Fic: The Propensities of Good Men, 12/15
I gave in, I know. But in all fairness I thought our Renegade fics were due tonight before midnight, instead of tomorrow. Which means I have an extra day to work on it, which means I'll easily get it in under the deadline, which means ~*CANDY AND PIE FOR EVERYONE.*~
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 12/15
Characters: Belial, Bobby, Castiel, Dean, Sam
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7,623
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Violence, staggering amounts of angst, dark!Sam followed by epic Sam!whumping, Dean's manly tears of manliness.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
~ ~ ~
The railcar jerks in a mighty quake when the back wall rips off. Dean’s eyes dart around frantically, searching for a cause or a host of demons or even Belial himself, positive they’re fucked, surrounded, but then he glances to Castiel and the angel’s hand is slightly raised, two fingers extended in the direction of the gaping hole, and he says simply, “Go.”
Both brothers spring for the newly opened wall. They only get as far as the tracks on the other side of the car before Dean turns, though, searching the warped metal. Sam skids to a swift stop and frowns. “Dean!” he calls, but Dean doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move at all. “Come on!”
Dean turns his head sharply and braces his jaw. His mind is made up. As fucked up and stupid as it probably is, because Castiel is Castiel, he’s a fucking angel and he can look after himself, Dean’s mind is made up. “I’m not leaving Cas.”
Sam is at his side in a quick blur of motion. “This is the plan, Dean, we’ve gotta get Belial away from his army. Cas can take care of himself until then, now come on. Let’s move!”
A pause as Dean mulls it over. He doesn’t look at his brother; he can’t make himself, just in case Sam’s eyes are still yellow. He’s not sure he could stand the sight again. Finally, he glances briefly to the ground and says, “You better be right, Sammy,” and they take off in a full-on sprint paralleling the tracks.
They make it about sixty yards before they hear the first crash.
Dean grounds to a rough stop, gravel popping under his feet, and when he looks over his shoulder he immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Railcars, full building-sized metal containers, fling easily through the air, colliding with linked trains and wrenching them off-track with awful metallic groans. Some of them land on blank stretches of ground, rolling in grand, intimidating somersaults as if they weigh nothing at all. Dean feels his eyes go wide, feels his jaw slacken into a loose gape as he watches it happen.
Sam catches a grip around his arm and jerks him roughly forward. “Dean, come on!” he’s shouting, but it comes through as a muffled echo. Dean doesn’t process the words, doesn’t process the concept of them or the fact that they need to be moving, fast, as the railcars flipping violently through the air are rapidly approaching the spot where they stand. The only thought in his head is Castiel.
And then he does what he knows is probably the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his life, which is definitely saying something in a lifetime of doing supremely stupid shit - he whips his arm out of Sam’s grip and takes off in a sprint right into the eye of the storm.
“Dean!”
He’s running as fast as he can, yet he’ll never be able to get there fast enough. Yards filter by in indistinct gray blurs of metal and gravel, each one seeming more like a mile than its actual three feet. Dean can feel his heart hammering wildly behind his ribs, can feel his veins pumping hotter than battery acid, can hear Sam screaming desperately for him at his back, but all that matters is up ahead. And he knows that if he dies, the war will be lost and this whole thing will be over - Lucifer will rise, the modern world will cave in on itself and die by inches - but fuck it. Just, fuck it. He still has to try to get there. And the thought that he would put the life of one before the lives of six billion almost disturbs him, but he doesn’t question it and he doesn’t fight it. Because if he’s ever known anything in his entire fucking life, he knows that he would let the whole world burn if it meant saving Castiel. It’s selfish and it’s honest and it’s true, and he doesn’t even try to fight it.
He just runs.
But then all the breath in his lungs is gone, punched out roughly, and he’s bracing his hands against the gravel, small bits of rock and sediment embedding deeply into his skin as he is shoved roughly to the ground by a solid pressure at his back. Sam, he thinks. He’s almost angry, almost wants to just scramble back to his feet and keep running, spin around with a what the fuck? on his lips and the burn of dust in his eyes, but when he looks up he sees the forty-foot carcass of a deep indigo railcar barrel directly over his head, only a few short feet above him. And - oh. Suddenly he gets it. He almost ran right into its path; almost got himself pancaked by the damn thing because he wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention to his surroundings, a lifetime of survival instincts shoved to the side when it came down to losing Castiel. Sam saved him by knocking him down.
Sam is at his side, panting, and he’s really Sam again - eyes brown and glittering and panicked, tender and cautious and stronger than Dean has ever understood or expected. Only when Dean blinks does his hearing suddenly flare back over the deafening baritone flurry of his pulse.
The wrecked car tumbles to a groaning stop a few short yards behind where they climb stiffly to their feet. Dean can feel his knees twinging and he knows automatically that they are scraped up something awful from falling onto the gravel. His hands, too. They’re battered and bloodied, small rocks sticking every which way out of his flesh. He brushes them against his jeans when he stands, knocking some of the dirt away but increasing the pain tenfold.
Both he and Sam have their eyes set intently on the distance where they’re every bit expecting Castiel and Belial to appear next, which is why it surprises Dean so much to hear the sudden shuffle of gravel at his back. They both spin a complete 180 in such perfect unison it’s almost choreographed.
Castiel is on his feet and he’s obviously put up one hell of a fight up to this point. His coat is torn and streaked with blood, unsettling amounts of it. Dean has to wonder if all of it is his, or if some of it belongs to Belial. The demon himself, he’s slick and red-eyed and omnipresent as always, though he’s dirtier and more ragged than Dean has ever seen him, which brings a strange sort of comfort with it. They’re standing straight in front of the dented railcar, face to face but feet apart, and the tension between them is almost tangible.
“Hey there, Dean,” Belial chimes as he licks a thin stripe of blood from his upper lip. He doesn’t take his eyes from Castiel, but his body straightens slightly and he walks a few steps to his right. Castiel walks to his right in turn, keeping them perfectly parallel. “Good to see you again,” he finishes, voice dripping with his usual sarcastic charm.
Dean recoils at the words, though he’s not sure why.
“And Lucifer’s favorite pupil,” Belial continues, “Little Sammy Winchester, how’s life been treating you lately?”
Sam doesn’t reply. Dean watches Castiel carefully before his eyes flash to his brother. Dean’s fingers tighten instinctively around Ruby’s knife until he can feel his knuckles go white.
“Your time here is up,” Castiel says bitterly.
“On the contrary,” Belial spits. He grins maliciously and slides his eyes to the empty space at Dean’s back, where a small group of demons has gathered. Ready. Poised for attack, awaiting instruction.
Dean stiffens and spins to face them, eyes darting frantically between the black-eyed dockworkers and Belial on opposite sides of his body. When his eyes land on his brother again, something deep in his gut bottoms out.
Sam’s eyes are gone yellow again as he easily rips the six demons from their bodies without so much as lifting a finger. A snarl builds on his lips, uncomfortably close to a smile, and suddenly Dean has the urge to put a greater distance between himself and his brother. He kicks himself for the thought, but it doesn’t go away, and since when the fuck did he start feeling intimidated by Sammy?
He takes two uneasy steps back, two steps he’ll never be able to undo. Two steps away from Sammy.
Belial gives an amused hum. “Somebody’s been practicing,” he laughs. He squares his shoulders and clears his throat, straightens his tie. “Lilith’s gonna be so delighted to hear that.”
“Lilith’s never gonna hear another word outta your goddamn mouth,” Dean jeers. He tries to keep his voice as steady as possible, despite the small horde of demons that are rapidly closing the distance between them, the flutter of nerves sparking around his body that’s telling him to keep his eyes on Sam.
Belial’s eyes narrow. “Touchy, touchy,” he says.
“Sam,” Castiel calls, something in his voice gone frantic.
Within a pulse, though, Belial is on him and he’s got his hand around Castiel’s neck and he’s chanting something, something ancient and terrible sounding. Dean’s eyes widen as a faint blue glow builds in Castiel’s eyes, slants out of his mouth. He tries to call Sam’s name again, but the sound is quickly choked to silence as Belial crashes his body hard against the railcar. Dean curses as he realizes Castiel isn’t fighting back at all, as if the ancient words rolling out of Belial’s mouth are paralyzing him. Ripping his iridescent soul straight out of his vessel and not letting him fight it.
When Dean sees Belial draw something familiar and sparking gold from his belt, that’s when he screams Sam’s name.
That’s also when the Legions charge.
Dean fights off as many as he can, and he’s doing pretty well - he cuts down demon after demon, their flesh opening up in white-hot gashes with every effortless slash of the knife. He’s not sure where all this energy in his body is welling from, but suddenly he’s relentless, unstoppable, his blood frothing with ravenous surges of adrenaline. The glow from Castiel’s eyes is increasing and Dean calls his brother’s name again, as loud as he can, and that’s when it hits him and he knows exactly why he’s gone so voracious - he’s fighting for them. He’s fighting to keep Sammy and Castiel alive, and he knows it’s up to him to hold the line, and every cell in his body is wild with the conviction. He doesn’t even think about the human vessels - just kills as many as he can, because it’s down to either them or Sammy and Castiel. It’s boiled down to bare bones, and there’s not a choice or a doubt in his head that he’ll kill every living creature on the planet before he’d ever let anything happen to either one of them.
