—Day 145—
Staring at the bags by the door at two hours past dawn, even Dean can’t explain what’s bothering him. Amanda, not having a Cas-shaped alarm for dawn, is running late, which is giving him way too much time to have absolutely no idea what he’s feeling (best guess: restless?) or why.
Cas, demonstrating his multitasking as well as his human skills, looks over the top of the open laptop—he’s really wondering if Chitaqua needs to be part of the (sort of) Information Age, what’s wrong with paper again?—to ask, “Do you not want to go because you feel your duty is to remain here or because you think I have some objections to you going that I’m concealing from you? Which,” he adds in the spirit of honesty and open communication (Dean assumes), “you have reason to question.”
Dean looks his ‘yeah, and how.’
“I have no objections to you going,” Cas says, staring into his eyes. “Does that help?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll start with duty and see if that provides enlightenment.” Cas eases the laptop aside—proof of Serious Conversation these days like nothing else—and considers Dean across the width of the coffee table. “Your duty is—be our leader. That isn’t synonymous with constant residency in Chitaqua. In fact,” he adds, “it would be counterproductive if you did so. As you told me once, they need to know you. Regular visits to Ichabod are to be encouraged. It doesn’t show any lack of faith in Amanda’s abilities as a commander.”
“Which weirdly enough, not something that occurred to me until now. Thanks, Cas.”
Cas doesn’t roll his eyes, but he looks like maybe he wants to. “This is still very new, and Alison and Amanda are both reassured by your regular attention. In Amanda’s case especially, since this is her first command and she assumes when you replace her, she’ll be able to help the new commander adapt more quickly.”
“You still haven’t told her it’s permanent?” Dean asks, dropping down on the other side of the couch and giving Cas a long look. “Why?”
“You’re her commander,” Cas answers annoyingly. “That would be more your responsibility than mine.”
“Don’t even try that one. You wanted her there—”
“You didn’t object.”
“She was my choice, but you got in before I could say anything.” Cas’s eyes narrow, which makes Dean’s indecently early morning. “So since it was your appointment, your responsibility. You had a reason—you always do—so let’s work on our communication skills. Why don’t you want her to know yet?”
Cas makes a face, but it’s mostly at himself. “Right now all she worries about is making an excellent impression on the communities and training her students. She doesn’t think she has to impress you—in fact, your check-ins are solidifying the impression that you’re observing the general progress of our tenure there, not her performance as a commander specifically—so she simply does the job asked of her to the best of her abilities without worrying if she’s doing it the way you want one of your lieutenants to do it. By the time we leave—”
“If,” Dean says, just because he can.
“When,” Cas says, giving him a sharp look, “she’ll be used to the position, and so finding out it’s permanent won’t lead to worrying if she’s doing it the way you want her to, but instead confirm that the way she does it is correct.”
Which was kind of what Dean was thinking, and probably the reason that Cas has been cagey about the subject before. Amanda has been out of training and on duty for over two years before he got here, and there’s no way she didn’t pick up how Dean liked to do things back then, and if she thought he was evaluating her, she might slip into that by sheer habit.
Which is why, he assumes, Cas wants him to tell her she was commanding Ichabod; if she thought she was only Cas’s choice, then she’d assume Dean would replace her with his own when he decided who he wanted. Not bad for a former angel, Dean thinks fondly: manipulative as fuck, but using it for good.
“To return to the original subject,” Cas says, obviously hoping Dean will do just that, “your visits now are necessary, and over time, should more of the people here accept our help, they’ll set the pattern for interaction with them to assure them of our good intentions. And Amanda’s students need to see you observe them,” he adds more slowly. “They’re only hers until training is complete, but they’ve been yours since they began training. They need to know the man who will be commanding them when they’re done.”
“You’re good,” Dean admits. “You thought about this.”
“I have,” Cas agrees in satisfaction. “Your duty is to go forth and be an example to others. Mine,” looking at the laptop with calculating eyes, “is to make Access my bitch.” It almost makes Dean feel bad for the programs that Cas will be bringing to their trembling knees. “And also to act as your proxy in Chitaqua, in case that wasn’t obvious. Which is, if I remember correctly, the primary reason you asked me to do this.”
