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This one was one of the files I lost on my old machine. It's taken this long for me to rewrite from scratch. *heavy sigh* Final part of the series.
Previous parts: Grace, Storm
Title: Bond
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Continuity: Direct sequel to Storm
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel, Dean, Sam, Cas. Little bit of OT4, but oddly platonic about it. Can be read either way, really.
Summary: Gabriel and the boys finish saving Cas. Which involves a four-way bond.
Wordcount: 4385
Warnings: Bonding
Disclaimer: Not mine
Notes: Older series of mine, so we'll say it goes AU after 5x08. Um. Quite a bit AU.
In his defense, though, he hadn't known. He hadn't known. He hadn't had time to look, not really, not in between panicking and freaking out at Dean Winchester. He hadn't had a chance to look close, to study and understand. To see.
Now, while Dean explained what had happened to a somewhat frantic Sam, probably badly and wildly inaccurately ... now he had time. And that was going to change in a minute, when Sam -curious, intelligent Sam- stopped trying to get answers out of his bewildered brother and started trying to get them out of him, but Gabriel didn't care. He didn't care.
He is rather luminous at the minute, isn't he?
To human eyes, to pagan eyes, an angel's Grace was light. For human eyes to see that light while the angel was in a vessel ... that could only happen if that Grace was torn open, bleeding out, fraying out into the ether. Gabriel had thought it was residue, stains, like dried blood over a human injury. It wasn't. Oh, it wasn't.
The brother cradled in his arms along the bed, the brother glowing serenely beneath him, Castiel ... was currently all but the angelic equivalent of a bloodied corpse. And Gabriel hadn't seen it. Gabriel had let him steadily bleed. More. Gabriel had offered, out of some ridiculous sense of honour, to take away what was holding him together. Even as barely as it was. He'd offered to pull free all that was barely holding some of those wounds closed.
He could see them now. See the wounds. So many, a myriad. Not jagged rents, not the marks of swords or saws or jagged Grace. Surgical. Savage. Neat. The mark of true skill, a Healer's skill, a surgeon turned against his patient. A Healer turned Executioner. Raphael.
And through them, over and around the savage tears, woven layer on layer in desperate, ragged patchwork, Castiel's attempt to stop it. The bright, glimmering threads of Gabriel's own Grace, rich and vibrant with power, still threaded back to him, still touching him so he could feel along them to the mauled Grace they feebly held. The deeper, more solid lines of a human soul. Dean's soul. And those ... those were used so sparingly. So barely there. Only pushed into the largest, most terrible gaps, pressed desperately close, as little as Castiel could possibly have taken. A stopgap. Nothing more.
Because Castiel had never intended more. Even if he'd been capable of it, which Gabriel doubted. Castiel had never intended to survive. His one aim, his only aim, had been to hold together power and Grace long enough to escape, long enough to get Dean clear. Long enough to throw them both clear, so he could bleed out secure in the knowledge that he had kept his human free. The bloody stupid self-sacrificing little idiot ...
"Gabriel? Gabriel? Dammit man, if you don't answer me ... GABRIEL!"
He blinked, looking up to find two angry and mildly fearful faces looking down at him. The Winchesters, side by side and glaring down at him in unison. Dean more belligerent, Sam more confused and worried, but both of them leaning towards him with the kind of intensity best reserved ... best reserved for people like Castiel. Like his ferocious little brother.
"It's not enough," he told them, shakily. Barely realising what he was saying. Again. "I didn't see before. It's not enough."
"What? What's not enough?" Dean leaned in, ripe with fear, and almost tried to grab Gabriel's jacket, pull him up, but stopped himself because of Castiel. Stopped himself because Gabriel was holding Castiel, and Dean was not, now or ever, going to hurt Cas.
Not that he'd get the chance.
"Gabriel?" Sam asked, more softly. Request to Dean's demand, but no less forceful. No less real.
"It's not enough," he repeated distantly, looking down at Castiel. "What he did. My Grace. Dean's soul. It's not enough. He's ... he's bleeding out. Breaking down. There's not enough ..."
There was a second, where they didn't get it, didn't understand, and then ... Dean looked stricken, terrified, hurt. The hunter's face went blank, horrified. Then he pulled it back. He pulled it back, yanked himself savagely back under control, and looked to Gabriel. Demanded tightly, carefully. "Can't you give him more, then? Can't we ... Can't you give him more? Can't you do something?"
Shouldn't you be doing something already?
Anger surged, harsh and snapping, and Gabriel wanted for a second to hurt the human again, to smash him against the wall for daring that, daring to question, to think that Gabriel would let his brother die, that he'd watch Castiel bleed out and do nothing, but ... But he couldn't afford anger. He couldn't afford it, however cathartic it would be, and besides. The human was right. He was right. Gabriel had to do something, and quickly, he knew that, but ...
He didn't know how to do this. He didn't know how to ... he wasn't a Healer! He'd never been a Healer, and yes, he'd put Cas back together once before, but only after the fact, only after Dad had done all the real work resurrecting him, and all Gabriel had had to do was top him up and soothe the angry lines of scars. This ... If he touched this, if he tried and got it wrong ... and he didn't even know how to try. He didn't know how you were supposed to fix what amounted to an attempted annihilation. Raphael was the Healer in the family, and hey, look, guess who'd done this in the first place ...
"I could," he whispered. "I could pour enough Grace in to fill him ten times over. But it would be like pouring water into a sieve. He's just ... If you could see ... Raphael's torn him to pieces. There's tears, they go down to the soul, into it ... All that's holding him together is your soul. He's shoved it into the worst, a pressure bandage, bound it in with my Grace ... he's been very fucking clever, my little brother, but he was only trying to make it another minute, another second, enough to get you out, he wasn't trying to fix himself, and I've no idea how to stop this, how to stop him unravelling ..."
