—Day 11—
Dean’s first visit to the hellhole that is Chitaqua wasn’t in the kind of circumstances that encouraged a lot of observation. Evacuating Cas’s cabin at dawn on the eleventh day of Apocalypse Almost Now, he’s suddenly aware of the camp slowly awakening to yet another Lucifer-free day that to them is business as usual and he still has no idea what business as usual even is.
Watching discreetly from one of the least-grimey windows, Dean waits as Cas does his usual morning ward-checking routine with the grim determination of someone going to their own execution, vanishing into the early morning fog that’s been a feature of Dean’s entire stay and won’t clear until well into the day as the temperature sluggishly rises to something just around muggy with an option to abruptly drop to clammy without warning. This much of Cas’s day Dean nailed down in post-cabin-chat inspired avoidance.
Like he’s on some kind of sadistically inclined internal clock, Cas reappears thirty minutes later, emerging suddenly from the fog slouching in the too-big army jacket like the most depressing miracle in history and making a straight line for his cabin to eventually meet with his groupies for their regularly-scheduled bouts of debauchery.
Only Cas, Dean reflects depressingly, would apply a strict timetable to his wild fits of hedonistic indulgence. In all honesty, it really couldn’t have happened any other way.
Once he’s sure Cas is cabin-bound for the morning (noon will see a mysterious lunch appear on the porch, and while he knows Cas can’t teleport, he has yet to catch him at it), Dean emerges from the cabin into the slightly-lessening fog and decides it’s about time to find out what kind of wards can protect this camp from not only Lucifer but possibly from his entire army.
There’s a well-worn path that despite the low visibility is almost impossible to miss, which explains how Cas can do it when the only sign of true dawn is an overall lighter shade of dark in the general direction of the east.
When he gets to the walls, he scans them carefully until he finds the sigils, all well-worn and from the look of them, frequently refreshed with a convenient knife, though few show bloodsign at all, much less anything fresh Considering the number and that Cas is the only one he’s seen out here, he’d probably bleed out well before he got more than ten feet if he tried to do them all.
While some of the individual sigils are familiar, the way they’re put together isn’t like anything he’s ever seen. On the surface, they look almost random; there’s Enochian, no surprise there, Sanskrit, hieroglyphs of various origins, even Latin thrown in like an afterthought mixed with complex whorls and shapes that have no relation to any language he has ever seen. Trying to read it is impossible; even looking at it for too long makes his head ache, like there’s more there than his eyes can actually process.
Taking a step back, he cocks his head, unfocusing his eyes from the specific symbols to get the pattern as he calls up every memory of every goddamn time Sam shoved a book in his face with an excited expression or Bobby explained something he’d recently found and wishes he’d paid more attention, but he thinks he’s getting the gist from simple familiarity with the rules that govern ritual magic.
This isn’t an active ward, or at least, not one that requires a lot of regular maintenance, okay. From what he can tell, someone who knew what they were doing had pulled elements from a lot of different places and shoved them together, though how the hell they’re joined is pretty much a guess. Setup alone would have taken weeks, maybe even months depending on how many people worked on it. He’s familiar enough with Bobby’s work to recognize him in the design, though, and on a guess, his consultant was a certain former angel with the entire history of time in his head and zero inhibitions using what he knew. Following the pattern, he finally finds the most painfully complicated mix of symbols he’s ever seen in his life, the beginning and ending of the entire goddamn structure tied together into a single key, and every line of it is coated with a layer of fresh blood.
Lucifer needed Dean’s blood to breach the camp, and seeing it, that makes sense; these kind can’t be opened and closed at will, not without destroying them and remaking them every time. So somewhere in here is a way to recognize who has the right to cross them and this being a place where paranoia would be a survival trait, he’s guessing it’s selective to the point of working on an individual level. More than that, he’s not sure, but Jesus, if Sam could see this—
With an effort, he pushes the thought of Sam aside; like Cas, he’s on a time limit, but unlike Cas, ignoring it still works.
