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alchemyaliceTitle: On the Wings of War
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Action/Adventure/Horror, possibly Dean/Castiel
Rating: R for violence
Warnings/Spoilers: Up to 5.14-ish? It goes AWOL from there.
Word Count: No idea yet, but very, very long.
Disclaimer: Entirely not mine. Just playin'.
Summary: The Horsemen are not just people with fancy rings. They aren’t even demons with fancy rings. They are another species entirely, a force unto themselves, and Lucifer is kidding himself if he thinks that they are at his beck and call. They are separate. They are neutral. Dean Winchester is not built like them.
A/N: I'm so productive this week! I feel like we're getting to the good stuff now. And now that I'm absolutely certain that I'm going to finish this story and not leave it in limbo, I'm unleashing it onto the unsuspecting lj populace. So for those of you already following, sorry in advance for the spam. I'm only going to post it to comms once now, and when its completed.
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Dean knew they were protecting the place, but the whole process felt uncomfortably close to desecration anyway. “Man, people are gonna be pissed when they see this tomorrow,” he said.
“They won’t see it,” Castiel said. “The sigils will work their way into the stone and then it will be as if they were never there.”
“Well, good. I’d hate to start an international incident.”
Castiel frowned at the epithet and then chose to ignore it. Bobby finished up the north wall and started in on the east. The lines of blood grew in arcs and complex calligraphy, and Dean never felt less comfortable.
None of the blood was his. It wasn’t allowed.
“We don’t know what changes have occurred in your bloodstream due to War’s ring,” Castiel had said. “It could affect the stability of the wards.”
“You’re both going to bleed dry before we find the next church,” Dean protested.
Bobby leveled a glare at him. “Then we’ll just get Gabriel and Sam to come along for the next one. Now shut up and get painting.”
It was more than weird swiping blood from the opened artery of an angel. Dean tried to be as sparing as he could, but Castiel tended to make impatient noises and go for another vein if he took too long, so he tried to be clinical about it. Castiel just kept working in quick efficient movements, forgetting entirely about his sliced up arm so long as he had enough blood on his fingers to work. Dean couldn’t take it.
“Dude, stop.”
“What is it, Dean?”
“Just…okay, if you don’t want to waste blood and drip it all over the place, you need to elevate your arm while your working.” And Dean found himself gripping Castiel’s wrist to position it so his arm wasn’t limp, it was bent up and compressed just enough for the steady drip to slow.
Castiel observed this in silence, and then said, “I see. Thank you, Dean. Though you do realize that it is impossible for me to run out of blood with my Grace still intact.”
Dean swallowed, and very carefully let go of the angel’s wrist. “Yeah, I know. I just…yeah. Can’t have you dripping all over the tiles. That’s just disrespectful.”
Cas smiled very slightly. “Of course.”
And then Dean sensed it, smelled it before it happened, but he didn’t want to, this is what he wanted least.
The room went cold.
“Dean Winchester. My, my. There’s something about you that’s different than last we met. What is it? New haircut?”
Across the room, Bobby dropped his knife with a clatter. Dean felt his whole body lock up, and with a shudder he could hide in his shoulders but not in his wings, he turned.
Lucifer was leaning against one of the columns, his stance supple, unguarded. One hand was in his pocket, and the other rested firmly on the shoulder of an elderly man who despite his coffee-colored skin looked as pale and fragile as the white in his beard and turban. He wasn’t looking at anyone, just up at the ceiling, his lips moving constantly, hushed Arabic tumbling from them in an unceasing desperate murmur. Dean could guess what he was saying. Prayer looked the same pretty much anywhere.
“An Imam? How dare you,” Castiel growled. His hand didn’t leave the wall, though, didn’t stop writing.
“I don’t see why you’re surprised,” Lucifer said. Even in his crumbling vessel his stillness is languid and full of sharp edges. “And may I offer my condolences, Castiel? Your fall has been slow and painful, I see.”
Dean’s mind, now that it had recovered from the screeching halt of panic, was working wildly. Lucifer overwhelmed his senses—the rage in him was like nothing Dean had ever sensed, abyssal in intensity and a mix of chemical smells and old rocks and the clean sheerness of ice. It rolled off of him in tangles that Dean had to fight to ignore. He took a breath through his mouth to block it out, and the air tasted like the smoke from firestorms.
Cas needed to finish the wall—it was the last one, and after that they could leave and never look back. But no way Lucifer would let that happen, he was more than capable of tearing the man he held in two before then.
“Looks like you’re not getting your showdown with your brother,” Dean said, hoping his voice didn’t waver too much. It sounded thin to him, but with the taste and smell of wrath clamoring in his lungs he couldn’t be sure. “Sorry about that.”
“Michael will find his way to me,” Lucifer shrugged. “He is…if not creative, at least persistent.”
Dean weighed that, and then shook his head. “Didn’t seem like that when I talked to him last.”
A flicker of…something passed across Lucifer’s blistering features. It was gone in less than a second, but Dean saw it, and smelled it lingering like a citrus tang, and he seized on it. “I believe his exact words were, ‘Have your war for free will, you’ll hear no more from me’,” he added. “He looked depressed. Things haven’t been going his way, y’see.”
Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. A bit of that stillness became façade. Not a lot, but enough. “You lie. That is not my brother.”
Dean shrugged in genuine regret. It was easy to lie when you weren’t. “He’s been through a lot. You’ve been away from home too long—haven’t seen how bad things have gotten lately. Zachariah’s been running the show, most times I’ve been aware.”
Lucifer snarled, “Zachariah is middle management. What did Michael think he was doing, sending him to earth?”
“Dunno, man,” Dean said, and okay, Cas was now completely out of sight behind his wingspan. Probably not out of sight out of mind, but he had to try. “But if you want my opinion, I think he’s just been delegating to escape. You do realize how badly this whole Apocalypse’s been going, right?”
“I may have taken some creative liberties,” Lucifer allowed, but he was reining himself back in now, that flare of brutal rage settling back to a simmer more dangerous than any solar flare.
“Yeah, well apparently so have others, considering this,” Dean flapped one wing, “So now it’s a big headache, and Michael’s feeling the pressure. He looked tired man, I’m telling you. You should give him a call some time, just to check in, tell him you’re worried that your smackdown might get canceled. Communication’s healthy, or so I hear.”
Shit, he was babbling now and he knew it, and worse, the devil knew it. Lucifer’s frame was coiling like that of a waiting tiger. “Cas,” Dean whispered.
“I’m almost finished, get the Imam out of here, save him first and I’ll get Bobby out,” Castiel hissed, and that was the only cue Dean needed. He lunged forward.
Lucifer’s hand was raised in a strike; Dean felt the force of it in the air as he wrapped himself around the old man, and in a frantic wingbeat, pulled as far and as hard as he could.
The world melted around him just as searing pain shot up his right side. He ignored it; he had to. He concentrated on the only place he could think of even as the old man cried out and struggled against him.
The world disappeared. And then it was back.
They landed in a heap on the porch. The Imam rolled out of his grasp and pulled himself up against the railing, shaking and speaking frantically. Dean just lay there, breathing hard, working up to the volume he’d need to get everything across before his brain started acknowledging the pain again and he passed out, because he could feel it coming on like a freight train. His breath felt wrong, dissipated and uneven, and he couldn’t feel his right arm at all.
Shit.
Last breath. “SAM!” he shouted.
Footsteps clattered and pounded, and came closer. “Jesus Christ, Dean! Oh god, what…”
Dean blinked hard and managed to lock onto Sam kneeling over him, hands fluttering distress like he didn’t know what to staunch or brace first. He was babbling now too, muttering about compresses, and he need to shut up right now.
“Sam. Sam.”
“Okay, okay what, Dean? What is it?”
Dean spoke as fast as he could without tripping over anything. “Old man was gonna be Lucifer’s desecration sacrifice, had to get him out. You know some Arabic, right? Tell him we’ll get him home as soon as we can and sorry.”
“Okay. Okay.” Sam was pulling himself back together, he was processing, Dean could see him processing, and thank god his brother was so sharp.
“Where’s Cas and Bobby?” Sam asked.
The pain was back. Dean was really tired of debilitating agony. “Still there,” he managed through gritted teeth, but his vision was dimming fast. “Cas’s gotta finish the wards.”
“You left them with Lucifer? Shit shit shit! Gabriel! Crowley!”
“It’s the Saadians tombs,” Dean croaked. “That’s where they are.”
And then everything slipped away.
***
There was darkness for a while. Dean was marginally aware of it, every once in a while. And every once in a while, the darkness would get a smear of red on it, and he could distantly feel his body trying to seize, to fight, anything, locking itself into desperate knots that tore across his nerves, rattling against his skull. And one time, there was a dim sound of shouting, followed by hard enunciation of Enochian.
Something jolted down his right side. It could have been anything from a lightning bolt to a sandstorm to a steel rod shoved up under his ribs. Dean was pretty sure he screamed.
He wasn’t sure if he had lungs anymore, though.
***
Dean drifted. And then the lights came on.
Same slick asphalt and dim lights. Same scuffed up parking lines and dewy sedans, lined up one by one. Lucifer, Dean supposed, was right about Michael lacking creativity.
He looked around and spotted him sitting on the bed of a pick up truck. There were rain droplets all over where he sat, but he looked dry and implacable. Dean cleared his throat.
“Uh. Hey. How’s it going?”
Michael turned to him, the movement birdlike and exacting. He frowned. “You are badly injured. I had wondered why you would be unconscious at this time of day.”
“Oh. Yeah, well, I had a run-in with your brother,” Dean said.
Michael stiffened, shoulders locking inward, and if Dean knew wings (and he did now, intimately) then he was drawing his own around himself. “I’m surprised you’re alive,” he said eventually, tone flat.
“Got lucky, I guess,” Dean said. “So what’s up with you these days? Still looking for instructions from Dad?”
“My Father hasn’t given instructions since the crucifixion,” Michael said. “What we follow are his laws, set forth at the Beginning.”
“With no chance of amendment? Classy.”
Michael glared at him. “The Word is infallible.”