"Wait, wait!" That was Sam, cutting through Gabriel's babbling, and he was sort of shocked to realise he had been babbling. Mouth on auto. Stupid. But Sam went on, and it was an intelligent question, wonder of wonders ... "Dean's soul? Dean's soul is helping? It's working?"
Gabriel blinked at him. Well, yes, the soul was working. Sturdy things, souls, usually, and Cas hadn't actually damaged Dean's, hadn't torn it, only pulled some of it into himself ... not much, either. Castiel hadn't taken much at all, and what had gone had gone willingly. In fact, without realising it, Dean had already been sustaining him as best he could. Unconsciously, instinctively, much as Castiel had reached for him in the first place. If Dean had known how, he would have already been feeding Cas more. Which was good, yes, but Gabriel wondered why they weren't slightly more concerned about it. Wondered why Sam wasn't slightly more concerned that angels were using his brother's soul as a glorified band-aid.
But he didn't have time to ask, because Dean was already leaping on the question, eager and desperate. "Then can't you take more of that?" he demanded quickly, harshly. Not even hesitating for a second, what was wrong with these two? You'd think, of all people, they'd realise the value of a soul ...
"Do you know how much that would take?" he snarled. Because it was him that would be doing the patching, and he was so far from an expert, or even an amateur, and if he was going to be working with a bloody soul ... "I don't think Cas would thank me if he woke up and found I'd fixed him by leaving you an empty husk, and most of your soul floating around his Grace like the grisliest bandage in history!"
No. Castiel would never forgive him for that. Never trust him again. Never. And Gabriel remembered, remembered Castiel reaching for him on a beach in Santa Barbara, terrified and trusting and so fucking gentle ... remembered Castiel reaching literally without thought when he was dying, trusting Gabriel absolutely ... and the thought of that, the thought of losing that ...
"He'll deal with it!" Dean snapped back, cutting across the thought, anger and terror. No care at all for the costs to himself, or to Gabriel. All he cared about was Cas. "He'll be alive to deal with it, and that's all that matters! It's not like it's the fucking first time I've sold my soul to manage ..."
He stopped, trailed off, as Gabriel stared. In outright shock, outright amazement. Because yes, Dean had sold his soul, but that had been for Sam, for his brother, for someone he cared about to frankly terrifying levels, and this was for Cas ...
"He means that much?" he asked, very, very quietly. Stunned. "As much as family?" For a Winchester, that was well nigh blasphemy. Dean stared back, mute and defiant and determined and almost ashamed, and he didn't say anything, but he didn't retract anything either, and then ... Then Sam spoke up.
"Castiel is family," the younger Winchester said simply. Quietly. Looking down at the angel spread out between them, at the pale, slack features of a dying Castiel, and his own expression went as hard and determined as his brother's. Sam looked down at Castiel, and then up at Gabriel, and his eyes were hard as agate. "Cas is family."
Gabriel blinked at him. At them. At the whole bloody lot of them. And there was a flare, brief and deadly, possessive, saying that Cas was his family, not theirs, Castiel was his little brother, how dare they ... Except. Except. Castiel had reached for Dean, and been answered. Castiel had picked a fight with an archangel three bloody times, for them, and died for them twice. Castiel had stood on a beach with a sword in his hand and broken Gabriel's shields and lies apart from the ground up, for them. For them, and for Gabriel, and that was because Dad had made Cas to pull angels from the sky and humans from Hell and fine. Bloody fine.
But Castiel was dying. Whatever Dad had made him for, he was dying, and Gabriel didn't know how to stop it, and he was not using Dean. He was not destroying his little brother's family to save him. It would kill Castiel more surely than Raphael already had.
"What about mine?" Sam said, suddenly. Quietly. "Could you use mine?"
Gabriel stared at him. Surely not ... "Use your what?"
Sam didn't look away. "My soul. If you could take from both of us, use just enough of each ... could you do it then? Could you fix him then?"
Aaannnnddd obviously Castiel was getting all his suicidal habits from hanging around with this lot. Grace, soul, life, limbs, here, have 'em all. Just leave the others alone. And the others saying exactly the same thing. Was there anyone here with any sense?
"Unless ..." Sam said suddenly, watching Gabriel's face. Gabriel froze, wary, waiting for anything. Bargains, prices ... he remembered the Mystery Spot, after all, but Sam ... Sam ducked his head. Suddenly pained. Suddenly shamed. "Unless it's not ..." He stopped, pulled in a deep breath, and avoided everyone's eyes. "Will the demon blood ... will it affect Cas, if you use my ... Will it affect him?"
... Nope. Not a scrap of sense. Not in any of them.
"Sammy," Gabriel murmured, somewhere between exasperated and awed. "Sam Winchester. There is nothing wrong with your soul, you idiot. At least, nothing that isn't wrong with every human who's ever sinned, anyway."
Sam's head snapped up, shocked and confused and disbelieving, and just a tiny, tiny bit hopeful ... "But ... the blood ... my powers ... I'm an abomination. That's what ..."
Gabriel sighed heavily, cutting him off. Partly because they didn't have time, partly because this was just too painful to listen to. "Kid, you have free will. That means choices. That means until you actually die, until you choose finally and for always, you've always got a chance. Your soul gets a bit stained, a bit battered, maybe a few lumps knocked out of it ... but as long as you keep making enough good choices along the way, you don't count as demon yet. So no. You won't poison Castiel. All clear?"