Concentrating on the constant, inaudible hum, it strengthens, almost as if it’s aware of his attention, which is not a thought he wants to follow. It’s not unpleasant, though, skating along the surface of his skin like a tuning fork leashed to a perpetual motion engine. He can’t imagine the kind of power it would take for him to feel it like this; for that matter, he still can’t figure out where the hell the power’s coming from or how the hell they got the power to raise it in the first place.
On impulse, he reaches out and ghosts a touch over one of the key sigils, still tacky with drying blood, and only has a moment to think what before the hum changes and everything stops.
Abruptly, the world expands, rippling outward around him like he’s a pebble dropped into the limitless depths of an infinite ocean. It sees him, knows him,recognition expressed in warm, welcoming tides washing against every nerve; even more than that, he knows it, too.
Pulling back in surprise, mouth dry, he stares at the sigils; he gets now where Cas was coming from that morning in the cabin. As far as the wards are concerned, he and the other Dean Winchester are one and the same, and all the power invested here, wards that can lock out fucking Lucifer, he could shut down as easily as he breathes.
With the memory of forever still trembling on the tips of his fingers he also thinks he knows how they got these up in the first place. His mind is crowded with memories of when he felt this before, where, but mostly of what he can’t remember at all: when he was consumed within it, an infinite flashburn of light and brightness and truth in crawling darkness, a promise in a place that was nothing but lies.
It’s repurposed into something else now, but he’ll never not know it; he’s looking at where Cas placed the last of his Grace before he Fell.
Dean spends the rest of the morning observing the three members of the watch doing their damnedest to look less bored with the sheer lack of activity at the camp entrance. This must be the shit job you get when you’ve fucked up or something; he’s never seen four more miserably bored people in his life, and being that bored, the best source of information he could have asked for. Settling himself close enough to listen to the combination of complaints and gossip, he wonders how it works out that the end of the world actually lowers the amount of supernatural activity. What he’s getting from them by implication is that boredom is a pretty new development.
Then again, there’s a lot of new developments, not least of which is that three days after Dean arrived here (apparently starting the day with an interrogation and intimidation was, for Cas, the equivalent of coffee), Cas abruptly called the camp into a meeting that defined the new world order until Dean Winchester’s presumptive return. Patrol was reorganized and seems to be focusing on a slightly extended local route and the perimeter of the city where Dean died. It makes sense, since the implication is that they’re watching for Dean, or would, anyway, if they weren’t forbidden to enter the city at all, and for the most part, they don’t seem to wonder why.
As the camp comes to life more and more as noon approaches, Dean finds himself watching everyone go about their duties with the assurance of long-formed habit, occasional laughter drifting from the makeshift garages where the mechanics seem more interested in shitty apocalypse jokes than maintenance, others lingering outside the cabin that seems to house the general mess if the fact people seem to emerge carrying food is any indication. Which explains why, despite the fact Cas’s cabin was stocked exclusively with alcohol and enough drug paraphernalia to supply several respectable crack dens (Cas doesn’t seem to realize some shit should be kept out of sight) and never cooks, when Dean shows up every night, there’s always food waiting.
Dean ignores the fact that he will never be able to make another angel-stalker joke in his life, too fascinated by the mundanity of life being lived at the end of the world in observation.
From his perch on the porch steps of one of the empty cabins, he watches Chuck and another person emerge from another cabin, gesturing toward a mound of freshly dug dirt some distance away from the inhabited part of the camp with a worried expression that Dean hopes doesn’t mean those are supposed to be latrines. Cas’s cabin as well as Dean’s both had running water, but the situation with the generators had been a sharp reminder that, like electricity, plumbing might not be something that can be taken for granted.
As they walk toward the mess, still talking, Dean gets up to investigate Chuck’s cabin more closely, remembering his comments on the toilet paper supply. Rainwater barrels line the entire back, strapped inexpertly into place and slumping slightly, which would be a problem if they weren’t almost empty. Circling around, Dean notes that all but two windows are boarded up from the inside, and both of those on a glance seem to be Chuck’s living quarters.
