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It started out as this little thing on my drive, because I wanted to see the Winchesters finding out about Gabriel suddenly being there for Cas, and then it went all ... big and massive and this. After posting this I'm dead for the night, by the way. Possibly for the week.
Title: Storm
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Continuity: set a couple of weeks after the conversation in Grace
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Gabriel, nearly-dead-Castiel. Possible hints of Dean/Cas
Summary: Dean wakes up in a room with a mostly dead Cas, no memory, and one severely pissed off archangel
Wordcount: 4782 (!)
Disclaimer: Not mine, so very not mine ...
Spoilers: just 5x08, I think
Dean raised his head, blinking furiously. It was dark, very dark, but there were ... flashes, against the corners of his eyes, just on the edges of seeing. Blue, actinic. And beneath them, something softer, steadier. A whole, white radiance, soft against him, quiet. Enveloping. He blinked, and blinked again, until the radiance resolved itself, until he could see its source.
The body.
The body, curled beneath him. Wrapped in the same old trench coat, the same old shirt and tie, the same old suit. Castiel. Castiel, his angel. Castiel, the holy tax accountant. But ... more. Because curled around him, curled around them, were ... light. Feathers. Bone and radiance and muscle and glory, blue-edged and beautiful. Fragile. Immense. Wings. Castiel had wings. And those wings were ... underneath Dean. His hands were ... clenched in them. Fingers clutching feathers, clinging tight, and Dean ... didn't remember doing that, didn't remember even seeing the wings before, let alone reaching for them, didn't remember how Cas ended up under him, didn't remember how the flying fuck he got here. He didn't remember this. Any of this.
He really, really needed to. Because now that he looked at Cas, at his face ... the angel wasn't awake. And despite Dean shifting around on top of him, despite him pulling clenched fingers apart and releasing those wings, despite the entire weight of a human being squirming around on him ... the angel wasn't waking up. And Dean needed to know what the fuck happened, right the fuck now.
"He won't be joining us for a while," a soft, chill voice spoke up, somewhere behind him. Dean jerked up, sliding around to look, and his foot caught the edges of one wing, caught and pulled, a squall of feathers and an aching creak as massive bones shifted against each other, the limb rising and falling, a dazzle of blue against the side of his face. He cursed vividly, lifting his foot, falling back onto Cas' chest, because somewhere in his head, somewhere in his heart, he had an idea that damaging the wings was bad. Really, majorly bad. You don't stand on a guy's wings. You just don't.
"What ... who?" he spat, still scrambling around, trying to move without touching the wings, without getting tangled in them, and in the process he was getting more and more tangled up in Cas, in arms and legs and faintly-moving chest, and with the light beneath him he couldn't see, he couldn't see who was there, who threatened them ...
"Really, kiddo. All this time, you'd think you'd recognise me," said the voice, darkly amused, and oh, oh, Dean did recognise it now. He'd recognise that smug tone anywhere.
"Gabriel," he hissed, raising a hand to shield his eyes, finally giving up on finding footing and instead sliding down to sit between Cas' legs, on the grounds that at least it wasn't on the wings, and it might help Cas to breathe if Dean wasn't actually crushing his chest.
"Give the man a cigar," the archangel sniped, moving forwards into the light. Into Castiel's light, and in between freaking out about the lack of memory, and the lack of Sam, and the presence of an archangel, and the presence of wings, he was kinda worried about that, too. He was pretty sure Cas hadn't been glowing the last time he saw him, after all. He'd have noticed.
"What do you want?" he growled, as he watched the bastard move closer, as he watched those sneering features resolve themselves. Gabriel came right up to the edges of Cas' wings, the long feathers at the end almost brushing the archangel's shoes, and Dean felt a deep-seated urge to tell him to back the hell off, away from them. There was something ... fragile, about them. About the unconscious splay of feather and bone, the way they were just spread out there, with Cas unconscious, unable to stop someone from ... from hurting them, or stepping on them, or breaking them or ... or anything. And that ... that was freaking Dean the fuck out, and he wasn't quite sure why.
But he'd bet any amount you'd care to name that Gabriel knew something about it. He'd bet a fair bit the bastard was responsible for it.
"What do you want?" he repeated, when the archangel only looked at him. Then, because it was slightly more important: "Where are we? Where's Sam? And what the fuck did you do to Cas?" He didn't have a weapon on him. He wanted one.
"I think you'll find that's my question," Gabriel said, suddenly, his eyes weirdly reflective in the ... angel-light? Reflective, and narrow, and pretty angry-looking, now that Dean thought about it. For a little man, Gabriel was radiating power right now, standing so stiff at the boundaries of Cas' wings that he almost looked like he was vibrating. The archangel looked pissed off, in short.
"Huh?" he asked. Intelligently, but hey! He was working on no memory, here, and a lot of freaky shit that made no damn sense, and he had every right to be confused!
"I said," Gabriel purred, stalking closer, stepping carefully, so very carefully around the wings to loom over Dean. And Cas, but Dean was pretty sure this show was all for him. "That's my question. As in, what the fuck did you, meathead, do to my brother?" He stopped, tilting his head, eyes icy and a hell of a lot more powerful-looking than Dean remembered. Then again, he'd mostly been getting the Trickster. This ... this was the archangel.
"I don't understand," he said, raising his hands slowly and carefully. Cautiously. "I don't know ... Look. I can't remember fuck all, I just woke up, and all I know is that Sam is missing, you're here, and Cas is fucking glowing and suddenly has wings, and I don't know how the fuck it happened! I don't know, alright?" He stopped, pulled in a hard breath, started again without screaming. "So if you could make with the answers, here, that'd be real nice, okay?"
Gabriel stared at him, rigid and furious, a steady pulse of power against his senses, but there was something calmer now, something considering, as the archangel leaned over him, leaned down (though not far, considering), one hand reaching for Dean's face. Dean flinched, opened his mouth to tell him to back the hell off, but the archangel quelled him with a look, reaching out until his finger hovered over the center of Dean's forehead. And then he stopped.
