—Day 33—
Despite having showered, Castiel feels only marginally more conscious than when he woke up to the sound of Joseph’s far too enthusiastic greeting to Dean at his arrival. Despite that, it’s still a massive improvement over dawn, when Dean took one look at him and ordered him back to bed with a painkiller and a glass of water. From the quality of the light coming through the window, he’s fairly certain that it no longer qualifies as morning any longer.
Leaning drowsily against the frame of the open bedroom door, he watches Dean engaging Joseph in enthusiastic discussion, gesturing broadly to punctuate each statement. Joseph’s usual reserve is almost absent, worn away by the sheer blunt force of Dean’s personality deployed with all the subtlety of a battering ram, all the more effective for the fact that Dean has no idea how powerful it actually is or what he could do with it. Worlds have burned to ash in the name of people who could do far less than what Dean does as instinctively as he breathes, and his major use of it is to make friends of his own soldiers.
Joseph bursts into laughter, collapsing into his chair, years of wariness washing away before his eyes, and Dean isn’t even trying.
He clenches his hands in the edge of the soft flannel overshirt and can almost pretend they aren’t shaking, feeling the burst of pain across his knuckles beneath the bandage. The ghost of a headache ripples across his forehead, the memory of pain; he can only blame the opiates for the fact that until now he didn’t think about what he almost did to himself last night.
“Hey,” Dean says suddenly, turning to look at him, and the force of that smile is blinding, overwhelming, destroying everything in its path. “You want some coffee?” Getting to his feet, he glances at Joseph belatedly. “You?”
“Sure, thanks,” Joseph replies with an admirable lack of visible surprise, as if Dean offers to get people coffee all the time. His “Good morning, Cas” however, is followed by a long pause. Joseph’s face goes through a bewildering series of contortions—it’s far too early to try and interpret even if it is noon—before composing itself into what might be polite interest. “You okay? You look…” There’s another extended pause before he gestures at the couch. “Sit down already.”
An excellent idea: he wonders why he didn’t think of it himself. Surprised by his own yawn, he makes his way to one end of the couch and sinks gratefully into the cushions, aware of a lingering lassitude pervading every cell of his body. It’s rather pleasant, all things considered.
“I’m not used to—” He’s startled by another yawn, along with an inexplicable desire to avoid movement in the foreseeable future and perhaps acquire a blanket and pillow. “I usually don’t sleep this late.”
“Looks like you might need a few more hours,” Joseph observes, cocking his head.
“Which is what he’s gonna be getting when we’re done,” Dean tells him, returning to the room with two cups and handing one to Joseph before dropping into a crouch, studying Castiel’s face critically before saying more quietly, “Feeling better?”
Are you going to bleed to death from your own stupidity, yes, he understands the question. “Much,” he murmurs, fighting back another yawn as he focuses on the coffee cup; the aroma is somehow both enticing and soothing.
“You need to eat something,” Dean says, inexplicably still holding the cup just out of reach. “I’ll see what we got. Forgot to raid Chuck’s yesterday for more supplies, but we got enough for another meal.”
“Fine, yes,” he says immediately, and Dean smiles smugly as he hands over the cup. Gratefully, Castiel takes a drink and fights back a sigh of sheer satisfaction as Dean, retrieving his own cup from somewhere, drops onto the couch beside him. When he looks up, Joseph is staring between them as if he’s never seen them before, cup forgotten in one hand. “I like coffee,” he explains. “No one told me it improves with the addition of sugar.”
“Sugar makes everything better,” Joseph agrees, taking a sip as if to prove the point, but the brown eyes dance with amusement before he looks at Dean. “So—”
“You convinced me,” Dean tells him sincerely. “You’re back on duty.”
Joseph raises an eyebrow in polite disbelief.
“And to celebrate, I have a job for you—two, actually. First, I need some maps, biggest you can find. Cas covered the state already, so get me country and global. Anything else?” he asks, glancing at Castiel questioningly.