Glancing toward the mess to assure Chuck’s not on his way back, he slips inside the front door, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dimness before trying the first of the two doors. It’s the bathroom, and—after flushing the toilet from sheer morbid curiosity—still working, so maybe not latrines, after all. He checks out the window again for Chuck before he tries the second door, unsurprised it opens on a touch. Going inside, he carefully shuts the door and flips on the light and looks around the room that houses the camp supplies.
Hastily installed shelves are shoved up against three of the four walls, nailed into place, he notes approvingly, circling the small table and chair in the center of the room stacked with paper bearing Chuck’s unmistakable scrawl. Stacks of canned goods fill the top three shelves along the back wall, bags of flour and cornmeal and sugar stuffed at the bottom, and coffee alone takes up two shelves all on its own, toilet paper and paper towels among other non-food goods on the shelves nearest the door, but the number of empty shelves outnumber the filled ones and from the wear on them, that’s new. Two ancient industrial refrigerators flank the door, both supplied with cheese and packages of foil wrapped bundles with indecipherable names but less than he would have assumed; a glance in the freezers shows the same situation. Closing the door, Dean does the math in his head and doesn’t like what he’s coming up with on what’s required for a camp this size.
Where they’re getting their supplies is also in question; the abandoned cities are the obvious answer, but while he hadn’t seen many perishables, they definitely had meat and that had to have come from somewhere. They could be trading locally or something, but there’s also the possibility they have to hunt, which considering this is Kansas makes him wonder uneasily what they might be hunting. Frowning, Dean turns in a circle, taking in the shelves again, and gets a glint of foil on the right bottom shelf. Dropping into a crouch, he takes in the stacks and stacks of depressing beige packages and pulls out one, turning it in his hands thoughtfully before putting it back as he gets to his feet.
Slipping out of Chuck’s cabin, he looks around, trying to decide where to be invisible next. Chuck’s cabin marks the edge of the inhabited cabins, and taking in the view, he thinks about the fact that for a camp that’s been a permanent residence for years, no one seems to notice they’re living in refugee conditions.
He’d spent two nights working on the generators after seeing the state of the first one Cas showed him. The only real surprise was that they were still working at all, haphazardly gathered together in hastily built sheds and apparently forgotten until they went out and needed more gas. How the hell they’d been going this long is a mystery: fishing out the weeds growing up around and into them, he replaced the worn parts with newer ones cannibalized from several broken ones stored behind the garage that, given access to a hardware store or hell, a Home Depot, he could have probably gotten running fine. As far as he can tell, no one’s even noticed the repairs, much less wondered who did them, but considering where they live, they may think a good elf is involved. From the sheer lack of anything but the most superficial maintenance, it’s actually the most likely explanation for why they’re still able to run at all.
The cabins themselves aren’t much better; the only difference between those in use and those that aren’t being the people inside of them; windows are regularly boarded up and doors left half-fallen off their hinges, those with porches slumping alarmingly into the ground, those without accommodated by shittily constructed stairs or nothing at all between the ground and the door. The industrial cable strung between the cabins and the generators is showing enough wear to indicate replacement should have happened, like, yesterday, but the risk of a camp-wide fire seems to elude everyone even when it starts to spark, which occurs way too frequently for Dean’s peace of mind.
Wandering the lush, overgrown grass and weeds that grow on either side of the well-worn paths between cabins, vines twining between the wheels of a few rusting gas grills that seem to still get some use and weaving traps for unwary feet, he wonders irritably why no one could take the time to get a goddamn lawnmower. Life on the road had adapted him to variable living conditions, but this is ridiculous.
Lost in thought, he didn’t realize how far he wandered until he finds himself surrounded by nothing but weeds and the sounds of the camp almost inaudible. He looks around, surprised to see what looks like the roof of another cabin peek above the sea of weeds and a few scraggly trees. Curious, he continues toward it, wondering why it’s so far from the rest of the camp and why on earth there’s a path to it until it comes fully into view and he’s abruptly standing on the edge of a wide swath of ground stripped down to bare dirt.
