On the Wings of War: Chapter Three

[alchemyalice]

Title: 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 probably 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 discreet. They are neutral. Dean Winchester is not built like them.

Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two

Chapter 3

Dean spent a long minute staring up at Sam and Castiel, lips curled in nausea at the smell emanating from the bed he laid on and the raw, tender places at his back. Not to mention the…appendages.

He could see them now, in the dim sunlight filtering in from the ceiling. They were hard to miss, actually. Huge and dark, though that was about all that he could tell because they were so blood-soaked and raw that they could have belonged to a bird or a bat or a fucking pterodactyl and he wouldn’t have been able to guess. They looked like what happened when oil spills caught seagulls. They were horrific.

They were also fucking massive. One had overturned the metal worktable and pinned it to the opposite wall. The other was bent uncomfortably at the feet of the two angels. After a long moment, Gabriel knelt down.

“You’re going to have to fold these,” he said. “And then we should get you outside.”

“Why?” Dean rasped.

“Because we need to wash the blood off, and if you don’t fold them in now you’ll probably hit something in the yard when we land, and with your good fortune you’ll probably break something. Also, I doubt Bobby’d appreciate us flooding his basement.”

“I don’t know how to fold them.”

“Yeah. About that. Castiel, help me out here.”

“Excuse me for this, Dean,” Castiel said, also crouching down. “This will feel strange.”

Carefully, he grasped one articulation of the thickest arc at his feet.  

Dean twitched. It was unsettling to say the least. He could tell that the…the wing was connected to him—it felt the same as someone grabbing his arm, except for how it completely didn’t. His brain wasn’t grasping it quite well enough, wasn’t reconciling the fact that he had two new goddamn extremities to contend with. He comprehended pressure, a shift, but it was like trying to send signals to a part of him that had fallen asleep.

Ironically, it was newness of them that managed to wake his brain to them as well. As Castiel began to push the wing towards Dean, the largest joint scraped the floor.

“Augh,” Dean gasped. “Stop. Ow, stop right now! Motherfucker.”

Castiel stopped. He looked up at Dean’s face. “What is it?”

“It’s still raw,” Gabriel surmised. “We’re gonna need to lift it off the floor before moving it. Unless, of course, Dean-o can figure it out himself.”

Dean shot him a glare. “Gimme a minute, okay?”

Reluctantly, Castiel let go.

The screaming pain receptors in the wing had done their job. Dean was now excruciatingly aware of every inch of it, the tenderness of the muscles and the untried strain of tendons. He looked down at it, this new part of him that was both viscerally there and completely alien. He frowned. Concentrated on the black and red bulge of muscle that looked like it could contract both upward and inward. Tentatively, he flexed.

The muscles shouted further protest, but they obeyed. Trembling, the whole thing lifted, stuttering and starting, dripping more thick gobs of blood onto the floor, and then pulled in towards Dean. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but all the gross shit that had accompanied its explosive birth from Dean’s back weighed it down, and so when it was close enough to reach, Dean gingerly wiped some of the viscosity from it.

It felt like he was wiping living leather. Living leather attached to him.

The opposite wing went a little easier, now that Dean knew what to concentrate on. After a few minutes, both were tucked close to his back as he lay on the bed, slowly staining his jeans and the mattress in seeping stripes down to his ankles. Castiel moved so that he was standing closer to Dean’s head.

“Can you stand?” he asked.

“Let’s find out.” Bracing his arms beneath him, Dean slowly pushed himself onto his hands and knees, and then tried to rock back onto just his knees. Without comment, Castiel gripped his forearms and with preternatural strength lifted him the rest of the way off the cot and onto his feet.

Dean stumbled. His center of gravity was all fucked up. One of his wings shot out of its own volition to make an abortive attempt to balance him, and made a slick impact with something.

“Son of a bitch!” Gabriel spluttered.  

Dean looked over, and despite excruciating pain, mental fatigue, blood loss, and general exhaustion, burst out laughing. Even Sam, in his panicky wide-eyed way, joined him.

The side of Gabriel’s face was covered in muck and blood. He looked like he’d been smacked in the face with a particularly badly crafted and burnt cherry pie. He looked murderous.