"I don't have the answers, Deano," Gabriel hissed quietly. "All I know is that I felt my brother scream in agony, felt him be torn apart, felt him reach for me, and then ... you. Then you, everywhere I looked. In place of my brother. Instead of Castiel. I felt his soul be ripped apart, and yours flood in to replace it, and I don't think I have to tell you exactly how bad that is, how worried and pissed off that makes me. Do I?"
Dean shook his head slowly, and said nothing, on the grounds that he had the feeling anything he said right now would earn him the smiting of the century.
And if what Gabriel was saying was true, he might deserve it.
"I need to know what happened, meathead," Gabriel went on, softly, almost reasonably, except that his eyes had a manic glitter. "I need you to show me what the fuck you did to my brother, and I need it now. So I'm going to reach in to your so-called mind and grab me the appropriate memory, and you're going to sit there and let me. Or else. Any questions?"
"No," Dean said, very quietly. Then reconsidered. "Well, one."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Yes?"
Dean took a deep breath, but if an archangel was going to wipe him off the face of the earth in a few minutes, he needed to know. He needed to know. "Sam," he said. "Is he alright? Is he safe?"
Something flickered over Gabriel's face, something Dean had no reference for, but the archangel nodded at him, and that was all that mattered. "He's in the next room. He's fine," Gabriel said. "In fact, he's better off than either of you, right now. So if that's all?"
Dean winced, but nodded. Yeah. That was all. He squinched his eyes shut on instinct as Gabriel pushed a finger into his forehead, and hoped that hadn't meant all all. Hoped that wasn't all, full stop, permanently, good bye.
Then Gabriel's presence pushed down into his head, filled him to bursting, and he wasn't conscious of anything except the pressure, bursting through walls he'd put up hastily in sheer self-defense against the memory Gabriel reached ruthlessly into, against the memory the archangel allowed him no retreat from.
Gabriel touched his mind, and Dean had no choice anymore. He remembered. He remembered.
He came back a little later, came back from the rush of light and pain and agony and desperation inside his head, came back from the sensation of Cas dying, of Cas being torn apart right in front of him, of Cas reaching out and doing ... something, something inside Dean, touching something, twisting something ... He came back from that, shoved it all down, too confused and panicked to try and understand it, and looked back up, blinking furiously, to see Gabriel sitting back on his heels, looking shocked and more than a little queasy.
"They killed him," the archangel whispered, like he couldn't really believe it. "They ... I knew they did before, I saw the ... the scars, but this ..."
"Yeah," Dean panted, harshly. "Not so easy to make fun of when you have to watch it happen, is it?"
Gabriel looked up at him sharply, dangerously, that hard sneer settling back over his face for a second. "You haven't the first clue what I've watched, Winchester," he hissed, stabbing a finger in Dean's direction. "You've no idea what I've had to watch. So you shut up, you hear. You shut up."
And yeah, no. Not happening. Because Castiel's death was still rattling in Dean's chest like a freight train come off the tracks, and he remembered seeing Cas, bloodied and beaten and facing this uncaring bastard down, and right now he was in the mood to fight something, to hate them and hurt them and make them understand what the hell it was like to have to watch someone you cared about die.
"No!" he snarled back, panting and furious and holding himself fiercely still because Cas' wings were still there, still right there beside him. "No. I'm sick of listening to all you bastards moaning about how rough you've had it, how hard it is living in your fucking family! I'm sick of listening to you make excuses to hurt each other, to turn around and kick the shit out of each other! He died, you bastard! He died fucking twice now, and for all I know, if he'd pissed you off at the wrong time, you have fucking done the same yourself ..."
He didn't so much trail off as choke to a stop, because a hand locking around your throat will do that to you, not to mention an archangel lifting both you and himself off your feet so he can fly you over and slam you into a wall without stepping on his brother in the process. For a moment, Dean thought he saw Cas twitch in unconscious distress, but that could have been his imagination, or the results of the little black lightnings flickering in his vision.
"You have no idea what you're talking about, Winchester," Gabriel snarled, and the guy must have been levitating or something, because his face was right up in Dean's, and even if Dean's feet hadn't been dangling an inch above the floor, no way that should have been possible. But a pissed-off archangel apparently had no care for such trivial details as gravity.
"Yeah?" he rasped through a crushed throat, sneering. "Then why ... why don't you ... enlighten me."
Gabriel stared at him, face twisted in anger and something that looked a little like pain. The archangel was silent for a long minute, and when he did speak, his voice was soft and cold as arctic midnight.
"Leaving out the rampant hypocrisy of you, Winchester, daring to lecture me about family hurting each other ..." A twisted sneer, briefly, dropping back into hard fury, "You don't know the first thing about me and Castiel. Or were you not paying attention? I felt him, you moron! I felt him die! And you know how I did that? Hmm? Because I found him, and I talked to him, weeks ago. Because he's a persuasive little bastard, and won't take fucking no for an answer, and because he made me listen! He made me care, after a thousand years of pretending I didn't even have a family. And I know he died. I know exactly what was done to him, what has been done to him, because I put him back together, you idiot! I put him back, I gave him my Grace, and that means that when he died this time, when he was screaming, it was me he reached for, me who had to feel it. Me, you arrogant, vapid son of a bitch! For the first time since the first fucking Fall, I had to feel my brother die, and you have the gall, the fucking gall, to tell me I don't know ..."
With something close to a scream, the archangel pulled him away from the wall, furious and almost incandescent with rage and pain, and flung Dean away from him. Dean felt the impact of the far wall along his shoulders, felt the crack as the back of his head bounced off the plaster, but he almost didn't care. Stunned, head ringing, he lay in a heap at the bottom of the wall, and stared at the panting archangel in shock.
