March-Stalkers Mighty: 14/22
Passus VII: Pes sinister.
“Close your eyes,” Gabriel hissed, like something a hell of a lot farther from civilisation than any sly-mannered demon.
Paulina: If you can behold it,
I’le make the Statue moue indeed; descend,
And take you by the hand: But then you’le thinke -
Which I protest against - I am assisted
By wicked Powers.
A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare, c. 1610. (Statue scene, V.iii)
The next few minutes were a blur in Dean’s memory. Cas tried to shove him into the salt circle, he knew that, but no way in hell was Dean going in there when there was fighting to be done and Sam and Cas were still out there, and Sam with his big bulk of a body could hardly fit into it when it was so tiny and Ellen wouldn’t let a dog in there without a hell of an explanation while there were still humans to be saved.
Gwen yelled out Dean’s name and tossed him Cas’ sword, that much was clear, mostly because he knew Cas was fighting unarmed (and wounded, the stupid son of a bitch), ducking and dodging and buffeting with his good wing and burning them to dust with a grip and concentration of steel while Dean and Rachel covered for him.
Then Hanael got stubborn and tossed her sword to Gwen and started fighting bare-handed, and Gwen yelled something frustrated and leaped out to join them, to turn the edge of the blade against the black smoky nothings that hustled in amongst the rocks.
But there were too many, pressing in on them, and in that crowded space Dean couldn’t even cover Cas without getting Cas’ elbow in the ribs. Cas was getting slower and trailing blood on the ground, and the light bleeding from his wing was too strong, and Rachel was only interested in covering Cas, not Gwen or Sam or Hanael or Dean, so it wasn’t an equal playing field. And there were at least half a dozen demons, and just one had almost taken Cas down, and sure, a slash of Cas’ blade and Dean could kill one but they were tricky smoky sons of bitches and didn’t just stand still for the blade, and when they were incorporeal you couldn’t guess their movements like you could something that had to obey the tug of bones and sinews, and he’d only managed to kill one before he was pinned by a distorted grinning nightmare of a thing and Sam was hurtling towards them, baying direly.
Dean saw, like everything was happening as slow as a dream, the demon’s unnaturally long arm swing out and catch Sam in the throat. Then he saw it turn away from him, grinning with delight, and crush Sam to the ground with a hand over his gullet.
Dean couldn’t move. He was pinioned by the demon’s will without a touch necessary, and Cas was way over the other side of the clearing and there was no way he was relying on the other two angels for Sam even if they did care and weren’t busy with their own battles, and Ellen was all out of rounds, and Gwen was busy, and Jo was rebuilding her body and had left nothing on her that would even distract a demon.
In all fairness, he and Jo hadn’t really planned for things to end up like this when they’d stocked up this morning.
It was up to Dean, dammit. And he’d managed to turn a blade with a demon inside him, so hell if he couldn’t move when one was just thinking him against a wall.
He struggled, and raged, and tried to pull free, as Sam choked and got weaker on the ground at his feet.
He might have made it, in the end; but he didn’t have to. The narrow midday sky lit up with angelic fury, and Gabriel descended in a flurry of rage and gold. Dean had to close his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, all he could see was the former Trickster crouched over his brother, snarling like an animal, with his red and flaming sword bared against the demons. Sam was gasping between his arms, eyes buried with a hell of a lot of trust in the corner of Gabriel’s elbow, and there was a demon’s corpse somewhere near there, but Dean was mostly concerned with the noise that was coming from between the archangel’s teeth.
“Close your eyes,” Gabriel hissed, like something a hell of a lot farther from civilisation than any sly-mannered demon.
Dean hesitated, just a moment. That moment was long enough for everyone to move. Sam rolled out from underneath Gabriel and towards Ellen. Jo looked up across the antechamber of rock towards Gwen, and Gwen looked towards Cas, and Cas opened his mouth then shut it again and reached for Gwen and Dean, drawing them in toward his body and tugging them under the shield of his wings. Gwen turned in against Cas’ shoulder, trusting as anything, and Dean was hardly going to argue when Cas’ fingers closed imperiously around his shoulder and drew him in to hide him.
“Ellen, it’s Sam. Just trust me, okay? Close your eyes,” he heard Sam say, and he closed his eyes obediently, because if Sam knew something he didn’t, sure as hell Dean would be trusting him.
Then the world turned white outside his eyelids, and everything narrowed itself to Dean’s forehead pressed into Cas’ throat, the salt-sweet smell of sweat and wings, the awkward nook of Dean’s nose against Cas’ collarbone, the itchy damp press of bloodied feathers against the back of Dean’s neck. And, after a moment, the savoury stench of burning flesh.
Cas’ hand loosened on the back of Dean’s neck, and the damaged curve of his wing folded haltingly back away from Dean’s side, which he decided to take as the okay to spin around and open his eyes.
The demons were gone. The ones who’d been in their solid forms were lying on the ground, contorted and dead with their eyes burnt from their sockets. The ones who’d still been black smoke were just gone, like shadows in front of a blowtorch. Hanael was leaning against the rock with a hand clamped over a gash in her thigh, though she looked more annoyed than hurt, and Gwen was pulling away from Cas to go and check on her.
Gabriel, though... Gabriel was the one washing the bleak grey granite and the pale grubby faces warm and bright, like they were clustered around a bonfire. He was rising slowly to his feet, and the great double arch of wings spanning rock to rock was folding cautiously down along his back, the glow still fading sullenly into them, each bristling feather slotting back in under the one before it nice and slow like they were reluctant to stand down. His shoulders and mouth were set hard and firm, and he was pointedly not looking in Ellen and Jo’s direction.
Dean made a very careful mental note not to piss Gabriel off. Unless he really deserved it, or made fun of Sammy.
“Thank you, Gabriel,” came Cas’ voice from behind Dean’s ear, solemn and mild as if Gabriel had helped him fold a double sheet or something.
Gabriel cocked a sarcastic eyebrow in his direction. “Hey, whenever you manage to keep yourself out of trouble for ten minutes at a time, let me know. We’ll throw a party. What’d it stick you with?”
“My sword,” muttered Cas, who had apparently decided that Dean’s shoulder was his personal leaning post. Although, given the fact that Dean’s arm seemed to have found its way around his waist, maybe it had been more a sort of joint decision.
Gabriel winced and strolled over into Dean’s space, aggressively casual, to slide his fingers in where Cas’ wing was still leaking blood and that freakish white light. That, at least, dimmed and vanished under Gabriel’s touch. “No quick fix for that, you know. You’ll have to get one of these guys to stitch you up and let it heal the long way around.”
Cas’ fingers pressed harder into the small of Dean’s back, almost painful. “I am aware,” he said tightly.
“So. The angels are gone, huh?” Jo asked behind Dean, high-pitched and shaky-bright.