A second, while Sam's face lit up, and Dean tried not to be too obvious about grabbing his brother's arm and squeezing it. Then both brothers switched right back to business mode.
"So it will work?" Dean asked, his other hand pressed against Castiel's knee, clenched white. "You can fix Cas, with both of us? You can help him?" And had he one scrap less of pride, if he'd been anyone but Dean Winchester ... there would have been an audible 'please' in there. If it had been anyone but Dean. Since it wasn't, the please was only there behind the words, silent and unspoken. But it was still there.
"You don't know what that will do," he whispered, cradling Cas' head. "I don't know what it will do. He barely took anything, spared you everything he could. If I do this, if I take you in properly ... and it will have to be me, he's too far gone ... you'll be bound to him. To us. Both of us. Both of you. If one of us falls ... we'll all feel it. If one of us is in pain, we'll all be. You'll feel ... you'll feel me, feel him, each other ... it's a bond. I don't know ... I don't even know if it will work, there has never been anything like this. Even angels don't bond this way. Not soul to soul. I don't know ..."
"Will it save him," Dean interrupted. Flat and terrified and trusting. Exactly like. Exactly like ...
"Maybe," he said. "Probably. I think ... I think yes."
"Then we try it." Sam, heavy and dark, and he had begged for his brother with that expression, pleaded with a cruel Trickster with those eyes. He had begged Gabriel once before, that way.
Well. It wasn't like he had a choice, was it? It was his little brother, after all. And these two ... these two ... willing to go soul for soul ... "I can try," he said quietly. "I don't know how much I can do. I'm not Raphael. But I can try."
They looked at each other, weighing him up between them, and Gabriel wanted to growl at them, to snarl that Cas was his brother, if they thought he wasn't good enough to try ... but then Dean, of all of them, nodded quietly, and looked back at him.
"Good enough," the hunter said softly. "Good enough."
So it was. It would have to be.
Castiel woke slowly. Fearfully, achingly. Feeling his way towards consciousness through Grace torn raw, stitched clumsily together. As best as Gabriel could manage, but that wasn't really saying much. His little brother woke slowly, and in agony. But alive. Oh, alive. That was the important part. Gabriel was clinging to that part.
He watched Castiel wake. Watched will and consciousness trickle back, watched him climb laboriously to the surface. Watched him encounter the souls inside him, the Grace, watched him touch the threads leading back, leading out to all of them. Watched him realise what they had done. Watched him freeze. There was a moment of stunned stillness, of quiet, frozen horror. Of agony and silent distress, and Gabriel flinched inside, waiting.
But Castiel didn't reject them. Gabriel had been more than half afraid that he might, not even consciously, but on pure instinct. The way human bodies sometimes rejected transplants. The instant rejection of the foreign. Gabriel had been afraid of that. But Cas didn't. He didn't.
Instead, though his spirit dimmed in pain and guilt, Castiel curled up around them. Cradled them clumsily, carefully. So achingly careful. The vibrant wonder of a curious spirit, the pained grief of a friend and brother as he saw what they had done, and tried to soothe them for it. Tried to protect them, wrapping them in Grace that could barely move, as once he had shielded another soul. The soul of a man named Jimmy Novak. A soul that had been torn from him.
Gabriel knew that. Gabriel had touched the scar. And feeling it, seeing it ... he had never been more glad that he had never had to bear a human soul. Never had to lose one. His vessel had not been born, but made. Mud-puppet golem. Not exactly fitting for the majesty of an archangel, but then that had kind of been the point ... Anyway. He'd never touched a human soul. Not the way Castiel had. Not until now.
Not until them.
"Gabriel," Castiel said at last. A tiny whisper.
"Hey," he answered softly. Gently. Looking down as exhausted blue eyes flickered open between his hands, as Castiel looked dazedly up at him. "Hey, little bro."
"Gabriel," Castiel said again, lines of pain and guilt scoring across his face. "Gabriel. What have I done?"
Quiet and crushed. Like the little idiot thought any of it had actually been his fault. Like he thought he had somehow forced them, while lying helpless and open and fucking dying at their feet. Like he thought they'd been unwilling.
Well, screw that.
"What have you done?" he growled sharply. "I'll tell you what you did, you little moron. You died. You bloody went and died on us! Rather spectacularly, I might add. I know. I felt it."
Castiel flinched a little, shrinking between them. "I'm sorry?" he whispered. "I didn't know ... I didn't realise you would have to. If I had ..."
Oh no! No, Gabriel could see where that one was going. "If you had, you'd have done exactly the same," he snarled, resisting the urge to shake the little twerp with great difficulty (or so he told himself - actually, he was hard pressed not to wrap himself around Castiel and cling for dear life). "Or else, little brother. I am not ... I am not losing you. Not again. Not ever. Clear?"
Castiel blinked at him. Still more than a little dazed, maybe. "Ah. Yes?" All soft confusion, too tired and hurt to really bear being yelled at. Gabriel felt a flash of guilt. The bloody angel was just about the one being in Creation who could make him do that.
"Yeah, well. Just remember it, alright?" he grumbled, smoothing a hand through Castiel's hair absently. "And stop getting killed, will you? It's becoming a really bad habit of yours, little bro. A really bad habit."
"I didn't want to," Castiel offered quietly, carefully, tilting his head as far as Gabriel's legs would allow. "Raphael ... I had to see that Dean was safe. I did ... try."
