Map of the World: September 14

Brownie Bites

—Day 42—

Limping carefully toward Cas’s cabin in the dull light of the setting sun, Dean pauses long enough to straighten and try to walk normally, because yeah, his ankle isn’t broken, but it’s very sprained right now. Again.

Honestly, he’d blame Cas for that shit, but no one (so far) held a gun to his head to make him jump out of the jeep and take off at a dead run even though he felt that landing was bad. On the plus side, he’s not dead and he figures (hopes) he can hold his own here. On the not so plus, Jesus, he hates anything fucking with his mobility.

He’s distracted enough by sheer irritation that the sound of voices doesn’t penetrate until he’s in full view of the cabin, where Vera, Cas, and a tall blonde kid he vaguely recognizes from the watch seem to be just on the verge of yelling at each other. Well, Vera looks hostile, anyway, while the kid has the sense to look kind of scared of her. Cas, on the other hand, is sitting on the steps looking like sobriety just isn’t worth this shit.

There’s no way to retreat gracefully, and Cas’s ability to sense him at twenty feet has got to be some kind of post-angelic superpower or something; the blue eyes flicker from the combatants to Dean and pause for an ominous moment.

“Dean,” he says, and suddenly he’s the center of everyone’s attention.

He wouldn’t usually mind, but in this case, the expression on Vera’s face when she sees him gives him the impression that he may be the reason that she’s pissed. He starts to acknowledge the greeting and unfortunately forgets why he’s standing really still, a sharp slice of pain cutting from instep to groin in vivid reminder. And he can hide a lot of things, but he can feel the color drain from his face even as he catches his balance and that he can’t hide.

Mojo or no mojo, Cas does something very like teleportation; before Dean’s even caught his breath, one hand is below his elbow, and Cas is saying, “What happened?”

Beyond Cas, two sets of eyes watch him warily, and Dean’s going to guess the guy must be Jeremy, who with Vera used to hold Cas’s head out of the toilet or whatever the hell it was that happened when former angels go junkie in a big way.

“Erotic potential of brownies,” Dean grits out before he gives up and lets Cas take his weight. The patrol leaders all milled around looking a combination of worried and freaked the fuck out until he got rid of them by the sheer awesome of being Dean Winchester (and limping bravely away), but unsurprisingly, this doesn’t work on Cas.

“That was sarcasm, and—were you attacked?” Castiel leads him to the cabin beneath two pairs of bemused eyes before almost shoving him down on the stairs. Crouching on the lower step, Castiel shoves up Dean’s blood-soaked sleeve to stare at the makeshift bandage. “You were attacked by a colony of brownies?”

“One, didn’t know they came in colonies,” Dean hisses, hideously aware of Vera and probably-Jeremy drifting closer. “Not in front of the kids.” Literally, in maybe-Jeremy’s case: what the hell?

Cas ignores him. “What happened?”

“There was a thing,” Dean says. “They went after our wheels when I asked to stop so I could look around.”

“You asked them to stop.” It’s not a question. “Why?”

Dean tries to impress by dint of staring how much he’s not answering that right now. Cas’s eyes flicker to Dean’s boot and then to his hastily wrapped arm, eyes narrowing. He’s not sure if it’s him or the patrol leaders who are the actual target of that look, but if it’s them, he really feels bad for what they’re going to be dealing with in what will probably be the very near future.

“We should go to the infirmary,” Cas says finally, sounding a weird mix of pissed and resigned. Even weirder, it’s not exactly unfamiliar; he gets that a lot from Cas.

“No fucking way.” Dean tries to think about moving and feels a warning twinge straight to his knee. So moving may be a bad idea, but he’s pretty sure his ankle is swollen in his boot, and he probably needs to deal with that. “It’s just—”

“Do you know the infection rate caused by brownie bites?” Cas interrupts. “Dean, any potential infection could—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Vera says unexpectedly. “Alicia’s with Joe anyway. Your kit up to date?”

“In the kitchen under the sink,” Cas answers, never looking away from Dean. “I checked it this morning.” He conveys with a look this is the very reason he did, which hey, good thinking.

“I’m fine,” Dean tries, already knowing he’s going to lose this one. He actually doesn’t know what’s in brownie teeth, come to think; he also didn’t know they were vicious little fuckers, so the more you know. “I don’t need—”

“Oh, we learned this lesson a while back,” Vera says as she passes Cas. “Jer, help Cas while I’ll get prepped.” Taking the steps two at a time, Vera goes inside with a swish of beads as Cas helps him get to his feet and Jeremy hovers in easy helping distance on the off-chance Cas needs it.

