grind open. He can already smell the fetid stench he remembers so well seeping out through the gap, the smell of burning meat; and the ashy heat of demons bombarding the portal blasts out at him, sending him reeling back against the Impala. Their screech and cry is earsplitting now, and Castiel raises his sword, braces himself to take on any that might breach the portal as the clamor becomes a fretful wail of disappointment and rage when they are thwarted by the runes.
They mill about aimlessly on the other side for long moments, plumes and puffs of oily black smoke that leap and billow, before they start to recede. As they clear, Castiel expects to see what the Winchesters saw when they stared into the abyss.
It isn't what the Winchesters saw, not according to the Prophet's version of events.
It isn't what Castiel remembers either, not from the first time he descended to redeem the Righteous Man, or the second time he ranged even deeper, to the solitary outer darkness where the Cage was.
Neither is it the same as Crowley's remodeled foyer, the bland front entrance to the demon's take-a-number-and-step-right-up torture chamber, with its endless waiting line.
Beyond the yawning maw of the portal there is a cracked and broken black top, bisected by a double yellow line. It stretches into infinity, into a far-off point on a sunset-red horizon, like the many highways Castiel has driven with the Winchesters in the Impala. Almost as he thinks it, he feels the nudge of the car on his thigh, places his hand on her to soothe her. And there it is again, that low-level current that blazes up through his fingers and casts his skin silvery-blue, and it is significant; and only now, as he focuses back on the road to nowhere, the road to somewhere, does he begin to understand what it might mean.
"You want to come with me to bring him home," Castiel murmurs, and he can feel her sigh under his palm. He smiles, remembers Dean's advice, treat my baby right, and she'll be real good to you. He dips his fingers in the blood on his arm, methodically inscribes the angelic keys on the metal shell of the car, a daisy chain of symbols to shield her as they travel. Once done, he swallows, looks up at the big sky. "You brought me back twice," he says. "Let it be for this. Please."
Castiel steps back up to the open mausoleum, reaches to pull the Colt out of the keyhole, and wedges it into the waistband of his jeans as he heads back to slide into the car. He slams the door, cranks her up, drowns out any trepidation with the rev of the engine as he pushes his foot against the pedal and is rewarded with a satisfying growl. The mark on his chest burns in reply, and when he rubs his hand over it, he thinks he feels it like embers beneath his skin. Son, don't do this, he can hear in his head, and it's as if Bobby is right next to him, but when he glances down he sees a red outline, a fiery glow that seeps out through the cotton of his t-shirt in the shape of Dean's handprint. "I'm coming, Dean," he breathes, and he ignores the howled chorus of distant hellhounds.
Castiel remembers how he folded his wings tight to himself and dove into the inferno before, he and his brothers in attack formation, accelerating arrow-straight and beset by demons. And surely this moment of passing from world to underworld again should be equally climactic even if his mode of transport is infinitely more mundane, but it's no different than going through a highway interchange at a toll booth, as the Impala slips effortlessly through a slot she is too wide to fit and her tires crunch across the border into the landscape of Hell.
Up closer the route looks like nothing more than a dilapidated road with weeds growing up through its cracks, and as he looks ahead of him Castiel raises his hand to his mouth, chews meditatively on a knuckle. He knows that human philosophers have long dwelt on the concept of Hell, pondered on what its perceived quality is, theorized over whether it is literal or whether it is a state of consciousness, a spiritual condition caused by separation from God. But its fires are real and eternal, he has felt them himself. This is just the beginning, he knows. He must push further, and perhaps in a while he will be surrounded by all the familiar mosaics of Hell: the fire, the brimstone, the usual. Or was that simply the Hell he knew as an angel, instead of the hybrid he is now?
Too much thinking, and he shakes his head, punches the radio, and static comes in. "No," he decides sharply, because he wants music to drown out his thoughts and he wants it now, dammit.
He thumps the dashboard with a fist, and suddenly the radio chirrups and a transmission breaks through. According to Bobby there hasn't been radio since things fell apart and Castiel knows there isn't radio in Hell, even if Crowley's piped Blue Danube might still be playing as the late, unlamented King's endless line shuffles forward before looping back on itself. And that wasn't even proper radio, not like the station that Dean tunes into when he's holed up at the back of Singer Salvage with the guts of a classic car scattered around him on the floor of Bobby's auto shop, sorting out replacement parts for his baby.
No, they don't have that kind of radio in Hell.
Only now it seems they do, as a voice filters in through the static and magnifies.
Castiel doesn't know the song or the singer, but he lets it play because it sounds like the kind of thing Dean would listen to during their long drives through rustbelt cities and one-horse towns, through suburbs and abandoned places back in the world; along roads just like this one, because they all look the same at midnight, under the silver of moonglow. There's an hour when the dew hits and mist creeps up from the ground, and this is what Castiel drives through now, taking his time at a sedate forty miles per hour. He can make out stars revolving above through the trees, and from time to time he thinks he sees a face in the mist, a figure, but just as he draws closer it dissipates like a mirage.
He keeps his hands steady on the wheel and time stretches on like the road, and the road is long, so long that Castiel believes hours might pass while the radio plays in the background of the humming engine with the needle balanced over the red line, reading E. He doesn't know how the car keeps driving. It just does.
He finds himself falling asleep behind the wheel, thinks, highway hypnosis, and recalls Dean telling him about it on a long, meandering drive through deep-south humidity, Sam tucked in the backseat, snoring and drooling onto the leather.
Between the vibration of the engine and that syncopated line, you just fall asleep, Dean warns him again inside his head. So you have to be smarter than that, keep yourself aware, awake. Just that moment of comfort can cost you everything.
Castiel rolls down the window to feel the bite of wind in his face, and he turns the music up. He remembers what Dean taught him but he wonders if any of it is really relevant in this place where the road doesn't end, doesn't curve, doesn't meet with crossroads or intersections, but just goes on, and on, and on.
