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alchemyaliceTitle: On the Wings of War
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Action/Adventure/Horror, eventually 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: Look at me, all getting shit done on time! Be proud, or something. Also, what is up with the copypasta bullshit dialogue box in lj these days? Very annoying. Anyway.
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
“No. No fucking way.”
“Do you want to save those people trapped in this church?” Gabriel argued. “Do you want to save the people in all of these churches? Because this is how to do it.”
“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” Sam waved his arms wildly. “The whole point of this fucking game is for me not to say yes. And I don’t fucking trust you!”
“Well, unless you’ve got a better idea, you’re going to have to, sport,” the archangel snapped. “We need to draw the demons away from the church, and for that, we need an available host body. The only one we’ve got to work with is mine.”
“And what’s gonna happen then?” Sam retorted. “What’s gonna happen when we let them take over your body and devil’s trap it?”
Gabriel’s smile was feral. “Then I reclaim it. And burn them all.”
Sam stared at him. “Won’t you burn me out?” he asked finally.
“I could,” Gabriel shrugged. “But I won’t.”
“I don’t trust you,” Sam repeated.
Gabriel said, “I didn’t really expect you to.”
“Then what—“
“I expect you,” he interrupted, “To weigh your lack of trust in me against the idea that we can save however many people are in that church.”
Sam sputtered incoherently for a long second, and then exhaled harshly. Finally he said, “I’ve been told I have martyr issues.”
“Uh huh. And I’m exploiting them. Sucker.”
Sam snorted. “This is temporary,” he said, deadly serious. “You’re in, and then you’re out, and we kill these sons of bitches.”
“Yep,” Gabriel said.
“And you don’t take control,” Sam added.
Gabriel shifted. “I may not be able to help it. At least, at first.”
Sam glowered.
Gabriel shrugged. “What? You’d rather I lie, and say we’d be all puppies and rainbows and equal-opportunity cooperation?”
“I’d rather you not turn me into a meatsuit,” Sam growled.
“Tough luck, hot stuff. Are you gonna say yes or no?”
“The trap’s done,” Bobby said, eying them both. “What now?”
Gabriel looked at Sam, who closed his eyes for a long moment before shifting his shoulders and nodding. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Jesus, I can’t believe I’m letting you, of all people, do this.”
“I said I was sorry about the whole killing-Dean-thing.”
“No. You really didn’t.”
Gabriel looked mildly surprised. “Oh. Right. Sorry, then. Does that count?”
“No.”
“Fantastic. Shall we do this?”
Sam tried to reign in his seething. “Who is your host, anyway? Are we gonna have to deal with him?”
“No,” Gabriel said, looking oddly sad for a moment. “He was a soldier, and I sent him home a while ago. No, you’re going to have to time this very carefully.”
He went to stand over by the trap Bobby had drawn onto the asphalt with black spray paint. It was virtually invisible except where the paint glistened. “Good call on invisibility. That might actually make our job easier. Gimme the oil.”
Sam handed it over. Gabriel walked around the trap, drawing a thin line of oil in a circle. When he’d closed it off, he put the jug down and turned. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to jump into you, and the demons are going to make a beeline for my body. Now, there’s room for one demon in there, but the way this trap works, it’s going to pull all of the others along for the ride. When there’s an opening, one of you goes to the church to check out the people inside, see if there are survivors. And I’ll jump back into my body to have it out with these bastards. The second I’m in there, Sam, you light up the holy oil.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
Gabriel gazed steadily at him. “If I don’t survive, you don’t want what’s left of me getting out.”
He stared for a long second. “There are four more of these churches,” he said quietly.
“This one will be enough to break the Pentagram,” Gabriel said. “The rest of the demons will disperse. It’s not ideal, but with some of Dean’s army following us over here, we should be able to take them once they start scattering.”
“Where is his army, anyway?” Bobby said. “Dean said he’d send them along.”
“Some of them are here,” Gabriel answered. “But not many. Dean-o may have overexerted himself with a promise like that. If he’s having trouble with Abaddon, they’ll rally to him first before they go anywhere else.”
“We should have stayed with him,” Sam muttered.
“And left these people to die?” Bobby demanded.
Sam didn’t answer. Gabriel looked between them for a second. “So dramatic, your lives are,” he commented. “Are you ready or not, Sam?”
