Chapter 3: His Greatest Wrath
Two bottles of beer slotted between the fingers of his right hand, two between the fingers of his left, Dean sauntered into the Library, whistling up a din—dots of blue tones, stars of red, ellipses for the green, soaring, swinging, leaping about the room: Kandinsky art turned into animated cartoon. Trying to “pull an innocent act”? An “I didn’t tiptoe into the War Room and press up against the wall attempting to listen in” act? Dean’s soft inhales, soft exhales, had struck Castiel’s eardrums as forcibly as his whistling clatter.
In a burst of neon orange, Dean clunked the bottles onto the table between them. He pulled a bottle opener from his jeans pocket and popped open one—an abrupt, beer-brown sound—and handed it to Castiel. And another for himself.
A pale orange clink: Dean tapping his bottle against Castiel’s.
“Cheers.”
“Thank you, Dean.”
Castiel sipped the coolness. Back when he’d lost his Grace and become all but human, his tastebuds would’ve savored a malty sweetness, a hoppy bitterness. But now, every unruly alpha acid, beta acid, and ester clamored for his attention, as noisy and dissonant as untuned chords. Still, he sipped—for Dean’s companionship.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong, dude?” Dean perched on the table corner beside him, swinging a jean-clad leg. “Michael’s Grace didn’t totally heal you, did it?”
“Dean…” It was time. Castiel steeled himself for the plunge into the thorny thickets of his worries. “Dean, would you have preferred I’d poured myself into a female vessel instead of Jimmy’s?”
Dean snickered. “Poured yourself into a female vessel.” He tilted back his head and poured beer into his mouth. “One of your better Castiel non sequiturs.”
“But would you?”
“With your personality? No way.” Dean slugged down more beer.
Cold tingles stung Castiel’s thighs, the middle of his back, his left cheek—phantom pricks of Celestial voltage. “M-my personality?”
Dean polished off his beer and pushed from the table. He crossed to a low bookcase, where an antique scimitar, keenly edged, sat mounted on a desktop rack. With a flourish, he unsheathed the scimitar—sissss! He struck a “ready” stance: knees bent, feet planted at right angles. En garde.
A play-fight. Like the mock angel battles he’d been trained on. In a movement too quick for the human eye—though it taxed him—Castiel zipped into position, angel blade drawn.
“Hate to break it to you, buddy—”
Dean lunged, slashing his weapon.
Castiel parried.
Dean recovered to ready. “But you’re intense, often shortsighted—”
Lunge.
Slash.
Parry.
“And back when we first met—”
Dean twirled, finishing with a cinematic 360.
“—intimidating as hell. Plus, you say what you think—no sugarcoating.”
Sugarcoating. Sugarcoating?
“The frost on a frosted flake, Dean? Sugarcoat—?”
Dean lunged.
“—ing?” The word snagging in his mind, Castiel forgot to parry.
Dean ran him through.
“Oops.”
Dean grimaced at the blade. He tugged it free, wiped the blood off on his sleeve. Castiel’s wound healed in a burst of Grace. The newly bloomed bloodstain on Castiel’s trench coat added to tonight’s collection.
“Sugarcoating, Dean?” Castiel said.
“Uh, you’re tactless.”
Dean saluted Castiel with the scimitar and remounted it. He hopped his bottom onto his table perch. “See, I was trying to be tactful. Using a whatchamacallit.”
Tactless = No Sugarcoating → Whatchamacallit = Truth Masked in Sweetness = ?
“Euphemism,” Castiel ventured. He retook his seat.
“Yeah, that. A Sammy word. Like non sequitur.” Dean popped open another beer, chug-a-lugged. “Drink up. Or am I the only one partying here?”
Castiel sipped, blinking at Dean’s assessment. “No human females are intense, shortsighted, and un-sugared?”
“Not that I’m gonna hang with.”
So, Castiel-in-a-male-vessel: hangable. In-a-female-vessel: not sugary enough. “What makes it different that I, a genderless angel, occupy a male vessel?”
