March-Stalkers Mighty: 2/22
Passus I: Pes sinister.
Cas looked at him, hard and clear in the moonlight. Then Cas opened his hand, and his blade fell to the floor with a soft heavy thud. And he stood there, arms out wide, aiming that glare like a burning weight on Dean, like he was just daring him to stab him or call the dogs.
“Iwyse, Sir Gawen,” that Lady sayd, Surely “And I were fayre ye wold do anoder brayd, If; take another tack Butt of wedlok ye take no hed. Unless you have no regard for marriage Yett for Arthours sake kysse me att the leste; least I pray you do this att my request. Lett se howe ye can spede!” fare Sir Gawen sayd, “I wolle do more will [undertake to] do Then for to kysse, and God before!” as God is my witness He turnyd hym her untille. towards He sawe her the fayrest creature That evere he sawe, withoute mesure. compare She sayd, “Whatt is your wylle?” “A, Jhesu!” he sayd; “Whate ar ye?”
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, anonymous, mid 1400s. (The wedding night, wherein the Loathesome Lady is transformed.)
Dean made Sam’s favourite stew, that first night, the one that had barley in it as well as the rest, because Sam had always loved the way it popped between his teeth. It had always cheered him up.
But when Dean went hunting for him, bowl in one hand and two slices of hot new bread in the other, he didn’t find Sam sulking in his own room, like he’d expected. Sam was in Dean’s room, sitting in the middle of the floor, lower lip caught between his teeth as he stared at the notebooks open on his lap and the rug like they could answer any secret in the world if only he could tip his head to the right angle. He’d shoved Dean’s bed aside, and the loose stone in the wall behind it was lying by Sam’s left knee. The dark compartment usually hidden by it was empty.
Dean sighed, and sat the plate and bowl carefully down on the stool by the door.
“You remember, huh?”
He’d kind of wondered, now and then. There had been a few times, not long after, when they’d gone through Dean’s sketchbooks together and Sam had happily identified all the right pages as “Cas!” (or sometimes, “Dean, Cas. Now please? Flying with Cas please?”). Never since, though.
“A bit.” Sam scowled at the page, like it had beaten him to the answer in a quiz or something. “I just... don’t get it, Dean. I mean, shifters and things like that can pretend to be human, and there’s a few monsters that can talk and so on, but they don’t... I don’t know, share jokes over beer and make toys for kids.”
Dean had to look away, had to rub the back of his hand over his mouth while he tried to work out what the hell Sammy needed to hear. Because. Dean remembered all of it. It was just something that he was really careful never to think about.
“Yeah, well.” His voice caught dry in his throat. “Guess they’re just that clever. Or something.”
Sam grunted, a tense little huff of breath. He drew the pads of his fingers around the inside curve of a dark wing, frozen forever halfway through an arch of indignation. The old grey marks smeared and faded a bit in his wake.
“D’you think he - it - was just screwing with us? What do you think it wanted?”
And Dean, for once, had no freaking clue what was going through his little brother’s head; but it didn’t really matter, because he got it anyway.
“Fuck if I know, Sammy.” He shoved his back against the wall, slid down until he was at a level with Sam, one knee hooked up against his chest. Wasn’t really hungry anymore anyway. “Hell of a long game if it was. I’d say passing on intel, but I’d swear it didn’t know we’ve been killing other angels, which, you know, you’d think a double-crosser would.”
Sam’s forehead crumpled up, all hurt and upset; and Dean stared at those old lines on the page, the ones he’d hidden away so well for years.
“You don’t think Cas was evil, do you?”
... Yeah, trust Sam to drag that out into the light.
Dean looked away, away from the fierce, empty ache inside him, next to the Sam space, where someone else was meant to be.
This, this here, was why Dean hated late spring. Because, even if he knew by now that it was pointless, he still couldn’t shut down that part of him that always started to perk up and hope, as the days got longer and the nights got milder and the sun edged upwards until it cut its daily arc almost straight overhead. Even though he knew now that Cas had never been his brother. He had changed Dean irreversibly into his brother, so that even now, years later, Dean felt like he’d lost something he needed vitally to keep safe. Dean was Cas’ brother, maybe, but Cas wasn’t his.
“A wolf cub ain’t evil, but you don’t want to run into it when it’s grown up and hungry.” He shrugged, uncomfortable with whatever that was even as he said it. Because, well, monsters weren’t animals. Animals had no malice. Raise a wolf cub and it becomes a dog, and... well, learns to live among people. Like people.
Sam just looked at him, frustrated and kind of tired. “It just doesn’t add up, Dean.”
“Yeah, I know. Never has.” Dean leaned forward to punch his shoulder, then shoved the stool with the bowl on it at him. “You just gotta learn to roll with it.”
Dean sort of liked a full moon.
Okay, so it meant anything of the shifter type was out in the woods in full crazy force; but then, the incubus and succubus types and skeletal things like wights and hathels preferred the dark of a new moon, so hey, win some lose some. Dean just liked the way everything got lit up all bright and clear with silver, the thrill of the pitch-black shadows. The clarity of the light, like everything was clear as could be. No halfway ground.
He wasn’t stupid enough to go outside the walls at night with only Chevy for company - she was a sighthound and a tracking dog, after all, bred for following in a pack and raising her voice loud and clear, not for one-on-one battles to the death with monsters. Not that Dean would let his best girl get tangled up in anything like that, not if he could help it, and definitely not just because Dean had itchy feet tonight. So they walked the perimeter, with Chevy slipping happily in and out of shadows, black and silver like the rest of the world. Apparently everything smelled more interesting at night too. And if she gave an extra-excited whine and a huff when they curved back around at the culvert, where the wall arched up to let in the river, well, it was probably just a wolf or a boar who’d been hanging around outside.