“Apparently they’re kinda like pigeons,” Dean shot back, instead of thinking, because there was something clamouring for his attention, some detail that was really really important that he’d skipped right over, and he could feel Cas’ fingers hovering carefully in the small of his back and it was very distracting.
Ellen’s deliberate drawl cut across the moment in that anyone who wants to start explaining any time soon go right ahead tone. “So, I got four angels here, a bunch of dead demons, three crazy kids who may or may not be under some kind of influence, there’s I-don’t-want-to-know-what gluing my daughter’s guts together, and Sam Winchester’s buck naked. Gotta say I didn’t see this one coming.”
... That was what Dean had missed.
He looked.
Sam was standing just behind Ellen like he’d grabbed her to cover her eyes, and his expression was sliding pretty damn quickly from “taking down evil shit” to “caught raiding cookie jar.”
“Uhm. Hi guys,” he mumbled, and sketched a sheepish wave with the hand that wasn’t valiantly trying to cover his junk.
Dean stared, and blinked, and stared again. Jo was on her feet and saying something, but it wasn’t important.
“Sammy.”
Sam’s wide brown eyes swung up to lock on Dean like he was the only thing in the world. Dean held Cas’ sword out blankly behind him and felt the angel take it without a word, fingers brushing warm and dry over Dean’s hand as he slid his weight off Dean’s shoulder. Dean moved forward, past Gabriel and Rachel, toward his miracle of a little brother.
(“You leant a human your sword?” came Gabriel’s voice somewhere behind him, an incredulous hiss like Cas’d pulled out the bones of his fingers and offered them to Dean on the off chance that he might want a game of tiddlywinks.
“Yes,” Cas said simply.)
Sam always looked extra long and gangly with no clothes on, all legs and forelock, like an embarrassed colt. Dean reached out to touch him, fingers resting kind of grubby on Sam’s chest, just under his collarbone, just above where Dean’s amulet hung against Sam’s breastbone. The skin was smooth and warm and alive, and it didn’t vanish under Dean’s fingertips.
“Look at you.” Dean’s voice felt rough in his mouth.
Sam huffed a bit, the beginning of a laugh dragging at the corners of his mouth, and Dean grabbed him and dragged him in. Sam buried his nose in Dean’s shoulder and held on, heart thudding fast between Dean’s fist and chest and all that stupid solid Sam-strength squeezing him too hard like he always did. And damn but he’d missed this kid.
“You fixed it, huh?” he said proudly into far too much hair.
Sam thumped him on the back then pulled away, looking a bit nervous. “Sort of?”
Dean gave him a Look.
Ellen cleared her throat pointedly, and Sam jumped and tried to use Dean as some sort of modesty screen. “Okay. You wanna explain to me how it is that there was some big dog behind me who just happened to be replaced by...” She made a brusque little gesture, up and down the length of Sam’s body. “... all of that?”
... Which, shit, yes, they were going to have to come up with an explanation for. And obviously Dean would like the real explanation too, but Sam looked fine and more important right now was no one attacking anyone with silver knives.
“Can there be pants for this conversation?” Sam asked plaintively.
Jo and one of the female angels made terrifyingly similar noises of glee. Dean glowered at Jo and shrugged out of his jacket, which Sam clutched for like a lifeline. “Okay, uh, so, there was this curse,” he started, and broke off when Cas moved up next to Dean, untying all the complicated little ties of his knee-length tunic.
Dean found himself blinking again. Given Cas was actually a good bit smaller than Sam, why did he seem to have so much more skin? Miles and miles of it, soft and pale and touchable under the velvety blue-black scallops of feathers, and the dark curls at the top of his neck, and...
“I love you, man,” Sam muttered fervently, snatched the slightly bloodied tunic, and promptly got lost in it. Cas gave him about ten seconds of confused fumbling before he moved forward and silently took over getting him into the thing. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Jo and Ellen exchange lifted eyebrows, then Jo casting an appraising eye over the other three angels. Not like there wasn’t plenty weird in this scenario.
“This curse,” Sam repeated, conveniently distracted by trying to work out which little braided cord was the match of some other little braided cord so that he couldn’t look up and meet anyone’s eyes. “Which wasn’t anyone’s fault, by the way, it was some old imp thing apparently, but anyway, it - oh, thanks Cas - turned me into a dog. That dog. The one I was a couple of minutes back - oh, hey, is that where that bit goes.” He turned around obediently under the press of Cas’ hand, like having Cas all up in his space was easy and normal. Cas’ fingers were deft and gentle on the lacings, and his eyes were hidden under dark lashes, but the tension in the firm planes of his shoulders said he was still on the alert, still in pain. “This was back on the day Bill died, and - oh.” Sam looked up, focussed properly on Ellen for the first time, with that apologetic little crinkle between his eyebrows. “That was a wendigo, by the way. Same with Annie. I don’t know if anyone else saw? I was kind of too distracted after to remember to tell Bobby, and I didn’t realise until later that everyone was blaming the angels for that bit, so. Sorry.”
Ellen nodded, one quick jerk of her head that said she’d taken that on board but would think about it later, while at her side Jo let out a small wounded “oh” noise, and stood up determinedly taller. Sam was looking at them like a worried puppy; but Cas had exchanged a quick glance with Gwen as he fastened the last tie, and Sam’s eyes were just a shade too wide and sincere for that to have little fact to been dropped accidentally, here and now.
They were plotting something.
“Anyway, um.” Sam pulled on Dean’s jacket over Cas’ tunic. “We couldn’t get rid of the curse, so we decided to add to it. And.” He spread his arms in a here-I-am way. “Technically I’m still a dog, just a dog that can change into a human when I want to, instead of, y’know, the other way round.”
Wait, what? Dean’s mind back-tracked frantically, trying to work out which bits of that were real and which bits had been for Jo and Ellen’s benefit.
“So you’re a skinwalker?” Ellen said bluntly.
Sam’s forehead crumpled up. “Mostly I think I’m me,” he said, in a small voice. “I don’t want to, y’know. Rip anyone’s heart out, or anything.”
He had his eyes fixed on Dean like Dean got to decide whether to give Sam the world or take it away from him forever, and it was that, more than anything else, that terrified Dean. Because no way was Sam just bullshitting here.
... Hadn’t that weird dream version of Cas said something about a skinwalker?
He slid his eyes over to Cas, who met them sort of reservedly, just long enough to raise his eyebrows in a very slight “why are you surprised?” expression.
Okay. Okay. Well, angels really talking in dreams, that could happen. Wouldn’t be the only things that could screw with your mind while you were sleeping. Only that meant that maybe some of those other dreams... but Dean wasn’t going to go there, because he wasn’t going to freak out right now, because Sam was staring at him and waiting on him, and skinwalker or not he was Sam, and he needed Dean, and that always came first.
And skinwalker wasn’t as bad as werewolf or shapeshifter.