Sam springs into action quickly, a fraction of a second after Dean calls his name. One of his hands raises and his eyes narrow, reptilian and marbled yellow, framed by the impressive gasp of air into Castiel’s lungs as the glow from his eyes withdraws back into his body. His face goes animal, twists into a vicious grimace, and he wrenches easily out of Belial’s grasp with a sickening snap of the demon’s arm. The glint of the dagger falls neglected to the ground.
Belial is wholly unaffected by the injury to his vessel, though. There is bone spearing out of his arm midway between elbow and wrist, dark red stains blotting his sleeve, and Dean thinks victoriously that it must hurt, but Belial isn’t concerned with that. He’s grabbing at his throat instead, clawing madly at it as his eyes raise to Sam. And when Dean catches a brief glimpse of them, he sees something there that he’s never seen before - not arrogance or pure evil, not seduction or wrath or impossible levels of power.
He sees fear.
A small black cloud chokes out of Belial’s mouth but sucks immediately back in. And even as he’s got his back turned and he’s fighting like a madman to keep the Legions back, Dean feels an undeniable shiver rattle along his backbone when Belial’s voice spills through the sticky twilight air in the slippery laugh of a predator cornering its prey. It’s rich and wide and genuine, and terrifying, and when Dean hears it he realizes that shit, Sam must not be strong enough.
But then Sam rips in a gulp of air and tilts his head, his hand rotating slightly, and Belial’s laugh chokes to a ragged cough, a larger cloud barreling out of his gaping mouth. His eyes flare, go black and scarlet, back and forth as if they can’t decide which shade to settle on. Dean pauses between demons when he can, and the realization hits like a fucking wrecking ball that this is solely Sam doing this to him. He is strong enough. He’s never been this close to powerful enough to exorcise something like Belial, and yet now, he’s doing it - all by himself, look, ma, no fucking hands. It’s Sam, purely Sam, individually him, yellow-eyed and lethal, eviscerating the demon before him. An Archdemon. Sam, impossibly focused and staggeringly powerful; Sam, smirking and cold and…
When something fractures in Dean’s chest, the epiphany just about costs him everything when one of the demons crushes a blow to his jaw that makes his ears ring like he stuck his head in the fucking Liberty Bell. He snaps immediately back into action; blocks another blow with an already-lacerated forearm and buries the knife deep into the demon’s gut, a growl ripping across his features. But even though his movements are skillful and perfectly executed, even though he’s still quick and pliable and doing a damn good job at fighting the Legions back, there is something else besides adrenaline ebbing in his veins now. It is something raw and visceral; dangerous, unfamiliar, heartbreaking.
Dean wonders to himself as he slices through throat after throat, cuts through hearts and abdomens and breaks bones and punctures lungs, if there is anything at all left of his little brother in the body of the thing standing not ten feet from where he fights.
Sam’s jaw tilts up as he focuses every ounce of his being into Belial, and when the demon’s legs give out and his knees hit the ground with a crunching thud, Castiel’s palm is on his forehead in one swift movement, his lips moving in a prayer that Dean can’t hear at this distance. A terrible wrenching sound comes out of Belial’s throat, a scream but not really a scream. Dean finds his blood running cold with the sound.
He throws a quick glance over his shoulder, which proves a ridiculous idea when a coal-smudged demon twice his size knocks a granite-hard fist against his temple and the knife flies out of his hand; it hits the ground at the same time Dean’s body does. His head does a little spin but he manages to get a good kick in, snapping the demon’s knee easily with a heel placed expertly right below his kneecap. The demon gives a sharp cry and topples clumsily as Dean’s hand sprawls out to grasp the knife. A quick glance to where it should be, and his mind immediately blanks. His blood freezes. Every muscle locks into constriction.
It’s gone. Fucking gone.
Oh, motherfucker.
Another punch, this one to the ribcage, and Dean flips onto his back with a grunt. The demon is on top of him fast, bear-like fists sweeping through the air to crush against his jaw, stunning him to stars. He can be certain about three of them, then four, before all the blows just bleed together in one bruising smear of pain.
But then they stop, and the weight is off his body. He tries to open his eyes but can’t manage to do anything but groan long and low. Parts of his face feel hot and wet, where the skin has split and blood has forced its way past the surface. His can feel that his lip is split clean in two, and his left eye feels like it’s been knocked clean out of its fucking socket.
Finally he manages to sit up, and when he does, he can’t move.
Can’t speak.
Can’t blink.
Can’t even breathe.
Sam’s got the demon by the jaw, its neck twisted at unnatural angles, and there’s a wide gash in its throat that’s spilling a fountain of blood out onto the ground. Only, as Dean focuses his eyes clearer on the picture he wishes wasn’t in front of him, he sees it’s not flowing onto the ground - it’s flowing straight down Sam’s throat.
And the only thought in Dean’s head is, simply, No.
A spell of what should be heartbeats passes, if Dean’s heart had been beating at all, before Sam’s head whips back with an unsettling growl. And while Dean thought the change of his brother’s eyes into marbled yellow walls was disturbing, it paled in comparison to the sight of Sam’s face in that moment. The sneer of his lips and the thick red liquid dripping down his chin, like some amateur sloppy vampire, or a rabid werewolf, or a thousand other things that Dean has hunted in his life. Like a monster.
But the worst part about it isn’t the Azazel eyes or the blood leaking in hot trails from the corners of his lips - it’s the expression of utter shock on Sam’s face, the unfathomable mixture of shame and guilt and sadness and disaster and primeval hunger carved so deeply into every inch of his body. It’s how his eyes, yellow as they are, seem somehow broken. As if he knew he was, by that simple action in that simple instant, diminished far from anything that was once human. That he wasn’t Sam anymore.
That he wasn’t Dean’s brother anymore.
The line of their eyes breaks and Sam drops the knife at his brother’s side, the blade tumbling to the ground with a careless thump. Dean doesn’t take it, just turns slowly to watch his brother approach the open area where Castiel still fights to tear Belial out of his body. It doesn’t seem to be working very well, Dean sees with an unmistakable twinge of fear. Castiel has several more bruises and welts and cuts on his body than he did the last time Dean afforded him a glance. A thin streak of bright red marks his forehead, snaking down the angle of his cheekbone from an impressive gash directly below the messy shock of his hair. He’s smeared with blood and his knuckles are busted and one of his eyebrows is interrupted by a wide laceration and he looks dangerously exhausted, but still he fights.
When another demon crops up out of left field, Dean quickly surges to life. Twists his legs with the demon’s and brings it down with a rough thud, jams the knife mercilessly into its soft side. He’s got just enough time to look up and see Sam stride close to Belial, the methodical rise of his hand and the scraping yelp that comes out of the demon’s mouth as the black smoke rips harshly out of his body, behind his ribs shocking with some weirdly electric white light. Then there’s a staggering rush of wind and the call of Castiel’s voice in an urgent shout: “Shut your eyes!”
Dean throws an arm across his eyes and slams them shut as hard he can, but the brightness of the blast is such that he somehow still sees it. There’s a rolling burst of force, something magnetic, some pulse strong enough to make him nauseous, strong enough to knock him clean over, flat onto the ground. A sound like all the air in the world being sucked away, the rattling screams of a thousand demons disintegrating into wispy black vapor, a mighty rush of wings pulling through the air, and a sound he wants to go his entire life without ever hearing again.
It’s Sam, and he is crying out in what Dean can only identify as a level of agony he’s only ever heard one other place in his life.
In Hell.
~ ~ ~
When Dean comes to, he doesn’t even know he was unconscious. His eyes flutter open against the blood in them and he hears rushing footsteps kick through the gravel at his side. They get closer, and then there’s the thick sound of someone skidding to a stop, and Castiel’s voice saying, “Dean…”
It takes a few seconds, but Dean pries his crazy-glued eyes open and sees blank sky. A bruising pain racks his arm, an ache that cuts down into the bone, and dust is thick in the air. He turns his head and Castiel is there, bloodied and ravaged, his face etched with a desperate concern but other than that he’s alright. He’s alive. Dean gives a low groan and tries to push up onto his elbows. “What the hell was that?” he asks roughly, ears still ringing so fucking bad his own voice sounds like a heat-warped cassette tape.
“Are you hurt?” Castiel asks softly. He shifts closer and helps him sit up, keeps him closely cradled, the search of his eyes over Dean’s body frantic. Leaning against him is like leaning against a fucking bulldozer, Dean notices, completely immovable and solid.
For a moment Dean just breathes. He shakes his head hard - the heavy strike of a demon’s fist, the knife flipping out of his grip - and nods. “I’m fine,” he says, even if it’s a lie. If it means keeping the warm safety of Castiel’s arm curled around his back, the pressure of his palm ghost-light against Dean’s shoulder, he’d lie about almost anything. Thankfully, even after he’s sitting up, Castiel doesn’t release him.
He rubs absently at a sore spot near his temple.
A fist solid as granite, a sickly weight on top of him.
He’s not surprised when he looks at his fingers and they’re smeared with rich scarlet. Fucking demons.
The weight, gone. The blank draw of black sky, and then Sam.
Dean’s blood freezes.
Yellow eyes. Bloody teeth. Spots of red on his shirt that were, for some reason, the worst part.
“Sam,” he whispers, and Castiel’s lips tighten into a dissenting frown. Dean is on his feet, scrabbling across the gravel towards Sam in less than a second.