“Things you use on maps to show locations—”
“Map pins?”
“Those, yes. And more pencils—I’m almost out.”
“Might as well ask Chuck if he needs anything if you’re knocking over an office supply store,” Dean says. “Think you can get that done by dusk or you need another day?”
“No problem. I saw some last time I checked the central library,” Joseph answers, taking another drink. “What’s the other thing?”
“You’re leaving for the border tomorrow morning. Who you taking?” At Joseph’s confused look, Dean grins. “You’ve been promoted, effective now. Who do you want for your team? Not Vera: I need her for something else.”
“Ana.” Joseph answers after a moment, valiantly attempting to hide his surprise. “Leah and Mike. Uh, what about Sid—”
“I’ll talk to him.” Dean sits back, giving Joseph an evaluating look. “How long will it take? Ballpark?”
“Three days including travel, probably less,” he answers. “Last time, it took them about a week to get everything. I’m using the estimates from last time on what we’ll pay, but if they want more, I’ll send someone to clear it with you.”
Dean waves a hand. “I trust your judgment. Cas is gonna give you access to all our accounts; I need a balance check while you’re there, see what we got to work with. I’m guessing if you can break into the DMV, you can figure out how to get that without them seeing what you’re doing?”
“Uh, yeah.” Joseph shifts in his seat. “So anything I should add to the list…”
“We’ll go over it again before you leave, but add this now,” Dean says. “Any sign of the military entering or leaving Kansas.”
Joseph stills briefly before nodding. “Got it.”
“And by the way, officially, this is going to take you about two weeks,” he says. “Check with Chuck on rations.”
Joseph lowers his cup. “It will?”
“You got another mission when you’re done. Secret,” he adds, grinning at Joseph’s expression. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
“Sure,” Joe says, straight-faced. “What am I doing?”
“You’re going to Wichita, Topeka, Olathe, Overland Park, and Kansas City. You get two days per city, so pay attention. I need two things: first, go to where the military was bunking, see if anyone’s left; if they are, leave. If they aren’t, I’m sending Alicia with you, and she’ll report to me.” Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on his knees. “Can you get a camera?”
“Yeah,” Joseph answers, intrigued. “Chuck has one.”
“Perfect. Second thing: if no one’s there, don’t touch anything.” Joseph nods firmly. “Get someone to photograph every room and do a full inventory of what they’ve got first. Better if you can get it off their systems, but if their generators are out, we’ll worry about that later. When you’re done with that part, this is a salvage operation; start with rations, gasoline, ammunition, and weapons, all you can get in one jeep, but take good notes. Eventually we’ll get everything they got.”
“Right.” Joseph regards them both for a moment. “And if they show up while we’re there—”
“If they’re not there, they’re not coming back,” Dean says, picking up his half-empty cup again. “So might as well put what they got to good use.”
“Just one thing—I don’t know where they were bunked.”
“Have a little faith, Joe.” Reaching over the arm of the couch, Dean retrieves a rough stack of papers, some crumpled and with visible water stains; on top is a series of faded Xeroxes, much folded and worn. Startled, Castiel straightens, just remembering not to ask where Dean got them. “Locations, floor plans, and where they kept everything, or as much as I could see during my visits. Think I’d send you out blind?”
Joseph’s mouth cracks into a smile. “You got keys, too?”
“Dude, why would I make this easy? I got the passcodes, but most of the doors just need a lockpick. Take enough C4 in case the codes are outdated or need power and for the armory.”
“Ana can set the charges,” Castiel inserts blandly. “She was trained in explosives during her time in the Marines.”
Dean tosses him a quick, grateful smile before turning back to Joseph. “Alicia will be assigned to bring me daily reports and any supplies you get, so someone needs to record everything—hey,” he says, looking pleased. “I think Phil’s just found his true calling. I’ll talk to Sarah. Make your bathroom breaks short, though; he’s got some kind of thing about that.”