“Jesus,” Dean breathes as he hobbles inside, feeling like an idiot and drops onto the couch with a grunt. Over the blinding pain, he can almost hear Cas thinking how right he was about never letting Dean leave the camp without his supervision again and just hates everything, ever.

The truth is, leaping boldly after goddamn brownies was pretty much his only option after the growing weirdness of the six hours that preceded it. Which on a guess, he doesn’t think Cas will appreciate as an excuse.

He checks back in on current events when something that feels like acid washes across his now-bared arm and Cas is saying, “…no hospitals available, if you’ll remember, much less a doctor. If you’re seriously injured, our resources are limited.”

He watches, a little nauseated, as Vera expertly dresses the brownie wound. Honest to God, while he’s been ripped up by hellhounds, those fuckers at least are truth in advertising. Brownies’ tiny jagged teeth just come out of nowhere and while the wounds are tiny rips in flesh and muscle, the similarity is uncanny and way too familiar for Dean’s peace of mind.

“Think he knows about that,” Vera is saying in amusement, stripping off a pair of latex gloves, another interesting note. Wearing gloves for something as simple as a bite seems like a lot of extra trouble, especially for former civilians, but the way she folds them together before turning them inside out and tossing them is way too automatic for anything but bone-deep habit. “I’ll get him some Z-paks from the infirmary.”

Dean really hates those. “I don’t think—”

“Yes, please get them. The infection rate is seventy percent and from what I understand, it’s not pleasant,” Cas tells Dean as he helps Vera clean up. Watching him work is an unnerving reminder of how much experience he has doing this; as good as he and Sam ever did in a motel room, though Dean could live without the live audience in attendance. “Take off your boot.”

“Wait,” Vera says before Dean can argue, going down on her knees as Castiel repacks the first aid kit, long fingers ghosting over the boot and pausing just above the faint bulge. “Cas,” she says, looking up with carefully restrained worry, “we’re going to have to cut this off. Dean, did you run on this? You get you weren’t even healed from the last injury, right?”

“Adrenaline,” Dean says, trying not to twitch beneath the steady, unblinking stare that is Cas silently judging him; he forgot how he could just do that. “It’s just—” he cuts himself off when Vera very gently touches a finger against the leather; okay, maybe that was actually worse than he thought. “I can do it.”

Vera looks at him incredulously, reaching back to pull out a knife from nowhere, and Dean remembers at the most inappropriate moment possible what Cas said about some of his partners being the type to stay armed during sex.

“Cas, can you cut it off for me?” she asks, flipping the knife and offering it to him, hilt-first. “I’ll be right back.”

“Fuck my life,” Dean says with a sigh, closing his eyes as he reaches for the back of the couch, more to brace himself than anything. After a moment, he feels Cas start to cut the laces; it hurts but nothing he can’t handle, letting it wash through him in hot, jagged waves.

After a while, Dean opens his eyes as Vera tapes his ankle, mouth set in a stern line. “Done yet?” he asks hopefully. Her head jerks up, a few loose locks of hair brushing against her face as she looks at him incredulously. “What?”

“Sorry I’m taking so much of your valuable time making sure this actually heals right,” she answers acidly, going back to work. Jeremy winces, shooting her a glance like he’s not sure she’s entirely sane, while Cas just looks like he’s considering how to make sure Dean never has fun again in his life. “Second degree, maybe, but I’ll check it in the morning. That’s two weeks of no walking for you,” she says as she sits back, stripping off the second pair of gloves with professional inattention. “Cas, get the morphine. His tolerance is too high to bother with anything else and we don’t have a muscle relaxant in inventory.”

“I don’t need painkillers.” It’s a lie; he really does. Straightening, he accidentally drags his heel an inch of rug and feels every goddamn fiber all the way to his teeth. He suppresses his reaction, but he’s never yet figured out how to suppress his body’s tells and feels a cold sweat rising on his skin. Fuck his life. “Uh, it’ll. Be fine.”

“Look, it’s not about your ego right now, it’s about making sure that doesn’t get worse. You get you may have run yourself into a hairline fracture, right?” Vera turns her attention to Cas. “Give him half a field dose; that’ll take the edge off.”

Dean watches Cas retrieve the dose with the uncomfortable expertise of someone who did time with IVs recreationally and is reminded he used to do just that. Before now, Dean made an effort not to think much about what Cas was doing in more than hazy outlines and generalities, though Cas’s collection definitely didn’t help with that.

He takes the shot, mostly because she’s probably right; twitchy team leaders or no twitchy team leaders, he really should have stopped the moment he felt the strain. If he’s really honest, it wasn’t even just that; watching them all day, it was brought home in force that he’s way off the average here, and life lived like a paranoia fantasy minus the fantasy is an understatement. Being outclassed by the supernatural he’s used to, but other people not so much, and he doesn’t think it’s going to bother him less as time goes on.