Sam is about ten feet away, curled up on the ground, palms pressing into his face. At first Dean thinks he is unconscious, but he gets to his side and falls to his knees and says his name, and the short whimper that comes out of Sam’s throat in response tells him otherwise.
“Sam, it’s okay, man,” Dean says, hovering a hand over his brother’s shoulder. He glances around, strangely breathless, and the quick perusal tells him that Belial is gone. Not even his human vessel remains, but the distinct nauseating stench of burning human flesh in the air tells Dean that the sonofabitch must be as good as dead. Briefly his gaze catches on Castiel, whose eyes instantly lower at the contact, as if ashamed. “We got ‘em, Sammy,” Dean continues with a crooked grin. “We got ‘em. Belial’s dead, he’s gone. It’s over.”
Sam’s knees bend up sharply as he rolls onto his back. A ragged breath sighs out of his throat with the words shaking out weakly behind it, “I can’t see.”
Dean blinks.
“I can’t see,” Sam repeats, his words panicked. “Dean… I can’t see…”
Dean wrestles his hands down, grips Sam’s wrists tight and drags them down, Jesus fucking Christ it’s like wrestling a goddamn grizzly bear, and he can feel it, really physically feel it, as he loses every ounce of color in his face, as his hands go cold and he can’t quite move or blink or function, doesn’t even fucking matter that Sam was just sucking down demon blood, doesn’t matter how wrongwrongwrong it all is, because he’s expecting to see the familiar warm gleam of Sam’s sienna-coffee eyes, welcoming and mischievous and intelligent, sensitive, loving, profound, somehow still young and innocent even with the shit they’ve been through.
But there’s no color there at all, no crisp whites or understated browns. There’s not even the fucking creepy pale clouded yellow, because it’s only a garbled mess of dark crimson and charred black.
Sam’s eyes have been burned clear out of his skull.
~ ~ ~
Suddenly it doesn’t even matter that the railyard is smattered with corpses and blood, or that that pain in the ass Belial has finally been destroyed (as near as Dean can guess, with the stink of burned flesh and the exhaustion curbing Castiel’s features, but fuck, who cares, fuck it all, because Sam), or that in the short span of under an hour the waking world has been saved from certain fucking Armageddon, because Sam is hurt and that’s the only thing in the world that matters.
They get to the motel fast, the Impala swinging wildly around curves and jumping the occasional curb on its reckless tear through the backstreets of Reno. In the back of his mind as he heaves the both of them through the motel door, Dean thanks a higher power that there were no cops out tonight; not that he would have stopped even if there had been.
Sam’s elbows hit the cabinet hard as he bends over the bathroom sink.
“Okay, Sammy, it’ll be alright,” Dean’s been saying the whole time. He doesn’t believe them, his own words, but he can only hope they bring some degree of serenity to Sam. He can’t really tell, though; Sam hasn’t said a word since he scooped him up from the railyard gravel and dragged him the half-mile to the patiently waiting Impala.
Dean had turned in that instant, determined to search Castiel’s eyes for an answer, any answer, but the angel had already gone. The place where he stood only moments before was empty, not a shadow or a sound filling its void. Fucking typical.
“Dean…”
Sam’s voice breaks Dean out of his shell. When he speaks, his voice is weak, a little slurred, but at least he’s talking. Which is more than Dean can say for the rest of the night, I can’t see the only thing he’s managed beside quiet groans and shaking sighs. The sink turns on with a metallic shriek.
“Shhh,” Dean hushes, whipping a washcloth from the shelf near the shower. He squeezes it under the faucet, wringing warm water from it before pressing lightly against Sam’s face. Long streaks of blood have carved their way down Sam’s cheekbones, some of them twisting along his jaw, drizzling down the length of his neck. Dean brushes them away while Sam simply breathes, lips parted, silent. The only sound in the room is the constant surge of the sink, the distant rumble of plumbing within the walls, as Dean tries not to wonder how much of the blood staining Sam’s face is his own, and how much is from the demon’s throat he was latched onto.
And oh, fuck, he feels like puking.
“You’re gonna be okay, Sammy,” Dean continues, even though it’s a fucking stupid thing to say and he thinks Sam probably knows that. When he squeezes the rag into the sink and the water that comes out is very nearly opaque red, Dean’s stomach does a full somersault. “Just gotta clean you up,” he says quietly. Sam only whimpers in response.
He softens his touch as much as he can the closer he gets to the burned flesh around Sam’s eyes. Sam himself doesn’t seem to notice the difference. He’s not wincing against the pain, not twisting away from the contact. He’s not really moving at all, in fact. Just breathing, slow and sure, obliging whatever way Dean turns or lifts his face.
And Dean tries not to allow his mind to wander as he dabs the first bit of blood away from Sam’s eyelids and sees that there really is nothing left beneath them. He tries not to let his voice break. Tries not to let the tears hovering on the edges of his own eyelids slide down his face. Tries not to think about how much pain Sam is in or what it’s going to do to him or how they’re going to get out of this one, but he can’t stop it when the tears leak out and the only logical sentence his mind can form is that, yeah, this is how it’s going to end.
~ ~ ~
It takes half an hour of screaming his throat hoarse before Castiel ever shows. When he finally does, his face is drawn and he seems to already know that Dean is in a mindless rage. And oh, holy fuck, is he ever. “Where the hell were you?” he demands, his voice is a rough husk from screaming his fucking lungs out for so long.
Castiel’s shoulders raise as he inhales a breath. Dean notices how he holds his arm, at a slight angle in front of his body, as if it hurts him to lower it. And he’s got a limp, too, a barely discernable favor to one side. “I was busy. I’m sorry,” he says. He comes closer until the distance between their bodies decreases to inches.
“You were fighting,” Dean muses quietly.
Castiel confirms his statement with a slight nod, but says nothing. Dean studies him meticulously - the cracked crystal of his eyes and the grim line of his mouth and the exhausted slump of his shoulders, the rips in his clothes that he usually fixes within a blink. And yet somehow, even through all this, he seems unfeasibly strong. Completely in control and composed, a discernible light emanating from behind his flesh.
A long silence stretches between them before Dean ever digs down far enough to find the right words. As soon as he does, they leap out of his throat before he can stop them. “You did this to Sammy.”
Again, Castiel only nods. The gesture is slow, carefully calculated. He’s obviously loathe to admit it, but he doesn’t dare lie. He keeps his head bowed; Dean can only assume it’s out of shame.
“Cas…”
“I’m sorry,” the angel offers, and his voice is sad and sincere, stabbing through Dean’s chest with all the ease and pain of a white-hot blade. When Castiel raises his eyes, they are a pure wreck of everything his voice echoed.
Dean hesitates. Shakes his head. Swallows back the inevitable build of tears. He stilts a hand on his hip and throws the other one in the direction of the room where Sam is restlessly sleeping. “My brother is blind, Cas. Blind. You burned out his fucking eyes.”
Castiel’s lips part, but Dean interrupts any words he may have offered.
“How could you do that?” he hisses. He lowers his arm, shrugging them both out openly. Something jumps in his throat and he tries to swallow it down, but he knows what it is and he knows it’s pointless to fight it. “You fry out his eyes, go nuclear, then just turn tail and leave?”
“I didn’t have a choice, Dean. We had to stop the Legions,” Castiel counters insistently. His tone is not angry, not impatient or cold, but just… desperate. Raw. Driven and determined to make Dean understand.
Dean withdraws, snorting back a bitter laugh. “Don’t make this about the greater good, Cas. This is about Sam. My brother, who you bullied into helpin’ you. This is your fault.”
“Sam wanted to help, I gave him the choice to do so or not.”
“Horseshit,” Dean bites, loud. “I know how you guys work. You say you’re just twisting an arm but really you’re pushing us right to the edge. Spitting ultimatums and threatening us with doom and gloom unless we do things your way.”
“Dean, that’s not true, you know that.”
“No,” he sneers, shaking his head. “No. I thought you were different, Cas, but you’re not. You’re just like Uriel, and Zachariah, and all those other dicks floating around in the clouds up there.” He pauses, swallowing back another lump in his throat. “You’re just as cold. Just as heartless as they are.”
Castiel simply blinks.
“You don’t care about Sam. Hell, you’re probably glad that happened to him, aren’t you? One item off the to-do list - keep Sammy from becoming the Antichrist, right?”
“Dean -”
“Don’t.” He sniffs sharply, stabbing away the tears on his cheeks that he hates so much to admit are there, fuck, why are they there? “Don’t get all righteous on me now, Cas. Don’t feed me that I’m not like them bullshit.”
“Dean - I warned Sam.” Castiel shakes his head just slightly, the squint of his eyes dramatic as if he is struggling to comprehend Dean’s anger. “You heard it yourself, I warned you both.”
“So that makes it okay?” Dean snaps, and immediately Castiel withdraws.
He swallows, all traces of his former desperation gone. “Of course not.”
A short silence descends as Castiel waits and Dean fidgets. He looks down, crunching his feet in the gravel that’s not unlike the kind that blanketed the railyard where he lost his brother not two hours ago. “What am I supposed to do, Cas?” he asks carefully. His voice quakes weakly when he does.
The tension builds in Castiel’s jaw, but he says nothing.
When Dean blinks, his gaze purposely averted from Castiel’s, another rush of tears skitters down his face. “I can’t even -… Look.” He raises a hand, hovers it in the air, clears his throat in an unsuccessful effort to steel his voice. “I finally started to see you as something else. Something besides some… weird, scary - alien creature playing ant farm with humans. Something besides a brick wall, or a - a robot, just blindly following orders.”
