Time Is The Justice That Examines All Offenders, PG-13, Dean/Castiel
Title: Time Is The Justice That Examines All Offenders
Fandom: Supernatual
Characters/pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Spoilers: 6.22
Summary: He doesn’t blame himself for not siding with Castiel about the souls or about Purgatory. Clearly, he was right about the wrongness of that particular move. He does however blame himself with ferocity just this shy of self flagellation for not being there for his friend.
Disclaimer: All credit to those who do own it (obviously not me)
The angel that Dean had known natural as breathing had been gone for six months, twelve days and sixteen hours and turned into God. Dean wasn’t the type to normally commit that much effort into remembering a particular moment but he’d looked at his watch just prior to the world going to shit (again) and for some inexplicable reason he couldn’t stop keeping the count. He used hash marks, old clocks, kitchen timers, anything. For some reason Dean felt it important to keep some sort hold on how long his friend had been gone for surely when he returned he’d want to know all about it. He’d want Dean to recount in perfect detail what had happened and in what span of time. Dean imagines this moment in the space between dreaming and waking. The detail of the reverie is vivid and always the same from the peeling floral wallpaper on the walls of some cheap motel to springs on the bed that creak beneath his weight. Cas will tilt his head in that way he so often used to do and Dean will exhale noisily and shake his head, just once, and indulge him. He will tell the story from his point of view and he will explain everything. Castiel will listen.
He tells this to Sam one night while he’s flying high on whiskey. His brother, ever the pragmatist looks at Dean with pity. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Dean’s gaze is sharp, fierce. “You don’t know that,” he says. “Dude, you don’t know that.”
Sam sighs, folding his long limbs into the motel bed and directing his hard stare at the ceiling instead of Dean. “I’m sorry,” Dean says. He doesn’t explain the apology, truly doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for but Sam accepts it with a huff of air and turns his back to his brother. The room is cool and unforgiving Dean thinks, like many a motel they’d stayed in. The coolness exists here because knowledge passes unspoken between the pair of Winchesters. There will be no quieting either Dean’s hope for Cas’ redemption or the obstinacy with which Sam hates him now. Dean can hardly blame him, remembering hell did awful things to him to and he wasn’t playing house with two royally pissed off angels. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, but this apology is meant more for the one whose entrance is preceded by the rustle of a trench coat and wings that appear to be made of shadow and dust. This time Sam decides to answer. “I know you are Dean.”
They leave the next morning. The vagabond brothers who had always traveled more than they stayed put were fraying at the edges. They hardly hunted anymore, mostly they ran. The irony of being the hunted was not lost on Dean. He’d have thought he would have been used to it by now, but he wasn’t. Castiel had set them free the moment they refused to bow down to his new power. It had shocked Dean at the time but it proved a much crueler punishment to be stalked from a distance, the threat of retribution hanging neatly over their heads. It upset the balance of both brothers cool. They’d been running ever since, angelic or perhaps godly wrath tracking them across the country. Streets melted behind them, scratching at the wheels of the Impala. Fires washed away cities and thunder rolled the earth beneath them. He was mercurial God, Castiel. Dean thought of him often, and of the ruthlessness he’d shown since he’d let them go. Often, once they had left a place, Dean heard by word of mouth that Castiel resurrected the cities he’d demolished recreating them clean days after they left. But this was always contingent on them staying gone from a place for good. If Sam and Dean made the mistake of returning to a place with even the barest hint of familiarity Cas would wipe it away for good, leaving only a barren nothingness in its place. Eventually, he and Sam would run out of places to run to. This was, of course, the point.
Dean believes that somewhere between resurrecting Sam and swallowing the souls that Castiel lost himself. It must of have incremental; slipping away in fractions because by the time he realized something was really wrong it had been too late for either of them to stop the taint. He looks back on those days with guilt that fills the belly and a shame that licks hotly up his spine. He doesn’t blame himself for not siding with Castiel about the souls or about Purgatory. Clearly, he was right about the wrongness of that particular move. He does however blame himself with ferocity just this shy of self flagellation for not being there for his friend. Maybe if Dean had spoken to him in something other than anger, some part of Castiel might have been reached. It’s all moot now but he never stops thinking about it.
