No tea, beyond the realms of belief, dancing, and the port pixies
Hey! Look at that! My LJ had somehow saved my spn_balthazar exchange fic. It's fate. It wants to be posted. When in fact all I wanted to do was talk about how you all take advantage of my drunken state to try and get me to write disturbing things and how hasn't it been ages since I drunk posted without actually having the excuse of having gone out anywhere?
Do you remember the old days? The cold old days when I would write about how I hated kerosene and snow? I think my LJ was a better reflection of how much, at heart, I like to complain. I've become so restrained. Restraint is boring.
Mostly I've drunk all the cheap port and the sake I had left in the fridge from hanami and now I'm seriously considering telling you all about that one time with the wine. You know the one.
Well, seeing as it wants so badly to be posted, I present fic. Alcohol and fic. The ii combi of all things.
And tomorrow I'm sure I will regret nothing.
Title: This Time It Will Be Us
Rating: PG
Genre and/or Pairing: Castiel, Balthazar, Dean and Sam.
Spoilers: Vaguely up to the middle of season 6
Warnings: Violence and language
Word Count: 5,345
Summary: Written for smaragdbird for the spn_balthazar fic exchange. An amalgam of the prompts Sam, Dean, Cas and Balthazar on a roadtrip, Balthazar standing for Cas in Heaven during 4x20, and Balthazar taking care of Cas when he becomes tired from the war.
Thanks to cienna for the beta. I think.
Castiel and Balthazar and six thousand years of friendship.
.This Time It Will Be Us.
1.
It was Balthazar who first asked a question.
They were alone, or at least that was what it felt like. The sky had turned to a deep, burning red, sight dimming in his human eyes, and Castiel remembered that this was nightfall. He had seen it many times; watched the Earth turn shadowed and hidden, but it was an entirely different thing to feel the loss of warmth as the sun dwindled, to see the world around him fall away to indistinct shapes. To unknowns. Castiel had never not known anything before, and it was humbling. Uncomfortable. For the first time he understood why humans lit fires and huddled close together and sang loudly into the night around them.
"Is this the third time?" Balthazar asked, and his human voice was strange and weak and Castiel learned concern.
"I don't know." And it was another thing that Castiel did not know.
There was blood on the lips of Balthazar's vessel and Castiel didn't know how to fix that either. He told himself, he wasn't afraid. What had they to fear?
In his arms, Balthazar snorted, and Castiel wondered at how his friend had so quickly, so easily, taken to this human form. While Castiel still struggled with the shape of it, ill fitting and awkward, Balthazar sunk into his vessel as though he had been born to it.
Too easily, Castiel thought. He had settled too deeply if he could bleed this way and feel pain this way. It wasn't the way an angel should be. It wasn’t something that should be possible, and yet here they were and Balthazar’s human lungs strained for air and his teeth ground together to keep himself from crying out.
"We have a lot of things to fear, my friend," Balthazar said. "We're alone, here."
The words were sharp, and they were blasphemy, and they weren't true.
"They are." It disturbed Castiel to the core of his being how certain Balthazar sounded. "And you know it."
Castiel knew nothing. He followed orders. He was no rebel.
"Neither am I." Balthazar sighed heavily, and it sounded wet and pained and Castiel wondered at the flawed fragility of humanity. He wished he could take his brother’s pain, and it was then Castiel realised this was want. He had never wanted anything before and it was an odd feeling filled with selfishness and desperation.
"Wanting to heal someone is not selfish, you idiot," Balthazar half-laughed, and Castiel felt wry affection interlaced with the pain. "Certainly not from where I'm sitting. Lying." Balthazar grimaced and wondered how humans could stand this weakness that filled their bodies with such agony that they couldn't move. Couldn't fight. Castiel held his brother more tightly, but carefully, because his wounds were severe.
"I shouldn't-" Castiel started, wanting to tell Balthazar that he shouldn't need to want something, but Balthazar already knew this.
"I think," and the meaning and the words were foreign, and Balthazar spoke them carefully, as though he were tasting them. "I think we are a long way from Heaven."
Looking around him, looking at Balthazar, Castiel can't help but agree.
The walls of the city had long since fallen to the demons. The last of their brothers had long since fallen. Distantly, Castiel could still hear the cries and screams of humans. There could be very few left alive by now, and Castiel regretted that he couldn’t help them. He smelled burning flesh and tasted smoke and wondered if this was what Hell was like.
It was defeat, and this was another thing Castiel had never known before. For all he knew they were the only surviving angels and even though it felt like cowardice, like disobeying, Castiel couldn't bring himself to leave Balthazar alone in the hiding place he had found for them. It was little more than a depression in the fertile fields around Balkh, a ditch half-filled with muddy, cold water, but it was not in the city and it was not indoors. Castiel might've been in a human body but he didn't like the way humans hid themselves away in bricks and stone. Walls and doors made escape difficult, even if they could be better defended, and under their roofs Castiel would be unable to see the sky, their Father's sun and clouds and stars.
"They might still hear," Castiel chastised, because he could see that Balthazar meant to challenge him again. To say something he didn't want to hear, even if he could anyway. Balthazar was thinking, There is nowhere to go anyway, and I would prefer you didn't leave. Castiel didn’t argue that their Father would hear even if their superiors couldn’t, because Balthazar already knew that.
"They don't care enough to listen." Balthazar's head tipped to the side, to look over at the body of what was once a brother's vessel sprawled over the verge of their hiding place. A dead, empty thing. There are darkened shapes burnt into the grass; wings, and nothing will ever grow there again. In the dim light they look almost like the shape of their true forms; unfixed, bleeding into the existence around them. Part of it.
"All we're part of," Balthazar continued, "Is a failed show of strength. And now our garrison is decimated and the humans will know we exist and I'm fairly certain that was never part of our beloved Creator's plan."
To speak as though he could possibly know their Father's mind was the worst blasphemy Castiel had heard yet, and he closed his eyes and pretended nothing had been said.
Balthazar, though, was as loud as ever. He thought Raphael was a donkey's ass, and Zachariah was a prideful maniac, and scorned their poor planning and their woeful execution of what should have been little more than a skirmish with a band of marauding demons. But they had not been ordinary demons. Instead, their small garrison had faced creatures hand-picked and trained by Lucifer himself armed with their weapons that burned Grace and sigils that blinded them and made their human ears bleed and it had turned into a massacre.
"They didn't know." In so very many ways Castiel wasn't sure why he defended them, but they were his superiors, and he was loyal beyond all things.
"I notice," Balthazar said, "you don't say they couldn't know."
It was true. Always before Castiel had complete faith in his commanders. He had never doubted them. But now here they were with demons seeking them out and all of their brothers dead, and Balthazar torn to pieces in his arms, and Castiel could neither see nor sense any aid forthcoming.
For the first time in his entire existence Castiel felt the creeping lethargy and despair of exhaustion.