Dean swiped his hand through the air, swatting Castiel’s words away. “Jeez, Cas, I don’t know. Why are we talking about this? Why are we talking about anything?”
Castiel tilted his head to the side to give his True Form a different perspective on Dean. “I think I understand. If a female is close to your age and draws your gaze”—however briefly, like a hummingbird, bright and gone—“you feel compelled to dominate the interaction, to guard your masculinity.”
Dean startled, as if the scimitar had flown over and rapped his skull. “Well,” he said, with a little smile, a little laugh, a little dance of his fingertips, “I might be open to a little light domination.”
“You require softness—”
“I do like soft.”
“—of personality.”
Dean gulped down the rest of beer number two, grabbed for number three. “Would you quit dissecting me?”
Castiel opened his clasped hands and showed his palms. “I’m trying to understand why my taking on a female vessel would’ve been off-putting.”
“What’s with the insecurity, man? I told you, you’re family.”
I love you, Castiel had said to him in the barn near Ramiel’s place.
You’re family, Dean had said in reply.
That word—spoken here, now—a wall sliding quietly into place.
But what was his own love? Angels don’t love—they’re not capable of it, not the human kind.
And yet, when he’d told Dean I love you—Castiel’s gaze dropping, and Dean looking away—he was certain he was in love. Not the abstract, “God commands angels to love humans, so we love humans,” but something much more personal, something that ached, something that whirled his head with dizzying sensations. Slipping on ice. Tumbling down a hill. Flying out of orbit.
But the Lance would kill him, so his love would die with him. Good. Problem solved. Only an aberrant blip of emotion. Nothing that need be examined. Or dealt with.
Only—he hadn’t died. And his feelings hadn’t died. And as they’d left the barn, a soft green hymn rising in him—
Clashes of chords had ripped through his Song: bitter oranges, muddy browns, bruised grays.
Dean will want no part of my love—not this kind.
Dean will reject me.
He’d started shaking.
His body and wings had been going haywire ever since—one reeling through the earthly plane, the other thrashing in the ether.
He must stop this feeling, fix it! Before it spiraled out, slipped past his careful questions, and drove Dean away.
“Can it be fixed?”
“What?” Castiel’s gaze shot to Dean.
“What’s with the wild eyes? I’m asking about the Lance.”
Dean leaned over and gathered the haft and blade from the other side of the table. He set them before Castiel, fitting them together at the break. Castiel’s fingers lunged for the ruinous runes. He rubbed them, caressing their hard Enochian angles and edges.
“Read them to me,” Dean said.
“No.”
“No ?” Dean’s beer halted halfway to his mouth. “Why the hell not?”
“Um… Why do you want me to?”
“I think they have something to do with your shaking.”
“They don’t. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Sure you are. Read them anyway.”
Castiel’s fingers rubbed and rubbed, as if they could rub the runes out.
Dean’s warm hand touched Castiel’s wrist.
Castiel’s fingers stilled. He pressed his eyes closed. Yes, touch me with your warmth. Let me touch you.
“Cas, c’mon.” Dean jumped to his feet again, shucked off a military jacket the color of raven feathers, tossed it onto the table, and flumped into the chair beside him. “If you really need a reason to spill your super-duper angel secrets, it’s this: I’m a Legacy. And ”—Dean toasted Castiel with his beer and a smirk—“cuz I want to know.”
On any other occasion, Dean’s irreverence would’ve sent an eddy of delight through him.
But—
“These are terrifying words, Dean. They grant the Lance a t-terrifying p-power—”
Angels don’t sweat. Never in his life, in any vessel, had he broken into a sweat. Now, it damped his forehead, trickled down the sides of his ribs—
And he was back in Ramiel’s house.