He and Sam cover the country with something close to desperation. They are move east, riding interstates that bring them from one side of the country to the other. Dean’s foot is lead. They both know it’s taking Castiel less and less time to find them. Even warding wherever they happened to be with enough Enochian to fill a textbook Dean knows it isn’t likely to have an effect. After all, if he could withstand the poke of an angel blade to the back what possible good can a bit of writing do? Still, Sam sleeps a little easier after the effort so he says nothing. Small victories, he tells himself. They drive for days and only the obsessive way with which Dean tracks time allow them to separate one dawn from another. Each day is the same, survive. And since nights began feeling like days weeks ago every moment is much like the last. They move north from Kentucky into Indiana. Six months, fifteen days and nine hours now.
Dean flips onto the I-74 working towards Lizton. Small place, or suppose to be, a little over four hundred people. There’s a rest stop coming up and he can feel his body pulling at him, crying out for sleep. He eyes Sam with a sideways glance. He is sleeping. It makes Dean smile which is a rare enough sight these days Dean checks his reflection in the rearview. Sam rests in the cautious way he does now, his cheek curled into one shoulder. His lips apart, his eyes tracking something foul in the darkness of his dreams behind the eyelids. His legs are cramped but crossed at the ankle and he snores so quietly that over the sound of the engine it’s hard to hear. Dean cannot bear to wake him. Instead he pulls off into the dusty relic of a rest stop. He barely makes it out of the car before he’s whisked away.
The sensation is familiar, weightlessness and pressure. When his feet hit terra firma he knows he’s far from Indiana, from Sam and from anything resembling protection. He feels Castiel’s presence first, and then hears him. “I like snow,” Castiel states. “I seem to remember you like snow as well.” When he opens his eyes he’s greeted with flurries like feathers that ghost across his skin. This is like no snow he’s ever seen. It is gray and dead and when on reflex his tongue sneaks from his mouth to taste, he finds it’s exactly what he expected, ash. His heart beats too loudly, staccato and rataplan and it takes him several moments to pull it together enough to say. “This isn’t snow Cas.”
Eyes the color of the sea after a storm bore into him. The look is measured and heavy, no trace of the fondness he’d become accustomed to seeing from Castiel. The new deity shrugs, inelegantly. His eyes never leave Dean. It makes him nervous; shifting uncomfortably he fists his hands into his pockets so he can feel the warm solidity of denim beneath his fingers. But it does not help and the falling ash grows thicker.
“You’ve been thinking about me,” Castiel continues to look at him, his eyes tracing the lines of Dean’s body. “Many of your days are occupied with thoughts of me. Many of your nights as well.”
Dean swallows hard. “Yeah man, I…” Castiel stops him with a silencing hand. The space between them is divided in two. Dean realizes vaguely that part of this inability to form coherent sentences is due to fear, the other because he can think of nothing to say that encompasses all he wishes to say. He is useless, mouth opening and closing like the jaws of a nutcracker. Castiel’s fingers fall hard upon his lips. He could not speak now if he tried. “You are sorry now,” Cas whispers. “But there will be no penance for you. It is over, Dean. You needed only to capitulate. But the time for that is over also.”
Dean licks his lips. “So, that means what…” he finds they are standing moments from each other now and that at some point in the conversation Castiel’s long fingers have slid into his hair and that the storm has abruptly ceased. Little of paper-thin strips of ash are scattered all around them. There are footprints in the cinders Dean notices as he tries to look anywhere but in the set of aqua eyes that stand directly in front of him.
The answer is direct and emotionless. “It means I could destroy you now. But I won’t.” Before Dean asks why, as if Castiel had plucked the thought directly from his head he answers. “You have not suffered enough.” He drags his knuckle over the sharp plane of Dean’s cheek and then is gone. When Dean adjusts to his surroundings he is back at the rest stop deserted but Sam and the Impala, engine still running. Dean lifts his wrist to check his watch but thinks better of it. There is no longer any point and Dean knows it.