Dean grimaces, thinking of Cas on the roof of the cabin, watching the world from behind Chitaqua’s walls; a trap is a trap, no matter how it’s baited. “I feel like I’m trapping you here.”
“You aren’t trapping me here. I assure you it’s by my choice.” The blue eyes flicker to the window, speculative. “The corruptive influence of power over a small population is addictive. I plan to institute a system of tribute soon. Preferably of coffee.”
“Glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Still not satisfied, he considers again not going, even though actually, Cas just removed every sane (and admittable) reason he has to do just that, which leaves—fuck his life—feelings.
The Insert Winter Holiday You Celebrate Thing in the mess last night was more or less Dean’s first real party at Chitaqua (no way in Hell he’s counting the Burning of the Former Team Leaders Night), and it was pretty much what he expected. Experience with Lisa, and more recently in Ichabod, kicked in automatically on how you do parties with significant others that were surprisingly applicable to Chitaqua’s version (something like a cross between a neighborhood barbecue and a work party without kids, more weapons, about the same number of hookups but the sex wasn’t necessarily illicit, and no adultery happening anywhere, especially in his and Lisa’s (or his and Cas’s) bedroom. Christ, some people).
Better, even: he and Cas know everyone in Chitaqua, at no point did the inevitable ‘so what do you do?’ come up (much less be a loaded question with a multiple choice answer requiring careful navigation and a lot of lying), no one asked how they got together (see ‘what do you do?’ for reference on how that usually worked) and all the topics of conversation were shit he knew and were relevant to his life. Sure, he might have been missing a little history, but that just made it more interesting, since a.) Cas was a fucking wizard filling in the blanks without looking like that’s what he was doing (with added sarcasm), b.) his tragic fever-related memory issues explained everything and hey, he’d almost forgotten about that (irony: they’ve met), leading to c.) he learned things he’s pretty sure this Dean never knew about and d.) things this Dean wouldn’t have been told about period. So there’s that.
(Yeah, he’s that fucking petty, and he’s okay with that.)
More importantly, he thinks that last night was the first time Cas realized he was a hunter, and not just in name or by the will of Dean goddamn Winchester, and what that meant in Chitaqua. Like everyone else in the room, the reason he started wasn’t necessarily the reason he was still doing it, and like many of them (more than Dean would have thought), given the choice now, he’d still want to. If visiting Ichabod taught Dean nothing else, it’s that the residents of Chitaqua, by avocation (and isolation, granted), have more in common with each other—including Cas—than pretty much anyone else on earth. And this group, for some of the same reasons, are exactly the right audience for someone whose conversational skills consists of weapons-grade sarcasm, brutal honesty, and utter bafflement with humans (that’s everyone, dude), and whose store of relevant anecdotes include all of history. How everyone in this camp managed to miss it for this long is a mystery, but Dean’s glad everyone’s caught up on the obvious (and Jesus, Cas’ mockery of Sparta was like—yeah, he wouldn’t have called that about Leonidas, just saying).
Then came the other part.
Insert Winter Holiday You Celebrate Thing was a room in which everyone was eating everything in sight, getting drunk, singing (badly), hooking up between snacks and trading guitars (they have guitars?), Zoe was holding court as Love Guru Mark II surrounded by the goddamn groupie contingent and that moment was when he realized something else. He knows them as individuals now, sure, but sitting together like that (and a few noticeably high), the once-vague faceless memories of groups going to Cas’s back in the day suddenly had names, faces, and he’s their commander and he used to watch them go to Cas’s for sex before patrol meetings. He may or may not (definitely did) see a few of them in medias fornication with him.
And hey, they weren’t the only ones, by the way. Just in case the stunningly obvious was somehow missed here.
He was no longer at a fun party; he was at a fun party surrounded by Cas’s (former) sex life. As Cas’s official boyfriend, even. (While Phil and Matt looked depressed in a corner, like Phil had any fucking grounds, and yeah, that would be the moment he realized exactly what he was dealing with. Fuck Phil). In the infirmary, after Jeffrey shot him, Cas told him that he didn’t think Dean would be okay with being commander of people he knew Cas was sleeping with, and it’s not that he didn’t agree (for vague reasons he felt no need to examine), it’s that he figured (because optimism does this shit) that he’d deal. In retrospect, he’s glad that was never put to the test, because that wouldn’t have ended well even by accident, for anyone, and he’s pretty sure then is nothing—and he does mean nothing—compared to what his reaction would be right now.