Ramiel snarling, “Angel.” Grabbing Castiel by his trench coat’s lapels and hurling him through a window with near-archangelic strength. Castiel, stunned and bloody, trying to heave himself to his feet—to fight, to flee, to something. Collapsing, barely enough breath to groan. Struggling to bellycrawl away through the grass—away, away, away!—Ramiel stalking him, pale moonlight streaming down on him like a misshapen curse. A surge of power crackling the air: Ramiel reaching over his shoulder and drawing up the Lance, the invisible turning all-too-solid. Castiel flailing onto his back, flinging up his hands. Useless. The blade stabbing into his belly. Every ripped cell shrieking. Struggling to crawl away again, unable to stifle his agonized cries. Ramiel, gloating, always gloating—Where do you think you’re going, huh?—raising the Lance again—
Mary’s car smashing into the Prince. Ramiel disappearing somehow, somewhere. Mary half carrying Castiel into a barn. Castiel crumpling into a chair. Blood gushing. Black veins of rotting flesh spreading up his belly, his chest, his throat—a road map to the Land of the Damned.
His True Form putrefying, its Celestial scaffolding—that latticework of Divine Light and Song holding it intact—disintegrating under Michael’s corrosive magic. And decaying into Celestial slime.
And then, with everything about to be taken from him—his life, Dean…Dean…Dean would be taken from him—discovering his truth, speaking it: I love you.
The black ooze choking him, poisoning him with Michael’s venom. The pain twisting upon itself and becoming a Mobius strip—endless, endless, and as vast as a starless universe.
The End—
Until Crowley broke the Lance.
Michael’s Grace escaping it. Flowing into Castiel. Curing him.
This time.
“Cas? Where’d you go?”
Dean’s voice jolted him back to the Library, his frayed wings flapping about him.
“T-terrifying words.”
“Just words, Cas. Sticks and stones.”
Castiel pulled his hands away from the runes. Somehow failed—his hands inched right back. “I don’t understand that reference.”
“Metatron didn’t download it into your brain?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to search. I— Let’s just get this over with.”
Castiel let his fingers read the runes like Braille. Because Dean had asked, and he always did as Dean asked.
“Ol zir a —”
Oh God, oh Somebody! Beneath his fingertips, the runes flared up, throbbing a black-tinged scarlet—the hue of his Lance-corrupted blood. Did Dean not see? Did he read the runes aloud not because Dean had asked, but because—?
“Quansb c tol —” With each word spilling out his mouth, the timbre of his voice darkened, harshened, charged with the Archangel Michael’s ire.
He yanked at his fingers. They stayed fixed on the runes as if nailed there.
He clamped his mouth shut. Something—runic magic?—forced it open.
“Tia ds ah —”
The room rattled and shook—as if Michael’s True Form were kicking it around like a pebble-filled tin can. Bunker lights flickered. Books tumbled from shelves.
Dean ! he cried. But all that left his lips was—
“Dobix c ne —”
Rattling turned to roar. Shaking to seismic quake. Bookcase after bookcase toppled. The War Room’s table cracked in two and crashed to the floor, its World Map splintering—
“Cas!”
Bunker alarms shrieked. Wall wards strobed—
He was sinking. As if he’d stepped onto the mushy ground of a bog. Then stepped on a weak spot—
And he shot straight down into a cold scarlet-and-black.
“Cas, stop!”
The Light of CasMichael’s Grace streamed from the vessel’s eyes. “Cnila —”
“Cas!”
Hands, human hands, wrenched his wrists from the runes. His fingers scrabbled at the air, scratching after the haft. The Light of his Grace splintered away, falling around him like holy shards.
“Cas! Castiel !”
What was a Castiel?
Mud thoughts.
“Castiel !”
A human shook him. It hauled him upright by his vessel’s arms. Shouted into his face. Shouted, “Castiel !”
Castiel.
Castiel.
A wallop snapped his head to the side. A cheek stung. Whose cheek?
He reached for its forehead. Smite it. Complete the ritual. Gather the spell’s ingredients: finger bone of a demon; Grace of an anathema; Holy Oil. Set them afire. Smoke wafting to Heaven. Ashes revealing his success: his Lance, repaired!
“Cas, please, come back. I need you.”
Another human raced into the room, brown mop of hair swinging along its collarbones. It skidded to a stop. Gawked. The human in front of him flashed turbulent sea-bright eyes at it, flashed them back at him. Said, “We need you, Cas.”