Dean cleared his throat, and shoved his shoulder in against Sam’s. Because if he had to, he’d take Sam and go and live Outside all on their own, even if it meant never seeing home again. “Okay, well, you’re you, and you’re shaped like you, so. We can figure out the rest as we go,” he declared (through the painful grateful squeeze of Sam’s hand on his bicep), and glared stubbornly around, daring anyone to contradict him.
Rachel was tight-lipped and stern like this whole thing had far too many emotions for her liking, and glared daggers at Dean’s hand when he slung it firm and solid around Cas’ waist. Hanael was watching with curiosity and something like compassion, like they were some kind of story she was entranced with. Gwen had her “I don’t see what all the fuss is about” face on but one hand hovering discreetly near a heavy stick dangling from her belt. Gabriel’s face was closed off and distant but his eyes were fixed on Sam, Jo was pale and uncertain and chewing her lip ragged, looking to Gwen for her reaction and obviously biting back a hell of a lot of questions, and Cas was just sort of standing there, leaning on Dean, a bit awkward and hunched now that he didn’t have to do anything with his body.
Ellen... well, she was standing with her arms crossed over her chest, searching Sam’s face with sharp, warm eyes. Then she hitched up one shoulder into a shrug. “Never heard of anything like it,” she said frankly, “but okay. Let’s go with that for now.”
Like she didn’t actually need to understand. Like, despite all their centuries of accumulated tests and lore and safeguards, Ellen was willing to go with her gut first, and compromise on the rest until they worked out what was what. Like it was that easy, and how the hell could she do that when she’d practically seen Sam change right in front of her?
Sam sagged a bit, all relief. Then he plastered himself all over Dean’s back and squeezed the breath out of him like he did when he was drunk, or high on adrenalin.
Dean grumbled and shoved at the giant hand splayed out over his heart, only not too much, because it was warm and Sam-sized and that was where it belonged. “Alright, alright, you giant sweaty throw rug, get off me.”
Sam sniggered and dug his chin into Dean’s shoulder. “Nah, you’re all tiny and comfortable. Think I’ll keep you.”
Then Ellen rounded on Cas, and Dean stopped trying to get an elbow into his brother’s ribs.
“Next order of business,” she said, to the angel she’d seen in Dean’s notebook and recognised from the day her husband had been killed, “I want to know who this is, who was chatting to that demon like he’d had a business deal go sour on him.”
Cas straightened up, and pulled his shoulders square. Dean felt a weird warm surge under Sam’s hand on his chest at the self-consciousness in that gesture, even as Cas’ face slipped into business-like impassivity. Cas’ eyes slipped sideways to meet Dean’s, cuing the introduction like he was rallying his forces or something; and Dean felt his jaw clench up. He really didn’t want this to play out until he’d had his own chance to asked Cas a few important questions, to get him home and stitch him up and get rid of that horrible pallor, but... this was all happening way too fast.
“Ca- Castiel,” he stumbled, then affirmed, “This is Castiel.” No place for childhood nicknames, and here and now, Cas was Castiel, was the angel and the warrior and the leader. He needed all the bits of him, whatever they added up to. Then, just in case it needed repeating, “And no one shoots him unless they shoot me first.”
He looked at Cas as he said it, and though Sam huffed in his ear like he’d just rolled his eyes, and Gwen made a faint scoffing noise, the corners of Cas’ eyes softened a little into something deep and warm.
“You have met my brother Gabriel, I understand,” Cas cut in, soft-spoken but with a dark emphasis on “met”that suggested he could understand a hell of a lot more if he chose to throw diplomacy out the window. “This is Rachel, my lieutenant; and my cousin Hanael - who had never entered your lands before we crossed your borders yesterday evening.”
Again, that significant little glance, like Cas was promising something, setting something up.
Gabriel kept up his statue act, and Rachel just nodded, but Hanael said eagerly, “Please, call me Anna. Sam says that’s the closest human name to mine.”
Great. Cas’ cousin was a human groupie.
Dean nodded briefly to them both, but Cas was speaking again. There was a sort of quiet authority to him, indisputable as steel, despite the painful hitch in his breath. “This must all look very strange to you; but Gwen and Sam have been good enough to clarify several points of our mutual recent history.”
Dean had never seen him switch this on before - hadn’t really thought much about what Cas must be like as a leader - but he seemed to fill the space in the same inexorable way he had back in the barn, or in the cabin after Sam had pissed him off, until it felt like the air was crackling with him. He wasn’t smooth-spoken and persuasive - still kind of awkward, actually, the way he held himself and the unwavering intensity in his eyes like he didn’t know staring was weird - but it was overridden by the weight of the conviction in him. Like he could make something the truth just by speaking it.
“I understand that, when my people first came here, you attacked them because you believed them to be on the demons’ side. They returned the favour, believing the same of you. We had pursued the demons here - and into other lands - to eliminate them. To clear up our mess,” whatever the hell that meant. Cas paused, and his eyes flicked from Ellen to Sam, and then, for some reason, to Gabriel. “We have avoided humans for generations, and so those angels who came to your lands did not know enough of your kind to understand that such an alliance was impossible.”
“That’s not what the demon was saying before you got here,” Jo pointed out sweetly.
Dean cleared his throat. “Actually, I kinda think it is.” Cas’ eyes on him were bright and deep like moonlight underwater, nothing like the shy, possessive warmth of his dreams. “It was saying... angels follow them around, or something. And that they follow you.”
Sam made an interested noise by Dean’s ear, and there was a sharp movement like a flinch somewhere off to Dean’s left, a rustle of feathers. Maybe Gabriel. Cas lifted his eyes away from Dean’s, and fixed them instead on the clouds that stretched across the sky like clawmarks.
“Do you know what civil war is,” he asked, of nobody in particular. “My parents - Gabriel’s and mine - perfectly ordinary. Nobody would have believed they were the kind to become murderers. But then, by that time those distinctions meant nothing. In a few years it was true of all of us, for one reason or another.”
Too close to some of Dean’s nightmares, to the blood splattered by Dean’s hands across the benches and walls of the Roadhouse and the savage inhuman grins in the faces of people he knew. Only Cas hadn’t had to imagine it.
No wonder Cas had got pissy and unhappy when Gabriel had assumed he didn’t know what an angel’s blade could do to an angel’s flesh.
Dean moved his hand, not really sure what he was doing with it, an awkward little half-rub up into the small of Cas’ back. Cas’ eyes flickered up to Dean’s face, oddly guarded. It wasn’t defensive, warning him off or anything, but it was hardly welcoming either. Dean cleared his throat, and dropped his hand back to its nice neutral spot on Cas’ hip, like all he was doing was helping him stay on his feet.
“So, the demons then,” he said roughly, to drag the topic away from whatever put that look on Cas’ face. “They got something to do with this civil war business?”
“They are not natural creatures,” Cas replied calmly, like he was talking about the weather. “They are what springs from the earth where the life’s blood of an angel is spilled by another angel. Toward the end, one of the two battling archangels - Lucifer - was creating them deliberately, and bending them to fight for him.”