Dean can’t be sure, but he thinks he sees Castiel flinch at the words.
“But no,” he continues, softer. “That - humanity,” and Dean’s eyes snap shut when he uses the word, “That’s not there, Cas. It never was.”
Castiel bristles, some of that vague electric power Dean remembers from before whipping out into the air around his body. “I’m not human, Dean. This was never a secret.”
For a moment Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe or react at all, and this is just ridiculous, this is painful and crushing and ten kinds of unfair, and it hurts, god, it fucking hurts, and he feels like an idiot having to explain this. He’s so far out of his element he’s not even sure what his element is anymore, and, fuck, this is like the fucking King of all chickflick moments, and might you know he’s sharing it with a goddamn angel. “But I felt something,” he chokes. “Something from you. And I know it wasn’t imaginary so don’t you even try to say it was.”
A long draw of silence spins out before Castiel responds. He keeps his eyes locked to Dean’s, and they are bright and slate gray and so unbearable Dean almost has to look away. “Humans are not the only creatures capable of affection,” he says, noncommittal and infuriatingly monotone. Case in point right fucking there, Dean thinks, but holds his tongue.
He takes a cautious step backward. “But I thought you guys didn’t feel emotion,” he argues. “I thought you just loved God, and followed his orders, and that was that. I mean - you’re a soldier. You’re a drone bee, Cas. You can’t make choices. You can’t care. Don’t try to pull that shit now.”
A misplaced smirk appears on Castiel’s lips for the quickest moment. “I care about all of God’s creations, Dean.” Then he looks down and his features darken inexplicably. He seems to be considering something, something beyond the issue at hand. “And I do care about you. Very deeply. You know this.”
Dean straightens. A distinct sensation crawls into his skin, burying and growing there, feeding on the slow rush of his pulse. “If you care so much then get in there and heal Sam,” he says, voice grounding low and acidic.
Castiel’s gaze drops almost as soon as it rises. “I can’t,” he says, quiet.
“Why not?”
The shake of Castiel’s head is slow; Dean bites his cheek until he can taste blood, then he keeps on biting.
“Cas… Why not?” he repeats.
“I have to leave now,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean’s chest goes cold in a single, rattling burst. “Cas.”
“I’m truly sorry for what happened to your brother, Dean.” Castiel begins to turn, pulling his hands into his pockets, and Dean wants with every cell in his body to chase after him, to throw his arms around him and never let go, to hit him, to punch him, to strangle him or kiss him or something, to get this shitstorm down and out of his system where it’s curdling and killing him, but he’s rooted to the spot and he can’t move for anything.
“Don’t you turn away, Cas,” he says, drawing Castiel’s attention again. He shakes his head methodically, steels his jaw until a dull ache rips rabid through his teeth. Castiel simply blinks, the movement a soft, sad glide. Dean drags in a ragged breath around clenched teeth, and if his voice cracks when he speaks he’s beyond the point of even giving a fuck. “Don’t you bail on me now.”
Castiel’s eyes darken. His chest inflates with a long breath, then deflates again as he sighs, systematic and low, and when all the air is breathed out he seems smaller, constricted, as if he has curled in on himself and he is now something less than what he was before. Heartbeats stretch into seconds, into minutes, into something infinite, but he doesn’t offer another word as he drops his gaze and lowers his head and turns his back. He’s gone in a matter of seconds.
~ ~ ~
They don’t talk about what happened in Reno.
Dean doesn’t ask about the blood and Sam, well. He almost stops talking entirely, the extent of his conversations mostly quick yes or no mumbles. For a week he didn’t do much - any other time Dean would have accused him of sulking and being an attention whore, but things were different now and he wasn’t quite sure how he should approach Sam these days. Which was stupid, because he might be blind and shit might have taken a hard corner worse than what had ever really happened to them before, but he was still Sam, and Dean felt like a fucking bastard when he didn’t know what to say to him.
Bobby did most of the work when it came to helping Sam adjust. Helping him memorize things by feel, count his steps around the house and hold onto the banister as he took careful sneaking sideways steps down the stairs. Keeping one finger in his mug so he wouldn’t overflow his coffee. Dean had offered to help more than once, but Sam’s face twisted up into a forced grin and he’d politely said, no thanks, I got it, his voice stinging with what Dean could never decide to define as bitterness or embarrassment. Maybe a little of both, fuck, who knows.
And maybe Dean was even a little thankful. Maybe he was alright with the fact that Sam was clinging tighter to Bobby than he’d clung to anyone since he did to Dean himself before he lit out on a bus bound for California. Because it was awkward, Dean could admit. He was close with his brother, yeah, but there was a line they walked, like a whisper-thin knife edge. At a certain point it just became awkward, watching Sam feel around clumsily with his already-ungraceful hands, and Dean sitting there completely unharmed and helpless. At a certain point it made Dean’s palms itch, made him throw up every morning and spend a lot of time just sitting in the front seat of the Impala staring at nothing, not even running the engine but just sitting.
Sometimes Dean wonders, and sometimes the image of Sam latched onto the demon’s throat will flash through his dreams in an unwelcome electric shock, but he tries not to mention it. Sam has enough to think about these days without being backed into a corner about what the hell he was doing playing vampire with a demon.
At least that’s what Dean tells himself to get through the days. He knows what it really is, though. He knows it’s probably his subconscious is telling him not to bring it up not because it might stress Sam out even more, that he’s afraid of what he might find out if he does, or some Freudian Pavlovian what the fuck ever psychological bullshit. But it doesn’t matter what kind of explanation or excuse Sam fabricates; the truth will still be there. What happened is still the same, and nothing would change that, no matter how bad it broke Dean’s heart or made him hate every fucking thing on the planet.
The third week since Sam was blinded, Dean has the nightmare again.
All the ache and the blood of the battle comes back to him and suddenly he is there again, with the dirty scent of the railyard in his nostrils and the grate of the gravel cutting into his hands. There’s a dull pressure building above his right eye, but he opens it anyway and that’s when he sees Sam.
But it’s not really Sam.
His eyes are yellow and he’s got the demon’s body held tight to him, latched onto its throat as if they were born fused like that, one conjoined organism. Sam’s body and the demon’s, spliced together, their veins sewn and fused together. One body with one blood streaming diseased and dark between them. Every drop of blood in the demon’s body rushes down Sam’s throat and he swallows it eagerly. When he rips his mouth from the wound his lips are dripping and his breathing is ragged and he’s got long dark lines of blood spindling from his jaw, just like Dean remembers. Sam’s teeth are coated in crimson and his shirt is staining with it, his eyes blank and cat-like and yellow but Dean knows somehow that he is staring right at him, right into him, and that’s when he jerks awake with a shout.
The room is pure dark around him, completely still and soundless. He fights to sit up straight, a sprawling tangle of blankets, his breaths coming heavy, shaken and uneven. A cold glistening film coats his skin when he splays a hand across the wild hammering in his chest.
With a sigh, he runs his hands through his hair, and that’s when Sam’s voice shocks quietly through the dark, making him jump almost clean out of his skin.
“Nightmare?”
It takes a few seconds for Dean’s breathing to plateau back to normalcy, but eventually he nods. Swallows thickly and kicks himself for the action. It’s been a month and he still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that Sam can’t communicate with things like nods and glares and gestures anymore. “Yeah,” he says, low. When a response doesn’t come, he asks, “What’re you still doin’ up?”
Sam breathes out a toneless laugh, devoid of any mirth. “Don’t really sleep much these days.”
Dean draws a calculated breath. He hasn’t told Sam about the nightmares, or even Bobby for that matter, and definitely not Castiel, who hasn’t even shown face since he turned his back and walked away those thirty days ago. Sam has asked several times about what Dean is seeing when he jolts awake at night, but he never tells him. Maybe if he stays quiet, Sam will think he’s just remembering something from Hell. Dreaming some fucked up thing about Alastair or the people he tortured, when in reality - fuck, he’d trade Hell dreams any day for the ones he’s having now.
“Why not?” Dean asks after a short lull.
A pause, then he sees Sam turn under the covers of his bed across the room. Their room, really. Ever since Sam was blinded, Bobby’s done his best to make his house as much into theirs too as he can. He’s cleared out a space for the Impala in the drive up front, and cleaned out a room upstairs and threw some mattresses in there. It’s touching, in a way. It’s the first actual bedroom Dean could call his own in more years than he cares to remember, even if it was just a cluttered storage room and a dusty, Paleolithic mattress.
Sam sighs, sounding strangely at ease when he says, “I’m blind, Dean. I can’t really tell the difference between night and day anymore.”
Dean winces.
“Guess my body’s not used to it yet,” Sam finishes thoughtfully.
For a moment, Dean strains his eyes to see his brother’s face in the dark, but gives up when he realizes it’s impossible. With a weary yawn, he turns to readjust his pillows. “Yeah, well. Mine isn’t either. I’m still tryin’ to wrap my head around it too, Sammy.”
A short, sour snicker. “Easy for you to say.”
And Dean really doesn’t know what the fuck to say to make anything better, so instead he just lies down and turns his back to Sam, and pretends to be asleep until he hears the quiet rustles and clatters of Bobby moving around downstairs close to an hour later.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
We're so close to the end, guys! Hang on just a little longer! ♥
ONTO PART THIRTEEN
Title: The Propensities of Good Men, 12/15
Characters: Belial, Bobby, Castiel, Dean, Sam
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7,623
Disclaimer: Pffft, I wish.
