It's the Stars That Lie: October 5

Out of the fire, back in the frying pan.

—Day 63—

That’s a lie, he discovers. And not even a good one.

Dean wakes up these days in stages, rising into consciousness like being dragged from the bottom of the ocean to a heavy, lethargic mass of low-grade aches that surrounds him, pinning him in place for what feels like forever before he finally gets used to it, remembers that this is how a body feels.

Everything else comes even more slowly: the give of the mattress beneath him; the ceiling stretched out above him; the walls of the room closing around him; but the longest part is the worst of all. Consciousness is an adventure every goddamn time: he pulls the pieces of himself together into some kind of coherent whole, making sense of the mess that’s him and who he’s supposed to be and what happened to him. While his name comes the fastest, the rest of it always takes time.

Dean, Chitaqua, brownies, fever, infection: he’s got it. His ankle hurts—hairline fracture, Vera was right—but it’s healing: his arm throbs dully and it’s getting better, or so they say; he still can barely feel it.

Slitting his eyes open, the room’s a dim, blurry mess around him, and he blinks slowly, waiting for focus like he waits for his name and the details of his life. Eventually, he identifies the sound of voices over the flat, monotonous beep of the heart monitor, and waits again for them to become more distinct, first resolving into two separate ones, and then, finally, making out the actual words and what they mean.

One’s Cas, though; he always knows the sound of his voice, sometimes before he knows anything else.

“…reflexes last night,” a woman is saying. “He’s on the extreme high end of normal, which shouldn’t surprise me, considering what happened when he was hallucinating.”

Turning his head carefully on the pillow, he stares in the direction of the doorway, waiting—he’s always waiting, always—for the slow spin to stop from the sudden movement. Eventually, the blurred suggestion of a doorway forms, Cas slumping against it and facing a woman—Vera, his mind supplies in relief—who’s reading from a clipboard barely restraining a small mountain of paper.

“You’re still surprised,” Cas says, managing to give the impression the wall is the only thing holding him up because he just can’t bother making the effort to do it for himself. Pushing his hair back from his eyes, he raised his eyebrows. “I assume you’re following—”

“Yes, yes, I still disarm before coming in here, I’m not stupid.” Now that’s interesting; he wishes he could follow up, but experience confirms he learns a lot more when they think he’s out. “I’d kill for a baseline on him, something. Darryl didn’t leave any records, the fucker, so I’m working from observation and a lot of guessing. Even for a hunter…never mind.” Faintly, he hears the sound of shuffling paper and squinting, he can see her skimming them with professional familiarity. “For someone on their deathbed a week ago, he’s doing remarkably well, by which I mean hostile, uncooperative, and cranky as hell. Dean Winchester is definitely in the building.”

Bullshit: he’s a model goddamn patient.

“He’s always perfectly pleasant with me,” Cas says, crossing his arms and confirming exactly how wrong Vera is.

“You ever heard of ‘divide and conquer’?” she asks, glancing up. “Learn it, watch it in action next time he wakes up.”

“I am not familiar with that reference,” Cas tries in his best ‘human ways are strange to me’ voice, which just might work with pretty much anyone who hasn’t actually met him.

Case in point. “Like I’m going to fall for that.” There’s another rustle of paper before she sighs. “You know, if there were still medical journals, I’d be selling this to all of them. I don’t even know anymore. Miracle is such a cliché, but….”

“You do realize that humanity survived plagues, infections, injuries, and all manner of viral infections before the advent of modern medicine?” Cas asks curiously. “There was a high mortality rate, granted, but survival of the fittest, or something like that, I think. Darwin was extremely annoying, much like Calvin, so I didn’t pay close attention.” He makes an irritated sound. “Is it a human characteristic to choose the most obnoxious possible person in any given era and name a major political, scientific, or religious movement after them? Why?”

There’s a brief, baffled silence, and he finds himself fighting a grin at Vera’s expression. “God, you’re like this when you’re clean?”

“Verily,” Cas answers. “Have you actually read Origin of Species in its entirety? It’s an excellent alternative to chemical sedatives, should we run out of them. I tested this: two chapters or less, I’m unconscious or desperately wishing I were. Even Valium doesn’t have such consistent results.”