Before Dean could think about that and all the messed-up crap that meant, Sam was slipping away, leaving his back cold, moving out of his reach. He looked up sharply to find Sam making for the other archangel, the one who’d “skipped home” as a teenager while the rest of this had been going on, hovering next to him looking all concerned and awkward. Only Gabriel, being the charming dick that he was, flinched back, and gave Sam a death glare that had Sam reddening up and tossing him a mortified bitchface.
... Demons. Demons came from angels. That was actually... better than he’d been thinking, better than the scenarios of deals and alliances that Dean had been trying not to think about. On the other hand, explaining that to people and trying to get them not to blame every death, angelic or demonic, right on Cas? Yeah, not so much.
Gwen was explaining something, some brisk and technical proof that she and Sam had put together, clues from their own past encounters with demons; but Dean wasn’t really listening. There was really only one analogy he could draw here that made it sound like not the angels’ fault, and if Cas and Sam were doing what he thought here and angling for some sort of truce...
“So demons are, what, like the angelic version of vengeful spirits? Only not tied to one place?” he broke in. Cas gave him a confused look - which, fair enough, he’d probably never had to deal with a human ghost before - and Gwen was temporarily derailed.
“Like a werewolf’s a version of a cute little puppy,” Gabriel drawled disparagingly, eyes fixed on the rock face somewhere over Dean’s head. “They’re not some kind of spiritual leftovers, kids. They’re a new thing altogether, made of blood and earth and memories and betrayal, and if they can’t find an angel’s heart to twist they’ll make do with yours.”
There was a moment of silence, just the crows calling far and faint across the marshes below, while Dean tried not to think about murder incarnate, grinning and delighted, spreading out across the lands like an infection, like a body turning against itself and enjoying it.Cas’ voice, low and rough: “I came here three months ago to bring an end to the fighting. For all of us, humans and angels. Because I remembered -”
He broke off, eyes on Dean; and Dean chuckled a bit and rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked away, because, hey, they’d brought everything else out already today, so why not this too?
“They know, Cas.”
Cas took a couple of deep breaths, heavy with pain against Dean’s arm. Then, “I remembered a child,” he finished, and there was something in his voice that said he was still looking at Dean, that there was something he was saying under there that was meant for Dean alone, only Dean wasn’t used to reading his voice as well as the rest of him, and whatever that message was, he missed it. “And I couldn’t believe humans were as monstrous as my kin had found them to be.”
… Yeah, Dean needed to get him home fast, because if Cas couldn’t fix himself up with angel mojo Dean was getting him somewhere safe where they could do it the human way, before he fell down. Even if he had to let the others lock him and Cas into his own house and paint containment sigils over every inch of wall space.
“And then you killed my dad,” Jo dropped like a lead weight of sarcasm across their delicate little web of nobody’s-actually-stabbing-anyone-right-now.
“Jo!” he heard Sam say, all reproachful, and he was going to pull out the “it was actually technically a wendigo” card again, which was really not the point here.
“Hey,” Dean cut in roughly, sharper than he’d ever spoken to Jo, and he saw her eyes widen at it, then narrow combatively. “He came here to patch things up, and we killed his brother and locked his other one up in a bull press, okay? And now he’s got himself all slashed up trying to save you, and me. This whole thing’s been a fucking mess for months. Years.”
“That’ll do,” Ellen rapped out, over Gwen and Sam and Hanael and whatever Jo had been about to hurl back into Dean’s face. They all quieted down, even the angel, but the damage had been done. Now it all felt like too many enemies in a small space, not tentative allies in the post-battle haze.
Ellen’s eyes were locked with Cas’. The angel shook his head, awkward and uncomfortable, slumping more dangerously by the minute against Dean, but he didn’t give an inch. “I am... sorry for your loss. I did not kill him, but,” pressing on, gruff and stubborn, as Jo hissed and looked away in anger, “I must take some of the culpability for his death, and for Sam’s misfortune. No angel lifted a sword against a human that day, and none has since I came here, but I understand that in depriving you of your sight and spreading confusion to save Rachel, I created an opportunity for... other things.”
Ellen lifted her eyebrows grimly, and looked at Dean where he stood beside Cas, then at Sam stubbornly not moving away from Gabriel, and Gwen, shoulder to shoulder with Hanael. Hanael, the one angel who hadn’t been here before, and who couldn’t be held personally responsible for any deaths. Not that most people would see it that way.
“Just because they’re not monsters doesn’t make them friends,” Ellen said, almost gently.
Gabriel’s face twisted into something bitter and sarcastic, but he clenched his jaw shut and looked away without a word. Dean thought of him laughing with people who would have called themselves his friends around a table in the Roadhouse, then filthy and reduced in the cage and stubbornly reading Sam’s books, then glowing furious and awesome over Sam, snarling into a demon’s face.
“Maybe not,” he said, and felt Sam’s betrayed eyes boring into the side of his head. He ignored him for a moment, focussed on Ellen, because this much he wasn’t going to budge on. “Could make them allies, though. And right now, Cas is a friend and an ally who’s in pretty bad shape, and I’m taking him home to fix him.”
Ellen held his gaze for a minute, a whole thoughtful interrogation in it that Dean didn’t really get but stubbornly refused to flinch away from. Then she glanced over at Gabriel. “Where do you fit into this?”
“Nowhere,” Gabriel replied brightly. “I’m not getting pulled back into this bloody mess. I’m just the hired cart for getting the humans back home.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the hired cart who likes to drop rocks on us and tries to make the whole town think he’s been screwing around in my head,” he muttered, earning himself a reproachful “Dean!” from Sam’s direction and two of Cas’ fingers tucked discreetly through his belt loop to tug him pointedly back.
Gabriel’s mouth curled viciously. “Well, excuse me for trying to give you an out with your lynch-mob buddies.”
Gwen slipped in between them like a tiny terrifying cattle dog. “Okay, guys, tuck ‘em away and zip up. Ellen, what d’you think?”
“I think it’s time we humans got back home, before something else impossible decides to stick its oar in,” Ellen replied dryly. “Jo, honey, you good to walk?”
Jo shrugged, then nodded, not taking her eyes off Cas. Sam’s forehead crumpled up and he bounded forward like a disappointed gazelle. “But Ellen, he needs patching up. And we could really do something here. I mean, can you just imagine if we had humans and angels living in here together? We could take down anything! We could make the whole land safe!”
“I’m imagining,” she said darkly, “and I’m seeing a hell of a lot of bad blood.”
Blood. Bad blood. Too much blood, all over Dean’s back by now. Blood, all over Bobby’s back and hips and legs, and...
“There are only the three of us here,” Cas said, then added like an uncertain afterthought, “and Gabriel. We came back to talk, not to fight.”
“So we fix it.” Dean grinned, wide and charming and fucking immovable, and pressed his fingers into Cas’ hip to shut him up. “What if they can heal Bobby?”