Beside the point, however (mostly): right now, he thinks the reason he doesn’t want to go is because Cas isn’t, and not just because he wants to hang out with Cas (though yeah, there’s that). It’s not that he doesn’t understand Cas’s reasons for staying, but he also slept alone on that mattress last night while Cas slept on the couch, which is what they’ve been doing (when not in Ichabod or hosting sweatshirt-throwing guests), so there’s no reason for him to suspect that maybe—just maybe—Cas doesn’t want to go for reasons meaning Dean himself. He’s not paranoid like that.
Mostly, all he can think is why the fuck this went down in the bathroom where there was literally nothing not working against him (nudity, steam, reports, hickey, mirror, Cas singing, which didn’t happen yet but will). Including Cas himself and that fucking ready-made plan to handle the tragic fallout of the Great Couch Groping Thing, and that right there is why Cas shouldn’t be left alone to think, or at least doing it unsupervised.
(Absolutely true statement of fact as example: I assure you, even if I’d jerked you off last night, you’d be just as heterosexual today as you were before. Even the fucking truth is working against him.)
(Why didn’t he just drop the sweatshirt on the floor? Throw it: what was that about? Drop it on the floor, how hard would that have been?)
Sighing, he gives up; he already packed for a couple of nights, Amanda swore Alison would have a lasagna night just for him, and they have to finalize details about their presence on New Year’s. Cas would really like lasagna; he should get the recipe.
“Yeah, okay.” Fixing Cas with a glare, he adds, “Next time, think you could rearrange your busy schedule to join me? If it wouldn’t be too difficult or anything.”
“I’ll pencil it in as a possibility,” Cas deadpans, but since he doesn’t go back to his laptop, Dean assumes there’s something else he’s got on his mind. “There’s another reason that, at least for the foreseeable future, I should remain here during your absences.”
“Oh?” He hopes he’s managing ‘interested’ and not ‘holy shit, now there’s a plan in place to spend less time around me’ which—Christ, stop. That doesn’t even make sense.
“We don’t have a clear line of succession.”
Dean takes a deep breath, trying to decide if he wants to actually hear this. “Cas—”
“Considering the events that occurred after Kansas City—that being an effective coup—it’s clear that one needs to be established. We need at least three people who can take over should you be disabled in some way that requires more than temporary oversight of the camp. Just as importantly, if I’m unable to fulfill my duties—or killed—they can take my place.”
“No one,” Dean says flatly, “can do that.”
Cas rolls his eyes this time, because he’s like that. “I have potential candidates—”
“That part, I like. Let’s hear ‘em.”
“Vera, Joseph, Amanda, Melanie, Alicia, and Kamal. Not necessarily in that order—”
“Dude, I know you; that’s exactly the order you mean.”
“That doesn’t,” Cas says stiffly, “mean it has to be yours. Amanda might be a better choice, but she’s needed where she is, and Ichabod’s too new, and she’s our only instructor. Later—”
“Do they know?”
“Not yet,” Cas answers, even more stiffly. “Your approval, in this case, is a requirement.”
“I like it—one change, though.” Leaning his head on his hand. “If I go down, my first choice is you.”
It’s comforting to know Cas can still miss the completely and totally obvious to everyone in the known world. Or Chitaqua and five trading partner communities, anyway.
“Yeah, I should have said something,” Dean continues without any intention of being believed. “But I was worried about your performance—you know, wanting to be a good lieutenant and everything, so—”
“Dean.”
“If I’m disabled or killed, you’ll be the one who steps up, just like you did before, but at least this time you’ll know about it,” Dean says. “Two times now, Cas, it’s been close. We can’t risk what happened when Dean died happening again, you’re right about that much. He took everyone who knew what to do when he went after Lucifer; we’re not making that mistake this time.”
“Dean—”
“Okay, injured, fever, out of my mind, whatever,” because it wasn’t like talking about his own death and the end of the world was something he was interested in doing. “That’s gonna happen again. Me not being here? It’s happening now. We learned how to do this together—and we’re still doing that—which is pretty convenient, come to think. We’re gonna teach them everything we’ve learned, and we make sure they know what it is we do and what we don’t.”