Smite it, said one part of his brain.
More softly, the green-eyed human said, “I need you. I need you, Cas.”
SMITE IT.
“Cas.” Its voice broke. It knocked aside CasMichael’s upraised arm and grasped CasMichael’s cheeks in its palms. “Cas, come back ! I need you !”
I need you. A memory streaked across CasMichael’s mind, twinkling like stardust on a comet’s tail.
I need you. The memory streaked by again.
CasMichael grabbed onto it.
It pulled him—him who ?—through time and space.
To Purgatory.
Then to a crypt, one of Lucifer’s.
Both times, this human—kneeling, standing—always reaching: with voice, with sea-bright eyes—
I need you.
The other part of his brain slowly lowered his hand.
He rose from the cold scarlet-and-black, sputtering. His Grace surged, whooshing through the vessel.
Feet. Hands. Eyes—
He blinked.
Castiel blinked.
“D-Dean?”
Dean’s palms, cupped around Castiel’s stinging cheeks, tightened. He pulled Castiel close and peered into his eyes. “That you, Cas?”
“I…think so. I… Yes?”
Dean’s hands dropped to Castiel’s shoulders and gave him a shake. “What the hell was that?”
The Library lay in shambles. Only the table in front of Castiel and his chair remained untouched. The other table, overturned. The other chairs, flung across the room. All the art deco table lamps and floor lamps and display weapons and rotary phones and useless little knickknacks lay broken on the floor.
And in the War Room, a more limited—yet more pointed?—damage: the World Map shattered; the Wall Map aflame, all the pushpins marking Sam and Dean’s hunts scattering across the floor. The runes’ petty revenge for the brothers’ thwarting of Michael’s Armageddon? A promise that the runes would still bring it about, the past and all their efforts together undone?
The ruby glow of emergency lights washed over the wreckage, washed over Sam’s face, over Dean’s.
“Dean?” Castiel’s voice sounded small in his ears. “What happened?”
“You happened! What the hell, Cas. Why didn’t you stop when I told you?”
Memories bubbled up from the mud. He’d intoned the first few runes, those runes flaring up and seething with a scarlet-and-black glow. And then…And then… And then he was watching his fingers move across the glowing runes, and a voice was coming out of him—angry, abrasive, righteous. And he was sinking. Sinking and shrinking. Into a dot. And the voice was far, far away, separate from him, and the moving fingers were far, far away, separate from him, and he shriveled up further. Into an iota.
And then—
The iota shot right down and was—
Gone.
“I-I couldn’t stop. M-Michael…”
Castiel collapsed into his chair—and reached for the runes. Dull silver, now. They must glow again! Glow with a seething, scarlet-and-jet-black glow—
Dean smacked his hands, snatched up the blade. “Oh no you don’t.” He scowled at the broken bottles strewn on the floor. “Dammit, Cas, you broke our beers. Want one, Sammy?”
Dean didn’t wait for an answer. He strode for the kitchen, blade in hand.
“Some party you two were having, huh?” Sam picked his way through the wreckage, skirting toppled bookcases and stepping over jumbles of books. Crunch crunch crunch: the shattered glass of Men of Letters portraits cracked beneath his feet. He dragged a quilted blanket behind him, like a child.
“Sam…” Castiel’s voice quavered. “Sam, we were not partying.”
“I know, buddy, I know.” Sam waggled the blanket. “Not sure why, but I grabbed this off my bed when I thought the bunker was coming down around our ears.”
The tips of Castiel’s ears burned.
“But I know a good use for it.”
Sam tucked the blanket around Castiel’s shoulders and torso as if he were swaddling a papoose he feared might wriggle free. He picked up two nearby chairs, righted them, and set them to either side of Castiel. He pleated his length into the chair on Castiel’s left.
“So,” Sam said, “I was thinking, any chance you could repair the Lance?”
All the air sucked out of the room. For I am the Archangel Michael, and my greatest wrath I direct toward—
“Why—” Castiel’s voice came out a strangled croak. “Why would you ask me this after seeing the damage my simply reciting the runes did?”