From dim memory, Castiel can hear the ghosts of conversations past, voices traded during midnight rides between cities and motels, Dean earnest, because it meant something to him, saving people, hunting things.
You feel yourself drifting. You want to pull over and grab some sleep and yeah, sometimes that's what we do. But I don't like that. Someone's waiting for us, you know? There's families out there, people in need, and if we don't get there, they could be on some vamp's dinner menu. Or a werewolf's. Or just a garden-variety haunting.
Castiel supplies his part of the conversation softly, like he had back then. "How do you deal with it?"
Don't fall asleep. Don't stop. Don't give up. I keep the faces of everyone I ever helped on a hunt with me. They keep me on the road.
Castiel reaches up to adjust the rearview mirror and he catches the familiar pattern of leather seating and then the smooth lines of Dean's shirt, his muscles flattening the fabric with their pressure and his easy slouch as he sinks into the vintage upholstery. He occupies it like he was born in the car. Just keep your eyes on the road, he instructs with a casual wave of his hand, as he scans the verge that races past. I got it under control. This is the way through.
Castiel fakes a derisive snort. "Do you have a road map for Hell back there?"
Dean smiles, the slow curl of his lips sensuous, and his eyes are iridescent in the pale orange sodium lights that dot the endless highway.
I can do you one better, buddy boy. We can try GPS.
Castiel smiles back, whispers, "We aren't in the world anymore, Dean."
Dean winks, a fold of green. Not the Global Positioning System. Get with the program, sport. It's the Gabriel Positioning System down here.
Castiel inhales, and only now does he realize just how heavy the atmosphere of comfort that surrounds Dean is; how even Dean's phantom presence arouses every latent memory of love, and joy, and ease, even as it scores him through with grief. Heat blazes out from the scar on his chest and he presses his hand to it, stifles a cry as another familiar voice echoes deep inside his head, calling his name. It sounds like Sam but Sam isn't here, and Castiel finds it easy to ignore because Dean's face is rippling like water swirling down a drain, and now Gabriel's face is in its place, his eyes crinkling and his grin crooked and snarky. In his hand is a Pepsi can, and Castiel can make out the beads of condensation dripping onto his fingers where he grips it.
What, you didn't miss me, brother? Gabriel taunts, and there in the background is Sam again, Cas, come on, almost as if he means to ground Castiel in reality.
"You're not real," Castiel says, his disappointment welling bitterly. "Neither was Dean. It's just…Hell. Like echoes of all of you. Like ghosts in a haunted house."
We could be real…
"Or you could be here to lead me astray."
Clever boy! his brother declares with a wink. But why on earth would we do that, Cas? I mean, we don't want you to leave. We want you to stay. Forever and ever. And wasn't that the plan from the get-go? You were supposed to be here with the rest of us. Your smackdown with the Beast was supposed to be a one way voyage on Lake of Fire Cruises, but you let boy-hero take the fall.
The radio crackles through Paint It Black, and then the Keith fuckin' Richards, hell yeah guitar riff fades into a sugar-sweet harmony, she's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care, before static crackles again. Castiel hisses, turns the dial left and right, then left again, until the volume peeters out and all they are left with is the faint rumble of the engine and the vibration of the struts as they float aimlessly across the blacktop like a ship adrift at sea. Behind him, his brother scoffs again, are those tears? and Castiel's frustration sears like inflammation, the patience he used to know so well and exercise with Dean lost somewhere on this odyssey. "I'm not human, not completely," he snaps, although he's not entirely sure if he's speaking to himself or the grinning apparition in the back seat. He swabs the wetness away from his eyes. "I don't cry. So if you've come for tears, go somewhere else."
Oh, you'll cry, Gabriel assures him, and his jocularity is gone. Especially if you think you can use it to put out a fire. A lake full of it. He leans back in the seat and laces his hands behind the back of his neck, as though he's reclining in a hammock with an ice-cold six pack at his feet, and he smirks. What is your plan, anyway short-bus? Don't you know how this road works?
"You're not real," Castiel persists. "I'm in the car alone and I'm arguing with myself."
I thought that was Sam's job, Gabriel points out, and suddenly his face is a twisting mire of flesh tones and facial structures, and his face pulls into Sam's familiar expression of gentle compassion, his listening face, the deep hazel of his eyes softening with every tale of woe, as though he takes on each stranger's sorrow for his own. Castiel wonders if that was a quality burned into him from the night his mother died onward, for all of time, as Sam's lips form words, pleading, Cas, come on, man.
Castiel pulls his eyes away from the mirror. "You're not Sam, either."
Well, what's a guy gotta do to get you to trust him?
Not-Sam shifts so he sits up in the seat, and he laces the fingers of both hands over his heart as he begins to sing, an alto of surprising strength, close your eyes, give me your hand, darling, can you feel my heart beating? Do you understand, do you feel the same? Am I only dreaming, or is this burning-
Caught out, and Castiel is triumphant. "Dean doesn't like that song, and Sam has better taste."
Don't talk shit about the Bangles, idjit!
Sam's long hair is gone, eyes shadowed by a threadbare baseball cap whose team insignia has faded beneath the force of a South Dakota sun. Bobby is as weathered as the tombstones that jutted haphazardly out of the soil in Colt's cemetery, sand-blasted by years of hunting, and he's typically stern and forbidding as he waggles a finger and lectures Castiel.
Dean used to sing that song to Sam to make him laugh and forget about what dear old sainted John Winchester was up to in the middle of the night with a forty-five and a prayer.
"Actually, that sounds like something Dean would do," Castiel admits.
Maybe he'd tell you himself, but you won't turn up the volume.
"Is that supposed to be a hint?"
Bobby sighs and then winks out like a light.