Fandom: Supernatual
Characters/pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Spoilers: 6.22
Summary: He doesn’t blame himself for not siding with Castiel about the souls or about Purgatory. Clearly, he was right about the wrongness of that particular move. He does however blame himself with ferocity just this shy of self flagellation for not being there for his friend.
Disclaimer: All credit to those who do own it (obviously not me)
The angel that Dean had known natural as breathing had been gone for six months, twelve days and sixteen hours and turned into God. Dean wasn’t the type to normally commit that much effort into remembering a particular moment but he’d looked at his watch just prior to the world going to shit (again) and for some inexplicable reason he couldn’t stop keeping the count. He used hash marks, old clocks, kitchen timers, anything. For some reason Dean felt it important to keep some sort hold on how long his friend had been gone for surely when he returned he’d want to know all about it. He’d want Dean to recount in perfect detail what had happened and in what span of time. Dean imagines this moment in the space between dreaming and waking. The detail of the reverie is vivid and always the same from the peeling floral wallpaper on the walls of some cheap motel to springs on the bed that creak beneath his weight. Cas will tilt his head in that way he so often used to do and Dean will exhale noisily and shake his head, just once, and indulge him. He will tell the story from his point of view and he will explain everything. Castiel will listen.
He tells this to Sam one night while he’s flying high on whiskey. His brother, ever the pragmatist looks at Dean with pity. “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Dean’s gaze is sharp, fierce. “You don’t know that,” he says. “Dude, you don’t know that.”
Sam sighs, folding his long limbs into the motel bed and directing his hard stare at the ceiling instead of Dean. “I’m sorry,” Dean says. He doesn’t explain the apology, truly doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for but Sam accepts it with a huff of air and turns his back to his brother. The room is cool and unforgiving Dean thinks, like many a motel they’d stayed in. The coolness exists here because knowledge passes unspoken between the pair of Winchesters. There will be no quieting either Dean’s hope for Cas’ redemption or the obstinacy with which Sam hates him now. Dean can hardly blame him, remembering hell did awful things to him to and he wasn’t playing house with two royally pissed off angels. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, but this apology is meant more for the one whose entrance is preceded by the rustle of a trench coat and wings that appear to be made of shadow and dust. This time Sam decides to answer. “I know you are Dean.”
They leave the next morning. The vagabond brothers who had always traveled more than they stayed put were fraying at the edges. They hardly hunted anymore, mostly they ran. The irony of being the hunted was not lost on Dean. He’d have thought he would have been used to it by now, but he wasn’t. Castiel had set them free the moment they refused to bow down to his new power. It had shocked Dean at the time but it proved a much crueler punishment to be stalked from a distance, the threat of retribution hanging neatly over their heads. It upset the balance of both brothers cool. They’d been running ever since, angelic or perhaps godly wrath tracking them across the country. Streets melted behind them, scratching at the wheels of the Impala. Fires washed away cities and thunder rolled the earth beneath them. He was mercurial God, Castiel. Dean thought of him often, and of the ruthlessness he’d shown since he’d let them go. Often, once they had left a place, Dean heard by word of mouth that Castiel resurrected the cities he’d demolished recreating them clean days after they left. But this was always contingent on them staying gone from a place for good. If Sam and Dean made the mistake of returning to a place with even the barest hint of familiarity Cas would wipe it away for good, leaving only a barren nothingness in its place. Eventually, he and Sam would run out of places to run to. This was, of course, the point.
Dean believes that somewhere between resurrecting Sam and swallowing the souls that Castiel lost himself. It must of have incremental; slipping away in fractions because by the time he realized something was really wrong it had been too late for either of them to stop the taint. He looks back on those days with guilt that fills the belly and a shame that licks hotly up his spine. He doesn’t blame himself for not siding with Castiel about the souls or about Purgatory. Clearly, he was right about the wrongness of that particular move. He does however blame himself with ferocity just this shy of self flagellation for not being there for his friend. Maybe if Dean had spoken to him in something other than anger, some part of Castiel might have been reached. It’s all moot now but he never stops thinking about it.