“Close your eyes,” Gabriel hissed, like something a hell of a lot farther from civilisation than any sly-mannered demon.
Paulina: If you can behold it,
I’le make the Statue moue indeed; descend,
And take you by the hand: But then you’le thinke -
Which I protest against - I am assisted
By wicked Powers.
A Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare, c. 1610. (Statue scene, V.iii)
The next few minutes were a blur in Dean’s memory. Cas tried to shove him into the salt circle, he knew that, but no way in hell was Dean going in there when there was fighting to be done and Sam and Cas were still out there, and Sam with his big bulk of a body could hardly fit into it when it was so tiny and Ellen wouldn’t let a dog in there without a hell of an explanation while there were still humans to be saved.
Gwen yelled out Dean’s name and tossed him Cas’ sword, that much was clear, mostly because he knew Cas was fighting unarmed (and wounded, the stupid son of a bitch), ducking and dodging and buffeting with his good wing and burning them to dust with a grip and concentration of steel while Dean and Rachel covered for him.
Then Hanael got stubborn and tossed her sword to Gwen and started fighting bare-handed, and Gwen yelled something frustrated and leaped out to join them, to turn the edge of the blade against the black smoky nothings that hustled in amongst the rocks.
But there were too many, pressing in on them, and in that crowded space Dean couldn’t even cover Cas without getting Cas’ elbow in the ribs. Cas was getting slower and trailing blood on the ground, and the light bleeding from his wing was too strong, and Rachel was only interested in covering Cas, not Gwen or Sam or Hanael or Dean, so it wasn’t an equal playing field. And there were at least half a dozen demons, and just one had almost taken Cas down, and sure, a slash of Cas’ blade and Dean could kill one but they were tricky smoky sons of bitches and didn’t just stand still for the blade, and when they were incorporeal you couldn’t guess their movements like you could something that had to obey the tug of bones and sinews, and he’d only managed to kill one before he was pinned by a distorted grinning nightmare of a thing and Sam was hurtling towards them, baying direly.
Dean saw, like everything was happening as slow as a dream, the demon’s unnaturally long arm swing out and catch Sam in the throat. Then he saw it turn away from him, grinning with delight, and crush Sam to the ground with a hand over his gullet.
Dean couldn’t move. He was pinioned by the demon’s will without a touch necessary, and Cas was way over the other side of the clearing and there was no way he was relying on the other two angels for Sam even if they did care and weren’t busy with their own battles, and Ellen was all out of rounds, and Gwen was busy, and Jo was rebuilding her body and had left nothing on her that would even distract a demon.
In all fairness, he and Jo hadn’t really planned for things to end up like this when they’d stocked up this morning.
It was up to Dean, dammit. And he’d managed to turn a blade with a demon inside him, so hell if he couldn’t move when one was just thinking him against a wall.
He struggled, and raged, and tried to pull free, as Sam choked and got weaker on the ground at his feet.
He might have made it, in the end; but he didn’t have to. The narrow midday sky lit up with angelic fury, and Gabriel descended in a flurry of rage and gold. Dean had to close his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, all he could see was the former Trickster crouched over his brother, snarling like an animal, with his red and flaming sword bared against the demons. Sam was gasping between his arms, eyes buried with a hell of a lot of trust in the corner of Gabriel’s elbow, and there was a demon’s corpse somewhere near there, but Dean was mostly concerned with the noise that was coming from between the archangel’s teeth.
“Close your eyes,” Gabriel hissed, like something a hell of a lot farther from civilisation than any sly-mannered demon.
Dean hesitated, just a moment. That moment was long enough for everyone to move. Sam rolled out from underneath Gabriel and towards Ellen. Jo looked up across the antechamber of rock towards Gwen, and Gwen looked towards Cas, and Cas opened his mouth then shut it again and reached for Gwen and Dean, drawing them in toward his body and tugging them under the shield of his wings. Gwen turned in against Cas’ shoulder, trusting as anything, and Dean was hardly going to argue when Cas’ fingers closed imperiously around his shoulder and drew him in to hide him.
“Ellen, it’s Sam. Just trust me, okay? Close your eyes,” he heard Sam say, and he closed his eyes obediently, because if Sam knew something he didn’t, sure as hell Dean would be trusting him.
Then the world turned white outside his eyelids, and everything narrowed itself to Dean’s forehead pressed into Cas’ throat, the salt-sweet smell of sweat and wings, the awkward nook of Dean’s nose against Cas’ collarbone, the itchy damp press of bloodied feathers against the back of Dean’s neck. And, after a moment, the savoury stench of burning flesh.
Cas’ hand loosened on the back of Dean’s neck, and the damaged curve of his wing folded haltingly back away from Dean’s side, which he decided to take as the okay to spin around and open his eyes.
The demons were gone. The ones who’d been in their solid forms were lying on the ground, contorted and dead with their eyes burnt from their sockets. The ones who’d still been black smoke were just gone, like shadows in front of a blowtorch. Hanael was leaning against the rock with a hand clamped over a gash in her thigh, though she looked more annoyed than hurt, and Gwen was pulling away from Cas to go and check on her.
Gabriel, though... Gabriel was the one washing the bleak grey granite and the pale grubby faces warm and bright, like they were clustered around a bonfire. He was rising slowly to his feet, and the great double arch of wings spanning rock to rock was folding cautiously down along his back, the glow still fading sullenly into them, each bristling feather slotting back in under the one before it nice and slow like they were reluctant to stand down. His shoulders and mouth were set hard and firm, and he was pointedly not looking in Ellen and Jo’s direction.
Dean made a very careful mental note not to piss Gabriel off. Unless he really deserved it, or made fun of Sammy.
“Thank you, Gabriel,” came Cas’ voice from behind Dean’s ear, solemn and mild as if Gabriel had helped him fold a double sheet or something.
Gabriel cocked a sarcastic eyebrow in his direction. “Hey, whenever you manage to keep yourself out of trouble for ten minutes at a time, let me know. We’ll throw a party. What’d it stick you with?”
“My sword,” muttered Cas, who had apparently decided that Dean’s shoulder was his personal leaning post. Although, given the fact that Dean’s arm seemed to have found its way around his waist, maybe it had been more a sort of joint decision.
Gabriel winced and strolled over into Dean’s space, aggressively casual, to slide his fingers in where Cas’ wing was still leaking blood and that freakish white light. That, at least, dimmed and vanished under Gabriel’s touch. “No quick fix for that, you know. You’ll have to get one of these guys to stitch you up and let it heal the long way around.”
Cas’ fingers pressed harder into the small of Dean’s back, almost painful. “I am aware,” he said tightly.
“So. The angels are gone, huh?” Jo asked behind Dean, high-pitched and shaky-bright.
“Apparently they’re kinda like pigeons,” Dean shot back, instead of thinking, because there was something clamouring for his attention, some detail that was really really important that he’d skipped right over, and he could feel Cas’ fingers hovering carefully in the small of his back and it was very distracting.