The radio snaps on again, and suddenly a woman is singing about clouds in her coffee, clouds in her coffee, and how Castiel is so vain he probably thinks the song is about him. It's a distraction, he tells himself; all of it is, distractions he doesn't need. Or perhaps this is a Hell of his own making, like those philosophers posited, a change in perception fueled by his waning grace and impending humanity. How many transmutations will it take, from angel to human and back again, from angel to God to this mongrel he is now, before the world as he knows it begins to look unrecognizable, before he is unrecognizable? Will Dean know it's me? he thinks frantically, and the hard smack of his palm onto his scar is purely instinctive.
When Castiel's fingers fall into the familiar grooves of Dean's handprint, he thinks that for an instant the thrum of the road and this eternal midnight falter. There is a flash like a spark that reminds him of that night in Pontiac, when he strode through the barn doors and the lights blew out above him in a thousand pinpricks of light. But then there is nothing but a brief flare of flame that erupts between his fingertips before it dies again, and if there was a connection between him and Dean, screaming for Castiel from the heart of Hell, it is gone.
Castiel chokes out terror, has to force himself to breathe deep and keep his free hand steady on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Not now, soldier, Balthazar breathes in his ear, for he is a traitor too and he burns with Dean in the Lake of Fire. You don't leave anyone behind. Castiel shakes his brother out of his head, focuses on his quest, but the fear that he might not succeed still seethes fitfully inside him. "It doesn't work," he whispers. "Dean, the link doesn't work. How am I going to find you if it doesn't work?"
He turns on the high beams as he careens along, pushes the pedal down until it grinds into the floor. The Impala races faster, Castiel's hands tighten on the wheel, and somewhere in this exhausting anxiety he drifts without thought as the hours turn into days.
Castiel sees the boy standing on the roadside at the last minute and almost clips him as he hauls the steering wheel to his left so that the big car fishtails clumsily, her tires tearing up grass and dirt as she skids to a halt. He peers up at the rearview mirror as the boy turns around, and he gasps, his eyes widening with his astonishment.
He's already leaning over to pull the handle and push open the door as the boy comes trotting up the shoulder, and as he draws close Castiel can make out the awkward sway of his arms poking through the sleeves of his black shirt and grass stains on a pair of old, unwashed jeans. He grabs the open door with one hand, stares in, and what Castiel sees steals his breath away.
"Dean," he croaks, his voice sandpaper rough because his throat has seized up from the long weeks of silence since Bobby flickered and vanished.
"Nope. I'm Vassago," the boy answers as he all but dives in, gangling arms and legs everywhere at once. He slides across the leather and looks over the interior of the car as though he's inspecting it to his satisfaction.
Castiel hasn't seen Dean for all the long weeks since he first drove the Impala through the portal, but he has known Dean down through his skin to his very molecules, through every hidden memory and every thought, both intimate and objective, and the teenager sitting beside him in the car is Dean. There's no mistaking it, even though the name he offers rings a distant alarm bell that clangs not, and even though Castiel can vaguely hear Sam's voice of reason cutting through it all from far away, Dean isn't here, Cas…
"Word is you're looking for this Dean guy," Vassago offers nonchalantly, and he winks in a way that stabs Castiel in the heart as he reaches across to clunk the passenger door shut.
"Have you seen him?" Castiel manages. "Do you know where he is?"
Vassago snorts. "Don't you know?"
Riddles, and Castiel blinks. "No. Where is he? Please…tell me."
"Look," Vassago says, and he sidles closer to Castiel with a glance around the wilderness, as though someone might overhear them, before he leans in conspiratorially. "Did you think to check the car before you started riding off every which way and getting your damn fool self lost?"
Castiel frowns, searches the boy's green eyes, with their stitchings of brown, and he is so hungry to find Dean's soul shining inside them that he has to make himself pull back and consider that what he is dealing with is not human. This thing beside him in the car is playing on his heartstrings by wearing the face of someone he loves so fiercely that he will lose all sense of purpose and direction if he doesn't make an effort to remain detached. But oh, it is so hard. "Come on," he dares finally. "I have no patience for your games."
After a snort, the boy rolls his eyes. "Jeez, try the trunk, man. Isn't that where Dean keeps everything he needs?"
Castiel opens the door in an unthinking, desperate scramble, and pounds down the asphalt. The trunk lid creaks loudly as it yawns wide open, and he thinks abstractedly that Dean would grease the hinges, that they will do it together when they get back. Moonlight fills the trunk and plays across the usual weapons bag, still open from when Castiel retrieved the Colt, and Castiel stares into it as though something will miraculously reveal itself.
Nothing does.
He scrubs a hand through his hair, yells, "There's nothing here!" and his voice echoes mockingly, nothing-nothing-nothing, so that he snaps his head around and gazes out across the flatlands.
The Impala's headlights cast an eerie beam across the landscape, barren but for deformed trees whose branches twist and gnarl to form sigils against a glutinous mist. Outside of the safe confines of the car, this new version of Hell is even more desolate and hostile, and Castiel senses the malevolence of the place pressing in against him. He can feel it sliding across his bare arms, feel its cold caress at the nape of his neck where Dean likes to nuzzle warmth into his skin, feel it seeping into his pores, a creeping infection that might taint him forever now that the immunity of his grace is weakened. He has fought on myriad fields of glory through his long existence, but this place is ancient, frigid evil, and its chill sends dread coursing through him, making him long for the warm, red glow of torture he remembers from before. And move, he needs to keep moving and not stare into the wasteland, but when he tears his eyes away from it and steps to the side of the car to squint in through the quarterlight window and repeat, "There's nothing here," the shotgun seat is empty.
In the next second Castiel hears the crunch of a boot on a scree of stone and grit, turns to find that Vassago is behind him. And child-Dean is gone, replaced by a hulking giant, rake-thin and sinewy, with onyx eyes and skin like coffee with a splash of half and half.
The giant grins, flashing a row of sharpened teeth. "There will be," he says, and his fist is the last thing Castiel sees.