Balthazar, always willing to say what Castiel wouldn't admit, "They've left us here to die and you know it."
The sky had turned to purples and blues, and there was the promise of rain in the air. A day earlier that would have mattered, but now the world had turned silent. There were no humans to care, and Castiel thought only that the coming rain would mean the ditch filling with water, and of Balthazar’s blood polluting it. His brother was already too cold.
Beyond their hiding place, ringed with salt and blessed water and sigils drawn in Castiel’s blood, he knew the demons waited for them.
"Then," Castiel said, determined, "we shall have to disappoint them."
Balthazar's laugh was a warm thing, and Castiel touched his brother's face, and for the first time in his life he made a choice.
2.
The paths between Heaven were long, except where they were short, but Castiel preferred they were long and so they were. Especially now.
Balthazar was talking, and this was not unusual. No matter how much the archangels might disapprove the noise, the humanness of it, and frowned and asked for silence, Balthazar had yet to stop. Either he didn't care or he took pleasure in annoying their superiors. Castiel strongly suspected the latter.
"Also," Balthazar said, "I like talking."
"I can hear that," Castiel agreed, and Balthazar grinned and threw an arm around Castiel's shoulders because he liked it most of all when Castiel talked back.
"It's been too long since I heard that fine voice of yours," Balthazar lamented, and was only half joking. Castiel could not help but think that this might be the last opportunity he would ever have to speak, and Balthazar frowned unhappily.
"Don't think like that," Balthazar said, even though he had been thinking it too. Worry, distrust and fear crowded his mind, and Castiel thought, Not here, Balthazar.
He shrugged, like he didn't care, but he quieted. Despite his recklessness, Balthazar knew as well as any angel the consequences of outright disobedience.
"And despite your loyalty they're sending you there anyway." Balthazar never had been one to stay silent for long.
They passed into the Outerlands with something too close to relief. This place- disliked by the archangels for its proximity to Earth and its imperfection- was more their home than the cities of Heaven ever had been. This was where their garrison stood, utilitarian and worn with loss and sand but more welcoming for it. Familiar. For most of their existences, this place was all they had known.
"It is an honour," Castiel reminded Balthazar. "To be chosen for this mission. I could not have-"
"Why do they send you alone?" Balthazar interrupted, and his distaste told Castiel exactly what he thought of honour.
"It is the will of our Father," Castiel told him, repeating the Zachariah’s words because he knew no others. It seemed unlikely that this could possibly succeed; that he- a lower angel of no particular exception- could ever hope to infiltrate the lower levels of Hell to retrieve a single human.
Balthazar prodded at Castiel's side. "You saved me. That was pretty exceptional, and for which I am eternally grateful."
That, though had been only a handful of demons-
"Powerful demons," Balthazar pointed out.
-on Earth-
"Almost as hell-like as Hell, if you listen to our exalted masters."
-and in the domain of Lucifer he would be beyond any form of assistance, even that of their Father.
For that, Balthazar had no assurances, no reply except to take Castiel's arm and hold on. Castiel had stood before the generals and he had not been afraid. In all his existence he could never have imagined a task this important would be assigned to him, and he had told himself he didn’t doubt. Here, though, as the blinding faith of Heaven turned to the dull truth of their everyday existence, to war and loss and servitude, it was much harder to hold on to that conviction. Here, with Balthazar holding onto him so tightly that it seemed as though he might never let go, his whole being filled with uncertainty and disquiet, Castiel hesitated.
Save for its gates, Castiel had never looked upon Hell. It had been a very long time since any angel had, but there were still stories. They were warnings filled with darkness, torture, endless suffering and eternal hopelessness and the more he thought on it the more Castiel did not think he would be coming back.
"I told you not to think like that," and it was almost a plea, because Castiel's faith had always been more sure than Balthazar's. "You'll succeed." Balthazar didn't sound convinced, though. More uneasy than anything.
As they passed the boundary markers, stepped out of the protections of Heaven and into the protections of their Garrison, Balthazar leaned close, spoke quietly, "You could not go."
There was a forced casualness in the way Balthazar walked, and he shrugged when Castiel turned his eyes sharply to look at him.
"What?" he said defensively. "You could. I know some people. Anna-"
"Balthazar," Castiel hissed, because as much as he appreciated the motivation behind Balthazar's offer, he spoke treason, and to invoke Anna's name would surely not go unnoticed.
"Still," Balthazar sighed, "you overestimate how much they care."
"And you overestimate the extent of their patience."
"Patience," Balthazar scoffed, but said no more. Instead, Balthazar thought of how none who had been sent to Hell had ever returned. He thought of Anna's freedom, and the freedom of humanity, and how they would never willingly journey into the worst of all possible places for a stranger.
"The Righteous Man doesn’t deserve to be there," Castiel said. This, at least, he believed.
"You don't deserve to be there." Balthazar looked at Castiel unhappily and Castiel wished he could comfort his brother, convince him that everything would be alright. That he would be alright. But there could be no promises because Castiel didn't know how this would end, and in all their existences Castiel had never lied to Balthazar.
"I will be careful," was the best he could think to say.
There was no smell, no temperature, no wind or sun or light or dark in Heaven, even in the spaces beyond its boundaries, and yet when Balthazar stopped Castiel, embraced him with his arms and his wings and all of who he was, Castiel felt flooded with sensation. Warmth, dry earth and sand, brightness. These were the things that made up Balthazar, and Castiel returned the embrace, holding on and memorising it all. It would give him strength in Hell. It would be something to cling on to when he was alone and so very far from home.
"Just make sure you come back to me, Cas," Balthazar whispered. "Don't leave me alone with these bastards."
If it were any other time Castiel would have reproved his friend for that, but right then all he could do was to hold his brother more tightly and pray that this wasn't goodbye.
3.
It was Castiel who first demanded an answer.
"Why would you do this?" Balthazar heard Castiel say, and all the angels looked at their brother in shock and disbelief and knew that Castiel had just condemned himself.
"Do you see?" Zachariah intoned, and his voice was smug and hateful. "He is corrupted by Earth."
Of all of them Balthazar couldn't think of a less corrupt angel, but he remained silent, wishing that he had Castiel's strength, the courage to stand up for his oldest friend. It was wrong, because Castiel's loyalty was unfathomable and his motivations always good. It was Balthazar who was the one to tempt him to disobedience; that Castiel would willingly defy their superiors could only mean that something was very wrong with the hierarchy of Heaven. This, Balthazar had suspected for a very long time; when they were left to die in an irrigation ditch on the outskirts of the ancient city of Balkh. When Castiel was ordered to Hell, alone.
Balthazar held his silence, but he followed. He saw the way Zachariah's lackeys gripped at Castiel's Grace, and they held him so tightly it had to be agony. Balthazar wanted very much to cut their throats with his sword.