Only, only... when they finally ended up back near the dog sheds, just outside the feed barn, she whined again, and did her little oo look I’ve found a smell I really have! dance.
Huh. Fox in the barn? Probably only after the rats, but the chicken coop wasn’t too far off, and they didn’t need any foxes moving in, thanks very much.
Dean eased the door open, and gave Chevy the signal for “quiet.” (Stealth wasn’t her strong suit, given her instincts told her to make a loud noise at things until the humans fixed it, but she always tried.)
It wasn’t a fox. It was a man. Standing in the shadows at the far end of the shed with his back to Dean and his shoulders weirdly hunched. Dean was about to say “Oh hey, sorry man, you couldn’t sleep either?” Except... Chevy wasn’t trundling over to nose his hand. Chevy was pointing, earnest and eager, like she would at a deer, or... fuck.
Dean drew his gun from his belt and said, nice and curt, “Turn around.”
It did, whip-crack sharp, shadows flicking out around it, and Dean had just a moment to think wings, and oh shit isn’t this just my luck alone in the dark, before the bars of silver light from the window fell across the angel’s face.
Chevy yipped once, helpfully. Just to show she’d noticed. Then she leaned against Dean’s legs and whapped him trustingly with her tail.
... Well, thanks.
Could be that Dean’s mind was fucking with him. That all the shit that the past few days had stirred up was flying loose and making him see things. Or, you know, a demon was making him see things.
Wings, flared open and high. Like a dog’s hackles. Like the way a cock would fluff out its feathers and spread its wings to look scarier, in the hope that the other guy would stand down. But in this kind of situation, against humans with ranged weapons, who were sure as hell not going to just back off, those wings, that instinct..?
“You shouldn’t do that,” was the first thing he said to Cas after sixteen years, and his voice sounded unfamiliar, rough and almost tender in his throat. “A kid couldn’t miss that target. Not even if he wanted to.”
Cas made a movement, sudden and sharp, and Dean heard his own laugh, too loud in the night.
“Hey, easy there. You think I’m gonna shoot you, Cas? Here -” and no, apparently he wasn’t, because he was tucking away his gun before he’d even thought about it. Because this was Cas, this was his lost little brother, and there were silver-blue eyes tracing his movement with that wide-eyed puzzlement that he remembered, would always remember.
It was only after that, as soon as he was vulnerable, that he saw the bright gleam of the sword in the angel’s hand.
... Well, of course. It’d be damn stupid of Cas not to carry a sword in here, where anyone would hurt him if they saw him. No way would Dean ever have let Sammy cross the wall alone without a weapon.
“Hey.” Dean held up his hands, all gentle, fighting down the stupid big smile that was trying to break all over his face. “It’s me, man. It’s Dean. Don’t you remember...?”
... only of course, he mightn’t. Play with the cub of the wolf, but when it’s grown up, meet it with gun and knife. Dean had been a kid, thinking of Cas as another kid, normal except for the wings and the silence, and who knew what had really been true? Who knew how an angel’s memory worked?
But Gabriel had kept an entire studbook of hounds in his head, across who knew how many towns and dating back at least four years. Gabriel remembered Cassie, and tiny private jokes, and Ellen’s apple crumble.
Cas looked at him, hard and clear in the moonlight. Then Cas opened his hand, and his blade fell to the floor with a soft heavy thud. And he stood there, arms out wide, aiming that glare like a burning weight on Dean, like he was just daring him to stab him or call the dogs.
Well, what the hell could Dean say to that?
“Chevy. Outside.”
He didn’t look away from Cas as the big, familiar body beside him turned on her tail and padded back out, toenails clicking on the wooden floor.
Cas’ eyelashes swept down, cast long fragile shadows over his cheekbone. It looked like surprise.
Dean bit down the sudden painful thump of his heart, because he wasn’t sure what to do with it, and turned his back on Cas to close and lock the door. He moved nice and slow, and it occurred to him in a detached sort of way that he should be expecting an attack, that powerful body that Cas had gone and grown himself barrelling into him while he was off guard (like Dean should have done). But no, just Cas standing there when he turned around, arms folded tight and hard over his chest, his face set into an unimpressed “this had better be good” glare that Dean remembered really, really well.
Dean snorted.
Cas cocked his head, sharp and questioning, the gesture achingly familiar even though Dean hadn’t thought of it for years. And suddenly he was eight years old again, with a friend who always found all the best grass soldiers, always let Dean have the flattest pebbles for skipping. Always sat still and listened when Dean was feeling sad or angry, huddled up with his arms wrapped around his knees and his wings wrapped around his arms, watching Dean with big solemn eyes, and always just leaned forward and touched Dean’s knee after, like that could make it better.
Dean stopped fighting the enormous idiotic grin and strode forward, with his arms out for his other little brother. “Oh, kid, you’ve got tall. Look at you, all big and man-shaped -” except for the freaking great wings at your back, wings that keep swooping down out of the sky and snatching up my friends and dropping then on the rocks. Except for that.
And hell, Gabriel. Gabriel who’d played along with the whole human thing so nicely, who’d turned into an animal the moment they’d found him out.
Cas flinched back away from Dean’s hand, just before it touched his shoulder, and Dean froze with both hands still in the air. Cas’ eyes were... not hard, like a man when he was angry, and not lustful like a monster. They were hot, and they were disbelieving and stubborn with that stubbornness Cas got when he was terrified.
... Angels felt fear?
Cas felt fear. Dean remembered that. Dean remembered hugging him through it, telling him how the ghouls couldn’t get in here - shit. Lies, all, and he’d been lying to a baby angel, the worst of all monsters.