What the hell? Where the flying fuck had that come from?
"You ... you ..." he gasped, fighting to get lungs back in working order long enough to get a fucking sentance out. "You and Cas ... What?"
Gabriel rolled his eyes, his head tossing a little in barely-controlled rage, his hands clenching at his sides, but then he caught himself, pulled his breathing back in from infuriated pants to something calmer, more controlled, and when he looked back at Dean he'd obviously pulled himself back under control, back under the Trickster's mask.
"Guess he never mentioned that, then," the archangel growled, lips still twisted angrily. "Not that I blame him. Hard enough to explain shit to you at the best of times, Winchester, but when it's me ..." He paused, a flicker of something almost soft passing over his face. "Guess he didn't want to risk dividing you until he was sure of me." He smiled at that, a rich, admiring curl. "My little brother is a sneaky son of a bitch, you know that? Even if I hadn't seen what he did ..."
Dean blinked, wiping blood from his mouth and hitching himself up the wall, keeping both eyes locked warily on the apparently bi-polar archangel. "What he did?" he managed, rasping, and blinked when Gabriel looked at him, a complicated series of emotions crossing his shadowed face. Admiration. Pain. Disgust. Rage. Rueful affection.
"You didn't notice," the archangel mused. "Or didn't understand what you saw. But Castiel ... he should be dead. Between wasting time to hurl Sam away, to try and hurl you away ... Raphael ripped him to pieces. Again." And that emotion, that wasn't complicated at all. Hate usually wasn't. But Dean could get onboard with it in this particular instance, because he'd heard Cas scream too. He'd felt it.
"He's not dead," he whispered roughly, looking over at Cas instinctively to reassure himself of the fact, to take in the faint rise and fall of that glowing chest, the gentle flutter of splayed wings. Cas wasn't dead. He wasn't dead.
"No," Gabriel said, very softly, looking over at Cas himself, one hand unconsciously reaching. "No, he's not. He should be, he should have been completely annihilated by that attack, should have been obliterated. I didn't have time to do anything. Didn't have time to even realise what was happening before it was over. He should be dead." He stopped, flinched, like it was hitting him for the first time, like he was really realising it. That Castiel should be dead. That Cas should be a smear of angel-grease all over some distant warehouse floor.
But he wasn't. He wasn't, and however the fuck it had happened, Dean was going to cling to that one thought with every fiber of his being, because otherwise he'd completely lose his shit.
"He called me," Gabriel whispered, went on. "He called me, asked me. It's a ... a signal, a call, when an angel is under attack ... it's instantaneous. He knew I'd say yes. Knew I was yes. He reached out, even as they ripped him apart. The little bastard learned. When I put him back together, that first time. He felt what I did and he learned. Enough to replicate it, enough to reach out and take my Grace, over that distance, inside a moment, a bare second ... not complete. He's not that good. But enough. Just enough to stitch himself together, to hold himself against annihilation long enough to catch you, to fly out. To stitch himself back up as fast as Raphael could unravel him. The sneaky, cunning, ruthless son of a bitch."
There was nothing but raw admiration in the archangel's voice, sheer amazement. Which Dean kinda got, because stealing one archangel's mojo to hold yourself together while another one destroyed you? Pretty damn badass, if he didn't say so himself. But awesome and all as that was ...
"What about me?" he asked, slowly, rubbing his chest absently, where he'd felt Cas reach in, where he'd felt something twist, just there at the end, in the welter of light and confusion and agony. Where he'd sensed ... something. He couldn't quite grab it, couldn't quite hold it down long enough to see it, to know what it was ... "When you arrived, you were having a shit-fit about sensing me instead of him," he said, groping around the edges of understanding. "What did he ...?"
Gabriel shifted, tilting his head to look down at Dean with wary assessment, measuring him down to his toes in one quick, cool look. "I'm not sure you want to know," the archangel said, at last. "I'm not sure I should ... but I suppose you have to choose, that he'd want you to have ... to have the chance ..."
Dean blinked, raising his head as something chill slid down his spine. Because that wasn't at all a worrying thing to be saying. "What do you mean?" he rasped, pulling himself up the wall to stand, to face Gabriel properly, his eyes drifting almost unwillingly to Castiel's still form. "Choose what?"
Gabriel looked away, looked at Cas, something sad, something wounded passing through him. "I don't think he meant to," he said, quietly. "You need to understand that first. I don't think he meant to do what he did. But it wasn't enough, my Grace wasn't enough, not in that time, not over that distance, and he needed ... it was pure instinct, I think. I'm sure. He needed ... that little bit more. More time, more energy. A chance. Something to hold himself together enough to get you to safety. And when he caught you, when he caught hold of you, all but falling apart around you ... he asked. He asked you. He couldn't help it."
Dean didn't know what any of that was supposed to mean, but he latched on to one thing. "He didn't ask me anything," he said. "He didn't have time. It was all wham bam, thank you ma'am. Whatever he needed, he didn't ..."
Gabriel cut him off, rolling his eyes a little in exasperation. "Not out loud, you moron. Not even mentally. Faster than that. Far faster. Same as he asked me. He reached out to your soul, Winchester. He asked you permission, asked you, the fundamental you, the deepest level of you ... asked for permission to use you, to take a little of what you are. A little of your soul." A pause, a faint, worried twitch, and for some reason Gabriel wasn't meeting his eyes, like the archangel was afraid of how he'd react. "He took a piece of you, Dean. Same as he took a piece of me. To keep himself from dying. You let him, at the time, or he couldn't have done it, couldn't have taken unless he had permission, but it wasn't conscious on your part. Like I said, it was mostly instinct, but ..."
Dean was silent. Sort of shocked, really. He wasn't ... he didn't know ... what was he supposed to do with that?
"Choice," he said, slowly. "You said I had to choose something?"