Sam took a breath, and let it out slowly, cutting a glance towards the black smoke that curled and obscured the church.
“Yeah. Okay. Go for it.”
Gabriel nodded, and didn't give any further warning.
Sam heard him say curtly, “Don’t look, Bobby,” and an answering, “What d’you think I am, an idjit?” and then a growing roar of wingbeats drowned his eardrums, and light first seeped, and then escalated to seem to crash out of the archangel’s form, a tidal wave pouring out of the edges of him, filling his vision.
“This had better work,” he said, or was pretty sure he said. He couldn’t hear anything except light, which didn’t make any sense, but things with angels, let alone archangels, rarely did.
No worries, kiddo, a voice in his head thrummed, sounding not at all like the Gabriel Sam knew. It was bigger, more sonorous; the voice of the Messenger.
We’ve got this covered.
***
Michael looked up at the heavy steel gray of the Detroit skyline. His body’s fragile frame goosepimpled slightly in the pervading cold, but he ignored it. More important was the scent of sulfur in the air, the near imperceptible taint of rotten eggs and fire that hung amid the more human smells of engine exhaust and cigarette smoke.
Lucifer had been here, for a brief time. No doubt in expectation of Sam’s capitulation. But then Dean’s…alteration had happened, and that last shred of prophecy left to them had seen its last days in the bloodied wings and reckoning of a South Dakota safe room.
You should come back, Michael thought. Just for symmetry’s sake.
Then he looked around at where he was. Belle Isle, right on the border of things, a green space looking out onto urban wasteland. It seemed fitting.
He spun his hand in a small circle, and the Heavens bent to his will.
***
In his desperation, Dean took some of the rubble with him. It landed and rolled around them in miserable piles while Dean clutched at Castiel’s prone form in a tangle of limbs and wings. A shriek of alarm greeted their arrival, followed by a long string of hysterical Arabic syllables from several people.
Dean pulled his wings up over Castiel, shielding them both from view as much as he could. He looked down at the angel’s torn up face and tried to assess the damage. There was damage from getting thrown into the wreckage of the ranch house, but that shouldn’t have been enough to put the angel down, even in his semi-fallen state. “Cas? Cas, wake up, we’re safe, or at least, kinda safe,” he said.
Castiel’s eyelids twitched, like he was trying to regain consciousness, but it wasn’t working.
“Shit. Cas…”
“As salaam alaikum.”
Dean looked up, and exhaled abruptly. “As salaam alaikum. My…my friend’s hurt. Can you help me?”
The Imam looked down at them worriedly, his color better than when Dean saw him last, but still ashen with stress and age. Looking down at him with troubled eyes, he said, “Come.”
***
Jimmy had not been lying when he’d said being a meat suit for an angel had been like being chained to a comet.
Gabriel was incandescent, a thousand watt flare of incomprehensibility and glory and light that burned and filled in ways that Sam was certain just shouldn’t be possible. For a long second he could barely think, let alone comprehend that he could still feel his nerve endings and that there was a voice in his head that wasn’t his own, and that it was yelling.
Move back, move back, Sam! They’re coming!
Sam couldn’t, he didn’t know how to work is own body anymore. Gabriel burned inside him, bursting out of his edges and so very, very wrong in a way that made Sam realize with a sickening jolt meant that he wasn’t Gabriel’s chosen vessel, he wasn’t a perfect fit like he should be. It was hot and uncomfortable and too tight in places he was pretty sure anatomy didn’t account for.
Dammit, Sam! Work with me here!
On unsteady legs that didn’t feel entirely attached to him anymore, Sam was vaguely aware that he stumbled (or Gabriel made him stumble) back from the trap, finally seeing through the haze of light around the outside of his vision Gabriel’s vessel go slack in front of him and start to crumple like a puppet with its strings severed. It was perhaps more disturbing than the shining presence of the archangel under his skin, but Sam pushed that thought aside.
And then the demons were there, circling like vultures around a carcass, surging and then diving forward in one uncontrolled demanding spiral of noxious greed.
Sam was vaguely aware of something inside of him flinch, except the flinch was more the shudder of a ruptured nuclear reactor, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t him, though the sight was gruesome. Gabriel was attached to that vessel, liked it as more than just a tool, and it was showing up on the inside of Sam’s skin.