He and Sam cover the country with something close to desperation. They are move east, riding interstates that bring them from one side of the country to the other. Dean’s foot is lead. They both know it’s taking Castiel less and less time to find them. Even warding wherever they happened to be with enough Enochian to fill a textbook Dean knows it isn’t likely to have an effect. After all, if he could withstand the poke of an angel blade to the back what possible good can a bit of writing do? Still, Sam sleeps a little easier after the effort so he says nothing. Small victories, he tells himself. They drive for days and only the obsessive way with which Dean tracks time allow them to separate one dawn from another. Each day is the same, survive. And since nights began feeling like days weeks ago every moment is much like the last. They move north from Kentucky into Indiana. Six months, fifteen days and nine hours now.
Dean flips onto the I-74 working towards Lizton. Small place, or suppose to be, a little over four hundred people. There’s a rest stop coming up and he can feel his body pulling at him, crying out for sleep. He eyes Sam with a sideways glance. He is sleeping. It makes Dean smile which is a rare enough sight these days Dean checks his reflection in the rearview. Sam rests in the cautious way he does now, his cheek curled into one shoulder. His lips apart, his eyes tracking something foul in the darkness of his dreams behind the eyelids. His legs are cramped but crossed at the ankle and he snores so quietly that over the sound of the engine it’s hard to hear. Dean cannot bear to wake him. Instead he pulls off into the dusty relic of a rest stop. He barely makes it out of the car before he’s whisked away.
The sensation is familiar, weightlessness and pressure. When his feet hit terra firma he knows he’s far from Indiana, from Sam and from anything resembling protection. He feels Castiel’s presence first, and then hears him. “I like snow,” Castiel states. “I seem to remember you like snow as well.” When he opens his eyes he’s greeted with flurries like feathers that ghost across his skin. This is like no snow he’s ever seen. It is gray and dead and when on reflex his tongue sneaks from his mouth to taste, he finds it’s exactly what he expected, ash. His heart beats too loudly, staccato and rataplan and it takes him several moments to pull it together enough to say. “This isn’t snow Cas.”
Eyes the color of the sea after a storm bore into him. The look is measured and heavy, no trace of the fondness he’d become accustomed to seeing from Castiel. The new deity shrugs, inelegantly. His eyes never leave Dean. It makes him nervous; shifting uncomfortably he fists his hands into his pockets so he can feel the warm solidity of denim beneath his fingers. But it does not help and the falling ash grows thicker.
“You’ve been thinking about me,” Castiel continues to look at him, his eyes tracing the lines of Dean’s body. “Many of your days are occupied with thoughts of me. Many of your nights as well.”
Dean swallows hard. “Yeah man, I…” Castiel stops him with a silencing hand. The space between them is divided in two. Dean realizes vaguely that part of this inability to form coherent sentences is due to fear, the other because he can think of nothing to say that encompasses all he wishes to say. He is useless, mouth opening and closing like the jaws of a nutcracker. Castiel’s fingers fall hard upon his lips. He could not speak now if he tried. “You are sorry now,” Cas whispers. “But there will be no penance for you. It is over, Dean. You needed only to capitulate. But the time for that is over also.”
Dean licks his lips. “So, that means what…” he finds they are standing moments from each other now and that at some point in the conversation Castiel’s long fingers have slid into his hair and that the storm has abruptly ceased. Little of paper-thin strips of ash are scattered all around them. There are footprints in the cinders Dean notices as he tries to look anywhere but in the set of aqua eyes that stand directly in front of him.
The answer is direct and emotionless. “It means I could destroy you now. But I won’t.” Before Dean asks why, as if Castiel had plucked the thought directly from his head he answers. “You have not suffered enough.” He drags his knuckle over the sharp plane of Dean’s cheek and then is gone. When Dean adjusts to his surroundings he is back at the rest stop deserted but Sam and the Impala, engine still running. Dean lifts his wrist to check his watch but thinks better of it. There is no longer any point and Dean knows it.