Gabriel took a deep breath, nodded. "I suppose. If I wasn't here, you'd just have to lump it, but since I am ... I could pull it back out. Your soul. He's stitched it in, stitched it in deep, because Raphael tore him from the inside out and he had to, but ... I could do it. It's risky, and it might ... he's not exactly in the best of shape, right now, and it might ..."
"Then don't," he cut him off, immediately, instinctively. Not even thinking. Because it was still there, in his head, in his chest, the feeling as Cas ... he remembered. He remembered the feeling of Cas reaching out, remembered the agony of it, the sheer agony of his angel, tearing apart in front of him. And he remembered the twist inside him, the wrench as something was pulled free, and that scared him, it scared him shitless, but if that, whatever it was, if that had stopped that wrenching wail of pain, if that had kept Cas alive, if that was what saved him ...
Gabriel was looking at him, eyes narrowed and measuring, unblinking. "Are you sure?" he asked, cautiously. "You don't know the consequences, you don't know what him having a piece of you could do to you ..."
"I said don't do it!" he snapped back, rapidly. To keep himself from changing his mind, maybe, but not really. Not deep down. Cas had put his soul back together. After Hell. After Alastair. Cas had done that, had saved him, and in a way he was kinda sorry that his soul had been the only one in range, the only one Cas could touch, because we were talking bargain basement at best here, but if it had done the job, if he had helped save Cas, even a little bit ... "Don't take it out. Let him have it. Don't ... don't risk it. Just. Just don't."
Gabriel looked at him for a long, long minute, a shadowed statue in the glare of Castiel's light, in the soft glow of his brother's wings, and there was an expression on his face, something Dean didn't understand at all ...
"He said you were worth it," the archangel said after a moment, almost absently. "He said you were worth what he'd done, what he'd endured. Worth the scars I felt. Worth defying archangels for. He said that. I didn't believe him. I mean, yeah, you're amusing, you and your brother, you're good for a laugh now and then, but to be worth that, to be worth what I felt, what he gave ... I didn't believe him."
Dean tried not to wince. Yeah. He wouldn't have believed him either. Some of the stuff Cas had gone through ... Yeah. Sometimes he wondered why the hell the angel thought them worth it too.
"I offered to help him," Gabriel said, suddenly. "More than just ... boosting him up a little every now and then. More than that. Just because ... well, because he's pretty much the only one of my brothers who isn't a dick." He smiled a little, at that, flashing Dean a little grin. "I don't know if you've noticed that ..."
"Oh, we've noticed. Believe me, we've noticed."
"Yes." Still with that smile. "Well. Anyway. I offered to help him, because he might just be worth it. But now ..." Gabriel stopped, turned, his eyes boring into Dean's as he prowled closer, fierce and intense, almost as intense as Cas in one of his moods. "Now," Gabriel mused, "now I might offer to help you, as well. You and Sammy."
Dean blinked at him. "You would?" He was slightly ashamed that it came out more shocked than coolly skeptical, like he'd wanted. Gabriel smirked a little.
"Castiel thinks you're worth it. And since he obviously has his work cut out with the pair of you, and is too loyal to stop ... well, if I'm going to help him, I'm just going to have to help you, too, aren't I?" Hands on hips, swaying up into his face, almost daring Dean to disagree with him, and it was there that Dean saw it, caught the edges of it, caught the reflections of something he'd only ever seen between him and Sam. A genuine concern, a genuine devotion, and one Gabriel was about as ready to admit to as Dean himself was. Something he'd never, ever show, not willingly. But something that was there, nonetheless.
"So," he said. "To sum up, you want to keep an eye on us because you don't want Cas to get killed helping us. Again. Because you've realised that he's just about the only brother you've got who isn't a shit. That about right?"
Gabriel paused, tilting his head as if considering it, bouncing on his heels a little. Then his eyes slid across, just for a second, to where Castiel lay, and his expression softened. "Yeah," he admitted. "That's about it."
Dean nodded slowly, like he was thinking about it himself, laying it on thick for a minute just to be annoying, and then he stuck out his hand. To the guy who'd killed him he didn't know how many times, to the guy who'd tormented Sam for months, to the guy who'd locked Cas away and kicked the shit out of him. He held out his hand, and told the Trickster welcome.
Because he was right. Cas needed all the help he could get, and Dean wasn't about to begrudge him a brother who might actually give a shit.
"You're gonna have to fill me in on this soul deal," he said, carefully, looking over at his angel's serenely glowing features, at the desperate spread of feathers and soul lying at their feet. "And you're gonna have to tell me what to do for him, how to help, because I gotta tell you, I've no idea what to do with a Cas who has the wingspan of a jumbo jet and glows like a Christmas tree."
Gabriel quirked a lip, smiling down at Cas. "He is rather luminous at the minute, isn't he?"
Dean manfully resisted the urge to go 'duh'. Gabriel shot him a knowing smirk, like he could hear it anyway, and knelt down beside his brother, tugging Dean down after him. Dean almost fell to his knees, growling at the archangel, but then he caught sight of Gabriel's face, of the expression there as the Trickster reached down to cup Cas' cheek gently, to brush the hair from his unconscious features.
"Don't worry, little brother," Gabriel murmured. Dean wasn't even sure if he knew he was saying it out loud. "Don't worry, Castiel. We've got you. I've got you." He leaned in close, whispered a hand through Cas' hair, a tremble in his hand betraying things, too many things, things Dean hadn't ever wanted to know about the bastard. But it was too late now, so he just watched, until Gabriel pulled himself together, pulled himself onto his heels, and gestured for Dean to take Cas' legs while he took arms and wings, folding them carefully with something other than his arms, with something Dean couldn't see, but so long as those fragile, awesome wings weren't getting bashed around, he didn't much care.
We've got you, Cas, he thought to himself, while they carried his angel in to lie next to a frantic Sam, while they laid him down and started talking. We've got you.
Damn. He hoped it was true.