"I know," Gabriel interrupted softly. "I know, Cas. Believe me, I know. But you could have ... I mean, pretty good for a first try, in zero seconds, but couldn't you at least have aimed for long-term survival instead of just the next few seconds? It took me a half-hour to realise you were still dying around those patches!"
Castiel was silent for a second. "Is that why ... Dean? Sam? I ... I can feel them ..."
Gabriel sighed. "They weren't all that happy with the idea of letting you up and die on them, no. And before you say anything, I didn't ask them. I told Dean what you'd done the first time, what you'd asked, and they figured it out on their own from there. I wasn't going to let them, but you were dying, and the Winchesters practically invented the word 'stubborn' all by their lonesomes ..."
Castiel frowned at him, his Grace stirring sluggishly, feeling around the threads of soul and Grace woven through it. Sounding them out, as gently as possible, whispering soothingly as the boys stirred a little. Touching the threads of Gabriel's Grace, and he had to shudder a little at that. Had to quake around the sensation. It had been so very, very long ...
"You brought them in," Cas whispered, awed. "You let them be bound to you. Not just me. You. You bound yourself ... to all of us."
Gabriel flinched, a little. Curled away from reproach, before it was even voiced. "It was an emergency," he muttered defensively. "And they let me!" A pause, a little thread of his own wonder, the shock that still lingered. That he'd been allowed. That he'd even been welcomed, after a fashion. He remembered them. Remembered feeling them.
Remembered feeling Dean, determined to give everything, anything, all that he had, because it was all he knew, all he cared about, being able to give enough to protect those he loved. Castiel. Sam. Here with him. Part of him. And Sam, too. Sam, too long alone, too long abandoned, too long drowning in pain and sin, desperate for everything, yearning for the trust that lived at this level, soul to soul. Yearning for that stained, fragile purity. The innocence of trust. Both of them, reaching out to each other, to Castiel, to Gabriel. Giving, offering. Accepting, taking. Drowning in the bond, the touch between them. Awed by a communion no human had ever felt. And he had been awed by them. By the way they gave, simply because he asked. By the way they trusted.
"They let me," he whispered again. "Despite everything ... everything I've done to them. They let me. I asked, and they gave. Not just for you. You can't ... you can't fake it, that deep. Soul to soul, you can't fake anything. They ... trusted me. Because you did. They trusted me."
Castiel smiled at him, looking horribly smug for someone who'd been dying only hours ago. His little brother smiled at him. "No," he whispered, struggling for a second to lift a hand, to reach up feebly and let Gabriel catch it. Hold it. "Not because of me. Because you asked, Gabriel. Because you gave them a choice." He closed his eyes, pained remembrance. "That's all they ever wanted. A choice. I told you. There isn't anything they won't give, if it's of their own free will ..."
"Yeah," Gabriel said softly. "Beginning to see that, little bro. Beginning to see that. And ... If it's any consolation? Your little ... misadventure ... may have given them more of a choice that you think."
Castiel froze, opening his eyes again to blink up at Gabriel, wide and desperate and shining with such hope, such trust. What Gabriel would have given, all those years ago, to have something like that again ...
"Angels need consent to take a vessel," he said quietly. He hadn't thought of it at the time. There had been at least one rather more pressing issue, after all. It had only been afterwards, after they had slipped into sleep, as he sat holding his little brother and watching the pained ebb and flow of Grace between them, between all four of them ... "The consent of a living soul, otherwise they'd just take any old corpse lying around with the right genes. Mike and Luci need them to say 'yes', right? Thing is, though ... they've already said yes. Soul and Grace, and that's what counts, right? They said yes. Just not to who they were supposed to."
Castiel stared at him. Putting it together, like the clever little bastard he was. Trying, very, very hard, not to hope too soon, not to believe too quickly, but oh, how very bright those pained eyes suddenly were. How very alive.
"They've said yes to us, Cas," Gabriel finished, with maybe more of a note of triumph in his voice than was really warranted, considering how late to the party he was, and the fact that it wasn't like he'd planned this or anything. Whatever. They were his now. He was allowed to enjoy their victory. "The fact that we happen to have a body apiece already doesn't really matter. We have their souls, they have our Grace, and short of destroying both of us, and a rather large chunk of the boys' souls in the process ... There's fuck all my brothers can do about it. And since the chances of getting a Winchester to agree to anything once you've killed a member of their family are pretty much zero ..."
Castiel frowned suddenly, around his small, sneaky little grin of triumph. Which, incidentally, was sort of cute on him. "Family?" his little brother asked, just gently confused, and Gabriel realised he didn't know. They'd never told him.
"You," he said softly, carding his hands through Castiel's hair. "You, Cas. They called you family." A small smile. "What? You think a Winchester would offer his soul for anything less? And I don't know why you're playing innocent, you sneaky little bastard. It's not like this is the first time you've wormed your way into someone's heart ..."
Castiel smiled, so very gently, surprised and happy and just a little bit smug, and then ... He reached up, curled his hand around the back of Gabriel's neck and tugged him down carefully, face to face, until Gabriel was curled over his little brother. Castiel tugged him down, closer than anyone had been in a long time who hadn't been trying to kill him, and smiled.
"Then you are family too, Gabriel," he said quietly, into Gabriel's wide-eyed expression. "You are my family. And theirs. You are family."
Gabriel swallowed, feeling something shake in his chest. "Sneaky," he managed. "I did tell you you're a sneaky little bastard, right?"
And Castiel smiled. His little brother smiled.
Cutscene: Healing
Previous parts: Grace, Storm
Title: Bond
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Continuity: Direct sequel to Storm
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel, Dean, Sam, Cas. Little bit of OT4, but oddly platonic about it. Can be read either way, really.