Castiel closes his eyes. “He’s entered the realm of the novella.”
“God bless him,” Dean says maliciously. “Anyway, report to me tomorrow morning after patrol and I’ll go over the details with you. You’ve done patrol in the cities, but take Cas’s maps with you anyway. Get Phil to do any updates if they need ‘em.”
“Right.” Joseph looks down at his empty cup regretfully. “Anything else?”
“One thing,” Dean says casually, taking another drink of coffee to hide his discomfort. “Only people who need to know what you’re doing is your team, but not until the negotiations are done at the border. Then you tell them everything you know. Anyone else asks, this is just a border run.”
“Yes, sir.” Joseph hesitates, brown eyes flickering to Castiel briefly before visibly bracing himself and looking at Dean directly. “You’re sure they’re not coming back?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re dead, and from what I know about their deployments, even if the military knew they were gone, they weren’t gonna be replaced.”
Joseph snorts. “Surprised they kept it up this long. They wrote off the zones when they made ‘em. They’re just waiting for everyone in here to die.” Looking at Dean, he hesitates again. “Does this have anything to do why it’s been over a month and everything’s quiet on the western front?”
“And the lack of squirrel stew in our lives? Probably, but I can’t be sure. What you find will help figure it out.” Dean gives Castiel a brief glance. “Joe, if anyone reports something feels weird when they touch something, get away from it. Take a picture and make sure you put it in the daily reports.”
“All right.” Joseph visibly tries to decide how to ask his next question. “Weird, like something the military is experimenting with or weird as in bad feeling?”
Dean stares back at Joseph a little blankly, and Castiel realizes only belatedly the danger just as he opens his mouth. “A feeling,” he says quickly before Dean can speak. “They won’t want to touch it or will avoid it entirely. They might not even notice that they’re doing it if there is nothing visibly unusual. If possible, have someone required to act as an observer at all times and document where it is occurring.”
“Is it dangerous?” Joseph asks neutrally.
“At this time, no, or I would evaluate it myself before sending anyone else.”
Joseph nods again, slowly getting to his feet, expression schooled to polite interest. “So anything else?”
“No,” Dean answers easily. “See you tonight.”
When he’s gone, Castiel reaches over, taking the papers from Dean’s hand, paging through them until he finds the notes on the military. Frowning, he glances at the Xeroxes, wondering how on earth they were acquired, much less why. “Where—”
“Everywhere. The bottom ones were holding up the table leg,” Dean says, then abruptly slams his coffee cup down. “So Joe thinks we’re being secretive dicks.”
“No, you think we’re being secretive dicks,” Castiel answers, scanning the next page, filing away the information at a glance for later thought. Dean made notes: contacts, names, ranks, locations, tracking his meeting with surprising regularity. It makes sense, he supposes uncertainly; in case he was unavailable, one of the team leaders could take his place. “He thinks that we have information that we’re not yet ready to disclose for good, albeit unknown, reasons. Which has the benefit of being true.”
Dean glares at him. “And that doesn’t make us secretive dicks?”
“It makes you,” Castiel answers as evenly as possible, “his commander, whom he trusts has good reason to not tell him yet. It makes me a hypocrite, which is nothing new.”
“Fine, I think we—plural—are secretive dicks. So tell me why the hell we can’t tell him about this?”
This discussion would benefit from either more coffee, a class two stimulant, or perhaps Dean having it with someone else. Any would do. “For one? Because then everything will feel ‘weird’, as you put it. To confirm their existence, relative objectivity is needed, and unless there are very obvious visual disparities, all we have to work with is ‘a feeling’. I’d prefer to go myself—”
“No.”
“I understand your reservations, so I won’t insist,” he agrees, though he doesn’t, not at all, but the way Dean looked last night gives him pause. He’s regularly tested another Dean Winchester’s temper and patience as a matter of course: a solution to boredom, a way to pass the time, or simply to prove he could, and knew exactly how to elicit the response that he desired, as predictable as clockwork and reflexive as breathing. This Dean, however… “Practically speaking—you’re still thinking like a hunter in a world where what you do is best known by a series of bestselling novels that are considered fiction. Here, those things are not only fact, but assumed to be a clear and present danger of immediate death until proven otherwise.”