The clearing extends from his feet to the cabin in a wide, rough circle, the center burned black. Reluctantly, he crouches, running his fingers over the ground, already knowing what he’ll find: rock salt glinting among traces of old ash that clings to his fingers, mixed with glimpses of familiar blackened splinters and the faint, unmistakable smell of kerosene. Glancing up, he notes the piles of brush and roughly chopped wood on one side of the cabin, numbly following the industrial wire from the roof to the four heavy wooden posts strung with camp lights that mark the boundaries of a rough square of methodically salted earth big enough to minimalize the risk of setting off a wildfire.
Standing up hastily, he wipes his hand on his jeans, giving the cabin a glance as he starts back toward the camp; he can guess what kind of supplies are kept in there.
Absently, he climbs back onto the porch, thinking of the bodies that were left in the city and those freshly cut logs. He gets why Cas forbade patrolling the city, but he’s gotta know why they have to go back for the bodies of Dean’s team. If Cas won’t, promise or not, Dean’ll do it himself; he’s sure as hell got the time.
Reaching for the beads, he looks up and stops short; it’s not dusk yet, but it’s way too late to have remembered that.
There are things you just don’t want to ever see, ever and family having sex is pretty high on the list. He really should have been paying attention to the time, since no matter the world, Cas pretty much always qualifies as family. Even so, Dean can’t remember he’s supposed to move; at that moment, if anyone had asked, Dean couldn’t have reliably told them his own name.
It’s not that Dean doesn’t get there’s a difference between theoretical knowledge and live action verification in the naked sense. It’s not like Cas’s groupies are subtle in their comings and goings, or that Cas has developed any concept of shame. He just hadn’t thought about it except in the most abstract, Cas’s casual mention of orgies, his nightly vanishing act into various cabins throughout the camp, the people who show up at the cabin between dawn and dusk, all ending in a fade to black that Dean was perfectly happy not to think about any more than he had to.
He has no idea how long he stands there as reality slams into him in full color and stereo sound; later, he’ll wonder, uncomfortable, if he’d even wanted to. The Cas he’d become unwillingly familiar with, brittle edges and too-wide smiles, bitterness and disappointment shaping every word, who wore his human body like it was a degradation, wasn’t anywhere in this cabin. Dean’s gaze finds him instantly among the bodies, unmistakable and vividly alive in a way Dean hadn’t seen him before. Watching the long-fingered hands skim up the length of a woman’s back, cup an unshaven male face for a kiss that seemed to last forever, the distant indifference is absent and open desire taking its place, uninhibited and unleashed; Cas tilts his head back against the worn rugs as the woman sits up, straddling his chest, smiling up at her in a flash of brilliance, nakedly enjoying her as much as he enjoyed her touch, losing himself in the kind of pleasure that only comes from being shared.
He still sees that smile when he’s sitting on Dean’s porch and makes himself think of anything but that.
So the groupies: he might have been wrong about that.
Before yesterday, he never really thought about the various times he saw people wandering to and from Cas’s cabin other than to note to himself Cas’s hedonism seemed to involve a terrifying worth ethic, which is so not a surprise. This is Cas, and be it rebelling against the Host, war in heaven, godhood, better living through chemistry, or adventures in sex, when he commits to something, moderation is not in his vocabulary. Now, however, from the safety of this Dean’s porch, he watches the participants of Cas’s group orgasm project trickle out only minutes before dusk, almost immediately noting another small group approaching, and it’s not that he’s gonna start wondering what kind of stamina a former angel has (or dangerous kinks), but they’re way too well-armed for a quickie.
He waits until they’re inside before getting up, bracing himself in case he’s wrong, then makes his way toward the cabin, wondering when he got used to being invisible, enough to have lost even the memory of a sense of exposure when he walks before a camp full of blind eyes. He hears voices even before he gets up the porch stairs, and pauses, listening.
“…no,” Cas is saying. “I mean, yes, please continue. This is utterly fascinating.”
Peering through the beads, he spots Cas near the couch, looking the worse for wear and facing still-dressed camp members, and has to bite his lip to keep from grinning. That particular expression he knows from the inside out; it’s when Cas is pretty sure everything is going to hell and has hit the why-not stage of what to do next. In general, this ends in Cas doing things like taking on groups of archangels, carving Enochian into people’s bones, Molotov-cocktailing his brothers, and putting banishing sigils in unusual places for surprise-related purposes. Dean didn’t see his expression when he came to the conclusion opening up Purgatory was a workable plan, but he suspects it had looked a lot like this.