“If that’s true, then why is it everything you were planning has gone to Hell, literally?” Dean demanded. He shut his eyes for a second, pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel in the back of his mind that he wasn’t whole, there was something shredded about him that spoke of nothing good when he woke up. He hoped Sam had gotten his shit together enough to get Cas and Bobby to safety.
Michael’s consternation grew deeper. “Are you well?”
“Clearly not,” Dean said. “But never mind.”
Without a sound, Michael lifted himself out of the bed of the truck and approached. “I could perhaps—“ he started.
Dean flinched violently away, and Michael stopped. And then, after a pause, he dropped his hands to his sides and said more quietly, “We weren’t always just warriors.”
Dean looked at him, and tried to see past his father’s face. “What were you, then?”
The archangel said, “Our Father’s first companions.”
That was where all of this started, wasn’t it? Dean thought. It was why Lucifer fell, and Michael let him fall.
“So God’s your companion, not just your Father,” he said slowly. “He cares about you.”
“He is love,” Michael said, which wasn’t really an answer, but was enough of one for Dean to work with.
“So he loves you. He loves mankind. He loves the world. And you love him back?”
“Of course,” Michael answered, as if it was the most obvious question in the world.
“Well, I don’t know shit about relationships, but generally when you love some one you take an interest in what they love,” Dean said. He shrugged. “And you do what’s best for the things they love, even if you’re not sure that’s what they want. ‘Cause at that point it doesn’t matter if you disagree, it matters that you’re doing it because you love them.”
“That…” Michael started, and then frowned. “That seems unhealthy.”
Dean laughed quietly. “So I’ve heard. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” He coughed, and winced. Drew his hand away from his mouth, and found blood on his palm. “Well, shit.”
Michael stepped forward again, this time with diffidence. He made John Winchester’s gait light and supple, even as his presence was heavy. “Let me help you. You’re falling apart.”
“Why? It’d be good riddance to the abomination, wouldn’t it?” Dean looked at him.
The archangel shook his head, and didn’t say anything. He reached out one hand, palm flat. Dean let his arms fall to his sides, and waited.
Michael laid his hand lightly over the center of Dean’s chest. A flicker of recognition passed over his features before smoothing out. “What?” Dean asked.
“Lucifer meant to destroy you. Utterly erase you from the world.”
“Friendly,” he commented.
Michael looked at him steadily. “He tried to do the same to me, once.”
Dean swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
He dismissed it with a flick of his head. “Everything was foreseen then. I had known it would happen, as had Lucifer. We meant it enough not to fight our destinies. This time is clearly different.”
“You didn’t have people with free will asking for a say in the proceedings,” Dean said.
Michael looked at him. “Yes,” he said, hesitant, and in a way that sounded like Dean had been speaking to him in a foreign language all this time, and he’d just begun to understand it. “Yes, I suppose that does make things more complicated.”
Dean realized that the hand on his chest had grown warm, and then blisteringly hot, but it was strangely neither painful nor alarming. He watched Michael as he fell silent, and pressed just slightly harder against Dean’s chest, gold magnifying in his eyes and turning molten. The tightness in Dean’s lungs eased, his breath coming easier, and the sharp tingle of distress in his right arm and wing faded slightly. Then Michael drew away.
“That is as much as I can do without leaving Heaven,” he said.
“Thanks,” Dean said, a bit hoarsely.
Michael stayed silent, and studied him for a long moment.
Then he said slowly, carefully, “I don’t know how much help I can be without finding a suitable host.”
Dean felt his heart leap into his throat, and now there was a whole new sort of tightness in his throat and lungs. “What about Dad?” he said, gesturing at the body Michael wore. “He was willing last time.”
Michael shook his head, “If I do that, and am killed in the present time, then I will erase John Winchester from his timeline. Mary would be left alone, and you and Sam would die in the fire with her.”
Dean thought back to their jaunt in the 70s, the words he’d spoken to his mother in desperation and unutterable sadness. He said, somewhat unsteadily, “Well, then this whole Apocalypse would be moot anyway. No more vessels for anyone.”
“You would risk that? After all of the lives you’ve saved?” The archangel’s eyes narrowed.
Dean squeezed his eyes shut. He thought about Austin, and how he couldn't make a call like that again. He said, “No. Not unless I was sure that the rest of the world would be saved.”
Michael nodded. And then he said, “I’ll try to find a way. Good bye, Dean.”
And he was gone.
***
There was blackness again, long and consuming. Dean began to wonder if he would ever truly wake, or if Michael had left him in a comatose limbo. And then even that faded, and he didn’t think anything.
***
When he came to, bone-wrenching pain was still the theme of the day.
“Winchesters passing out and nearly dying seems to be the theme of the day,” Gabriel complained over him.
Dean wanted to protest that he’d already established what the theme was but all that he managed was a sort of hissing groan that he immediately regretted because the exhalation of air caused his lungs and therefore his right side to move and that was a terrible, terrible plan.
He heard Sam settle on his other side; he’d recognize that specific shuffle and crouch anywhere. “Hey, Dean. He’s awake?”
“Awake but staying immobile,” Gabriel said, “Which is actually the smart thing to do. I highly doubt he’d enjoy talking at this point.”