“The damage, exactly.” Sam trotted his fingertips along the haft. “Just think what we could do with such a weapon, if you turned it to the side of good.”
“It is on the side of good—Michael’s good.”
Sam’s fingertips stopped. His jaw clenched. “Not Michael’s good. Real good.”
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Sam had paused on the rune for “Holy.” Next runes: Blood. Rot. Agony.
“Moral issues aside,” Castiel said, “only Michael’s Grace can repair his Lance—the Light of my Grace is to Michael’s as a firefly’s to a supernova.”
And why in Heaven’s name would he want to repair it? Invite it to take him over again—and this time, unleash Michael’s Wrath upon the entire world? All that Righteous Fury: More devastating than a thousand hurricanes drowning every shore. More relentless than wildfires sweeping the continents, razing forests to sticks. More merciless than quakes splitting the earth, swallowing cities whole.
Michael’s Wrath scouring the planet clean.
Humanity—every last soul—burned, drowned, starved, erased.
“Cas?” Sam said. “Where’d you go, buddy?”
His Grace writhed at the images he’d conjured up. “Just picturing fireflies hopped-up on runic steroids.”
Dean cruised in, carrying an army of beers in his arms and the Lance’s blade under his armpit. With practiced moves, he stooped and set the bottles onto the table en masse, not tipping over any. He handed Sam the blade, got on all fours, hunted around in the wreckage.
“What are you doing?” Sam said.
Dean held up a finger. Gimme a minute.
Dean peered under overturned bookcases, poked at knickknacks. Eventually, he fished out the bottle opener from under a half-burnt book—The Lore of Michael the Archangel. He waved it in triumph.
“We should probably get another of these. Just in case Cas here wants to play Find the Button again.”
Dean plumped down in the other oak chair, bookending Castiel on his right. He popped open two beers, handed one to Sam. “Speaking of which, what if you gave us the English version, Cas?”
Dean slid the haft along the table till it lay in front of Castiel. With no hesitation, Sam married it up with the blade. His arms bound by the blanket, Castiel couldn’t touch the injurious runes. His fingers yearned for their knifelike angles and edges. His tongue yearned for their throat-ripping consonants and vowels.
Why could they both not stop poking the beehive? Winchesters! Braver than angels, hearts as big as the world, and, and—
“Idjits,” Bobby Singer had called them.
“Are…are you asking if that would set off more quakes?”
“That’s what I’m asking, yeah.”
“I…I believe the ancient Enochian wreaked the havoc. That, and Michael’s anger infusing the runes, transmitted through me when I touched them. I’m sorry. I should’ve never—”
“No need for sorries. I coaxed, you caved, simple as that.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“What do you think, Sammy?” Dean swung his beer to his mouth. “Should we have him give it a go?”
Scrrritches of sound.
Nothing like angel radio. Like, like snakes slithering through deep grasses.
The runes—whispering. To him.
Sam, Dean! Listen! The runes! Still alive—still dangerous.
But his throat refused to release his cry.
“Go on, Cas.” Sam gave him another of his thumbs-ups. “Gotta do our bit to add to the lore. ’Sides, Dean can always give you another heartfelt sp—”
The runes erupted in scarlet and black, dancing with the laughter of vipers.
No. No. The door to Michael was opening—
Castiel leapt up, struggled free of the blanket, shoved the haft and blade toward Dean before the runes could stop him. “Lock these away from me!”
Dean’s bottle flew from his lips, beer geysering onto the table. “What’s wrong?”
The door, his anger—my touch on the runes is no longer required! The words stayed trapped in his mouth.
But this, he could do this—
He slammed his hand onto the table. “I would be Michael’s next target.”
The brothers stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Um, Cas?” Sam said. “Enochian infecting your brain?”
Castiel whirled on him. “You want to know what the runes say?”
Tell me to stop!
“They say—”
No, please, no.
Michael’s words ripped themselves from his mouth, coiling in the air. His Grace shrieked, scrambled to stuff the words back down—
But they hissed.