Warnings: Violence, staggering amounts of angst, dark!Sam followed by epic Sam!whumping, Dean's manly tears of manliness.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
~ ~ ~
The railcar jerks in a mighty quake when the back wall rips off. Dean’s eyes dart around frantically, searching for a cause or a host of demons or even Belial himself, positive they’re fucked, surrounded, but then he glances to Castiel and the angel’s hand is slightly raised, two fingers extended in the direction of the gaping hole, and he says simply, “Go.”
Both brothers spring for the newly opened wall. They only get as far as the tracks on the other side of the car before Dean turns, though, searching the warped metal. Sam skids to a swift stop and frowns. “Dean!” he calls, but Dean doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move at all. “Come on!”
Dean turns his head sharply and braces his jaw. His mind is made up. As fucked up and stupid as it probably is, because Castiel is Castiel, he’s a fucking angel and he can look after himself, Dean’s mind is made up. “I’m not leaving Cas.”
Sam is at his side in a quick blur of motion. “This is the plan, Dean, we’ve gotta get Belial away from his army. Cas can take care of himself until then, now come on. Let’s move!”
A pause as Dean mulls it over. He doesn’t look at his brother; he can’t make himself, just in case Sam’s eyes are still yellow. He’s not sure he could stand the sight again. Finally, he glances briefly to the ground and says, “You better be right, Sammy,” and they take off in a full-on sprint paralleling the tracks.
They make it about sixty yards before they hear the first crash.
Dean grounds to a rough stop, gravel popping under his feet, and when he looks over his shoulder he immediately wishes he hadn’t.
Railcars, full building-sized metal containers, fling easily through the air, colliding with linked trains and wrenching them off-track with awful metallic groans. Some of them land on blank stretches of ground, rolling in grand, intimidating somersaults as if they weigh nothing at all. Dean feels his eyes go wide, feels his jaw slacken into a loose gape as he watches it happen.
Sam catches a grip around his arm and jerks him roughly forward. “Dean, come on!” he’s shouting, but it comes through as a muffled echo. Dean doesn’t process the words, doesn’t process the concept of them or the fact that they need to be moving, fast, as the railcars flipping violently through the air are rapidly approaching the spot where they stand. The only thought in his head is Castiel.
And then he does what he knows is probably the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his life, which is definitely saying something in a lifetime of doing supremely stupid shit - he whips his arm out of Sam’s grip and takes off in a sprint right into the eye of the storm.
“Dean!”
He’s running as fast as he can, yet he’ll never be able to get there fast enough. Yards filter by in indistinct gray blurs of metal and gravel, each one seeming more like a mile than its actual three feet. Dean can feel his heart hammering wildly behind his ribs, can feel his veins pumping hotter than battery acid, can hear Sam screaming desperately for him at his back, but all that matters is up ahead. And he knows that if he dies, the war will be lost and this whole thing will be over - Lucifer will rise, the modern world will cave in on itself and die by inches - but fuck it. Just, fuck it. He still has to try to get there. And the thought that he would put the life of one before the lives of six billion almost disturbs him, but he doesn’t question it and he doesn’t fight it. Because if he’s ever known anything in his entire fucking life, he knows that he would let the whole world burn if it meant saving Castiel. It’s selfish and it’s honest and it’s true, and he doesn’t even try to fight it.
He just runs.
But then all the breath in his lungs is gone, punched out roughly, and he’s bracing his hands against the gravel, small bits of rock and sediment embedding deeply into his skin as he is shoved roughly to the ground by a solid pressure at his back. Sam, he thinks. He’s almost angry, almost wants to just scramble back to his feet and keep running, spin around with a what the fuck? on his lips and the burn of dust in his eyes, but when he looks up he sees the forty-foot carcass of a deep indigo railcar barrel directly over his head, only a few short feet above him. And - oh. Suddenly he gets it. He almost ran right into its path; almost got himself pancaked by the damn thing because he wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention to his surroundings, a lifetime of survival instincts shoved to the side when it came down to losing Castiel. Sam saved him by knocking him down.
Sam is at his side, panting, and he’s really Sam again - eyes brown and glittering and panicked, tender and cautious and stronger than Dean has ever understood or expected. Only when Dean blinks does his hearing suddenly flare back over the deafening baritone flurry of his pulse.
The wrecked car tumbles to a groaning stop a few short yards behind where they climb stiffly to their feet. Dean can feel his knees twinging and he knows automatically that they are scraped up something awful from falling onto the gravel. His hands, too. They’re battered and bloodied, small rocks sticking every which way out of his flesh. He brushes them against his jeans when he stands, knocking some of the dirt away but increasing the pain tenfold.
Both he and Sam have their eyes set intently on the distance where they’re every bit expecting Castiel and Belial to appear next, which is why it surprises Dean so much to hear the sudden shuffle of gravel at his back. They both spin a complete 180 in such perfect unison it’s almost choreographed.
Castiel is on his feet and he’s obviously put up one hell of a fight up to this point. His coat is torn and streaked with blood, unsettling amounts of it. Dean has to wonder if all of it is his, or if some of it belongs to Belial. The demon himself, he’s slick and red-eyed and omnipresent as always, though he’s dirtier and more ragged than Dean has ever seen him, which brings a strange sort of comfort with it. They’re standing straight in front of the dented railcar, face to face but feet apart, and the tension between them is almost tangible.
“Hey there, Dean,” Belial chimes as he licks a thin stripe of blood from his upper lip. He doesn’t take his eyes from Castiel, but his body straightens slightly and he walks a few steps to his right. Castiel walks to his right in turn, keeping them perfectly parallel. “Good to see you again,” he finishes, voice dripping with his usual sarcastic charm.
Dean recoils at the words, though he’s not sure why.
“And Lucifer’s favorite pupil,” Belial continues, “Little Sammy Winchester, how’s life been treating you lately?”
Sam doesn’t reply. Dean watches Castiel carefully before his eyes flash to his brother. Dean’s fingers tighten instinctively around Ruby’s knife until he can feel his knuckles go white.
“Your time here is up,” Castiel says bitterly.
“On the contrary,” Belial spits. He grins maliciously and slides his eyes to the empty space at Dean’s back, where a small group of demons has gathered. Ready. Poised for attack, awaiting instruction.
Dean stiffens and spins to face them, eyes darting frantically between the black-eyed dockworkers and Belial on opposite sides of his body. When his eyes land on his brother again, something deep in his gut bottoms out.
Sam’s eyes are gone yellow again as he easily rips the six demons from their bodies without so much as lifting a finger. A snarl builds on his lips, uncomfortably close to a smile, and suddenly Dean has the urge to put a greater distance between himself and his brother. He kicks himself for the thought, but it doesn’t go away, and since when the fuck did he start feeling intimidated by Sammy?
He takes two uneasy steps back, two steps he’ll never be able to undo. Two steps away from Sammy.
Belial gives an amused hum. “Somebody’s been practicing,” he laughs. He squares his shoulders and clears his throat, straightens his tie. “Lilith’s gonna be so delighted to hear that.”
“Lilith’s never gonna hear another word outta your goddamn mouth,” Dean jeers. He tries to keep his voice as steady as possible, despite the small horde of demons that are rapidly closing the distance between them, the flutter of nerves sparking around his body that’s telling him to keep his eyes on Sam.
Belial’s eyes narrow. “Touchy, touchy,” he says.
“Sam,” Castiel calls, something in his voice gone frantic.
Within a pulse, though, Belial is on him and he’s got his hand around Castiel’s neck and he’s chanting something, something ancient and terrible sounding. Dean’s eyes widen as a faint blue glow builds in Castiel’s eyes, slants out of his mouth. He tries to call Sam’s name again, but the sound is quickly choked to silence as Belial crashes his body hard against the railcar. Dean curses as he realizes Castiel isn’t fighting back at all, as if the ancient words rolling out of Belial’s mouth are paralyzing him. Ripping his iridescent soul straight out of his vessel and not letting him fight it.
When Dean sees Belial draw something familiar and sparking gold from his belt, that’s when he screams Sam’s name.
That’s also when the Legions charge.
Dean fights off as many as he can, and he’s doing pretty well - he cuts down demon after demon, their flesh opening up in white-hot gashes with every effortless slash of the knife. He’s not sure where all this energy in his body is welling from, but suddenly he’s relentless, unstoppable, his blood frothing with ravenous surges of adrenaline. The glow from Castiel’s eyes is increasing and Dean calls his brother’s name again, as loud as he can, and that’s when it hits him and he knows exactly why he’s gone so voracious - he’s fighting for them. He’s fighting to keep Sammy and Castiel alive, and he knows it’s up to him to hold the line, and every cell in his body is wild with the conviction. He doesn’t even think about the human vessels - just kills as many as he can, because it’s down to either them or Sammy and Castiel. It’s boiled down to bare bones, and there’s not a choice or a doubt in his head that he’ll kill every living creature on the planet before he’d ever let anything happen to either one of them.