On the other hand, there’s this. He suspects Vera’s interaction with Dean Winchester since Debra has been at a distance and filtered as shit. Sure, it’s embarrassing to sit here like an idiot getting patched up for a goddamn brownie bite, but if he’s gonna get anywhere with Vera, her threat assessment of him has to get a lot lower. It’s not just what happened to Debra, though; she’s living at the end of the world in a militia, for fuck’s sake. That she’d accept eventually accept if not forgive, but she sure as hell wouldn’t be afraid of him, and he’s pretty sure now she is, and he really wants to know why.

There’s a semi-awkward silence afterward; awkward as in, there’s some kind of silent conversation between Vera and Jeremy that seems to reference Cas, who looks at them like humans are just that goddamn annoying, and from the glances shot his way, he’s pretty sure it’s about him.

“I guess that means I’m stuck with your cooking,” Dean tells Castiel finally. From the corner of his eye, he sees Vera straighten abruptly. “I heard good things about fasting.”

“Shut up,” Cas says pleasantly, leaning a hip against a chair. Yeah, when they’re alone, it’s gonna be a lot of fun around here. “Dean—”

“I’m saying, I fixed the range and everything, yet fire still confuses you.”

“Not in certain contexts.” Cas remarks, giving the general impression he’s imagining Dean on fire right now. “If you try to stand up for the purposes of heating a can of substandard root vegetables…”

The sad thing is, he’s going to have to. Cas can cook in theory but his views of food are so fucked up that he transmits his contempt or something into whatever it is they’re supposed to be eating.

“So everything okay?” Dean breaks in a little desperately. “When I got here, looked like something was going on.”

Cas’s expression doesn’t change, but Vera’s hits some cross between anger and wariness, eyes flickering nervously to Cas. “Nothing. I mean, I was supposed to go back on patrol duty tomorrow. Just wondering why I’m not.”

“Oh yeah, that.” Vera blinks, mouth opening helplessly, which Dean takes advantage of immediately. “I have something else for you to do. But seriously, food would be good here.”

“I’ll get something from the mess if you want,” Jeremy offers uncertainly, eyes darting frantically between them. Dean’s guessing it’s less altruistic than a deep, deep desire to get away; he has the look of a kid whose parents are bypassing the couch and approaching the ‘motel accommodations of indefinite length’ relationship milestone, which is just so weird a thought he’s not sure what to do with it. “If you don’t mind, Cas—”

“Bring enough for everyone,” Dean agrees happily, smiling at Vera’s expression. “You free? I need to talk to you anyway.”

Vera visibly hesitates before she nods. “Sure. I’ll help Jeremy and stop off in the infirmary on the way back. That okay?”

“Awesome.” As soon as they’re gone, Dean cocks his head at Cas. “She was a doctor, right? Before?”

“Practitioner nurse. She doesn’t practice in the camp, however,” Cas answers absently. He braces himself for Cas to start back on the brownie thing—which to be fair, Dean can kind of see his point of view—but instead he pushes off the chair, dropping bonelessly into a crouch to check Dean’s foot briefly before looking up, blue eyes thoughtful. “So how was your day?”

Dean lets his head drop onto the back of the couch. “So other than the hairline fracture, I had a great day, saw the sights, all of that.” When he lifts his head, Castiel’s expression is almost aggressively neutral. “You’re dying to say ‘I told you so’, aren’t you?”

“I only wish I could,” Cas admits. “But even in my most pessimistic moments, I didn’t consider the possibility of you being injured due to accidentally encountering a hostile colony of brownies.”

“How did I not know brownies came in colonies?” Dean demands.

“The American education system is a disgrace.”

Blowing out a breath, Dean straightens—carefully—and tries to think of what he’s going to say. “So Vera’s pissed?”

“More at you than me, but as I was here and you weren’t, I’m not sure that makes much of a difference.”

Dean winces. “Sorry about that.”

“It might have been worse,” Castiel answers philosophically.

“And Jeremy?”

“I think he was hoping his presence would be a restraining influence. He and Vera are very close, and he dislikes conflict.”

“Seems like a nice kid,” Dean says casually. “So his next birthday, should I get beer, or wait a couple more years for him to be able to legally drink it?”

“I’m sure he can legally drink anywhere in the Midwest; there is not a great deal of legal oversight here.” Beneath Dean’s steady gaze, however, he sighs, dropping to sit cross-legged on the floor. “The rule of law is somewhat difficult to understand when there’s a lack of anything resembling law.”

“How the hell did a kid end up here?”