“Oh dude,” Dean gasped, wiping slightly hysterical tears from his eyes. “Sorry about that.”

“As if you’re actually sorry,” Gabriel muttered sourly. “Let’s get these damned things outside and into the sun.”

He snapped his fingers. 

*** 

The rest of the day was…well, not as disgusting as the first hour of it, but still not pleasant. Dean at least appreciated that he didn’t have to do any of the work—while Gabriel presumably zapped the panic room back into cleanliness, he threw himself down on top of a crapped out Ford and watched as Castiel summoned two huge cast iron tubs of water.

“Dip the wings in, as far as they will fit,” he instructed, like this was all perfectly normal. “That should soak most of the blood off. Your back needs tending to.”

“You my nurse for the day, Cas?” Dean smirked, but he sounded worn and strung out even to his own ears.

“I will do what I can,” Castiel replied.

Dean risked a glance over his shoulder, grimaced and said, “That’s gonna need a lot of bandages.”

Castiel made a noncommittal noise, and said, “I imagine you’ll heal quickly. The ring would hardly abide weakness in its host for long.”

“Please don’t refer to me as a host,” Dean winced. “That’s just got Invasion of the Body Snatchers all over it, and I really don’t need that.”

“Apologies.” Castiel made long strokes with a damp cloth over his back, lightening his touch as he approached the wounds from which the wings emerged, dripping water over them to wash the blood away.  

“Why wings?” Dean grumbled. “Why couldn’t it be cool shit, like Wolverine claws, or something? Why am I not made of adamantine?”

“There is no such thing as adamantine. And while wolverine claws would perhaps be useful in hand-to-hand combat, wings, when employed in supernatural contexts, often have far more interesting connotations.” Castiel ran the now blood-soaked cloth over the portion of the wing not submerged in the tub, spraying pink water onto the lawn.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Dean asked.

“Metaphysical flight. Greater invulnerability. You must understand, Dean, that only the most powerful creatures in Creation manifest wings through unnatural means.”

Dean managed a weak grin. “So what you’re saying is…I’m Batman.”

Castiel frowned, and rung out the cloth before applying it to Dean’s shoulder. “I don’t know who that is.”

*** 

Gabriel didn’t stay after the panic room was clear. Sam didn’t even see him leave—after an hour or so he went to check and it was as if the archangel had never been there. As if Dean hadn’t vomited wings out of his back like they were the chest-bursters from Alien. He shook his head, looking at the now spotless room. When he emerged from the basement, Bobby shot him a questioning look.

“He’s gone. As usual,” he said, irritated.

“Are we trusting him?” Bobby grunted, not looking particularly surprised.

“Fuck no,” Sam snorted. “He killed Dean. Over and over.”

“He’s also an archangel.”

“He’s a Trickster.”

Bobby shrugged. “All right.”

Sam cast a look outside. The scene in the yard was just way too surreal for his brain to really deal with. Dean was sitting stiffly, black wing forms arcing out and then disappearing into tubs of water on either side of him. His chest was white with gauze that Castiel continued to roll tightly around his middle and then in crisscrosses over his back. Half the gauze was already beginning to look saturated with blood.

“How has he not bled out?” Sam wondered aloud.

“Beats me,” Bobby said. “But your brother’s lived through worse, to be honest.”

“Worse?” Sam said sharply. “Bobby, someone’s turned him into a monster.”

“A potentially useful monster,” Bobby pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought I was, before I started the Apocalypse,” he snapped.

Bobby glared at him. “Is that what’s got your panties in a twist? Because I’ll go on record and say that that was a bad time, but you were never a monster, Sam. Never, you hear me?”

Sam deflated.

“Sure,” he said, more quietly and clearly not believing it. “And I’m sure Dean’ll probably deal with it better than I did.”

“Hey,” Bobby said, “Don’t you forget that this is a whole different kettle of fish. Dean doesn’t have an addiction, and he’s not going darkside. He’s going—“

“Horseman side,” Sam finished grimly. “Is there a difference?”

“Gabriel seems to think there is. Isn’t that what he told you? They’re neutral. Operate on a different level. They’re only darkside because Lucifer’s got hold of them.”

Sam nodded. He didn’t look convinced. Bobby sighed.