Dean silently agreed. Sam probably nodded, because then he was saying, “The man you saved, Dean? His name was Omar, by the way. He was grateful that you got him away, even though you look like the Angel of Death.”
Dean huffed a laugh, and once again, regretted it. Sam said, “We brought him back to Marrakech, to his family, about an hour ago. And yes, Cas and Bobby are all right. Well, mostly.”
At that, Dean had to turn. He managed to twitch his fingers too, and hoped that they conveyed his question.
“Cas was…not in great shape,” Sam said carefully. “He finished the wards and sent Bobby back himself, but by the time Gabriel got there, Lucifer had gone to town on him. Not with any intent to kill, I don’t think, but just to vent.”
“Lucifer is still an angel,” Gabriel said. “He won’t kill his brothers until he’s on the battlefield. But he has no problem maiming them.”
This was not helping Dean stay still. Through the haze of jangling, suffering nerves he wanted very badly to get up and see for himself just how bad it was, and what he could do to fix it.
“Don’t even think about it,” Gabriel said firmly. “He’s taken care of, and that’s all you can ask for, for now.”
Dean managed a very angry twitch of fingers, which Gabriel huffed at. “You keep that up, and I’ll knock you out so you stay down,” he said.
“He should be in the hospital,” Sam said worriedly.
“And I’m sure the doctors will be thrilled to treat a man with wings,” Gabriel retorted. “I’m the best he’s got at the moment, and I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna die. Not after…well.”
Dean made a very soft inquiring noise. He wanted to open his eyes to get a read on Sam’s expression—it was the best way to figure out how bad off he was. But he was pretty sure he didn’t have the wherewithal at this point. He strongly suspected his right eye was completely swollen shut anyway. Which probably could tell him more than enough already.
He wondered whether his wings were broken. That would be…inconvenient.
He tried flexing the left one, with some degree of success. Sam immediately grabbed hold of it, though, and placed it back down firmly on the floor.
“No, dude. Don’t even think about it,” he said. And then, apparently at Gabriel, “What were you going to say? Not after what?”
Gabriel made several shuffling noises. “I wasn’t the only one giving him a hand, let’s say. If I had been, he would have been dust by the time we got back from fetching Cas and Bobby. What I cast before we left was just to keep him stable, but it wasn’t enough for all the time we were gone. We took longer than I thought with Castiel and…yeah.”
Dean could almost see Sam shaking his head. “Then what? Who helped him?”
“I imagine he’ll tell us, when he can.”
Dean spared another breath to make further question noises.
It was a good thing Sam could read him so well. Or at least, as well as anyone could, with a limited amount of information. “He wants to know what precisely is wrong with him,” he said to Gabriel.
“Where to start?” Gabriel said dryly. Dean heard him shift, and then settle. “The devil tried to explode you, Dean-o. It’s a good thing you’re made of tougher stuff these days, or you’d be splatter on the necropolis floor. As it is, he managed to start some serious atomization over your right side, including your wing, from about your hip to your shoulder. I had to build your lung and kidney from scratch. Your heart took a beating too, no pun intended, but that was taken care of by your mysterious benefactor. Oh, and about sixty percent of your skin was basically gone. Think Anatomy 101 textbook diagrams. Except with a lot more blood.”
So that’s what got Sam into panicky babble. Dean was really glad he hadn’t tried to move after landing. He made a weak tff noise through his teeth, and Sam said, “Yeah, dude. It…I’d rather not see anything like that again.”
“We should let you sleep. Don’t even think about moving,” Gabriel said warningly. “I know you Winchesters, and believe me, outside help or not, now is not the time to be your usual stubborn self.”
Dean managed a very slight twitch of his lips for acknowledgment. Sam laid a hand lightly on his good shoulder, and then he listened to their footsteps retreat, and the panic room door close. With nothing else to do, he let himself drift.
***
“Castiel. How’re you holding up?”
The angel looked up from the book in his lap. He looked almost completely normal, except for how he held his torso just slightly away from the back of his chair. There were fading bruises along the left side of his face, and dried blood in crusts in his ears. One leg was propped up on another chair, unbraced. He said, “There will be no lasting damage.”
Gabriel shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. His expression was inscrutable and tight, hardening his jaw. “You know who helped Dean, don’t you?” he said eventually. “You know who kept him alive.”
“I have my suspicions,” Castiel said, his gaze sliding from Gabriel to the tabletop.
Gabriel was silent for a long moment. Then he said quickly, sharply, as if he couldn’t stop even to take one jagged breath, “He wouldn’t. He would never, not after all of this time. I begged him, on my knees, and he didn’t, but now—“
“Those were very different times,” Castiel said quietly.
Gabriel sucked in his breath. “I’m his brother,” he whispered.
Castiel watched him. “Maybe that was why he couldn’t listen.”
Gabriel made an almost inaudible sound, somewhere high up in his throat, and then he was gone like he’d never been there. Castiel blinked slowly, and turned back to his book.
Chapter Ten
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Action/Adventure/Horror, possibly Dean/Castiel
Rating: R for violence
Warnings/Spoilers: Up to 5.14-ish? It goes AWOL from there.