He’s not gonna laugh. He’s not. No matter how much he wants to.

“Do I want to know what Calvin did to piss you off?” Vera asks, like she knows she’s gonna regret it but can’t stop herself. He knows the feeling.

“Predestination.”

Dean and Vera wince in unison at the edge in Cas’s voice: time for a new subject.

“Right. So, uh….” He hears the sound of papers being shuffled in what sounds like desperation before Vera sighs in something suspiciously like relief. “So where were we….right. Short term memory still seems a little off, not a surprise, he’s only been awake a week, so we just need to watch him. Long term, though—he’s said a couple of things, especially when he’s feverish….”

“That’s normal, isn’t it?” Cas interrupts.

“Yeah, I’m not worried,” she assures him. “Some retrograde amnesia is common and usually fixes itself, given time. Even if it doesn’t—if all he comes out with is some sketchiness in recent long term memory, that’s better than the best a specialist probably would have predicted. There’s something else….” She pauses, voice dropping. “I never knew he had a brother.”

Dean swallows, mouth dry, as Cas says, “Vera.”

“I’m not asking anything; it’s his business and I’d never expect you to confirm or deny. Tell him—just tell him that nothing that happened during the fever goes any farther than here.”

“I will,” Cas says quietly.

She studies the clipboard again, flipping the sheets rapidly. “I’m not a neurologist, and my rotation in that department was short. Take as a given the spots probably won’t get worse and there’s a good chance they’ll get better. I’ll send Alicia for some more texts, but this is in territory I’d need a medical library, a degree, and about a decade or so in the field to know enough about to guess. Mostly, it’ll be a matter of him learning where the spots are and not freaking out about them. Could use a therapist, maybe—”

“Yes, I’m sure Dean would be happy to speak to a psychologist. Do you know where we can acquire one?”

Vera laughs then covers her mouth, looking guilty. “Let’s not tempt Joe. For now, if you notice anything—I’d say don’t draw attention to it, but Dean can and will be pissed if he notices and you pretend you don’t, so whatever keeps him calm and focused on getting better. Right now, any stress could cause a relapse, and his body doesn’t have the reserves to deal with it. There’s no margin for error here.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Cas says thoughtfully. “I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to aid in his recovery.”

She raises her eyebrows in polite disbelief. “Have you met him?”

“He’s listening to us now.” His eyes flicker to Dean with a hint of amusement, and Dean stares back, wondering how the hell he knew. Turning his attention back to Vera, Cas adds with painful earnestness, “I would have told you he’d awakened, but I didn’t want to risk him trying to get up and follow us if we went out of his hearing range. That would also be stressful, correct? I certainly don’t want to be responsible for slowing his progress.”

Vera stares at Cas like she doesn’t know he’s, like, world champion of the expressionless stare and there’s no way she’s gonna win this one.

“Dean,” Cas says in the exact same voice, “do you recognize us?”

“No,” he answers deliberately. “Mickey? Disneyland?”

“He’s always been insane,” Cas tells her. “You didn’t notice before? How on earth could you miss it?”

Vera’s eyes narrow before she jerks her head toward the door. “Yeah, I’m gonna take a nap on the couch. You got him until I wake up.”

Cas just doesn’t know when to quit. “If I need you—”

“If he’s not in full arrest for at least a minute, I’ll shoot you,” she says over her shoulder. “Then I’ll know it’s serious. Later.”

Cas doesn’t bother hiding his smirk as he closes the door behind her, only pausing to grab a chair from near the bathroom door and pull it toward the bed before dropping into it with a sigh. Blinking at him, Dean wonders if it’s possible he’s literally in a whole new world again.

“Her aim?”

“Very good,” Cas admits, reaching the short distance between them to touch Dean’s forehead with a thoughtful expression before sitting back, hooking a knee over one threadbare arm, bare foot swinging idly. “Excellent: ninety-eight point six exactly. How are you feeling?”