Then struck.
“‘I am the Destroyer of All’—”
The room quivered.
The brothers exchanged glances—they’d felt it too.
Make me stop!
“Okay, so, really not so bad.” Dean gestured with his beer. “Give us more.”
No. No!
“‘Whoever never possessed a drop of holy blood, I will catch their hearts on fire, and they will explode into dust’—”
The floor beneath Castiel’s boots flickered. Skulls—thousands of them—piled up like a cathedral vault. Then gone.
Stop! Stop! Make me stop !
“That tracks,” Dean said. “Ramiel went poof. What’s next?”
“‘F-for I am the Archangel Michael, and my greatest wrath I direct toward the rebellious Sons and Daughters of G—’”
Rebellious Sons. Rebellious Daughters—
Castiel doubled over and retched into his fist.
Dean didn’t spring from his chair and rush to him. Didn’t even glance up. Instead, Dean busied himself with his fidgety behavior, slapping the blade against his palm, as if Castiel gagging his guts out were an everyday occurrence. Sam’s posture perked up some, but only in the manner of a Men of Letters researcher curious to hear this translation of the runes.
“No surprise there, Cas,” Dean said. “What’s holy, holy, holy Michael got to say next?”
Castiel opened his hand. Rotting goo of angel innards. He yanked aside his shirt and tie and touched the skin. Rotting veins of his vessel’s flesh.
“Cas? What’s next?”
The room’s quivering abruptly escalated. Books, lamps, weapons, knickknacks shot up from the floor—and spun around the room on the wings of a whirlwind. Pages tore from lore books and flapped for the sky. The ham radio yawled with static. Electricity thundercrashed above their heads—
“I raise my Lance,” Castiel howled through the storm in his ears, “and with my fearsome Wrath I obliterate the rebellious Sons and Daughters of God. For I am the Archangel Michael! I am the Archangel Mi—!’”
With one last, raw-nerved effort of will, Castiel slammed the door on Michael, a door cracked open when the Lance had pierced him, a door growing ever wider during his recitations of the runes—
A door threatening to loose the hurricane of Michael’s Wrath upon his firefly Grace.
He fell to his knees.
Forced his eyes closed.
The debris smacked to the floor.
The room’s quivering lessened.
It eventually stopped.
Silence—but for his own shaky breaths.
No “What the hell, Cas,” from Dean.
No “Some party, huh?” from Sam.
Dean’s hands, Sam’s hands, each grabbing an arm, hoisting him up.
“You okay?” Dean said.
Sam placed a palm on Castiel’s chest, steadying his swaying. “What happened there?”
What happened? Had they both gone deaf and blind?
But the radio sat silent. Every book, weapon, lamp, and knickknack lay precisely where it’d been before. Castiel touched face, his chest. No rotting veins. No goo in his palm.
None of it real.
The whirling debris, yawling radio, even that ghastly, acrid stench that’d fouled the air from the moment Sam opened the Michael book: hallucinations. Injected into his brain by the runes to break him.
Castiel rammed his mind into focus. He shook free of the brothers’ grips and shoved the blade—hard—into Dean’s hands before the runes could wrestle it back. “They’re trying to derange me!”
A chill shuddered through his fractured Grace, more fragments of memory bubbling up through the mud. “I think… The pieces want me to guard them. To bring them to Michael when he gets free, so he can repair his Lance—”
Repair it with a spell. And one of the ingredients? The Grace of an anathema.
His Grace.
“Friggin’ archangels,” Dean said. His grip tightened on the blade’s haft.
“To kill Lucifer.” Sam scooped up the burnt Lore of Michael book from the floor and fingered through it, flakes of paper crumbling off at his touch. His hand hovered above the Raphael artwork. Michael still thrust his Lance; Satan had been crisped. “You think the runes are trying to—program you for that?”
Program. His Grace recoiled at the word. He reeled away from it and collapsed into his chair. “I would be Michael’s next target. Did you not hear me ?”