Word Count: No idea yet, but very, very long.
Disclaimer: Entirely not mine. Just playin'.
Summary: The Horsemen are not just people with fancy rings. They aren’t even demons with fancy rings. They are another species entirely, a force unto themselves, and Lucifer is kidding himself if he thinks that they are at his beck and call. They are separate. They are neutral. Dean Winchester is not built like them.
A/N: I'm so productive this week! I feel like we're getting to the good stuff now. And now that I'm absolutely certain that I'm going to finish this story and not leave it in limbo, I'm unleashing it onto the unsuspecting lj populace. So for those of you already following, sorry in advance for the spam. I'm only going to post it to comms once now, and when its completed.
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Dean knew they were protecting the place, but the whole process felt uncomfortably close to desecration anyway. “Man, people are gonna be pissed when they see this tomorrow,” he said.
“They won’t see it,” Castiel said. “The sigils will work their way into the stone and then it will be as if they were never there.”
“Well, good. I’d hate to start an international incident.”
Castiel frowned at the epithet and then chose to ignore it. Bobby finished up the north wall and started in on the east. The lines of blood grew in arcs and complex calligraphy, and Dean never felt less comfortable.
None of the blood was his. It wasn’t allowed.
“We don’t know what changes have occurred in your bloodstream due to War’s ring,” Castiel had said. “It could affect the stability of the wards.”
“You’re both going to bleed dry before we find the next church,” Dean protested.
Bobby leveled a glare at him. “Then we’ll just get Gabriel and Sam to come along for the next one. Now shut up and get painting.”
It was more than weird swiping blood from the opened artery of an angel. Dean tried to be as sparing as he could, but Castiel tended to make impatient noises and go for another vein if he took too long, so he tried to be clinical about it. Castiel just kept working in quick efficient movements, forgetting entirely about his sliced up arm so long as he had enough blood on his fingers to work. Dean couldn’t take it.
“Dude, stop.”
“What is it, Dean?”
“Just…okay, if you don’t want to waste blood and drip it all over the place, you need to elevate your arm while your working.” And Dean found himself gripping Castiel’s wrist to position it so his arm wasn’t limp, it was bent up and compressed just enough for the steady drip to slow.
Castiel observed this in silence, and then said, “I see. Thank you, Dean. Though you do realize that it is impossible for me to run out of blood with my Grace still intact.”
Dean swallowed, and very carefully let go of the angel’s wrist. “Yeah, I know. I just…yeah. Can’t have you dripping all over the tiles. That’s just disrespectful.”
Cas smiled very slightly. “Of course.”
And then Dean sensed it, smelled it before it happened, but he didn’t want to, this is what he wanted least.
The room went cold.
“Dean Winchester. My, my. There’s something about you that’s different than last we met. What is it? New haircut?”
Across the room, Bobby dropped his knife with a clatter. Dean felt his whole body lock up, and with a shudder he could hide in his shoulders but not in his wings, he turned.
Lucifer was leaning against one of the columns, his stance supple, unguarded. One hand was in his pocket, and the other rested firmly on the shoulder of an elderly man who despite his coffee-colored skin looked as pale and fragile as the white in his beard and turban. He wasn’t looking at anyone, just up at the ceiling, his lips moving constantly, hushed Arabic tumbling from them in an unceasing desperate murmur. Dean could guess what he was saying. Prayer looked the same pretty much anywhere.
“An Imam? How dare you,” Castiel growled. His hand didn’t leave the wall, though, didn’t stop writing.
“I don’t see why you’re surprised,” Lucifer said. Even in his crumbling vessel his stillness is languid and full of sharp edges. “And may I offer my condolences, Castiel? Your fall has been slow and painful, I see.”
Dean’s mind, now that it had recovered from the screeching halt of panic, was working wildly. Lucifer overwhelmed his senses—the rage in him was like nothing Dean had ever sensed, abyssal in intensity and a mix of chemical smells and old rocks and the clean sheerness of ice. It rolled off of him in tangles that Dean had to fight to ignore. He took a breath through his mouth to block it out, and the air tasted like the smoke from firestorms.
Cas needed to finish the wall—it was the last one, and after that they could leave and never look back. But no way Lucifer would let that happen, he was more than capable of tearing the man he held in two before then.
“Looks like you’re not getting your showdown with your brother,” Dean said, hoping his voice didn’t waver too much. It sounded thin to him, but with the taste and smell of wrath clamoring in his lungs he couldn’t be sure. “Sorry about that.”
“Michael will find his way to me,” Lucifer shrugged. “He is…if not creative, at least persistent.”
Dean weighed that, and then shook his head. “Didn’t seem like that when I talked to him last.”
A flicker of…something passed across Lucifer’s blistering features. It was gone in less than a second, but Dean saw it, and smelled it lingering like a citrus tang, and he seized on it. “I believe his exact words were, ‘Have your war for free will, you’ll hear no more from me’,” he added. “He looked depressed. Things haven’t been going his way, y’see.”
Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. A bit of that stillness became façade. Not a lot, but enough. “You lie. That is not my brother.”