“About sixteen months ago, Vera was on an extended mission for Dean that required spending several weeks on the west coast,” Cas explains. “She went to LA to meet with one of Dean’s contacts, unaware that the city was on the verge of being quarantined due to suspicion of a Croatoan outbreak. When the quarantine was imposed and the city became subject to martial law, it entered a state of anarchy from those trying to escape before the state could be classified as infected and measures taken to curtail its spread beyond the borders.”

Dean’s mouth goes dry. “What kind of measures?”

“Officially, all residents who wished to leave would report to one of the military checkpoints and after three days of isolation, if they showed no symptoms, they were allowed to leave.”

“And unofficially?”

“I don’t know,” Cas answers, looking into the middle distance. “Within six hours of the announcement, the checkpoints were overwhelmed as people fled for the borders, where they were shot on sight by the newly established border patrol supplemented by the army.”

“The state was already zoned as infected before they even made the goddamn announcement,” Dean says softly. “They didn’t have a chance.”

“They never do.” Cas shakes himself, looking at Dean. “Vera didn’t know LA well enough to be able to escape, but staying for much longer was equally dangerous, and the information she had was important. She met Jeremy, who offered to help her get out of LA and to the state borders, which she had experience in crossing. His parents had been killed in the initial rioting and as his chances of survival alone in LA were non-existent, she brought him back here.”

“To a militia camp,” Dean answers flatly. “Tell me he’s eighteen on his next birthday and I might believe you.”

“He’s seventeen now.”

Jesus: he wanted to be wrong about that. “And no one noticed or Dean just didn’t give a shit about recruiting kids?”

“Dean was distracted due to an extended mission that required frequent absences from the camp. By the time he became aware of Jeremy’s presence, he’d been trained enough to take up duty with the watch.”

There’s no fucking way anyone could have missed his age; he probably wasn’t even shaving yet. “Cas, you gonna tell me what actually happened or just keep pretending that what you’re telling me makes any kind of sense? There’s no way that anyone got into this camp without Dean knowing about it. You telling me she got back from a mission in a goddamn infected zone and no one did a basic check in case she’d been compromised and found him hiding in the jeep?” Dean stops short, feeling like an idiot. “You got him in.”

“Vera told me the day she returned that he was concealed just beyond the local patrol route and asked for my help.”

“And you did it. Because they wouldn’t check you.” After today with the patrol leaders, that’s not a guess; explains how Cas got him inside the camp that first night, too.

“No,” he answers with perfect composure, and for a minute, something inhuman looks out at Dean. No, he thinks, feeling pinned by that cool regard; no one would ask Cas a damn thing when he looked like that. “I evaluated him and told Dean when he returned that he was adequate for our purposes and there was no reason he shouldn’t stay. Dean accepted my judgment.”

“Did you?”

“I’m relatively sure I must have been on the training ground at some point when he was also there.”

“Because Vera asked you to.”

Cas shrugs. “The sentimentality of her request appealed to me, as did the fact here could possibly be preferable to anywhere else. She was correct, of course. He had nowhere else he could go.”

Dean does the math on the timing. “That was soon after Debra died, right?”

“It had been several months.”

“Why didn’t she leave after Debra died?”

“I’m not sure,” Cas says, and for the first time in this conversation, Dean can hear the almost-lie. “As I said, there weren’t many places to go, and that was true for most of those here.”

Dean pauses, not sure if he wants to know the answer to this one. “Was it you?”

“No, not in the sense we were involved when she was in training,” Cas answers in surprise, the cool look cracking. “For one, she was grieving for her lover, and two, at the time, I was her instructor and sex would have been inappropriate.” Dean doesn’t smile at that, but under any other circumstances, he’d really want to; somehow, it’s not a surprise this would be where Cas would draw a line. “She believed in what Dean was doing here, and there were other reasons she preferred to stay rather than try to find somewhere else to go. Most people come here for a very good reason, Dean; they want to fight. She wasn’t any different in that.”

“Is Jeremy good enough now? To fight, I don’t mean we throw him out or anything, just—he’s a kid. He shouldn’t have to do this.”

“He is very good. I was responsible for him coming here, so I handled his training personally, of course.” Of course. “He promised to kill me when we were done every day, but he was far too exhausted for his aim to be a threat.” Castiel raises an eyebrow. “I would also like to remind you that you were taken on hunts with your father well before puberty. His age is irrelevant to his abilities, and I assure you, left in LA, his life would have been far shorter than here.”

Dean wants to argue that was with his dad and it wasn’t fucking Lucifer they were chasing; it’s also a really stupid argument. “Right, so you think he’ll be okay on a team?”

“I don’t think he’ll object, no.” Cas looks thoughtful. “Do you plan to tell Vera tonight what you have in mind for her?”