Cas leaned back against the couch, blue eyes thoughtful. “We aren’t anyone’s private army.”
“And that includes Chitaqua’s leadership.” He blows out a breath. “It’s not just about Chitaqua anymore. Ichabod and the other towns are our responsibility; they don’t have time for us to have a crisis of leadership, and they can’t afford for us to have a change in policy. That goddamn fever….” It was just weirdly good luck, too, that everyone thought Dean was banging Cas then. Like, the stupidest good luck ever. “They know you’re my second and they answer to you just like they do to me; all we’re doing is making sure that everyone—and I mean everyone—knows you’re also my successor.”
“If I agree,” Cas says, “can we end this depressing conversation? Or at least supplement it with alcohol and a soundtrack? Something in emo, perhaps?”
“Blues,” Dean says firmly; boybands, fine, he can roll with it, but there are lines. “Almost done: if we go south—shut up,” Cas shuts his mouth with a disgruntled look, “we need two people ready to take over in our absence, and I’d like a third for backup.”
“Vera—”
“And who won’t coup us in our absence,” Dean says seriously, but Cas’s expression tells him he failed at keeping a straight face. “On the other hand: if she doesn’t like who we leave, she might coup them, so….what about putting Kyle and Cynthia in charge? Give it two days and vive la revolution and the inevitable two casualties that result, but that happens in war.”
“I feel as if perhaps my—incorrect—concerns regarding Cynthia when she was on James’s team have influenced you unduly.” He wets his lips, and Dean watches the flicker of pink way too intently before catching himself just as Cas adds, “You were correct regarding my ambivalence—and distrust—of the other members of the camp due to the actions of a few.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Dean tells him, bracing an elbow on the back of the couch. “Growing as a person, all that. Good job, Cas.”
“Or not,” Cas says with a bright, malicious smile. “At least as it applies to this room. As I was saying—”
“I don’t like her,” Dean states. “And I don’t trust her.”
He watches Cas debate how to phrase what he’s pretty sure is coming next. “If it’s because I don’t—”
“That would be the reason, yeah.” Cas makes a face. “Give me a reason I should.”
“Other than the fact you shouldn’t allow yourself to be influenced by…” And that look again. “Just because we don’t get along should have no bearing on your relationship with her.”
“I’d love to know why not.” Cas straightens, and yeah. “Get up here.”
Cas hesitates before joining him on the couch—the other side, but still—folding himself into the corner to look at Dean blankly.
“I won’t put her—or anyone—in the field if I don’t think I can trust them to watch each other’s backs,” he says, leaning his head on one hand. “I’m going on faith with most of ‘em, yeah, but Cynthia already made one thing clear; she won’t watch yours.”
“You don’t know that—”
“We both know that,” Dean interrupts. “She set up her team leader to fail when she was on James’ team; that alone would have had her kicked off the patrol teams for good, and she’s lucky she didn’t get a ten day ration pack and a twenty mile drive to anywhere but here. But I wouldn’t have risked her on a team in the first place—much less put her on James’—if I’d known there was any chance at all she was one of the ones at your cabin that night. Cas, look at me.” Reluctantly, Cas looks up, eyes unreadable. “If I ever find out she was there, the best she can hope for is that she gets a knife and twenty-four hours to get out of Kansas before I go hunting. And everyone in this camp will know exactly why.”
Cas stills, searching his face for a long moment before sitting back. “You mean that.”
“Yeah, I do.” He doesn’t need to say what they both know; Cynthia will survive exactly as long as it takes Amanda to find her, and that’ll be less than twenty-four hours whether she’s on this side of the border or not. Thing is, even that’s the best case scenario; right now, he doesn’t think he can shoot someone in cold blood two years after the fact for a crime they failed to commit, no matter how much he might want her dead, but six months ago, he never would have even thought to ask the question. “Joe,” he says, deciding a return to the original subject is in order before he has to decide just how sure he is of his current answer. “Vera and Joe, Mel and Alicia as backup since yeah, we need Amanda at Ichabod. What do you think?”