Dean shrugged in genuine regret. It was easy to lie when you weren’t. “He’s been through a lot. You’ve been away from home too long—haven’t seen how bad things have gotten lately. Zachariah’s been running the show, most times I’ve been aware.”
Lucifer snarled, “Zachariah is middle management. What did Michael think he was doing, sending him to earth?”
“Dunno, man,” Dean said, and okay, Cas was now completely out of sight behind his wingspan. Probably not out of sight out of mind, but he had to try. “But if you want my opinion, I think he’s just been delegating to escape. You do realize how badly this whole Apocalypse’s been going, right?”
“I may have taken some creative liberties,” Lucifer allowed, but he was reining himself back in now, that flare of brutal rage settling back to a simmer more dangerous than any solar flare.
“Yeah, well apparently so have others, considering this,” Dean flapped one wing, “So now it’s a big headache, and Michael’s feeling the pressure. He looked tired man, I’m telling you. You should give him a call some time, just to check in, tell him you’re worried that your smackdown might get canceled. Communication’s healthy, or so I hear.”
Shit, he was babbling now and he knew it, and worse, the devil knew it. Lucifer’s frame was coiling like that of a waiting tiger. “Cas,” Dean whispered.
“I’m almost finished, get the Imam out of here, save him first and I’ll get Bobby out,” Castiel hissed, and that was the only cue Dean needed. He lunged forward.
Lucifer’s hand was raised in a strike; Dean felt the force of it in the air as he wrapped himself around the old man, and in a frantic wingbeat, pulled as far and as hard as he could.
The world melted around him just as searing pain shot up his right side. He ignored it; he had to. He concentrated on the only place he could think of even as the old man cried out and struggled against him.
The world disappeared. And then it was back.
They landed in a heap on the porch. The Imam rolled out of his grasp and pulled himself up against the railing, shaking and speaking frantically. Dean just lay there, breathing hard, working up to the volume he’d need to get everything across before his brain started acknowledging the pain again and he passed out, because he could feel it coming on like a freight train. His breath felt wrong, dissipated and uneven, and he couldn’t feel his right arm at all.
Shit.
Last breath. “SAM!” he shouted.
Footsteps clattered and pounded, and came closer. “Jesus Christ, Dean! Oh god, what…”
Dean blinked hard and managed to lock onto Sam kneeling over him, hands fluttering distress like he didn’t know what to staunch or brace first. He was babbling now too, muttering about compresses, and he need to shut up right now.
“Sam. Sam.”
“Okay, okay what, Dean? What is it?”
Dean spoke as fast as he could without tripping over anything. “Old man was gonna be Lucifer’s desecration sacrifice, had to get him out. You know some Arabic, right? Tell him we’ll get him home as soon as we can and sorry.”
“Okay. Okay.” Sam was pulling himself back together, he was processing, Dean could see him processing, and thank god his brother was so sharp.
“Where’s Cas and Bobby?” Sam asked.
The pain was back. Dean was really tired of debilitating agony. “Still there,” he managed through gritted teeth, but his vision was dimming fast. “Cas’s gotta finish the wards.”
“You left them with Lucifer? Shit shit shit! Gabriel! Crowley!”
“It’s the Saadians tombs,” Dean croaked. “That’s where they are.”
And then everything slipped away.
***
There was darkness for a while. Dean was marginally aware of it, every once in a while. And every once in a while, the darkness would get a smear of red on it, and he could distantly feel his body trying to seize, to fight, anything, locking itself into desperate knots that tore across his nerves, rattling against his skull. And one time, there was a dim sound of shouting, followed by hard enunciation of Enochian.
Something jolted down his right side. It could have been anything from a lightning bolt to a sandstorm to a steel rod shoved up under his ribs. Dean was pretty sure he screamed.
He wasn’t sure if he had lungs anymore, though.
***
Dean drifted. And then the lights came on.
Same slick asphalt and dim lights. Same scuffed up parking lines and dewy sedans, lined up one by one. Lucifer, Dean supposed, was right about Michael lacking creativity.
He looked around and spotted him sitting on the bed of a pick up truck. There were rain droplets all over where he sat, but he looked dry and implacable. Dean cleared his throat.
“Uh. Hey. How’s it going?”
Michael turned to him, the movement birdlike and exacting. He frowned. “You are badly injured. I had wondered why you would be unconscious at this time of day.”
“Oh. Yeah, well, I had a run-in with your brother,” Dean said.
Michael stiffened, shoulders locking inward, and if Dean knew wings (and he did now, intimately) then he was drawing his own around himself. “I’m surprised you’re alive,” he said eventually, tone flat.
“Got lucky, I guess,” Dean said. “So what’s up with you these days? Still looking for instructions from Dad?”
“My Father hasn’t given instructions since the crucifixion,” Michael said. “What we follow are his laws, set forth at the Beginning.”
“With no chance of amendment? Classy.”
Michael glared at him. “The Word is infallible.”
“If that’s true, then why is it everything you were planning has gone to Hell, literally?” Dean demanded. He shut his eyes for a second, pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel in the back of his mind that he wasn’t whole, there was something shredded about him that spoke of nothing good when he woke up. He hoped Sam had gotten his shit together enough to get Cas and Bobby to safety.
