FIC: Pulling Out The Nails, Chapter 10: Lull [11/20]
Back to 9. Comfort, or go to the Masterpost.
Loud footsteps jerked Dean awake the next morning, and for a moment, he didn't recognize his surroundings. He knew he'd dozed off in the room that Castiel inhabited-slumped down in an uncomfortable wooden chair, the cat stretched out over his shoulders, soft puffs of air against his neck-but his memories of staggering to his bed in the middle of the night were hazy, mere snapshots: alien concern in too-blue eyes, an arm propping him up as he dragged his feet, a wry voice as he dropped down to the mattress.
He groaned. Humiliating himself was really all the rage lately.
Sam barged into his room and gave him a flat, unimpressed look.
"I'm sorry," he announced. He didn't sound sorry at all.
Dean stared blearily up at him. "Good morning?"
"But I'm not going anywhere," Sam continued, glaring down at him menacingly. "I know you're trying to protect me, but I have to be here. Can you deal with that?"
Dean rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to disperse the sand half-gumming them shut. "Fine?"
Sam deflated, as though he'd expected another shouting match. After last night, Dean just didn't have it in him. Let Sam talk them into a truce-he didn't care. Selfishly, he wanted Sam here, anyway, though it made him feel worse to satisfy this instinctual need for his brother's presence. Having Sam out of sight was too much like being with Alastair again.
"Fine," Sam repeated. "Good talk."
He stomped back out of the cabin. Dean gave up on trying to get vertical and fell back to the bed. Castiel was close by, probably reading more Vonnegut in the room next door, but the cabin was eerily quiet.
"Stop eavesdropping," he said experimentally.
"Stop being so entertaining, then," was Castiel's muffled reply through the wall. Despite the ache in his temples, Dean's lips twitched up. The djinni was hilarious at the most inappropriate times. Castiel was growing on him.
To the displeasure of his muscles, he made a second attempt to get out of bed. Outside, it was still raining, but he needed to do the vehicle check today; he needed to put together a concrete list of what they needed the next time they drove to a nearby town; he needed to make sure that their emergency bunker was correctly stocked-
Even though he'd made it upright, it didn't feel like much of a victory. The crushing weight of the things left for him to do before they were ready for anything threatened to flatten him to the floor. Setting his jaw, he headed for the bathroom and tried to put his to-do list out of his mind.
Their cabins had once been a vacation home for wealthy people who liked to rough it, so they were, technologically speaking, very blessed. There was a generator that gave them enough power to run a few industrial freezers and refrigerators, and could have even heated the running water for them, but Dean never let their camp use more power than strictly necessary; they needed to do their best not to attract any attention. They were all resigned to cold showers by now; hot water was a luxury they hadn't had in a long time. It was saved for washing dishes and cleaning wounds, and that was it.
Dean turned the faucet and splashed water in his face, shivering. On rainy days, it was like ice; it reminded him of the Colorado River, a vague memory of squealing as the freezing water hit his toes in Yosemite while his dad hoisted him onto his shoulders. It was a recollection from before the fire, from before even Sam. He hadn't been to California since.
"A nice Inferno would warm that up."
Dean jumped. Castiel had snuck up on him; he'd left the bathroom door open.
"If I thought you were able to cast an Inferno, I would've had you roast that deer the other night," he returned, blinking water out of his eyes.
Castiel rolled his eyes and snapped; in the corner of the bathroom, a glowing ball of flames hovered midair, radiating warmth. The sudden change in temperature gave Dean goosebumps.
"Enjoy," the djinni said dryly, wandering out of the room again. A folded-over paperback was clasped in his hand; Dean glimpsed Cat's Cradle inked across the top of a worn page. Castiel appeared to be going through his Vonnegut collection. He shut the door to the bathroom, dismissing the warm feeling in his chest.
The shower was still cold, but the balmy heat that greeted him when he stepped out made it almost worth it. He scrubbed his hair mostly dry, scurried back into clean, warm clothes and socks, and vigorously brushed his teeth, spitting out the remains of last night's binge. He didn't do that much anymore. The fucking Tecate wasn't really worth it.
When he finally emerged from the bathroom, warm and dry, the Inferno sputtered out. Castiel was in the room across the hall, seemingly oblivious to Dean's movement, his face buried in the paperback. "Thanks," Dean muttered, hoping the spirit could hear him, and headed back to his office.
"Dean," Castiel said calmly.