Ahead of him, Castiel tried to reason, "You have to see what they're doing," and the bastard to his left silenced him with a hard yank on his Grace that caused Castiel to draw inwards on himself. This was how they treated their own brother and it made Balthazar enraged. This was what he'd always told Castiel; that they were nothing but canon fodder to the higher ups, and Castiel had never answered. Had never doubted that it was their place. And he should not have been there now, with those sorry excuses for angels calling him traitor and disloyal and threatening him with Hell and death and Earth. Like Cas would be afraid of Hell after he'd single-handedly battled his way in and out of that place, and maybe the thugs remembered that- the evidence still there on the scars that criss-crossed Castiel's dark wings- because they fell silent.
As for Earth, Balthazar had some idea of Castiel's mission, but the dedication and the affection he felt from his brother for his human charges was both unexpected and dangerous. When an angel cared for a human it never ended well. It ended like this; being taken to the very highest levels of Heaven to be hidden away and discarded and executed. Or worse.
Even if Balthazar knew the hopelessness of standing against Zachariah, he wasn't about to let Castiel just disappear. So he hid in shadows that only existed so that Balthazar could hide in them. Following steadily, Balthazar dampened the sound of his presence, made himself invisible in ways he had learned from many less-than-savoury associates he had made across the millennia. Many of whom even Castiel didn't know about.
He watched as Castiel was dragged along the Halls, always headed upwards to where the walls became crumbled, half-remembered things. This was somewhere Balthazar had never been before, had barely known existed, and he wished it had stayed that way. Castiel did not belong here.
The deeper they went, the more the Halls turned to corridors that twisted and turned, maze-like and claustrophobic, so enclosed Balthazar had to draw his wings in close against his body. He wondered if he'd ever be able to find his way back, didn't dare pray for guidance in case his prayers were heard.
Gradually, Balthazar became aware of others, hidden behind the walls on either side of him. There were no doors, no windows, but he could hear something of their thoughts and their voices and knew that once, these had been angels. There was madness and despair and very little of what he heard made any sense. Just the occasional plea for freedom, or sound, or light.
They hardly noticed Balthazar's presence at all and Balthazar didn't think he wanted to know how long they'd been there.
The thought made Balthazar pause, wondering if he'd been concentrating so hard on these strangers that he'd missed the thugs locking Castiel away. He couldn't have, he told himself. He would’ve seen it. He' would’ve heard it, because he didn't think Castiel would go easily. Even so, he hurried his pace, caught up with Castiel and his escort two grey, dirty corridors up, turning a corner.
He would never have imagined such places to exist in Heaven. Except that this was certainly Zachariah's creation, and Balthazar had always suspected him of being capable of anything.
Ahead of him, the thugs, or guards, or whatever, have stopped moving, and Castiel tried once more to convince them. "This is wrong," he argued. "If you'd just listen-" But they were Zachariah's angels, and Zachariah's angels listened only to Zachariah. They shoved Castiel against the wall, pinned his wings with their will, sharp and merciless. One of the angels took his sword and Balthazar heard the scratch of metal against stone, as though they were on Earth. The sound echoed, out of place in Heaven, and Balthazar gritted his teeth.
As silently as he could, Balthazar inched closer, trying to make out the sigils the angel was carving, knowing that these were what would imprison Castiel. He would free him, Balthazar decided. He had his friends. He would help Castiel to escape and they would run away to Earth and not look back.
(He knew, even as he memorised every line and curve, that it would never happen. Castiel would never agree. They would never be able to run forever. It was hope though, and Balthazar had to do something.)
With a flash almost as bright as a banishing spell, the last thing Balthazar heard Castiel plead was, "Listen," and then nothing.
Castiel was gone; silenced, shut away behind the wall, Balthazar supposed. All he could do was hide himself behind layers of diversion and sigils drawn in dirt that shouldn't have existed and wait until the bastards had left. They moved too slowly, looked too pleased with themselves and Balthazar wanted to hurt them in a way he had never wanted to hurt his own kind before.
Cautious, because he knew how tricky and paranoid Zachariah could be, Balthazar waited a long time in the cool shadows of his own creation. Trying not to listen to the voices of angels driven mad by loneliness and absence and despair around him, trying to ignore the fact that he couldn't hear Castiel at all.
Time had never meant very much before, but now it crawled, and Balthazar wondered if he'd be missed. There were still demons to fight; seals to defend. Or, if Castiel was right, to lose. The thought was sour, tasting of betrayal and disbelief. But unlike most of his brothers, Balthazar knew Castiel and knew when to trust him. His was always the truth.
When finally he felt it had been long enough, that he was safe, Balthazar stepped carefully along the wall where Castiel had disappeared. He placed his hands to the cold construct and in that instant the voices of those damned to languish here were loud in his mind, so loud that Balthazar recoiled. This wasn't a prison, he realised. It was fucking torture.
Desperately, searching out Castiel’s familiar presence, Balthazar ran the very edges of his awareness against the wall, calling Castiel’s name. He couldn't be gone already. He couldn't be like them. But Balthazar knew as well as any other angel that time wasn't fixed here. That Castiel could have been trapped for years or centuries or millennia and all while Balthazar had been sitting on his arse doing nothing.
It was with immense relief that Balthazar found, heard, Castiel's stern, "Balthazar."
"Castiel." He held on to the name and on to the familiar disapproval. The sigils Zachariah's bitch angel had carved were gone, sunk into the wall and into Castiel and it made Balthazar angry that he couldn't see Castiel. Just a wall and his own Grace pressed against it.
"You shouldn't be here," Castiel said, and Balthazar thought, That's gratitude for you, but really he was glad, because it was so Castiel.
"I'm here to break you out, my friend." It was stupid, because they both knew he wasn't really.
For a long time he stood there, holding onto Castiel's presence, remembering the shape of it and the sense of it, and wondering if Anna had the right idea all along.
"Don't think like that," Castiel told him, too gently, and it reminded Balthazar of how they’d parted before Hell. Before Righteous Humans and all this shit. He wanted to ask why, but he already knew.
"How can you still have faith, Castiel?" he asked instead. "We should at least try."
"There is no escape from here, you know that." Not alive. Not without Balthazar ending up exactly where Castiel was right now. At the periphery of Castiel's consciousness Balthazar could hear the echoes of pain and longing and insanity.
Another long pause, and maybe days passed, or hours, because Castiel was growing unfocused, distant, a shade of his former self. Balthazar was certain that when he let go, when he left, the Castiel he had known for so, so long would be gone.
"Maybe not," Castiel said, but it wasn't as certain as before.
He couldn't listen to this. "Come with me anyway," Balthazar begged, reckless and desperate.
Castiel didn't answer, instead withdrew further and said, "You once asked me if this was the third time."
When he thought he'd been dying, on Earth, back when they weren't young, but were younger. He'd already felt old when the Earth was new and had wished for the peace of those earliest times when they had all felt their Father's touch with every breath. It had felt like the apocalypse back then in that ditch as he bled all over Castiel and cursed the archangels- the third time- and Balthazar realised he would've been glad for the end to come.