“I was going to wait until Joe got back and get a personal report on what he thinks of the people he took with him,” Dean admits. “No real reason to wait, though; she can have Jeremy and pick two more and that’ll get me five teams. When Joe gets back, she’ll be used to them and I’ll send both of them to start talking to the people here, find out if they need anything.”

“Supplies.”

“Unless you wanna start ploughing the training field and learn to farm, we’re gonna have a problem with food we can’t shoot,” Dean agrees grimly. “Might as well start now; if it doesn’t work, we need to know sooner than later and start thinking about how much we can get over the border. Getting supplies from the border guard is a whole different ball game when it’s necessities; they think we’re desperate, they’ll triple the price on everything.”

Cas nods, but his expression is speculative. “Five teams.” Yes, Dean can do math, surprise.

“I’m not putting Sid back out there until I’m sure his team’ll survive it.” Cas tilts his head, which tells Dean that he knows there’s more. “With Joe and Vera, that also makes two team leaders that aren’t scared of you.”

Cas’s expression doesn’t change, but Dean can see him go still. Sitting back, Dean ignores the sharp pain from the inadvertent jolt to his ankle, staring at Cas. “You said humans react to you weird, I get that. I don’t get how after all this time, they haven’t gotten over it.”

“What are you accusing me of?”

“What?” Dean blinks at him before he realizes what Cas means. “Cas, I’m not accusing you of beating them up for shits and giggles, okay? Just level with me; what’s their problem with you? They don’t even know you. I mean, they really don’t, it’s weird. So just get it out there.”

“They were all on the team leaders’ personal teams.”

“Yeah, Chuck told me, that’s why I figured they’d be okay as team leaders,” Dean answers. “Mistake with Sid, yeah, lesson learned. So it was the old team leaders that had a problem with you?”

“Yes,” Cas answers unhelpfully. “We didn’t get along.”

“Risa seemed okay with you,” he tries, groping for the memories of Risa and Cas. He didn’t get the impression she particularly liked him, but it wasn’t anything like what he felt today. Vaguely, he remembers Chuck saying something about Cas and the old team leaders: he really should have followed up on that.

To his surprise, Cas hesitates a moment before answering. “Except Risa, yes.”

Dean tries to decide how much it’s worth pushing right now. Cas is way too good at giving him answers that aren’t lies, but might as well be, and he’s getting tired of it.

“I know you made a point of being a dick, but that doesn’t explain this kind of reaction to you. Out of all of them, Mel was the only one who’s dialed back to defcon three around you, and today she wasn’t—never mind.” He’s not sure what to make of Mel’s glares at Sidney, who wasn’t nearly as good as he thought at hiding how he felt. “So they got this from the former team leaders, okay. What was their problem?”

Cas doesn’t fidget, twitch, tap, or do anything a normal person does when they’re stationary for any length of time, which over a month of exposure has taught Dean isn’t Cas’s default state, not anymore. Cas is restless, barely leashed energy indifferently contained, and it’s an effort for him to be still.

This stillness, however, isn’t like that, and Dean honestly doubts that Cas lets himself do this very often; like the strength and speed, he minimized what couldn’t be hidden, and like those two things, with Dean, the habit seems to be slipping. Of all the times to realize that, this may be the worst; this conversation already has the earmarks of something that Cas didn’t like to think about (forgot?), and Dean wasn’t excited about doing this before.

“When we settled here,” Cas says slowly, “and Dean began to recruit, the majority of the recruits were either hunters or victims of Lucifer who then became hunters.” He pulls up one knee, looking at nothing. “As I told you, some were unstable, but their skills were invaluable, and few of those who survived the early attacks were particularly sane in any case. Dean offered them the possibility of vengeance, and for many, vengeance was all that they had left. Considering the nature of our mission, commitment was a very desirable trait in a recruit.”

“You mean obsession,” Dean counters. “How many John Winchesters does it take to kill Lucifer anyway?”

“We haven’t managed to yet, so the answer is obviously more than we have.” Cas shakes his head, eyes distant. “At Chitaqua, they found others among the recruits who shared their suffering and understood their need for revenge. Dean gave them hope, companionship, purpose in living, and in return, they gave him their loyalty.” He hesitates, and already, Dean knows what’s coming next. “I don’t think Dean understood what he had become to them or what that would mean when he told me to train them. I didn’t, not then.”

“He wanted fanatics. He understood what he was looking at, Cas; he was counting on it.” Cas looks away. “When did you figure it out?”

“You mean, when it became a problem?”

“Yeah.”

“Between Lucifer’s genocidal intentions and the Host’s disappearance, angels were not very popular. Even Fallen and mortal, I wasn’t what I appeared to be, and—I was tired of pretending I didn’t notice—I didn’t handle it well.” A flicker of something raw crosses his face before vanishing, but it’s enough. “It was the first time a human had ever referred to me as Lucifer’s brother.”