Contd: Bond
Title: Storm
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Continuity: set a couple of weeks after the conversation in Grace
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Gabriel, nearly-dead-Castiel. Possible hints of Dean/Cas
Summary: Dean wakes up in a room with a mostly dead Cas, no memory, and one severely pissed off archangel
Wordcount: 4782 (!)
Disclaimer: Not mine, so very not mine ...
Spoilers: just 5x08, I think
Storm
He lay somewhere warm. Somewhere warm, and somewhere dark. Somewhere quiet. Except ... breathing? And the warmth ... it was moving? There was ... something warm and solid and breathing, underneath him. Against his chest. He was ...
Dean raised his head, blinking furiously. It was dark, very dark, but there were ... flashes, against the corners of his eyes, just on the edges of seeing. Blue, actinic. And beneath them, something softer, steadier. A whole, white radiance, soft against him, quiet. Enveloping. He blinked, and blinked again, until the radiance resolved itself, until he could see its source.
The body.
The body, curled beneath him. Wrapped in the same old trench coat, the same old shirt and tie, the same old suit. Castiel. Castiel, his angel. Castiel, the holy tax accountant. But ... more. Because curled around him, curled around them, were ... light. Feathers. Bone and radiance and muscle and glory, blue-edged and beautiful. Fragile. Immense. Wings. Castiel had wings. And those wings were ... underneath Dean. His hands were ... clenched in them. Fingers clutching feathers, clinging tight, and Dean ... didn't remember doing that, didn't remember even seeing the wings before, let alone reaching for them, didn't remember how Cas ended up under him, didn't remember how the flying fuck he got here. He didn't remember this. Any of this.
He really, really needed to. Because now that he looked at Cas, at his face ... the angel wasn't awake. And despite Dean shifting around on top of him, despite him pulling clenched fingers apart and releasing those wings, despite the entire weight of a human being squirming around on him ... the angel wasn't waking up. And Dean needed to know what the fuck happened, right the fuck now.
"He won't be joining us for a while," a soft, chill voice spoke up, somewhere behind him. Dean jerked up, sliding around to look, and his foot caught the edges of one wing, caught and pulled, a squall of feathers and an aching creak as massive bones shifted against each other, the limb rising and falling, a dazzle of blue against the side of his face. He cursed vividly, lifting his foot, falling back onto Cas' chest, because somewhere in his head, somewhere in his heart, he had an idea that damaging the wings was bad. Really, majorly bad. You don't stand on a guy's wings. You just don't.
"What ... who?" he spat, still scrambling around, trying to move without touching the wings, without getting tangled in them, and in the process he was getting more and more tangled up in Cas, in arms and legs and faintly-moving chest, and with the light beneath him he couldn't see, he couldn't see who was there, who threatened them ...
"Really, kiddo. All this time, you'd think you'd recognise me," said the voice, darkly amused, and oh, oh, Dean did recognise it now. He'd recognise that smug tone anywhere.
"Gabriel," he hissed, raising a hand to shield his eyes, finally giving up on finding footing and instead sliding down to sit between Cas' legs, on the grounds that at least it wasn't on the wings, and it might help Cas to breathe if Dean wasn't actually crushing his chest.
"Give the man a cigar," the archangel sniped, moving forwards into the light. Into Castiel's light, and in between freaking out about the lack of memory, and the lack of Sam, and the presence of an archangel, and the presence of wings, he was kinda worried about that, too. He was pretty sure Cas hadn't been glowing the last time he saw him, after all. He'd have noticed.
"What do you want?" he growled, as he watched the bastard move closer, as he watched those sneering features resolve themselves. Gabriel came right up to the edges of Cas' wings, the long feathers at the end almost brushing the archangel's shoes, and Dean felt a deep-seated urge to tell him to back the hell off, away from them. There was something ... fragile, about them. About the unconscious splay of feather and bone, the way they were just spread out there, with Cas unconscious, unable to stop someone from ... from hurting them, or stepping on them, or breaking them or ... or anything. And that ... that was freaking Dean the fuck out, and he wasn't quite sure why.
But he'd bet any amount you'd care to name that Gabriel knew something about it. He'd bet a fair bit the bastard was responsible for it.
"What do you want?" he repeated, when the archangel only looked at him. Then, because it was slightly more important: "Where are we? Where's Sam? And what the fuck did you do to Cas?" He didn't have a weapon on him. He wanted one.
"I think you'll find that's my question," Gabriel said, suddenly, his eyes weirdly reflective in the ... angel-light? Reflective, and narrow, and pretty angry-looking, now that Dean thought about it. For a little man, Gabriel was radiating power right now, standing so stiff at the boundaries of Cas' wings that he almost looked like he was vibrating. The archangel looked pissed off, in short.
"Huh?" he asked. Intelligently, but hey! He was working on no memory, here, and a lot of freaky shit that made no damn sense, and he had every right to be confused!
"I said," Gabriel purred, stalking closer, stepping carefully, so very carefully around the wings to loom over Dean. And Cas, but Dean was pretty sure this show was all for him. "That's my question. As in, what the fuck did you, meathead, do to my brother?" He stopped, tilting his head, eyes icy and a hell of a lot more powerful-looking than Dean remembered. Then again, he'd mostly been getting the Trickster. This ... this was the archangel.
"I don't understand," he said, raising his hands slowly and carefully. Cautiously. "I don't know ... Look. I can't remember fuck all, I just woke up, and all I know is that Sam is missing, you're here, and Cas is fucking glowing and suddenly has wings, and I don't know how the fuck it happened! I don't know, alright?" He stopped, pulled in a hard breath, started again without screaming. "So if you could make with the answers, here, that'd be real nice, okay?"
Gabriel stared at him, rigid and furious, a steady pulse of power against his senses, but there was something calmer now, something considering, as the archangel leaned over him, leaned down (though not far, considering), one hand reaching for Dean's face. Dean flinched, opened his mouth to tell him to back the hell off, but the archangel quelled him with a look, reaching out until his finger hovered over the center of Dean's forehead. And then he stopped.