“Shitty,” he admits, wishing Cas would move a little closer. Talking is still an effort when his current maximum volume is ‘above a whisper’ and only that by sheer determination. Looking him over, Dean takes in the easy slump, the loose shoulders, and realizes he’s never seen Cas relax without the aid of sex or drugs, and even then it wasn’t like this. Even the constant signs of low-grade sleep deprivation that Dean’s insistence on living life on a sane schedule only began to put a dent in are almost gone. “Less than yesterday, though.”

“Headache or nausea?”

He thinks about it; headaches are pretty much always, but though there’s a faint pounding in the back of his head, it’s nothing like the ones where the only time the lights are on is when Vera’s examining him. “Not really.”

“It’s the seventh day since you woke up, and your intermittent fevers are now a full hour shorter in duration and have lessened in severity than they were then,” Cas begins. “Today’s first started after your morning examination following breakfast. It reached one hundred and three point six before it began to drop, and happily, you didn’t threaten to exorcise anyone or require me to restrain you. A very pleasant change: please continue to refrain, if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition.”

Dean bites his lip at Cas’s very audible sigh as he slumps further into the chair: humans being sick are so annoying.

“Vera changed your IV and gave you something to lower your temperature and help you sleep. You woke briefly at noon and consumed your recommended amount of nutrition and suffered another examination in very poor spirits—or so Vera implied—before falling asleep again. This afternoon you exhibited two low-grade fevers lasting one hour and ten minutes and forty-five minutes, respectively, but they were not accompanied by hallucinations, for which we thank you, as it puts Vera in a terrible mood to be mistaken as a demon and seems to hold me responsible for reasons I have yet to understand.”

He might, actually, remember something like that happening a few times.

“It’s now five o’clock in the afternoon, you aren’t running a temperature, and you seem relatively cognizant of your surroundings. Please don’t correct me if any of this is untrue: it’s pleasant to interact with you without being required to restrain you first.”

Dean feels himself grinning at Cas’s soliloquy, painfully grateful for the way he always starts off with day and time, breaking up the muted, timeless void between brief periods of consciousness into concrete landmarks of progress and events (and sarcasm, because Cas), whether he remembers them or not. The first three days after he woke up were the worst, a half-conscious nightmare of not quite remembering what happened and exhaustion, too feverish to be able to sleep for long but not quite enough to be entirely conscious. Every time, though, two things stayed the same: Vera and her professional confidence, and Cas and his calm certainty, and they made sense when nothing else did.

Concentrating, he tries to figure out how much of today he actually remembers, but it’s a crapshoot at best. Vera checks his memory and reflexes every morning and evening, innocuous questions interspersed with explanations of what she’s doing and why, but Dean’s never been too tired not to feel a start of fear when he hears them, when he has to grope for answers and hope that they’re right. That’s her job, and he gets that, but he’s glad Cas doesn’t think it’s supposed to be his, too.

That doesn’t mean he ever forgets what Cas needs to hear.

“Dean Winchester,” he says as clearly as he can. “Chitaqua. Kansas. End of the world.”

Cas smiles at him, blue eyes lighting up, and seeing that is pretty much the highlight of his goddamn day. “It’s not over yet.”

Grinning back, Dean settles in for a little time being conscious and cognizant of his surroundings.

“You have two hours until your next exam and dinner, which will be broth but in a green cup instead of a blue one, along with whatever Vera feels would best serve your nutritional requirements. Are you thirsty?” Dean hesitates, eyeing the IV bag by the bed, then nods firmly. The sooner he can drink and eat regularly, the sooner he’s off that goddamn bag, and his mouth tastes like shit anyway. Cas stands up, inclining his head toward the bathroom door. “I’m going to fill your glass. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He waits for Dean to nod again before picking up the glass and making his way to the open door of the bathroom. Cas isn’t and has never been a talker, but all Dean’s uncertain memories since the fever broke come with the sound of Cas’s endless narration, sometimes tired, always sarcastic, and so effortless now that Dean thinks he must have gotten a lot of practice during those two weeks of fever. He rarely remembers the details, sometimes doesn’t even understand the words Cas is using or what they mean between one sentence and the next, but hearing him somehow makes that okay.