Sam springs into action quickly, a fraction of a second after Dean calls his name. One of his hands raises and his eyes narrow, reptilian and marbled yellow, framed by the impressive gasp of air into Castiel’s lungs as the glow from his eyes withdraws back into his body. His face goes animal, twists into a vicious grimace, and he wrenches easily out of Belial’s grasp with a sickening snap of the demon’s arm. The glint of the dagger falls neglected to the ground.
Belial is wholly unaffected by the injury to his vessel, though. There is bone spearing out of his arm midway between elbow and wrist, dark red stains blotting his sleeve, and Dean thinks victoriously that it must hurt, but Belial isn’t concerned with that. He’s grabbing at his throat instead, clawing madly at it as his eyes raise to Sam. And when Dean catches a brief glimpse of them, he sees something there that he’s never seen before - not arrogance or pure evil, not seduction or wrath or impossible levels of power.
He sees fear.
A small black cloud chokes out of Belial’s mouth but sucks immediately back in. And even as he’s got his back turned and he’s fighting like a madman to keep the Legions back, Dean feels an undeniable shiver rattle along his backbone when Belial’s voice spills through the sticky twilight air in the slippery laugh of a predator cornering its prey. It’s rich and wide and genuine, and terrifying, and when Dean hears it he realizes that shit, Sam must not be strong enough.
But then Sam rips in a gulp of air and tilts his head, his hand rotating slightly, and Belial’s laugh chokes to a ragged cough, a larger cloud barreling out of his gaping mouth. His eyes flare, go black and scarlet, back and forth as if they can’t decide which shade to settle on. Dean pauses between demons when he can, and the realization hits like a fucking wrecking ball that this is solely Sam doing this to him. He is strong enough. He’s never been this close to powerful enough to exorcise something like Belial, and yet now, he’s doing it - all by himself, look, ma, no fucking hands. It’s Sam, purely Sam, individually him, yellow-eyed and lethal, eviscerating the demon before him. An Archdemon. Sam, impossibly focused and staggeringly powerful; Sam, smirking and cold and…
When something fractures in Dean’s chest, the epiphany just about costs him everything when one of the demons crushes a blow to his jaw that makes his ears ring like he stuck his head in the fucking Liberty Bell. He snaps immediately back into action; blocks another blow with an already-lacerated forearm and buries the knife deep into the demon’s gut, a growl ripping across his features. But even though his movements are skillful and perfectly executed, even though he’s still quick and pliable and doing a damn good job at fighting the Legions back, there is something else besides adrenaline ebbing in his veins now. It is something raw and visceral; dangerous, unfamiliar, heartbreaking.
Dean wonders to himself as he slices through throat after throat, cuts through hearts and abdomens and breaks bones and punctures lungs, if there is anything at all left of his little brother in the body of the thing standing not ten feet from where he fights.
Sam’s jaw tilts up as he focuses every ounce of his being into Belial, and when the demon’s legs give out and his knees hit the ground with a crunching thud, Castiel’s palm is on his forehead in one swift movement, his lips moving in a prayer that Dean can’t hear at this distance. A terrible wrenching sound comes out of Belial’s throat, a scream but not really a scream. Dean finds his blood running cold with the sound.
He throws a quick glance over his shoulder, which proves a ridiculous idea when a coal-smudged demon twice his size knocks a granite-hard fist against his temple and the knife flies out of his hand; it hits the ground at the same time Dean’s body does. His head does a little spin but he manages to get a good kick in, snapping the demon’s knee easily with a heel placed expertly right below his kneecap. The demon gives a sharp cry and topples clumsily as Dean’s hand sprawls out to grasp the knife. A quick glance to where it should be, and his mind immediately blanks. His blood freezes. Every muscle locks into constriction.
It’s gone. Fucking gone.
Oh, motherfucker.
Another punch, this one to the ribcage, and Dean flips onto his back with a grunt. The demon is on top of him fast, bear-like fists sweeping through the air to crush against his jaw, stunning him to stars. He can be certain about three of them, then four, before all the blows just bleed together in one bruising smear of pain.
But then they stop, and the weight is off his body. He tries to open his eyes but can’t manage to do anything but groan long and low. Parts of his face feel hot and wet, where the skin has split and blood has forced its way past the surface. His can feel that his lip is split clean in two, and his left eye feels like it’s been knocked clean out of its fucking socket.
Finally he manages to sit up, and when he does, he can’t move.
Can’t speak.
Can’t blink.
Can’t even breathe.
Sam’s got the demon by the jaw, its neck twisted at unnatural angles, and there’s a wide gash in its throat that’s spilling a fountain of blood out onto the ground. Only, as Dean focuses his eyes clearer on the picture he wishes wasn’t in front of him, he sees it’s not flowing onto the ground - it’s flowing straight down Sam’s throat.
And the only thought in Dean’s head is, simply, No.
A spell of what should be heartbeats passes, if Dean’s heart had been beating at all, before Sam’s head whips back with an unsettling growl. And while Dean thought the change of his brother’s eyes into marbled yellow walls was disturbing, it paled in comparison to the sight of Sam’s face in that moment. The sneer of his lips and the thick red liquid dripping down his chin, like some amateur sloppy vampire, or a rabid werewolf, or a thousand other things that Dean has hunted in his life. Like a monster.
But the worst part about it isn’t the Azazel eyes or the blood leaking in hot trails from the corners of his lips - it’s the expression of utter shock on Sam’s face, the unfathomable mixture of shame and guilt and sadness and disaster and primeval hunger carved so deeply into every inch of his body. It’s how his eyes, yellow as they are, seem somehow broken. As if he knew he was, by that simple action in that simple instant, diminished far from anything that was once human. That he wasn’t Sam anymore.
That he wasn’t Dean’s brother anymore.
The line of their eyes breaks and Sam drops the knife at his brother’s side, the blade tumbling to the ground with a careless thump. Dean doesn’t take it, just turns slowly to watch his brother approach the open area where Castiel still fights to tear Belial out of his body. It doesn’t seem to be working very well, Dean sees with an unmistakable twinge of fear. Castiel has several more bruises and welts and cuts on his body than he did the last time Dean afforded him a glance. A thin streak of bright red marks his forehead, snaking down the angle of his cheekbone from an impressive gash directly below the messy shock of his hair. He’s smeared with blood and his knuckles are busted and one of his eyebrows is interrupted by a wide laceration and he looks dangerously exhausted, but still he fights.
When another demon crops up out of left field, Dean quickly surges to life. Twists his legs with the demon’s and brings it down with a rough thud, jams the knife mercilessly into its soft side. He’s got just enough time to look up and see Sam stride close to Belial, the methodical rise of his hand and the scraping yelp that comes out of the demon’s mouth as the black smoke rips harshly out of his body, behind his ribs shocking with some weirdly electric white light. Then there’s a staggering rush of wind and the call of Castiel’s voice in an urgent shout: “Shut your eyes!”
Dean throws an arm across his eyes and slams them shut as hard he can, but the brightness of the blast is such that he somehow still sees it. There’s a rolling burst of force, something magnetic, some pulse strong enough to make him nauseous, strong enough to knock him clean over, flat onto the ground. A sound like all the air in the world being sucked away, the rattling screams of a thousand demons disintegrating into wispy black vapor, a mighty rush of wings pulling through the air, and a sound he wants to go his entire life without ever hearing again.
It’s Sam, and he is crying out in what Dean can only identify as a level of agony he’s only ever heard one other place in his life.
In Hell.
~ ~ ~
When Dean comes to, he doesn’t even know he was unconscious. His eyes flutter open against the blood in them and he hears rushing footsteps kick through the gravel at his side. They get closer, and then there’s the thick sound of someone skidding to a stop, and Castiel’s voice saying, “Dean…”
It takes a few seconds, but Dean pries his crazy-glued eyes open and sees blank sky. A bruising pain racks his arm, an ache that cuts down into the bone, and dust is thick in the air. He turns his head and Castiel is there, bloodied and ravaged, his face etched with a desperate concern but other than that he’s alright. He’s alive. Dean gives a low groan and tries to push up onto his elbows. “What the hell was that?” he asks roughly, ears still ringing so fucking bad his own voice sounds like a heat-warped cassette tape.
“Are you hurt?” Castiel asks softly. He shifts closer and helps him sit up, keeps him closely cradled, the search of his eyes over Dean’s body frantic. Leaning against him is like leaning against a fucking bulldozer, Dean notices, completely immovable and solid.
For a moment Dean just breathes. He shakes his head hard - the heavy strike of a demon’s fist, the knife flipping out of his grip - and nods. “I’m fine,” he says, even if it’s a lie. If it means keeping the warm safety of Castiel’s arm curled around his back, the pressure of his palm ghost-light against Dean’s shoulder, he’d lie about almost anything. Thankfully, even after he’s sitting up, Castiel doesn’t release him.
He rubs absently at a sore spot near his temple.
A fist solid as granite, a sickly weight on top of him.
He’s not surprised when he looks at his fingers and they’re smeared with rich scarlet. Fucking demons.
The weight, gone. The blank draw of black sky, and then Sam.
Dean’s blood freezes.
Yellow eyes. Bloody teeth. Spots of red on his shirt that were, for some reason, the worst part.
“Sam,” he whispers, and Castiel’s lips tighten into a dissenting frown. Dean is on his feet, scrabbling across the gravel towards Sam in less than a second.
Sam is about ten feet away, curled up on the ground, palms pressing into his face. At first Dean thinks he is unconscious, but he gets to his side and falls to his knees and says his name, and the short whimper that comes out of Sam’s throat in response tells him otherwise.