"I don't have the answers, Deano," Gabriel hissed quietly. "All I know is that I felt my brother scream in agony, felt him be torn apart, felt him reach for me, and then ... you. Then you, everywhere I looked. In place of my brother. Instead of Castiel. I felt his soul be ripped apart, and yours flood in to replace it, and I don't think I have to tell you exactly how bad that is, how worried and pissed off that makes me. Do I?"
Dean shook his head slowly, and said nothing, on the grounds that he had the feeling anything he said right now would earn him the smiting of the century.
And if what Gabriel was saying was true, he might deserve it.
"I need to know what happened, meathead," Gabriel went on, softly, almost reasonably, except that his eyes had a manic glitter. "I need you to show me what the fuck you did to my brother, and I need it now. So I'm going to reach in to your so-called mind and grab me the appropriate memory, and you're going to sit there and let me. Or else. Any questions?"
"No," Dean said, very quietly. Then reconsidered. "Well, one."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Yes?"
Dean took a deep breath, but if an archangel was going to wipe him off the face of the earth in a few minutes, he needed to know. He needed to know. "Sam," he said. "Is he alright? Is he safe?"
Something flickered over Gabriel's face, something Dean had no reference for, but the archangel nodded at him, and that was all that mattered. "He's in the next room. He's fine," Gabriel said. "In fact, he's better off than either of you, right now. So if that's all?"
Dean winced, but nodded. Yeah. That was all. He squinched his eyes shut on instinct as Gabriel pushed a finger into his forehead, and hoped that hadn't meant all all. Hoped that wasn't all, full stop, permanently, good bye.
Then Gabriel's presence pushed down into his head, filled him to bursting, and he wasn't conscious of anything except the pressure, bursting through walls he'd put up hastily in sheer self-defense against the memory Gabriel reached ruthlessly into, against the memory the archangel allowed him no retreat from.
Gabriel touched his mind, and Dean had no choice anymore. He remembered. He remembered.
He came back a little later, came back from the rush of light and pain and agony and desperation inside his head, came back from the sensation of Cas dying, of Cas being torn apart right in front of him, of Cas reaching out and doing ... something, something inside Dean, touching something, twisting something ... He came back from that, shoved it all down, too confused and panicked to try and understand it, and looked back up, blinking furiously, to see Gabriel sitting back on his heels, looking shocked and more than a little queasy.
"They killed him," the archangel whispered, like he couldn't really believe it. "They ... I knew they did before, I saw the ... the scars, but this ..."
"Yeah," Dean panted, harshly. "Not so easy to make fun of when you have to watch it happen, is it?"
Gabriel looked up at him sharply, dangerously, that hard sneer settling back over his face for a second. "You haven't the first clue what I've watched, Winchester," he hissed, stabbing a finger in Dean's direction. "You've no idea what I've had to watch. So you shut up, you hear. You shut up."
And yeah, no. Not happening. Because Castiel's death was still rattling in Dean's chest like a freight train come off the tracks, and he remembered seeing Cas, bloodied and beaten and facing this uncaring bastard down, and right now he was in the mood to fight something, to hate them and hurt them and make them understand what the hell it was like to have to watch someone you cared about die.
"No!" he snarled back, panting and furious and holding himself fiercely still because Cas' wings were still there, still right there beside him. "No. I'm sick of listening to all you bastards moaning about how rough you've had it, how hard it is living in your fucking family! I'm sick of listening to you make excuses to hurt each other, to turn around and kick the shit out of each other! He died, you bastard! He died fucking twice now, and for all I know, if he'd pissed you off at the wrong time, you have fucking done the same yourself ..."
He didn't so much trail off as choke to a stop, because a hand locking around your throat will do that to you, not to mention an archangel lifting both you and himself off your feet so he can fly you over and slam you into a wall without stepping on his brother in the process. For a moment, Dean thought he saw Cas twitch in unconscious distress, but that could have been his imagination, or the results of the little black lightnings flickering in his vision.
"You have no idea what you're talking about, Winchester," Gabriel snarled, and the guy must have been levitating or something, because his face was right up in Dean's, and even if Dean's feet hadn't been dangling an inch above the floor, no way that should have been possible. But a pissed-off archangel apparently had no care for such trivial details as gravity.
"Yeah?" he rasped through a crushed throat, sneering. "Then why ... why don't you ... enlighten me."
Gabriel stared at him, face twisted in anger and something that looked a little like pain. The archangel was silent for a long minute, and when he did speak, his voice was soft and cold as arctic midnight.
"Leaving out the rampant hypocrisy of you, Winchester, daring to lecture me about family hurting each other ..." A twisted sneer, briefly, dropping back into hard fury, "You don't know the first thing about me and Castiel. Or were you not paying attention? I felt him, you moron! I felt him die! And you know how I did that? Hmm? Because I found him, and I talked to him, weeks ago. Because he's a persuasive little bastard, and won't take fucking no for an answer, and because he made me listen! He made me care, after a thousand years of pretending I didn't even have a family. And I know he died. I know exactly what was done to him, what has been done to him, because I put him back together, you idiot! I put him back, I gave him my Grace, and that means that when he died this time, when he was screaming, it was me he reached for, me who had to feel it. Me, you arrogant, vapid son of a bitch! For the first time since the first fucking Fall, I had to feel my brother die, and you have the gall, the fucking gall, to tell me I don't know ..."
With something close to a scream, the archangel pulled him away from the wall, furious and almost incandescent with rage and pain, and flung Dean away from him. Dean felt the impact of the far wall along his shoulders, felt the crack as the back of his head bounced off the plaster, but he almost didn't care. Stunned, head ringing, he lay in a heap at the bottom of the wall, and stared at the panting archangel in shock.