Summary: Gabriel and the boys finish saving Cas. Which involves a four-way bond.
Wordcount: 4385
Warnings: Bonding
Disclaimer: Not mine
Notes: Older series of mine, so we'll say it goes AU after 5x08. Um. Quite a bit AU.
Bond
Sometimes Gabriel couldn't believe the things that came out of his own mouth. He really couldn't. "He is rather luminous at the minute, isn't he?" Honestly.In his defense, though, he hadn't known. He hadn't known. He hadn't had time to look, not really, not in between panicking and freaking out at Dean Winchester. He hadn't had a chance to look close, to study and understand. To see.
Now, while Dean explained what had happened to a somewhat frantic Sam, probably badly and wildly inaccurately ... now he had time. And that was going to change in a minute, when Sam -curious, intelligent Sam- stopped trying to get answers out of his bewildered brother and started trying to get them out of him, but Gabriel didn't care. He didn't care.
He is rather luminous at the minute, isn't he?
To human eyes, to pagan eyes, an angel's Grace was light. For human eyes to see that light while the angel was in a vessel ... that could only happen if that Grace was torn open, bleeding out, fraying out into the ether. Gabriel had thought it was residue, stains, like dried blood over a human injury. It wasn't. Oh, it wasn't.
The brother cradled in his arms along the bed, the brother glowing serenely beneath him, Castiel ... was currently all but the angelic equivalent of a bloodied corpse. And Gabriel hadn't seen it. Gabriel had let him steadily bleed. More. Gabriel had offered, out of some ridiculous sense of honour, to take away what was holding him together. Even as barely as it was. He'd offered to pull free all that was barely holding some of those wounds closed.
He could see them now. See the wounds. So many, a myriad. Not jagged rents, not the marks of swords or saws or jagged Grace. Surgical. Savage. Neat. The mark of true skill, a Healer's skill, a surgeon turned against his patient. A Healer turned Executioner. Raphael.
And through them, over and around the savage tears, woven layer on layer in desperate, ragged patchwork, Castiel's attempt to stop it. The bright, glimmering threads of Gabriel's own Grace, rich and vibrant with power, still threaded back to him, still touching him so he could feel along them to the mauled Grace they feebly held. The deeper, more solid lines of a human soul. Dean's soul. And those ... those were used so sparingly. So barely there. Only pushed into the largest, most terrible gaps, pressed desperately close, as little as Castiel could possibly have taken. A stopgap. Nothing more.
Because Castiel had never intended more. Even if he'd been capable of it, which Gabriel doubted. Castiel had never intended to survive. His one aim, his only aim, had been to hold together power and Grace long enough to escape, long enough to get Dean clear. Long enough to throw them both clear, so he could bleed out secure in the knowledge that he had kept his human free. The bloody stupid self-sacrificing little idiot ...
"Gabriel? Gabriel? Dammit man, if you don't answer me ... GABRIEL!"
He blinked, looking up to find two angry and mildly fearful faces looking down at him. The Winchesters, side by side and glaring down at him in unison. Dean more belligerent, Sam more confused and worried, but both of them leaning towards him with the kind of intensity best reserved ... best reserved for people like Castiel. Like his ferocious little brother.
"It's not enough," he told them, shakily. Barely realising what he was saying. Again. "I didn't see before. It's not enough."
"What? What's not enough?" Dean leaned in, ripe with fear, and almost tried to grab Gabriel's jacket, pull him up, but stopped himself because of Castiel. Stopped himself because Gabriel was holding Castiel, and Dean was not, now or ever, going to hurt Cas.
Not that he'd get the chance.
"Gabriel?" Sam asked, more softly. Request to Dean's demand, but no less forceful. No less real.
"It's not enough," he repeated distantly, looking down at Castiel. "What he did. My Grace. Dean's soul. It's not enough. He's ... he's bleeding out. Breaking down. There's not enough ..."
There was a second, where they didn't get it, didn't understand, and then ... Dean looked stricken, terrified, hurt. The hunter's face went blank, horrified. Then he pulled it back. He pulled it back, yanked himself savagely back under control, and looked to Gabriel. Demanded tightly, carefully. "Can't you give him more, then? Can't we ... Can't you give him more? Can't you do something?"
Shouldn't you be doing something already?
Anger surged, harsh and snapping, and Gabriel wanted for a second to hurt the human again, to smash him against the wall for daring that, daring to question, to think that Gabriel would let his brother die, that he'd watch Castiel bleed out and do nothing, but ... But he couldn't afford anger. He couldn't afford it, however cathartic it would be, and besides. The human was right. He was right. Gabriel had to do something, and quickly, he knew that, but ...
He didn't know how to do this. He didn't know how to ... he wasn't a Healer! He'd never been a Healer, and yes, he'd put Cas back together once before, but only after the fact, only after Dad had done all the real work resurrecting him, and all Gabriel had had to do was top him up and soothe the angry lines of scars. This ... If he touched this, if he tried and got it wrong ... and he didn't even know how to try. He didn't know how you were supposed to fix what amounted to an attempted annihilation. Raphael was the Healer in the family, and hey, look, guess who'd done this in the first place ...
"I could," he whispered. "I could pour enough Grace in to fill him ten times over. But it would be like pouring water into a sieve. He's just ... If you could see ... Raphael's torn him to pieces. There's tears, they go down to the soul, into it ... All that's holding him together is your soul. He's shoved it into the worst, a pressure bandage, bound it in with my Grace ... he's been very fucking clever, my little brother, but he was only trying to make it another minute, another second, enough to get you out, he wasn't trying to fix himself, and I've no idea how to stop this, how to stop him unravelling ..."