“Sam, it’s okay, man,” Dean says, hovering a hand over his brother’s shoulder. He glances around, strangely breathless, and the quick perusal tells him that Belial is gone. Not even his human vessel remains, but the distinct nauseating stench of burning human flesh in the air tells Dean that the sonofabitch must be as good as dead. Briefly his gaze catches on Castiel, whose eyes instantly lower at the contact, as if ashamed. “We got ‘em, Sammy,” Dean continues with a crooked grin. “We got ‘em. Belial’s dead, he’s gone. It’s over.”
Sam’s knees bend up sharply as he rolls onto his back. A ragged breath sighs out of his throat with the words shaking out weakly behind it, “I can’t see.”
Dean blinks.
“I can’t see,” Sam repeats, his words panicked. “Dean… I can’t see…”
Dean wrestles his hands down, grips Sam’s wrists tight and drags them down, Jesus fucking Christ it’s like wrestling a goddamn grizzly bear, and he can feel it, really physically feel it, as he loses every ounce of color in his face, as his hands go cold and he can’t quite move or blink or function, doesn’t even fucking matter that Sam was just sucking down demon blood, doesn’t matter how wrongwrongwrong it all is, because he’s expecting to see the familiar warm gleam of Sam’s sienna-coffee eyes, welcoming and mischievous and intelligent, sensitive, loving, profound, somehow still young and innocent even with the shit they’ve been through.
But there’s no color there at all, no crisp whites or understated browns. There’s not even the fucking creepy pale clouded yellow, because it’s only a garbled mess of dark crimson and charred black.
Sam’s eyes have been burned clear out of his skull.
~ ~ ~
Suddenly it doesn’t even matter that the railyard is smattered with corpses and blood, or that that pain in the ass Belial has finally been destroyed (as near as Dean can guess, with the stink of burned flesh and the exhaustion curbing Castiel’s features, but fuck, who cares, fuck it all, because Sam), or that in the short span of under an hour the waking world has been saved from certain fucking Armageddon, because Sam is hurt and that’s the only thing in the world that matters.
They get to the motel fast, the Impala swinging wildly around curves and jumping the occasional curb on its reckless tear through the backstreets of Reno. In the back of his mind as he heaves the both of them through the motel door, Dean thanks a higher power that there were no cops out tonight; not that he would have stopped even if there had been.
Sam’s elbows hit the cabinet hard as he bends over the bathroom sink.
“Okay, Sammy, it’ll be alright,” Dean’s been saying the whole time. He doesn’t believe them, his own words, but he can only hope they bring some degree of serenity to Sam. He can’t really tell, though; Sam hasn’t said a word since he scooped him up from the railyard gravel and dragged him the half-mile to the patiently waiting Impala.
Dean had turned in that instant, determined to search Castiel’s eyes for an answer, any answer, but the angel had already gone. The place where he stood only moments before was empty, not a shadow or a sound filling its void. Fucking typical.
“Dean…”
Sam’s voice breaks Dean out of his shell. When he speaks, his voice is weak, a little slurred, but at least he’s talking. Which is more than Dean can say for the rest of the night, I can’t see the only thing he’s managed beside quiet groans and shaking sighs. The sink turns on with a metallic shriek.
“Shhh,” Dean hushes, whipping a washcloth from the shelf near the shower. He squeezes it under the faucet, wringing warm water from it before pressing lightly against Sam’s face. Long streaks of blood have carved their way down Sam’s cheekbones, some of them twisting along his jaw, drizzling down the length of his neck. Dean brushes them away while Sam simply breathes, lips parted, silent. The only sound in the room is the constant surge of the sink, the distant rumble of plumbing within the walls, as Dean tries not to wonder how much of the blood staining Sam’s face is his own, and how much is from the demon’s throat he was latched onto.
And oh, fuck, he feels like puking.
“You’re gonna be okay, Sammy,” Dean continues, even though it’s a fucking stupid thing to say and he thinks Sam probably knows that. When he squeezes the rag into the sink and the water that comes out is very nearly opaque red, Dean’s stomach does a full somersault. “Just gotta clean you up,” he says quietly. Sam only whimpers in response.
He softens his touch as much as he can the closer he gets to the burned flesh around Sam’s eyes. Sam himself doesn’t seem to notice the difference. He’s not wincing against the pain, not twisting away from the contact. He’s not really moving at all, in fact. Just breathing, slow and sure, obliging whatever way Dean turns or lifts his face.
And Dean tries not to allow his mind to wander as he dabs the first bit of blood away from Sam’s eyelids and sees that there really is nothing left beneath them. He tries not to let his voice break. Tries not to let the tears hovering on the edges of his own eyelids slide down his face. Tries not to think about how much pain Sam is in or what it’s going to do to him or how they’re going to get out of this one, but he can’t stop it when the tears leak out and the only logical sentence his mind can form is that, yeah, this is how it’s going to end.
~ ~ ~
It takes half an hour of screaming his throat hoarse before Castiel ever shows. When he finally does, his face is drawn and he seems to already know that Dean is in a mindless rage. And oh, holy fuck, is he ever. “Where the hell were you?” he demands, his voice is a rough husk from screaming his fucking lungs out for so long.
Castiel’s shoulders raise as he inhales a breath. Dean notices how he holds his arm, at a slight angle in front of his body, as if it hurts him to lower it. And he’s got a limp, too, a barely discernable favor to one side. “I was busy. I’m sorry,” he says. He comes closer until the distance between their bodies decreases to inches.
“You were fighting,” Dean muses quietly.
Castiel confirms his statement with a slight nod, but says nothing. Dean studies him meticulously - the cracked crystal of his eyes and the grim line of his mouth and the exhausted slump of his shoulders, the rips in his clothes that he usually fixes within a blink. And yet somehow, even through all this, he seems unfeasibly strong. Completely in control and composed, a discernible light emanating from behind his flesh.
A long silence stretches between them before Dean ever digs down far enough to find the right words. As soon as he does, they leap out of his throat before he can stop them. “You did this to Sammy.”
Again, Castiel only nods. The gesture is slow, carefully calculated. He’s obviously loathe to admit it, but he doesn’t dare lie. He keeps his head bowed; Dean can only assume it’s out of shame.
“Cas…”
“I’m sorry,” the angel offers, and his voice is sad and sincere, stabbing through Dean’s chest with all the ease and pain of a white-hot blade. When Castiel raises his eyes, they are a pure wreck of everything his voice echoed.
Dean hesitates. Shakes his head. Swallows back the inevitable build of tears. He stilts a hand on his hip and throws the other one in the direction of the room where Sam is restlessly sleeping. “My brother is blind, Cas. Blind. You burned out his fucking eyes.”
Castiel’s lips part, but Dean interrupts any words he may have offered.
“How could you do that?” he hisses. He lowers his arm, shrugging them both out openly. Something jumps in his throat and he tries to swallow it down, but he knows what it is and he knows it’s pointless to fight it. “You fry out his eyes, go nuclear, then just turn tail and leave?”
“I didn’t have a choice, Dean. We had to stop the Legions,” Castiel counters insistently. His tone is not angry, not impatient or cold, but just… desperate. Raw. Driven and determined to make Dean understand.
Dean withdraws, snorting back a bitter laugh. “Don’t make this about the greater good, Cas. This is about Sam. My brother, who you bullied into helpin’ you. This is your fault.”
“Sam wanted to help, I gave him the choice to do so or not.”
“Horseshit,” Dean bites, loud. “I know how you guys work. You say you’re just twisting an arm but really you’re pushing us right to the edge. Spitting ultimatums and threatening us with doom and gloom unless we do things your way.”
“Dean, that’s not true, you know that.”
“No,” he sneers, shaking his head. “No. I thought you were different, Cas, but you’re not. You’re just like Uriel, and Zachariah, and all those other dicks floating around in the clouds up there.” He pauses, swallowing back another lump in his throat. “You’re just as cold. Just as heartless as they are.”
Castiel simply blinks.
“You don’t care about Sam. Hell, you’re probably glad that happened to him, aren’t you? One item off the to-do list - keep Sammy from becoming the Antichrist, right?”
“Dean -”
“Don’t.” He sniffs sharply, stabbing away the tears on his cheeks that he hates so much to admit are there, fuck, why are they there? “Don’t get all righteous on me now, Cas. Don’t feed me that I’m not like them bullshit.”
“Dean - I warned Sam.” Castiel shakes his head just slightly, the squint of his eyes dramatic as if he is struggling to comprehend Dean’s anger. “You heard it yourself, I warned you both.”
“So that makes it okay?” Dean snaps, and immediately Castiel withdraws.
He swallows, all traces of his former desperation gone. “Of course not.”
A short silence descends as Castiel waits and Dean fidgets. He looks down, crunching his feet in the gravel that’s not unlike the kind that blanketed the railyard where he lost his brother not two hours ago. “What am I supposed to do, Cas?” he asks carefully. His voice quakes weakly when he does.
The tension builds in Castiel’s jaw, but he says nothing.
When Dean blinks, his gaze purposely averted from Castiel’s, another rush of tears skitters down his face. “I can’t even -… Look.” He raises a hand, hovers it in the air, clears his throat in an unsuccessful effort to steel his voice. “I finally started to see you as something else. Something besides some… weird, scary - alien creature playing ant farm with humans. Something besides a brick wall, or a - a robot, just blindly following orders.”