Returning to the bed, Cas sets the glass on the bedside table and helps Dean sit up with the unthinking, effortless ease of post-angel strength and a lot of practice, arranging the pillows behind him for maximum comfort with minimal effort before settling Dean back against them.

“Small sips,” he says seriously, holding up the glass. They’re both good at this; Dean can manage not to make a wet mess, and Cas has some kind of freakish ability to tell exactly how much he can take. “You’re responding exceptionally well to the antibiotics,” he continues, timing each sip to Dean’s strength. “Vera thinks that if you continue at your current rate of progress, you’ll be able to begin solid foods within the next week, and some of it may not be pureed.”

Dean raises his eyebrows in excited acknowledgement of the fact that’s a huge milestone in his life and tries not to remember when cheeseburgers were a feature in plural.

“The cast on your ankle, provided you continue not to aggravate the injury by trying to walk—as you tended to do during the fever, much to our displeasure—should come off in four weeks,” Cas says when they reach the halfway mark, sitting back as if he’s not waiting to see if Dean’s too tired to finish the glass in one go. “The wound on your right arm is showing great improvement as well. There’s no further sign of inflammation or swelling, the flesh is beginning to close, and the danger of sepsis has passed entirely. Vera checked the sutures this morning and thinks they can be removed in two weeks if it continues to progress at the current rate.”

Dean nods, fighting the urge to flex his hand against the bed; he can’t tell if it’s working anyway unless he looks, and too often, it just doesn’t. That he might have actually lost his arm is something he doesn’t want to think about too hard. “Will I be able to use my arm again?”

“Vera doesn’t think you’ll lose all mobility,” Cas answers without hesitation. “There’s no way to predict the extent of impairment until its fully healed, of course, but she thinks—”

“What do you think?” Cas frowns, starting to answer, but Dean cuts him off with a shake of his head. “You trained hunters, Cas. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to do an assessment.”

Cas hesitates, then sets the glass down and braces a hand on the mattress before transferring himself to Dean’s right side so smoothly he barely disturbs the mattress enough for it to do anything more than squeal a half-hearted protest. Settling cross-legged beside him, Cas picks up his arm, carefully stretching it across his lap where it lies like a hunk of meat. Turning his hand palm-up, Cas spreads out the fingers carefully, drawing a finger up the center of his palm; there’s a distant tickling, but the only way Dean knows for sure is because he’s watching it happen.

“There’s nerve damage, as you already know,” Cas says, voice coolly impersonal as he folds Dean’s lifeless fingers into a fist before easing them open again. “The extent is uncertain, but there’s no reason to believe you won’t regain gross and some amount of fine motor control as well as sensitivity.”

Dean swallows hard. Using a weapon takes more than ‘some amount’.

“As soon as it’s fully healed and the extent of the nerve damage discovered,” Cas continues, “we’ll begin exercising it regularly to regain full use. In the meantime, we’ll concentrate on strengthening your left arm and hand to compensate for any weakness in your right.”

Dean gives him a dark look. “I’m shit with my left.”

“You won’t be when I’m done with you.”

“Cas…” Dean takes a deep breath, wondering how to explain it doesn’t work that way. “If I can’t use my right arm—”

“You will; the only question is what the limitations will be and at that time, we’ll work on how to deal with them,” Cas interrupts, getting his full attention. “If you can’t believe that for yourself, then believe me. I trained hunters and I’m very good at it. I also know what can be taught to a human body and what can’t, and this is one of the things that can.”

Dean nods slowly; actually, Cas does know what a human body can learn, from the inside out. “Okay.”

Setting his arm back down on the bed, Cas rests his chin in one hand, an unexpected smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, blue eyes dancing behind the fall of too-long bangs. “I’m looking forward to when you’re well enough to begin. Consider it an expression of my gratitude for seventy-five sequential breakdowns and rebuilds of the entire arsenal present in the Impala four and a half years ago because I wasn’t taking it seriously.”

“That wasn’t me,” Dean protests, fighting down unexpected laughter. “Only seventy-five?”