Had he not said the words aloud, but only slammed his hand onto the table? Had not even the slam of his hand been real? Had not even his “English version recitation” been real? None of it, none of it, real?
Dean set the blade down with exaggerated care. “You ? What’re you talking about?”
Castiel wrapped his broken wings around his firefly Grace, his scorched feathers trembling in the ether. “He promised to obliterate me. You—you must’ve heard that.”
And if he recited Michael’s vow aloud again—or even mentally—would the hallucinations swamp him?
Sam and Dean traded pressed-lipped looks.
“Not exactly, Cas,” Sam said. “But—”
“But no.” Dean snatched up another beer and popped it open like he was mad at it—a sharp, brown crack. “C’mon, Cas. You really think Michael believed you a rebellious son-of-a-Chuck, way back when he forged his Lance?”
“Now matters—not way back when!” Castiel buried his face in his shaking hands. “I am a rebellious son-daughter who chose humanity over Heaven. That’s why the Lance killed me slow. Not simply because I’m an angel—Crowley didn't know the full truth! Rather because—”
His Song wailed within him, piercing, chaotic clashes of chords, thick gray-yellows crashing against rattling pallid reds.
“Cas…” Fingers settled on his shoulder—Sam’s, giving him a gentle squeeze. “Because why, Cas?"
“Because I once held a drop of the Holy—and in Michael's eyes I do so no more.”
Castiel dropped his hands. Sharpened his tongue. “Or are you forgetting I flambéed that assbutt in Holy Oil?”
“Hey, hey.” Sam glommed onto the blanket. He bustled about, turning Castiel into a burrito again. From beneath a pile of rune-toppled books, he grabbed a Men of Letters’ curio: a foot-long, padlocked metal box, sigils welded onto its surface.
Angel warding. Like that on the crypt box, keeping the Angel Tablet “safe.”
And just as with the crypt box, he’d be powerless to open it. (A small mercy.)
Sam seized the Lance blade, wedged it inside. With more force than necessary, he snapped the sigiled padlock shut. “There. He tries anything, we stop him—just like before. You know you did the right thing with Michael, Cas.”
A vise clamped down on Castiel’s heart. “And thus, I am reviled by my own kind. I am alone.”
“You got us, bro,” Sam said.
You’re family, both brothers had told him this very evening.
But he wasn’t.
He was—
Wired too tight: Missed too many nuances of human behavior. Made too many decisions based on cosmic calculus, not factoring in the—incomprehensible—emotional consequences. Unable to seamlessly slot into their dynamics.
And amongst angels—
“A freak. Both here and in Heaven. Everyone knows it.”
“Freaking awesome, you mean.” Dean, seated again, drinking again, leaned forward and tapped the table with his forefinger. “You know what your best quality is?”
The vise clamped tighter. “Not my intensity, my short-sightedness, my un-sugared nature.”
“Where did that come from?” Sam snugged the blanket taut.
“Dean says female vessels can’t have those qualities for him to—”
“Whoa!” Dean lifted a hand, chopped it down like an ax. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What Cas means is— Never mind what he means. Go back to bed, Sammy.”
Sam’s eyebrows climbed up to his hairline. “You too? What am I, ten? Besides, this just got interesting.”
“Yeah? Cas nearly nuking the bunker with Enochian wasn’t interesting enough for y—?”
“Did I say something wrong?” Under the blanket, Castiel pressed his trembling palm to his chest, as if he could ease the vise’s ache. Dean had shut him down because…because Sam might figure out he’d asked Dean if he would’ve preferred him in a female vessel? And, and, Dean found the idea so off-putting he couldn’t bear hearing it again?
His bookends turned to him. Sam’s eyebrows climbed down. Dean’s mouth un-set.
“No, no, you’re good, Cas.” Sam did his once over, twice over, thrice over thing, taking in both Castiel and Dean. He stepped to Dean and bent himself in two, his lips a mere inch from his brother’s ear. “Dude almost died tonight, remember?” he said, his words whispers of emerald, soft and mossy, gentled by care. “Let him talk about whatever he wants without jumping all over his ass, all right?”