“Very well,” Cas says abruptly, cutting off the way too earnest guy currently saying something about rocks while staring at Cas with an expression that makes Dean deeply uncomfortable. “Does anyone have anything useful to report?”
“Same as yesterday,” a woman drawls, and Dean recognizes Vera leaning against the wall, regarding Castiel thoughtfully. “Might help if we knew what it is you want us to be looking for.”
“I didn’t think I needed to instruct you in your duties,” Cas answers sharply before closing his eyes with a pained look, and Dean’s pretty sure he doesn’t imagine Vera’s flicker of satisfaction. “Anything that might explain current events would be helpful.”
Vera nods, doing the most expert weaponization of respectful attention that Dean’s ever had the privilege to see, and just for that, he really wishes he could get to know her. “Yes, sir.”
As far as Cas’s impulse-driven decision making skills are concerned, Dean’s gotta admit that keeping a paramilitary camp running during an Apocalypse is definitely not his worst, not least because it seems to be working out pretty well. He’s got the calm certainty thing down, and being dead sober, all that time being an angel seems to assert itself enough for Cas to project the kind of confidence that from experience Dean knows can convince anyone of almost anything when he puts some effort into it.
Cas pauses as he picks up a stack of paper from the coffee table, eyes scanning the room and stopping short on Dean. He smiles back, leaning against the doorway casually.
“There will be no alterations to the route,” Cas tells them, interrupting the low-voiced argument going on between two of the men. “Continue your observations as instructed and report immediately if you find anything unusual. I’ll expect your full reports in twenty-four hours. You’re dismissed.”
Dean jerks to the side as they obediently turn to leave, waiting until the last clears the porch before going inside and watches Cas drop onto the edge of the couch, looking—actually, Dean’s not sure.
“Hey,” he tries, making his way to the opposite side of the coffee table, and tries to remember if that’s always been there. “What’s up?”
Cas doesn’t look up from whatever he’s reading. “You’re early.”
“I got bored.” Dean glances at the door. “Was that the patrol?”
“The night shift, yes,” Cas answers shortly, frown deepening as he flips to the next page. Giving Dean a glance, he hesitates, but his cover is pretty obviously blown. “Feel free to entertain yourself while I finish this.”
“What is it?”
“Reports from last night.” Flipping another page, Cas tilts his head. “When I said to record all their activities, I didn’t expect them to interpret that quite so literally.”
Dean eyes the stack warily; that’s a lot of paper. “All of them wrote reports?”
“Only whoever is leading the patrol team that day is required to do so, but as they’re taking turns, perhaps they misunderstood.” Cas gives him a sardonic look and extends the report. “Feel free to examine it for yourself. In addition to monotonous descriptions of the variety of rocks and flora on their current route, it goes into surprising detail regarding the unacceptable length of lunch periods and the unconscionable number of bathroom breaks.”
“You’re kidding.” Dean nicks the reports from his hand and skims the first three pages. Years of dealing with how humanity recorded information in the days before Gutenberg means that if Dean knows the language, he can read it. He’s gotta be honest, though; illuminations and calligraphic flourishes are one thing, but no one should be able to print this small without magic being involved. “You’re not. Is he saying nothing is going on but a need for bladder control? For six pages? Why?”
“You skipped the riveting description of the current state of the roads and the number of potholes per mile,” Cas answers tiredly. “Phil is unnaturally fond of words, relevant or not, but unfortunately, everyone seems to suffer from the same problem.”
Dean glances up at the strain in Cas’s voice. “You’re not gonna tell them what they’re looking for?”
Cas doesn’t look at him. “No.”
Crouching, he pages through the stack to give himself time to think, pausing to read snatches of the other team members’ reports, but none seem to hit the level of the first one; the nearly page-long description of the skyline is almost hypnotic in its sheer level of monotonous detail.
“How long do you think you can—”
“I don’t know,” Cas interrupts. “I’m surprised it’s lasted this long.”