This whole thing was seriously messing with Dean’s mind.
“Come on, man,” he coaxed, because sometimes little brothers needed a bit of bullying when they weren’t sure what was best for them (but did angels?). “What am I, a rabid weasel? Let me take a look at you.”
Then his hands were closing around Cas’ stiff shoulders (too scrawny, didn’t he have anyone to make him eat?), and Cas’ eyes were very wide and bright in the moonlight, and -
“Arthur’s balls, Cas, you’re soaked through.” He lifted one hand, nice and slow, to touch the damp curl plastered to Cas’ forehead (and he should have noticed earlier, but Cas’ hair was so much shorter now that it all hung different anyway). Cas’ eyes narrowed, but he didn’t flinch this time - he looked kind of thoughtful, actually.
And then Dean realised. “You swam in under the culvert, didn’t you? Because you can’t go over the wall anymore.” And there was Cas’ good old guilty silence, which he was absolutely crap at pretending he wasn’t doing. Dean rolled his eyes, and smacked him on the shoulder. “You stupid little son of a bitch, you know you can’t swim for shit.”
Cas’ eyebrows shot up, and he pursed his mouth, all sarcasm and “it’s been years Dean” incredulity, and Dean couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. Because, oh, how could he have forgotten that Cas had an array of eloquent bitchfaces to rival Sam’s?
Cas pulled his “I find you perplexing and irrational” face; but there was something else mixed in with it too. Something like wonder, or startled recognition. He lifted his hand - his left hand, and he had always done gentle, careful things with his left hand and busy, vigorous things with his right. Dean stood very still as Cas hesitated, a pin-scratch frown between his eyebrows, then delicately touched his fingertips to the corner of Dean’s mouth, where it was still curled in from laughing. And hell, Dean had missed the stupid beautiful son of a bitch.
A little sound punched its way out of Cas’ throat, a bewildered little breath like “huh.” Then his hand moved, the slip and drag of dry fingertips, back around Dean’s cheek to the corner of his jaw, lingering over the scratch of stubble between there and his ear, tickling their way forward along the cheekbone to linger over the crinkles at the corner of his eye, as if he had hours to explore just this tiny landscape. As if Dean was something worth figuring out.
Well, of course he was, he was awesome.
It suddenly occurred to Dean, staring at him so close, that Cas looked really tired. The kind of tired you got from months without a proper rest, with having to make sure the people you loved were okay and not always managing it, with doing things you didn’t really want to do but had to do anyway. The kind of tired that Dean would never let Sam drive himself to.
“Hey.” Dean raised his hand to cup Cas’ against his cheek, keeping it warm, and reached for his right hand with the other. It was clenched against Cas’ thigh, which was stupid, and Dean had to coax it a little before Cas let him wrap his fingers loose and firm around the wrist. It was a bit girly, but Cas had always liked that kind of thing (and Sammy too, though he wouldn’t admit it that often anymore). “You okay there, man? You’re looking kinda run down.”
Cas’ mouth went tight and thin. His left hand jerked, slipping out from under Dean’s hand. Then, very deliberately, he drew it down over Dean’s jaw, along the underside of his chin, down the delicate skin of his gullet. Kept his eyes on Dean's like a challenge, as he wrapped his long, cool fingers around Dean’s throat.
Like Dean was ever going to be scared of him.
Dean chuckled, fond with a bit of a rasp in it, and felt his throat jump and flex against Cas’ touch. “So?”
Cas scowled, an expression almost child-like in its impatience but a hell of a lot older in the resignation underneath. His thumb pressed in, a silent pointed offer of violence, right on Dean’s windpipe. Right on the edge of pain.
Dean’s mouth didn’t seem liked it wanted to stop smiling at Cas anytime soon, so he didn’t make it. “Yeah, and, we both know you ain’t gonna deliver.” After all, Cas was still using his left hand.
Cas huffed, and pulled away. Dean tightened his grip on his right wrist and tugged, spinning Cas back toward him, suddenly frustrated. Because, this was his little brother, or as good as, who should be all happy with eyes bright as anything that crinkled at the edges, and how the hell had he gone and gotten so damned bitter?
“Come on, man. You don’t have to be a part of that crap.”
And Cas actually growled, twisted his arm with a sudden vicious movement that forced Dean to let go, and grabbed him in return, fingers biting in hard enough to bruise. And that palm, pressing in against the underside of Dean’s wrist, was nowhere near as soft as the other. Sword callouses, Dean registered automatically, then again, more furiously, sword callouses.
“Fifteen days ago,” said Cas, deep and gravelly and nothing like Gabriel, “you killed my brother.”
And all Dean’s happy thoughts crashed to a halt, just like that. Because this was an angel, and this was Cas. Both at the same time.
Fuck.
Dean blinked at him, then swallowed. His throat clicked, dry.
Cas’ eyes went narrow and he lifted his chin, just a bit, like he was kind of shocked too but wasn’t going to let it show.
Dean was suddenly really, really pissed at everyone who’d ever been part of putting that stubborn, desperate look on Cas’ face. Especially because he was kind of terrified that he might be pretty high up on that list.
He cleared his throat, felt really uncomfortable, and cleared it again. This was probably a moment for saying something nice and sensitive and comforting, only because this was Dean’s life, what actually came out was, “So you always did understand everything I said to you, huh. Thought I might have been making that up.”
Cas huffed again and rolled his eyes, which, okay, fair enough.
Also, the hell? Cas had a brother? What kind of brother let his little brother run away every freaking day all summer because he didn’t have anyone to play with? (Obviously Cas had to have been the little brother, because Cas wouldn’t do that to his own little brother if he had one, he wasn’t like that, he took that kind of thing seriously.)