Sam felt his entire body clench as the demons kept pouring in, an endless stream that alit in Gabriel’s vessel and took control, his eyes going black and an expression of cruel amusement that even Gabriel at his most Trickster-ish would not, could not ever wear.
“Sam Winchester,” it said, voice harsh and snide and low. “What a pleasure. And with an angel riding sidecar? What is the world coming to?”
Sam didn't answer, didn't know if he could. The demons were still pouring in, drawn in by the trap, no longer fitting inside Gabriel’s flesh and blood, just swirling around him in an awful hurricane of black. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bobby run over to the church and slip inside unnoticed.
He waited for the realization. It didn’t take long.
The demon wearing Gabriel’s face took a step forward, malice pulling at his features, and then stopped abruptly, raising one hand to the invisible border of the trap. The swirl of demons faltered, and then whirred like a swarm of angry bees.
“Deceitful little brat,” the demon hissed, and threw a fist at the trap, recoiling.
Sam and Gabriel looked up at the black smoke still flowing into the trap, and watched how it broke down, became less a steady, unsettling curl and more a scrabbling, chaotic surge against the inevitable.
Just a little longer, Gabriel said, or maybe Sam said it aloud, he couldn’t tell over the roaring of the archangel’s presence in his ears. It was starting to burn, not in the ice-hot way that felt like being filled beyond capacity, but in the way that felt like consumption.
“Gabriel?” some part of him whispered.
The demons filled the trap, a long rising column of wrath outside the church, like a storm caught in a glass bottle.
Wait just a little longer, kiddo, I won’t let you burn.
“I don’t know if I can—“
Numbly he felt his knees hit the ground, and heard Bobby shouting.
Okay. Okay, I’m gone.
And then cool air was rushing into his lungs.
Get your lighter ready, and shut your eyes, for God’s sake.
He fumbled it in his hands, couldn’t quite get the zippo top open, his nerves completely fried. The heat and fire was receding, and he squeezed his eyes shut like he’d just rediscovered he had eyelids to do it with, and the red of bloodvessels beneath his skin burned itself into his retinas as Gabriel exploded back out of him.
Dimly, he heard Bobby shout, “Close your eyes, all of you! Do it unless you want to go blind!”
And then the low rasp of Gabriel, in his so quiet, so human voice, “Now, Sam. Holy fire, stat.”
Sam opened his eyes to meet Gabriel’s, which were flickering between black and gold in his vessel. The archangel’s sword was trembling in his grip at his side. “Good luck,” Sam whispered.
And threw down the lighter.
***
Dean was getting a little tired of every fight ending with everything in his body aching through and through.
Omar’s house hadn’t been far from the tombs, thank god. Bad enough that Dean’d already made a spectacle of all of them not once, but twice in the same damn city. But he didn’t even care at this point, because dammit, Castiel.
The angel came to once, when Dean was looking up at the very narrow staircase that led to the second story of the apartment building Omar was gesturing at and deciding that he was not going to be able to maneuver them up there without some supernatural finagling. He tensed against Dean’s arms and immediately Dean tightened his grip and looked down. “Cas?”
Castiel’s one unswollen eye opened a fraction. “Dean. Where—“
“Back in Marrakech. Omar’s helping us out. Just relax, be still, and I’ve got you.”
“Abaddon—“
“Is gone. But I’m pretty sure we destroyed half of Montana.”
Castiel grimaced, and his eye closed. Omar looked at Dean worriedly. “You come up,” he said, half a question, half instruction.
Dean nodded. He looked up at what he could see of the apartment from the window, and concentrated.
One shift later, and he was inside. And a woman was screaming. “This really doesn’t bode well for my pulling abilities after this shit is over,” Dean muttered.
Then he looked up just in time to dodge a frying pan to the face.
“La’a!” Omar came rushing into the room, launching into explanations and giving Dean a chastising look. Dean ducked his head and concentrated on lowering Castiel carefully to the floor.
“No, wait please. The bedroom is better.”
She must have been Omar’s daughter. Omar was still talking calmingly to his wife, who was throwing a headscarf hastily around her face while shooting Dean horrified glances. The daughter had covered herself quickly as well, but she was also looking steadily at Dean without fear in her eyes.
“He’ll bleed onto the furniture,” Dean said blankly.
“He helped save my father’s life,” she replied. “I think we can forgive him.” She tilted her head in suggestion towards a hallway. "You need a shirt anyway. It is unseemly, how you are marked."