Dean lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “You didn’t tell Dean.”

“Technically speaking, Lucifer was also Dean’s brother,” Cas answers with a flickering glance. “They were unaware of that connection, and it seemed wiser to not bring it to his attention.”

He wonders what that is translated from Cas to English; if he thought Dean would react badly, or if he already knew Dean wouldn’t care enough to deal with it. “So they didn’t trust you.”

“That would be an understatement. They saw me as both a threat and a dangerous influence on Dean. They resented me openly, but at the time, I didn’t particularly care.”

What do you do when you meet a genuine Fallen angel of the Lord in a militia camp at the end of the world? He’s faster, stronger, and he doesn’t care if you hate him because he’s got a job to do and is getting that shit done whether you like it or not. Dean knows how he’d react—history is useful like that—but it turns out some people double down on that kind of thing.

“That sounds stupidly dangerous.”

Cas snorts. “After training with me, they were well aware of what I could do. The former team leaders also knew the risk of failure was far too high to test with impunity.”

“They wanted to kill you?” Cas’s expression doesn’t change, but Dean knows him, and that says everything. “They actually tried, didn’t they? They tried to kill you.”

“I doubt that could possibly become a problem with the new patrol leaders,” Cas answers, like that’s even fucking relevant, or even comes close to answering the question. “None of them would risk almost certain failure when they know how I would react.”

“Which would be…”

“I would kill them.”

Dean swallows hard. “That’s what you told the old team leaders?”

“No,” Cas answers calmly, meeting Dean’s eyes. “I killed the first one that tried.”

Dean’s still taking that in when Vera and Jeremy make the porch; they’re louder than they need to be, but he figures this conversation was going to be over right there anyway. He leans back into the couch, hiding his face with a blank stare at the ceiling that hopefully looks more pathetic than freaked out; Cas just says, “You needn’t have gone to the trouble; I can cook.”

“You really can’t,” Dean hears himself say in a surprisingly normal voice. Straightening, he smiles at Vera and Jeremy and grits his teeth; he can deal with this. “Vera, you want your own team?”

Vera stops short, a box from the infirmary dropping to the floor with an audible thunk. Jeremy almost runs into her before he corrects himself, both of them staring at Dean. “What?”

“Team leader,” he says, grinning more naturally at her expression of disbelief. “So what do you think?”

---

Dinner isn’t so much awkward as weirdly charged, though Dean can’t tell if it’s him or Vera and Jeremy. Cas is just Cas, calmly eating whatever the hell this is, which actually isn’t bad, though he thinks it helps that he has no idea what’s in it or if the meat was recently alive and what animal it was attached to. The company also encourages Cas to actually eat more than some internal minimal requirement.

That little explanation about his relationship with his body explains a lot about Cas’s flirtation with heroin-chic, and it makes him think about what Cas said about trial and error, repetition, life lived where something as simple as eating needed to be remembered or he wouldn’t do it. Watching Vera methodically time her eating to drag out the meal and add social pressure to Cas actually finishing his plate (good idea; he’s gonna try that) tells him, a.) she’s done this before, and b.) she probably knows why she has to.

(It occurs to him that this may be a reason Cas didn’t put up nearly the kind of fight Dean expected when he got them on a sane living schedule; he needs to think about that, too.)

Dean knew Vera wouldn’t refuse his offer and after today, he’s got a pretty good idea why. Knowing she was the one who led the coup that put Cas (very reluctantly) in charge of Chitaqua means she’s probably motivated now to even out the odds among the current team leaders, but what he doesn’t know and can’t ask is why the hell Vera did it in the first place.

The story about Jeremy gives him some context on why the hell she seems to like him, but he wonders what she was thinking to go to the resident goddamn junkie in the first place for help, even if he was her instructor when she got here. Considering everyone probably knows why Cas and the former team leaders didn’t get along, Vera’s attitude—like Amanda’s and even Joe’s—is refreshingly free of fear and God knows, she doesn’t have any problem facing off with Cas the former angel when she’s pissed, which argues—fuck if Dean knows.

After Vera and Jeremy leave, Dean watches Cas, without prompting—though after a considerable delay, but visible proof that Dean’s made progress on teaching Cas about habitable living conditions—take the dishes to the kitchen. The sound of water running—after invisibly examining the other cabins, he knows now that working plumbing is less a right than a privilege you really have to work for—is something of a minor revelation; Cas is practicing his cohabitation skills for the purposes of avoidance. Of Dean.