Dean can’t be sure, but he thinks he sees Castiel flinch at the words.
“But no,” he continues, softer. “That - humanity,” and Dean’s eyes snap shut when he uses the word, “That’s not there, Cas. It never was.”
Castiel bristles, some of that vague electric power Dean remembers from before whipping out into the air around his body. “I’m not human, Dean. This was never a secret.”
For a moment Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe or react at all, and this is just ridiculous, this is painful and crushing and ten kinds of unfair, and it hurts, god, it fucking hurts, and he feels like an idiot having to explain this. He’s so far out of his element he’s not even sure what his element is anymore, and, fuck, this is like the fucking King of all chickflick moments, and might you know he’s sharing it with a goddamn angel. “But I felt something,” he chokes. “Something from you. And I know it wasn’t imaginary so don’t you even try to say it was.”
A long draw of silence spins out before Castiel responds. He keeps his eyes locked to Dean’s, and they are bright and slate gray and so unbearable Dean almost has to look away. “Humans are not the only creatures capable of affection,” he says, noncommittal and infuriatingly monotone. Case in point right fucking there, Dean thinks, but holds his tongue.
He takes a cautious step backward. “But I thought you guys didn’t feel emotion,” he argues. “I thought you just loved God, and followed his orders, and that was that. I mean - you’re a soldier. You’re a drone bee, Cas. You can’t make choices. You can’t care. Don’t try to pull that shit now.”
A misplaced smirk appears on Castiel’s lips for the quickest moment. “I care about all of God’s creations, Dean.” Then he looks down and his features darken inexplicably. He seems to be considering something, something beyond the issue at hand. “And I do care about you. Very deeply. You know this.”
Dean straightens. A distinct sensation crawls into his skin, burying and growing there, feeding on the slow rush of his pulse. “If you care so much then get in there and heal Sam,” he says, voice grounding low and acidic.
Castiel’s gaze drops almost as soon as it rises. “I can’t,” he says, quiet.
“Why not?”
The shake of Castiel’s head is slow; Dean bites his cheek until he can taste blood, then he keeps on biting.
“Cas… Why not?” he repeats.
“I have to leave now,” Castiel says quietly.
Dean’s chest goes cold in a single, rattling burst. “Cas.”
“I’m truly sorry for what happened to your brother, Dean.” Castiel begins to turn, pulling his hands into his pockets, and Dean wants with every cell in his body to chase after him, to throw his arms around him and never let go, to hit him, to punch him, to strangle him or kiss him or something, to get this shitstorm down and out of his system where it’s curdling and killing him, but he’s rooted to the spot and he can’t move for anything.
“Don’t you turn away, Cas,” he says, drawing Castiel’s attention again. He shakes his head methodically, steels his jaw until a dull ache rips rabid through his teeth. Castiel simply blinks, the movement a soft, sad glide. Dean drags in a ragged breath around clenched teeth, and if his voice cracks when he speaks he’s beyond the point of even giving a fuck. “Don’t you bail on me now.”
Castiel’s eyes darken. His chest inflates with a long breath, then deflates again as he sighs, systematic and low, and when all the air is breathed out he seems smaller, constricted, as if he has curled in on himself and he is now something less than what he was before. Heartbeats stretch into seconds, into minutes, into something infinite, but he doesn’t offer another word as he drops his gaze and lowers his head and turns his back. He’s gone in a matter of seconds.
~ ~ ~
They don’t talk about what happened in Reno.
Dean doesn’t ask about the blood and Sam, well. He almost stops talking entirely, the extent of his conversations mostly quick yes or no mumbles. For a week he didn’t do much - any other time Dean would have accused him of sulking and being an attention whore, but things were different now and he wasn’t quite sure how he should approach Sam these days. Which was stupid, because he might be blind and shit might have taken a hard corner worse than what had ever really happened to them before, but he was still Sam, and Dean felt like a fucking bastard when he didn’t know what to say to him.
Bobby did most of the work when it came to helping Sam adjust. Helping him memorize things by feel, count his steps around the house and hold onto the banister as he took careful sneaking sideways steps down the stairs. Keeping one finger in his mug so he wouldn’t overflow his coffee. Dean had offered to help more than once, but Sam’s face twisted up into a forced grin and he’d politely said, no thanks, I got it, his voice stinging with what Dean could never decide to define as bitterness or embarrassment. Maybe a little of both, fuck, who knows.
And maybe Dean was even a little thankful. Maybe he was alright with the fact that Sam was clinging tighter to Bobby than he’d clung to anyone since he did to Dean himself before he lit out on a bus bound for California. Because it was awkward, Dean could admit. He was close with his brother, yeah, but there was a line they walked, like a whisper-thin knife edge. At a certain point it just became awkward, watching Sam feel around clumsily with his already-ungraceful hands, and Dean sitting there completely unharmed and helpless. At a certain point it made Dean’s palms itch, made him throw up every morning and spend a lot of time just sitting in the front seat of the Impala staring at nothing, not even running the engine but just sitting.
Sometimes Dean wonders, and sometimes the image of Sam latched onto the demon’s throat will flash through his dreams in an unwelcome electric shock, but he tries not to mention it. Sam has enough to think about these days without being backed into a corner about what the hell he was doing playing vampire with a demon.
At least that’s what Dean tells himself to get through the days. He knows what it really is, though. He knows it’s probably his subconscious is telling him not to bring it up not because it might stress Sam out even more, that he’s afraid of what he might find out if he does, or some Freudian Pavlovian what the fuck ever psychological bullshit. But it doesn’t matter what kind of explanation or excuse Sam fabricates; the truth will still be there. What happened is still the same, and nothing would change that, no matter how bad it broke Dean’s heart or made him hate every fucking thing on the planet.
The third week since Sam was blinded, Dean has the nightmare again.
All the ache and the blood of the battle comes back to him and suddenly he is there again, with the dirty scent of the railyard in his nostrils and the grate of the gravel cutting into his hands. There’s a dull pressure building above his right eye, but he opens it anyway and that’s when he sees Sam.
But it’s not really Sam.
His eyes are yellow and he’s got the demon’s body held tight to him, latched onto its throat as if they were born fused like that, one conjoined organism. Sam’s body and the demon’s, spliced together, their veins sewn and fused together. One body with one blood streaming diseased and dark between them. Every drop of blood in the demon’s body rushes down Sam’s throat and he swallows it eagerly. When he rips his mouth from the wound his lips are dripping and his breathing is ragged and he’s got long dark lines of blood spindling from his jaw, just like Dean remembers. Sam’s teeth are coated in crimson and his shirt is staining with it, his eyes blank and cat-like and yellow but Dean knows somehow that he is staring right at him, right into him, and that’s when he jerks awake with a shout.
The room is pure dark around him, completely still and soundless. He fights to sit up straight, a sprawling tangle of blankets, his breaths coming heavy, shaken and uneven. A cold glistening film coats his skin when he splays a hand across the wild hammering in his chest.
With a sigh, he runs his hands through his hair, and that’s when Sam’s voice shocks quietly through the dark, making him jump almost clean out of his skin.
“Nightmare?”
It takes a few seconds for Dean’s breathing to plateau back to normalcy, but eventually he nods. Swallows thickly and kicks himself for the action. It’s been a month and he still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that Sam can’t communicate with things like nods and glares and gestures anymore. “Yeah,” he says, low. When a response doesn’t come, he asks, “What’re you still doin’ up?”
Sam breathes out a toneless laugh, devoid of any mirth. “Don’t really sleep much these days.”
Dean draws a calculated breath. He hasn’t told Sam about the nightmares, or even Bobby for that matter, and definitely not Castiel, who hasn’t even shown face since he turned his back and walked away those thirty days ago. Sam has asked several times about what Dean is seeing when he jolts awake at night, but he never tells him. Maybe if he stays quiet, Sam will think he’s just remembering something from Hell. Dreaming some fucked up thing about Alastair or the people he tortured, when in reality - fuck, he’d trade Hell dreams any day for the ones he’s having now.
“Why not?” Dean asks after a short lull.
A pause, then he sees Sam turn under the covers of his bed across the room. Their room, really. Ever since Sam was blinded, Bobby’s done his best to make his house as much into theirs too as he can. He’s cleared out a space for the Impala in the drive up front, and cleaned out a room upstairs and threw some mattresses in there. It’s touching, in a way. It’s the first actual bedroom Dean could call his own in more years than he cares to remember, even if it was just a cluttered storage room and a dusty, Paleolithic mattress.
Sam sighs, sounding strangely at ease when he says, “I’m blind, Dean. I can’t really tell the difference between night and day anymore.”
Dean winces.
“Guess my body’s not used to it yet,” Sam finishes thoughtfully.
For a moment, Dean strains his eyes to see his brother’s face in the dark, but gives up when he realizes it’s impossible. With a weary yawn, he turns to readjust his pillows. “Yeah, well. Mine isn’t either. I’m still tryin’ to wrap my head around it too, Sammy.”
A short, sour snicker. “Easy for you to say.”
And Dean really doesn’t know what the fuck to say to make anything better, so instead he just lies down and turns his back to Sam, and pretends to be asleep until he hears the quiet rustles and clatters of Bobby moving around downstairs close to an hour later.
~ ~ ~
{to be continued...}
We're so close to the end, guys! Hang on just a little longer! ♥
ONTO PART THIRTEEN