Right, okay. Turning his attention back to the stack, Dean frowns. “What exactly did you ask them to do?”
“Record everything that they observed. None of them have ever led the patrol, and some have never been on regular patrols at all, so any attempt at correction could cause them to disregard something important.”
“None of them?” Dean whistles. “Talk about a learning curve.” Dropping the reports back on the coffee table, he starts to ask why he wants reports at all—if he’s watching for Lucifer, whoever sees that probably won’t wait to write a report about it—but stops short. “Wait, what happened to the leaders?” Cas raises an eyebrow. “You’re kidding. That’s who he took to Kansas City?”
“The entire command hierarchy,” Cas confirms, slumping on the couch. “That the patrol doesn’t know what they’re doing is probably the only reason they seem to be oblivious to the fact that I don’t either.”
“And you just…took over patrol?”
“The camp,” Cas answers bitterly, and the last of Dean’s amusement dies. “Do you have any idea how to run a militia? That isn’t a rhetorical question.” Dean shakes his head mutely. “Apparently, there’s more to do than fight evil and drink to excess during downtime. Chuck came to inform me that, among other things, the toilet paper situation has become untenable, and I’m responsible for doing something about it. I informed him that I don’t care, but I doubt that will inhibit his ongoing assessment of the situation. It hasn’t stopped him yet, and our current situation isn’t going to improve.”
Dean has a bad feeling about this. “Are there any—is anyone left here who can even fight?”
“You don’t come here if you can’t.”
Cas abruptly gets to his feet to restlessly pace the length of the room. It’s weirdly fascinating to watch; he doesn’t do it like a human does even now. He walks like he expects the universe to clear a path for him, knocking into a low table hard enough to bruise himself without noticing, looking vaguely surprised when walls show up like they’ve personally offended him and smiting’s on the table.
Dean’s familiar enough now with Cas’s habits to recognize that he probably hasn’t indulged in anything particularly recreational other than a lot of orgasms. The faint, languorous looseness still lingers beneath the surface tension, and all at once, Dean remembers what he saw earlier before he ruthlessly pushes it aside.
“The problem,” Castiel says quietly, “is that if they question me on what we’re doing now, I don’t have any answers to give them.”
From Dean’s observations so far, the likelihood of anyone here asking a question would be a lot higher if even one of them was actually capable of conceptualizing the idea that orders might have reasons, much less that they could be questioned. It wasn’t just the team that this Dean Winchester sent to die to give him a shot at Lucifer; it’s the watch, perfectly happy to watch absolutely nothing, and the patrol, who took Cas’s orders today and didn’t even seem to care what they were or why he gave them and looked surprised when Vera asked Cas a question. What went down that night they attacked Lucifer hadn’t been a one-off; that had been policy.
“Tell me about the checkpoints,” Dean says abruptly, getting Cas’s attention again. The radio’s occasional mention gave enough context to confuse the fuck out of himself. “In Kansas, I mean, there are three of them—”
“Six,” Cas corrects him. “Four are not general passthroughs, however, and are restricted to military use only.”
Military use: interesting. “How long have they been up?”
“Twenty-one months, from what we were able to find out. Kansas was the third state that was isolated to slow the progress of the epidemic. Any area where Croatoan has become epidemic is quarantined and its borders guarded to prevent the spread of further infection.”
“Infection zones.” Dean thinks of that conversation he overheard between Cas and Vera. Getting between uninfected states would mean a lot of shitty routes unless you could just go through: solution, credentials. “But you can cross at the passthroughs?”
“No one can leave a state once it’s been zoned infected,” Cas says, confirming Dean’s growing suspicions. “The two checkpoints that allow crossing the border are for commercial use to carry products between uninfected zones when going around them would require…” He frowns, irritated. “I think crossing the Canadian border in some instances, which from what I understand Canada frowns upon and does so very heavily armed.”
Canada’s armed: who saw that coming? “How many states are infected?”
“You’ve been listening to the radio,” Cas says, looking amused. “Yes, that would confuse you; they’re very careful not to be too specific when reporting the news. Though it does make one wonder how on earth you can pretend half a country doesn’t exist.”