Dean paused on the threshold. "Yeah?"
"It's my understanding that humans need to eat regularly, or they'll expire."
Despite the disturbing feeling that he was being mothered by a fucking djinni, he chuckled. "That so."
"Yes," Castiel said idly.
"Fine. I'm going to the kitchen, then. Wanna come?"
"I don't need to eat," Castiel replied, as though repulsed by the thought. Dean stifled another laugh, shrugged into his jacket and tugged on his boots, and called out a goodbye as he headed out into the gentle drizzle, turning up his collar.
Sam was only collateral damage from the meeting yesterday, truth be told. No one had been enthused by his suggestions; if they weren't all so desperate to survive-if he had been a stricter leader, like his father-he thought he would probably have a mutiny on his hands by now. But he was out of ideas, and they were running out of time, and that combination was good for no rebellion, ever. They had been squatting in the mountains for three years, scraping by, left alone by magicians and everyone else because they'd been neutered, but Azazel clearly wasn't satisfied with their mere paralysis anymore. He was looking for a more permanent solution, and Dean refused to wait here until the next wave of assassins came for him-came for all of them.
But his plans of attack sounded terrible, even to him. His only inside man had his hands tied, and one low-level magician couldn't break them into Washington no matter how great his connections were. Henriksen was good on his word, but he could only do so much. And even with an armada of spirits at his back-something he wasn't sure he was capable of in a physical or moral capacity-Dean couldn't hope to remove everyone from Azazel down. It was, at best, a suicide mission. At worst, it was a suicide mission that accomplished nothing, and then the Resistance was down a general, and Dean might as well have let Castiel swallow him whole.
He was so tired that it didn't even sound half-bad, and he knew that was the worst part. I know we're going to lose, he'd whispered to Castiel, and half-drunk and tired, he'd meant it. Hell, he still meant it. He didn't know why the spirit was tagging along with a guy who'd long since given up on the light at the end of the tunnel.
He'd thought the djinni would leave him alone when he flinched back from the offer of comfort. Take it as the insult it was, no matter what Dean intended, and go haunt another part of the cabin until Dean needed him for something utilitarian again, but the damn spirit had seen right through him. He'd never even told Sam why, after those eight years with Alastair, he often couldn't stand physical contact; his brother just learned that spontaneous hugs made Dean seize up, and everyone else picked up on the subtle body language and left him alone. There were very few people who had managed to overcome his defenses, and even they rarely lingered as long as Castiel had.
He wanted to question Castiel's motives-wanted to demand what the spirit got out of it, if this was a manipulation that he should have shoved off-but he thought he knew what it was without having an awkward conversation about it. They were both lonely. And maybe it made him a sad fuck, that he was so out of touch with humanity that he couldn't connect with anyone but a broken-down djinni, but he was long out of dignity.
"Mornin'," Garth greeted, offering up the usual bowl of oatmeal, granola, dried cranberries, and peanut butter. The scent made Dean's stomach growl. It wasn't exactly luxury fare, but it did the job well enough-complex carbs, protein, the good kind of fat. Balanced nutrition was one of the few things keeping all of them alive.
"Thanks," Dean grunted back, taking the bowl. Pam and Missouri were talking quietly on the opposite side of the cabin, huddled over their own bowls of oatmeal. Dean poured himself a cup of coffee and made his way to the only one currently sitting alone-Jess. He was willing to bet that Sam had taken off for their community garden after confronting him. Jess was barely picking at her food; the stab of guilt hit him directly in the stomach.
"Hey," he said quietly, sliding onto the bench across from her. She looked up and-even though she should have been angry at him-smiled.
"Hey, Dean. Haven't seen you in a while."
"Got my hands full," he admitted, peeling the foil back from his bowl. "It's not a picnic, having a djinni camped out in your living room."
"I think I've seen him in the window," Jess said, poking at her oatmeal with her spoon. "The cat, right? You'd never have a cat otherwise."
"That's him," Dean confirmed. "Oatmeal not good enough for you, kiddo?"
The corner of her mouth tipped up. She was a grown woman, well over eight months pregnant, but she always smiled when he called her that, like having a surrogate big brother made her happy, even if he was as fucked up as Dean.
"My stomach's feeling a little weird," she admitted with a sigh. "The baby doesn't like it when you guys fight."
"Tell sasquatch to stop resisting my authority, then," Dean said weakly.
"He's just worried, Dean," she said soothingly. "He doesn't want to lose you, and he's convinced that's what will happen if we march on the capitol."