Ellen’s deliberate drawl cut across the moment in that anyone who wants to start explaining any time soon go right ahead tone. “So, I got four angels here, a bunch of dead demons, three crazy kids who may or may not be under some kind of influence, there’s I-don’t-want-to-know-what gluing my daughter’s guts together, and Sam Winchester’s buck naked. Gotta say I didn’t see this one coming.”
... That was what Dean had missed.
He looked.
Sam was standing just behind Ellen like he’d grabbed her to cover her eyes, and his expression was sliding pretty damn quickly from “taking down evil shit” to “caught raiding cookie jar.”
“Uhm. Hi guys,” he mumbled, and sketched a sheepish wave with the hand that wasn’t valiantly trying to cover his junk.
Dean stared, and blinked, and stared again. Jo was on her feet and saying something, but it wasn’t important.
“Sammy.”
Sam’s wide brown eyes swung up to lock on Dean like he was the only thing in the world. Dean held Cas’ sword out blankly behind him and felt the angel take it without a word, fingers brushing warm and dry over Dean’s hand as he slid his weight off Dean’s shoulder. Dean moved forward, past Gabriel and Rachel, toward his miracle of a little brother.
(“You leant a human your sword?” came Gabriel’s voice somewhere behind him, an incredulous hiss like Cas’d pulled out the bones of his fingers and offered them to Dean on the off chance that he might want a game of tiddlywinks.
“Yes,” Cas said simply.)
Sam always looked extra long and gangly with no clothes on, all legs and forelock, like an embarrassed colt. Dean reached out to touch him, fingers resting kind of grubby on Sam’s chest, just under his collarbone, just above where Dean’s amulet hung against Sam’s breastbone. The skin was smooth and warm and alive, and it didn’t vanish under Dean’s fingertips.
“Look at you.” Dean’s voice felt rough in his mouth.
Sam huffed a bit, the beginning of a laugh dragging at the corners of his mouth, and Dean grabbed him and dragged him in. Sam buried his nose in Dean’s shoulder and held on, heart thudding fast between Dean’s fist and chest and all that stupid solid Sam-strength squeezing him too hard like he always did. And damn but he’d missed this kid.
“You fixed it, huh?” he said proudly into far too much hair.
Sam thumped him on the back then pulled away, looking a bit nervous. “Sort of?”
Dean gave him a Look.
Ellen cleared her throat pointedly, and Sam jumped and tried to use Dean as some sort of modesty screen. “Okay. You wanna explain to me how it is that there was some big dog behind me who just happened to be replaced by...” She made a brusque little gesture, up and down the length of Sam’s body. “... all of that?”
... Which, shit, yes, they were going to have to come up with an explanation for. And obviously Dean would like the real explanation too, but Sam looked fine and more important right now was no one attacking anyone with silver knives.
“Can there be pants for this conversation?” Sam asked plaintively.
Jo and one of the female angels made terrifyingly similar noises of glee. Dean glowered at Jo and shrugged out of his jacket, which Sam clutched for like a lifeline. “Okay, uh, so, there was this curse,” he started, and broke off when Cas moved up next to Dean, untying all the complicated little ties of his knee-length tunic.
Dean found himself blinking again. Given Cas was actually a good bit smaller than Sam, why did he seem to have so much more skin? Miles and miles of it, soft and pale and touchable under the velvety blue-black scallops of feathers, and the dark curls at the top of his neck, and...
“I love you, man,” Sam muttered fervently, snatched the slightly bloodied tunic, and promptly got lost in it. Cas gave him about ten seconds of confused fumbling before he moved forward and silently took over getting him into the thing. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Jo and Ellen exchange lifted eyebrows, then Jo casting an appraising eye over the other three angels. Not like there wasn’t plenty weird in this scenario.
“This curse,” Sam repeated, conveniently distracted by trying to work out which little braided cord was the match of some other little braided cord so that he couldn’t look up and meet anyone’s eyes. “Which wasn’t anyone’s fault, by the way, it was some old imp thing apparently, but anyway, it - oh, thanks Cas - turned me into a dog. That dog. The one I was a couple of minutes back - oh, hey, is that where that bit goes.” He turned around obediently under the press of Cas’ hand, like having Cas all up in his space was easy and normal. Cas’ fingers were deft and gentle on the lacings, and his eyes were hidden under dark lashes, but the tension in the firm planes of his shoulders said he was still on the alert, still in pain. “This was back on the day Bill died, and - oh.” Sam looked up, focussed properly on Ellen for the first time, with that apologetic little crinkle between his eyebrows. “That was a wendigo, by the way. Same with Annie. I don’t know if anyone else saw? I was kind of too distracted after to remember to tell Bobby, and I didn’t realise until later that everyone was blaming the angels for that bit, so. Sorry.”
Ellen nodded, one quick jerk of her head that said she’d taken that on board but would think about it later, while at her side Jo let out a small wounded “oh” noise, and stood up determinedly taller. Sam was looking at them like a worried puppy; but Cas had exchanged a quick glance with Gwen as he fastened the last tie, and Sam’s eyes were just a shade too wide and sincere for that to have little fact to been dropped accidentally, here and now.
They were plotting something.
“Anyway, um.” Sam pulled on Dean’s jacket over Cas’ tunic. “We couldn’t get rid of the curse, so we decided to add to it. And.” He spread his arms in a here-I-am way. “Technically I’m still a dog, just a dog that can change into a human when I want to, instead of, y’know, the other way round.”
Wait, what? Dean’s mind back-tracked frantically, trying to work out which bits of that were real and which bits had been for Jo and Ellen’s benefit.
“So you’re a skinwalker?” Ellen said bluntly.
Sam’s forehead crumpled up. “Mostly I think I’m me,” he said, in a small voice. “I don’t want to, y’know. Rip anyone’s heart out, or anything.”
He had his eyes fixed on Dean like Dean got to decide whether to give Sam the world or take it away from him forever, and it was that, more than anything else, that terrified Dean. Because no way was Sam just bullshitting here.
... Hadn’t that weird dream version of Cas said something about a skinwalker?
He slid his eyes over to Cas, who met them sort of reservedly, just long enough to raise his eyebrows in a very slight “why are you surprised?” expression.
Okay. Okay. Well, angels really talking in dreams, that could happen. Wouldn’t be the only things that could screw with your mind while you were sleeping. Only that meant that maybe some of those other dreams... but Dean wasn’t going to go there, because he wasn’t going to freak out right now, because Sam was staring at him and waiting on him, and skinwalker or not he was Sam, and he needed Dean, and that always came first.
And skinwalker wasn’t as bad as werewolf or shapeshifter.