"Wait, wait!" That was Sam, cutting through Gabriel's babbling, and he was sort of shocked to realise he had been babbling. Mouth on auto. Stupid. But Sam went on, and it was an intelligent question, wonder of wonders ... "Dean's soul? Dean's soul is helping? It's working?"
Gabriel blinked at him. Well, yes, the soul was working. Sturdy things, souls, usually, and Cas hadn't actually damaged Dean's, hadn't torn it, only pulled some of it into himself ... not much, either. Castiel hadn't taken much at all, and what had gone had gone willingly. In fact, without realising it, Dean had already been sustaining him as best he could. Unconsciously, instinctively, much as Castiel had reached for him in the first place. If Dean had known how, he would have already been feeding Cas more. Which was good, yes, but Gabriel wondered why they weren't slightly more concerned about it. Wondered why Sam wasn't slightly more concerned that angels were using his brother's soul as a glorified band-aid.
But he didn't have time to ask, because Dean was already leaping on the question, eager and desperate. "Then can't you take more of that?" he demanded quickly, harshly. Not even hesitating for a second, what was wrong with these two? You'd think, of all people, they'd realise the value of a soul ...
"Do you know how much that would take?" he snarled. Because it was him that would be doing the patching, and he was so far from an expert, or even an amateur, and if he was going to be working with a bloody soul ... "I don't think Cas would thank me if he woke up and found I'd fixed him by leaving you an empty husk, and most of your soul floating around his Grace like the grisliest bandage in history!"
No. Castiel would never forgive him for that. Never trust him again. Never. And Gabriel remembered, remembered Castiel reaching for him on a beach in Santa Barbara, terrified and trusting and so fucking gentle ... remembered Castiel reaching literally without thought when he was dying, trusting Gabriel absolutely ... and the thought of that, the thought of losing that ...
"He'll deal with it!" Dean snapped back, cutting across the thought, anger and terror. No care at all for the costs to himself, or to Gabriel. All he cared about was Cas. "He'll be alive to deal with it, and that's all that matters! It's not like it's the fucking first time I've sold my soul to manage ..."
He stopped, trailed off, as Gabriel stared. In outright shock, outright amazement. Because yes, Dean had sold his soul, but that had been for Sam, for his brother, for someone he cared about to frankly terrifying levels, and this was for Cas ...
"He means that much?" he asked, very, very quietly. Stunned. "As much as family?" For a Winchester, that was well nigh blasphemy. Dean stared back, mute and defiant and determined and almost ashamed, and he didn't say anything, but he didn't retract anything either, and then ... Then Sam spoke up.
"Castiel is family," the younger Winchester said simply. Quietly. Looking down at the angel spread out between them, at the pale, slack features of a dying Castiel, and his own expression went as hard and determined as his brother's. Sam looked down at Castiel, and then up at Gabriel, and his eyes were hard as agate. "Cas is family."
Gabriel blinked at him. At them. At the whole bloody lot of them. And there was a flare, brief and deadly, possessive, saying that Cas was his family, not theirs, Castiel was his little brother, how dare they ... Except. Except. Castiel had reached for Dean, and been answered. Castiel had picked a fight with an archangel three bloody times, for them, and died for them twice. Castiel had stood on a beach with a sword in his hand and broken Gabriel's shields and lies apart from the ground up, for them. For them, and for Gabriel, and that was because Dad had made Cas to pull angels from the sky and humans from Hell and fine. Bloody fine.
But Castiel was dying. Whatever Dad had made him for, he was dying, and Gabriel didn't know how to stop it, and he was not using Dean. He was not destroying his little brother's family to save him. It would kill Castiel more surely than Raphael already had.
"What about mine?" Sam said, suddenly. Quietly. "Could you use mine?"
Gabriel stared at him. Surely not ... "Use your what?"
Sam didn't look away. "My soul. If you could take from both of us, use just enough of each ... could you do it then? Could you fix him then?"
Aaannnnddd obviously Castiel was getting all his suicidal habits from hanging around with this lot. Grace, soul, life, limbs, here, have 'em all. Just leave the others alone. And the others saying exactly the same thing. Was there anyone here with any sense?
"Unless ..." Sam said suddenly, watching Gabriel's face. Gabriel froze, wary, waiting for anything. Bargains, prices ... he remembered the Mystery Spot, after all, but Sam ... Sam ducked his head. Suddenly pained. Suddenly shamed. "Unless it's not ..." He stopped, pulled in a deep breath, and avoided everyone's eyes. "Will the demon blood ... will it affect Cas, if you use my ... Will it affect him?"
... Nope. Not a scrap of sense. Not in any of them.
"Sammy," Gabriel murmured, somewhere between exasperated and awed. "Sam Winchester. There is nothing wrong with your soul, you idiot. At least, nothing that isn't wrong with every human who's ever sinned, anyway."
Sam's head snapped up, shocked and confused and disbelieving, and just a tiny, tiny bit hopeful ... "But ... the blood ... my powers ... I'm an abomination. That's what ..."
Gabriel sighed heavily, cutting him off. Partly because they didn't have time, partly because this was just too painful to listen to. "Kid, you have free will. That means choices. That means until you actually die, until you choose finally and for always, you've always got a chance. Your soul gets a bit stained, a bit battered, maybe a few lumps knocked out of it ... but as long as you keep making enough good choices along the way, you don't count as demon yet. So no. You won't poison Castiel. All clear?"