"I don't know what else to do, Jess," Dean muttered, looking down at his oatmeal rather than meeting her worried gaze. "If Cas could find us, anyone can. If we took them by surprise, maybe we'd stand a chance, but we're sitting ducks out here."
"I know," she whispered. When she reached out to cover his hand with hers, he tensed but didn't pull away. "You're doing your best. But I will never forgive you if my daughter doesn't get to meet her uncle."
Dean chuckled. "You don't know it's a girl."
Jess squeezed his hand. "I know. I can just tell. She hates your bullshit fights the way only a woman could."
Dean squeezed back, his throat too tight to speak. They ate their breakfast in companionable silence, Jess trying to sneak a sip of Dean's coffee now and then, and he wished again that she and Sam were far away from all of this-safe. Like such a thing existed for any of them, anymore.
*
Castiel found Dean in the garden a few hours later, pulling up weeds.
He had already been through their small array of vehicles. The combination of Jeeps and old SUVs were fully stocked for an emergency or a long trip; the last check had been six months ago, and hardly anyone had been in or out of camp since then. Gas tanks were full; tire pressure and oil was topped off. The only member of their sad little fleet that Dean had put out to pasture was an old Suzuki. The belt squealed every time he turned the key in the ignition, and after two hours of digging around in the car's guts, he'd discovered a half-dozen things that needed fixing. He cleared out the emergency kit and hauled it back to camp, to be distributed among the other vehicles, and left the forlorn little car to be salvaged for parts.
Even with it out of the picture, they had enough room to evacuate everyone. He didn't think running for it was a good option, but all the same, he considered their possible destinations: west, until they ran out of land and hit the western seaboard; north, until they crossed over to Canada, but the Americans were sizing up that vast territory and it wouldn't be an asylum for long; south, and yes, it was a long way down before they ran out of places to run, but some of those little nations in South America had already been recolonized and would be no safer than where they were now. Someday, no matter what, if the magicians were left unchecked, they would run out of safe havens.
"The default brood," Castiel commented, kneeling down in the damp dirt a yard away from Dean. He was appearing as Jimmy again. Dean absentmindedly reflected that Jimmy was a good-looking guy, with nice, capable-looking hands, just before he firmly shut down that train of thought, which couldn't possibly go anywhere good. "Heavy thoughts, fearless leader?"
Dean thought he could have used Castiel a few years back, when everything first went to shit. His macabre humor and simultaneous light mockery was a relief. Too often, Dean felt the burden of the entire camp, waiting for him to call the shots, waiting for him to lead them to paradise, and Castiel, seeing right through that impossible notion, made him feel human again.
A djinni made him feel human. Fuck me, he thought, shaking his head.
"Advise me," Dean invited, yanking up another patch of weeds from around the tomatoes. "If they know where we are-or, you know, it's not so hard to find us-why don't they just come and get us?"
"It's noisy," Castiel replied, gently shaking free the weeds peeking up from near the chives. "It would draw too much attention to your cause. A mass slaughter like that would provoke sympathy. It's why they sent me, probably hoping that the Resistance would crumble from the inside once you were dead." Castiel paused; from the corner of his eye, Dean saw the spirit squinting at him again, blue eyes pinched tight. "I feel compelled to ask what plan you pitched to the others yesterday. I could better advise you on that than on speculation. Even I don't know why magicians do the things they do."
"I proposed a few things," Dean hedged, shuffling over on his knees to the onion patch. Sam had obviously cleared the potatoes, all the way on the other side of the garden, earlier that morning; the area looked almost too clean. "A full-on assault, for one. Run at them with every artifact and able-bodied man and woman we've got."
"Do you know how heavily guarded Washington is?" Castiel asked, exasperated. He looked so out of place, Dean thought, kneeling in the mud in a suit and trench coat-and that was without considering his true form, which looked even more alien lounging in the garden. Even so, he pulled weeds like he knew what he was doing; it was only his appearance that was out of place. "There aren't even enough of you to choose targets. You would be dead before you came within five miles of anyone important."
"Maybe we're not supposed to live," Dean said, trying to keep his voice neutral. "Maybe we're just supposed to kill each other, wipe out the magicians and the Resistance, let the commoners pick up the pieces."
"I'm not here to indulge your self-pity, Dean," Castiel said sharply.
Dean rolled his eyes. "Guess not. What are you here for, then? Besides our awesome retirement package."