Dean looked down at his blood-streaked torso, and felt himself flush. Readjusting his grip on Castiel’s body, he followed as meekly as he could.
***
Malaeka, as she introduced herself, seemed not to have a single irrational bone in her body. She was barely twenty and well-educated, and had picked up English through watching BBC news and reading used paperbacks. “It is useful, here,” she said, “If only to know when tourists are being insulting. And I teach my father some after you saw him last.”
Dean laid Castiel down. “Thanks for, you know, not panicking,” he said awkwardly.
She shrugged. “Father told us all how an angel had saved his life when Satan came for him. We are a religious family; it was not so difficult to believe. You,” she paused, and looked him over, “Well, you don’t look much like how I imagined an angel, but you still look like one, somehow.”
“I’m not really the angel,” Dean said. He waved a hand at Castiel, “He is. I’m just…well, something different.”
Malaeka digested this, and then shrugged again. “You both saved my father’s life,” she said. “That’s enough.”
“Thank you.”
“Malaeka,” Omar said in the doorway. His arms were folded across his chest, looking less protective than Dean would have been in his position, but cautious nonetheless.
Malaeka nodded very slightly, and afforded Dean one last glance before leaving the room. Omar stepped inside in her stead.
“He says Abaddon,” he said, nodding at Castiel’s prone form. “The fifth trumpet of Allah.”
Silently, Dean nodded.
Omar closed his eyes for a long moment, and then said, “It is ending.”
“No,” Dean said, more forcefully than he meant to. Omar raised an eyebrow. “No ending yet.”
The Imam said nothing, but didn’t disagree either. “Malaeka gets dressings,” he said eventually. “You are welcome here.”
“Thank you,” Dean said again. It was more than he could have asked for.
He looked back down at Castiel, whose coat was in tatters, and who could afford to breathe only shallowly. He was bleeding sluggishly from one arm and across his face, but there was something deeper that was torn up about him, and Dean didn’t know the first thing about how to fix it.
Michael, he thought, I could really use your help about now.
He wasn’t dreaming, though, so there was no answer.
Chapter Nineteen.
Author: Alchemy Alice
Genre and/or Pairing: Action/Adventure/Horror, eventually 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: Look at me, all getting shit done on time! Be proud, or something. Also, what is up with the copypasta bullshit dialogue box in lj these days? Very annoying. Anyway.
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
“No. No fucking way.”
“Do you want to save those people trapped in this church?” Gabriel argued. “Do you want to save the people in all of these churches? Because this is how to do it.”
“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” Sam waved his arms wildly. “The whole point of this fucking game is for me not to say yes. And I don’t fucking trust you!”
“Well, unless you’ve got a better idea, you’re going to have to, sport,” the archangel snapped. “We need to draw the demons away from the church, and for that, we need an available host body. The only one we’ve got to work with is mine.”
“And what’s gonna happen then?” Sam retorted. “What’s gonna happen when we let them take over your body and devil’s trap it?”
Gabriel’s smile was feral. “Then I reclaim it. And burn them all.”
Sam stared at him. “Won’t you burn me out?” he asked finally.
“I could,” Gabriel shrugged. “But I won’t.”
“I don’t trust you,” Sam repeated.
Gabriel said, “I didn’t really expect you to.”
“Then what—“
“I expect you,” he interrupted, “To weigh your lack of trust in me against the idea that we can save however many people are in that church.”
Sam sputtered incoherently for a long second, and then exhaled harshly. Finally he said, “I’ve been told I have martyr issues.”
“Uh huh. And I’m exploiting them. Sucker.”
Sam snorted. “This is temporary,” he said, deadly serious. “You’re in, and then you’re out, and we kill these sons of bitches.”
“Yep,” Gabriel said.
“And you don’t take control,” Sam added.
Gabriel shifted. “I may not be able to help it. At least, at first.”
Sam glowered.
Gabriel shrugged. “What? You’d rather I lie, and say we’d be all puppies and rainbows and equal-opportunity cooperation?”
“I’d rather you not turn me into a meatsuit,” Sam growled.
“Tough luck, hot stuff. Are you gonna say yes or no?”
“The trap’s done,” Bobby said, eying them both. “What now?”