“What’s bothering you, kid? Is it just the monster thing, hittin’ too close to home?”

“I just…we should be finding out who did this,” Sam said, throwing up his hands. “Who the fuck had the motivation to go neutral, but instead of coming to us, decides to force this…this thing on Dean?” 

“With your shoot first ask questions later policy? I‘d say most creepy crawlies might be so inclined,” Bobby said dryly. “Hell, they probably think they’re doing you a favor. Or this is some kind of super-twisted revenge.”

“Shouldn’t we find out, and not just deal with the fallout?” Sam demanded.

“Would it make a difference?” Bobby shot back.

Sam looked like he was about to say something, and then thought better of it. “No,” he said eventually. “There’s no going back, right? Not after all the time the ring’s had.”

“’Fraid so,” Bobby agreed. “So let it go for once, boy.”

Sam could…well, no. He knew he couldn’t do that. But he could try, at least for a while. He’d been taught, after all, about what vengeance tended to reap. That was deterrent enough for at least a few weeks. And Dean looked…well, he looked quiet out on the junk heap. There was still gore dripping from his extremities down into the grass, but he didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a dude with a serious Icarus infection.

“Yeah,” Sam said slowly. “Yeah, okay.”

*** 

It wasn’t long after that that Dean started picking up other weirdnesses. They weren’t as explosive as the wings, but they were there, and at times were all the more unsettling for being subtle. After a couple of days, Dean had learned two things:

One: His wings were of the decidedly feathery kind, though the feathers themselves were hardly the fluffy angel type. They were smoothly tough like well-worn calluses, absorbing the sunlight rather than reflecting it, shifting against each other with the sounds of whispering sandpaper, and Dean was pretty sure he was going to be freaking himself out most nights trying to sleep with that as background noise.

Additionally, just to make things interesting, horrific spikes of bone jutted out between the layers of feathers, through where the alula was supposed to be, and with more tucked in with some of the primaries for good measure. Castiel had found that out entirely by accident, and not in a good way. After spending most of the first day helping Dean sponge blood and plasma off the wings and then waiting for them to dry out in the sun, he’d been finishing up the bandaging of Dean’s chest when Dean had begun to stretch, and one wing had inadvertently drawn back out of the tub behind him.

Castiel made a sudden intake of breath and his hands stilled abruptly.

“Dean,” he said, very carefully.

“Cas,” Dean acknowledged. He knew that tone, and so he ordered every muscle, new and old, to freeze.

“You are about to impale me in the throat,” Castiel said.

Delicately, Dean looked over his shoulder. And indeed, where his right wing had pulled out of the water, the large sodden fan shape was up near Cas’s face, and the feathers were clumped with damp and coagulation enough to reveal several very large and black claw-like accessories among them, one of which was about three inches from Cas’s jugular.

“Oh,” Dean said blankly. He concentrated, and managed to direct the wing back to a safer position. “Sorry, dude.”

“You didn’t know,” Castiel said calmly. And that was that. At least for the time being. Dean tried to look on the bright side—he had asked for Wolverine shanks, after all.

Two: Dean could smell violence. Worse—it smelled really, really good. The first whiff of it he got was from Gabriel, who appeared after two days of absence as night fell with the express purpose, it seemed, to eat pie and mouth off. But when he zapped into the yard, Dean was outside, wings too big to fit comfortably indoors all the time. As soon as the archangel appeared, Dean stood up. Without thinking, he jumped off the roof of the car, wings slowing his descent, and he got right up into Gabriel’s space.

“What were you just doing?” Dean said intently.

Gabriel, to his credit, just looked steadily back at Dean, though a new and visceral part of Dean could smell just a hint of trepidation on him in addition to…whatever it was that was sending all sorts of signals to his brain. “I was doing some business,” he said.

Dean took another breath. “Trickster business?” he asked.

Gabriel smirked. “What’s it matter to you, Dean-o?” 

“Tell me,” he demanded.

The archangel sighed, like Dean was wasting his valuable time. “I may have caused a bit of a scuffle between a stock broker and her less-than-faithful husband.”

“Scuffle is putting it mildly,” Dean said instinctively. “She’s ready to kill him right now. Because of you.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure of that?”