... The brother that had been that angel two weeks ago, apparently. Slim steel-grey wings, neat tricky little manoeuvres, spitting little hisses that sounded like curses at them even when he was halfway dead, even when Dean had stood over him with the knife and -
Shit.
Dean had imagined Cas coming back probably hundreds of times, when he’d been small. Hundreds of different ways, all kinds of different scenes and stories. Hadn’t ever imagined this, though.
“Cas, you - dammit.” Dean looked away, flinched away, and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. They stung and prickled in its wake, like he’d forgotten to blink for too long. “That isn’t even your name, is it? You got another one already.”
A name, a family. Before Dean had ever been there.
“Cas will do.” It came out grudging, bitten-back, like Ca- the angel - he - was trying to pretend that nothing was getting past his lips that meant anything more than little sighs, little grunts and murmurs and chuckles, like before.
Dean cut him a glare. “The hell it will. You remember where that name came from?”
Cas nodded, one quick brief jerk of his head, but hell if Dean was letting him off that easy, with gestures and expressions. Cas was damn well going to use words.
“Tell me,” he rapped out, and took back that foot of space Cas had left him when they’d spun back together with Dean’s wrist caught in a clamp, pushed right up into Cas’ face and took his gaze and held it.
Cas narrowed his eyes, challenge met and raised, then, “Cassie,” he said, right on the edge of gentle. “You said it was the name of a girl called Cassie, that she looked at you like I did.” He stopped, licked his lips (too dry), and kept going, even without Dean asking. “And the week after that, you were complaining that she had taken your blue wooden horse, but you couldn’t take it back because she was clever and she always said mean things to Sam when she was angry at you, and it made him cry. And besides, she liked blue things better than you did, so perhaps it wasn’t fair to take it away from her. Bobby had always told you to stop and think hard about whether it’s fair or not before you took something off someone smaller than you.”
Dean flinched, tried to pull away, but Cas wouldn’t let him. The words just kept on coming, the low velvet drag of the voice Dean had never known he had, so familiar anyway in their solemn weight and the flicker of exasperation and the cadence, just what Cas should sound like.
“And the next year you didn’t come to meet me for two whole weeks, because her little brother was sick and she was scared. You stayed away until he was well and she was happy, and when you came again, that was the first day that Sam followed you and you didn’t try to send him back,” he went on inexorably. “You made pie out of the first pears of the season, and you shared it with us both.”
Dean jerked his hand again, wrenched it away, bruised and aching, as the last fragile wall of self-delusion came cracking and tumbling down.
And instead there was this hot useless knot of rage inside him, because Cas remembered, he remembered all of that, and this was real. Cas knew about all these people, these people who were Dean’s world, and he and his monsters were killing them anyway. And why the hell couldn’t he have left Dean that one tiny sliver of denial.
“Yeah, Cas.” Dean’s voice came out like a croak, and he coughed and tried again, harder, throwing the words back at him. “Yeah, that’s her. And guess what? She’s dead. Killed a month ago by your brother. Week before he tried to kill mine.” This time, it was Cas who flinched, and Dean laughed a bit, harsh.
“Audrey still gets confused. Her mum - you remember her? Looks up and thinks she sees her, y’know? Y’can always tell when that happens, ’cos she starts keening again. You can hear it from halfway across the valley, ‘specially in the middle of the night.”
Cas’ wings quivered, bunched, and pulled in tight behind his shoulders. So transparent, he always was, even when he never said a word. Especially when. Dean scrubbed one hand over his face and looked away, looked at the stark black and silver lines of the window bars against the moon. The pale light lay across the floor like cold fingers, almost touching their feet but never quite reaching.
One of Cas’ bare white feet shifted, slid a little way over the boards, nudging carefully toward Dean. Then it stopped, and held its position where it was.
“We did not come here to kill you,” Cas said, low. “Too many of my people have forgotten that.” He bent down, one long fluid movement in the corner of Dean’s eye, and reclaimed his sword from where it lay. “But neither did we come here to be killed.”
So perfectly matter-of-fact. We. One of them, one who (unlike Gabriel, maybe) knew what they were doing, was part of it, was responsible; and who (definitely unlike Gabriel) might be persuaded to talk.
Dean, swallowed, sick. And it wrenched at his gut, but he said it: “Cas, you can’t be here. You have to go.”
Cas - the angel, dammit - stayed very still for a minute, then two; and Dean didn’t look up to see his face. Or his wings.
Then he moved, sudden and efficient, and the smooth slide-snick of a blade sliding home into is sheath echoed incongruously loud off the stone-work outer wall of the shed. His feet padded forward all brisk and regimental across the light, across Dean’s field of vision, over to the edge of the room, where the shadows turned into darkness to crawl up the walls.
But just at the door, he turned back, looked over his shoulder to lock his gaze with Dean’s and hold it steady, make the world fall away like he always did.
“You guessed close. Castiel.”
And Dean could only open and close his mouth, and the angel shook his head and was gone, to the sound of Chevy’s startled little growl outside and heavy footfalls, one, two, threefourfive, faster and faster, then the heavy shuff of wings in the air. Dean was left all alone in the cool, dust feed shed. And for a moment, the only thing he could think was, it’s spring. He isn’t supposed to be here yet.
That... wasn’t how it should have gone.
Castiel. Did he mean that was his name?
Four extra letters. More than half his name, then, and Dean had never even known they existed.
Chevy poked her nose around the door, wearing her worried eyes.
... Angels could speak.
Hell, that changed everything. Angels with voices. Angels with names, and brothers, and stories, and plans. Angels with feelings, goddammit Cas, you relentless stupid beautiful bastard.