What the hell? Where the flying fuck had that come from?
"You ... you ..." he gasped, fighting to get lungs back in working order long enough to get a fucking sentance out. "You and Cas ... What?"
Gabriel rolled his eyes, his head tossing a little in barely-controlled rage, his hands clenching at his sides, but then he caught himself, pulled his breathing back in from infuriated pants to something calmer, more controlled, and when he looked back at Dean he'd obviously pulled himself back under control, back under the Trickster's mask.
"Guess he never mentioned that, then," the archangel growled, lips still twisted angrily. "Not that I blame him. Hard enough to explain shit to you at the best of times, Winchester, but when it's me ..." He paused, a flicker of something almost soft passing over his face. "Guess he didn't want to risk dividing you until he was sure of me." He smiled at that, a rich, admiring curl. "My little brother is a sneaky son of a bitch, you know that? Even if I hadn't seen what he did ..."
Dean blinked, wiping blood from his mouth and hitching himself up the wall, keeping both eyes locked warily on the apparently bi-polar archangel. "What he did?" he managed, rasping, and blinked when Gabriel looked at him, a complicated series of emotions crossing his shadowed face. Admiration. Pain. Disgust. Rage. Rueful affection.
"You didn't notice," the archangel mused. "Or didn't understand what you saw. But Castiel ... he should be dead. Between wasting time to hurl Sam away, to try and hurl you away ... Raphael ripped him to pieces. Again." And that emotion, that wasn't complicated at all. Hate usually wasn't. But Dean could get onboard with it in this particular instance, because he'd heard Cas scream too. He'd felt it.
"He's not dead," he whispered roughly, looking over at Cas instinctively to reassure himself of the fact, to take in the faint rise and fall of that glowing chest, the gentle flutter of splayed wings. Cas wasn't dead. He wasn't dead.
"No," Gabriel said, very softly, looking over at Cas himself, one hand unconsciously reaching. "No, he's not. He should be, he should have been completely annihilated by that attack, should have been obliterated. I didn't have time to do anything. Didn't have time to even realise what was happening before it was over. He should be dead." He stopped, flinched, like it was hitting him for the first time, like he was really realising it. That Castiel should be dead. That Cas should be a smear of angel-grease all over some distant warehouse floor.
But he wasn't. He wasn't, and however the fuck it had happened, Dean was going to cling to that one thought with every fiber of his being, because otherwise he'd completely lose his shit.
"He called me," Gabriel whispered, went on. "He called me, asked me. It's a ... a signal, a call, when an angel is under attack ... it's instantaneous. He knew I'd say yes. Knew I was yes. He reached out, even as they ripped him apart. The little bastard learned. When I put him back together, that first time. He felt what I did and he learned. Enough to replicate it, enough to reach out and take my Grace, over that distance, inside a moment, a bare second ... not complete. He's not that good. But enough. Just enough to stitch himself together, to hold himself against annihilation long enough to catch you, to fly out. To stitch himself back up as fast as Raphael could unravel him. The sneaky, cunning, ruthless son of a bitch."
There was nothing but raw admiration in the archangel's voice, sheer amazement. Which Dean kinda got, because stealing one archangel's mojo to hold yourself together while another one destroyed you? Pretty damn badass, if he didn't say so himself. But awesome and all as that was ...
"What about me?" he asked, slowly, rubbing his chest absently, where he'd felt Cas reach in, where he'd felt something twist, just there at the end, in the welter of light and confusion and agony. Where he'd sensed ... something. He couldn't quite grab it, couldn't quite hold it down long enough to see it, to know what it was ... "When you arrived, you were having a shit-fit about sensing me instead of him," he said, groping around the edges of understanding. "What did he ...?"
Gabriel shifted, tilting his head to look down at Dean with wary assessment, measuring him down to his toes in one quick, cool look. "I'm not sure you want to know," the archangel said, at last. "I'm not sure I should ... but I suppose you have to choose, that he'd want you to have ... to have the chance ..."
Dean blinked, raising his head as something chill slid down his spine. Because that wasn't at all a worrying thing to be saying. "What do you mean?" he rasped, pulling himself up the wall to stand, to face Gabriel properly, his eyes drifting almost unwillingly to Castiel's still form. "Choose what?"
Gabriel looked away, looked at Cas, something sad, something wounded passing through him. "I don't think he meant to," he said, quietly. "You need to understand that first. I don't think he meant to do what he did. But it wasn't enough, my Grace wasn't enough, not in that time, not over that distance, and he needed ... it was pure instinct, I think. I'm sure. He needed ... that little bit more. More time, more energy. A chance. Something to hold himself together enough to get you to safety. And when he caught you, when he caught hold of you, all but falling apart around you ... he asked. He asked you. He couldn't help it."
Dean didn't know what any of that was supposed to mean, but he latched on to one thing. "He didn't ask me anything," he said. "He didn't have time. It was all wham bam, thank you ma'am. Whatever he needed, he didn't ..."
Gabriel cut him off, rolling his eyes a little in exasperation. "Not out loud, you moron. Not even mentally. Faster than that. Far faster. Same as he asked me. He reached out to your soul, Winchester. He asked you permission, asked you, the fundamental you, the deepest level of you ... asked for permission to use you, to take a little of what you are. A little of your soul." A pause, a faint, worried twitch, and for some reason Gabriel wasn't meeting his eyes, like the archangel was afraid of how he'd react. "He took a piece of you, Dean. Same as he took a piece of me. To keep himself from dying. You let him, at the time, or he couldn't have done it, couldn't have taken unless he had permission, but it wasn't conscious on your part. Like I said, it was mostly instinct, but ..."
Dean was silent. Sort of shocked, really. He wasn't ... he didn't know ... what was he supposed to do with that?
"Choice," he said, slowly. "You said I had to choose something?"