"That's why," Castiel said, "they want it to be the end too."
As though that justified what Zachariah had done to Castiel. What he was still going to do.
"It doesn't." But this was their third goodbye and it would be their last. This, Balthazar knew. "But it's why I can't let it happen," Castiel explained and none of it made any sense at all.
"Have faith," Castiel said, and it made Balthazar remember what being skewered through the stomach felt like.
In the end it wasn't Balthazar who let go, it was Castiel. Balthazar would have stayed there forever, and maybe that would've been the cruellest thing of all; to keep a sliver of sanity, to know where you were and why you were there. Without that grounding, without that link to a world outside that was filled with light and movement and memory, there was nothing to be other than an echo against a wall in a dusty corridor.
Much later, Balthazar saw what they had made Castiel in to, and he found he had no faith left at all.
4.
It wasn't stalking, Balthazar told himself.
Following Castiel was not stalking. It was brotherly concern. It was distrust of humans. Particularly those humans, who had been Castiel's downfall over and over again. It was logical. Made sense. Perfectly understandable and reasonable and not at all strange or overprotective.
"It's pointless," Castiel said, and Balthazar had thought he was better at hiding than that.
Castiel's amusement was something he hadn't felt for far too long. "Not from me."
From the front seat, Dean asked, "Talking to yourself, Cas?" Balthazar could see him smirk. "That's a sign of madness, you know."
What did Dean Winchester know of madness.
"I'm speaking with Balthazar," Castiel told him, and Balthazar felt glee at the way Dean's grin fell and he hunched his shoulders around the wheel of his car, annoyed.
"Well you can tell that dick to go the fuck away," he snapped, and- oh- just for that Balthazar took form in the seat beside Castiel. Sam, at least, looked at him more with calculating interest than with open hostility.
"Oh for-" Dean bitched, because he was a bitch, but didn't swerve or jump or look all that surprised by Balthazar's appearance in the backseat of his vehicle. Castiel, it seemed, had been training Dean well.
"What is it?" Castiel asked, always straight to the point, and Balthazar smiled.
"I can't just drop in? Visit my favourite brother?" He laid a hand on Castiel's shoulder- the shoulder of his vessel anyway- because sometimes it was still hard to believe that Castiel was alive. That he was himself and whole. He still had scars across his wings, and strength in his Grace. His faith was a strange, twisted thing now but it was still Castiel, and the warmth and the presence of him under Balthazar's hand was reassurance that this was real. "I haven't seen you in days," he complained.
"I’ve been busy," Castiel said, but he nodded his head to Balthazar in greeting as he had always done before. Balthazar knew better than anyone exactly how busy Castiel had been. He could see it wearing along the edges of his vessel and his Grace and wished there was some way he could make this different. Balthazar could only wish he knew some way to defeat Raphael, knew some way to make it so that Castiel didn’t look more defeated and exhausted with every passing day.
What surprised Balthazar was the way Dean picked up on the comment, like he understood something wasn't right. "Doing what?" he demanded to know.
"Things that don't concern little humans," Balthazar deflected, knowing that Castiel wouldn't want his favourite pets to know just how much of a mess he'd got himself in to.
Predictably, Dean tensed up defensive, threw back, "Asshole. You're in my car and I will banish you."
"Then you'd banish Cas too," Sam pointed out reasonably, which only made Dean scowl and mutter curses under his breath. Balthazar grinned at Sam, because he liked this one, and was rewarded with a deep frown that made Balthazar smile all the more. "We do have some holy oil left," Sam added thoughtfully.
"And there are a great many things that can be used for." Balthazar raised his eyebrows suggestively and Sam just rolled his eyes and turned away. He hadn't said no.
"Stop provoking them, Balthazar," Castiel chided, but he looked amused and relaxed in a way Balthazar hadn't seen him in years. For this, Balthazar thought, looking around the enclosed, confining interior of Dean's car, Castiel had gone to Hell and died and Fallen and given up everything. It might be funny, if it wasn't so galling.
It was never just for this. Castiel was looking at him with his vessels' big eyes, and with his true self, and whatever he was seeing was making him determined. It was for us, too.
Us, meaning angels, and how Balthazar had told Castiel six thousand years ago that their lives meant nothing to their superiors. Castiel reached out, and pressed his hand against the stomach of his vessel, where once he'd been run through with a cursed demon knife and it had hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before.
In the front, Dean asked his brother in a low voice, "What the hell are they doing back there?" and Sam leaned in closer to Dean's side and replied, "Staring at each other. Cas has his hands on Balthazar's leg. Or something. I can't see properly."
Dean was a mass of secrets and undefined emotion and denial and all he said was, "Freaking angels."
The insult made Castiel's mouth tug upwards into a half-smile and this, Balthazar realised, was where Castiel most wanted to be. He'd always loved humans too much.
They're good, Castiel said, and he was sure of it in a way Balthazar hadn't heard in a long time.
"Cassie," Balthazar sighed, because he knew Castiel hated the name. "You are a soft touch, my friend."
Castiel wasn't at all. He was fierce and skilful and had a ruthlessness that could match any archangel's. Despite everything, though, Castiel still kept his human allies safe and helped them more than he had time for. It was loyalty, Balthazar knew. He suspected it was guilt, too, but kept that to himself.
"As are you," Castiel retorted, and he was thinking of wars and prisons.
Balthazar snorted. He would deny it until his dying day. He wasn't the type to die for someone, or some cause. What life he had made for himself away from Heaven was freedom, and even if he knew it wouldn't last, Balthazar was going to enjoy every last second of it. And Balthazar was going to made sure Castiel enjoyed something of this freedom they had carved out for themselves too. Even if he did have to put up with Dean Winchester to achieve it.
"Only for you, Petal," Balthazar teased, and was rewarded by Dean's indignant spluttering.
"Jesus fucking Christ. Will you shut up with that shit? It's weird." He paused, and Balthazar could tell Dean was looking at Castiel in his rear-view mirror. "And disturbing."
"Jealousy doesn't suit you, Winchester." Balthazar gave Dean his most malicious grin.
"Jealous my ass," Dean muttered, then louder, more commanding, "If you're staying in my car there are some rules."
Now this Balthazar had to hear.
Even as Castiel’s hand fell away, and he turned his head and his attention towards Dean, Castiel thought approvingly, You're getting along.
Yes, Balthazar agreed. Tomorrow we'll be getting married.
Castiel was still close and alive and as content in that moment as could be expected. For that Balthazar would listen to Dean ranting about music and inappropriate touching, and he would gladly laugh in the human’s face. He would look to Sam's soul and see it safe, because it was what Castiel wanted. He would sit and listen to Castiel’s thoughts, to make sure he wasn’t pushing himself too far- killing himself with this crusade of his- and Balthazar would, for once, do as he asked. Just so long as they never again had to say goodbye.
.End.