Castiel comes round to the taste of blood in his mouth, and it is half so bitter as the aftertaste of regret. He thinks it was a stupid trick, a ruse he should have seen coming a mile away; thinks that Dean would have known.
He jounces with every imperfection in the pavement, hears the rush of momentum beneath him as the wheels press hot rubber over ground, and an array of weapons clunking against each other under the false bottom of the trunk and inside the weapons duffel he is curled against. He has an arsenal at his disposal and no way to reach it, tied and trussed as he is, like a pig ready to be spit-roasted.
He strains at the cords that wind around his wrists and hands and cut cruelly into his flesh, mouths at the duct tape Vassago slapped over his face and tastes its bitter glue with a curse. How long have we been on this road? he thinks desperately, as he squirms against the rough surface of the trunk interior.
How much time has passed?
He thinks that it has been days.
He suspects that it could be weeks.
He worries that it could be months.
"Try years!" Vassago sings out from the front, and his voice slithers silkily through the back of the bench seat like a snake in the grass, before the sound of radio static snaps on and grows louder, cutting in and out through snatches of music until it settles and the sound of a guitar riff filters through to the trunk.
Castiel hears it only vaguely, beguiled by the notion that years might have passed for him down here even though it should come as no surprise after the four decades he spent here the first time, decades that added up to mere months back in the world. The second time he had been newly minted and stronger, raised at the hand of God, or so he thought, and the journey to the Cage and back had taken much less time.
He finds himself pondering his aimless drift through the wasteland before the demon waylaid him, and he considers his perception that this is not the Hell he knows, that this Hell is different. It has been stripped bare in the absence of Lilith and Alastair, without Crowley's iron hand at the tiller and the threat of Lucifer's return looming large. This Hell has been left to decay and ruin, and its miasma of atrophy befuddles and confounds his mind, spins his sense of direction until he has lost his true north. Everything is ephemeral, even memories he thought would be etched in stone. What is the name of the old man whose eyes soften when he thinks Castiel isn't looking, the man who offered him a home and calls him son, and what is the name of the man's dog? Who is the child he can see in his mind's eye, the girl with eyes like his own? And who is the pearl-skinned demon he kissed despite being repulsed by the misshapen, unholy fiend that roiled beneath her human veneer, the one who called him…what did she call him? Not his name, and that seems fitting because he can't recall what her name is.
They are important, he knows, but their identities are lost to him.
If he spent enough time here, trapped in this place, would he soon forget Sam too?
And would he forget Dean, the tidal pull of him, the longing of both separation and proximity? Would he forget the stolen kisses, the torrid nights, the way his bold, brash lover becomes something soft and tender in the dark, the way he gazes at Castiel through half-lidded, lust-dazed eyes as he worships him with tongue, teeth, trailing hands and teasing fingertips? Would he forget that Dean loves him, would he forget how Dean felt under him and around him as Castiel claimed him for his own?
Castiel suspects that given enough time, nothing withstands the amnesiac eternity that shapes this new Hell.
Years, has it been years? he marvels again, and he finds himself wondering why he came at all. He tries to navigate through this dementia that has cast his recollection in murky fog, searches through the ragged holes in his memory to find the reason for his quest.
I'm looking, he thinks. I'm looking… looking for…
And he spends a long time trying to recall the name of the thing he lost that he wanted back so badly, but can no longer remember.
The road goes on. And on. And on.
There is a wound on Castiel's chest that burns, and when he looks down he can see it glowing red through his t-shirt, but he doesn't know how it got there or what it means. When he seeks within himself for the remaining shreds of his grace to aid him, there is no weight to his light and energy; both are spent, dissipated, leaking from him like marrow from a smashed bone. Whatever is left isn't substance enough to fight back with, so he lets go with a sigh, starts to sing to himself softly, a song someone he can't put a name or face to taught him, hey Jude, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better, as he waits for the road to end.
And then an incredible thing happens.
The car stops.
Castiel wriggles like a worm, all invertebrate muscle and no bones or joints, twisting onto his back so he faces the opening of the trunk, and in his head he is going over every scenario, how to thrust his bound legs out heels-first, into Vassago's face to knock him backwards; how he will scramble to escape and cut himself free. Will he have to kill Vassago first? Castiel digs in with his awkward, clasped, immobile hands and listens, breathes in the Impala's sweat, and it smells like motor oil and gasoline.
A door opens and slams closed. Castiel hears muffled speech and there is more than one voice, the lilt of a woman speaking, and then another. He lists to the side, pushing his ear against the metal of the wheel well. The voices are low but he recognizes Vassago's baritone, and then an uptick in the conversation as it becomes more heated. Words filter through.
"Tweedledemon, I suggest you get back to wherever you came from-"
"Oooh, he's gettin' testy now."
"I'm the crown prince of twenty-six legions of demons, Tweedledumber. This means I'm not to be trifled with."
"You used to be a nice guy, Vassago. I know that ain't your car."
"I bought it. Fair and square."
Castiel kicks out and screams as best he can behind the barrier of duct tape. He tastes plastic as he kicks again, all feet and knees crashing against metal, until he pauses and listens to the silence from outside.
"Oh, that? That's nothing."
"Sounds like something, all right. You got contraband? You know we can't let you smuggle, Vassago. Rules is rules."
Vassago clears his throat loudly. "You really ought to treat me with more respect than that."
"We don't trust rats. And we know you dabble with those mudmonkey souls more than you should. So why don't you open the trunk and show us what you got?"
Castiel stills and listens to the scuffle and scrape of feet over gravel and dirt. The footsteps pause before the trunk catch, and he hears the sound of Vassago fumbling with the keys, and then the grating sound of metal shifting as the trunk opens.
Moonlight pours in, and Castiel scents brimstone on the air, but he has only a second to appreciate the view of the night stars and the inverted Milky Way scattered above before Vassago stands above him, bisecting his view of the pinprick lights and the sinister forest surrounding them. Beyond Vassago are the twisted faces of low-grade demons, their darkened skin bubbled and raw in their true forms, the withered remains of the humans they began life as barely apparent.