Michael’s consternation grew deeper. “Are you well?”
“Clearly not,” Dean said. “But never mind.”
Without a sound, Michael lifted himself out of the bed of the truck and approached. “I could perhaps—“ he started.
Dean flinched violently away, and Michael stopped. And then, after a pause, he dropped his hands to his sides and said more quietly, “We weren’t always just warriors.”
Dean looked at him, and tried to see past his father’s face. “What were you, then?”
The archangel said, “Our Father’s first companions.”
That was where all of this started, wasn’t it? Dean thought. It was why Lucifer fell, and Michael let him fall.
“So God’s your companion, not just your Father,” he said slowly. “He cares about you.”
“He is love,” Michael said, which wasn’t really an answer, but was enough of one for Dean to work with.
“So he loves you. He loves mankind. He loves the world. And you love him back?”
“Of course,” Michael answered, as if it was the most obvious question in the world.
“Well, I don’t know shit about relationships, but generally when you love some one you take an interest in what they love,” Dean said. He shrugged. “And you do what’s best for the things they love, even if you’re not sure that’s what they want. ‘Cause at that point it doesn’t matter if you disagree, it matters that you’re doing it because you love them.”
“That…” Michael started, and then frowned. “That seems unhealthy.”
Dean laughed quietly. “So I’ve heard. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” He coughed, and winced. Drew his hand away from his mouth, and found blood on his palm. “Well, shit.”
Michael stepped forward again, this time with diffidence. He made John Winchester’s gait light and supple, even as his presence was heavy. “Let me help you. You’re falling apart.”
“Why? It’d be good riddance to the abomination, wouldn’t it?” Dean looked at him.
The archangel shook his head, and didn’t say anything. He reached out one hand, palm flat. Dean let his arms fall to his sides, and waited.
Michael laid his hand lightly over the center of Dean’s chest. A flicker of recognition passed over his features before smoothing out. “What?” Dean asked.
“Lucifer meant to destroy you. Utterly erase you from the world.”
“Friendly,” he commented.
Michael looked at him steadily. “He tried to do the same to me, once.”
Dean swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
He dismissed it with a flick of his head. “Everything was foreseen then. I had known it would happen, as had Lucifer. We meant it enough not to fight our destinies. This time is clearly different.”
“You didn’t have people with free will asking for a say in the proceedings,” Dean said.
Michael looked at him. “Yes,” he said, hesitant, and in a way that sounded like Dean had been speaking to him in a foreign language all this time, and he’d just begun to understand it. “Yes, I suppose that does make things more complicated.”
Dean realized that the hand on his chest had grown warm, and then blisteringly hot, but it was strangely neither painful nor alarming. He watched Michael as he fell silent, and pressed just slightly harder against Dean’s chest, gold magnifying in his eyes and turning molten. The tightness in Dean’s lungs eased, his breath coming easier, and the sharp tingle of distress in his right arm and wing faded slightly. Then Michael drew away.
“That is as much as I can do without leaving Heaven,” he said.
“Thanks,” Dean said, a bit hoarsely.
Michael stayed silent, and studied him for a long moment.
Then he said slowly, carefully, “I don’t know how much help I can be without finding a suitable host.”
Dean felt his heart leap into his throat, and now there was a whole new sort of tightness in his throat and lungs. “What about Dad?” he said, gesturing at the body Michael wore. “He was willing last time.”
Michael shook his head, “If I do that, and am killed in the present time, then I will erase John Winchester from his timeline. Mary would be left alone, and you and Sam would die in the fire with her.”
Dean thought back to their jaunt in the 70s, the words he’d spoken to his mother in desperation and unutterable sadness. He said, somewhat unsteadily, “Well, then this whole Apocalypse would be moot anyway. No more vessels for anyone.”
“You would risk that? After all of the lives you’ve saved?” The archangel’s eyes narrowed.
Dean squeezed his eyes shut. He thought about Austin, and how he couldn't make a call like that again. He said, “No. Not unless I was sure that the rest of the world would be saved.”
Michael nodded. And then he said, “I’ll try to find a way. Good bye, Dean.”
And he was gone.
***
There was blackness again, long and consuming. Dean began to wonder if he would ever truly wake, or if Michael had left him in a comatose limbo. And then even that faded, and he didn’t think anything.
***
When he came to, bone-wrenching pain was still the theme of the day.
“Winchesters passing out and nearly dying seems to be the theme of the day,” Gabriel complained over him.
Dean wanted to protest that he’d already established what the theme was but all that he managed was a sort of hissing groan that he immediately regretted because the exhalation of air caused his lungs and therefore his right side to move and that was a terrible, terrible plan.
He heard Sam settle on his other side; he’d recognize that specific shuffle and crouch anywhere. “Hey, Dean. He’s awake?”
“Awake but staying immobile,” Gabriel said, “Which is actually the smart thing to do. I highly doubt he’d enjoy talking at this point.”
Dean silently agreed. Sam probably nodded, because then he was saying, “The man you saved, Dean? His name was Omar, by the way. He was grateful that you got him away, even though you look like the Angel of Death.”