A second, while Sam's face lit up, and Dean tried not to be too obvious about grabbing his brother's arm and squeezing it. Then both brothers switched right back to business mode.
"So it will work?" Dean asked, his other hand pressed against Castiel's knee, clenched white. "You can fix Cas, with both of us? You can help him?" And had he one scrap less of pride, if he'd been anyone but Dean Winchester ... there would have been an audible 'please' in there. If it had been anyone but Dean. Since it wasn't, the please was only there behind the words, silent and unspoken. But it was still there.
"You don't know what that will do," he whispered, cradling Cas' head. "I don't know what it will do. He barely took anything, spared you everything he could. If I do this, if I take you in properly ... and it will have to be me, he's too far gone ... you'll be bound to him. To us. Both of us. Both of you. If one of us falls ... we'll all feel it. If one of us is in pain, we'll all be. You'll feel ... you'll feel me, feel him, each other ... it's a bond. I don't know ... I don't even know if it will work, there has never been anything like this. Even angels don't bond this way. Not soul to soul. I don't know ..."
"Will it save him," Dean interrupted. Flat and terrified and trusting. Exactly like. Exactly like ...
"Maybe," he said. "Probably. I think ... I think yes."
"Then we try it." Sam, heavy and dark, and he had begged for his brother with that expression, pleaded with a cruel Trickster with those eyes. He had begged Gabriel once before, that way.
Well. It wasn't like he had a choice, was it? It was his little brother, after all. And these two ... these two ... willing to go soul for soul ... "I can try," he said quietly. "I don't know how much I can do. I'm not Raphael. But I can try."
They looked at each other, weighing him up between them, and Gabriel wanted to growl at them, to snarl that Cas was his brother, if they thought he wasn't good enough to try ... but then Dean, of all of them, nodded quietly, and looked back at him.
"Good enough," the hunter said softly. "Good enough."
So it was. It would have to be.
---
Castiel woke, a long time later. A long time. The other two were asleep, worn quite literally down to the soul, only human after something that would kill a lot of angels. They were asleep, curled down on either side of Cas, clinging close to him while Gabriel sat behind them, Castiel's head in his lap, and kept watch.Castiel woke slowly. Fearfully, achingly. Feeling his way towards consciousness through Grace torn raw, stitched clumsily together. As best as Gabriel could manage, but that wasn't really saying much. His little brother woke slowly, and in agony. But alive. Oh, alive. That was the important part. Gabriel was clinging to that part.
He watched Castiel wake. Watched will and consciousness trickle back, watched him climb laboriously to the surface. Watched him encounter the souls inside him, the Grace, watched him touch the threads leading back, leading out to all of them. Watched him realise what they had done. Watched him freeze. There was a moment of stunned stillness, of quiet, frozen horror. Of agony and silent distress, and Gabriel flinched inside, waiting.
But Castiel didn't reject them. Gabriel had been more than half afraid that he might, not even consciously, but on pure instinct. The way human bodies sometimes rejected transplants. The instant rejection of the foreign. Gabriel had been afraid of that. But Cas didn't. He didn't.
Instead, though his spirit dimmed in pain and guilt, Castiel curled up around them. Cradled them clumsily, carefully. So achingly careful. The vibrant wonder of a curious spirit, the pained grief of a friend and brother as he saw what they had done, and tried to soothe them for it. Tried to protect them, wrapping them in Grace that could barely move, as once he had shielded another soul. The soul of a man named Jimmy Novak. A soul that had been torn from him.
Gabriel knew that. Gabriel had touched the scar. And feeling it, seeing it ... he had never been more glad that he had never had to bear a human soul. Never had to lose one. His vessel had not been born, but made. Mud-puppet golem. Not exactly fitting for the majesty of an archangel, but then that had kind of been the point ... Anyway. He'd never touched a human soul. Not the way Castiel had. Not until now.
Not until them.
"Gabriel," Castiel said at last. A tiny whisper.
"Hey," he answered softly. Gently. Looking down as exhausted blue eyes flickered open between his hands, as Castiel looked dazedly up at him. "Hey, little bro."
"Gabriel," Castiel said again, lines of pain and guilt scoring across his face. "Gabriel. What have I done?"
Quiet and crushed. Like the little idiot thought any of it had actually been his fault. Like he thought he had somehow forced them, while lying helpless and open and fucking dying at their feet. Like he thought they'd been unwilling.
Well, screw that.
"What have you done?" he growled sharply. "I'll tell you what you did, you little moron. You died. You bloody went and died on us! Rather spectacularly, I might add. I know. I felt it."
Castiel flinched a little, shrinking between them. "I'm sorry?" he whispered. "I didn't know ... I didn't realise you would have to. If I had ..."
Oh no! No, Gabriel could see where that one was going. "If you had, you'd have done exactly the same," he snarled, resisting the urge to shake the little twerp with great difficulty (or so he told himself - actually, he was hard pressed not to wrap himself around Castiel and cling for dear life). "Or else, little brother. I am not ... I am not losing you. Not again. Not ever. Clear?"
Castiel blinked at him. Still more than a little dazed, maybe. "Ah. Yes?" All soft confusion, too tired and hurt to really bear being yelled at. Gabriel felt a flash of guilt. The bloody angel was just about the one being in Creation who could make him do that.
"Yeah, well. Just remember it, alright?" he grumbled, smoothing a hand through Castiel's hair absently. "And stop getting killed, will you? It's becoming a really bad habit of yours, little bro. A really bad habit."
"I didn't want to," Castiel offered quietly, carefully, tilting his head as far as Gabriel's legs would allow. "Raphael ... I had to see that Dean was safe. I did ... try."