Castiel cries out behind his duct tape gag, cringing deeper into the trunk.
"Lookit that shit! He's smuggling a fuckin' angel in! Holy shit…"
Vassago does a funny thing, then. He winks at Castiel, his eyes flaring yellow for a fraction of a second. Before Tweedledemon and Tweedledumber can stop their hoots of excitement at discovering angel contraband in the back of a Chevy Impala, Vassago swiftly reaches down a hand to Castiel's lower back. He whips it up again grasping the Colt, snapping back the hammer before he turns and sets the butt of the gun over his left forearm to steady his aim. He shoots once, twice. The first demon goes down with the same vapid expression of delight on his face as the woman demon beside him. She has the sense to show fear before the bullet plugs her square between the eyes, and then they erupt into flame, dispersing their energy into the night.
Vassago huffs with annoyance and looks down at the Colt before he returns to staring at Castiel. His face is neutral, his eyes still burning sulfur yellow.
"You understand the kind of trouble we're in?" he says, not unkindly. "Now you just sit tight, kiddo. Hell ain't what it used to be. It feels. It senses. Especially bright ones like you. It knows you're somewhere around here, so I need you to be quiet inside, okay? Quiet, deep down. Don't be thinking about your sweetheart, you dig? You think too loud, and Hell will find you. And when Hell finds you, you don't get out. Upstarts like Crowley and even the grand master badass Lucy thought they had ownership rights on Hell, but you can't own what enslaves you. So…you be quiet for me, pretty little angel. Huh?"
Castiel wonders if this is a demon who has been tortured for so long he has gone mad, but his yellow eyes give all the indication Castiel needs to know that this is an old one, as old as Azazel and maybe even older. Azazel? he muses then. Where do I know that name from? And the name Vassago tolls that same warning klaxon it did before, but Castiel is so tired he can't remember where he heard it, and most of all he can't remember the one he swore he would never forget.
"Hey," the demon's voice cuts in. "You listening?"
Castiel stares up, nods obediently.
"Good," Vassago grins, and looks at the Colt. "I'll keep this with me for insurance. I'll give it back later."
And he closes the trunk and shrouds Castiel in pitch black again.
Castiel thinks he sleeps, and in the tiny slice of death that is heavy slumber he hears a syncopated, dull thud like an arrhythmic heartbeat far, far in the distance. He dismisses it and sleeps on but it remains, stitching haphazardly through his rest while he drifts, dreaming a jumble of incoherent images. He thinks he dreams of a man who smells faintly of bourbon, a man who sits beside him in this car that transports him and gives him a wry smile as he passes him a bottle. The man has green, green eyes, a faint smattering of freckles over his cheeks and he blinks lazily at Castiel and asks how he's doing, his voice a familiar drawled-out rumble, a patchwork of accents from a splintered life spread across too many states.
Castiel wants nothing more than to cant his head and touch tender lips to the man's, but before he can say this he is shaken awake by the halting of the vehicle. He hears the squeal of rubber as the tires skid across the surface and he rolls in a painful jumble of limbs from one side of the trunk to the other, ending up lying on his back like a turtle, staring up into the dark.
He hears the faint thud sound in the distance again.
He thought it was a dream-
thud
-but it beats as steadily as ocean waves crash onto the shoreline, and now Castiel becomes aware of a pounding boom just behind the sound. It is forbidding, threatening, like the footfalls of a giant a thousand miles away from here but drawing closer with every second, and Castiel wants to bury himself in a hole until the sound stops along with whatever is making it.
Running steps patter around the car and then there is a rush of air as the trunk creaks open again and Castiel is staring at someone new.
There is a moment of silence as the man regards him, and Castiel makes out a circle-flare of light around the man's head before it is gone, winked out of existence as the newcomer reaches down and rips away the duct tape.
Castiel winces and licks his lips. "Thank you," he ventures uncertainly, while the man stands there expectantly.
"Well?" the man challenges, and he raises an eyebrow.
Castiel tilts his head quizzically, asks, "Do I know you?"
"Know me?" The man throws up his hands. "Bro. Think harder. It'll come to you."
Castiel blinks. The man's face looks like a malleable wad of silly putty, meandering through any number of amused, bemused, indulgent expressions beneath a mop of brown hair, and he has eyes the color of mud. He waits with an air of patience for Castiel to reach some great conclusion, and when Castiel continues to stare without deducing anything at all, he sighs and reaches into his pocket, withdrawing a soda can with the word Pepsi across it.
Castiel recognizes it from an infinite number of motel vending machines across the lower forty-eight, and finally it clicks. "You're the man from the commercial."
The Pepsi guy's eyebrows arch with dramatic flair. He pops the tab and a hiss of carbonated syrup escapes. "Uh, no, little brother. That's just my vessel, Richard Speight Jr., before a certain spoiled brat of a kid brother killed the both of us and I ended up with a one way ticket to Inferno Island, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars." He leans down to pinch Castiel's cheek between his thumb and forefinger. "Don't worry, buddy. I'll admit, you weren't the smartest doll off the Precious Moments factory line, but ye olde Highway to Hell can do a number on you."
Castiel knows he gapes. "Vessel…you're an angel." A name surfaces from the depths then, and he clutches after it like a fisherman reeling in a line. It's not the right name, but it feels close, feels right, and he blurts it out without tact or consideration. "Kali."
The man goes still with the aluminum can still clutched in his hand, which flexes to form a fist and then grinds convulsively. Soda jets out as the metal crushes and he lets it drop, staring daggers at Castiel.
"You shouldn't drop litter like that," Castiel diverts. "Are you going to help me out of here or not? And where is Vassago? Why did he bring me to you?"