Dean really needed to punch something. But more important, right now, he needed answers.
Cas looked at him, hard and clear in the moonlight. Then Cas opened his hand, and his blade fell to the floor with a soft heavy thud. And he stood there, arms out wide, aiming that glare like a burning weight on Dean, like he was just daring him to stab him or call the dogs.
“Iwyse, Sir Gawen,” that Lady sayd, Surely “And I were fayre ye wold do anoder brayd, If; take another tack Butt of wedlok ye take no hed. Unless you have no regard for marriage Yett for Arthours sake kysse me att the leste; least I pray you do this att my request. Lett se howe ye can spede!” fare Sir Gawen sayd, “I wolle do more will [undertake to] do Then for to kysse, and God before!” as God is my witness He turnyd hym her untille. towards He sawe her the fayrest creature That evere he sawe, withoute mesure. compare She sayd, “Whatt is your wylle?” “A, Jhesu!” he sayd; “Whate ar ye?”
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, anonymous, mid 1400s. (The wedding night, wherein the Loathesome Lady is transformed.)
Dean made Sam’s favourite stew, that first night, the one that had barley in it as well as the rest, because Sam had always loved the way it popped between his teeth. It had always cheered him up.
But when Dean went hunting for him, bowl in one hand and two slices of hot new bread in the other, he didn’t find Sam sulking in his own room, like he’d expected. Sam was in Dean’s room, sitting in the middle of the floor, lower lip caught between his teeth as he stared at the notebooks open on his lap and the rug like they could answer any secret in the world if only he could tip his head to the right angle. He’d shoved Dean’s bed aside, and the loose stone in the wall behind it was lying by Sam’s left knee. The dark compartment usually hidden by it was empty.
Dean sighed, and sat the plate and bowl carefully down on the stool by the door.
“You remember, huh?”
He’d kind of wondered, now and then. There had been a few times, not long after, when they’d gone through Dean’s sketchbooks together and Sam had happily identified all the right pages as “Cas!” (or sometimes, “Dean, Cas. Now please? Flying with Cas please?”). Never since, though.
“A bit.” Sam scowled at the page, like it had beaten him to the answer in a quiz or something. “I just... don’t get it, Dean. I mean, shifters and things like that can pretend to be human, and there’s a few monsters that can talk and so on, but they don’t... I don’t know, share jokes over beer and make toys for kids.”
Dean had to look away, had to rub the back of his hand over his mouth while he tried to work out what the hell Sammy needed to hear. Because. Dean remembered all of it. It was just something that he was really careful never to think about.
“Yeah, well.” His voice caught dry in his throat. “Guess they’re just that clever. Or something.”
Sam grunted, a tense little huff of breath. He drew the pads of his fingers around the inside curve of a dark wing, frozen forever halfway through an arch of indignation. The old grey marks smeared and faded a bit in his wake.
“D’you think he - it - was just screwing with us? What do you think it wanted?”
And Dean, for once, had no freaking clue what was going through his little brother’s head; but it didn’t really matter, because he got it anyway.
“Fuck if I know, Sammy.” He shoved his back against the wall, slid down until he was at a level with Sam, one knee hooked up against his chest. Wasn’t really hungry anymore anyway. “Hell of a long game if it was. I’d say passing on intel, but I’d swear it didn’t know we’ve been killing other angels, which, you know, you’d think a double-crosser would.”
Sam’s forehead crumpled up, all hurt and upset; and Dean stared at those old lines on the page, the ones he’d hidden away so well for years.
“You don’t think Cas was evil, do you?”
... Yeah, trust Sam to drag that out into the light.
Dean looked away, away from the fierce, empty ache inside him, next to the Sam space, where someone else was meant to be.
This, this here, was why Dean hated late spring. Because, even if he knew by now that it was pointless, he still couldn’t shut down that part of him that always started to perk up and hope, as the days got longer and the nights got milder and the sun edged upwards until it cut its daily arc almost straight overhead. Even though he knew now that Cas had never been his brother. He had changed Dean irreversibly into his brother, so that even now, years later, Dean felt like he’d lost something he needed vitally to keep safe. Dean was Cas’ brother, maybe, but Cas wasn’t his.
“A wolf cub ain’t evil, but you don’t want to run into it when it’s grown up and hungry.” He shrugged, uncomfortable with whatever that was even as he said it. Because, well, monsters weren’t animals. Animals had no malice. Raise a wolf cub and it becomes a dog, and... well, learns to live among people. Like people.
Sam just looked at him, frustrated and kind of tired. “It just doesn’t add up, Dean.”
“Yeah, I know. Never has.” Dean leaned forward to punch his shoulder, then shoved the stool with the bowl on it at him. “You just gotta learn to roll with it.”
Dean sort of liked a full moon.
Okay, so it meant anything of the shifter type was out in the woods in full crazy force; but then, the incubus and succubus types and skeletal things like wights and hathels preferred the dark of a new moon, so hey, win some lose some. Dean just liked the way everything got lit up all bright and clear with silver, the thrill of the pitch-black shadows. The clarity of the light, like everything was clear as could be. No halfway ground.
He wasn’t stupid enough to go outside the walls at night with only Chevy for company - she was a sighthound and a tracking dog, after all, bred for following in a pack and raising her voice loud and clear, not for one-on-one battles to the death with monsters. Not that Dean would let his best girl get tangled up in anything like that, not if he could help it, and definitely not just because Dean had itchy feet tonight. So they walked the perimeter, with Chevy slipping happily in and out of shadows, black and silver like the rest of the world. Apparently everything smelled more interesting at night too. And if she gave an extra-excited whine and a huff when they curved back around at the culvert, where the wall arched up to let in the river, well, it was probably just a wolf or a boar who’d been hanging around outside.