Gabriel looked at Sam, who closed his eyes for a long moment before shifting his shoulders and nodding. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Jesus, I can’t believe I’m letting you, of all people, do this.”
“I said I was sorry about the whole killing-Dean-thing.”
“No. You really didn’t.”
Gabriel looked mildly surprised. “Oh. Right. Sorry, then. Does that count?”
“No.”
“Fantastic. Shall we do this?”
Sam tried to reign in his seething. “Who is your host, anyway? Are we gonna have to deal with him?”
“No,” Gabriel said, looking oddly sad for a moment. “He was a soldier, and I sent him home a while ago. No, you’re going to have to time this very carefully.”
He went to stand over by the trap Bobby had drawn onto the asphalt with black spray paint. It was virtually invisible except where the paint glistened. “Good call on invisibility. That might actually make our job easier. Gimme the oil.”
Sam handed it over. Gabriel walked around the trap, drawing a thin line of oil in a circle. When he’d closed it off, he put the jug down and turned. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’m going to jump into you, and the demons are going to make a beeline for my body. Now, there’s room for one demon in there, but the way this trap works, it’s going to pull all of the others along for the ride. When there’s an opening, one of you goes to the church to check out the people inside, see if there are survivors. And I’ll jump back into my body to have it out with these bastards. The second I’m in there, Sam, you light up the holy oil.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
Gabriel gazed steadily at him. “If I don’t survive, you don’t want what’s left of me getting out.”
He stared for a long second. “There are four more of these churches,” he said quietly.
“This one will be enough to break the Pentagram,” Gabriel said. “The rest of the demons will disperse. It’s not ideal, but with some of Dean’s army following us over here, we should be able to take them once they start scattering.”
“Where is his army, anyway?” Bobby said. “Dean said he’d send them along.”
“Some of them are here,” Gabriel answered. “But not many. Dean-o may have overexerted himself with a promise like that. If he’s having trouble with Abaddon, they’ll rally to him first before they go anywhere else.”
“We should have stayed with him,” Sam muttered.
“And left these people to die?” Bobby demanded.
Sam didn’t answer. Gabriel looked between them for a second. “So dramatic, your lives are,” he commented. “Are you ready or not, Sam?”
Sam took a breath, and let it out slowly, cutting a glance towards the black smoke that curled and obscured the church.
“Yeah. Okay. Go for it.”
Gabriel nodded, and didn't give any further warning.
Sam heard him say curtly, “Don’t look, Bobby,” and an answering, “What d’you think I am, an idjit?” and then a growing roar of wingbeats drowned his eardrums, and light first seeped, and then escalated to seem to crash out of the archangel’s form, a tidal wave pouring out of the edges of him, filling his vision.
“This had better work,” he said, or was pretty sure he said. He couldn’t hear anything except light, which didn’t make any sense, but things with angels, let alone archangels, rarely did.
No worries, kiddo, a voice in his head thrummed, sounding not at all like the Gabriel Sam knew. It was bigger, more sonorous; the voice of the Messenger.
We’ve got this covered.
***
Michael looked up at the heavy steel gray of the Detroit skyline. His body’s fragile frame goosepimpled slightly in the pervading cold, but he ignored it. More important was the scent of sulfur in the air, the near imperceptible taint of rotten eggs and fire that hung amid the more human smells of engine exhaust and cigarette smoke.
Lucifer had been here, for a brief time. No doubt in expectation of Sam’s capitulation. But then Dean’s…alteration had happened, and that last shred of prophecy left to them had seen its last days in the bloodied wings and reckoning of a South Dakota safe room.
You should come back, Michael thought. Just for symmetry’s sake.
Then he looked around at where he was. Belle Isle, right on the border of things, a green space looking out onto urban wasteland. It seemed fitting.
He spun his hand in a small circle, and the Heavens bent to his will.
***
In his desperation, Dean took some of the rubble with him. It landed and rolled around them in miserable piles while Dean clutched at Castiel’s prone form in a tangle of limbs and wings. A shriek of alarm greeted their arrival, followed by a long string of hysterical Arabic syllables from several people.
Dean pulled his wings up over Castiel, shielding them both from view as much as he could. He looked down at the angel’s torn up face and tried to assess the damage. There was damage from getting thrown into the wreckage of the ranch house, but that shouldn’t have been enough to put the angel down, even in his semi-fallen state. “Cas? Cas, wake up, we’re safe, or at least, kinda safe,” he said.