Gabriel took a deep breath, nodded. "I suppose. If I wasn't here, you'd just have to lump it, but since I am ... I could pull it back out. Your soul. He's stitched it in, stitched it in deep, because Raphael tore him from the inside out and he had to, but ... I could do it. It's risky, and it might ... he's not exactly in the best of shape, right now, and it might ..."
"Then don't," he cut him off, immediately, instinctively. Not even thinking. Because it was still there, in his head, in his chest, the feeling as Cas ... he remembered. He remembered the feeling of Cas reaching out, remembered the agony of it, the sheer agony of his angel, tearing apart in front of him. And he remembered the twist inside him, the wrench as something was pulled free, and that scared him, it scared him shitless, but if that, whatever it was, if that had stopped that wrenching wail of pain, if that had kept Cas alive, if that was what saved him ...
Gabriel was looking at him, eyes narrowed and measuring, unblinking. "Are you sure?" he asked, cautiously. "You don't know the consequences, you don't know what him having a piece of you could do to you ..."
"I said don't do it!" he snapped back, rapidly. To keep himself from changing his mind, maybe, but not really. Not deep down. Cas had put his soul back together. After Hell. After Alastair. Cas had done that, had saved him, and in a way he was kinda sorry that his soul had been the only one in range, the only one Cas could touch, because we were talking bargain basement at best here, but if it had done the job, if he had helped save Cas, even a little bit ... "Don't take it out. Let him have it. Don't ... don't risk it. Just. Just don't."
Gabriel looked at him for a long, long minute, a shadowed statue in the glare of Castiel's light, in the soft glow of his brother's wings, and there was an expression on his face, something Dean didn't understand at all ...
"He said you were worth it," the archangel said after a moment, almost absently. "He said you were worth what he'd done, what he'd endured. Worth the scars I felt. Worth defying archangels for. He said that. I didn't believe him. I mean, yeah, you're amusing, you and your brother, you're good for a laugh now and then, but to be worth that, to be worth what I felt, what he gave ... I didn't believe him."
Dean tried not to wince. Yeah. He wouldn't have believed him either. Some of the stuff Cas had gone through ... Yeah. Sometimes he wondered why the hell the angel thought them worth it too.
"I offered to help him," Gabriel said, suddenly. "More than just ... boosting him up a little every now and then. More than that. Just because ... well, because he's pretty much the only one of my brothers who isn't a dick." He smiled a little, at that, flashing Dean a little grin. "I don't know if you've noticed that ..."
"Oh, we've noticed. Believe me, we've noticed."
"Yes." Still with that smile. "Well. Anyway. I offered to help him, because he might just be worth it. But now ..." Gabriel stopped, turned, his eyes boring into Dean's as he prowled closer, fierce and intense, almost as intense as Cas in one of his moods. "Now," Gabriel mused, "now I might offer to help you, as well. You and Sammy."
Dean blinked at him. "You would?" He was slightly ashamed that it came out more shocked than coolly skeptical, like he'd wanted. Gabriel smirked a little.
"Castiel thinks you're worth it. And since he obviously has his work cut out with the pair of you, and is too loyal to stop ... well, if I'm going to help him, I'm just going to have to help you, too, aren't I?" Hands on hips, swaying up into his face, almost daring Dean to disagree with him, and it was there that Dean saw it, caught the edges of it, caught the reflections of something he'd only ever seen between him and Sam. A genuine concern, a genuine devotion, and one Gabriel was about as ready to admit to as Dean himself was. Something he'd never, ever show, not willingly. But something that was there, nonetheless.
"So," he said. "To sum up, you want to keep an eye on us because you don't want Cas to get killed helping us. Again. Because you've realised that he's just about the only brother you've got who isn't a shit. That about right?"
Gabriel paused, tilting his head as if considering it, bouncing on his heels a little. Then his eyes slid across, just for a second, to where Castiel lay, and his expression softened. "Yeah," he admitted. "That's about it."
Dean nodded slowly, like he was thinking about it himself, laying it on thick for a minute just to be annoying, and then he stuck out his hand. To the guy who'd killed him he didn't know how many times, to the guy who'd tormented Sam for months, to the guy who'd locked Cas away and kicked the shit out of him. He held out his hand, and told the Trickster welcome.
Because he was right. Cas needed all the help he could get, and Dean wasn't about to begrudge him a brother who might actually give a shit.
"You're gonna have to fill me in on this soul deal," he said, carefully, looking over at his angel's serenely glowing features, at the desperate spread of feathers and soul lying at their feet. "And you're gonna have to tell me what to do for him, how to help, because I gotta tell you, I've no idea what to do with a Cas who has the wingspan of a jumbo jet and glows like a Christmas tree."
Gabriel quirked a lip, smiling down at Cas. "He is rather luminous at the minute, isn't he?"
Dean manfully resisted the urge to go 'duh'. Gabriel shot him a knowing smirk, like he could hear it anyway, and knelt down beside his brother, tugging Dean down after him. Dean almost fell to his knees, growling at the archangel, but then he caught sight of Gabriel's face, of the expression there as the Trickster reached down to cup Cas' cheek gently, to brush the hair from his unconscious features.
"Don't worry, little brother," Gabriel murmured. Dean wasn't even sure if he knew he was saying it out loud. "Don't worry, Castiel. We've got you. I've got you." He leaned in close, whispered a hand through Cas' hair, a tremble in his hand betraying things, too many things, things Dean hadn't ever wanted to know about the bastard. But it was too late now, so he just watched, until Gabriel pulled himself together, pulled himself onto his heels, and gestured for Dean to take Cas' legs while he took arms and wings, folding them carefully with something other than his arms, with something Dean couldn't see, but so long as those fragile, awesome wings weren't getting bashed around, he didn't much care.
We've got you, Cas, he thought to himself, while they carried his angel in to lie next to a frantic Sam, while they laid him down and started talking. We've got you.
Damn. He hoped it was true.
Contd: Bond
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