It’s a few long minutes before the water turns off, and even longer until Cas appears at the doorway. Dean wonders if anyone else would notice Cas’s reluctance to so much as come back into the room.

“Do you wish me to help you get to bed?”

Dean tries to think of something to say and gives up, aware of a faint headache forming behind his eyes, along with a belated throbbing from both his arm and his ankle which may or may not be psychosomatic. Not like he’s going to sleep tonight anyway.

“Sure,” he says, then adds, “Look—”

“You don’t have to offer reassurance you don’t believe,” Cas interrupts, pausing beside the couch. “His name was Luke and he was one of Dean’s lieutenants. He tried to kill me, and I retaliated by killing him.”

There isn’t a word for how Dean feels about this right now. Mostly, all he can think of is Cas telling him in Dean’s cabin that day that he wouldn’t sleep in his own goddamn cabin while Dean was there so Dean wouldn’t kill him. Like maybe that part wasn’t bullshit; he meant it. It wasn’t personal or anything; he learned humans did that kind of thing. They kill people they don’t like. It happens.

“If you hadn’t killed him,” Dean asks, “would someone else have tried?”

“I know that was the last time anyone tried to put a bullet in my head in this camp,” he answers flatly. “Do you have any other questions?”

Jesus, yeah, starting with how the hell could Dean fucking Winchester let that happen. “No—”

“Then you should go to bed. It’s very late, and I can give you more morphine later so you can sleep tonight without pain.”

Right. “Yeah, okay.” Letting Cas help him to his feet, Dean wishes the goddamn headache would go away so he could think. “Cas—”

“You need time to think about it.” Leaving Dean on the edge of the bed, Cas retreats to the door too quickly for it to be anything other than an escape. “If you need anything—”

“You’ll be there,” Dean interrupts, meeting Cas’s eyes and trying to convey something—anything—that will make Cas stop looking at him like something just ended, like maybe he should sleep somewhere else tonight and every night after. “I know. Thanks.”

Cas hesitates before nodding. “You’re welcome. Good night.”

Dropping back on the mattress, Dean stares at the ceiling, thinking of the team leaders today on patrol, what they didn’t know how to ask him and he didn’t know enough to answer. It helps to have the context, but he’s still not sure of the question: if Cas would do it again, or if he would let him. The answer’s the same either way: no.

No, Cas won’t do it again; no, he won’t let him; no, because he won’t have to. He’s not the Dean fucking Winchester who wanted a camp of fanatics but didn’t deal with the shit that came with them. Anyone pulls a gun on Cas and means to use it, he’ll take care of them himself.

---

Half-awake, Dean gropes blearily for the covers he kicked off during the night, so cold he can feel his teeth chattering. Getting the blankets in one hand, he hesitates, suddenly aware of the silence around him; it shouldn’t be this quiet. He should be able to hear—something.

Vaguely alarmed, he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and has to pause at vertigo strong enough to make him almost throw up. Swallowing frantically, he ignores the distant throbbing in his arm when he tries to use it to brace himself, trying to remember what he was doing. Snoring, that’s what he’s missing, Sam’s goddamn snoring, the annoying soundtrack of his life.

Frowning, he raises a hand to rub his eyes, wondering what the hell they were doing today—and why they’re doing it in fucking sub-zero temperatures—and the vivid-white of the bandage around his arm catches his attention. Flexing his arm, he tries to focus, but the pain is distant, and not like a really good painkiller, either.

“Sam?” he says uncertainly, getting to his feet and barely catching himself on the mattress at the sickening tilt of the room that makes his stomach churn unpleasantly, ankle throbbing with every beat of his heart. As soon as he can see past the black spots dancing in his vision, he starts toward where he thinks the other bed should be, but the faint light coming from around the motel room door gets his attention, and he feels like an idiot. Sam probably went for a soda or something, right.

He thinks about getting back in bed, but a soda sounds like a pretty good idea right now; his mouth tastes like shit. It seems like forever crossing the bare wood floor, catching himself against the doorway with a grunt; Jesus, what the hell were they hunting? And where for that matter; that’s something else he thinks he should probably know.

Opening the door, he stumbles out, and only belatedly becomes aware he’s still standing on wood, not concrete. Looking around, he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing. There’s no concrete or asphalt or cars, no sound of the highway, no stretch of starry sky, just a room he’s never seen before, and dimly, a blurry figure stretched out on the couch that sits up, head turning in slow-motion to look at him.

The rush of adrenaline makes him dizzy; blur or not, no one has blue eyes like that.

“Cas,” he breathes in horror; this can’t be happening, not again. It can’t. “How?”