“Half the country…” Dean takes a breath.
“Though it’s probable they’re not pretending.”
“Not all the zones are public knowledge?” Dean asks. “So no one knows how bad it actually is.”
“No one knows their true extent, no,” Cas agrees. “We had informants at the checkpoints, but unfortunately, they’re rotated out every six months—I assume due to the stress of keeping people trapped behind the borders of infected states or more likely, to lower the chances of bribery—so our latest information is somewhat out of date.”
“So we can get across the border?”
“Any member of Chitaqua, or you?” Cas’s mouth quirks at his expression. “I thought that might be where you were going with this. I wouldn’t advise trying.”
Dean hesitates, eyeing Cas’s expectant look. “Just tell me why and get it over with.”
“You might not be first on the ten most wanted list for the FBI,” Cas admits after a moment, and for no reason at all, he’s getting the impression that Cas has been looking forward to telling him this, “but I doubt it.”
Okay, he didn’t see that coming. “I’m supposed to be dead—”
“Yes, faking your own death is among the charges,” Cas agrees easily, seating himself on the arm of the couch. “I forgot that one.”
“What else am I wanted for?”
“It’s a very long list. Do you want it in categorical or alphabetical order?” Yeah, Cas is enjoying himself. “If it’s any consolation, so am I. I haven’t been out of this state since we arrived here for that reason.”
When he stopped being able to teleport, he interprets. He makes an effort not to ask to see what he’s wanted for these days; it’s gotta be amazing. “So they’d recognize me.”
“There is no one living on this planet who would not recognize you, and I’m not even sure that’s not literal.”
“Holy shit.” He has no idea how to deal with that. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I didn’t think that we’d live long enough for it to become a problem,” Cas answers, regarding him sardonically. “Yet we continue to survive, so why not. Even if we could bribe the checkpoint guards to allow you to cross—which is unlikely—there are very few places that your name and your face are not very well known. The current reward being offered for your capture contains more zeros than I was aware your treasury contained and for those trapped in infected zones, a way out of them.”
“Just my capture?” For some reason, Dean doesn’t like that.
“They don’t want you dead,” Cas says. “Not yet, anyway. They need you as a very public example of justice being served.”
“What the hell do they think—” He cuts himself off, wondering if he really wants to know. “Just tell me.”
“Treason against the United States government as well as acts of both domestic and international terrorism,” Cas recites. “Among the many, many charges listed: planning and executing attacks against military personnel to break quarantine when infection was confirmed and deliberately causing the uncontrolled spread of the Croatoan virus.”
Dean stares at him.
“The evidence, when not conveniently circumstantial, was manufactured,” Cas continues with deliberate indifference. “Dean didn’t cause the spread of infection.”
“But he did break the quarantines,” Dean says, watching Cas’s carefully neutral face. “Attacks on the military?”
“For the purposes of assuring the escape of those who were trapped in the infected zones, yes. None of them were infected and they did not cause the spread of the virus.”
“Right.” Dean blows out a breath; that’s not all of it, not from the way Cas looks right now. “What else?”
Cas hesitates, looking into the middle distance. “My familiarity with the current political structures in this world is superficial at best. When I was a member of the Host, it was not relevant, and since I Fell, I’ve been—here.”
“You said no one on this planet doesn’t know my face,” Dean says, mouth dry. “What does that mean?”
“When the government introduced Dean as the cause of the spread of Croatoan, his activities on the borders of Canada and Mexico were considered evidence that he caused its spread beyond the United States.”
“You’re saying the entire world thinks I’m responsible for Croatoan?”
“For obvious reasons, international news is not entirely reliable,” Cas says evasively, which means that yeah, they do. “It might be some consolation to know that while Chitaqua as a whole is considered equally guilty, very few of their names are known.”
Dean nods blindly; he knew this could get worse. “Right. Except yours.”
“Jimmy Novak, alias Castiel.” Jesus Christ, Cas is a freak, because he sounds really goddamn amused. Looking up, Dean is completely floored by the slight grin. “You don’t see the humor.”
