Map of the World: September 15-27
Wake up!
—Interlude—
The grass still isn’t crumpling beneath them, not even sound escaping when he shifts in place.
He must have heard that wrong. “What?”
“You keep coming here,” Amieyl says quietly. “I thought it was familiar to you at first—”
“I’ve never been here before in my life!” Dean’s eyes are drawn back to the church—that girl, those demons, those kids, Cas dying and not dead yet, and that’s what it is; the stillness is starting to crack. If it shatters, nothing and no one will ever be able to put it back together again, that much he’s sure of.
You could hear him all the way across the camp.
No one could hear him, though, not really; they didn’t understand. He was trapped in there, an infinite being locked up for all eternity in a living corpse rotting around him that wouldn’t even die. No matter how much he beat the walls and screamed, no one heard a goddamn thing.
“Except me.” He doesn’t realize he’s gotten to his feet until Amieyl’s grip on his arm jerks him to a stop halfway to the church. “I gotta—”
“Dean. Use words.”
“I kept missing it,” Dean says distractedly, dragging her two more steps before she digs in her heels and brings him to an abrupt stop. Turning to face her, he wonders, incredulous, why she’s fighting him. “I kept getting the time wrong—it’s not like I know how to do this! Humans can’t see multiplying time! I’m lucky I got here at all!”
“Multiplicity of time,” Lia murmurs, rolling her eyes at his and Amieyl’s glares. “I apologize; being a former god, this is a subject I know something about. Dean, look at me: when did you start hearing it?”
“I don’t know…” In his mind, an image forms: Chitaqua in a bowl of light, lit by something brighter than the sun. Meeting Lia’s eyes, he sees her nod. “I have to get in the church—”
“Why?” Amieyl asks impatiently. “Words, Dean: use them.”
“Why do you think?” Dean demands, almost ready to scream himself in sheer frustration. “He’s calling me. I’m answering.”
Something hot and hideously painful stabs into his chest, screaming through his body like an electric shock, and air floods his lungs in a great, painful burst.
“There we go,” a voice says, brutally raspy, like she’s been screaming for hours over the endless sound of that goddamn droning that abruptly spikes into semi-regular beats. “Got it. Cas, get the fuck over here and get me that tray. I’ll crack his chest if I have to, but it’s not ending here, not now. It’s not over yet.”
“Got you,” Lia murmurs, arms circling his chest with a feeling of slowly diminishing warmth. “Sorry, it’s getting a little dicey here. I’ll be more careful.”
Staggering upright, Dean warily touches his chest again: that hurt. Even his fingertips are tingling.
“Thanks,” he manages to wheeze, trying to look fine and in control, which from Lia’s expression isn’t working too well. Glancing down, he’s perversely reassured by the lack of crumpling grass; that means it’s still okay. What he needs here is a plan. “Okay, that goddess—you said she pulled us out of time, right?”
“This is now,” Amieyl confirms warily. “It’s always now until she’s done.”
“Done with what? Wait,” he adds hastily, thinking of the way she and Cas looked at those demons. “Never mind, I can guess. What happens when she’s done?”
Amieyl hesitates. “In here, now, your soul is safe, but once time begins…”
“Right, game over,” Dean finishes for her, jerking his head toward the church. “So let’s get started.”
Lia frowns. “What are we doing?”
“First things first,” Dean says. “I gotta get in that church.”
“Cas, stop,” she says, and the shove of air abruptly stops. Distantly, cool air brushes against his lips. “Mark the time. Dean, you got thirty seconds: now breathe.”
Amieyl and Lia both look at him with matching wtf expressions, which isn’t helping, thanks.
“You said I’m hiding you,” he says impatiently to Lia. “Lucifer is killing gods tonight, and when time starts, he’s gonna find whoever’s in that church with Cas and take them both out.” This’ll work, he’s pretty sure; Cas is alive in his time, isn’t he? Probably sitting by his deathbed with all the drugs in the goddamn world at his fingertips if Dean doesn’t keep his promise. He will; just this one time, when someone needs him, he won’t fail. “I gotta make her keep us in now until…” Lia raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I don’t know, I’ll think of something.”
“Dean,” Amieyl says, like she’s not sure he’s sane, which he’s not, so whatever, “listen to me…”
“That’s why I kept coming to this church: to get here. Now, I mean. Both.” Amieyl stills, but she doesn’t look surprised. “He’s why I’m here.”
“Dean, you’re only mostly here, you get that, right? You can’t do anything like this. So how are you going to…” He looks toward the church and beyond it; following his gaze, she catches her breath, eyes flying back to him, wary. “You remember how to do that.”
“I do now,” he answers: when Lia saw his life, he saw it too, and what happened after; he remembers everything. Looking down, he sees the knife lying at his feet: sharp and dull, old blood dripping fresh and new, but the screaming’s muted now; he’s not there anymore, and he doesn’t have to listen. “It’ll work.”
She bites her lip, eyes focused on the blade. “Yeah, it will.”
“You carry your past, always, no help for it,” he tells her, picking it up and feeling it slide into his hand with a nauseating sense of fitness. “I don’t have to wear it to use it.”
“Come on,” she says roughly over the jagged beeps. “That’s it, Dean, keep it up. We’re almost there, you can do this. All you gotta do is try.”