“He almost died, we almost died, we’re all almost always dying—or dead,” Dean growled under his breath, his tones as rough as maple bark—with the faintest hint of quiet amethyst, deep, deep inside.
“I can hear you both perfectly,” Castiel said. “I can hear a mouse nibble cheese on the moon.”
“You’re speaking figuratively, I assume,” Sam said.
“No,” Castiel said.
“Ookay, then,” Dean said. “Good to know. Mice on the moon, and no private whisper-fights around Cas. So let me say it loud and proud: Go the hell to bed, Sammy.”
“But the room—”
“We’ll clean it up in the morning.”
“The Lance—”
Sam nabbed the sigiled box.
Dean plucked it out of Sam’s hands.
“I’ll lock up both pieces myself, good and angel-proof. Go to bed.”
Sam twisted his mouth into a tight red knot—his “you’re an asshole, Dean” look. “’Night again, Cas. Hope the blanket helps.”
“Thank you. And I-I promise, I’ll do my best to replace your damaged lore books. But”—Castiel’s fingers fretted with the blanket, his feathers fretted in the ether—“oh, Sam, Dean, the World table, your Wall Map—”
“Hey, no prob, buddy.” Dean lifted his beer and tipped it to Castiel. Then he drank down the last of it. “I got woodworking skills—rebuilding Baby ain’t my only blue-collar gift. Just need us a map, slap some glass over it—better than new.”
“And we’ve got plenty of maps, Cas,” Sam said. “World maps, U.S. maps—I’ve come across copies in the storeroom.”
“There you go.” Under the table, Dean bumped Castiel’s knee with his leg.
On purpose?
Castiel held his Grace still, except for the trembling he couldn’t control.
“I’ll go get them,” Sam said.
“No, you won’t.” Dean scooped up the spell bowl from the table, cocked his arm. “Don’t make me throw this at you.”
Sam trotted away through the wreckage—and into the War Room.
“Now what?” With a huff, Dean lowered the bowl but didn’t let go of it.
Sam knelt and swept all the scattered pushpins into his palm. Back at Castiel’s side, he poured them onto the table in a little pile. Only a colorful jumble, now. But when the brothers hung the new Wall Map, he’d be the one to press each one into its proper place: The Sam and Dean Constellation of Monster Hunts.
“Yes,” Castiel said, as if Sam had asked him a question. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Dean.
The vise’s grip let up, just a bit.
Another fist-bop to his shoulder. “Go Team Free Will.”
“For cryin’ out loud,” Dean said. “Go. To. BED.”
“Taking this.” Sam swiped the Lance haft from in front of Dean. “You don’t have the required three arms.”
He snailed out, loitering at toppled bookshelves, perusing the titles of flung-about books—and side-eyeing glances their way. Eventually, he ran out of any more room to snail. He shot Dean one last “asshole” look and left with a wave of his hand.
Dean thunked the spell bowl onto the table, spun it with his finger. “Your best quality? You screw up—but turn around and make things right. Me? Can’t ever admit I botched it, let alone suck it up and correct stuff. I, uh…” Dean’s finger gave the spell bowl another spin, his gaze flitting about the room—everywhere but at Castiel. “Well, buddy, I admire you for that.”
“Admire,” Castiel said. Admire. Not love.
Dean rubbed his hands over his face. “Dammit, Cas, tonight’s must be the weirdest talks we’ve ever had—and we’ve had some doozies.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not a problem. But I’m tired too. Gonna turn in.”
Dean lazed to his feet, scraped up his jacket, draped it over his arm. He corralled his army of beers between his palms and stacked them atop the sigiled box, ordering them, “Stay.”
He hoisted the box and ambled toward the bedrooms.
And silence and shadows and the ruby glow of emergency lights fell around him.
Like a curtain on the final act.
No. No, please. There’re still things I want to—need to—know, and we’ll never return to this discussion.
Castiel sat rigid, shivering in his blanket, his tattered feathers flapping about him as if to teleport him over to the exit and plant himself in front of Dean.
Dean, please, stop!