"I know," Gabriel interrupted softly. "I know, Cas. Believe me, I know. But you could have ... I mean, pretty good for a first try, in zero seconds, but couldn't you at least have aimed for long-term survival instead of just the next few seconds? It took me a half-hour to realise you were still dying around those patches!"
Castiel was silent for a second. "Is that why ... Dean? Sam? I ... I can feel them ..."
Gabriel sighed. "They weren't all that happy with the idea of letting you up and die on them, no. And before you say anything, I didn't ask them. I told Dean what you'd done the first time, what you'd asked, and they figured it out on their own from there. I wasn't going to let them, but you were dying, and the Winchesters practically invented the word 'stubborn' all by their lonesomes ..."
Castiel frowned at him, his Grace stirring sluggishly, feeling around the threads of soul and Grace woven through it. Sounding them out, as gently as possible, whispering soothingly as the boys stirred a little. Touching the threads of Gabriel's Grace, and he had to shudder a little at that. Had to quake around the sensation. It had been so very, very long ...
"You brought them in," Cas whispered, awed. "You let them be bound to you. Not just me. You. You bound yourself ... to all of us."
Gabriel flinched, a little. Curled away from reproach, before it was even voiced. "It was an emergency," he muttered defensively. "And they let me!" A pause, a little thread of his own wonder, the shock that still lingered. That he'd been allowed. That he'd even been welcomed, after a fashion. He remembered them. Remembered feeling them.
Remembered feeling Dean, determined to give everything, anything, all that he had, because it was all he knew, all he cared about, being able to give enough to protect those he loved. Castiel. Sam. Here with him. Part of him. And Sam, too. Sam, too long alone, too long abandoned, too long drowning in pain and sin, desperate for everything, yearning for the trust that lived at this level, soul to soul. Yearning for that stained, fragile purity. The innocence of trust. Both of them, reaching out to each other, to Castiel, to Gabriel. Giving, offering. Accepting, taking. Drowning in the bond, the touch between them. Awed by a communion no human had ever felt. And he had been awed by them. By the way they gave, simply because he asked. By the way they trusted.
"They let me," he whispered again. "Despite everything ... everything I've done to them. They let me. I asked, and they gave. Not just for you. You can't ... you can't fake it, that deep. Soul to soul, you can't fake anything. They ... trusted me. Because you did. They trusted me."
Castiel smiled at him, looking horribly smug for someone who'd been dying only hours ago. His little brother smiled at him. "No," he whispered, struggling for a second to lift a hand, to reach up feebly and let Gabriel catch it. Hold it. "Not because of me. Because you asked, Gabriel. Because you gave them a choice." He closed his eyes, pained remembrance. "That's all they ever wanted. A choice. I told you. There isn't anything they won't give, if it's of their own free will ..."
"Yeah," Gabriel said softly. "Beginning to see that, little bro. Beginning to see that. And ... If it's any consolation? Your little ... misadventure ... may have given them more of a choice that you think."
Castiel froze, opening his eyes again to blink up at Gabriel, wide and desperate and shining with such hope, such trust. What Gabriel would have given, all those years ago, to have something like that again ...
"Angels need consent to take a vessel," he said quietly. He hadn't thought of it at the time. There had been at least one rather more pressing issue, after all. It had only been afterwards, after they had slipped into sleep, as he sat holding his little brother and watching the pained ebb and flow of Grace between them, between all four of them ... "The consent of a living soul, otherwise they'd just take any old corpse lying around with the right genes. Mike and Luci need them to say 'yes', right? Thing is, though ... they've already said yes. Soul and Grace, and that's what counts, right? They said yes. Just not to who they were supposed to."
Castiel stared at him. Putting it together, like the clever little bastard he was. Trying, very, very hard, not to hope too soon, not to believe too quickly, but oh, how very bright those pained eyes suddenly were. How very alive.
"They've said yes to us, Cas," Gabriel finished, with maybe more of a note of triumph in his voice than was really warranted, considering how late to the party he was, and the fact that it wasn't like he'd planned this or anything. Whatever. They were his now. He was allowed to enjoy their victory. "The fact that we happen to have a body apiece already doesn't really matter. We have their souls, they have our Grace, and short of destroying both of us, and a rather large chunk of the boys' souls in the process ... There's fuck all my brothers can do about it. And since the chances of getting a Winchester to agree to anything once you've killed a member of their family are pretty much zero ..."
Castiel frowned suddenly, around his small, sneaky little grin of triumph. Which, incidentally, was sort of cute on him. "Family?" his little brother asked, just gently confused, and Gabriel realised he didn't know. They'd never told him.
"You," he said softly, carding his hands through Castiel's hair. "You, Cas. They called you family." A small smile. "What? You think a Winchester would offer his soul for anything less? And I don't know why you're playing innocent, you sneaky little bastard. It's not like this is the first time you've wormed your way into someone's heart ..."
Castiel smiled, so very gently, surprised and happy and just a little bit smug, and then ... He reached up, curled his hand around the back of Gabriel's neck and tugged him down carefully, face to face, until Gabriel was curled over his little brother. Castiel tugged him down, closer than anyone had been in a long time who hadn't been trying to kill him, and smiled.
"Then you are family too, Gabriel," he said quietly, into Gabriel's wide-eyed expression. "You are my family. And theirs. You are family."
Gabriel swallowed, feeling something shake in his chest. "Sneaky," he managed. "I did tell you you're a sneaky little bastard, right?"
And Castiel smiled. His little brother smiled.
Cutscene: Healing
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