“Paranoia,” Dean says sourly, crossing his arms. “I get it.”
“Survival,” he corrects him. “Considering our mission, it’s also generally a valid concern. Which brings me to my second point; this is a militia of hunters. Whether or not it was possible to win the Apocalypse, Lucifer was something concrete that we could fight and could, in theory, be stopped or killed, preferably killed, of course, and humans can be ridiculously optimistic. While it’s known an archangel’s Grace is very powerful, the worst that could happen was he’d win and wipe out humanity. Or possibly become the new god, I’m still unclear on—”
“God?” Dean straightens in alarm. “Lucifer wants to be a god?”
“I doubt he was serious,” he answers impatiently. “Which is beside the point.”
“I really, really think this should be a point somewhere.”
He closes his eyes, wondering why counting to ten is recommended for moments like this. It never works. “So decided, later.” Reluctantly, Dean nods, slumping back into the cushions. “The worst potential ending was the destruction of humanity, and as you may have noticed, his weapon was more or less visible and we could kill it. Telling them that Lucifer’s Grace, released upon the earth, can create permanent holes in the very fabric of reality would lead to the obvious question of can he do that to the entire world—the answer is yes, it’s possible—and if the war goes badly and we seem to be winning, he’ll take the eraser method of dealing with it.”
“How is the end of humanity better than punching holes in existence?” Dean demands.
“It shouldn’t be.” There’s no way to explain his own visceral reaction to the idea; even if he wanted to do so, words haven’t been invented yet to define what he felt when he’d see those holes. “But it is, and I don’t think you actually disagree with me.”
To his relief, Dean grimaces, conceding the point. “Yeah, I get it. Keep going.”
“At this time, the problem is relatively contained and completely harmless, and it will remain so in the near future.”
“And if there’s more of them because Lucifer has another temper tantrum?”
The headache gets worse, and Castiel wonders vaguely if perhaps he was wrong about damage. “I almost killed myself getting you this information,” he says, and distantly, he hears Dean’s breath catch. “I think it’s very little to ask of you in return that you delay disclosure to everyone in this world until we know more about it.”
He regrets it immediately; easing into a subject is far more difficult when you don’t usually care about the audience enough to have practice doing it.
“I mean—”
“You’re right.” The couch shifts, and to his surprise, Dean tips his face up, an inexorable pressure that might define the futility of resistance. Green eyes peer searchingly into his, worried. “Headache?”
“A little,” he whispers, clutching the cup. “And tired.”
“Hungry?”
“I’m never hungry,” he answers without thinking and freezes at the admission. “I suppose I could eat something. Maybe sleep. Someone told me once that it helps.”
Dean’s worried expression lightens. “I got some reading to do before Joe shows up tonight anyway. I’ll get you something to eat, then you can get some rest while I research the fuck out of myself. Sound good?”
He doesn’t trust himself to do more than nod, which seems enough. Plucking the empty cup from nerveless fingers, Dean gets to his feet. “And more coffee.” A trace of smugness threads its way through his voice as he adds, “Fridge is working, by the way.”
Castiel looks toward the kitchen and then at Dean, who radiates satisfaction. “Can you make the dryer stop beeping? It’s annoying, and now I have to deal with it on a weekly basis.”
“Joe offered me all the beer I want if I fix his range,” Dean says thoughtfully.
He sits back. “What do you want?”
“Where’s the Eldritch Horror?”
“Top of the utility closet behind the stack of Farmer’s Almanacs,” he answers immediately.
“And the still?”
“Please.” He crosses his arms. “What are you offering?”
Dean rolls his eyes before starting toward the kitchen. “I’ll think of something.”