Comments and concrits and insults as to my lack of sobriety loved and appreciated with all my heart.
Repeat after me: Big Bangs? What Big Bangs? Also, who writes chapters that are 14,000 words long anyway?
Do you remember the old days? The cold old days when I would write about how I hated kerosene and snow? I think my LJ was a better reflection of how much, at heart, I like to complain. I've become so restrained. Restraint is boring.
Mostly I've drunk all the cheap port and the sake I had left in the fridge from hanami and now I'm seriously considering telling you all about that one time with the wine. You know the one.
Well, seeing as it wants so badly to be posted, I present fic. Alcohol and fic. The ii combi of all things.
And tomorrow I'm sure I will regret nothing.
Title: This Time It Will Be Us
Rating: PG
Genre and/or Pairing: Castiel, Balthazar, Dean and Sam.
Spoilers: Vaguely up to the middle of season 6
Warnings: Violence and language
Word Count: 5,345
Summary: Written for smaragdbird for the spn_balthazar fic exchange. An amalgam of the prompts Sam, Dean, Cas and Balthazar on a roadtrip, Balthazar standing for Cas in Heaven during 4x20, and Balthazar taking care of Cas when he becomes tired from the war.
Thanks to cienna for the beta. I think.
Castiel and Balthazar and six thousand years of friendship.
.This Time It Will Be Us.
1.
It was Balthazar who first asked a question.
They were alone, or at least that was what it felt like. The sky had turned to a deep, burning red, sight dimming in his human eyes, and Castiel remembered that this was nightfall. He had seen it many times; watched the Earth turn shadowed and hidden, but it was an entirely different thing to feel the loss of warmth as the sun dwindled, to see the world around him fall away to indistinct shapes. To unknowns. Castiel had never not known anything before, and it was humbling. Uncomfortable. For the first time he understood why humans lit fires and huddled close together and sang loudly into the night around them.
"Is this the third time?" Balthazar asked, and his human voice was strange and weak and Castiel learned concern.
"I don't know." And it was another thing that Castiel did not know.
There was blood on the lips of Balthazar's vessel and Castiel didn't know how to fix that either. He told himself, he wasn't afraid. What had they to fear?
In his arms, Balthazar snorted, and Castiel wondered at how his friend had so quickly, so easily, taken to this human form. While Castiel still struggled with the shape of it, ill fitting and awkward, Balthazar sunk into his vessel as though he had been born to it.
Too easily, Castiel thought. He had settled too deeply if he could bleed this way and feel pain this way. It wasn't the way an angel should be. It wasn’t something that should be possible, and yet here they were and Balthazar’s human lungs strained for air and his teeth ground together to keep himself from crying out.
"We have a lot of things to fear, my friend," Balthazar said. "We're alone, here."
The words were sharp, and they were blasphemy, and they weren't true.
"They are." It disturbed Castiel to the core of his being how certain Balthazar sounded. "And you know it."
Castiel knew nothing. He followed orders. He was no rebel.
"Neither am I." Balthazar sighed heavily, and it sounded wet and pained and Castiel wondered at the flawed fragility of humanity. He wished he could take his brother’s pain, and it was then Castiel realised this was want. He had never wanted anything before and it was an odd feeling filled with selfishness and desperation.
"Wanting to heal someone is not selfish, you idiot," Balthazar half-laughed, and Castiel felt wry affection interlaced with the pain. "Certainly not from where I'm sitting. Lying." Balthazar grimaced and wondered how humans could stand this weakness that filled their bodies with such agony that they couldn't move. Couldn't fight. Castiel held his brother more tightly, but carefully, because his wounds were severe.
"I shouldn't-" Castiel started, wanting to tell Balthazar that he shouldn't need to want something, but Balthazar already knew this.
"I think," and the meaning and the words were foreign, and Balthazar spoke them carefully, as though he were tasting them. "I think we are a long way from Heaven."
Looking around him, looking at Balthazar, Castiel can't help but agree.
The walls of the city had long since fallen to the demons. The last of their brothers had long since fallen. Distantly, Castiel could still hear the cries and screams of humans. There could be very few left alive by now, and Castiel regretted that he couldn’t help them. He smelled burning flesh and tasted smoke and wondered if this was what Hell was like.
It was defeat, and this was another thing Castiel had never known before. For all he knew they were the only surviving angels and even though it felt like cowardice, like disobeying, Castiel couldn't bring himself to leave Balthazar alone in the hiding place he had found for them. It was little more than a depression in the fertile fields around Balkh, a ditch half-filled with muddy, cold water, but it was not in the city and it was not indoors. Castiel might've been in a human body but he didn't like the way humans hid themselves away in bricks and stone. Walls and doors made escape difficult, even if they could be better defended, and under their roofs Castiel would be unable to see the sky, their Father's sun and clouds and stars.
"They might still hear," Castiel chastised, because he could see that Balthazar meant to challenge him again. To say something he didn't want to hear, even if he could anyway. Balthazar was thinking, There is nowhere to go anyway, and I would prefer you didn't leave. Castiel didn’t argue that their Father would hear even if their superiors couldn’t, because Balthazar already knew that.
"They don't care enough to listen." Balthazar's head tipped to the side, to look over at the body of what was once a brother's vessel sprawled over the verge of their hiding place. A dead, empty thing. There are darkened shapes burnt into the grass; wings, and nothing will ever grow there again. In the dim light they look almost like the shape of their true forms; unfixed, bleeding into the existence around them. Part of it.
"All we're part of," Balthazar continued, "Is a failed show of strength. And now our garrison is decimated and the humans will know we exist and I'm fairly certain that was never part of our beloved Creator's plan."
To speak as though he could possibly know their Father's mind was the worst blasphemy Castiel had heard yet, and he closed his eyes and pretended nothing had been said.
Balthazar, though, was as loud as ever. He thought Raphael was a donkey's ass, and Zachariah was a prideful maniac, and scorned their poor planning and their woeful execution of what should have been little more than a skirmish with a band of marauding demons. But they had not been ordinary demons. Instead, their small garrison had faced creatures hand-picked and trained by Lucifer himself armed with their weapons that burned Grace and sigils that blinded them and made their human ears bleed and it had turned into a massacre.
"They didn't know." In so very many ways Castiel wasn't sure why he defended them, but they were his superiors, and he was loyal beyond all things.
"I notice," Balthazar said, "you don't say they couldn't know."
It was true. Always before Castiel had complete faith in his commanders. He had never doubted them. But now here they were with demons seeking them out and all of their brothers dead, and Balthazar torn to pieces in his arms, and Castiel could neither see nor sense any aid forthcoming.
For the first time in his entire existence Castiel felt the creeping lethargy and despair of exhaustion.
Balthazar, always willing to say what Castiel wouldn't admit, "They've left us here to die and you know it."