"Vassago's doing you a solid and risking his neck," Vassago calls out, and Castiel dares lift his head higher to see the demon taking a leak by a stunted tree. All he can make out is Vassago's motorcycle jacket, all zippers and intimidating leather, and a flare of phosphorus yellow where he pisses a line of urine into the ground as the tree blackens and withers under the stream of noxious liquid.
"Still got no reception?" the short man asks Castiel.
"You're an angel," Castiel repeats, and after a moment of trying to parse the concept it occurs to him to ask, "But what are you doing here?"
There is a short but weighty pause. "Fallen angels get the express elevator ride straight to Hell," the man retorts lightly and he taps his temple. "Been-"
"Fallen angels?" Castiel echoes, and he gets a flat look.
"Let's not dwell," the man says, and he repeats the tapping motion and backtracks. "Been on that road for a while, huh? Spacing out? Memory like a sieve? No matter. It just means we get to do everything all over again. My name's Gabriel, you've-"
"The Gabriel?" Castiel queries faintly, and the smaller man preens.
"The Gabriel. You've already met my sometime associate, Vassago."
"I find lost shit," Vassago interjects as he zips up and ambles over, idly kicking a stone across the faded meridian.
Again Castiel hears the faint thud-boom in the background, and it momentarily distracts him. "What's that noise?" he wonders aloud.
"That, kiddo, is going to jog your memory," Gabriel informs him, and when the smaller man winks, Castiel likes it not at all.
The noise sounds again as Gabriel sidesteps around Castiel, muttering something about Rambo and overkill, and leans on the lip of the trunk for a bare instant before he snatches his hand back along to a vibrant strobe of light. His eyes widen as he slants his gaze back to Castiel.
"It's her grace," Castiel explains, and he knows this more than ever now, as he reaches to touch the metal himself. A hazy bluish light emanates from her dusty skin to bathe his fingertips, and again he is caught by its familiarity and comfort.
Gabriel grunts noncommittally, disturbing Castiel's brief reverie as he bends in to heave the weapons duffel out and on to the ground. The angel squats down, his hand streaking into the bag to grasp one of the short, lethal silver blades poking out from the jumbled collection of knives, semi-automatics and crossbows. "You kept my sword," he remarks softly, as he runs a thumb along the edge.
Castiel has no real memory of where any of the swords in the bag came from, but he nods anyway.
The man returns the small gesture, says, "I'm touched." He returns to his examination of the bag's contents, clears his throat in what seems a critical way as he sifts through the interior. "That's quite a killing spree, little brother. Isn't this Rachel's?"
"I…don't really remember." And it's true, Castiel is racking his brain as he stares at the weapons, but there is nothing, just a nebulous fog he can't see through.
"Oh, that'll all come back to you too," the man says. "In fact-" He stops abruptly and Castiel hears a barely perceptible out-breath, sees his shoulders tense as he withdraws another sword. It's different from the others, the blade longer, the hilt covered with intricate designs. Gabriel holds it up in front of him, turns it so that Castiel can see a curved sigil etched into the metal under the crossguard, and he whistles with something that sounds like awe. "I know someone who'll be pretty damned happy to see this," he says, and a wicked smile curls his lips up as he admires the rest of the weaponry. "Sure you brought enough?" he adds dryly.
"The trunk has a false bottom, so there's more ordnance should we need it," Castiel tells him. "I came prepared because I'm here to find - someone. I'm just not sure who."
He knows it comes out a little sheepishly, as though this is a matter of remembering where he put the car keys, and after another grin and a wink Gabriel says, "Like I said. We're going to jog your memory."
Vassago pulls his lips back from his fangs as he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a pair of brass knuckles and a knife. "Why don't you hang onto this?" he offers, as he holds the Colt out butt-first.
Castiel takes it gingerly and slides it back into his jeans. Gabriel looks him up and down, the examination critical, and then turns his attention back to the duffel, his eyes narrowing as he pulls out an assortment of weapons. A few minutes later, Castiel is feeling twenty pounds heavier. There are several bandoliers slotted with salt rounds slung around his neck, his crossbow is clipped in its customary position at his back, knives drenched in holy water are jammed into a holster strapped to his thigh, and a shotgun is hooked over his shoulder.
"You look beautiful," Gabriel decides, and he opens the passenger door for Castiel with a theatrical flare, as though this were a date, and the thought sounds like the kind of thing Dean would say.
Dean?
Castiel trips over the name, and there is a quickening of images that swirls into nothingness as quickly as they arrive.
"Looks like you almost had it there," Gabriel says. "Don't worry. You will soon. Now get your head back in the game, because letting Vassago get the jump on you like that?" He tsks. "Not the soldier I remember."
Just as Castiel is settling into the shotgun seat, there is a shattering noise that sends him bolt upright in choking fear, and he forgets the relentless thud-boom that never quits. When he turns to look, he sees Vassago leaning over the trunk with a tire iron in one hand, and the shattered glass of the Impala's back windshield is sprinkled all over the bench seat.
Castiel is speechless for a split second before a geyser of rage bursts out of him. "What the fuck did you do that for?"
"Better now than when the shooting begins," Vassago informs him through the ragged shards that still cling to the windshield frame. "I've eaten glass. It's no party."
The answer is even more disconcerting than the distant sound, and Gabriel slaps a hand down on the steering wheel, barks out, "Get in the damn car, we've been in one place too long as it is." He guns the engine as Vassago is slamming the back door shut, and doesn't wait for anyone to brace for take-off before he kills the lights, barrels them into motion, and cuts the wheels into a hard right.
Castiel grunts in surprise when he feels the Impala leave the numbing security of the endless highway and dig into soft soil. "Don't we need to stay on the road?"
He gets a decisive headshake in reply, followed by, "You still don't get it, do you? The road's for do-gooders like you. It just goes in a circle, round and round." Gabriel's features twist into a scowl. "It's like driving in New Jersey."