Castiel blinked at him. "I thought I was here to keep you alive," he said dryly. "If your desires have changed, feel free to tell me last."
Unbidden laughter bubbled up in his throat. Though it was the last thing he wanted, he burst into guffaws, hands braced on his knees, weeds and dirt crumbling in his fingers. "I hate you," he managed to cough out when the worst of his sudden humor had passed.
Castiel's lip twitched. The mask made of bone seemed upturned, somehow. "I'm not surprised."
"You're good at this," Dean chuckled, wiping his eyes with the relatively clean part of his wrist. "Stick it on your resume. Proficient advisor to the opposition when captured."
"I wouldn't get a lot of job offers with that kind of declaration."
"That's the point," Dean said, still breathing unevenly as he went back to weeding. "It would solve all your problems, man."
"Ah," Castiel said, smiling now. "I see your point."
They went on weeding quietly for a few minutes, before Dean's curiosity finally got the better of him.
"Hey, Cas?"
"Hmm?" the spirit replied, obviously distracted by the thick growth of wildflowers jauntily springing up around the basil.
"Jimmy had a daughter?"
Castiel looked up, but Dean kept his gaze focused on the soil.
"Claire," the djinni answered after a few seconds. "She was lovely. Very smart. Very stubborn. She liked my griffon form best. Sometimes I took her flying. Jimmy always berated me afterward."
Dean imagined the niece he might never meet. He hoped she had Jess's blond hair, he thought, and Sam's hazel eyes. She would be a spoiled little kid, even if they spent their lives on the run.
"I thought that wasn't allowed," Dean said. "Magicians having kids, I mean."
"The policy was different, when the British were in control," Castiel replied. "Colonial magicians had their own way of doing things, and the British were too busy side-eyeing one another to keep strict tabs here. Various organizations thought that giving magicians a little more freedom to develop personal lives would keep them from their more destructive habits."
"Seems like it worked," Dean said, frowning. "With Jimmy, anyway."
"One of the very few it would work for," Castiel agreed. "His ambition was still enormous, just not directed toward political power-grabbing."
"What did he figure out, anyway?" Dean asked, untangling some of the blossoms from one another. His second glance over Ptolemy's Apocrypha the day before had told him next to nothing; an incantation, a wing and a prayer. "Doing that research of his?"
Castiel didn't answer; when Dean looked up, he was frowning, gazing down at the wildflowers as he shook them free.
"Sorry," Dean said, shaking his head. "I don't need to know specifics. I just wondered."
He went back to his weeding, wondering if he'd pried too deeply, but to his surprise, Castiel spoke.
"It was a theory, nothing more," the spirit said. "A very detailed theory-the kind that I believe would work nearly faultlessly, if put into practice-but still a theory, because I refused to help him test it. We were still at that stalemate when he died. I wish now that I had relented. He might have lived, if I had not been so determined to protect him."
"What?" Dean interrupted. "How?"
Castiel sighed. "In order to reduce the risk of death to the magician as he returns to his body from the other place, he must become more…spirit-like, for lack of a better word. Jimmy saw it as a transformation of essence. The soul would be made less vulnerable when outside the body, and the body could be moderately independent of the soul. The hybridity is complicated, but after the first journey to the Other Place, the magician would be able to come and go as he pleased, without any adverse effects to his physical form.
"The only problem, of course, is that the magician in question would need a spirit he trusted on the other side. The spirit needs to both answer his initial call, to guide him through the Gate, and to then send him back with the right incantation. Otherwise, he faces Ptolemy's predicament: the soul disjointed, the body aged, and death eminent."
"And there are only a few magicians who have ever trusted a spirit that much," Dean said.
"And just as few spirits who returned the sentiment," Castiel agreed, nodding. "I suspect that if they knew what was truly in my head, they would be very disappointed. Traveling to and from the Other Place might eventually be achieved without a spirit's help-I don't know. But I do know that our worlds were separate until the first magician found a way to invite us here. I would hope that the reverse is true-that because it is our home, it will hold against intruders unless we let them in." The spirit hesitated. "I don't really believe that, though. Magicians have found a way to enslave us here, and it was still a magician who first found his way into the Other Place. The spirit involved did not create the incantation. Our home seems more vulnerable than yours."
"Sorry, Cas," Dean offered quietly.
The spirit shrugged and didn't seem inclined to say any more. Dean let the subject drop.
Forward to 11. Trespass.