Cas’s smile takes on a predatory edge; it’s not a bad look for him. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

The couple of times Dean got to watch Cas and Amanda sparring were great for more than the sheer entertainment value. It was easy to see why half the camp sulked when he gave the order about staying off the training field after ten to give Cas and Amanda their private badass time. When the ‘holy shit they’re trying to kill each other for fun’ wore off, though, he started actually thinking about what he was seeing and what it meant.

It’s weird to see himself and even Sam in Cas, but satisfying, too, in a way that he still can’t explain to himself. That Cas trained Amanda is obvious, and not simply because he sees those echoes in her as well. It’s not just confidence that makes you willing to step on the field with someone stronger and faster than you can ever hope to be; that’s trust written straight into the bone, as unthinking and automatic as she breathes, as effortless as it’s always been between him and Sam.

He stares at the glass significantly, and Cas immediately reaches over him to retrieve it, giving him another drink. Time to take advantage of being awake enough to have an actual conversation. “So the camp?”

“Patrol reports that the lack of activity continues and requested permission to hunt down the brownie colony that attacked you to execute all that they find in your name.” Dean almost spits out a mouthful of water, glaring at Cas suspiciously. “I agreed, of course, and it’s understood their corpses will be presented to you in lieu of flowers, of which we have none.”

Reaching up, he wipes his mouth weakly, careful of the IV line. “So it’s not just you that’s crazy. Is it the air here or something?”

“The brownies are fortunate I’m no longer an angel,” Cas remarks idly, “or they and all their descendants would be cursed unto the end of time.”

Eyes wide, he nods in acknowledgement that Cas is still the craziest of them all and indicates he wants another drink. “Keep going.”

“I reinstituted written reports, so when you’re better, you’ll be able to review my tenure and evaluate if I’m performing my duties to your satisfaction.” Cas gives him a narrow look as he holds up the glass. “I’d also like to thank you, in case I forgot earlier; this time, at least, I wasn’t the last to know I was placed in charge of a militia. Finding out at the same time as everyone else when Vera announced it was an improvement, yes, but perhaps at some point, I could be told first? Just a suggestion.”

“My memory these days,” Dean says sadly. “Total blank spot: no idea how that happened. Sorry about that.”

“Could you at least pretend that you care about being convincing?”

“I could,” he allows, taking the last satisfying swallow. “I just forgot.”

Cas rolls his eyes as he sets the empty glass back on the bedside table, and Dean braces himself for the inevitable moment he gets up and tells Dean it’s time to rest because he’s tired. He’s always tired, but he’s not always awake, and it’s rare enough that he values every second he can get.

To his surprise, however, Cas reaches for the spare pillow, twisting lithely in place until he’s stretched out beside Dean on his stomach, tucking the pillow under his chest. Dean blinks, distracted by the careless sprawl of Cas’s body, loose and comfortable in repose, as settled in his skin as if he lives there; different, he thinks vaguely, but he can’t quite make out how.

“Joseph and his team will be returning to the eastern checkpoint tomorrow to get the information we requested,” Cas says, propping his chin on one hand and reaching up to absently push messy bangs from his eyes. “He was understandably reluctant to leave the camp during your fever, but as you’ve demonstrated this week that you can be trusted not to die unexpectedly in his absence, I felt comfortable giving him my personal assurance you would remain among the living until his return.”

Alicia, Joe, and his team returned to the camp two days after the fever started and pretty much everything took a backseat to the drama that was Dean’s attempt at dying in the stupidest way possible. Joe was placed in charge of helping Alicia get what they needed from the hospitals and (he’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear this part) may or may not have argued with terrifying sincerity about getting a doctor from the nearest non-infected state up until the fever finally broke. How, he’s not sure (the word ‘gunpoint’ may or may not have been in there), but he’s still on the fence between being touched and kind of horrified.

(Touched is winning, and what that says about him he’d prefer not to know. Gotta be the air.)

“Thanks,” Dean says, failing to fight back a smile. “Glad I got your confidence.”

Cas shrugs an eloquent ‘my pleasure, of course’. “He thinks it should take five days to a week including travel time, as he’ll also make a stop in Kansas City and bring back Melanie’s report on our salvage efforts at the military outposts there as well as some of the priority items. If there’s anything you want to request from the border guards, I can tell him before he leaves in the morning.”