Castiel’s eyelids twitched, like he was trying to regain consciousness, but it wasn’t working.
“Shit. Cas…”
“As salaam alaikum.”
Dean looked up, and exhaled abruptly. “As salaam alaikum. My…my friend’s hurt. Can you help me?”
The Imam looked down at them worriedly, his color better than when Dean saw him last, but still ashen with stress and age. Looking down at him with troubled eyes, he said, “Come.”
***
Jimmy had not been lying when he’d said being a meat suit for an angel had been like being chained to a comet.
Gabriel was incandescent, a thousand watt flare of incomprehensibility and glory and light that burned and filled in ways that Sam was certain just shouldn’t be possible. For a long second he could barely think, let alone comprehend that he could still feel his nerve endings and that there was a voice in his head that wasn’t his own, and that it was yelling.
Move back, move back, Sam! They’re coming!
Sam couldn’t, he didn’t know how to work is own body anymore. Gabriel burned inside him, bursting out of his edges and so very, very wrong in a way that made Sam realize with a sickening jolt meant that he wasn’t Gabriel’s chosen vessel, he wasn’t a perfect fit like he should be. It was hot and uncomfortable and too tight in places he was pretty sure anatomy didn’t account for.
Dammit, Sam! Work with me here!
On unsteady legs that didn’t feel entirely attached to him anymore, Sam was vaguely aware that he stumbled (or Gabriel made him stumble) back from the trap, finally seeing through the haze of light around the outside of his vision Gabriel’s vessel go slack in front of him and start to crumple like a puppet with its strings severed. It was perhaps more disturbing than the shining presence of the archangel under his skin, but Sam pushed that thought aside.
And then the demons were there, circling like vultures around a carcass, surging and then diving forward in one uncontrolled demanding spiral of noxious greed.
Sam was vaguely aware of something inside of him flinch, except the flinch was more the shudder of a ruptured nuclear reactor, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t him, though the sight was gruesome. Gabriel was attached to that vessel, liked it as more than just a tool, and it was showing up on the inside of Sam’s skin.
Sam felt his entire body clench as the demons kept pouring in, an endless stream that alit in Gabriel’s vessel and took control, his eyes going black and an expression of cruel amusement that even Gabriel at his most Trickster-ish would not, could not ever wear.
“Sam Winchester,” it said, voice harsh and snide and low. “What a pleasure. And with an angel riding sidecar? What is the world coming to?”
Sam didn't answer, didn't know if he could. The demons were still pouring in, drawn in by the trap, no longer fitting inside Gabriel’s flesh and blood, just swirling around him in an awful hurricane of black. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bobby run over to the church and slip inside unnoticed.
He waited for the realization. It didn’t take long.
The demon wearing Gabriel’s face took a step forward, malice pulling at his features, and then stopped abruptly, raising one hand to the invisible border of the trap. The swirl of demons faltered, and then whirred like a swarm of angry bees.
“Deceitful little brat,” the demon hissed, and threw a fist at the trap, recoiling.
Sam and Gabriel looked up at the black smoke still flowing into the trap, and watched how it broke down, became less a steady, unsettling curl and more a scrabbling, chaotic surge against the inevitable.
Just a little longer, Gabriel said, or maybe Sam said it aloud, he couldn’t tell over the roaring of the archangel’s presence in his ears. It was starting to burn, not in the ice-hot way that felt like being filled beyond capacity, but in the way that felt like consumption.
“Gabriel?” some part of him whispered.
The demons filled the trap, a long rising column of wrath outside the church, like a storm caught in a glass bottle.
Wait just a little longer, kiddo, I won’t let you burn.
“I don’t know if I can—“
Numbly he felt his knees hit the ground, and heard Bobby shouting.
Okay. Okay, I’m gone.
And then cool air was rushing into his lungs.
Get your lighter ready, and shut your eyes, for God’s sake.
He fumbled it in his hands, couldn’t quite get the zippo top open, his nerves completely fried. The heat and fire was receding, and he squeezed his eyes shut like he’d just rediscovered he had eyelids to do it with, and the red of bloodvessels beneath his skin burned itself into his retinas as Gabriel exploded back out of him.
Dimly, he heard Bobby shout, “Close your eyes, all of you! Do it unless you want to go blind!”