Dean cleared his throat, and shoved his shoulder in against Sam’s. Because if he had to, he’d take Sam and go and live Outside all on their own, even if it meant never seeing home again. “Okay, well, you’re you, and you’re shaped like you, so. We can figure out the rest as we go,” he declared (through the painful grateful squeeze of Sam’s hand on his bicep), and glared stubbornly around, daring anyone to contradict him.
Rachel was tight-lipped and stern like this whole thing had far too many emotions for her liking, and glared daggers at Dean’s hand when he slung it firm and solid around Cas’ waist. Hanael was watching with curiosity and something like compassion, like they were some kind of story she was entranced with. Gwen had her “I don’t see what all the fuss is about” face on but one hand hovering discreetly near a heavy stick dangling from her belt. Gabriel’s face was closed off and distant but his eyes were fixed on Sam, Jo was pale and uncertain and chewing her lip ragged, looking to Gwen for her reaction and obviously biting back a hell of a lot of questions, and Cas was just sort of standing there, leaning on Dean, a bit awkward and hunched now that he didn’t have to do anything with his body.
Ellen... well, she was standing with her arms crossed over her chest, searching Sam’s face with sharp, warm eyes. Then she hitched up one shoulder into a shrug. “Never heard of anything like it,” she said frankly, “but okay. Let’s go with that for now.”
Like she didn’t actually need to understand. Like, despite all their centuries of accumulated tests and lore and safeguards, Ellen was willing to go with her gut first, and compromise on the rest until they worked out what was what. Like it was that easy, and how the hell could she do that when she’d practically seen Sam change right in front of her?
Sam sagged a bit, all relief. Then he plastered himself all over Dean’s back and squeezed the breath out of him like he did when he was drunk, or high on adrenalin.
Dean grumbled and shoved at the giant hand splayed out over his heart, only not too much, because it was warm and Sam-sized and that was where it belonged. “Alright, alright, you giant sweaty throw rug, get off me.”
Sam sniggered and dug his chin into Dean’s shoulder. “Nah, you’re all tiny and comfortable. Think I’ll keep you.”
Then Ellen rounded on Cas, and Dean stopped trying to get an elbow into his brother’s ribs.
“Next order of business,” she said, to the angel she’d seen in Dean’s notebook and recognised from the day her husband had been killed, “I want to know who this is, who was chatting to that demon like he’d had a business deal go sour on him.”
Cas straightened up, and pulled his shoulders square. Dean felt a weird warm surge under Sam’s hand on his chest at the self-consciousness in that gesture, even as Cas’ face slipped into business-like impassivity. Cas’ eyes slipped sideways to meet Dean’s, cuing the introduction like he was rallying his forces or something; and Dean felt his jaw clench up. He really didn’t want this to play out until he’d had his own chance to asked Cas a few important questions, to get him home and stitch him up and get rid of that horrible pallor, but... this was all happening way too fast.
“Ca- Castiel,” he stumbled, then affirmed, “This is Castiel.” No place for childhood nicknames, and here and now, Cas was Castiel, was the angel and the warrior and the leader. He needed all the bits of him, whatever they added up to. Then, just in case it needed repeating, “And no one shoots him unless they shoot me first.”
He looked at Cas as he said it, and though Sam huffed in his ear like he’d just rolled his eyes, and Gwen made a faint scoffing noise, the corners of Cas’ eyes softened a little into something deep and warm.
“You have met my brother Gabriel, I understand,” Cas cut in, soft-spoken but with a dark emphasis on “met”that suggested he could understand a hell of a lot more if he chose to throw diplomacy out the window. “This is Rachel, my lieutenant; and my cousin Hanael - who had never entered your lands before we crossed your borders yesterday evening.”
Again, that significant little glance, like Cas was promising something, setting something up.
Gabriel kept up his statue act, and Rachel just nodded, but Hanael said eagerly, “Please, call me Anna. Sam says that’s the closest human name to mine.”
Great. Cas’ cousin was a human groupie.
Dean nodded briefly to them both, but Cas was speaking again. There was a sort of quiet authority to him, indisputable as steel, despite the painful hitch in his breath. “This must all look very strange to you; but Gwen and Sam have been good enough to clarify several points of our mutual recent history.”
Dean had never seen him switch this on before - hadn’t really thought much about what Cas must be like as a leader - but he seemed to fill the space in the same inexorable way he had back in the barn, or in the cabin after Sam had pissed him off, until it felt like the air was crackling with him. He wasn’t smooth-spoken and persuasive - still kind of awkward, actually, the way he held himself and the unwavering intensity in his eyes like he didn’t know staring was weird - but it was overridden by the weight of the conviction in him. Like he could make something the truth just by speaking it.
“I understand that, when my people first came here, you attacked them because you believed them to be on the demons’ side. They returned the favour, believing the same of you. We had pursued the demons here - and into other lands - to eliminate them. To clear up our mess,” whatever the hell that meant. Cas paused, and his eyes flicked from Ellen to Sam, and then, for some reason, to Gabriel. “We have avoided humans for generations, and so those angels who came to your lands did not know enough of your kind to understand that such an alliance was impossible.”
“That’s not what the demon was saying before you got here,” Jo pointed out sweetly.
Dean cleared his throat. “Actually, I kinda think it is.” Cas’ eyes on him were bright and deep like moonlight underwater, nothing like the shy, possessive warmth of his dreams. “It was saying... angels follow them around, or something. And that they follow you.”
Sam made an interested noise by Dean’s ear, and there was a sharp movement like a flinch somewhere off to Dean’s left, a rustle of feathers. Maybe Gabriel. Cas lifted his eyes away from Dean’s, and fixed them instead on the clouds that stretched across the sky like clawmarks.
“Do you know what civil war is,” he asked, of nobody in particular. “My parents - Gabriel’s and mine - perfectly ordinary. Nobody would have believed they were the kind to become murderers. But then, by that time those distinctions meant nothing. In a few years it was true of all of us, for one reason or another.”
Too close to some of Dean’s nightmares, to the blood splattered by Dean’s hands across the benches and walls of the Roadhouse and the savage inhuman grins in the faces of people he knew. Only Cas hadn’t had to imagine it.
No wonder Cas had got pissy and unhappy when Gabriel had assumed he didn’t know what an angel’s blade could do to an angel’s flesh.
Dean moved his hand, not really sure what he was doing with it, an awkward little half-rub up into the small of Cas’ back. Cas’ eyes flickered up to Dean’s face, oddly guarded. It wasn’t defensive, warning him off or anything, but it was hardly welcoming either. Dean cleared his throat, and dropped his hand back to its nice neutral spot on Cas’ hip, like all he was doing was helping him stay on his feet.
“So, the demons then,” he said roughly, to drag the topic away from whatever put that look on Cas’ face. “They got something to do with this civil war business?”
“They are not natural creatures,” Cas replied calmly, like he was talking about the weather. “They are what springs from the earth where the life’s blood of an angel is spilled by another angel. Toward the end, one of the two battling archangels - Lucifer - was creating them deliberately, and bending them to fight for him.”