“Dean,” Castiel says, getting to his feet. Panicked, Dean realizes he doesn’t have a weapon and how the fuck had that even happened? Not that it would matter, he thinks in groggy horror as Castiel comes closer; he still has no idea how to kill a god. “Dean, what are you—”

“Where’s Sam?” It’s so stupid, he hadn’t even thought about it, but of course, of course he’d go after Sam. He thought this was over, he—Jesus, it wasn’t over. The reservoir was a lie, the hospital, everything. Of course it was. “What did you do with him?”

He backs up a step and nearly falls when Castiel comes closer. “Dean, I don’t think—”

“You can’t do this,” Dean whispers, mouth dry. He never thought Castiel would go this far. Kill him, yeah, but not Sam. Not Sam—and he doesn’t know why he believed that. Gods don’t play by anyone’s rules, and Castiel… “Give him back.”

Castiel stops short. “Dean, where are you right now?”

“You know, you son of a bitch. Give him back.” Dean feels the open door at his back, but he doesn’t know where Sam is and Castiel might do anything, anything at all, and he can’t—why can’t he think? Is Castiel fucking with his head, too? “Worship, that what you want? That what it takes?”

Castiel’s eyes widen. “Where are you, Dean?”

“Fuck you, you want that? Fine.” Dean drops to his knees, the floor angling up to meet him. Catching himself on one hand, wood scraping against his palm, he thinks vaguely there’s something wrong with this, but right now, he can’t worry about it, because Sam. “Pledge—pledge—”

“Dean, don’t—”

“Pledge my loyalty and love,” he spits out, a convulsive shudder shaking his body, and he can’t quite make his teeth stop chattering. It’s so fucking cold. “You got it. Give me Sam back.”

To his surprise, Castiel doesn’t respond. When Dean looks up, there are two of him—Christ, he thinks, two—and he’s so still that Dean can almost hear the wind outside.

“Please,” he adds, wondering what else Castiel wants from him; he’s got everything now. “I’m sorry. Give me Sam back. Please, give him back.”

In the silence that follows, Dean can’t hear anything but his own panting, arm shaking as it tries to hold him up. He feels it start to give out—he’s going to fall on his face in front of Castiel, he thinks blurrily—but his face never hits wood, worn denim suddenly appearing beneath his cheek. A warm hand is pressed against his forehead, making him shake even more; he knows it’s Castiel’s, but it feels so good that he just doesn’t care.

“I’m sorry,” Dean tries desperately, not sure what he’s apologizing for. “Please—”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Castiel murmurs, sounding—he has no idea. “This is what he tried to do to you.”

Dean tries to lift his head, but angelic strength—divine strength?—holds him in place. He’s not exactly sorry for it; giving up shouldn’t feel this much like relief. “Sam. You gotta—”

“I need you to go back to bed,” Castiel says firmly, fingers threading through Dean’s hair with surprising gentleness, and God, he’s so tired. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this tired in his entire life. “Your brother will be returned to you. Please avoid making any further vows meant to last into perpetuity, please.”

Dean nods weakly, feeling Castiel shift beneath his head, hands gentle on his shoulders, fingers trailing down his arm to the bandage and skimming over the soreness he didn’t realize was bothering him until it flares into active pain.

Castiel must use his new god mojo at some point, because the next thing Dean knows is he’s in bed again, light flaring in his peripheral vision. Wincing, he blinks the afterimage from his eyes as Castiel sits on the edge of the bed, holding—something, Dean has no idea.

“Where’s Sam?” he manages; he’s got to know. “You said—”

“I keep my promises,” Castiel says, touching his face, the rough scrape of calluses against his cheek a surprise. Why would Castiel have calluses? “For now, I need you to take this.” Something is pressed against his lips; obediently, Dean takes it, rolling it on his tongue without interest before swallowing it dry. Not like he has any reason to refuse; Castiel can do whatever the fuck he wants now. It doesn’t even matter anymore. Several smaller ones follow—pills, he realizes belatedly, bitter-sharp edges like aspirin or maybe ibuprofen, Dean has no idea. “Go to sleep,” Castiel says, helping Dean stretch out on the bed. “It will help.”

“Freezing,” Dean murmurs, surprised his breath doesn’t freeze in the air. “Why—”

“Sleep,” Castiel interrupts quietly, piling the blankets on top of him until it’s almost possible he might eventually get warm again. “I need to see someone.”

---

“Don’t worry,” a woman’s voice is saying, and it’s only in their sudden absence that he recognizes the presence of her hands as she draws back. “Get Alicia in the infirmary and tell her what’s going on. She’ll know what we need. This shit happens sometimes.”

“You’re certain?” Cas, he thinks blurrily. “It’s only been a few hours since he was bitten.”

“He’ll be fine,” she answers confidently. “Couple of days, no problem.”

He’s out again.