To his relief, Cas goes with it. “They work well together, and between them, they can keep the patrol schedule stable and regular contact with the border and the communities we are protecting. Joseph is already our representative to the alliance, and all the mayors know him, and by the time we leave, they’ll be familiar enough with Vera to be comfortable with the temporary change in leadership.”
“Unless she coups us,” Dean offers, and has the satisfaction of seeing Cas’s faint smile. “We need to be here for Amanda to finish her first class and get them integrated—introduce them around, get them on the schedule—”
“Amanda gave me the list of recruits with a provisional evaluation of their potential,” Cas interrupts, reaching for his laptop and tapping a few keys before turning it toward Dean. “Barring any unforeseen difficulties—”
“…is this the schedule for the next six months?” Dean asks blankly, squinting at the screen. “You got them in already?”
“They will have their adjustment period here before we assign some of them permanently to the camp we’re building in Ichabod, per our agreement with Alison,” Cas answers didactically. “Two of the current districts and those communities will be assigned as their routes, and we can begin, if you wish, to approach more of the communities. By then, Alison believes that our reputation will have spread enough they won’t immediately hide from us or assume we’re attempting to conquer them.”
“I like starting on the least terrifying foot,” Dean agrees, scanning the list. He recognizes some of the names from Amanda’s class are already listed, awesome, but…. “Okay, wait, who is Person20? We’re only getting—”
“I forgot to tell you,” Cas interrupts so casually that he’s immediately suspicious. “Amanda also reported that she has sufficient recruits to begin a second class when this one is done.”
Startled, Dean looks at the patrol schedule again. “When? Why didn’t she tell me?”
“I told her I would. Approval has been granted by Ichabod’s council for us to recruit ten to a maximum of twenty of Ichabod’s residents per class, provided that Chitaqua compensates for the town’s loss of labor with a proportional increase in our own for the town,” Cas answers placidly. “As that was reasonable and consummate with the original terms, I agreed and told Joe that would be among the terms when our residence in Ichabod is officially made permanent and we begin formation of our second base there.”
Oh. “Okay, so about ten to twenty per class.” Dean tries to remind himself that isn’t much, that they need an army, but despite himself, excitement bubbles up, irrepressible. He’d been honest when he told Alison one made a difference; anything more is just icing. Forty to eighty in a year, though, is a hell of a lot of icing. Maybe get some other communities to think about joining up. Maybe…he cut himself off. “Sweet.”
“Amanda also asked permission, pending the results of this class, to raise the number she and Mark could train in the next group,” Cas adds, turning the laptop back around and tapping the touchpad. “I gave provisional approval, with the final decision when I’ve evaluated her first group of recruits.”
“Why?” Dean thinks back to the people coming from the other towns and felt another frisson of excitement he tried desperately to tamp down. “So next class, how many does she want?”
“Fifty.”
Dean blinks. “Fifty?”
“Yes, fifty.” Cas frowns at the laptop. “She sent a tentative list of those who had spoken to her already, but she anticipates there may be more as word of what we’re doing in Ichabod spreads beyond those communities we are contracted to. Traders seem to be spreading the word.”
Dean does the math; about two months, twenty more; three after that, they get fifty. Jesus, that’s— “Fifty people want to sign up for the war on evil?”
“No,” Cas says, still frowning at the screen and ignoring Dean’s surprise. “More than fifty requested consideration, but she felt fifty was the maximum number that she and Mark could handle at this time. Did you know the largest single attack on a town by a group of Croats was ten?”
“No.” Scooting down the couch, he turns the laptop, trying to interpret the endless columns of data and Cas’s personal code. “Cas—”
“None were ever accompanied by demons; those tended to be discrete, though equally destructive.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Dean scrolls right—that is a lot of columns—then goes back and to the top. “Person42? How—”
“I wasn’t aware there was footage of the attack.”
Crap, he forgot about that. “Yeah, that. Walter—”
“Cameras, attack vector, I heard.” Something in Cas’s voice gets his full attention. “After an attack, the towns’ patrol leaders meet to discuss the details and plan for future attacks, and Manuel and Teresa asked Tony to accompany him to this one, as well as Amanda and two teams of her students who participated in the defense of the town. Despite the fact that Manuel had no history of lying, they didn’t believe—the statistics.”