Dean huffed a laugh, and once again, regretted it. Sam said, “We brought him back to Marrakech, to his family, about an hour ago. And yes, Cas and Bobby are all right. Well, mostly.”
At that, Dean had to turn. He managed to twitch his fingers too, and hoped that they conveyed his question.
“Cas was…not in great shape,” Sam said carefully. “He finished the wards and sent Bobby back himself, but by the time Gabriel got there, Lucifer had gone to town on him. Not with any intent to kill, I don’t think, but just to vent.”
“Lucifer is still an angel,” Gabriel said. “He won’t kill his brothers until he’s on the battlefield. But he has no problem maiming them.”
This was not helping Dean stay still. Through the haze of jangling, suffering nerves he wanted very badly to get up and see for himself just how bad it was, and what he could do to fix it.
“Don’t even think about it,” Gabriel said firmly. “He’s taken care of, and that’s all you can ask for, for now.”
Dean managed a very angry twitch of fingers, which Gabriel huffed at. “You keep that up, and I’ll knock you out so you stay down,” he said.
“He should be in the hospital,” Sam said worriedly.
“And I’m sure the doctors will be thrilled to treat a man with wings,” Gabriel retorted. “I’m the best he’s got at the moment, and I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna die. Not after…well.”
Dean made a very soft inquiring noise. He wanted to open his eyes to get a read on Sam’s expression—it was the best way to figure out how bad off he was. But he was pretty sure he didn’t have the wherewithal at this point. He strongly suspected his right eye was completely swollen shut anyway. Which probably could tell him more than enough already.
He wondered whether his wings were broken. That would be…inconvenient.
He tried flexing the left one, with some degree of success. Sam immediately grabbed hold of it, though, and placed it back down firmly on the floor.
“No, dude. Don’t even think about it,” he said. And then, apparently at Gabriel, “What were you going to say? Not after what?”
Gabriel made several shuffling noises. “I wasn’t the only one giving him a hand, let’s say. If I had been, he would have been dust by the time we got back from fetching Cas and Bobby. What I cast before we left was just to keep him stable, but it wasn’t enough for all the time we were gone. We took longer than I thought with Castiel and…yeah.”
Dean could almost see Sam shaking his head. “Then what? Who helped him?”
“I imagine he’ll tell us, when he can.”
Dean spared another breath to make further question noises.
It was a good thing Sam could read him so well. Or at least, as well as anyone could, with a limited amount of information. “He wants to know what precisely is wrong with him,” he said to Gabriel.
“Where to start?” Gabriel said dryly. Dean heard him shift, and then settle. “The devil tried to explode you, Dean-o. It’s a good thing you’re made of tougher stuff these days, or you’d be splatter on the necropolis floor. As it is, he managed to start some serious atomization over your right side, including your wing, from about your hip to your shoulder. I had to build your lung and kidney from scratch. Your heart took a beating too, no pun intended, but that was taken care of by your mysterious benefactor. Oh, and about sixty percent of your skin was basically gone. Think Anatomy 101 textbook diagrams. Except with a lot more blood.”
So that’s what got Sam into panicky babble. Dean was really glad he hadn’t tried to move after landing. He made a weak tff noise through his teeth, and Sam said, “Yeah, dude. It…I’d rather not see anything like that again.”
“We should let you sleep. Don’t even think about moving,” Gabriel said warningly. “I know you Winchesters, and believe me, outside help or not, now is not the time to be your usual stubborn self.”
Dean managed a very slight twitch of his lips for acknowledgment. Sam laid a hand lightly on his good shoulder, and then he listened to their footsteps retreat, and the panic room door close. With nothing else to do, he let himself drift.
***
“Castiel. How’re you holding up?”
The angel looked up from the book in his lap. He looked almost completely normal, except for how he held his torso just slightly away from the back of his chair. There were fading bruises along the left side of his face, and dried blood in crusts in his ears. One leg was propped up on another chair, unbraced. He said, “There will be no lasting damage.”
Gabriel shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. His expression was inscrutable and tight, hardening his jaw. “You know who helped Dean, don’t you?” he said eventually. “You know who kept him alive.”
“I have my suspicions,” Castiel said, his gaze sliding from Gabriel to the tabletop.
Gabriel was silent for a long moment. Then he said quickly, sharply, as if he couldn’t stop even to take one jagged breath, “He wouldn’t. He would never, not after all of this time. I begged him, on my knees, and he didn’t, but now—“
“Those were very different times,” Castiel said quietly.
Gabriel sucked in his breath. “I’m his brother,” he whispered.
Castiel watched him. “Maybe that was why he couldn’t listen.”
Gabriel made an almost inaudible sound, somewhere high up in his throat, and then he was gone like he’d never been there. Castiel blinked slowly, and turned back to his book.
Chapter Ten
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Date: 25 Jun 2010 16:25 (UTC)As for Lucifer, I just love how you wrote him. Vicious, sadistic and cruel. Trying to erase Dean out of existence and then wailed on Castiel. It's how Lucifer would act.
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Date: 25 Jun 2010 20:18 (UTC)