“Okay,” he says as they climb the stairs to the small porch. As he reaches for the handle of the door, he says, “Now, what—” The cold cuts up his arm and goes all the way down to his feet before he even touches it; jerking back, the world—such as it is—darkens briefly, and then Lia and Amieyl are both holding him up. “What—”
“She’s locked it,” Lia says grimly, one small hand digging into his side to keep him on his feet. The dark brown eyes change briefly, an echo of eternity in them before it vanishes. “If you could summon her—”
“How?” It should be a terrifying thought, but right now, it’s not even on the radar; Cas is screaming and he doesn’t have that kind of time. He remembers Gaius in the grove, calling on Castiel: okay, yeah, he’s got this. “Right, I need her name. What is it?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“No, I’m not,” Lia answers distractedly, staring at the door with an expression he can’t read. “You can’t call her without one, and she’ll only answer to one she recognizes as her own.”
“Then how did she—” Stupid question; he knows this one. A thin layer of wood and goddamn divine power away, Cas is shattering into pieces and he’s here and can’t even get through the goddamn door because he doesn’t have her goddamn name. Battering it down: he can do that. He’s almost dead anyway: why fuck not. “Okay, new plan—”
“That might work, though,” Lia interrupts, letting him go before he can parse what the hell she’s talking about. Amieyl catches him before he falls over, cursing softly under her breath in what’s definitely not English but does involve indecency with a sheep. “Dean?”
“What?” Lia extends a hand with an expectant look. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I think this is how it’s done now,” she answers testily, snapping her fingers in eerie imitation of Amieyl. “Now, Dean.”
Gingerly, he straightens, vaguely surprised he’s able to keep on his feet. Taking Lia’s hand, he’s almost pulled right off them at her hearty shake; what is with them anyway? “Dean Winchester. Now what—”
“Cornelia,” Lia says, and suddenly, the brown eyes are vast, sprinkled with the fading remains of galaxies, stars born and dying in a breath of time, but this time it’s warm: humanity smiles back at him, too. “My true name is Cornelia, Dean.”
Dean doesn’t sigh, but it’s hard. “Nice to meet you, Cornelia. Now can we—”
“You know my true name because I gave it freely,” she says, holding his eyes, and he wonders if it’s just him or if she’s getting brighter. “Now say it.”
“Cornelia,” he says.
She makes a face. “I’m used to a little more formality from petitioners, but—”
“I’m not kneeling.”
“You don’t even know the meaning of the word,” she answers, an unexpected grin lighting up her face before she composes herself into a parody of serious contemplation. “You called. I’m your answer. What would you ask of me, Dean Winchester? Freely given: I ask nothing in return.”
Holy shit. “To—get in there before she’s—does the time thing.” Rocking back on his heels, he squints at her dubiously. “Can you still do that?”
“Oh ye of little faith.” Turning to the doors, she tilts her head, and the wood begins to creak rebelliously. “She’s not going to be happy, Dean. Just keep that in mind.”
No shit. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I know,” Cornelia says cheerfully, an insane grin almost splitting her face in two as the wood begins to crack, gold zig-zagging across the wood. For a moment, he sees it form her true name in golden-white light as the church itself lights up. “There we go, almost there.”
“I have faith,” Amieyl says confidently, warm, callused fingers sliding reassuringly through his, and something butts against the back of his knees. Looking down, he sees a smiling sheep. He didn’t know sheep did that, but when he looks around, they’re spread out behind them to the horizon, and all of them are doing just that. Right, because they’re not sheep. “You ready?”
Dean squeezes Amieyl’s fingers as the doors burst open, spilling searing light around them; it’s almost blinding. “Yeah, I am.”
“Okay, let me…yeah, got it,” she whispers hoarsely over the monotonous beeping. “Five minutes normal rhythm, no sign of arrhythmia—respiration normal… Cas, he’s back.”
“His fever’s dropping,” Cas says calmly, like he’s reading from a goddamn book. “You were correct; he’s responding to your treatment now. He’ll recover.”
“You can’t know that yet…” There’s a long stretch of silence. “You know. How?”
“I always know what I create,” he answers hoarsely, and Dean thinks he feels the ghost of a touch, warm against his forehead, gentle, but the fingers against his skin are fighting not to shake. There’s a short pause, then Cas says, in a completely different voice, one Dean’s never heard before, “Thank you.”
“Oh. Okay.”
There’s another sound, like something heavy dropping, and then someone—a couple of someones, he thinks vaguely—are crying.
He can’t see anyone, but he feels like shit; that probably means…
“Hey, Dean.”
Turning his head, wool scratching softly against his cheek, he manages to open his eyes to see Amieyl grinning down at him, framed by a small church porch beneath a sky as blue as a dream of summer. Turning his head, he takes in the bright day, a friendly sun shining down on an entire goddamn world of happy sheep.
“That,” he observes raspily, “is a lot of sheep.”
“More than you can imagine right now.” One callused hand rests on his chest; he can feel his heart beating against her palm. “You can count them later. Much later.”
“You okay?” he starts, then almost sits up; the memories are already fading, but he has to be sure. “Cas. Lia. Did they—”
“Everyone’s fine,” she interrupts, smiling down at him. “You did it.”
That’s good, he thinks hazily. “I got it right?”
“You couldn’t get it wrong if you tried,” she answers, laughter in her voice as she gestures toward the clear summer sky. He assumes that’s supposed to be an answer, though he’d love to get one for his actual question. “A thousand miles, Dean Winchester, and you walked them all. You can rest now.”
That sounds disturbingly like the exact opposite of what he was going for here. “Uh, wait—”
“Only one thing left to do.” He blinks at her smirk. “Wake up.”
the temptation to read on is strong
I've resisted so far...this may be my breaking point for jumping in