Before Dean could think about that and all the messed-up crap that meant, Sam was slipping away, leaving his back cold, moving out of his reach. He looked up sharply to find Sam making for the other archangel, the one who’d “skipped home” as a teenager while the rest of this had been going on, hovering next to him looking all concerned and awkward. Only Gabriel, being the charming dick that he was, flinched back, and gave Sam a death glare that had Sam reddening up and tossing him a mortified bitchface.
... Demons. Demons came from angels. That was actually... better than he’d been thinking, better than the scenarios of deals and alliances that Dean had been trying not to think about. On the other hand, explaining that to people and trying to get them not to blame every death, angelic or demonic, right on Cas? Yeah, not so much.
Gwen was explaining something, some brisk and technical proof that she and Sam had put together, clues from their own past encounters with demons; but Dean wasn’t really listening. There was really only one analogy he could draw here that made it sound like not the angels’ fault, and if Cas and Sam were doing what he thought here and angling for some sort of truce...
“So demons are, what, like the angelic version of vengeful spirits? Only not tied to one place?” he broke in. Cas gave him a confused look - which, fair enough, he’d probably never had to deal with a human ghost before - and Gwen was temporarily derailed.
“Like a werewolf’s a version of a cute little puppy,” Gabriel drawled disparagingly, eyes fixed on the rock face somewhere over Dean’s head. “They’re not some kind of spiritual leftovers, kids. They’re a new thing altogether, made of blood and earth and memories and betrayal, and if they can’t find an angel’s heart to twist they’ll make do with yours.”
There was a moment of silence, just the crows calling far and faint across the marshes below, while Dean tried not to think about murder incarnate, grinning and delighted, spreading out across the lands like an infection, like a body turning against itself and enjoying it.Cas’ voice, low and rough: “I came here three months ago to bring an end to the fighting. For all of us, humans and angels. Because I remembered -”
He broke off, eyes on Dean; and Dean chuckled a bit and rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked away, because, hey, they’d brought everything else out already today, so why not this too?
“They know, Cas.”
Cas took a couple of deep breaths, heavy with pain against Dean’s arm. Then, “I remembered a child,” he finished, and there was something in his voice that said he was still looking at Dean, that there was something he was saying under there that was meant for Dean alone, only Dean wasn’t used to reading his voice as well as the rest of him, and whatever that message was, he missed it. “And I couldn’t believe humans were as monstrous as my kin had found them to be.”
… Yeah, Dean needed to get him home fast, because if Cas couldn’t fix himself up with angel mojo Dean was getting him somewhere safe where they could do it the human way, before he fell down. Even if he had to let the others lock him and Cas into his own house and paint containment sigils over every inch of wall space.
“And then you killed my dad,” Jo dropped like a lead weight of sarcasm across their delicate little web of nobody’s-actually-stabbing-anyone-right-now.
“Jo!” he heard Sam say, all reproachful, and he was going to pull out the “it was actually technically a wendigo” card again, which was really not the point here.
“Hey,” Dean cut in roughly, sharper than he’d ever spoken to Jo, and he saw her eyes widen at it, then narrow combatively. “He came here to patch things up, and we killed his brother and locked his other one up in a bull press, okay? And now he’s got himself all slashed up trying to save you, and me. This whole thing’s been a fucking mess for months. Years.”
“That’ll do,” Ellen rapped out, over Gwen and Sam and Hanael and whatever Jo had been about to hurl back into Dean’s face. They all quieted down, even the angel, but the damage had been done. Now it all felt like too many enemies in a small space, not tentative allies in the post-battle haze.
Ellen’s eyes were locked with Cas’. The angel shook his head, awkward and uncomfortable, slumping more dangerously by the minute against Dean, but he didn’t give an inch. “I am... sorry for your loss. I did not kill him, but,” pressing on, gruff and stubborn, as Jo hissed and looked away in anger, “I must take some of the culpability for his death, and for Sam’s misfortune. No angel lifted a sword against a human that day, and none has since I came here, but I understand that in depriving you of your sight and spreading confusion to save Rachel, I created an opportunity for... other things.”
Ellen lifted her eyebrows grimly, and looked at Dean where he stood beside Cas, then at Sam stubbornly not moving away from Gabriel, and Gwen, shoulder to shoulder with Hanael. Hanael, the one angel who hadn’t been here before, and who couldn’t be held personally responsible for any deaths. Not that most people would see it that way.
“Just because they’re not monsters doesn’t make them friends,” Ellen said, almost gently.
Gabriel’s face twisted into something bitter and sarcastic, but he clenched his jaw shut and looked away without a word. Dean thought of him laughing with people who would have called themselves his friends around a table in the Roadhouse, then filthy and reduced in the cage and stubbornly reading Sam’s books, then glowing furious and awesome over Sam, snarling into a demon’s face.
“Maybe not,” he said, and felt Sam’s betrayed eyes boring into the side of his head. He ignored him for a moment, focussed on Ellen, because this much he wasn’t going to budge on. “Could make them allies, though. And right now, Cas is a friend and an ally who’s in pretty bad shape, and I’m taking him home to fix him.”
Ellen held his gaze for a minute, a whole thoughtful interrogation in it that Dean didn’t really get but stubbornly refused to flinch away from. Then she glanced over at Gabriel. “Where do you fit into this?”
“Nowhere,” Gabriel replied brightly. “I’m not getting pulled back into this bloody mess. I’m just the hired cart for getting the humans back home.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, the hired cart who likes to drop rocks on us and tries to make the whole town think he’s been screwing around in my head,” he muttered, earning himself a reproachful “Dean!” from Sam’s direction and two of Cas’ fingers tucked discreetly through his belt loop to tug him pointedly back.
Gabriel’s mouth curled viciously. “Well, excuse me for trying to give you an out with your lynch-mob buddies.”
Gwen slipped in between them like a tiny terrifying cattle dog. “Okay, guys, tuck ‘em away and zip up. Ellen, what d’you think?”
“I think it’s time we humans got back home, before something else impossible decides to stick its oar in,” Ellen replied dryly. “Jo, honey, you good to walk?”
Jo shrugged, then nodded, not taking her eyes off Cas. Sam’s forehead crumpled up and he bounded forward like a disappointed gazelle. “But Ellen, he needs patching up. And we could really do something here. I mean, can you just imagine if we had humans and angels living in here together? We could take down anything! We could make the whole land safe!”
“I’m imagining,” she said darkly, “and I’m seeing a hell of a lot of bad blood.”
Blood. Bad blood. Too much blood, all over Dean’s back by now. Blood, all over Bobby’s back and hips and legs, and...
“There are only the three of us here,” Cas said, then added like an uncertain afterthought, “and Gabriel. We came back to talk, not to fight.”
“So we fix it.” Dean grinned, wide and charming and fucking immovable, and pressed his fingers into Cas’ hip to shut him up. “What if they can heal Bobby?”