The sky had turned to purples and blues, and there was the promise of rain in the air. A day earlier that would have mattered, but now the world had turned silent. There were no humans to care, and Castiel thought only that the coming rain would mean the ditch filling with water, and of Balthazar’s blood polluting it. His brother was already too cold.
Beyond their hiding place, ringed with salt and blessed water and sigils drawn in Castiel’s blood, he knew the demons waited for them.
"Then," Castiel said, determined, "we shall have to disappoint them."
Balthazar's laugh was a warm thing, and Castiel touched his brother's face, and for the first time in his life he made a choice.
2.
The paths between Heaven were long, except where they were short, but Castiel preferred they were long and so they were. Especially now.
Balthazar was talking, and this was not unusual. No matter how much the archangels might disapprove the noise, the humanness of it, and frowned and asked for silence, Balthazar had yet to stop. Either he didn't care or he took pleasure in annoying their superiors. Castiel strongly suspected the latter.
"Also," Balthazar said, "I like talking."
"I can hear that," Castiel agreed, and Balthazar grinned and threw an arm around Castiel's shoulders because he liked it most of all when Castiel talked back.
"It's been too long since I heard that fine voice of yours," Balthazar lamented, and was only half joking. Castiel could not help but think that this might be the last opportunity he would ever have to speak, and Balthazar frowned unhappily.
"Don't think like that," Balthazar said, even though he had been thinking it too. Worry, distrust and fear crowded his mind, and Castiel thought, Not here, Balthazar.
He shrugged, like he didn't care, but he quieted. Despite his recklessness, Balthazar knew as well as any angel the consequences of outright disobedience.
"And despite your loyalty they're sending you there anyway." Balthazar never had been one to stay silent for long.
They passed into the Outerlands with something too close to relief. This place- disliked by the archangels for its proximity to Earth and its imperfection- was more their home than the cities of Heaven ever had been. This was where their garrison stood, utilitarian and worn with loss and sand but more welcoming for it. Familiar. For most of their existences, this place was all they had known.
"It is an honour," Castiel reminded Balthazar. "To be chosen for this mission. I could not have-"
"Why do they send you alone?" Balthazar interrupted, and his distaste told Castiel exactly what he thought of honour.
"It is the will of our Father," Castiel told him, repeating the Zachariah’s words because he knew no others. It seemed unlikely that this could possibly succeed; that he- a lower angel of no particular exception- could ever hope to infiltrate the lower levels of Hell to retrieve a single human.
Balthazar prodded at Castiel's side. "You saved me. That was pretty exceptional, and for which I am eternally grateful."
That, though had been only a handful of demons-
"Powerful demons," Balthazar pointed out.
-on Earth-
"Almost as hell-like as Hell, if you listen to our exalted masters."
-and in the domain of Lucifer he would be beyond any form of assistance, even that of their Father.
For that, Balthazar had no assurances, no reply except to take Castiel's arm and hold on. Castiel had stood before the generals and he had not been afraid. In all his existence he could never have imagined a task this important would be assigned to him, and he had told himself he didn’t doubt. Here, though, as the blinding faith of Heaven turned to the dull truth of their everyday existence, to war and loss and servitude, it was much harder to hold on to that conviction. Here, with Balthazar holding onto him so tightly that it seemed as though he might never let go, his whole being filled with uncertainty and disquiet, Castiel hesitated.
Save for its gates, Castiel had never looked upon Hell. It had been a very long time since any angel had, but there were still stories. They were warnings filled with darkness, torture, endless suffering and eternal hopelessness and the more he thought on it the more Castiel did not think he would be coming back.
"I told you not to think like that," and it was almost a plea, because Castiel's faith had always been more sure than Balthazar's. "You'll succeed." Balthazar didn't sound convinced, though. More uneasy than anything.
As they passed the boundary markers, stepped out of the protections of Heaven and into the protections of their Garrison, Balthazar leaned close, spoke quietly, "You could not go."
There was a forced casualness in the way Balthazar walked, and he shrugged when Castiel turned his eyes sharply to look at him.
"What?" he said defensively. "You could. I know some people. Anna-"
"Balthazar," Castiel hissed, because as much as he appreciated the motivation behind Balthazar's offer, he spoke treason, and to invoke Anna's name would surely not go unnoticed.
"Still," Balthazar sighed, "you overestimate how much they care."
"And you overestimate the extent of their patience."
"Patience," Balthazar scoffed, but said no more. Instead, Balthazar thought of how none who had been sent to Hell had ever returned. He thought of Anna's freedom, and the freedom of humanity, and how they would never willingly journey into the worst of all possible places for a stranger.
"The Righteous Man doesn’t deserve to be there," Castiel said. This, at least, he believed.
"You don't deserve to be there." Balthazar looked at Castiel unhappily and Castiel wished he could comfort his brother, convince him that everything would be alright. That he would be alright. But there could be no promises because Castiel didn't know how this would end, and in all their existences Castiel had never lied to Balthazar.
"I will be careful," was the best he could think to say.
There was no smell, no temperature, no wind or sun or light or dark in Heaven, even in the spaces beyond its boundaries, and yet when Balthazar stopped Castiel, embraced him with his arms and his wings and all of who he was, Castiel felt flooded with sensation. Warmth, dry earth and sand, brightness. These were the things that made up Balthazar, and Castiel returned the embrace, holding on and memorising it all. It would give him strength in Hell. It would be something to cling on to when he was alone and so very far from home.
"Just make sure you come back to me, Cas," Balthazar whispered. "Don't leave me alone with these bastards."
If it were any other time Castiel would have reproved his friend for that, but right then all he could do was to hold his brother more tightly and pray that this wasn't goodbye.
3.
It was Castiel who first demanded an answer.
"Why would you do this?" Balthazar heard Castiel say, and all the angels looked at their brother in shock and disbelief and knew that Castiel had just condemned himself.
"Do you see?" Zachariah intoned, and his voice was smug and hateful. "He is corrupted by Earth."
Of all of them Balthazar couldn't think of a less corrupt angel, but he remained silent, wishing that he had Castiel's strength, the courage to stand up for his oldest friend. It was wrong, because Castiel's loyalty was unfathomable and his motivations always good. It was Balthazar who was the one to tempt him to disobedience; that Castiel would willingly defy their superiors could only mean that something was very wrong with the hierarchy of Heaven. This, Balthazar had suspected for a very long time; when they were left to die in an irrigation ditch on the outskirts of the ancient city of Balkh. When Castiel was ordered to Hell, alone.
Balthazar held his silence, but he followed. He saw the way Zachariah's lackeys gripped at Castiel's Grace, and they held him so tightly it had to be agony. Balthazar wanted very much to cut their throats with his sword.