Only, only... when they finally ended up back near the dog sheds, just outside the feed barn, she whined again, and did her little oo look I’ve found a smell I really have! dance.
Huh. Fox in the barn? Probably only after the rats, but the chicken coop wasn’t too far off, and they didn’t need any foxes moving in, thanks very much.
Dean eased the door open, and gave Chevy the signal for “quiet.” (Stealth wasn’t her strong suit, given her instincts told her to make a loud noise at things until the humans fixed it, but she always tried.)
It wasn’t a fox. It was a man. Standing in the shadows at the far end of the shed with his back to Dean and his shoulders weirdly hunched. Dean was about to say “Oh hey, sorry man, you couldn’t sleep either?” Except... Chevy wasn’t trundling over to nose his hand. Chevy was pointing, earnest and eager, like she would at a deer, or... fuck.
Dean drew his gun from his belt and said, nice and curt, “Turn around.”
It did, whip-crack sharp, shadows flicking out around it, and Dean had just a moment to think wings, and oh shit isn’t this just my luck alone in the dark, before the bars of silver light from the window fell across the angel’s face.
Chevy yipped once, helpfully. Just to show she’d noticed. Then she leaned against Dean’s legs and whapped him trustingly with her tail.
... Well, thanks.
Could be that Dean’s mind was fucking with him. That all the shit that the past few days had stirred up was flying loose and making him see things. Or, you know, a demon was making him see things.
Wings, flared open and high. Like a dog’s hackles. Like the way a cock would fluff out its feathers and spread its wings to look scarier, in the hope that the other guy would stand down. But in this kind of situation, against humans with ranged weapons, who were sure as hell not going to just back off, those wings, that instinct..?
“You shouldn’t do that,” was the first thing he said to Cas after sixteen years, and his voice sounded unfamiliar, rough and almost tender in his throat. “A kid couldn’t miss that target. Not even if he wanted to.”
Cas made a movement, sudden and sharp, and Dean heard his own laugh, too loud in the night.
“Hey, easy there. You think I’m gonna shoot you, Cas? Here -” and no, apparently he wasn’t, because he was tucking away his gun before he’d even thought about it. Because this was Cas, this was his lost little brother, and there were silver-blue eyes tracing his movement with that wide-eyed puzzlement that he remembered, would always remember.
It was only after that, as soon as he was vulnerable, that he saw the bright gleam of the sword in the angel’s hand.
... Well, of course. It’d be damn stupid of Cas not to carry a sword in here, where anyone would hurt him if they saw him. No way would Dean ever have let Sammy cross the wall alone without a weapon.
“Hey.” Dean held up his hands, all gentle, fighting down the stupid big smile that was trying to break all over his face. “It’s me, man. It’s Dean. Don’t you remember...?”
... only of course, he mightn’t. Play with the cub of the wolf, but when it’s grown up, meet it with gun and knife. Dean had been a kid, thinking of Cas as another kid, normal except for the wings and the silence, and who knew what had really been true? Who knew how an angel’s memory worked?
But Gabriel had kept an entire studbook of hounds in his head, across who knew how many towns and dating back at least four years. Gabriel remembered Cassie, and tiny private jokes, and Ellen’s apple crumble.
Cas looked at him, hard and clear in the moonlight. Then Cas opened his hand, and his blade fell to the floor with a soft heavy thud. And he stood there, arms out wide, aiming that glare like a burning weight on Dean, like he was just daring him to stab him or call the dogs.
Well, what the hell could Dean say to that?
“Chevy. Outside.”
He didn’t look away from Cas as the big, familiar body beside him turned on her tail and padded back out, toenails clicking on the wooden floor.
Cas’ eyelashes swept down, cast long fragile shadows over his cheekbone. It looked like surprise.
Dean bit down the sudden painful thump of his heart, because he wasn’t sure what to do with it, and turned his back on Cas to close and lock the door. He moved nice and slow, and it occurred to him in a detached sort of way that he should be expecting an attack, that powerful body that Cas had gone and grown himself barrelling into him while he was off guard (like Dean should have done). But no, just Cas standing there when he turned around, arms folded tight and hard over his chest, his face set into an unimpressed “this had better be good” glare that Dean remembered really, really well.
Dean snorted.
Cas cocked his head, sharp and questioning, the gesture achingly familiar even though Dean hadn’t thought of it for years. And suddenly he was eight years old again, with a friend who always found all the best grass soldiers, always let Dean have the flattest pebbles for skipping. Always sat still and listened when Dean was feeling sad or angry, huddled up with his arms wrapped around his knees and his wings wrapped around his arms, watching Dean with big solemn eyes, and always just leaned forward and touched Dean’s knee after, like that could make it better.
Dean stopped fighting the enormous idiotic grin and strode forward, with his arms out for his other little brother. “Oh, kid, you’ve got tall. Look at you, all big and man-shaped -” except for the freaking great wings at your back, wings that keep swooping down out of the sky and snatching up my friends and dropping then on the rocks. Except for that.
And hell, Gabriel. Gabriel who’d played along with the whole human thing so nicely, who’d turned into an animal the moment they’d found him out.
Cas flinched back away from Dean’s hand, just before it touched his shoulder, and Dean froze with both hands still in the air. Cas’ eyes were... not hard, like a man when he was angry, and not lustful like a monster. They were hot, and they were disbelieving and stubborn with that stubbornness Cas got when he was terrified.
... Angels felt fear?
Cas felt fear. Dean remembered that. Dean remembered hugging him through it, telling him how the ghouls couldn’t get in here - shit. Lies, all, and he’d been lying to a baby angel, the worst of all monsters.