He floors the pedal then, and they rocket forward. It takes only a matter of seconds before Castiel realizes they are heading in the direction of the sound, the sound that is growing louder as they travel, shaking the leaves on the arching trees that are greater in number here in the wooded hinterland, and appear to be closing in and bending over them to scratch and tap inquisitively at the windshield and quarterlights. A shot explodes in the darkness, and Castiel sees Vassago's silhouette in the rearview mirror, cranes to look over his shoulder as the demon leans out the busted back window and fires into the darkness again.
He looks back at the narrow-featured man who stares calmly ahead as he drives, asks, "What's he doing?"
Gabriel waves a dismissive hand. "It's just the trees. Don't worry, this isn't the worst. You should see what happens when we have to use the sewers." He spares Castiel a glance and smirks, an expression that's so familiar it catches Castiel in his heart, though he doesn't know why.
If the man notices how Castiel sucks in a surprised breath, he ignores it. "I keep forgetting you haven't been to this part before," he goes on. "It's not the sort of place you send postcards from. More like the lock-your-doors-as-you-pass-through and keep-your-hand on-your-gun section. The Detroit of the Underworld."
Gabriel turns his attention back to the road again, and in profile it's easy to see that a muscle is jumping in his cheek and his jaw is clenched. It gives Castiel the impression that he's scared despite his bravado and his snarky comments.
Far above the trees is a pale hue of pink, as though the horizon is on fire. A jet of flame spikes into the sky and then recedes, and after a moment Castiel realizes it is occurring in time with the steady thud that has become a boom-boom-boom that shakes the car. Through the window he can see shapes flitting by now; twisted freaks, gargoyles, aberrations that never should be, things with scales and talons and forked tongues, things that he somehow knows are wrong even for this place of the condemned. He presses his nose to the glass to see better, jerks back with a yelp as something grotesque looms up from the half-light. "Why are those creatures here?" he gasps. "I don't think they should be."
"Bad things afoot," Vassago informs him amiably from the back seat. "The planes are coming together, ripping into each other's meat, bleeding their infection into each other's wounds. Like osmosis, and soon there won't be any barriers. Purgatory, Hell… they're becoming one reality, one disease, and the underworld is spilling its bacteria out all over your beloved place of men."
He pauses to let loose a volley of shots, and as the gun blats, the Impala launches into a whirling three hundred sixty-degree turn, Gabriel spinning the steering wheel energetically even as he shakes Castiel off his shoulder. The car pegs three demons at the back end, crushes them under her thundering wheels in a grind of bone and tissue that splatters upwards and curves its glutinous way down onto the trunk lid.
"Jaywalking's a capital offense in my book," Gabriel quips.
Vassago makes a gleeful hooting noise, and when he glances back at Castiel, his face is streaked with ichor and gristle. And then they are plowing once more through earth that might not be earth at all. Where demon blood spatters the Impala's hood, Castiel can see the paint job smoke and singe as it burns away into ash beneath a faint blue-white glow of grace before vanishing. Castiel studies the side-view mirror, finding the view hypnotic. He thinks he sees things buried in the crust of the earth as they blur past, struggling neck deep in mud and waving their many hands. He had wondered what those ominous thumps beneath the chassis were, and there they are, deformed fiends birthing themselves from the poisonous womb of the Pit.
Before long the forest grows patchy, but Vassago remains with his hand white-knuckled on the back seat as he leans out the broken back windshield. Castiel can see him casting his eyes up and around them every few minutes, as if he's expecting something to descend from the midnight sky, and when he catches Castiel's gaze he pulls a face of mock horror. "Here be dragons."
The steady boom-boom grows louder as they breach the treeline and bounce down an embankment before breasting a slight rise.
At the pinnacle of this brief valley, the Impala's headlights dip over what lies beyond, and Castiel sees the mirror surface of a lake. For an instant he thinks it is no more imposing than a resort for older folks looking to take in the air and serenity of the countryside in their twilight years, but for the midnight blackness and the sense of fire close by - and not fire like Castiel knows fire. Vague memories trip back into his neurons, lighting a path through his brain, and he thinks of the green-eyed man who told him about the fireworks he set for his brother. A man who showed him how to flick open a lighter without using your thumb because it was more badass if you did it off the sleeve of your jacket; how to take one apart and adjust the flame so the next person to light a cigarette with it nearly burns off their eyebrows.
Dean.
That name again.
Dean understood fire like this, somehow Castiel knows it.
When he looks down across the onyx surface of the lake it seems flat black, but as they draw closer, their proximity reveals more. A ripple disturbs and distends the surface along to the resounding boom, because the sound is emanating from the water itself, and in those fractious ripples small currents of flame erupt hot blue before winking out as though they had never been there at all.
The car rolls to a stop, and the silence within the cabin is broken only by the nightmarish pounding.
"It's on fire, isn't it?" Castiel breathes.
"You remember?" Gabriel asks.
"No. Not…quite." It is there somewhere though, recall from long ago and from more recent times too. "I can feel something," Castiel continues in a murmur. "Familiarity. A memento of this place buried in the back of my mind."
"It doesn't look like it's on fire," Gabriel teases.
"No," Castiel agrees. "But it is, isn't it?"
Gabriel nods, and the mirth is suddenly gone from him. "The blue flames, the heat of the forge." His tone turns almost wistful. "This was earth. This was earth before the surface cooled, before bacteria, before the Cambrian explosion, before those really important fish, before dinosaurs, and before the mudmonkeys climbed down from their trees. This was the earth of the Great Old Ones. The primeval heart of Hell. Can you hear it beat, Castiel?"
Boom. Boom. Boom. Castiel can hear it, and he licks lips gone arid. "That's where he is, isn't it?"
"That's where they are," is the enigmatic reply.
"They?" Castiel pushes tentatively.
Gabriel shrugs. "Dean bound himself to Cthulhu and dragged the big guy down with him like a drowning. We all heard it when it happened."