“Nothing I can think of right now.” He remembers going over the original list with Joe before the first border run, but that sketchiness in long-term memory thing isn’t entirely about who he isn’t, and in some spots, details are sometimes pending. “Anything else?”

“I think that’s all for now,” Cas decides, tilting his head. “Everyone sends their support and hopes for your full recovery, of course.”

“Of course,” Dean says, straight faced.

“At least they’re no longer camping outside the front door.” He makes a face, sinking more deeply into the mattress. “Joseph led group prayer in five languages and several denominations at all hours of the day and night until you were confirmed to be recovering. The repetition was becoming annoying, so I taught him two in Enochian for the sake of variety. His accent was much improved by the tenth rendition.”

Cas taught Joe how to pray in his native tongue: for some reason, that makes his eyes prickle. Blinking rapidly, he realizes in annoyance that it’s getting harder to keep them open: worse, he knows Cas sees it. Before he can protest—sick or not, there’s always time for being stupid—Cas helps him to lie back down. It’s like a countdown; he’s about five minutes from unconsciousness, and God, he’s tired of that.

“Nothing else?” Dean asks before he can stop himself. He could sound more pathetic, but he can’t quite see how.

Cas hesitates, giving him an uncertain look. “Someone was sneaking out of Kyle’s cabin the last three mornings just before dawn.”

“What?”

“Amanda mentioned it when she was bringing us more canned broth two days ago,” Cas answers with a frown. “Along with the number of cans of broth we have in inventory, which—”

“Are you…” Cas won’t meet his eyes. “Dude. You’re gossiping? With Amanda?”

“No—I don’t know. I’ve never been interested in other people’s questionable life choices or felt any particular need to remark upon it,” he says slowly. “And yet today, when she came by to see if there was anything Vera needed, I asked her if there was any indication whose failure of standards led them to willingly engage in sex with Kyle and was extremely disappointed she didn’t have an answer.”

Cas looks so weirded out that Dean almost feels bad for him. Which is the only reason he asks, “Anything else?”

“Zoe is doing something requiring excessive amounts of incense at midnight every Thursday, which is making her roommates Christina and Penn nervous and also constantly smelling of patchouli, which I’ve been curious about for several days,” Cas answers obediently. “And Kat and Andy—”

“Wait, which one is Andy?” Dean doesn’t fool himself he can identify every person in the camp yet on sight, but—

“You probably haven’t spoken to him directly,” Cas assures him so confidently Dean decides to believe him. “Until I assigned Alicia to patrol and he became a member of her team, he worked with Zoe on ammunition manufacturing and weapons maintenance. Five feet ten inches, one hundred and fifty-two pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, bears a passing resemblance to the boy next door whose persistence—one might characterize it as ‘stalking’—eventually leads him to gain the affections of a supermodel through what I assume is some unnamed form of Stockholm Syndrome that Hollywood believes is a valid basis for a successful long term relationship.”

“You used to watch a lot of TV.”

“The Lifetime Channel was extremely educational on the formation of primary human relationship bonds,” Cas says wistfully, which may be the most terrifying statement ever uttered on planet earth. “In any case, since you became ill, he and Kat have been spending a great deal of time together—I assume for reassurance in the face of your pending mortality—but Amanda isn’t sure if that’s going anywhere now that you are recovering. It seems they do this a great deal and it always ends in friends without any benefits at all. Why I have no idea; orgasms cause a release of endorphins that improve the mood, decrease aggressive tendencies, promote emotional bonding, and can result in a substantial increase in general health altogether. The addictive properties generally assure continued—what?”

Dean stares at him wordlessly.

“Please tell me you didn’t actually believe sex was merely for procreation,” Cas says after a long, worried pause, expression slowly resolving into something like pity. “That could have been far more easily and consistently accomplished with simple parthenogenesis, or even the addition of estrous cycles to the human genotype—I think it’s known as ‘going into heat’—”

“Right, got lucky there,” Dean interrupts, abruptly remembering he knows how to talk. “So back to the camp; what else did Amanda tell you?”