And then the low rasp of Gabriel, in his so quiet, so human voice, “Now, Sam. Holy fire, stat.”
Sam opened his eyes to meet Gabriel’s, which were flickering between black and gold in his vessel. The archangel’s sword was trembling in his grip at his side. “Good luck,” Sam whispered.
And threw down the lighter.
***
Dean was getting a little tired of every fight ending with everything in his body aching through and through.
Omar’s house hadn’t been far from the tombs, thank god. Bad enough that Dean’d already made a spectacle of all of them not once, but twice in the same damn city. But he didn’t even care at this point, because dammit, Castiel.
The angel came to once, when Dean was looking up at the very narrow staircase that led to the second story of the apartment building Omar was gesturing at and deciding that he was not going to be able to maneuver them up there without some supernatural finagling. He tensed against Dean’s arms and immediately Dean tightened his grip and looked down. “Cas?”
Castiel’s one unswollen eye opened a fraction. “Dean. Where—“
“Back in Marrakech. Omar’s helping us out. Just relax, be still, and I’ve got you.”
“Abaddon—“
“Is gone. But I’m pretty sure we destroyed half of Montana.”
Castiel grimaced, and his eye closed. Omar looked at Dean worriedly. “You come up,” he said, half a question, half instruction.
Dean nodded. He looked up at what he could see of the apartment from the window, and concentrated.
One shift later, and he was inside. And a woman was screaming. “This really doesn’t bode well for my pulling abilities after this shit is over,” Dean muttered.
Then he looked up just in time to dodge a frying pan to the face.
“La’a!” Omar came rushing into the room, launching into explanations and giving Dean a chastising look. Dean ducked his head and concentrated on lowering Castiel carefully to the floor.
“No, wait please. The bedroom is better.”
She must have been Omar’s daughter. Omar was still talking calmingly to his wife, who was throwing a headscarf hastily around her face while shooting Dean horrified glances. The daughter had covered herself quickly as well, but she was also looking steadily at Dean without fear in her eyes.
“He’ll bleed onto the furniture,” Dean said blankly.
“He helped save my father’s life,” she replied. “I think we can forgive him.” She tilted her head in suggestion towards a hallway. "You need a shirt anyway. It is unseemly, how you are marked."
Dean looked down at his blood-streaked torso, and felt himself flush. Readjusting his grip on Castiel’s body, he followed as meekly as he could.
***
Malaeka, as she introduced herself, seemed not to have a single irrational bone in her body. She was barely twenty and well-educated, and had picked up English through watching BBC news and reading used paperbacks. “It is useful, here,” she said, “If only to know when tourists are being insulting. And I teach my father some after you saw him last.”
Dean laid Castiel down. “Thanks for, you know, not panicking,” he said awkwardly.
She shrugged. “Father told us all how an angel had saved his life when Satan came for him. We are a religious family; it was not so difficult to believe. You,” she paused, and looked him over, “Well, you don’t look much like how I imagined an angel, but you still look like one, somehow.”
“I’m not really the angel,” Dean said. He waved a hand at Castiel, “He is. I’m just…well, something different.”
Malaeka digested this, and then shrugged again. “You both saved my father’s life,” she said. “That’s enough.”
“Thank you.”
“Malaeka,” Omar said in the doorway. His arms were folded across his chest, looking less protective than Dean would have been in his position, but cautious nonetheless.
Malaeka nodded very slightly, and afforded Dean one last glance before leaving the room. Omar stepped inside in her stead.
“He says Abaddon,” he said, nodding at Castiel’s prone form. “The fifth trumpet of Allah.”
Silently, Dean nodded.
Omar closed his eyes for a long moment, and then said, “It is ending.”
“No,” Dean said, more forcefully than he meant to. Omar raised an eyebrow. “No ending yet.”
The Imam said nothing, but didn’t disagree either. “Malaeka gets dressings,” he said eventually. “You are welcome here.”
“Thank you,” Dean said again. It was more than he could have asked for.
He looked back down at Castiel, whose coat was in tatters, and who could afford to breathe only shallowly. He was bleeding sluggishly from one arm and across his face, but there was something deeper that was torn up about him, and Dean didn’t know the first thing about how to fix it.
Michael, he thought, I could really use your help about now.
He wasn’t dreaming, though, so there was no answer.
Chapter Nineteen.