This whole thing was seriously messing with Dean’s mind.
“Come on, man,” he coaxed, because sometimes little brothers needed a bit of bullying when they weren’t sure what was best for them (but did angels?). “What am I, a rabid weasel? Let me take a look at you.”
Then his hands were closing around Cas’ stiff shoulders (too scrawny, didn’t he have anyone to make him eat?), and Cas’ eyes were very wide and bright in the moonlight, and -
“Arthur’s balls, Cas, you’re soaked through.” He lifted one hand, nice and slow, to touch the damp curl plastered to Cas’ forehead (and he should have noticed earlier, but Cas’ hair was so much shorter now that it all hung different anyway). Cas’ eyes narrowed, but he didn’t flinch this time - he looked kind of thoughtful, actually.
And then Dean realised. “You swam in under the culvert, didn’t you? Because you can’t go over the wall anymore.” And there was Cas’ good old guilty silence, which he was absolutely crap at pretending he wasn’t doing. Dean rolled his eyes, and smacked him on the shoulder. “You stupid little son of a bitch, you know you can’t swim for shit.”
Cas’ eyebrows shot up, and he pursed his mouth, all sarcasm and “it’s been years Dean” incredulity, and Dean couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. Because, oh, how could he have forgotten that Cas had an array of eloquent bitchfaces to rival Sam’s?
Cas pulled his “I find you perplexing and irrational” face; but there was something else mixed in with it too. Something like wonder, or startled recognition. He lifted his hand - his left hand, and he had always done gentle, careful things with his left hand and busy, vigorous things with his right. Dean stood very still as Cas hesitated, a pin-scratch frown between his eyebrows, then delicately touched his fingertips to the corner of Dean’s mouth, where it was still curled in from laughing. And hell, Dean had missed the stupid beautiful son of a bitch.
A little sound punched its way out of Cas’ throat, a bewildered little breath like “huh.” Then his hand moved, the slip and drag of dry fingertips, back around Dean’s cheek to the corner of his jaw, lingering over the scratch of stubble between there and his ear, tickling their way forward along the cheekbone to linger over the crinkles at the corner of his eye, as if he had hours to explore just this tiny landscape. As if Dean was something worth figuring out.
Well, of course he was, he was awesome.
It suddenly occurred to Dean, staring at him so close, that Cas looked really tired. The kind of tired you got from months without a proper rest, with having to make sure the people you loved were okay and not always managing it, with doing things you didn’t really want to do but had to do anyway. The kind of tired that Dean would never let Sam drive himself to.
“Hey.” Dean raised his hand to cup Cas’ against his cheek, keeping it warm, and reached for his right hand with the other. It was clenched against Cas’ thigh, which was stupid, and Dean had to coax it a little before Cas let him wrap his fingers loose and firm around the wrist. It was a bit girly, but Cas had always liked that kind of thing (and Sammy too, though he wouldn’t admit it that often anymore). “You okay there, man? You’re looking kinda run down.”
Cas’ mouth went tight and thin. His left hand jerked, slipping out from under Dean’s hand. Then, very deliberately, he drew it down over Dean’s jaw, along the underside of his chin, down the delicate skin of his gullet. Kept his eyes on Dean's like a challenge, as he wrapped his long, cool fingers around Dean’s throat.
Like Dean was ever going to be scared of him.
Dean chuckled, fond with a bit of a rasp in it, and felt his throat jump and flex against Cas’ touch. “So?”
Cas scowled, an expression almost child-like in its impatience but a hell of a lot older in the resignation underneath. His thumb pressed in, a silent pointed offer of violence, right on Dean’s windpipe. Right on the edge of pain.
Dean’s mouth didn’t seem liked it wanted to stop smiling at Cas anytime soon, so he didn’t make it. “Yeah, and, we both know you ain’t gonna deliver.” After all, Cas was still using his left hand.
Cas huffed, and pulled away. Dean tightened his grip on his right wrist and tugged, spinning Cas back toward him, suddenly frustrated. Because, this was his little brother, or as good as, who should be all happy with eyes bright as anything that crinkled at the edges, and how the hell had he gone and gotten so damned bitter?
“Come on, man. You don’t have to be a part of that crap.”
And Cas actually growled, twisted his arm with a sudden vicious movement that forced Dean to let go, and grabbed him in return, fingers biting in hard enough to bruise. And that palm, pressing in against the underside of Dean’s wrist, was nowhere near as soft as the other. Sword callouses, Dean registered automatically, then again, more furiously, sword callouses.
“Fifteen days ago,” said Cas, deep and gravelly and nothing like Gabriel, “you killed my brother.”
And all Dean’s happy thoughts crashed to a halt, just like that. Because this was an angel, and this was Cas. Both at the same time.
Fuck.
Dean blinked at him, then swallowed. His throat clicked, dry.
Cas’ eyes went narrow and he lifted his chin, just a bit, like he was kind of shocked too but wasn’t going to let it show.
Dean was suddenly really, really pissed at everyone who’d ever been part of putting that stubborn, desperate look on Cas’ face. Especially because he was kind of terrified that he might be pretty high up on that list.
He cleared his throat, felt really uncomfortable, and cleared it again. This was probably a moment for saying something nice and sensitive and comforting, only because this was Dean’s life, what actually came out was, “So you always did understand everything I said to you, huh. Thought I might have been making that up.”
Cas huffed again and rolled his eyes, which, okay, fair enough.
Also, the hell? Cas had a brother? What kind of brother let his little brother run away every freaking day all summer because he didn’t have anyone to play with? (Obviously Cas had to have been the little brother, because Cas wouldn’t do that to his own little brother if he had one, he wasn’t like that, he took that kind of thing seriously.)