Dean nodded. Gabriel studied him for a long moment, seemingly content to bear their proximity while Dean breathed in the strange scent of aggression that somehow reminded him of cinnamon and black pepper and hydrochloric acid. “You can read it,” the archangel said eventually. “You can read the potential for damage.”

“Seems so,” Dean said, still preoccupied with the new parts of his brain that seemed to come unlocked with the scent clinging to Gabriel’s hands.

“Creepy,” Gabriel said lightly. “Let’s go inside, shall we? I’m starving.”

“You don’t need to eat,” Dean accused, even as he fell into step with him.

“That’s what makes it even better,” Gabriel smirked. “It’s all about indulgence, kid. Get with the program. I thought we were the two hedonists in this little game?”

“Well, obviously, seeing as the only other three at the moment are a giant geek, a nerdy virgin angel, and Bobby, respectively,” Dean snorted, “But that is so not my point.”

“Precisely. So you’ve got no point at all. Get in the house, and I’ll conjure some cherry pie.”

Dean halted for a second, and then tucked his wings close to him to fit in the door. “I might slightly like you. Just on a preliminary basis.”

Gabriel grinned. “Come on, freakazoid. I’ll even give you some shirts that go around your new flappy bits. I’m tired of seeing you walk around looking like some cheap cover of a fantasy romance novel.”

“Dude, ‘flappy bits’? For someone who has wings himself, that’s just wrong.”

There were other things, as well. Even when his back scarred over, it remained black and diseased-looking, which was just really uncool. Gabriel at least kept his word on the whole ‘shirts with convenient holes’ thing, so Dean didn’t have to look at it all the time. Also, the ring started changing color. Three days, and it had turned from gold to a sort of tarnished silver.

“That’s probably good, right?” Dean said. “I’m changing it; it’s not changing me.”

Castiel raised an eyebrow. “Which makes me wonder just how powerful you are becoming, Dean.”

“Heh. Sweet.”

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely, man,” Sam points out.

Dean rolls his eyes. “I got this. Really.”

“We don’t know what you’ve got, boy,” Bobby cut in, rolling into the room. “Unfortunately for you though, you’re not gonna to have time to find out before we’re taking you out for a test drive.”

“I really don’t like the sound of that,” Sam said.  

Dean really didn’t disagree. Castiel tensed but didn’t react, like he wasn’t surprised. “You got something to say about that, Cas?” he said sharply.

Delicately, Castiel said, “I’m curious as to Bobby’s take on it, actually.”

“My take?” Bobby snapped. “My take is that Dean’s going Horseman has put him back on the map, angelic rib carvings or no. Because someone’s left you a massive calling card called Texas.”

He flung down a newspaper on the table. Dean and Sam both looked down at the headline, and winced.

6,000 Drop Dead in Austin, Outbreak of Meningitis Blamed 

And then a map of the outbreak’s epicenters, gaudy hasty red marks over a Google map of the city, points that looked random except—

Except that Dean knew those points of articulation, knew them because he’d carved them, connecting the dots from memory after months and years of having them carved lovingly into every inch of him, bone flesh and agonizing sinew. He knew them because he could feel the echoes of them under his skin.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he said, eventually, through a closed throat. “He’s dead.”

“I believe it’s traditional that the apprentice take his master’s name when he dies in Hell,” Castiel said quietly. “Or am I mistaken?”

Dean clenched his jaw, and didn’t answer. He could feel Sam looking at him. For the first time, his wings felt heavy.

“Sorry, maybe I’m a little slow here,” Sam said quietly. “Is that--?”

“It’s the sigil of Alistair, Sammy,” Dean said, and god he sounded tired all of a sudden, and Sam really wanted to know what memories this was dredging up—wanted to, and didn’t. “Someone’s apparently hoping I’ll be taking up the mantle.”

The shadows seemed to deepen beneath his eyes, and Sam realized he hadn’t been keeping track of Dean’s state of mind lately, spending all of his time in research while Dean stayed out in the sun, letting the wings settle with him. 

“That seems like a high body count for something that unlikely to happen,” Sam commented. Dean gave him a twitch of lips that could have been a smile in better times.

“Well, I’m smelling a trap, likely or unlikely,” he said. “Who wants to walk into it with me?”


Chapter Four.