"Cthulhu…" Castiel frowns, chases the name through the murk in his brain as though it will bring everything flaring back to life, and then, like a computer rebooted, he will know everything complete. It simmers beneath the shell of his consciousness, so close, so close…
"This is where we switch seats," Gabriel continues. He doesn't look at Castiel when he says it. He stares over the surface of the lake as though he's mesmerized by the flutter of blue fire that snaps across the top and then recedes. "You have to drive her down, down deep. Strap in and go, and you may as well forget about calling triple A. They don't take calls down here."
Heat, molten, and Castiel remembers it abruptly, remembers how it scalds. "It's too hot," he protests feebly. "We'll burn up. It's not possible."
Gabriel keeps his eyes fixed to the Lake of Fire. "We've got a case of Pepsi to cool us down," he quips, and his lips twist in a humorless smile. "You're right, though. We probably won't survive it. The car might give us an extra layer of protection, though. Her grace and all…who knows? Anyhoo. Balt's been expecting you, but it's this-"
Gabriel leans over to tap his first two fingers against Castiel's chest before withdrawing, and Castiel feels an electric charge of sensation there, where the handprint is burned into his skin.
"-that you need to use to find him."
Confused, Castiel asks, "Find Balt?"
"Dean," the angel corrects. "You need to use that to find Dean. So…ready for the Indy 500, bro?"
Castiel swallows. He thinks, no, and he doesn't even know what he's here for and what his motivation might be when he exits the passenger side almost mechanically, as if Gabriel's words are hiding some spell of compulsion. As they switch sides, Castiel experiences a sparking fragment of memory, armor shining like light through fire and Gabriel's face set as solemn as it is now.
He has done this before, through different means and for a different cause, but the elements are all the same, and Castiel is suddenly serene and ready. He makes himself comfortable in the driver's seat, adjusts the rearview mirror and sees Vassago reflected in it, watching the proceedings with eyes that glow red before their embers dampen to cold obsidian again, and his gaze drifts to the lake.
Gabriel doesn't bother to buckle himself in and he twists, holds his hand out, palm up and flat. Castiel hears Vassago groan behind him.
"Drama queen," the demon growls, and he leans forward to slap something that looks like a rounded shank of bone into Gabriel's hand. It winks, a glimmer of blue-white that flares for a fraction of a second before it vanishes into the ossified surface once more, and Castiel blinks because he has seen it in Gabriel's hand in some other past.
The angel's sharp features are almost reverent as he looks at Castiel. "And storms will rage and oceans roar, when Gabriel stands on sea and shore…"
And Castiel finds that he knows the prophecy, and picks it up. "And as he blows his wondrous horn, old worlds die and new be born."
There is a still moment, a moment that feels like brotherhood, before Gabriel snorts. "I'm supposed to save it for earth, but, meh, what the hell, right?" He reaches a hand out to brace himself on the dash, and his face splits in a smile as he looks at Castiel. "Hit it, kiddo."
Castiel takes a deep breath and when he does the mark in the center of his chest flares like power does on electronics, as though it is one great on button in the middle of him. It begins to throb like a burn when the deep tissue is busy dying, but there is no time to wonder at that now and Castiel fears to remember how he was scarred, or the name of the man who left it there.
He slams on the gas pedal without ceremony.
The pedal sinks to the floor and after a brief hesitation as the old car catches up with the command, the engine revs so hot and hard Castiel wonders if her pistons might break, and her valves blow, and her engine block crack like a nuclear reactor. But the rev reaches a scream and then levels out as the car jolts forward, and Castiel bites down on a cry while everything in him cringes backwards into the surface of his seat and revolts against slamming the car grille-first into the waves.
From the corner of his vision, Castiel sees Gabriel lift the horn in one fist. The archangel's eyes have become burning stones in the center of his face, reflecting the waves that surge across the surface of the lake to meet them. As Gabriel inhales deeply and presses his lips to the mouthpiece, there is a second of time that Castiel uses up deliciously, savoring every micro-fraction of it the way he remembers the green-eyed man, Dean, would savor the best liquor when he tipped a glass until every last drop was gone and sliding down the golden trail of his throat. And then there is a sound that causes a visible shockwave, the air folding and bending around them.
Gunfire rips through the engine's growl as Vassago leans out of the window and begins to shoot a steady rat-a-tat-tat, like a Chicago gangster from an old film Castiel remembers watching with the green-eyed man. The front windshield explodes outward simultaneously with every other pane of glass, and the instrument panels blow, dials spinning in every direction. Castiel can smell burning rubber and a swift glance at the side mirror reveals flames licking out from the Impala's back tires as they hit the water and shoot fat clouds of noxious smelling smoke into the air.
Castiel rocks back in his own private whiplash, knuckles sharp and bony as he grips the steering wheel, and the car is illuminated in white like a halo as they breach the surface. The temperature spikes like a kiln at the highest setting, heat billowing in through the broken window and melting everything with its simmering breath. Gabriel leans over and collapses into the concave of his chest as he blows into the horn with his eyes closed and tears streaming from his lashes, and Castiel can't hear Vassago shooting at anything now.
Liquid fire rises up to meet them and Castiel thinks he cries out, no. His shirt ignites with a vicious snap where it meets the mark on his chest, and he slams his hand there to put out the flames. When he does, the jolt is nuclear and he is at the nexus of infinite volts of energy from every dimension, and memories, memories that stutter out from his mind and then speed up to flood him with recognition.
Of course. Sam. Bobby. Gabriel. Balthazar. And Dean-Dean-Dean.
Castiel leans forward to hug Gabriel into him, away from the inferno that engulfs them. This is what he was made for: the fight, the glory of victory, and he laughs wildly with the centrifugal force of their spin as they submerge and dive full-fathom-five into deep, hot, wet Hell.
Episode 24: Redemption (part II continued)