... The brother that had been that angel two weeks ago, apparently. Slim steel-grey wings, neat tricky little manoeuvres, spitting little hisses that sounded like curses at them even when he was halfway dead, even when Dean had stood over him with the knife and -
Shit.
Dean had imagined Cas coming back probably hundreds of times, when he’d been small. Hundreds of different ways, all kinds of different scenes and stories. Hadn’t ever imagined this, though.
“Cas, you - dammit.” Dean looked away, flinched away, and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. They stung and prickled in its wake, like he’d forgotten to blink for too long. “That isn’t even your name, is it? You got another one already.”
A name, a family. Before Dean had ever been there.
“Cas will do.” It came out grudging, bitten-back, like Ca- the angel - he - was trying to pretend that nothing was getting past his lips that meant anything more than little sighs, little grunts and murmurs and chuckles, like before.
Dean cut him a glare. “The hell it will. You remember where that name came from?”
Cas nodded, one quick brief jerk of his head, but hell if Dean was letting him off that easy, with gestures and expressions. Cas was damn well going to use words.
“Tell me,” he rapped out, and took back that foot of space Cas had left him when they’d spun back together with Dean’s wrist caught in a clamp, pushed right up into Cas’ face and took his gaze and held it.
Cas narrowed his eyes, challenge met and raised, then, “Cassie,” he said, right on the edge of gentle. “You said it was the name of a girl called Cassie, that she looked at you like I did.” He stopped, licked his lips (too dry), and kept going, even without Dean asking. “And the week after that, you were complaining that she had taken your blue wooden horse, but you couldn’t take it back because she was clever and she always said mean things to Sam when she was angry at you, and it made him cry. And besides, she liked blue things better than you did, so perhaps it wasn’t fair to take it away from her. Bobby had always told you to stop and think hard about whether it’s fair or not before you took something off someone smaller than you.”
Dean flinched, tried to pull away, but Cas wouldn’t let him. The words just kept on coming, the low velvet drag of the voice Dean had never known he had, so familiar anyway in their solemn weight and the flicker of exasperation and the cadence, just what Cas should sound like.
“And the next year you didn’t come to meet me for two whole weeks, because her little brother was sick and she was scared. You stayed away until he was well and she was happy, and when you came again, that was the first day that Sam followed you and you didn’t try to send him back,” he went on inexorably. “You made pie out of the first pears of the season, and you shared it with us both.”
Dean jerked his hand again, wrenched it away, bruised and aching, as the last fragile wall of self-delusion came cracking and tumbling down.
And instead there was this hot useless knot of rage inside him, because Cas remembered, he remembered all of that, and this was real. Cas knew about all these people, these people who were Dean’s world, and he and his monsters were killing them anyway. And why the hell couldn’t he have left Dean that one tiny sliver of denial.
“Yeah, Cas.” Dean’s voice came out like a croak, and he coughed and tried again, harder, throwing the words back at him. “Yeah, that’s her. And guess what? She’s dead. Killed a month ago by your brother. Week before he tried to kill mine.” This time, it was Cas who flinched, and Dean laughed a bit, harsh.
“Audrey still gets confused. Her mum - you remember her? Looks up and thinks she sees her, y’know? Y’can always tell when that happens, ’cos she starts keening again. You can hear it from halfway across the valley, ‘specially in the middle of the night.”
Cas’ wings quivered, bunched, and pulled in tight behind his shoulders. So transparent, he always was, even when he never said a word. Especially when. Dean scrubbed one hand over his face and looked away, looked at the stark black and silver lines of the window bars against the moon. The pale light lay across the floor like cold fingers, almost touching their feet but never quite reaching.
One of Cas’ bare white feet shifted, slid a little way over the boards, nudging carefully toward Dean. Then it stopped, and held its position where it was.
“We did not come here to kill you,” Cas said, low. “Too many of my people have forgotten that.” He bent down, one long fluid movement in the corner of Dean’s eye, and reclaimed his sword from where it lay. “But neither did we come here to be killed.”
So perfectly matter-of-fact. We. One of them, one who (unlike Gabriel, maybe) knew what they were doing, was part of it, was responsible; and who (definitely unlike Gabriel) might be persuaded to talk.
Dean, swallowed, sick. And it wrenched at his gut, but he said it: “Cas, you can’t be here. You have to go.”
Cas - the angel, dammit - stayed very still for a minute, then two; and Dean didn’t look up to see his face. Or his wings.
Then he moved, sudden and efficient, and the smooth slide-snick of a blade sliding home into is sheath echoed incongruously loud off the stone-work outer wall of the shed. His feet padded forward all brisk and regimental across the light, across Dean’s field of vision, over to the edge of the room, where the shadows turned into darkness to crawl up the walls.
But just at the door, he turned back, looked over his shoulder to lock his gaze with Dean’s and hold it steady, make the world fall away like he always did.
“You guessed close. Castiel.”
And Dean could only open and close his mouth, and the angel shook his head and was gone, to the sound of Chevy’s startled little growl outside and heavy footfalls, one, two, threefourfive, faster and faster, then the heavy shuff of wings in the air. Dean was left all alone in the cool, dust feed shed. And for a moment, the only thing he could think was, it’s spring. He isn’t supposed to be here yet.
That... wasn’t how it should have gone.
Castiel. Did he mean that was his name?
Four extra letters. More than half his name, then, and Dean had never even known they existed.
Chevy poked her nose around the door, wearing her worried eyes.
... Angels could speak.
Hell, that changed everything. Angels with voices. Angels with names, and brothers, and stories, and plans. Angels with feelings, goddammit Cas, you relentless stupid beautiful bastard.
Dean really needed to punch something. But more important, right now, he needed answers.