“Not really, no.”
The grin widens, reminding Dean that Cas is actually kind of crazy. “It helps to have cultivated a sense of dramatic irony.”
“Really?” Because Dean’s not seeing it.
“Maybe you had to be present at Sodom’s destruction to appreciate it.”
Dean blinks, wondering if Cas is trying to make him feel better. Shaking his head, he straightens, dismissing his current status as the most wanted man in the world with an effort.
“So I’m pretty much stuck in this camp even if Lucifer’s having an extended post-victory vacation,” he says, trying not to sound bitter and failing. “There’s nowhere I can go, that’s what you’re telling me.”
Cas looks away before Dean catches his expression. “Nowhere that you would not be recognized as Dean Winchester, no.”
“Okay.” Suddenly, Lucifer looks like a much less depressing topic. “Speaking of Lucifer, hey, anything happening with the end of the world yet?”
The world is right again as Cas remembers he really doesn’t like him all that much.
“I told you the first night, I do not know the sequence of events after Lucifer’s triumph,” Cas says flatly. “Why do you—”
“I’m over the shock and dick treatment in Dean’s cabin last week,” he answers challengingly, crossing his arms. “So you know what? Fuck a timeline; we’re going to talk about what’s not happening right now. I don’t know if you noticed, but the end of the world is stalled.”
To his surprise, Cas just nods. “I noticed that, yes.”
“That was easy.” Suspiciously easy, actually. “Got anything else? Like why we’re not all dead?”
“The wards are very powerful, which would be a factor had he tried to breach them.”
“Or if his army was here to try. Not seeing an army, Cas.”
“Your grasp of the obvious is breathtaking.” Dean’s never wanted to punch anyone as much as he does right now. “Unfortunately, we must live in ignorance, since the only person who can explain its absence is not currently available for questioning.”
Dean tries to remember just how fast Cas is. It might be worth trying just for the sheer satisfaction of wiping that smug look off Cas’s face. “Yeah, I don’t think questioning Lucifer is on the agenda.”
“It isn’t,” Cas agrees, “because he is not here to question.”
“Yeah, and…you don’t mean in the camp, do you?”
“On this plane.” Like it’s incredibly—wait, breathtakingly obvious. “His presence is as unmistakable as his absence.”
Dean smiles over gritted teeth. “How long has he been MIA?”
“Since we left him in the city.”
That’s new. “And that’s not worth mentioning before now?”
“That he left? No. Nor did I care why he did,” Cas throws out, because God fucking knows it’s been five entire minutes since he reminded Dean that he hates everyone and everything and especially being alive to have to deal with all of it. “However,” he adds with noticeable reluctance, “even gathering his entire army shouldn’t take this much time.”
“Three years and change,” Dean agrees, because his Hell to Earth math is pretty damn good. “How long would it take him to gather an army?”
“Less time than it took you to think to ask that question.” Cas gazes into the distance, expression speculative. “I could think of many reasons he might be delayed.”
“And?” Dean cocks his head curiously. “What are they?”
“I haven’t bothered to actually think of them. They all depend on knowing something I have no way to discover.”
“He killed the only person who could end the Apocalypse and the only thing he does is burn Dean and beat you up before going home? What the hell is he waiting for? I mean…” Dean glances at Cas and stops short, words frozen on the tip of his tongue. He’d forgotten how it felt to be the sole focus of Cas’s attention, tangible as a physical touch and impossible to escape, like standing in a spotlight the size of a planet.
Even that morning in the cabin when Cas had told him he wasn’t human, he hadn’t really grasped what that meant; seeing this, he wonders how he missed it. He isn’t living a mortal life as a not-quite human; an incorporeal being whose existence was defined by the infinity of time and space is trapped in the limits of a finite space, imprisoned in the sharply defined limits of a human body with no possibility of escape but death.
Dean stares at him, shocked silent; even Hell in all its horrors wasn’t that cruel.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Cas says abruptly, getting to his feet, and Dean lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Pausing at the doorway, he glances back, giving Dean a sharp smile. “It’s growing late, and I have much more enjoyable ways to spend my time than this. Good night.”