Ahead of him, Castiel tried to reason, "You have to see what they're doing," and the bastard to his left silenced him with a hard yank on his Grace that caused Castiel to draw inwards on himself. This was how they treated their own brother and it made Balthazar enraged. This was what he'd always told Castiel; that they were nothing but canon fodder to the higher ups, and Castiel had never answered. Had never doubted that it was their place. And he should not have been there now, with those sorry excuses for angels calling him traitor and disloyal and threatening him with Hell and death and Earth. Like Cas would be afraid of Hell after he'd single-handedly battled his way in and out of that place, and maybe the thugs remembered that- the evidence still there on the scars that criss-crossed Castiel's dark wings- because they fell silent.
As for Earth, Balthazar had some idea of Castiel's mission, but the dedication and the affection he felt from his brother for his human charges was both unexpected and dangerous. When an angel cared for a human it never ended well. It ended like this; being taken to the very highest levels of Heaven to be hidden away and discarded and executed. Or worse.
Even if Balthazar knew the hopelessness of standing against Zachariah, he wasn't about to let Castiel just disappear. So he hid in shadows that only existed so that Balthazar could hide in them. Following steadily, Balthazar dampened the sound of his presence, made himself invisible in ways he had learned from many less-than-savoury associates he had made across the millennia. Many of whom even Castiel didn't know about.
He watched as Castiel was dragged along the Halls, always headed upwards to where the walls became crumbled, half-remembered things. This was somewhere Balthazar had never been before, had barely known existed, and he wished it had stayed that way. Castiel did not belong here.
The deeper they went, the more the Halls turned to corridors that twisted and turned, maze-like and claustrophobic, so enclosed Balthazar had to draw his wings in close against his body. He wondered if he'd ever be able to find his way back, didn't dare pray for guidance in case his prayers were heard.
Gradually, Balthazar became aware of others, hidden behind the walls on either side of him. There were no doors, no windows, but he could hear something of their thoughts and their voices and knew that once, these had been angels. There was madness and despair and very little of what he heard made any sense. Just the occasional plea for freedom, or sound, or light.
They hardly noticed Balthazar's presence at all and Balthazar didn't think he wanted to know how long they'd been there.
The thought made Balthazar pause, wondering if he'd been concentrating so hard on these strangers that he'd missed the thugs locking Castiel away. He couldn't have, he told himself. He would’ve seen it. He' would’ve heard it, because he didn't think Castiel would go easily. Even so, he hurried his pace, caught up with Castiel and his escort two grey, dirty corridors up, turning a corner.
He would never have imagined such places to exist in Heaven. Except that this was certainly Zachariah's creation, and Balthazar had always suspected him of being capable of anything.
Ahead of him, the thugs, or guards, or whatever, have stopped moving, and Castiel tried once more to convince them. "This is wrong," he argued. "If you'd just listen-" But they were Zachariah's angels, and Zachariah's angels listened only to Zachariah. They shoved Castiel against the wall, pinned his wings with their will, sharp and merciless. One of the angels took his sword and Balthazar heard the scratch of metal against stone, as though they were on Earth. The sound echoed, out of place in Heaven, and Balthazar gritted his teeth.
As silently as he could, Balthazar inched closer, trying to make out the sigils the angel was carving, knowing that these were what would imprison Castiel. He would free him, Balthazar decided. He had his friends. He would help Castiel to escape and they would run away to Earth and not look back.
(He knew, even as he memorised every line and curve, that it would never happen. Castiel would never agree. They would never be able to run forever. It was hope though, and Balthazar had to do something.)
With a flash almost as bright as a banishing spell, the last thing Balthazar heard Castiel plead was, "Listen," and then nothing.
Castiel was gone; silenced, shut away behind the wall, Balthazar supposed. All he could do was hide himself behind layers of diversion and sigils drawn in dirt that shouldn't have existed and wait until the bastards had left. They moved too slowly, looked too pleased with themselves and Balthazar wanted to hurt them in a way he had never wanted to hurt his own kind before.
Cautious, because he knew how tricky and paranoid Zachariah could be, Balthazar waited a long time in the cool shadows of his own creation. Trying not to listen to the voices of angels driven mad by loneliness and absence and despair around him, trying to ignore the fact that he couldn't hear Castiel at all.
Time had never meant very much before, but now it crawled, and Balthazar wondered if he'd be missed. There were still demons to fight; seals to defend. Or, if Castiel was right, to lose. The thought was sour, tasting of betrayal and disbelief. But unlike most of his brothers, Balthazar knew Castiel and knew when to trust him. His was always the truth.
When finally he felt it had been long enough, that he was safe, Balthazar stepped carefully along the wall where Castiel had disappeared. He placed his hands to the cold construct and in that instant the voices of those damned to languish here were loud in his mind, so loud that Balthazar recoiled. This wasn't a prison, he realised. It was fucking torture.
Desperately, searching out Castiel’s familiar presence, Balthazar ran the very edges of his awareness against the wall, calling Castiel’s name. He couldn't be gone already. He couldn't be like them. But Balthazar knew as well as any other angel that time wasn't fixed here. That Castiel could have been trapped for years or centuries or millennia and all while Balthazar had been sitting on his arse doing nothing.
It was with immense relief that Balthazar found, heard, Castiel's stern, "Balthazar."
"Castiel." He held on to the name and on to the familiar disapproval. The sigils Zachariah's bitch angel had carved were gone, sunk into the wall and into Castiel and it made Balthazar angry that he couldn't see Castiel. Just a wall and his own Grace pressed against it.
"You shouldn't be here," Castiel said, and Balthazar thought, That's gratitude for you, but really he was glad, because it was so Castiel.
"I'm here to break you out, my friend." It was stupid, because they both knew he wasn't really.
For a long time he stood there, holding onto Castiel's presence, remembering the shape of it and the sense of it, and wondering if Anna had the right idea all along.
"Don't think like that," Castiel told him, too gently, and it reminded Balthazar of how they’d parted before Hell. Before Righteous Humans and all this shit. He wanted to ask why, but he already knew.
"How can you still have faith, Castiel?" he asked instead. "We should at least try."
"There is no escape from here, you know that." Not alive. Not without Balthazar ending up exactly where Castiel was right now. At the periphery of Castiel's consciousness Balthazar could hear the echoes of pain and longing and insanity.
Another long pause, and maybe days passed, or hours, because Castiel was growing unfocused, distant, a shade of his former self. Balthazar was certain that when he let go, when he left, the Castiel he had known for so, so long would be gone.
"Maybe not," Castiel said, but it wasn't as certain as before.
He couldn't listen to this. "Come with me anyway," Balthazar begged, reckless and desperate.
Castiel didn't answer, instead withdrew further and said, "You once asked me if this was the third time."
When he thought he'd been dying, on Earth, back when they weren't young, but were younger. He'd already felt old when the Earth was new and had wished for the peace of those earliest times when they had all felt their Father's touch with every breath. It had felt like the apocalypse back then in that ditch as he bled all over Castiel and cursed the archangels- the third time- and Balthazar realised he would've been glad for the end to come.
"That's why," Castiel said, "they want it to be the end too."
As though that justified what Zachariah had done to Castiel. What he was still going to do.