“They showed them the footage.” That’s why Tony was there. “Cas, I didn’t know—”
“They wouldn’t have,” Cas interrupts. “Except it was the only way to convince them—the largest single attack that they know of on a town consisted of ten Croats. Out of six hundred residents, three survived; that’s the only reason anyone knows that town even existed.”
Dean nods, licking his lips. “The town….”
“There’s nothing left of it,” Cas says. “It was less than twenty miles from the eastern Kansas border, and proximity to an uninfected state tends to get a very thorough response from the military, even if it’s after the fact. However, that’s beside the point.” Dean raises his eyebrows; that sounds like one hell of a not point. “There were four hundred and thirteen Croat bodies recovered from Ichabod.”
Dean checks his nod. “A lot, yeah, overkill.”
“And four confirmed demon deaths.” Cas takes a breath. “They didn’t know demons could be killed.” Dean assumes his expression conveys his interest and not wondering what the point is. “Fifty Croats is enough to quarantine a city; the spread of infection is so fast there are no survivors because we can’t get to them before they’re infected or dead. Fifty active Croats means ten times that number are infected already, and half of them are at stage two and infecting others without even knowing it.”
“Ichabod had quarantine procedures, they knew what they were doing—”
“They did, which makes a difference,” Cas says with a half-exasperated, half-fond smile. “They were able to implement best case scenario; Ichabod’s patrol was able to concentrate on protecting the survivors and getting them to safety and then do a full and thorough sweep of all streets and the surrounding area as well as isolate those potentially infected immediately. Their procedures were flawless, but generally, implementing them requires there be time to leave the immediate fight for their lives and those around them to establish a perimeter inside which procedure could be followed.”
“So we helped with that.”
“The timeline Manuel gave to the rather stunned patrol leaders of the other towns shows a hard perimeter was established within one hour of the first—and very unexpected—attack on the north fields, which Amanda’s students were instrumental in assisting them form and defend. Kamal’s team began initial sweeps, allowing Ichabod’s patrol to defend the survivors and get them to safety. The appearance of another group of Croats two hours after that technically broke the perimeter line, yes, but we were warned, and none of them survived their arrival at Second Street in any case.”
“You and Amanda killed them all,” Dean agrees, because yeah, he does have a copy of the footage and fuck the blizzard for electricity rationing, he’s gotta see this.
“Two teams of students helped under our supervision,” Cas says, and Dean makes a note to steal more blankets because he’s watching that goddamn tape without heat or lights if he has to. Soon. “Five hours after the initial attack, all Croats were dead, the infected identified or in isolation, and the casualties totaled sixty-three, not including the human infiltrators, the majority of which occurred within the town square.” There’s the briefest hesitation. “You were responsible for the fact there were survivors at all.”
Dean nods shortly; they really should return to the subject, which was….Cas’s fucking spreadsheet, right. Picking up the laptop from the coffee table, he stares at it until a column finally resolves into a list of names. “Right, so—you said you’re planning for a year?”
“Six months,” Cas says beside him as Dean continues to scroll, frowning as he reaches the end: Person01, Person39, Person86, eighty six, he guesses they could get that many in the next year. “Dean—” Abruptly, Cas pushes his hand away, minimizing the spreadsheet.
“Hey, I was looking at—”
“This,” Cas says, opening a new spreadsheet—how many does Cas have? Not a question he wants answered—and list of names that aren’t PersonNumber. “Read it,” Cas says, sitting back.
Glancing at Cas warily, he reaches for the touchpad and starts scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling. “Uh—”
“The other towns are interested in—our method.”
Dean removes his fingers from the touchpad, staring at the names. “Cas—”
“A town of one thousand individuals survived an attack of four hundred and thirteen Croats and six demons with only sixty-three casualties. And Chitaqua’s leader, with only two guns and insufficient ammunition and still recovering from a fever that almost killed him less than three months before, stopped what would have been a wholesale slaughter of every living being in the daycare,” Cas continues softly. “As well stopped a human sacrifice from being performed in the courtyard of Ichabod. Alone.”
Distantly, he notices his hands are beginning to tremble. “How many?”
“Four hundred and thirty-eight individuals from the trade alliance approached Amanda and requested consideration to join Chitaqua before the blizzard.” Dean jerks his gaze to Cas, who grins back. “They heard we were going to win this, and they want in.”