"It doesn't." But this was their third goodbye and it would be their last. This, Balthazar knew. "But it's why I can't let it happen," Castiel explained and none of it made any sense at all.
"Have faith," Castiel said, and it made Balthazar remember what being skewered through the stomach felt like.
In the end it wasn't Balthazar who let go, it was Castiel. Balthazar would have stayed there forever, and maybe that would've been the cruellest thing of all; to keep a sliver of sanity, to know where you were and why you were there. Without that grounding, without that link to a world outside that was filled with light and movement and memory, there was nothing to be other than an echo against a wall in a dusty corridor.
Much later, Balthazar saw what they had made Castiel in to, and he found he had no faith left at all.
4.
It wasn't stalking, Balthazar told himself.
Following Castiel was not stalking. It was brotherly concern. It was distrust of humans. Particularly those humans, who had been Castiel's downfall over and over again. It was logical. Made sense. Perfectly understandable and reasonable and not at all strange or overprotective.
"It's pointless," Castiel said, and Balthazar had thought he was better at hiding than that.
Castiel's amusement was something he hadn't felt for far too long. "Not from me."
From the front seat, Dean asked, "Talking to yourself, Cas?" Balthazar could see him smirk. "That's a sign of madness, you know."
What did Dean Winchester know of madness.
"I'm speaking with Balthazar," Castiel told him, and Balthazar felt glee at the way Dean's grin fell and he hunched his shoulders around the wheel of his car, annoyed.
"Well you can tell that dick to go the fuck away," he snapped, and- oh- just for that Balthazar took form in the seat beside Castiel. Sam, at least, looked at him more with calculating interest than with open hostility.
"Oh for-" Dean bitched, because he was a bitch, but didn't swerve or jump or look all that surprised by Balthazar's appearance in the backseat of his vehicle. Castiel, it seemed, had been training Dean well.
"What is it?" Castiel asked, always straight to the point, and Balthazar smiled.
"I can't just drop in? Visit my favourite brother?" He laid a hand on Castiel's shoulder- the shoulder of his vessel anyway- because sometimes it was still hard to believe that Castiel was alive. That he was himself and whole. He still had scars across his wings, and strength in his Grace. His faith was a strange, twisted thing now but it was still Castiel, and the warmth and the presence of him under Balthazar's hand was reassurance that this was real. "I haven't seen you in days," he complained.
"I’ve been busy," Castiel said, but he nodded his head to Balthazar in greeting as he had always done before. Balthazar knew better than anyone exactly how busy Castiel had been. He could see it wearing along the edges of his vessel and his Grace and wished there was some way he could make this different. Balthazar could only wish he knew some way to defeat Raphael, knew some way to make it so that Castiel didn’t look more defeated and exhausted with every passing day.
What surprised Balthazar was the way Dean picked up on the comment, like he understood something wasn't right. "Doing what?" he demanded to know.
"Things that don't concern little humans," Balthazar deflected, knowing that Castiel wouldn't want his favourite pets to know just how much of a mess he'd got himself in to.
Predictably, Dean tensed up defensive, threw back, "Asshole. You're in my car and I will banish you."
"Then you'd banish Cas too," Sam pointed out reasonably, which only made Dean scowl and mutter curses under his breath. Balthazar grinned at Sam, because he liked this one, and was rewarded with a deep frown that made Balthazar smile all the more. "We do have some holy oil left," Sam added thoughtfully.
"And there are a great many things that can be used for." Balthazar raised his eyebrows suggestively and Sam just rolled his eyes and turned away. He hadn't said no.
"Stop provoking them, Balthazar," Castiel chided, but he looked amused and relaxed in a way Balthazar hadn't seen him in years. For this, Balthazar thought, looking around the enclosed, confining interior of Dean's car, Castiel had gone to Hell and died and Fallen and given up everything. It might be funny, if it wasn't so galling.
It was never just for this. Castiel was looking at him with his vessels' big eyes, and with his true self, and whatever he was seeing was making him determined. It was for us, too.
Us, meaning angels, and how Balthazar had told Castiel six thousand years ago that their lives meant nothing to their superiors. Castiel reached out, and pressed his hand against the stomach of his vessel, where once he'd been run through with a cursed demon knife and it had hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before.
In the front, Dean asked his brother in a low voice, "What the hell are they doing back there?" and Sam leaned in closer to Dean's side and replied, "Staring at each other. Cas has his hands on Balthazar's leg. Or something. I can't see properly."
Dean was a mass of secrets and undefined emotion and denial and all he said was, "Freaking angels."
The insult made Castiel's mouth tug upwards into a half-smile and this, Balthazar realised, was where Castiel most wanted to be. He'd always loved humans too much.
They're good, Castiel said, and he was sure of it in a way Balthazar hadn't heard in a long time.
"Cassie," Balthazar sighed, because he knew Castiel hated the name. "You are a soft touch, my friend."
Castiel wasn't at all. He was fierce and skilful and had a ruthlessness that could match any archangel's. Despite everything, though, Castiel still kept his human allies safe and helped them more than he had time for. It was loyalty, Balthazar knew. He suspected it was guilt, too, but kept that to himself.
"As are you," Castiel retorted, and he was thinking of wars and prisons.
Balthazar snorted. He would deny it until his dying day. He wasn't the type to die for someone, or some cause. What life he had made for himself away from Heaven was freedom, and even if he knew it wouldn't last, Balthazar was going to enjoy every last second of it. And Balthazar was going to made sure Castiel enjoyed something of this freedom they had carved out for themselves too. Even if he did have to put up with Dean Winchester to achieve it.
"Only for you, Petal," Balthazar teased, and was rewarded by Dean's indignant spluttering.
"Jesus fucking Christ. Will you shut up with that shit? It's weird." He paused, and Balthazar could tell Dean was looking at Castiel in his rear-view mirror. "And disturbing."
"Jealousy doesn't suit you, Winchester." Balthazar gave Dean his most malicious grin.
"Jealous my ass," Dean muttered, then louder, more commanding, "If you're staying in my car there are some rules."
Now this Balthazar had to hear.
Even as Castiel’s hand fell away, and he turned his head and his attention towards Dean, Castiel thought approvingly, You're getting along.
Yes, Balthazar agreed. Tomorrow we'll be getting married.
Castiel was still close and alive and as content in that moment as could be expected. For that Balthazar would listen to Dean ranting about music and inappropriate touching, and he would gladly laugh in the human’s face. He would look to Sam's soul and see it safe, because it was what Castiel wanted. He would sit and listen to Castiel’s thoughts, to make sure he wasn’t pushing himself too far- killing himself with this crusade of his- and Balthazar would, for once, do as he asked. Just so long as they never again had to say goodbye.
.End.
Comments and concrits and insults as to my lack of sobriety loved and appreciated with all my heart.
Repeat after me: Big Bangs? What Big Bangs? Also, who writes chapters that are 14,000 words long anyway?